White House reportedly preps strike team to take out terrorists tied to Libya attack

WASHINGTON –  The White House has put special operations strike forces on standby and moved drones into the skies above Africa, ready to strike militant targets from Libya to Mali — if investigators can find the Al Qaeda-linked group responsible for the death of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya.

But officials say the administration, with weeks until the presidential election, is weighing whether the short-term payoff of exacting retribution on Al Qaeda is worth the risk that such strikes could elevate the group's profile in the region, alienate governments the U.S. needs to fight it in the future and do little to slow the growing terror threat in North Africa.

Details on the administration's position and on its search for a possible target were provided by three current and one former administration official, as well as an analyst who was approached by the White House for help. All four spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the high-level debates publicly.

The dilemma shows the tension of the White House's need to demonstrate it is responding forcefully to Al Qaeda, balanced against its long-term plans to develop relationships and trust with local governments and build a permanent U.S. counterterrorist network in the region.

Vice President Joe Biden pledged in his debate last week with Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan to find those responsible for the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others.

"We will find and bring to justice the men who did this," Biden said in response to a question about whether intelligence failures led to lax security around Stevens and the consulate. Referring back to the raid that killed Osama bin Laden last year, Biden said American counterterror policy should be, "if you do harm to America, we will track you to the gates of hell if need be."

The White House declined to comment on the debate over how best to respond to the Benghazi attack.

Via: Fox News

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Obama At Intense ‘Debate Camp’ At Virginia Golf Resort

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (AP) — With the White House race barreling toward the finish, President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney were staying out of the spotlight Monday, underscoring the intense focus each campaign is placing on the second presidential debate.

Obama’s campaign, seeking to rebound from a dismal first debate, promised a more energetic president would take the stage Tuesday at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. Romney’s team aimed to build on a commanding opening debate that gave the Republican new life in a White House race that had once appeared to be slipping away from him.

When the two candidates step back into the public eye at the debate, there will be exactly three weeks left until Election Day. But early voting is already underway in dozens of states, including some battlegrounds, giving the candidates little time to recover from any slipups.

Pres. Obama and Gov. Romney on the issues: Weigh in on the Presidential Forum
Much of the pressure in the coming debate will be on Obama, who aides acknowledge showed up at the first face-off with less practice — and far less energy — than they had wanted. The president and a team of advisers are seeking to regain focus with an intense, three-day “debate camp” at a golf resort in Williamsburg, Va.

“It is going great,” Obama said of his preparations Sunday, while taking a brief break to greet volunteers at a nearby campaign office.

Via: CBS DC

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Exclusive: Study shows $1.2 trillion gap for public pensions

(Reuters) - The largest 100 public pension funds have around $1.2 trillion of unfunded liabilities, about $300 billion above the nearly $900 billion they reported themselves, according to a new actuarial study to be released on Monday.

The pension systems reported a median funding level of 75.1 percent. The study by the actuarial firm Milliman, which used different ways to value assets and measure liabilities, finds an aggregate level of funding of 67.8 percent.

But Milliman, one of the world largest actuarial firms took a close look at U.S. public pension funding for the first time, and said the multibillion-dollar difference was good news.
Rebecca Sielman, the report's author, said results should reassure the public that America's public pensions in general are accurately reporting their funding shortfalls.

The difference between what public pensions across the United States have reported and what Milliman found wasn't significant, Sielman said. She noted that a relatively small change in the way the figures are calculated could lead to seemingly outsized results because the funds are so large.
"The numbers really didn't change that much," she said. "It really didn't move the needle."

Both the pension funds' reported results and Milliman's findings fell within the range of previous estimates from other studies of the total size of the public pension shortfall in the United States.
With the study, Milliman, stepped into the debate about whether public pensions are underreporting the size of their liabilities.

That hot-button issue revolves around how much money public employers - and, by extension, taxpayers - will have to contribute to cover future payouts for member benefits. It is a key issue at a time of dwindling revenues and tighter budgets for states and local governments.

Pension funds get money from the returns on their assets and from members' contributions. States and cities also pay into the funds, but their contributions are discounted based on how much money they think their investments will make over time.

Via: Reuters

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Poll: 47 Percent Of New Yorkers Are Worse Off Financially Than They Were 4 Years Ago

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) - A new poll finds that 47 percent of New Yorkers say they are worse off financially than they were four years ago, compared to 37 percent who say their finances have improved.
The Siena College poll released on Friday also found that 68 percent of New York state residents support raising the federal income tax for high earners.

Around 75 percent favor increased development of  domestic energy sources, including oil and natural gas.
New Yorkers are evenly split when it comes to support for recent federal health care reforms. Forty three present said they support the changes. Forty percent favor repealing them.
The telephone survey of 621 New York state residents over 18 was conducted from Oct. 2 to 6. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.
Do you feel that you’re worse off now than you were four years ago? Let us know in the comments section below…

Via: CBS New York

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City to recognize Black Panthers Marker to honor volunteer efforts in community

Born out of the tumult of the 1960s, the Black Panther Party is usually portrayed as a militant organization with radical political views.

But there's another side to the story of the Black Panthers, one that involved feeding breakfast to poor children, operating an ambulance service for people in neglected areas, screening people for sickle-cell anemia and infusing a spirit of black pride within their communities.

That version of the Black Panther story will be recognized today when city officials unveil a historic marker for the Winston-Salem chapter of the Black Panther Party at the northeast corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Fifth Street, near the group's former headquarters.

The Winston-Salem chapter, organized in 1969, was the first to be formed in the Southeast.

Nelson Malloy, an early member of the party who later became member of the Winston-Salem City Council, said he never imaged the Panthers would be recognized in such an official capacity.

"But we are, in fact, part of the city's history," he said.

Mark Maxwell is the chairman of the city's 12-member Historic Resources Commission that selects historic markers.

Most members of the commission were familiar with the violent past of the national Panther Party, Maxwell said.

But once they learned of the local Panthers' positive impact on the community, their views shifted, she said.

"We felt we had an organization that had a story," Maxwell said.

City Council Member Derwin Montgomery suggested the marker, and a city intern helped organize the application, said Leslie Pegram, the historic resource officer for the Historic Resource Commission.

The commission usually has funding to mark two historic sites each year, she said. The Katie B. Reynolds Memorial Hospital, a segregated hospital that served the black community, received a marker earlier this year.

Montgomery said that the local Panther movement came at a time when many blacks distrusted the police.

"You had some who chose a passive stance, the nonviolent approach, and those who chose the Malcolm X or Black Panther Party approach," he said. "We recognize much from the nonviolent portion of the movement but there are also positive things that came out from the other side as well."

But the local Panthers were not averse to violence or the threat of violence. In 1971, they exchanged gunfire with Winston-Salem police near their headquarters when police arrived to investigate a stolen truck. They also threatened to use violence if a local woman, who had been evicted, was not allowed to return to her home on Locust Street.

A 1970 newspaper photo showed a young, solemn-faced Larry Little, his hands gripping a shotgun, standing sentry behind the woman.

That confrontation ended peacefully after someone agreed to pay the woman's rent.

Little, a longtime professor at Winston-Salem State University, also served on the city council.

He and Malloy are scheduled to speak at today's program, which begins at 3 p.m.

The social awareness that Malloy gained as a member of the party has served him and other former Panthers in the years since the local group dissolved in 1977.

"It allowed us to continue our dedication to the community and to be agents of change," Malloy said.

Via: Winston Salem Journal

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Moderator Role Under Scrutiny — Before the Debate

In a rare example of political unity, both the Romney and Obama campaigns have expressed concern to the Commission on Presidential Debates about how the moderator of the Tuesday town hall has publicly described her role, TIME has learned.

While an early October memorandum of understanding between the Obama and Romney campaigns and the bipartisan commission sponsoring the debates suggests CNN’s Candy Crowley would play a limited role in the Tuesday-night session, Crowley, who is not a party to that agreement, has done a series of interviews on her network in which she has suggested she will assume a broader set of responsibilities. As Crowley put it last week, “Once the table is kind of set by the town-hall questioner, there is then time for me to say, ‘Hey, wait a second, what about X, Y, Z?’”

(MORE: What Happened at the First Presidential Debate)

In the view of both campaigns and the commission, those and other recent comments by Crowley conflict with the language the two campaigns agreed to, which delineates a more limited role for the moderator of the town-hall debate. The questioning of the two candidates is supposed to be driven by the audience members themselves — likely voters selected by the Gallup Organization. Crowley’s assignment differs from those of the three other debate moderators, who in the more standard format are supposed to lead the questioning and follow up when appropriate. The town-hall debate is planned for Tuesday at 9 p.m. E.T. at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.

According to the town-hall format language in the agreement, after each audience question and both two-minute responses from the candidates, Obama and Romney are expected to have an additional discussion facilitated by Crowley. Yet her participation is meant to be otherwise limited. As stated in the document: “In managing the two-minute comment periods, the moderator will not rephrase the question or open a new topic … The moderator will not ask follow-up questions or comment on either the questions asked by the audience or the answers of the candidates during the debate or otherwise intervene in the debate except to acknowledge the questioners from the audience or enforce the time limits, and invite candidate comments during the two-minute response period.” The memorandum, which has been obtained by TIME, was signed by lawyers for the two campaigns on Oct. 3, the day of the first presidential debate in Denver.

Via: Time

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Obama Owns Shares Of Sensata, Personally Benefits By Outsourcing Of Jobs To China

The Obama October surprise has exploded with a whimper and not a bang.

Liberals have gone absolutely insane after snorting bathsalts under the name of “Sensata.” Supposedly, Romney is responsible for what Bain does 12 years after he left it, and Obama is not responsible at all for 4 years of failed economic policy.

And what is their claim? That Romney’s blind trust has holdings in this company that is off-shoring jobs from Illinois to China.

Pretty devastating. The only way this could be a dud is if Obama owned stock in this company as well…

For many sophisticated and wealthy investors, as well as for ordinary workers invested in pension funds, China is a part of any diversified investment strategy. President Obama, a former Illinois state senator, has as much as $100,000 in a state retirement plan that contains shares of SensataTechnologies, the same auto parts company controlled by Bain that is closing its Illinois factory.

 Oh… it would seem that this is a non-story then, right?

Not when you’re snorting bathsalts. The liberals are dedicated to spreading this smear while ignoring the obvious problems with the criticism, including the fact that one of Obama’s most prolific fundraising bundler headed Bain during the closing of GST steel, the other attempt to derail the Romney campaign with lies.

The real surprise here is how desperate the Obama tactics are this late in the game…

UPDATE:

Some liberals are still running around like Big Birds with their heads cut off, screeching “Sensata! Sensata!” The far left commies at Daily Kos put out“5 Facts about Sensata You Need to KNOW!”

Even those Marxist chakra-massagers had to admit that, “Mr. Romney had nothing to do with that decision.” Then they confuse their lemmings with a concatenation of half-truths in order to let them loose on the world screaming insanely.

Via: SooperMexican

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The Reality Principle

Column: Obama and Biden were winning—until they faced actual opponents

Hold it, I’m confused. I watched all of the vice presidential debate last night, and someone did not show up. Vice President Joe Biden was there—how could one miss him, with all the grinning, grunting, interrupting, and sneering. But where was the Ayn Rand-worshiping, rape-redefining, fanatically exercising zealot who wants to throw grandmothers off of cliffs and whose budget plan is, according to the president, “thinly veiled Social Darwinism” that is “antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility”? That Paul Ryan was nowhere to be found.

What America saw instead was a young and likable and knowledgeable conservative worried about the current trajectory of fiscal, monetary, foreign, and social policy. Where Biden harrumphed, Ryan calmly litigated President Obama’s failed record. Twice in eight days, the caricatures against which President Barack Obama and Biden are purporting to run have been exposed as grotesque exaggerations. The liberal attempt to frighten America with the illusory specter of an extremist Republican ticket dissolved on first contact with, well, the actual ticket. The reality principle asserted itself once again. We have an open race.

Perceptions matter. Why did 67 million people watch the first debate? One reason may have been that Americans, open to an alternative to the incumbent, wanted to know who the Republican nominee actually was. They only had vague knowledge of Mitt Romney going into the Denver bout—and their impression was not favorable.

What they knew was largely limited to the messages of $217 million in negative advertising from Obama and his allies: Romney was rich, secretive, out of touch, paying little in taxes, hiding his tax returns, stashing money in the Cayman Islands, singing out of tune, shipping jobs overseas with little thought of the lives he affected, dismissing out of hand 47 percent of the country, in favor of raising middle-class taxes and health-care costs for seniors, and waging a “war on women” with Todd Akin to “turn back the clock” on women’s rights.

Via: WFB

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Obama And The Triumph Of Cargo Cult Economics

Over the past four years the American middle class has suffered an unprecedented decline. At this writing the labor for participation rate is the lowest since 1981 and for men it is the lowest since that statistic has been gathered. Household income has plummeted by 7.3% equating to over $4,000 per family. The number of persons on food stamps has nearly doubled in a mere four years. The unemployment rate continues to decline only by statistical legerdemain and reducing the number of people actively looking for work by demoralizing them.

Instead of taking firm action to preserve the middle class, the Obama regime has engaged in a full frontal assault on the middle class in order to reduce it to a state of government dependency.

Our home loans are no longer held by local banks, they are secured by the United States government. Superficially private sector jobs in industry sectors chosen to be winners by government bureaucrats only exist because of extravagant government subsidies… and some of those jobs being created in foreign countries. The agricultural sector is being wildly distorted in the service of ethanol production. Students are being inveigled into taking out loans to acquire an education that is either irrelevant or superfluous in the modern world (really, a master’s degree in jazz flute? What did you think was going to happen?)

As we’ve chronicled over the past month, the economic strategy pursued by the Obama regime is nothing more that cargo cult economics (here | here | here | here). Simply put, the regime has attempted to bolster the middle class using exactly the same method that Neolithic South Pacific islanders have used to continue receiving food and supplies from the United States. Instead of building a bamboo C-47 they are creating the trappings of a middle class society, e.g. a college education, a job, etc., without strengthening the underlying economy which supports it.

Via: Red State

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ABC Censors Obama-Communist Joke

Michael Schneider reported about campaign plot lines showing up in network sitcoms in the October 15-21 edition of TV Guide. NBC's gay sitcom "The New Normal" had an "Obama Mama" episode,  and ABC's Tim Allen sitcom "Last Man Standing" will debut in November with an Obama-fan-vs-. Romney- fan plot.

In an age in which the networks can't seem to censor anything -- and in which ABC can put on a show like "Good Christian Bitches" (oops, let's abbreviate it) -- the censors will spike some things...like joking Barack Obama is a communist:

On Last Man Standing’s Season 2 premiere, set to air November 2 – four days before the election – Allen’s character, a Romney supporter lobbies his daughter, Mandy, to vote for the Republican candidate. On the other side, Mandy’s older sister makes a push for Obama. “It’ll be something regular people care about, so our characters should care about it,” says exec producer Tim Doyle.

Helping to balance the show is the fact that Doyle leans left, while Allen leans slightly right of center. Allen says the episode goes “back and forth, weighted so it’s like a teeter-totter. But at the end, I wanted it off balance.” He won’t say how it finally tilts.

Doyle and Allen did have to fight the network and studio on some content. Specifically, Allen says the standards department took issue with his character calling Obama a communist. Allen fought to keep that in – noting he finds it funny when conservatives paint the president with that label – but it appears he lost that battle as none of the references made the final cut.

"We all really love Archie Bunker," said Allen of playing a Bunkeresque character. "And that's where we're going. I push every button and love pushing them." ABC won't allow certain buttons to be touched. It's almost funny that the censors would be so lax on sex and violence, but will clamp down like Bonnie Bluehair on Obama jokes. Is this their only Thou Shalt Not?

Update 12:42 | Matthew Sheffield. This isn't the first time that ABC has censored its own programming to please Democratic sensibilities. The famous 2006 mini-series "The Path to 9/11" was gutted by ABC at the behest of former president Bill Clinton. To this day, unlike any other highly rated programming that ABC has paid for, "Path" actually still has not been released on DVD due to pressure from Democrats.

Via: Newsbusters

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Report: Global Warming Stopped 16 Years Ago

The figures reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012 there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures

This means that the ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996

The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week. 
The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.
This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years. 

global temperature changes

Research: The new figures mean that the 'pause' in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. This picture shows an iceberg melting in Eastern Greenland

The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued  quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported. 
This stands in sharp contrast  to the release of the previous  figures six months ago, which went only to the end of 2010 – a very warm year. 
Ending the data then means it is possible to show a slight warming trend since 1997, but 2011 and the first eight months of 2012 were much cooler, and thus this trend is erased.

Via: Daily Mail

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Why Big Bird’s Federal Subsides Need to Go

The call to eliminate federal subsidies to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), such as Governor Mitt Romney’s recent statement, shouldn’t ruffle the famous fowl.

After all, not only does PBS not need taxpayer support, but because it inevitably entangles Big Bird in politics, it does him more harm than good.

Federal contributions to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which distributes money to PBS, totaled $444 million in FY 2012. While that may not be a lot in Washington, which spent a whopping $3.54 trillion that year, it is real money to most Americans.

But ending these subsidies wouldn’t break the bank for public broadcasting. In FY 2010 (information available to date), the CPB subsidies amounted to only 15 percent of public broadcasting station’s total funding. Other sources included listener and viewer contributions, university and foundation support, and business underwriting. Sesame Street itself received only $1.4 million in a federal grant through CPB in FY 2012. As Sherrie Westin, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Sesame Workshop, affirms:

[Sesame Workshop] receives very, very little funding from PBS. So, we are able to raise our funding through philanthropic, through our licensed product, which goes back into the educational programming, through corporate underwriting and sponsorship.

Big Bird and his popular Sesame Street neighbors would not disappear if federal ties are severed. Westin adds that “when they always try to tout out Big Bird, and say we’re going to kill Big Bird—that is actually misleading, because Sesame Street will be here.”

The “Golden Condor” has quite a healthy nest egg, too: Sesame Workshop reported a net worth of $356 million as of June 2011.

Via: The Foundry

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Obamacare 2013: Now Playing At A State Capitol Near You

If elected, Mitt Romney vows to “end” it.

If re-elected, Barack Obama says he’s “open to amending” it.

But regardless of who wins the presidency next month, conscientious voters need to know this: Obamacare is already costing taxpayers lots o fmoney, and within the next few months it will cost millions of dollars more.

It’s bad enough that President Obama’s “if you like your Doctor, you can keep your Doctor” promise has proven false.  And it’s bad enough that his promise to “bend the healthcare cost curve downward” has proven to be fictitious, as well (according to MIT Economist Jonathan Gruber prices for private insurance will likely increase 30% by 2016 – this, despite Gruber’s support of the President’s claims in 2009).

Now, state governments are spending taxpayer-funded time and resources figuring out how to comply with the federal mandates. The Obamacare law has imposed a deadline of November 16th, whereby the states must explain to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services what they intend to do about the establishment of their respective “healthcare exchanges” - the government organized group of standardized health insurance plans from which citizens private citizens and organizations will be permitted to purchase health plans – and the states are deciding now how to proceed.

Via: Canada Free Press

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WHILE OBAMA CRAMS, ROMNEY CAMPAIGNS

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and running mate Paul Ryan are campaigning through Ohio and other critical swing states while President Barack Obama crams for the second presidential debate on Tuesday. Yesterday, Romney addressed a crowd of 11,000 supporters in Lebanon, Ohio, just one of the many large crowds he has been drawing across the state in recent days. 

Meanwhile, Obama, who was criticized for not preparing enough for the first presidential debate on Oct. 3, is parked at a golf resort in Virginia to practice.

Romney is practicing, too, for the second debate, which will be held at Hofstra University near New York City on Tuesday, though he is squeezing debate preparation into his daily campaign schedule. 

Romney has the added benefit of having devoted more time to debate practice already over the past several weeks. He has also spend more time in the kind of town hall setting that will be used in Tuesday's debate. And he has less to prove, having won what both sides agree was a clear victory in the first debate. while Obama has ground to make up.

Obama has not made any apparent adjustments to his debate team, and is still using 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry as a stand-in for Romney, despite earlier criticism by the Obama campaign of Kerry's performance as a sparring partner. Obama has also indicated that he would be less "polite" than he had been at the first debate. Democrats believe that Romney won by dominating the discussion, though Obama spoke for longer than Romney and moderator Jim Lehrer interrupted Romney more often. Vice President Joe Biden cheered Democrats with an aggressive performance in his Oct. 11 debate with Rep. Paul Ryan, and Obama may follow his lead.

However, the extra time that Obama is devoting to debate practice during a critical late stage of the campaign may cost him crucial opportunities to interact with voters, even as Romney builds a lead in swing states. Early voting has already started in Ohio, for instance, and Romney's appearances there this weekend have lent an additional sense of momentum to his campaign. 

Via: Breitbart

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Former Senator Arlen Specter Dies At 82

HARRISBURG, Pa. –  Former U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, the outspoken Pennsylvania centrist whose switch from Republican to Democrat ended a 30-year career in which he played a pivotal role in several Supreme Court nominations, died Sunday. He was 82.

Specter, who announced in late August that he was battling cancer, died at his home in Philadelphia from complications of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, said his son Shanin. Over the years, Arlen Specter had fought two previous bouts with Hodgkin's disease, overcome a brain tumor and survived cardiac arrest following bypass surgery.

Specter rose to prominence in the 1960s as an aggressive Philadelphia prosecutor and as an assistant counsel to the Warren Commission, developing the single-bullet theory that posited just one bullet struck both President Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally -- an assumption critical to the argument that presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. The theory remains controversial and was the focus of Oliver Stone's 1991 movie "JFK."

In 1987, Specter helped thwart the Supreme Court nomination of former federal appeals Judge Robert H. Bork -- earning him conservative enemies who still bitterly refer to such rejections as being "borked."

But four years later, Specter was criticized by liberals for his tough questioning of Anita Hill at Clarence Thomas' Supreme Court nomination hearings and for accusing her of committing "flat-out perjury." The nationally televised interrogation incensed women's groups and nearly cost him his seat in 1992.

Specter, who had battled cancer, was Pennsylvania's longest-serving senator when Democrats picked then-U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak over him in the 2010 primary, despite Specter's endorsements by President Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders. Sestak lost Specter's seat to conservative Republican Rep. Pat Toomey by 2 percentage points.

A political moderate, Specter was swept into the Senate in the Reagan landslide of 1980.

He took credit for helping to defeat President Clinton's national health care plan -- the complexities of which he highlighted in a gigantic chart that hung on his office wall for years afterward -- and helped lead the investigation into Gulf War syndrome. Following the Iran-Contra scandal, he pushed legislation that created the inspectors general of the CIA.

Via: Fox News

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Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/arlen-specter-dies/2012/10/14/former-senator-arlen-specter-dies-82#ixzz29IlKapbR

As protesters dressed as Nazis riot in an Athens ruled by Brussels stooges, giving the Nobel Peace Prize to the EU is beyond satire

The Nobel Peace Prize is the sacred elephant of the liberal establishment. It is sometimes awarded to good people who have done great things, but equally often to unworthy recipients as a gesture of pious hope.

The world applauded when it was presented to Martin Luther King in 1964, to Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991, to Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk two years later.

Sensible people sighed when the prize went to Henry Kissinger and Viet Cong leader Le Duc Tho in 1973, who stitched up a charade of a Vietnam peace deal as a figleaf for surrendering the country to the Communists; to Egypt’s leader Anwar Sadat and his Israeli counterpart Menachem Begin in 1978 for their Middle East deal which brought no lasting peace; and to Barack Obama in 2009 for his commitment to ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which are still mired in bloodshed. 

Controversial: Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland announces the European Union as the recipient of the 2012 Nobel Peace prize

In all these cases — and many more besides — the Nobel Committee was obviously seeking to say to the winners and to the world: ‘We welcome what you are attempting to do, and hope that giving you the Prize will make you try even harder for the cause of peace.’

These are the sort of decent, woolly-minded sentiments that country vicars unleash on their flocks every Sunday. But the consequence is that too many Nobel Laureates are honoured for aspirations rather than achievements, for proclaiming objectives which go unfulfilled, or for displaying an illusory semblance of virtue. 

However, this year, the 93rd in which the award has been made, the committee has surpassed all previous follies and travesties. The peace prize has been given to the European Union. The award, it is said, recognises six decades of commitment to the advancement of peace, reconciliation and human rights.

The Nobel Peace Prize is the sacred elephant of the liberal establishment. It is sometimes awarded to good people who have done great things, but equally often to unworthy recipients as a gesture of pious hope.

The world applauded when it was presented to Martin Luther King in 1964, to Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991, to Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk two years later.

Sensible people sighed when the prize went to Henry Kissinger and Viet Cong leader Le Duc Tho in 1973, who stitched up a charade of a Vietnam peace deal as a figleaf for surrendering the country to the Communists; to Egypt’s leader Anwar Sadat and his Israeli counterpart Menachem Begin in 1978 for their Middle East deal which brought no lasting peace; and to Barack Obama in 2009 for his commitment to ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which are still mired in bloodshed. 

Controversial: Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland announces the European Union as the recipient of the 2012 Nobel Peace prize

In all these cases — and many more besides — the Nobel Committee was obviously seeking to say to the winners and to the world: ‘We welcome what you are attempting to do, and hope that giving you the Prize will make you try even harder for the cause of peace.’

These are the sort of decent, woolly-minded sentiments that country vicars unleash on their flocks every Sunday. But the consequence is that too many Nobel Laureates are honoured for aspirations rather than achievements, for proclaiming objectives which go unfulfilled, or for displaying an illusory semblance of virtue. 

However, this year, the 93rd in which the award has been made, the committee has surpassed all previous follies and travesties. The peace prize has been given to the European Union. The award, it is said, recognises six decades of commitment to the advancement of peace, reconciliation and human rights.

Via: Mail Online

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Race tightens for swing states

Mitt Romney’s overwhelming debate victory has tightened the presidential race in the dozen or so battleground states that will determine the winner of the election.

To reach the Oval Office, Romney must win back a number of the states won by President Bush in 2004 but President Obama in 2008 —or win back states like Pennsylvania that have been won by Democratic presidential candidates the past several cycles.

Here’s a look at where the swing-state battles stand ahead of Obama and Romney’s second debate showdown on Tuesday night.

Florida (29)

Romney enjoys a two-percentage-point advantage in the Real Clear Politics (RCP) average of polls after crushing Obama in their initial debate. He had previously trailed the president by 1.6 percentage points.

But it’s possible Romney’s numbers are being boosted by one poll. The Tampa Bay Times released a survey Thursday that showed him up by 7 percentage points, a finding the looks like an outlier compared to other polls.

The Tampa poll showed Obama’s 11-point lead among independents swing to a 13 point advantage for Romney. In addition, Hispanic voters in the poll favored Romney 46 to 44 percent over Obama, despite the president’s more than 50-percentage point lead among the group nationally.

Obama campaign adviser David Plouffe dismissed the poll, telling the Tampa Bay Times that “it’s impossible for us to be at 44 in Florida,” and arguing that the campaign believes it will outperform its 2008 support among Hispanics. Plouffe said Obama’s campaign expects to take win at least 60 percent of the Hispanic vote.

Florida is must win territory for Romney given the uphill climb he faces in other swing states.

Via: The Hill

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RUPERT MURDOCH PREDICTS ‘NIGHTMARE FOR ISRAEL IF OBAMA WINS,‘ ACCUSES WHITE HOUSE OF ’STILL LYING ABOUT BENGHAZI’

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch went on a bit of a Twitter tear Saturday morning, predicting a “nightmare for Israel if Obama wins” re-election and accusing the White House of “still lying about Benghazi.”

The media mogul — whose company owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and others — said Vice President Joe Biden “threw [the] CIA under the bus“ and ”now [White House] throws State [Department]!” He also came down on Mitt Romney, saying the Republican presidential nominee needs to ignore personal attacks at the next debate and focus on his jobs plan:

Image source: Twitter

Image source: Twitter

Image source: Twitter

Murdoch has been fairly free with his Twitter advice for Romney in the past: Last month he said he needed to “stop fearing [the] far right” and take more of a big tent approach to win the election. During the summer, he wondered, “when is Romney going to look like a challenger?” He subsequently defended himself from an apparent barrage of negative tweets from Romney supporters, saying, “of course I want him to win, save us from socialism, etc.”

As Mediaite noted, when a Murdoch-type figure in the media espouses such clear-cut political beliefs so publicly, “the question arises as to whether these opinions will eventually trickle down through their outlets.”

Via: The Blaze

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New $100 bills stolen en route to Fed facility

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Unknown thieves stole a "large amount" of newly-designed $100 bills bound for a Federal Reserve facility in New Jersey on Thursday, the FBI said.

Frank Burton, Jr., spokesman for the FBI's Philadelphia division, said the theft occurred at some point between when the shipment of bills landed at the Philadelphia airport on a commercial flight from Dallas at 10:20 Thursday morning, and when the shipment reached its New Jersey destination around 2:00 p.m., when the courier service transporting the bills reported some missing.

Via:CNN Money

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