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27 Jul 2011 23:52

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Politics: McCain invokes “Lord of the Rings” in debt ceiling tirade

  • The Republican House that failed to raise the debt ceiling would somehow escape all blame. Then Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced-budget amendment and reform entitlements, and the tea-party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth having defeated Mordor.
  • John McCain • Ripping the Republican Party on the Senate floor. He later derided House Republicans’ approach to the debt-ceiling discussions as “the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into GOP Senate nominees.” source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

27 Jul 2011 22:53

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Culture: Massachusetts politicians cut “It Gets Better” clip

  • If you thought this was the last time you’d get to see United States lawmakers in an “It Gets Better” video, think again! John Kerry, who was absent from the previous effort, has made up for it by posting an IGB clip of his own, where he appears alongside a bunch of other Massachusetts politicians to help comfort LGBT youth. The gang’s all here—and by “gang,” we mean “Massachusetts congressional delegation”—except for Scott Brown, who’s afraid of getting primaried from the right in his re-election campaign busy focusing on jobs and the economy. Regardless, it’s nice to see more lawmakers stepping up to the plate here.  source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

27 Jul 2011 21:57

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Tech: Laptop broken? Enroll in an Owensboro, KY public school

  • FREE Macbooks for kids in Kentucky! source
  • » We were generally supportive of the 2009 stimulus package, but aspects of it are starting to seem a bit questionable, to say the least. Case in point: 2,200 students and staff in the town of Owensboro, Kentucky will soon be enjoying a free Macbook Air, courtesy of the Recovery and Reinvestment Act. While we’re all for providing students with the technical competency needed to compete in the 21st-century global economy, you don’t really need to give everyone a Macbook Air to do that. The cheapest Air is $999; if we assume, for the sake of argument, that Apple gave Owensboro a 50% bulk discount, that’s still over a million dollars of federal money being spent so kids can have free laptops. Opponents of “wasteful government spending,” your Exhibit A is right here.
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

27 Jul 2011 21:34

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World: Somali aid begins to trickle in, but honestly, they need a flood

  • ten number of tons of emergency food delivered to Somalia earlier today
  • 3,500 number of children that can be fed with the food for one month source
  • » A drop in a chaotic bucket: With millions reportedly affected by widespread famine and political factors preventing aid from getting to over 2 million people, a lot more has to be done to ensure the health and safety of many affected by the historic drought currently hitting Africa. The World Food Program estimates that as many as 11.3 people in the region need aid. Fortunately, world organizations like the European Union are starting to chip in more money.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

27 Jul 2011 14:43

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U.S.: Pew study: There’s a massive wealth gap along racial lines

  • $113,149 average net worth of a white household in 2009
  • $5,677 average net worth of a black household in 2009 source
  • » That is a stark difference. In their latest study, Pew compared the net wealth of families in various racial groups and found that blacks and Latinos in particular did very poorly compared to whites. (Asians, on the other hand, were somewhat within shouting distance. EDIT: Please see explanation.) This is a historic trend which has lasted decades, but has become all the more apparent with the Great Recession. “The bursting of the housing market bubble in 2006 and the recession that followed from late 2007 to mid-2009 took a far greater toll on the wealth of minorities than whites,” Pew writes in its study. While net wealth among whites fell roughly 16 percent, blacks families lost about 53 percent, and Latino families lost the most — losing 66 percent of their wealth on average.
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

27 Jul 2011 14:08

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Tech: Important LulzSec member reportedly goes down

  • Topiary, LulzSec’s most public member and second-in-command has reportedly been arrested. He’s the one that ran LulzSec’s Twitter and wrote all of their eloquent messages — and he was only 19. Topiary deleted every tweet from his personal twitter and left only one: “You can’t arrest an idea,” pointing more to the fact that he was arrested and even knew it was coming. LulzSec will undoubtedly confirm or deny all of this soon enough, but this all comes on the heels of a sting which nailed 14 members of Anonymous, which reportedly has ties to the more-low-key group. source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

27 Jul 2011 10:41

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Politics: Fed Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke stays out of debt ceiling debate

  • If you’re the Fed chairman, you’ve got to be above politics.
  • Sen. Jon Kyl • Offering a bit of unsolicited advice to our boy Ben Bernanke in the whole debt ceiling mess: Stay out of it, be above it, let the children fight over it. Which, let’s face it, is pretty much his only good option at this point. For what it’s worth, he’s done a good job of this so far: While he’s warned that the debt ceiling needs to go up, he’s stopped short of favoring any one way to do it, a response Barney Frank calls “appropriate.” Not that he’s above actions that raise the ire of the GOP — the Fed’s recent spate of bond purchases, $600 billion in all, have ticked off Republicans. But he hasn’t pissed ’em off too much lately. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
 
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