If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed. -- Benjamin Franklin
South Carolina U.S. Senator Jim DeMint compared President Obama to an addict, saying Thursday that President Obama is “an addict-in-chief.”
“Washington is addicted to spending, and the addict-in- chief is the president,” Mr. DeMint said on the Senate floor.
As a result of all this sudden uncertainty, Bloomberg now speculates that the ECB will have no choice than to flip flop on its own adamant position of isolating defaulted collateral, and accept Greek bonds even in an event of default: “The ECB cannot remove liquidity from the big Greek banks,” said Dimitris Drakopoulos, an economist at Nomura. “This discussion is a waste of time. The ECB is going to back down in the end -- what can they do?” he added."
The net result is that the ECB will ultimately have no choice but to bend its rules unless it wants a freefall run on the global bank, unless it manages to bribe the rating agencies with enough money created out of thin air, to make all the other money printed out of thin air, and soon to be collateralized with defaulted bonds, still valuable.
Republicans might accept a “mini” deal with the Obama administration on raising the debt limit, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a Republican leader, said yesterday on “Fox News Sunday.”
The idea may delay politically difficult decisions if it’s structured to postpone action on a larger package of spending cuts or revenue increases until after the 2012 election cycle, an analyst said.
“What we’ve been calling for is to have a down payment that’s as big as possible,” Marc Goldwein, former associate director of President Barack Obama’s debt commission, said yesterday in an interview.
Even so, the White House rejected a short-term extension of the debt limit, deputy communications director Jen Psaki said.
“The president has consistently said it is in the country’s economic interests for Congress to reach common ground on a significant long-term deficit reduction package,” Psaki said in an e-mail. “He has been clear in conversations with leaders in both parties about that.”
Obama administration officials are offering to cut tens of billions of dollars from Medicare and Medicaid in negotiations to reduce the federal budget deficit, but the depth of the cuts depends on whether Republicans are willing to accept any increases in tax revenues.
Administration officials and Republican negotiators say the money can be taken from health care providers like hospitals and nursing homes without directly imposing new costs on needy beneficiaries or radically restructuring either program.
Before the talks led by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. broke off 12 days ago, negotiators said, they had reached substantial agreement on many cuts in the growth of Medicare, which provides care to people 65 and older, and Medicaid, which covers lower-income people. Those proposals are still on the table when Congress reconvenes this week, aides said, and are serious options that Democrats could accept in exchange for Republican concessions that raise revenues.
“Congress smells blood,” said William L. Minnix Jr., the chief lobbyist for nonprofit nursing homes.
This could have derailed the police investigation. These actions could have allowed the murderer of a young girl to go free. It caused grieving parents additional and unnecessary paid. Until now, NoW has been mostly focused on celebrity and royal cell phones, but they are clearly branching out. It's time to make an example out of this so that the message is clear. This is just disgusting.
An investigator working for the News of the World allegedly hacked into the mobile phone of murdered girl Milly Dowler, a lawyer for the family says.Mark Lewis said police told her parents that Glenn Mulcaire hacked into her voicemail while she was missing.The Guardian has claimed he intercepted messages left by relatives and said the NoW deleted some, which gave her parents false hope she was alive.
(CNN) -- A bareheaded motorcyclist participating in a ride to protest mandatory helmet laws was killed when he was thrown over the handlebars in Onondaga, New York.Philip A. Contos, 55, of Parish, New York, was on a ride organized by the Onondaga chapter of American Bikers Aimed Towards Education (ABATE), state police said Sunday.Contos hit his brakes, began fishtailing and lost control of his 1983 Harley Davidson. He shot over the handlebars, hit his head on the pavement and was taken to Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse, New York, where he was pronounced dead.State police say evidence at the scene plus information from the attending medical expert indicated Contos would have survived had he been wearing a helmet as required by state law.
Beleaguered Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan took another blow on Tuesday when his reconstruction minister said he intended to resign after about a week in the job over criticism for remarks that offended victims of the March earthquake and tsunami.
Jiji news agency said Ryu Matsumoto, appointed to the newly created post of reconstruction minister at the end of June, had decided to step down after a public outcry over his comments.
Japan’s new disaster reconstruction minister submitted his resignation Tuesday after making remarks widely criticized as offensive during a visit to the earthquake-devastated northeast coast, where he refused to shake a governor’s hand, scolded the official and threatened to withhold aid.
In meetings with local governors over the weekend, Ryu Matsumoto appeared arrogant and uncaring, angering local residents and political opponents. He told the governor of Iwate, one of the hardest-hit prefectures, that the government would not help municipalities that did not have good ideas about rebuilding.
With the clock ticking, federal education officials fear that calamity awaits.
If Congress doesn't move quickly to change the No Child Left Behind law, they project that a whopping 82 percent of the nation's public schools could fail to meet proficiency targets this year, facing sanctions that ultimately can include a loss of federal aid. That's up from 37 percent last year.
Beset with a case of the jitters, Education Secretary Arne Duncan is warning of "a slow-moving educational train wreck for children, parents and teachers" — and he's not waiting for the crash.
With Congress showing no signs of meeting a request by President Barack Obama to overhaul the law by this fall, Duncan said he'll use executive authority to waive some requirements of the law, essentially freeing states from any harsh consequences if their schools fail to meet the federal testing requirements.
His threat has set off a clash on Capitol Hill, where key lawmakers say it would be a mistake to bypass Congress. They're not particularly eager to relinquish their authority to the executive branch.
South Carolina Lt. Governor Ken Ard (R) has settled his 107 ethics violations with the State Ethics Commission, and agreed to pay a $48,400 fine, cover the cost of the investigation, and reimburse his campaign for $12,121 in illegal expenditures.
Among those expenditures, Corey Hutchins of the South Carolina Free Times reports, was Ard's wife's phone bill and more than $3000 at Best Buy for a "Playstation 3, a flat-screen TV, an iPod Touch 8G, and two 3G iPads." Ard initially claimed the purchases were "computer equip" for "campaign and office-related purposes."
Ard also told ethics investigators that the $2,543 he spent to take his family to Washington, D.C. was for a visit to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) -- a meeting Graham's office said never took place.
"I'll be honest, I'm not really good at dotting i's and crossing t's, but I've got a lot -- a lot -- of money in here and I'm certainly not spending any money on my own personal behalf," Ard told the Free Times back in January. "I've got a vast amount of my personal wealth tied up in this campaign and I'm just trying to recoup as much of that as I can."
As part of the settlement Ard admitted to 38 of the illegal expenditures and was given a public reprimand.