~DANIEL GROSS ..more

First-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits rose to 366,000 in the week ended Nov. 8 from a revised 353,000 the previous week. Market expectations were for a rise to 360,000.

The dollar's sluggish performance in the last few sessions has raised questions again about the pace of the U.S. recovery, analysts said.

"More and more people are questioning the quality of the recovery, having been led by extraordinarily low interest rates and refinancings in the mortgage market. I think the recovery is not as broad-based and stable as many think it is," said John McCarthy, director of foreign exchange at ING Capital Markets LLC in New York.

~Gertrude Chavez  .. more

"The measures are not there to punish the US but to focus the minds of the US administration," said a commission spokeswoman. "The sooner they terminate the measures the better, and we won't need to use these sanctions."

~  .. more

~Marc Cooper   .. more

Batteries!

That's the answer. That is why we have distributed electicity instead of renewables. I Should have been able to say this before. Have you ever seen a flashlight sold by someone besides the power company? Probably not. Sell the flashlights at a loss and make up the differrence when you sell the replacement batteries. That's what it's about, selling batteries. The flashlights use up the batteries. The power lines (drug lines?) hooked to your house do the same thing. Think about it. Once you have centralized distribution, you have centralized collection, you are the flashlight, and it's even better than batteries, because it is "pay as you go." It's the power companies light and you keep paying for the batteries (electricity). So once you have these units set up, you really don't want to change the system. That is, if you own the system. Not so good for the end user. That is why the big push for Nuclear Power Plants. They plug in to this system for the big energy operators.

Those friggin' pinko, commmie, perverted environmentalists want to screw up this system. I mean, renewable energy, this stuff is a friggin' menace. I can just picture it. Locals all over working like beavers, putting this stuff in and on homes all over the country. Next thing you know they stop paying the power companies (that's un-American), the power companies stop giving the governments their cut of the money, and then these same beavers start spending all the monies they don't send to the power companies and their government partners in local economies. That's gotta be wrong. I mean, what do these dips know about spending big money. We wouldn't even have an excuse for a new nuclear waste dump. Worse than that. The renewable stuff is more efficient overall than our present system and we'll even be held responsible for our own inefficiencies. Installation and maintenance businesses will be springing up all over the place and these damn fools will probably be sucked in by the fact that they will be working in harmony with the environment.

We can't have that, that's un-American, un-Republican, and un-Corporate. If these dipshits aren't terrorists, I don't know what else you could call them. They probably think that wars are bad. When will they learn to think globally? Hell man, it's the wars that pull us out of the recessions. I can't believe they give those eco-dipshits the right to vote. Next thing you know someone would have to be responsible for all the waste and mismanagement by the old energy system. It would even slow down all those big global warming, government sponsored, gov't funded, abatement initiatives that we were going to build next generation profits on. These eco-nuts are worse than Arafat. Worse yet, how about all those nuke plants that have to be defended from terrorist plots caused by bad big energy policy (bad for whom, you might ask). We'll have these big piles of nuke waste that were gonna be DU's for the military, and that could become a liability,instead of big profits. We have to wise them up before something like this gets started again (remember Carter) and we'll have to do that by dumbing them down.

We should run on an education platform, so we can control the education. Let's make them technicallly sophisticated so we can get the high tech toys repaired, but make sure they don't know shit about the rest of the world or their next door neighbor. A little food for thought. What if those dipshits figure out we get big money to fix all the problems we create. Think General Electric nuclear waste creation, and then hire General Electric to clean up (under the rug) the problem. I'll bet we could even hire them to clean up PCBs. The waste is no problem. Get it all collected in one fictitious entity and bankrupt the fictitious entity. Standard operating procedure. Wait till these dipshits find out we snookered em' with the Nuke waste. Next thing you know they'll be saying that fictitious entities are not what make the country work. Damn, that's even un-Republican. Don't they know that fictitious entities is where the power lies. We may not be able to vote, but we can sure buy the vote, and if that doesn't work, buy the politicians. Hell man, why do we buy both parties in an election? This is about making money for the fictitious entities, not these friggin' eco nutballs trying to undo the fictitious entity power base.

This is serious. Hire us a gaggle of lawyers. Make solar, wind, and all those renewable and alternative energy plans illegal. Buy more politicians at the Federal level, where we can really do some damage to those eco-terrorists. Wouldn't it be great to have Ronnie back in the main office again. He'd straighten those no good eco-nutballs out and sell it with a good one-liner. Now, there was someone who knew that the fictitious entities were the real power and the backbone of this great economy. Did you know there are eco cases out there who think this nation is about people, not money? That kind of thinking could be contagious, even infectious, and we can't nip it in the bud quickly enough. Make them afraid of something and we'll sell them security, just like the Mafia. Don't let them find out that wars are not about ism's (socialism, communism, republicanism, federalism), or they'll figure out they're about banking and money. Next thing you know, they'll be blaming us fictitious entities. Get those lawyers out there and get us the right to vote, and make sure we get more than one vote. Better yet, get us some judges, and we'll win the next election for sure. That's lots of votes in one place. That's the fictitious entity way. Attack those eco-screwballs before they upset the playing field. We didn't spend billions (trillions?) to let them run things.

‘Ol’ quid pro quo’

~LOUIS UCHITELLE .. more

After pushing through tax reductions in each of the past three years, the Bush team is eyeing another way to trim Americans' tax bills: two tax-free savings accounts with fewer restrictions and much higher dollar limits than the current Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs). 

One plan, called a Lifetime Savings Account, would allow individuals to set aside up to $7,500 a year. The money could be withdrawn at any time, for any purpose, without penalty or tax.

The second, a Retirement Savings Account, would replace current IRAs and more than double the limit on contributions to $7,500. Money could not be withdrawn until retirement age. It would have no income cap, unlike current Roth IRAs, which are not available to couples with adjusted gross incomes over $160,000.

With both accounts, money would grow tax-free, and there would be no tax due when the money is withdrawn. Between the two accounts, each family member could set aside $15,000.

~Christian Science Monitor  .. more

The legislation that won final congressional approval Tuesday would allow seniors to buy coverage — at an estimated monthly premium of $35 — for their prescription drugs beginning  in three years. After they agreed to the monthly premiums and paid their first $250 in pharmacy bills, the coverage would kick in, paying 75 percent of their bills between $250 and $2,250. 

After that, there would be no further coverage until beneficiaries' drug bills for the year reached $5,100, leaving a gap of $2,850 that they would have to pay out of their own pockets. Above $5,100 the insurance would pick up roughly 95 percent of costs.

~MARK SHERMAN  .. more

I like the timing, too -- they slipped that Medicare deform bill through just in time for the drug companies, the insurance companies and the HMOs to give loud hosannas around their Thanksgiving tables.

 Let us hear their hymns of praise, paeans, benedictions and blessings upon the Republican Party rise from their groaning and appreciative boards forever, amen.

~Molly Ivins  .. more

I think that even if you don't find as much as a primer to a bullet cartridge, you have still found thousands of body parts of the thousands of innocent civilians who were butchered at the hands of a madman.

This is true. I have seen photos of Iraqi civilians, including children, dismembered by BushCo munitions. All of this brought to us by the policies of a madman, if you insist.

Refresh my memory, please.  I remember we were told that the reason we had to attack Iraq was that Iraq was going to attack the US using weapons of mass destruction.  Is this a misconception on my part?  ~YB

You have unending stories of the victims coming forward and testifying of the brutality that they lived in every day. You have the Kurds who were gassed to death.

I swear I don't have any Kurds.  I am old enough to remember this.  Wasn't the US providing Saddam with these weapons?  Wasn't he our buddy back then?  Why the sudden change of heart?  Why was there no outcry when he used this stuff?  Many of the same people involved back then are running the show now.  Isn't there new evidence that Iran was actually the culprit? 

Not soldiers, but women and children. You have the jubilation of the freed people as they tore down the statues of their tormentor and beat the head of it with the bottom of their shoes; which for them was the highest insult to offer up.

Multiple statues.  One head?  Weird.

Staged by the US army, wasn't it?  Maybe not.  But isn't the real point that they seem to hate us now about as much as they hated Saddam?  When we leave--whenever that might be--are they going to hit an effigy of Bush on the head with a shoe?  Are you going to parade that image around as proof positive that American lives were worth the jubilation?

You do the President, Great Britton's Prime Minister, the military forces from differing contries and their sending nations a great injustice by calling the war a bad move to have taken.

I've got to hear this one...  I did them a great injustice?

To clarify this position; what if Hitler hadn't been grabbing all the countries he did, but kept to all his secret projects and his genecidal activities. Would we not had gone after him once we learned just how brutal he was and how murderous his power over the peoples of Europe had become? Perhaps you would have wrote then something like: "well it's only Jews, Gypsies, Retards, Handicappers, Elderly, Ministers and a mixed group of nonGermans, so why waste the fuel and manpower?".

I guess my history education is defective.  That's exactly what we did, isn't it?  Didn't we enter the war when Japan (not Germany) attacked us?  Were those German Zeros that bombed Pearl Harbor?  We didn't get into the mix with Hitler until the Lusitania was sunk, I think. You are saying we entered the war because of Hitler's brutality, not because we were attacked?  Wasn't Bush's great granddad Prescott so concerned about the brutality that he continued doing business with the nazis throughout the war?

I'm so sick to my stomach to say, that the way the news and Democrats are using airtime and prose for nothing better than showing the world your total contempt for the suffering masses around the world.

Excuse me?  Are we the ones under funding or defunding international aid agencies, weapon reduction pacts such as land mine bans, global environmental agreements, disease control, reproductive aid and education aid, etc.?

A very obnoxious and macabre way to slam the integrity of a man you obviously want to loose the next election, while doing it over the tombs of those whose blood cries out for some justice, and protection to those they leave behind.

No...  I simply want Bush to lose for the second time, not loose anything.  He's let loose quite enough already.  I will vote in my normal polling location.  The tombs and blood have been removed, I hope.

The media was so biased against the then, Governor Bush during Bush's election that it really opened the eyes of a lot of people who saw your tactics.

Can you give even a single example?  I believe I can provide you with several pages of examples of the ass-rip job they did on Gore.  I'm trying to think of anything the press reported that was seriously critical of Bush.  Maybe one of us is confused.  Isn't Bush the one that was AWOL, drunken, womanizing and Gore the one that served during this same period?  Help me out here.

But you still didn't learn anything. When the war started, the networks started the propaganda machinery all over again and lost ratings, because of their baseless cries of destruction to the American Military and other such nonsense. Now you're at it again with slam articles about not finding weapons of mass destruction.

What the hell are you talking about?  Did a cat walk across your keyboard or did you type that?

I think you and every body else who has verbated all the parties previously mentioned, owes President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, and all the other noble men and women who freed the multiple people groups who were brutalized in Iraq a huge and resounding pat on the back for what they did do and not what a madman with ample warning was able to successfully ship accross his borders and hide before the war started.

So you are saying that the WMD's got FedEx'ed to... where?  I'm sure you must have some very interesting information the US army would love to see.  They've been looking for that shit for six months.  Why don't you help them out by telling them where the weapons are?  Or could it be, maybe, that you are making it all up?

By the way, I never verbated any parties.  At least while sober.

The intelligence that the President used was also from previously found items that were found

(Usually, previously found items were found)

before the war by UN inspectors who saw the illegal hardware with their own eyes.

Really?  Again, you must get off your ass and tell the state department about this because Powell went in front of the world and lied about the existence of this stuff.  If you can bail him out, I'll bet he would be really, really, really grateful.

By the way, if you cannot find something, it does not prove that it exists.

So continue the antiBush/Blair stance you seem to be insanely devoted to, but you'll not find a sympathetic ear from me, because it is obvious that your minds are so polluted with prejudice, that every thing appears evil in your eyes, even when good is all around and in clear sight.I say this to your shame.

No, I see evil when it exists.  I do not see greatness where it does not exist, as you appear to.

For our noble President, England's Prime Minister, the troops, the victims, the grieving mothers, fathers, children of Iraq.

M.

Go talk with some of these folks.  I am sure they would love to hear your words.  Tell them again why their kid or spouse got maimed or killed.  Tell them about the glory.  Don't leave out the part about our "noble President."

George W and his regime of warmongering chicken hawks are constantly doing political photo-ops with our soldiers and piously admonishing everyone to "support the troops." But you might ask Lt. Col. Dale Starr, Col. David Everly, Col. Clifford Acree, and several other soldiers about how the Bushites themselves support our troops. 

These combat veterans were captured, imprisoned, and tortured by Saddam Hussein's minions during the 1991 war with Iraq. As prisoners of war, they sustained fractured skulls, burnings, broken bones, threats of dismemberment and castration during their nightmarish confinement, yet they survived and made it home. Here they found some solace in a 1996 U.S. law that allowed them to sue the Iraqi government for the physical and emotional injuries they suffered, with payments to be made from Iraqi assets that had been frozen by our government. Last summer, a federal court awarded this group nearly a billion dollars in damages. 

So, guess who is trying to keep them from collecting even a dime of it? Bush and gang, that's who. They've taken the soldiers back to court, arguing that this money is now needed for rebuilding Iraq. White House mouthpiece Scott McClellan and our Iraqi occupation czar, L. Paul Bremer III, both have been trotted out to say that these tortured POWs cannot be allowed to "get in the way" of the administration's nation-building scheme in Iraq. 

Get in the way? These soldiers put themselves in the way of horrendous harm, only to be betrayed now by a money-grubbing, draft-dodging, commander-in-chief who's shamelessly trying to stiff them. The next time you see George W posing for another self-serving photo-op with our troops, remember this picture.

~Jim Hightower  .. source

At that level of spending, a participant's out-of-pocket expenses would total $1,745 -- the $250 deductible, $500 to cover the one-fourth co-payment on the next $2,000 in drug costs, and $995 to cover the full cost of drugs over the $2,250 initial ceiling. 

Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, an advocacy group for health care consumers, said about 29.5 million Medicare recipients will face these expenses if they opt to participate in the new drug benefit program. Another 12 million or so low-income elderly people would receive special treatment. 

Pollack said the lowest-income older Americans who also qualify for Medicaid -- about 6 million -- would be able to buy generic drugs for $1 per prescription and brand-name drugs for $3 per prescription, with no premiums, deductibles or co-payments. But, he said, this may be less of a benefit than it appears because Medicaid already has a prescription drug benefit.

~Edward Walsh and Bill Brubaker  .. more

If the Republicans are alarmed, it is partly because the Soros donations are part of a new form of political activism on the left, one that takes advantage of the internet. MoveOn.org, with its 1.8 million members, has proved it can raise millions of dollars in days for a liberal cause and act as a counterweight to political organisations, including the Democratic Party leadership. 

~Andrew Gumbel .. more

...imagine their outrage at the news that George Soros, the billionaire financier and philanthropist, will spend millions next year to defeat President Bush. Actually, no imagination is needed to hear the squealing and squawking from the right. From the commanding heights of the Republican National Committee and House hearing rooms all the way down to the lowliest Web sites, George Soros is an object of vilification.

Righteous anger about the Soros funding burns hottest among those with the least credibility. Leading the anti-Soros chorus is Ed Gillespie, the new R.N.C. chairman and former lobbyist. His clients notably included the late Enron Corporation, a firm where criminal book-cooking paid for promiscuous political palm-greasing.

~Joe Conason   .. more

For the nation, nobody knows. But it is surely a great day for the Frists.

Were this Rube Goldbergian monstrosity to take effect next year, we could judge the various "facts" against reality and reach some political conclusions. Conveniently, it doesn't take effect until 2006 when Bush either will be departed or into his last term and immune to consequences.

The Senate debate made clear nobody understood the bill's consequences. The competing "facts" created a relativism seldom seen in lawmaking.

~James O. Goldsborough  .. more

In a column 10 days ago about Iraq, I expressed frustration at the absence of a good name for our war there. So I offered prizes (Iraqi 250-dinar notes with Saddam's picture) and invited readers to send in entries.

~NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF  .. more

Intelligence analysts around the world are studying the videotapes. "It certainly looked and sounded like him, but we get so few glimpses at Bush in real-life situations that it is hard to tell," said one operative from a Western intelligence agency.

People who know Bush said it appeared to him. "That's him, all right," said one longtime associate.

The tape shows the man claiming to be Bush praising U.S. attacks in Iraq. "We will stay until the job is done," he threatened.

The videotape was delivered to the Baghdad bureau of FOX News by an intermediary courier who has brought material before from the U.S. military, according to the U.S. network.

~DISASSOCIATED PRESS  .. more

BushSpeak mavens instantly recognized the abrupt change in policy. America is about to cut and run while Bush knows Iraqis can no more run Iraq than the Reverend Al Sharpton could carry Idaho.

Nothing quite says "Blow off" like a George W. Bush promise. Pick an issue, any issue. Democratizing Iraq, liberating Afghanistan, preserving Medicare, protecting the environment, honoring free trade, funding education, caring for veterans, balancing the budget, any issue except those hallowed tax cuts -- on every one Bush called what seemed a determined play and promptly ran a misdirection. BushSpeak is more than amusing malapropisms or a looking glass of mental dishevelment. It is the most cynical politics ever practiced from the Oval Office.

 ~P. M. Carpenter   .. more