Witness journal entry in GJ evidence: "Dang if [Brown] didn't start running right at the cop like a football player" pic.twitter.com/cHtTIZnEjN
— Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) November 25, 2014In Northeast Los Angeles, 1,000 people huddled in the evening chill last Thanksgiving as they waited outside a Target store for the chance to snap up Black Friday deals.
Across town at the Grove, the mostly upscale stores such as Barneys and Nordstrom were closed that night. Holiday shoppers didn't start massing until well into the next morning.
This year's annual ritual of conspicuous consumption promises an even greater contrast.
Discounters and mid-priced chains, eager to gain an edge on competitors for limited gift budgets, have again moved their opening times earlier into Turkey Day, with Kmart leading the pack by launching specials at 6 a.m. Higher-end retailers, however, are keeping their doors firmly shut until Friday.
Increasingly, the seasonal shopping surge has become a window into America's class divide, in which high earners have benefited from a booming stock market and rising home prices as many others still grapple with stagnant incomes and lingering financial anxiety.
Consider these opposite scenarios: In 2013, Bloomingdale's went against the grain by offering fewer Black Friday bargains than the year before, according to the advertising experts at bestblackfriday.com. At a Wal-Mart in Duarte, customers elbowed one another to get their hands on Crayola crayon sets, marked down to $11 from nearly $20. (A trending Twitter hashtag last Thanksgiving was #WalmartFights.)
"You have people who really need a bargain — they will sit out for two days to get that deal because that may be the only big thing they can afford for the whole family," said Britt Beemer, founder of America's Research Group. "Luxury retailers don't do very well on Black Friday because their customers are not going to fight the crowds."
Uncertainty is driving both retailers and customers, especially on the lower end.
The National Retail Federation has forecast that spending will climb 4.1% to $617 billion in November and December, compared with a 3.1% increase the same period last year.
But a separate survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers predicted average household spending for the holidays will fall to $684 from $735 last year.
The slump is driven by those who earn less than $50,000, called "survivalists," whose ranks have been growing. This year, 67% of American shoppers fall into that category, up from 63% two years ago, the report said.
These are the families that retailers will fight over Thanksgiving night — ones with limited budgets who are willing to gobble down their apple pie and hustle to the malls to score enough discounts to check off Christmas lists, said Ken Perkins, president of Retail Metrics Inc.
"Once they have spent their budgets, they are done," Perkins said. "Retailers know if they get them first, they may not have anything left to go to other stores."
Brown allegedly was coming from the commission of a crime where he appeared to threaten a store clerk. The forensic evidence appears to contradict those who insist that Brown was not shot in a struggle but with his hands in the air. There is evidence that Wilson was injured in a struggle, the gun was discharged in the car and Brown was shot at close quarters leaving blood on the gun. Finally, more than a half-dozen black witnesses reportedly gave testimony supporting Wilson. Other scenarios could explain the evidence, and there is still the question of why so many shots were fired. But those questions might never be answered, a reality of some criminal cases.
The law requires us to deal with facts, and when those facts do not support a criminal charge, prosecution is barred regardless of popular demand.
In the end, it rings hollow to cry "no justice, no peace" when you are rioting or looting. There can be no justice if it is merely the result of demonstrations rather than demonstrated facts. Otherwise, the scales of justice become just one more object to throw through the window of an appliance store.
BOCA RATON, Fla. — Republican presidential primaries have for decades been orderly affairs, with any momentary drama mitigated by the expectation that the party would inevitably nominate its tested, often graying front-runner.Just reading this made me realize how not ready I am for the 2016 presidential cycle. It's on, folks. We're barely out of the midterms and the presidential election is on. Who'll be the first Republican to declare his or her candidacy?
But as the 2016 White House campaign effectively began in the last week, it became apparent that this race might be different: a fluid contest, verging on chaotic, that will showcase the party’s deep bench of talent but also highlight its ideological and generational divisions.
As Democrats signal that they are ready to rally behind Hillary Rodham Clinton before their primary season even begins, allowing them to focus their fund-raising and firepower mostly on the general election, the Republicans appear destined for a free-for-all.
Balance of Power: What 2014 Elections Can Tell Us About 2016: Not Much at AllNOV. 6, 2014
“I can think of about 16 potential candidates,” said Haley Barbour, the former governor of Mississippi and a veteran of Republican presidential politics dating to 1968. “Almost every one of them have a starting point. But there is no true front-runner.”
The sprawling nature of the race was on display Thursday as an array of would-be candidates took steps to position themselves.
At a gathering of Republican governors here, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey sought to capitalize on the party’s victories this year in Democratic-leaning states while at least six fellow governors tested their messages and met with potential donors.
On the same day in Washington, Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, addressed an education conference and tried to tamp down differences with the right on the Common Core standards. On Capitol Hill, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky continued his outreach to African-Americans by having breakfast with the Rev. Al Sharpton, while Senator Ted Cruz of Texas appealed to conservatives by citing Cicero on the Senate floor in a speech castigating President Obama’s executive action on immigration.
And in California, Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, just back from taking a group of evangelicals from early primary states on a trip to Europe honoring Ronald Reagan’s Cold War leadership, venerated Mr. Reagan in a speech at his presidential library.
If the dizzying activity on a single day captured the depth of the Republican field, it also underlined its factions, split among pragmatists, hard-liners and those trying to bridge the blocs.
@jjauthor Guess who's coming to dinner? http://t.co/BpvRnf2qD4 @UniteRight @DailySignal @DavidLimbaugh pic.twitter.com/uxuovG6AZE
— varvel (@varvel) November 21, 2014Is Obama 'Dangerously Close To Totalitarianism'? http://t.co/iQjSCke1IP … #IBDEditorials via @IBDinvestors - pic.twitter.com/Mwh40v3RPf
— Daniel John Sobieski (@gerfingerpoken) November 22, 2014Given the president's end-runs around Congress, his shredding of the Constitution and his assault on the authority of the courts, a second term free of electoral restraints may be a frightening prospect.
Judge Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News commentator, raised the question on Neil Cavuto's "Your World" show Wednesday. And while it seems fanciful in light of the safeguards built into our democracy and its institutions, it recognizes the threat posed by the president's policies and actions if left unchecked.
"I think the president is dangerously close to totalitarianism," Napolitano opined. "A few months ago he was saying, 'The Congress doesn't count, the Congress doesn't mean anything, I am going to rule by decree and by administrative regulation.'
"Now he's basically saying the Supreme Court doesn't count. It doesn't matter what they think. They can't review our legislation. That would leave just him as the only branch of government standing."
Obama missed this Scripture in his immigration talk: Romans 13:1. Also Titus 3:1.
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) November 21, 2014Here are the passages. Romans 13:1:
Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.
And Titus 3:1:
Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good...
Maybe the president should name a Bible czar to help him out of the tricky predicament he’s put himself in with his selective quoting of verse to fit his political agenda?
LONDON — Across Pakistan, the black standard of the Islamic State has been popping up all over.More.
From urban slums to Taliban strongholds, the militant group’s logo and name have appeared in graffiti, posters and pamphlets. Last month, a cluster of militant commanders declared their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State.
Such is the influence of the Islamic State’s steamroller success in Iraq and Syria that, even thousands of miles away, security officials and militant networks are having to reckon with the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
Its victories have energized battle-weary militants in Pakistan. The ISIS brand offers them potent advantages, analysts say — an aid to fund-raising and recruiting, a possible advantage over rival factions and, most powerfully, a new template for waging jihad.
Although the Islamic State is not operational in Pakistan, just its symbolic presence is ample cause for concern. It is there, after all, that Al Qaeda was founded in the 1980s, followed by other extremist ideologies that easily found the means and support to carry out international attacks...
In February 2007, Yale clinicians identified in Adam Lanza what they believed were profound emotional disabilities and offered him treatment that could give him relief for the first time in his troubled life.More.
But Adam was angry and anxious, and he didn't want to go. His mother, Nancy Lanza, constantly placating her son, was inclined to pull away from the treatment, prompting a psychiatric nurse to reach out to his father, Peter Lanza, in an urgent email.
"I told Adam he has a biological disorder that can be helped with medication. I told him what the medicines are and why they can work. I told him he's living in a box right now and the box will only get smaller over time if he doesn't get some treatment."
Nancy Lanza rejected the Yale doctors' plan. Adam was 14.
Six years later, Adam, now an emaciated recluse and fixated with mass killers, murdered his mother and massacred 20 children and six educators before turning a gun on himself at the elementary school he once attended in the Sandy Hook section of Newtown.
A report released today by the Office of the Child Advocate pointed to the Yale episode as one of dozens of red flags, squandered opportunities, blatant family denial and disturbing failures by pediatricians, educators and mental health professionals to see a complete picture of Adam Lanza's "crippling" social and emotional disabilities.
While the report does not draw a line between the events in Adam Lanza's young life and the massacre, it points out repeated examples where the profound anxiety and rage simmering inside Lanza was not explored in favor of attempts to manage his symptoms.
For example, at the apex of Adam's increasing phobias and problems coping with middle school, he went to a pediatrician and was repeatedly prescribed a lotion to soothe hands rubbed raw by excessive washing and a laxative to ease constipation brought on by a dangerous loss of weight. Yet, the authors note that there was no effort during these visits to address the underlying causes. A visit to a hospital emergency room was cut short before there was a chance for clinicians to explore Adam's problems at greater depth and schedule him for long-term treatment because Nancy Lanza said that being at the hospital was making Adam anxious.
"This shooting could have been stopped at any point along the trajectory of (Adam Lanza's) life," said Scarlett Lewis, whose son Jesse was one of the first-graders killed in classrooms in the Sandy Hook School.
"Red flags were evident, yet procedures were not in place to effectively deal with the issues. This is a systemic concern," Lewis said.
Lewis has started a foundation in her son's honor called the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Foundation to create and promote social and emotional learning programs for school-aged children.
Far from settling matters, President Obama’s unilateral action on immigration all but ensures at least two more years of fierce and angry debate over one of the most contentious and polarizing issues facing the country.Still more.
It is a debate that presents opportunity and political risk to both parties, but especially Republicans, who are deeply divided among themselves and badly need to mend relations with a Latino and Asian American population growing bigger and more politically powerful each day.
And, with the loudest, most strident voices likely to dominate the discussion, it is a debate that will continue to mask a broad consensus among Americans, who want compromise and a fix to a decades-old problem — fashioned by Congress and the president working in tandem — rather than more of the partisan brick-throwing that has escalated over the past several days.
Exit polls this month found that nearly six in 10 voters supported legislation that would go further than Obama’s plan by establishing a path to citizenship for the roughly 11 million people in the country illegally — a striking ratio for a largely white, GOP-leaning electorate that swept Republicans to power across the country on Nov. 4.
Even here in Arizona, a state known for taking one of the hardest lines on illegal immigration, there is a strong desire to see the political skirmishing end.
“People want a solution,” said Chuck Coughlin, a GOP strategist who has advised two of the state’s top Republicans, Sen. John McCain and Gov. Jan Brewer, who have sometimes worked at cross-purposes on the issue. “They’re tired of the partisan stalemate and the finger-pointing by both sides.”
Immigration is a uniquely difficult and emotional issue, freighted with the weight of family ties and two broad, sometimes conflicting impulses. The United States, as the president suggested in his speech Thursday night, is both a land of laws and a nation of immigrants; squaring that circle and finding agreement somewhere in the middle has exceeded both the imagination and capacity of elected leaders for a generation.
Obama was never going to placate all sides by going it alone, a move he says was forced upon him by hostile, intransigent Republicans in Congress. What he has done, though, has heightened tensions in the short term and cast the conflict forward into the race to succeed him, placing every White House hopeful on the spot for the next two years.
Because Obama’s actions are not binding on his successor “the next president is going to have to decide whether to continue these policies after 2017,” said Matt Barreto, a University of Washington political scientist who conducts extensive polling among Latinos nationwide. “Whether it’s Hillary Clinton or Chris Christie or Marco Rubio, they’re all going to have to take a position, because it’s a policy that the next president, through his or her executive power, will be overseeing.”
The danger Democrats face is alienating the white working-class voters who have never much cared for the president and who could view the influx of newly hirable immigrants as unwelcome job competition.
Moreover there are voters of all stripe who recoil from the notion of rewarding — or at least excusing — those who break the law, which is how many critics portrayed the outcome of Obama’s single-handed move...
His unilateral order will encourage more migrants to come in hope of a future amnesty, without matching the ebb and flow of migration to America’s changing labor market demands. His order also offers no prospect of future citizenship, creating a laboring class with less of a stake in American institutions—and less incentive to assimilate.RTWT.
The politics of immigration is already fraught, and Mr. Obama’s order will make it worse. He is empowering the most extreme anti-immigrant voices on the Republican right, which may be part of his political calculation.
Mr. Obama wants Democrats to get political credit with Hispanics for legalization, while goading the GOP into again becoming the deportation party in 2016. Hillary Clinton would love that, which explains why Bill Clinton is already backing Mr. Obama’s order. Mark this down as one more way in which this President has become the Great Polarizer.
***
The polls show the American people are uneasy about Mr. Obama’s unilateral law-making, and liberals should be too. Mr. Obama is setting a precedent that Republican Presidents could also use to overcome a Democratic majority. How about an order to the IRS not to collect capital-gains taxes on inflated gains from property held for more than a decade? That policy would be broadly popular and also address a basic lack of fairness.
Mr. Obama’s rule-by-regulation has already been rebuked more than once by the Supreme Court. His “I, Barack” immigration decree is another abuse that will roil American politics and erode public confidence in the basic precepts of self-government.
One can argue whether this executive order is legal, but it certainly violates the spirit of the founders. They intentionally focused Article One of the Constitution on the Congress and Article Two on the president. That is because the Congress is the body charged with passing laws and the president is the person charged with faithfully carrying them out.
In effect, the Congress was originally seen as the pre-eminent branch and the president more of a clerk. The president's power grew enormously in the 20th century but even so, the Constitution still envisions Congress and the president as co-equal branches of government -- or as the scholar Richard Neustadt observed, co-equal branches sharing power.
For better or worse, Americans have always expected that in addressing big, tough domestic issues, Congress and the president had to work together to find resolution.
For a president to toss aside such deep traditions of governance is a radical, imprudent step. When a president in day-to-day operations can decide which laws to enforce and which to ignore, where are the limits on his power? Where are the checks and balances so carefully constructed in the Constitution?
If a Democratic president can cancel existing laws on immigration, what is to prevent the next Republican from unilaterally canceling laws on health care?
A bad way to start with new Congress
Coming on the heels of midterm elections that were a clear call for a change of course in Washington, starting in the White House, this is also a discouraging way to open the final years of this presidency. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll finds that by 53-40%, Americans feel positive about the election results; by 56-33%, they want Congress to set policy for the country, not the President; by 57-40% they favor a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants but by 42-32%, they disapprove of Obama overhauling immigration through executive order. Why isn't the White House listening to the public?
In retrospect, it would have been far better if coming out of the elections, the President had said he had promised he would act through executive order before the end of the year, but in light of the election results, he would work with the new Congress for six months. If there were no legislation, he would act on his own.
That would have been a much fairer proposition, would have started out with Republicans on better footing, and would have rallied the public behind him if the GOP refused to cooperate.
Sadly, we instead have an action from the White House that will cast a dark shadow over prospects for legislative cooperation, falls short of what the immigrant population had hoped and steers us into deep, unknown waters in our governance.
When it comes to racially lopsided arrests, the most remarkable thing about Ferguson, Mo., might be just how ordinary it is.More.
Police in Ferguson — which erupted into days of racially charged unrest after a white officer killed an unarmed black teen — arrest black people at a rate nearly three times higher than people of other races.
At least 1,581 other police departments across the USA arrest black people at rates even more skewed than in Ferguson, a USA TODAY analysis of arrest records shows. That includes departments in cities as large and diverse as Chicago and San Francisco and in the suburbs that encircle St. Louis, New York and Detroit.
Those disparities are easier to measure than they are to explain. They could be a reflection of biased policing; they could just as easily be a byproduct of the vast economic and educational gaps that persist across much of the USA — factors closely tied to crime rates. In other words, experts said, the fact that such disparities exist does little to explain their causes.
"That does not mean police are discriminating. But it does mean it's worth looking at. It means you might have a problem, and you need to pay attention," said University of Pittsburgh law professor David Harris, a leading expert on racial profiling.
Whatever the reasons, the results are the same: Blacks are far more likely to be arrested than any other racial group in the USA. In some places, dramatically so.
At least 70 departments scattered from Connecticut to California arrested black people at a rate 10 times higher than people who are not black, USA TODAY found.
"Something needs to be done about that," said Ezekiel Edwards, the head of the ACLU's Criminal Law Reform Project, which has raised concerns about such disparate arrest rates. "In 2014, we shouldn't continue to see this kind of staggering disparity wherever we look."
The unrest in Ferguson was stoked by mistrust among black residents who complained that the city's police department had singled them out for years. For example, every year, traffic stop data compiled by Missouri's attorney general showed Ferguson police stopped and searched black drivers at rates markedly higher than whites.
A grand jury is considering whether Officer Darren Wilson should face criminal charges for shooting a teen, Michael Brown. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency Monday as authorities braced for more unrest after the grand jury's decision is announced.
Such tensions are not new. Nationwide, blacks are stopped, searched, arrested and imprisoned at rates higher than people of other races. USA TODAY's analysis, using arrests reported to the federal government in 2011 and 2012, found that those inequities are far wider in many cities across the country, from St. Louis to Atlanta to suburban Dearborn, Mich...
WASHINGTON — Every time Berzabeth Valdez heads out to work from her mobile home on the outskirts of Houston, it crosses her mind that she might not come back.PREVIOUSLY: "Forty-Eight Percent Oppose Obama's Executive Amnesty for Illegal Aliens," and "Barack Broke That — Democrats Now in Worse Shape Than Before Obama Took Office!"
Ms. Valdez, 48, is a Mexican immigrant who has been living in Texas for 11 years without legal papers, and so without a driver’s license. For her commute to her job as a restaurant manager, she keeps her taillights in working order and never speeds.
“We are terrified of the police,” Ms. Valdez said. “One traffic ticket could end in deportation. I could lose my whole life, everything I have gained for my family.”
One of Ms. Valdez’s daughters grew tired of living with those fears and joined an organization of young undocumented immigrants. The youths, who call themselves Dreamers, won protection from deportation from President Obama in 2012 and continued to press him to extend those measures to others here illegally.
On Thursday, Mr. Obama will announce changes to the immigration enforcement system that will allow as many as five million immigrants to remain and work legally. But the youths will face a bittersweet ending, because White House officials have decided to leave out their parents, according to advocates familiar with the plans.
“It’s getting so hard to call my mom,” said MarÃa Fernanda Cabello, 23, Ms. Valdez’s activist daughter. “I’ve had to tell her, ‘There is a victory coming, and I don’t know if you’re part of it.’ ”
Mr. Obama will grant deportation reprieves to undocumented parents whose children are American citizens and legal permanent residents if they have lived in the country for five years and have not committed serious crimes, administration officials said. Officials say the president can exercise prosecutorial discretion to avoid breaking up families of children entitled to be in the country and to steer enforcement agents toward deporting criminals and foreigners who pose national security threats.
But some senior administration officials have argued that it would be more difficult both legally and politically to make the case for including parents of immigrants in the existing program for young people who came when they were children, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. Since that program is based on executive action by Mr. Obama, the youths have deportation deferrals and work permits but no green cards or any other visa or formal immigration status, which only Congress can confer. Their parents’ claim for relief is weaker, the officials said.
The president is facing angry opposition from Republicans to his new initiatives. Calling Mr. Obama’s plans “executive amnesty,” Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, an outspoken adversary, accused him of seizing sole power to decide who can live and work in the United States. “Surrendering to illegality is not an option,” Mr. Sessions said.
Republicans are considering different ways to stop funding for the president’s new measures and for the existing DACA program.
Even after receiving their own reprieves, the youths played a large role in bringing a reluctant president to take more sweeping action unilaterally. They mobilized law professors to build Mr. Obama’s legal case. Early this year, when the president was urging activists to pressure Republicans in the House to take up an immigration bill passed by the Senate, young immigrants decided there was little chance the House would act. Instead, they dogged Mr. Obama, interrupting his speeches and staging street sit-ins at his events.
The hints that their parents could be excluded by the White House have stunned many youths.
“It’s really hard to process when we’ve been pushing so hard for this,” said Ms. Cabello, an organizer in Texas for United We Dream, a national network of youth groups. “I cry every time I think about it.”
The White House will expand the current DACA program by eliminating the age cap for eligibility, which now excludes those over 30, or adjusting other requirements, measures youth leaders said they would welcome.
According to estimates by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research organization, about 3.3 million undocumented parents have children who are citizens or legal residents and have been living here for at least five years. Many families have some children born in other countries and some who are citizens born in the United States, and the number of eligible immigrants would increase only to 3.4 million if the parents of youths in the DACA program were included.
But for young people in families with no American-born children, it is bitterly frustrating that they have to continue to worry whenever their parents go out the door.
In October, Ms. Valdez recalled, her car was rammed in a rear fender while she was stopped at a red light. An apologetic American driver explained that she was wearing a new pair of high heels and had been unable to press the brake in time.
“Let’s just forget about it,” Ms. Valdez said, eyeing her crumpled fender, and she left to avoid calling the police...
It would have cost Senate Democrats little to have given Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., a win on the Keystone Pipeline. After all, the president could have blown off the vote with an insurmountable veto, citing the need to protect executive prerogatives. So it seemed odd when the White House got coy ahead of the vote about the president’s veto threat. When the time came, though, we saw why: Team Obama had successfully whipped against the Landrieu bill. There was little chance that Landrieu was going to win her Dec. 6 runoff whatever the outcome, but with the Hail Mary turning into a Fail Mary, the seat is signed, sealed and delivered for the GOP. Democrats, led by the White House, ate one of their own rather than defy the orthodoxy of the party’s liberal base. That’s strong evidence that Democrats currently care more about ideological purity than electoral expediency. And that is always a dangerous thing.*****
An audacious, confrontational approach to the midterm defeat is very much in vogue among Democrats, especially liberal firebrands who believe that a more concentrated version of the party’s ideology would have given more reason for inert coalition members to get to the polls. What the president heard from the two thirds of adults who did not vote was that they wanted more, more, more of his agenda. He started with global warming last week, but in the coming days will turn to immigration. As recent polling has shown, that won’t go over very well. Democrats may blame their inability to motivate their base for a painful midterm cycle, but anything seen as “big” could be very dangerous for a party that is approaching the vanishing point with the blue-collar white voters that once formed its core.More.
Enough, Donna Brazile told White House political director David Simas the day after the midterms.Keep reading.
Democrats are in worse shape than when President Barack Obama came into office — the number of seats they have in Congress, the number of governors, a party approval rating that’s fallen behind Republicans for the first time in recent history, enthusiasm, energy. The White House, Brazile said when she came to meet with Simas, has got to focus for the next two years on getting the party into better shape, and Obama’s the best and most effective person to get out the message.
As much Hillary Clinton anticipation as there is, two weeks later, Democrats are still reeling and anxious. Obama may have built his political career without the party — and created anti-establishment alternatives — but he’s a lame duck with a new Congress that’s been elected to oppose him. He needs Democrats. And they need him.
“The base craves his leadership,” Brazile said in an interview later that week, following a meeting of the DNC committee that’s beginning to set the rules for the next presidential nomination. “They want him in the mix, talking about what Democrats accomplished, what Democrats are fighting for, and what the president has done to make lives better.”
Nancy Pelosi was reelected minority leader. So was Harry Reid. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s term at the DNC isn’t up until 2017.
Obama said repeatedly before and after the votes were counted that he wasn’t going to fire anyone because of election results. But if no one’s going to take the blame for 2014, Democrats are hoping he’ll take responsibility for getting things better for 2016.
“He may or may not be the best messenger,” said Vic Fazio, the former California congressman who was the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair for the 1994 rout. “But at this point, he is still our messenger. And the first year is very important.”
At least until the next presidential campaign begins in earnest, Democrats say, it’ll be up to Obama to centralize the Democratic message around something other than simply trying to paint the Republicans as extreme.
Interviews with leading party strategists turn to three main suggestions: Obama should be a much more frequent and strong voice on Democratic priorities, he should transform his West Wing political office from a midterm clearinghouse to an instrument for true party outreach, and he should reinvest his energy in the Democratic National Committee — including seeking a full-time chair who can begin the major clean-up and overhaul they need ahead of 2016.
And if doing it for the party isn’t enough for Obama, Democrats say, do it out of self-interest.
“A strong party is the key to a lasting legacy,” said a senior Democratic strategist. “Whether it’s for our ideals as Democrats or it’s for his personal legacy — if we lose the White House and continue to get gutted down ballot, they will repeal the ACA and everything else we’ve fought so hard for, and all of this will be for naught.”
That should be a short-term worry for Obama too, Brazile said.
“The Republicans have not retreated from the battlefield, so why should President Obama surrender?” she said. “He can’t give up, he can’t waver. All of that looks to Democrats like he doesn’t stand for much, and it’s not the truth.”
On Sept. 23, 1979, two years before construction of Gateway Plaza began, a crowd of 200,000 converged on the landfill for an "anti-nuke" rally. Prompted by the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, the gathering was the biggest demonstration since the Vietnam War.And at People, "From Bruce to Bonnie, the Hottest Acts in Rock Warm Up the No-Nuke Crusade."
Take Me to the River
Talking Heads
8:50 AM
Happy
The Rolling Stones
8:48 AM
Twist and Shout
The Beatles
8:43 AM
FAME
DAVID BOWIE
8:39 AM
Don't Stop
Fleetwood Mac
8:36 AM
No One Like You
Scorpions
8:32 AM
Get Together
The Youngbloods
8:18 AM
Surrender
Cheap Trick
8:14 AM
Caught Up in You
38 Special
8:09 AM
Love Is a Battlefield
Pat Benatar
8:04 AM
Free Ride
The Edgar Winter Group
8:01 AM
It’s not just women who are hurt by feminist bullies. Everyone is. That’s because human relationships are harmed in the toxic outrage culture. The very perpetuation of humanity relies on men and women getting along well. People who stoke resentment and anger between the sexes, or create false claims about women’s oppression, are making it more difficult for happy, healthy, human relationships to flourish.Well, leftists pretty much destroy everything they touch, but read the whole thing. She's mad about this, for good reason.
The FBI bulletin expresses concern only over those who would exploit peaceful protests, not the masses of demonstrators who will want to legitimately, lawfully and collectively express their views on the grand jury’s decision.More.
The bulletin “stresses the importance of remaining aware of the protections afforded to all U.S. persons exercising their First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.”
Within hours of the FBI issuing its bulletin, some police departments across the country issued their own internal memos urging officers to review procedures and protocols for responding to mass demonstrations.
Still, the bulletin’s conclusions were blunt: “The FBI assesses those infiltrating and exploiting otherwise legitimate public demonstrations with the intent to incite and engage in violence could be armed with bladed weapons or firearms, equipped with tactical gear/gas masks, or bulletproof vests to mitigate law enforcement measures.”
The bulletin cites a series of recent messages threatening law enforcement, including a message posted online last week by a black separatist group that offered “a $5,000 bounty for the location” of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who fired the shots that killed Brown on Aug. 9.
In interviews with ABC News, police officials said their departments have identified a number of agitators who routinely appear at mass demonstrations.
“How many of those sympathizers are actually sympathizers?” Rick Hite, the chief of the Indianapolis Metropolitan police department, wondered. Many of them see the protests as a way to “chime in with their own personal agenda,” he said.
In its new intelligence bulletin, obtained by ABC News, the FBI says “exploitation” of mass demonstrations “could occur both in the Ferguson area and nationwide.”
Interesting obit: Fumiko Hayashida, 103, one of the 1st Japanese Americans in internment camps http://t.co/LGdtXRFOlx pic.twitter.com/TpuzUauGjM
— Lauren Raab (@raablauren) November 16, 2014Three men and a woman died and at least 15 people, including seven teenagers, were wounded in shootings across the city from Saturday afternoon into early Sunday morning.RELATED: At Town Hall, "Despite Gun Sales Being Banned in Chicago, Police Superintendent Still Blaming Lack of Gun Control For Violence."
In the latest fatal shooting, a 27-year-old man died after being shot around 3:15 a.m. Sunday in the Old Town neighborhood on the Near North Side, said Chicago Police Department spokesman News Affairs Officer Hector Alfaro.
The man was found inside a vehicle in the 400 block of West Evergreen Avenue with multiple gunshot wounds, Alfaro said. The car he was in crashed into several parked cars before coming to a stop.
He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Alfaro said...
The weekly shop, 'cause eating is fundamental. (with Kate at Stop & Shop) — https://t.co/zdgfnpjjw9
— Walter James Casper (@repsac3) November 16, 2014Brunch with my bride, 'cause shopping deserves a reward. (with Kate at Mastic Sports Deli) — https://t.co/7aj4dmKyOc
— Walter James Casper (@repsac3) November 16, 2014Conservative critiques of liberalism sometimes concede that liberals’ aspirations are laudable before insisting that the means liberals favor are insufficiently practical and at least potentially destructive. The way liberal compassion lends itself to liberal bullshit, however, argues for a less forgiving interpretation. Liberals’ ideals make them more culpable, not less, for the fact that government programs set up to do good don’t reliably accomplish good. Doing good is often harder than do-gooders realize, but doing good is also more about the doing and the doer than it is about the good. Too often, as a result, liberals are content to treat gestures as the functional equivalent of deeds, and intentions as adequate substitutes for achievements.That's a snippet of Voegeli's book, The Pity Party: A Mean-Spirited Diatribe Against Liberal Compassion.
#RedMeat #PJNETMT @peddoc63: Voters pushed you off plank! GOP - Not time 4compromise! #MakeItRight pic.twitter.com/aQ9jCneaW7
— Judy Stines (@jstines3) November 14, 2014
Islamic State murder video of 18 Syrian soldiers in a brutal and deliberately cruel fashion as the camera stares into the eyes of the condemned. The video production is smooth and a moment is taken to quash any idea that this is a “fake video” as ‘Jihadist John’ looks into the camera mid beheading with a menacing full metal jacket stare.More at Telegraph UK, "Peter Kassig may have defied captors' demand to film propaganda video before he was murdered."
What’s important about [Jonathan] Gruber’s words is that they highlight the fact that ObamaCare isn’t just “controversial” or “divisive” or “hotly debated.” It is fraudulent. Being based on lies, it is illegitimate.Word.
Heh. Shrinkage: More charges of 'doxxing' by Instapundit 'downsized' by accuser http://t.co/yJKfEEBC1e Leftists are simpletons straight up.
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 16, 2014#GruberGate basically:
a) Exposed Obama as a liar
b) Gave the supreme court the underpinnings to gut #Obamacare in the spring.
— RockPrincess (@Rockprincess818) November 16, 2014As a rule, Americans don’t like to be called “stupid,” as Jonathan Gruber is discovering. Whatever his academic contempt for voters, the ObamaCare architect and Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his candor about the corruption of the federal budget process.More.
In his now-infamous talk at the University of Pennsylvania last year, Professor Gruber argued that the Affordable Care Act “would not have passed” had Democrats been honest about the income-redistribution policies embedded in its insurance regulations. But the more instructive moment is his admission that “this bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.”
Mr. Gruber means the Congressional Budget Office, the institution responsible for putting “scores” or official price tags on legislation. He’s right that to pass ObamaCare Democrats perpetrated the rawest, most cynical abuse of the CBO since its creation in 1974.
In another clip from Mr. Gruber’s seemingly infinite video library, he discusses how he and Democrats wrote the law to game the CBO’s fiscal conventions and achieve goals that would otherwise be “politically impossible.” In still another, he explains that these ruses are “a sad statement about budget politics in the U.S., but there you have it.”
Yes you do. Such admissions aren’t revelations, since the truth has long been obvious to anyone curious enough to look. We and other critics wrote about ObamaCare’s budget gimmicks during the debate, and Rep. Paul Ryan exposed them at the 2010 “health summit.” President Obama changed the subject.
But rarely are liberal intellectuals as full frontal as Mr. Gruber about the accounting fraud ingrained in ObamaCare. Also notable are his do-what-you-gotta-do apologetics: “I’d rather have this law than not,” he says.
Recall five years ago. The White House wanted to pretend that the open-ended new entitlement would spend less than $1 trillion over 10 years and reduce the deficit too. Congress requires the budget gnomes to score bills as written, no matter how unrealistic the assumption or fake the promise. Democrats with the help of Mr. Gruber carefully designed the bill to exploit this built-in gullibility.
So they used a decade of taxes to fund merely six years of insurance subsidies. They made-believe that Medicare payments to hospitals will some day fall below Medicaid rates. A since-repealed program for long-term care front-loaded taxes but back-loaded spending, meant to gradually go broke by design. Remember the spectacle of Democrats waiting for the white smoke to come up from CBO and deliver the holy scripture verdict?
On the tape, Mr. Gruber also identifies a special liberal manipulation: CBO’s policy reversal to not count the individual mandate to buy insurance as an explicit component of the federal budget. In 1994, then CBO chief Robert Reischauer reasonably determined that if the government forces people to buy a product by law, then those transactions no longer belong to the private economy but to the U.S. balance sheet. The CBO’s face-melting cost estimate helped to kill HillaryCare.
The CBO director responsible for this switcheroo that moved much of ObamaCare’s real spending off the books was Peter Orszag, who went on to become Mr. Obama’s budget director. Mr. Orszag nonetheless assailed CBO during the debate for not giving him enough credit for the law’s phantom “savings.”
Then again, Mr. Gruber told a Holy Cross audience in 2010 that although ObamaCare “is 90% health insurance coverage and 10% about cost control, all you ever hear people talk about is cost control. How it’s going to lower the cost of health care, that’s all they talk about. Why? Because that’s what people want to hear about because a majority of Americans care about health-care costs.”
But let’s look in particular at the youngest part of the eligible workforce. The share of 16- to 24-year-olds saying they didn’t want a job rose from an average 29.5% in 2000 to an average 39.4% over the first 10 months of this year. There was a much smaller increase among prime working-age adults (ages 25 to 54) over that period. And among people aged 55 and up, the share saying they didn’t want a job actually fell, to an average 58.2% this year.
Soldiers called in to help hunt for the Disneyland Paris "tiger", with fresh paw prints spotted after beast apparently crossed a major highway and slinked past a petrol station.More at London's Daily Mail, "Camera footage captures big cat stalking across a car park near Disneyland as police marksmen continue hunt for 'aggressive and adventurous animal'."
Police and soldiers hunting for a large cat believed to be on the loose near Paris have shut down a motorway service station after the beast was spotted there a day after it was first seen near the Disneyland theme park.
Motorists were warned to be extra vigilant on the busy A4 motorway after a driver first spotted what he described as a “wandering animal” before dawn on Friday at the service station.
Paw prints believed were later found on the grounds of the service station.
However, the National Office for Hunting and Wildlife said it is not a tiger but some other sort of (as yet unidentified) feline. They base their statement on analysis of its paw prints.
How low can gas prices go?PREVIOUSLY: "The Geopolitical Consequences of the Shale Revolution."
In Southern California — and across the country — prices have been dropping for months, placing extra dollars in consumers' wallets. This week the average price for a gallon of regular hit $3.24 in Los Angeles and Long Beach, the lowest in four years, according to AAA. In Orange County, it was $3.19.
Energy analysts say it may go lower.
"We could see gasoline prices in the high 2s," said Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability at UC Davis.
Several factors are likely to get prices there, Jaffe said.
Oil production in the United States — driven by the nation's shale oil boom — is increasing. And on the demand side, the sluggish global economy has sent the price of crude steadily down.
In the U.S., where growth has been stronger, demographics and consumer habits are putting downward pressure on demand, analysts said...
The current decline is partly seasonal...
But the nation's shale oil boom should help drive down prices in 2015 across the state, with average prices potentially falling below $3 once next year's summer driving season ends, Kloza said.
"It's going to be a sloppy year next year for oil," he said. "On balance, crude oil prices should be the lowest they've been in four or five years."
The rise in oil production has been so great that the U.S. Energy Information Administration now predicts average daily production in 2015 will reach the highest level since 1972.
Low fuel prices have been a boon to consumers' pocket books, especially working- and middle-class Americans for whom gas accounts for a significant portion of their paychecks.
When prices were around $4 a gallon, Rita Mena paid as much as $80 to fill her Ford Explorer.
On Friday, at an Arco gas station in Boyle Heights, she shelled out $60.
With the extra money, the 32-year-old said, she can buy more of the things she needs, like groceries or diapers for her 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Leilani.
Then there's the luxuries.
"I want to go out more now," said Mena, who works at a downtown L.A. health clinic. "And maybe I could pick up an extra present or something for Christmas."
Francoise Boufhal @Onlybadchicks @S2nningBabes @johnnywalkeryyc @Fan_Of_Glamour @US_GlamourFan @onlyhotgirlzz #beauty pic.twitter.com/zWrZaSH7lE
— BABEIMPACT (@babeimpact) October 14, 2014Donald Sutherland's epic Hollywood life and career. The GQ
&A: http://t.co/5bku2tjkWH pic.twitter.com/MzIjMqHd7D
— GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) November 15, 2014
The fight against the self-proclaimed Islamic State is still in its early days, but already it is challenging the Pentagon's assumptions about where and how war will be fought and what the military will need to be prepared.More.
The conflict in Iraq and Syria represents the type of war the Obama administration has tried to relegate to history. The days of fighting protracted ground wars in the Middle East were supposed to be over. Instead, the White House directed the Pentagon to turn its attention to the Asia-Pacific region, where it's believed by some that high-tech weapons systems belonging to the Air Force and Navy could be optimized in a more conventional fight.
But with new conflicts and pockets of violence and instability rapidly cropping up in places such as Ukraine, the Middle East, and parts of Africa, defense policymakers are being forced to revisit, if not rethink, some of the assumptions that underpin today's strategy and resource decisions.
Among the ideas under scrutiny are the relevance of ground forces and whether state actors pose the most dangerous threat to the U.S. homeland and global security.
For the military services, the debate over these assumptions will directly affect their size, budget, and the types of weapons they buy.
For senior military leaders, the issue of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, "is as much about where the services are headed as it is about the problem to solve," said David E. Johnson, a military analyst at Rand who from 2012 to 2014 directed the Army's Strategic Studies Group for Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno.
The Pentagon has laid out a strategy that accepts greater risk in the ground forces so that more resources can be poured into the Air Force and Navy -- the services that play the biggest role in the Asia-Pacific region. A smaller ground force is also believed to be necessary due to escalating personnel costs at a time when the defense budget is shrinking.
As part of this plan, the Army is continuing to shrink from a wartime high of 570,000 active-duty soldiers to today's 505,000, with the goal of dropping to 490,000 by the end of 2015. And even deeper cuts are likely to come; the Army is expected to downsize to 420,000 soldiers if Congress doesn't undo the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration planned for 2016.
The assumption behind these troop reductions is that the United States won't fight large-scale, protracted ground wars like it has in Iraq and Afghanistan anytime soon. And although no one is recommending inserting large-scale U.S. ground forces into Iraq -- the current cap is 3,100 "non-combat" troops -- events there and in Ukraine are providing the Army support for its argument that it is too risky to make the Army much smaller than it already is.
"I think there is a sense by many in the Army of, 'Hey, we told you you've been engaging in some degree of wishful thinking and we think we're getting growing evidence that we're not talking about hypotheticals,'" said Maren Leed, a senior advisor to Odierno from 2011 to 2012 who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's ISIS, it's Ebola, it's Russia. Name your problem, ground forces matter."
Meanwhile, the other services are arguing, "You can do it with us and with other people's boots," she said...
