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3 men in US terror ring get 15-45 years in prison
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Home Front: Politix
SOPA shelved until 'consensus' is found
House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said early Saturday morning that Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) promised him the House will not vote on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) unless there is consensus on the bill.

"While I remain concerned about Senate action on the Protect IP Act, I am confident that flawed legislation will not be taken up by this House," Issa said in a statement.  "Majority Leader Cantor has assured me that we will continue to work to address outstanding concerns and work to build consensus prior to any anti-piracy legislation coming before the House for a vote."
More details at link.
Posted by: || 01/15/2012 08:29 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  ...at least until after the next election, when lobbyist money will again matter a lot more than voter discontent.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 01/15/2012 11:02 Comments || Top||

#2  Or they can twist enough arms to get a majority.
Posted by: Pappy || 01/15/2012 12:14 Comments || Top||

#3  Sadly, consent is for sale.
Posted by: Iblis || 01/15/2012 12:50 Comments || Top||

#4  SOPA is an excellent example of rent-seeking.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 01/15/2012 13:12 Comments || Top||

#5  Anyone who votes for SOPA needs to have their tongue removed since they obviously don't need it anymore to voice an opinion.
Posted by: DarthVader || 01/15/2012 21:49 Comments || Top||


-Election 2012
Obama team hits out at Romney's US corporate past
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Barack Obama's
They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them...
campaign has fired off a withering attack on Mitt Romney, branding the US president's likely election foe as a corporate raider who made money "hand over fist" by destroying jobs.

The Obama campaign's intervention Friday whipped up a new storm around Romney, who has been battered by criticism from his Republican rivals over his 15-year role at equity firm Bain Capital and his claims to have created 100,000 jobs.
There's a good idea: let's compare who's created jobs and who hasn't. You sure you want to have that argument, Mr. Axelrod?
The Chicago-based team's decision to enter the fray added to the impression that an important moment of the 2012 campaign could be at hand, with Romney battling to shore up the central rationale of his presidential run.

Obama strategist Stephanie Cutter took aim in a memo at Romney's claim that his business expertise gives him the corporate savvy and turnaround skills needed to reboot the struggling US economy. She accused Romney of taking advantage of an "uneven playing field" by using the cash of rich investors to take over failing firms, strip them down and fire workers during his time at the private equity firm.

"Our economic crisis and endemic income inequality were caused in large part by a few who put profits over people," Cutter wrote. "Mitt Romney and his friends made money hand over fist while working families lost their grip on the middle-class lifestyle they earned.

"Between now and November the American people will decide whether to respond to this crisis by electing a corporate raider who profited from -- and promises to restore -- the conditions that caused it."
As opposed to throwing taxpayer dollars into Democratic-connected green companies that went bankrupt...
Cutter accused Romney of closing more than 1,000 industrial plants, stores and offices, cutting employee wages and benefits and pensions and outsourcing American jobs to other countries while making hundreds of millions of dollars.

The controversy was further fuelled by a report by the McClatchy newspaper chain that Bain Capital more than doubled its money on its acquisition of GS Industries Inc., the former parent company of Georgetown Steel, in the 1990s, even as the steel manufacturer went on to cut more than 1,750 jobs.
How many at Solyndra lost jobs?
Restore fairness
When they say they're going to "restore fairness" you should keep your hand on your wallet.
Obama would restore fairness for consumers and help the middle classes regain economic security and support the business sector, Cutter argued, and rejected Romney's claims that Obama was waging war on capitalism.
Waging war? More like just blowing it up...
"That's what's on trial, not free enterprise. Free enterprise isn't running for president, Mitt Romney is."
Free enterprise sure isn't in the White House now...
Romney sought to mitigate political damage from the Bain affair, which is complicating his campaign to win next week's South Carolina primary after triumphs in Iowa and New Hampshire nominating contests.
Complicating? Nice editorial...
Posted by: Fred || 01/15/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  ask Newt how those attacks on Bain and capitalism are working out for him?
*spit*
When you are parroting the Obama attacks perhaps you should rethink your place in the GOP
Posted by: Frank G || 01/15/2012 9:50 Comments || Top||

#2  of course, the [Daily Nation (Kenya)] is sticking up for their favorite son
Posted by: Frank G || 01/15/2012 9:51 Comments || Top||

#3  Jeebus, is that photo of Bambi real or 'shopped?

Yikes!
Posted by: Barbara || 01/15/2012 11:09 Comments || Top||

#4  Love them ears. They forgot to glue them down.
Good look of the stink eye also. It also takes more muscle to smile.

How many have lost jobs with O being in direct charge(CEO). What, is it something like 80,000 in the services to go. Look at all the job support services that will be lost X 5 ?. Things will come home to roost near election time or sooner.
Posted by: Dale || 01/15/2012 12:24 Comments || Top||

#5  Millions of former workers have joined Obama's new "leisure class." Not a word about that in the MSM.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 01/15/2012 13:22 Comments || Top||

#6  Obama's gonna shoot himself in the foot again...

Romney should play on his "Real Employment" edge, highlight that a certain candidate has NEVER had a real job.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 01/15/2012 15:45 Comments || Top||

#7  certain candidate has NEVER had a real job

Did you check FSB records?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/15/2012 16:48 Comments || Top||

#8  "leisure class." Yes AH. Sad but true. I had to move away from my home in one area because most everyone there were home. I felt like I was living in a retirement community. The problem was my home was messed with during the day while I was at work.
Posted by: Dale || 01/15/2012 16:52 Comments || Top||

#9  get a dog, Dale. A mean one
Posted by: Frank G || 01/15/2012 17:04 Comments || Top||

#10  that image of Obama makes him look like the President of Mordor
Posted by: Lord Garth || 01/15/2012 17:47 Comments || Top||

#11  "Sir? Michelle has indicated she'd like 'personal time' with you tonight"
Posted by: Frank G || 01/15/2012 17:57 Comments || Top||


Obama Promises Tax Incentives for Job Creation
[An Nahar] U.S. President Barack Obama
They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them...
promised Saturday new tax incentives for companies that create jobs in the United States -- and punishment for those who export them overseas.
I've been listening pretty attentively and I've yet to hear anyone, Publican or Sinner, utter the words "reindustrialization of the U.S.A." To me there's a big difference between fiddlin' the tax code and actually making things and selling them.
In his weekly radio and Internet address, the president said that in the next few weeks, he will "put forward new tax proposals that reward companies that choose to do the right thing by bringing jobs home and investing in America - and eliminate tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas."
I refinished a nice dresser a couple weeks ago. I put new knobs on it, nice porcelain things. As I went to put them on I noticed they were made in China. I can't for the life of me figure why we can't build a factory in this country that's automated enough to compete with China to manufacture porcelain knobs. Or wooden. Or brass. Or plastic. We talk a lot more about innovation than we actually innovate.
He did not elaborate.
He didn't have to elaborate. He's going to manufacture a few more hundred pages of legislation rather than encourage anybody to build anything they're not already building.
The comments came after Obama held a White House summit with business leaders this week to discuss ways of bringing outsourced American jobs back home while growing the U.S. economy. The business figures at the event included senior executives from Ford, DuPont, Otis Elevator Company, Intel, Siemens USA and Rolls Royce North America.
That's because the Dems think in terms of workers in cloth hats with lunch buckets going to plants owned by big companies. They don't think in terms of a dozen people working at a brass foundry turning out door knockers or something like that. Nor do they think in terms of restarting something as unglamorous as a paper box company -- I know of two of them, both abandoned, one with its windows closed up with concrete block to keep the street lice out. When did the demand for cardboard boxes evaporate? Are we using up existing stock?
The president said he had pledged these business leaders his firm support if they continue on the path of job creation. "I'll make sure you've got a government that does everything in its power to help you succeed," he said.
That's because they're already in existence and in a position to make campaign contributions. Potential businesses are only potential contributors. And the Greenies who already contribute won't like seeing nasty new manufactories to despoil a pristine environment.
The president also showcased his plan to merge six U.S. trade and commerce agencies in an effort to cut red tape for businesses and end government overlap. "These changes will make it easier for small business owners to get the loans and support they need to sell their products around the world," Obama said.
I'm not even going to turn red in the face and holler about the ladies who used to sing "Look for the Union Label" until they priced the entire garment industry into oblivion.
Posted by: Fred || 01/15/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || [5 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Good inline commentary, Fred.

Coupla points, though.

-If a factory is "sufficiently automated", to use your term, doesn't that mean there aren't a whole lot of jobs there?

-At what point do we address the underlying systemic problem of excessive expectation of material standard of living by the workforce? Is the Great Recession the means of doing this? IMO, it isn't, at least so far.

Extra points to you for pointing out the fact that politicians don't really care about businesses succeeding other than to parasitize them for campaign contributions and to use them as a funding source for their rent-seeking regulatory henchmen.

Extra extra points for introducing me to the term "street lice" which will now become part of my lexicon.
Posted by: no mo uro || 01/15/2012 8:15 Comments || Top||

#2  At what point do we address the underlying systemic problem of excessive expectation of material standard of living by the workforce?

Define "excessive expectation".
Posted by: Pappy || 01/15/2012 12:11 Comments || Top||

#3  When did the demand for cardboard boxes evaporate?

Who is building anything to put into those boxes?
Posted by: Formerly Dan || 01/15/2012 12:38 Comments || Top||

#4  -If a factory is "sufficiently automated", to use your term, doesn't that mean there aren't a whole lot of jobs there?

I'm talking about reindustrializing, not (specifically) job creation. "Job creation" often ends up as "shovel-ready projects" involving public works with the accompanying expenditure of public funds in the form of contracts to campaign contributors.

Reindustrialization has to involve making things and selling them. If a factory is sufficiently automated to compete with the Chinese there are second-level economic benefits connected with it: somebody's got to do the programming, somebody's got to make the robots, somebody's got to sell the product, somebody's got to deliver it to market. All those represent jobs.

"If you build things they will come," to misquote a silly movie.
Posted by: Fred || 01/15/2012 12:40 Comments || Top||

#5  The monstrous overhand of bad debts is one element which has sucked the life out of the US economy. Another element is high energy costs. Re-industrialization requires investment, and the money for that has been dedicated or is tied up. This is one aspect of Taibbi's "Vampire Squid" metaphor.
Clear the bad debts, get rid of the financial institutions that are TBTF, and there might be something left to invest in re-industrialization.
One thing the US is quite capable of making, and that is cheaper energy (think nukes, cooking down coal, and not so much drilling for more petro fuels). The NIMBYists and the lawfare specialists must be suppressed before that can happen.
Politicians are far better at destroying jobs and domestic industrial capacity than they have ever been at creating them. That goes for the GOP as well as the Democrats. Of course there will be no serious discussion of this in the 2012 campaign, just negative crap ads.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 01/15/2012 13:44 Comments || Top||

#6  The US has legitimate environmental and human rights [worker safety laws] issues all its industries must operate and comply with. Chinese industries do not. Tariffs may be necessary to redress that imbalance.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 01/15/2012 13:48 Comments || Top||

#7  excessive expectation of material standard of living by the workforce Some of the recent spike in workforce standard of living was financed by them either taking on debts they couldn't repay or by politicians giving away work/retirement bennies (mostly to public unions) that could not be paid for in years to come.
What can't go on forever, won't.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 01/15/2012 13:51 Comments || Top||

#8  Translation: found another way to pass $$$ to his pals.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/15/2012 15:17 Comments || Top||

#9  Bingo, grom.
Posted by: Barbara || 01/15/2012 15:22 Comments || Top||

#10  500 people just laid off at a power plant because EPA wants it closed because its coal. Keeps opening the border for the hoards of extremely cheap, undocumented cheap labor to pour in. Killed the pipeline project, gulf drilling, fraqing, signed into law thousands of business reguLations and wants to send 500,000 troops to the unemployment line after sending the Hummer plants to China. And now this bs. The biggest dumbass for president in the history of mankind.
Posted by: Snease Hupuper4845 || 01/15/2012 22:38 Comments || Top||



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Two weeks of WOT
Sun 2012-01-15
  3 men in US terror ring get 15-45 years in prison
Sat 2012-01-14
  Mob Kills 2, Burns Mosques in Raid on Nigerian Village
Fri 2012-01-13
  Syrian Forces Kill 32, Fire on Protesters in Presence of Monitors
Thu 2012-01-12
  Dronezap Recess is Over: 2nd in two days
Wed 2012-01-11
  Iranian 'nuclear scientist' killed in Tehran bomb attack
Tue 2012-01-10
  Baghdad Bombs Target Shi'ite Pilgrims, 16 Killed
Mon 2012-01-09
  Suspected Islamic Extremist Arrested in Alleged Florida Bomb Plot
Sun 2012-01-08
  Kenyan airstrikes kill 60 in Somalia
Sat 2012-01-07
  17 Dead as Gunmen Attack Mourners of 5 Christians in Nigeria
Fri 2012-01-06
  Qatar: Arab monitors made mistakes in Syria
Thu 2012-01-05
  Baghdad bombings kill 29 in Shiite neighborhoods
Wed 2012-01-04
  Morocco gets new Islamist-led government
Tue 2012-01-03
  Iran Missile Drill Results Exaggerated, Images Photoshopped
Mon 2012-01-02
  Syrians ring in New Year with more anti-regime demos
Sun 2012-01-01
  Nigeria Declares State of Emergency in Troubled Areas


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