it's not a question of who is rght or wrong but what is right or wrong that counts.
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World & National News

Jobs?
U.S. Economy Lost 54,000 Jobs in August; Unemployment Rate Rises to 9.6%

Job losses continued to mount in the U.S. economy last month, though at a more modest pace than expected, putting further pressure on policy makers to take action to spur growth and employment.

A separate report indicated the U.S. nonmanufacturing sector expanded at a much slower pace last month.

The U.S. economy shed jobs for a third straight month, losing 54,000 non-farm jobs, but the losses were half as bad as expected. The unemployment rate rose to 9.6%. Kelly Evans, Dennis Berman, Paul Vigna, Phil Izzo and Sudeep Reddy discuss. Also, Jerry Seib discusses what has happened to the American job creation machine.

120 Days to Go
Largest Tax Hikes in History

In just 120 days, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect.  They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2011:

In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families.  These will all expire on January 1, 2011:
Personal income tax rates will rise.  The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed).  The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent.  All the rates in between will also rise.  Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates.  The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:
- The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%
- The 25% bracket rises to 28%
- The 28% bracket rises to 31%
- The 33% bracket rises to 36%
- The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%

Cape Cod greets Earl

Residents and business owners in the beach communities of Cape Cod and nearby islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard hung plywood over their shop windows on Friday and rued the arrival of Hurricane Earl, which appeared set to spoil their holiday weekend.

But the vacation haven for many of America's rich and famous, from presidents to musicians to hedge fund managers, looked like it would be spared a direct hit from the storm.

President Barack Obama and his family visited Martha's Vineyard in August, where they endured several days of chilly rain but missed the hurricane threat.

Obama Promises New Economic Proposals Next Week

In the wake of a new jobs report showing increased unemployment, President Obama today said the steps his administration has taken to improve the economy are working, but not fast enough. He called on Congress to pass a small business bill and said he would announce next week a broader set of ideas to accelerate job creation.

"There are certain steps that we know will will advance our recovery," Mr. Obama said. "If we're wililng to put partisanship aside and be the leaders the American people need us to be... we'll rebuild America's eoncomy stronger than it's been before."

Experts Fear Mideast Talks Are Too Ambitious

As the Israeli and Palestinian leaders pledged at the peace summit meeting in Washington this week to try to resolve the core issues that have long divided their people and bloodied the land, a growing number of stakeholders here in Israel worried that the two sides were aiming too high.

Some of the nation’s veteran peace process practitioners, along with a range of policy experts and commentators, say that in order to stave off failure, Israel, the Palestinians and their American sponsors should first aim for a partial or interim solution because the gaps between the Israeli and Palestinian positions are too wide.


Chance of Israeli Attack on Iran 50-50

The chance that Israel will launch a pre-emptive attack on Iran's rogue nuclear-weapons facilities is now 50-50 and appears to be rising steadily, says Middle East expert and award-winning journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave.

"I think it is, as of now, a 50-50 proposition," de Borchgrave tells Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview. "It seems to be moving up the ladder."

De Borchgrave has warned that international sanctions won't be enough to encourage Iran's theocrats to relinquish their nuclear ambitions. But he tells Newsmax that the leaders of several Persian Gulf nations have said privately they would welcome a U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear-enrichment sites.

Iran calls on Palestnians to fight on

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged Palestinians to keep up their armed struggle against Israel a day after Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to continue talks on a U.S.-backed peace deal.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who hosted the first session of talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Washington, voiced confidence that this latest attempt to bring peace to the region could succeed where so many others have failed.

BP Provides Lessons Learned From Gulf Spill

BP PLC Friday disclosed various lessons and capabilities built from trouble-shooting the big oil spill in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico which, it said, would allow the industry to more quickly cope with any future offshore oil drilling accidents.

"These advances can serve as part of an initial discussion on how to institutionalize the increased capabilities and ensure that they can be readily mobilized in addressing a marine oil spill of any size," the company said in a 46-page report it prepared for the main U.S. offshore drilling regulator.


Democarts face grim election prospects

An unrelenting sour mood among voters has steadily eroded support for President Barack Obama's Democrats, putting the party's grip on Congress at growing risk two months before the November 2 election.

Worries about the economy and plummeting confidence in Obama have Democrats on the defensive in dozens of once-safe races, sparking new predictions of a 1994-style sweep that would restore Republicans to power in the House of Representatives and even the Senate.

US, South Korean nuclear envoys meet

South Korea's envoy to stalled North Korean nuclear talks is meeting with senior U.S. officials as China and the North reportedly are pushing for the disarmament negotiations to resume.

The State Department said Wi Sung-lac met with Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg and others Friday to discuss North Korea. Wi's meeting follows a U.S. visit this week by China's nuclear envoy.

DOJ sues Ariz. Sheriff
  
The Justice Department sued Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Arizona's Maricopa County, on Thursday, saying his office has repeatedly declined to hand over documents to federal investigators examining whether his aggressive tactics against illegal immigrants have violated their civil rights.

Arpaio, whose Phoenix area office has drawn widespread attention for his unusual practices, has been the focus of U.S. investigators who have opened criminal and civil investigations of the sheriff and his office.


Democratic Salvage Plan
How Nancy Pelosi might save her majority.

With the economy struggling and the polls turning sharply against them, Democrats are at sea about how to prevent an electoral rout in November. Reports yesterday said the White House may be panicked enough to contemplate new tax cuts. Allow us to suggest a salvage plan that would help the economy and perhaps also save the Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill: Return after Labor Day, extend all of the 2001 and 2003 tax rates at least through 2013, and then go home.

This is not Speaker Nancy Pelosi's current plan, to say the least. Her idea is to return to Washington in 10 days and start a debate over raising taxes only weeks before Election Day. Democrats are betting they can vote to extend the lower tax rates set to expire in January for those making less than $200,000 a year, while cornering Republicans to defend lower rates for "the rich." Voters are supposed to applaud this exercise in class warfare amid a weak recovery and 9.5% unemployment.


Disorder
     By Geoff Metcalf
"In its narrowest acceptation, order means obedience. A government is said to preserve order if it succeeds in getting itself obeyed."
             -- John Stuart Mill

I have tried and failed to give our young hope and change President the chance to demonstrate by action that those of us who had been critical of his lack of experience, hypocrisy and duplicity might have been wrong. The republic needs help and what is right and wrong should overshadow who is right or wrong.

However, this president seems intent on establishing new standards for incompetence, failure and even the barest minimal capacity to judge the climate, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats his actions (and inaction) precipitate.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that statistically, the administration might be right more based on pure chance probability?  Not even!  Even the liberal punditry class is wishing Hillary had prevailed.

Nobel laureate Isidor Issac Rabi once observed, "Most new insights come only after a superabundant accumulation of facts have removed the blindness which prevented us from seeing what later comes to be regarded as obvious."  Hell-o?!?!?

Barack Obama is failing epically. Even the brayed about Obamacare victory (?) has supporters seeking cover.  Woodrow Wilson was a flop as president largely because he allowed the oligarchy to do what they wanted to do. And look what it got us…the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the 16th Amendment and systemic Big Brotherism.

Jimmy Carter failed without help from the CFR magus…his monumental failures were largely his own. LBJ failed…but at least was slick enough to craft his own exit strategy.  Richard Nixon was Richard Nixon and although he has become a stereotype for all things venial and wrong, he still gets kudos for statesmanlike props because of China (which yet may come back to bite us in the bottom).

Barack Obama however, is a horse in another garage…a new standard to overshadow all previous failures. The Obama failures are not isolated or focused…no; they are routine, ubiquitous, and the new standards.

The President's job performance has been not just bad but way bad: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, (no one could have forcast our first Black president's awful ham handedness in turning minor racial issues into such a monumental SNAFU) and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people (for whom he appears to show open distain)
.
Cicero noted, “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.  For the traitor appears not a traitor, he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men.  He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politics so that it can no longer resist.  A murder is less to fear.  The traitor is the plague.”

The Wall Street Journal said Obama is failing because "he has no understanding of the American people". Some say he just flat out doesn’t like the American people he is supposed to serve.

Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says Obama is failing because he has "lost control of his message", and is overexposed. However, the systemic problem from the jump was the message was form without substance…it was a catch phrase without a plot. Beyond winning the election, Obama really had no strategy and no tactics.

Clarice Feldman of American Thinker dared to say what needed to be said...not just that the emperor has no clothes but, “Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.”

The real villain in the contemporary American tragedy is not really Barack Obama, or even his liberal socialist masters.  Justice Hugo Black once wrote, "The Press was protected so that it could bare the secrets the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people."  However, we now have a press that has epically failed in its responsibilities “to prevent any part of government from deceiving the people.”

The main stream media has become a willing and hyper-active co-conspirator enabling an incompetent dysfunctional administration that has done (and continues to do) irreparable harm to the republic.



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