After two whole months of active campaigning, it is only now official. Rahm Emanuel, who returned to Chicago after resigning as White House chief of staff, has formally announced his intent to run as mayor of the Windy City. —JCL The Associated Press: Rahm Emanuel officially announced Saturday what everyone has known since he quit his job as White House chief of staff, hugged President Barack Obama and returned to Chicago: He’s in. To the surprise of no one, Emanuel, who has long talked about his desire to be mayor, told a packed auditorium at a school on Chicago’sNorth Side that he is running to succeed retiring Mayor Richard Daley. The election is Feb. 22. Emanuel represented the city’s North Side in Congress before he went to the White House. He has been actively campaigning in the city since his return about two months ago. Read more Related Entries November 12, 2010 ‘Left, Right & Center’: Debt Commission; Obama’s Overseas Bust November 12, 2010 Connecting the Dots on the Great Disconnect
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While jobs may be scarce in most parts of the country, look out for a boom in the exorcism sector. A shortage in the number of clergy who can perform the rite has led the Catholic Church to hold a conference and training in the sacred art of purging spirits from the possessed. —JCL The Associated Press: Citing a shortage of priests who can perform the rite, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops are holding a conference on how to conduct exorcisms. The two-day training, which ends Saturday in Baltimore, is to outline the scriptural basis of evil, instruct clergy on evaluating whether a person is truly possessed, and review the prayers and rituals that comprise an exorcism. Among the speakers will be Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston, Texas, and a priest-assistant to New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan. “Learning the liturgical rite is not difficult,” DiNardo said in a phone interview before the conference, which is open to clergy only. “The problem is the discernment that the exorcist needs before he would ever attempt the rite.” Read more Related Entries November 12, 2010 ‘Left, Right & Center’: Debt Commission; Obama’s Overseas Bust November 12, 2010 Connecting the Dots on the Great Disconnect
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Contemporary Nicaraguan politics has always been mired in conflict, be it in response to natural disasters, U.S.-sponsored terrorism, or depressing and dire poverty. And now President Daniel Ortega is using a “contested interpretation” of the country’s constitution to try to stay in power, incensing his opposition. Ortega has irked many of his former allies, with one former rebel fighter planning to run against him and another taking up arms in the same mountains where civil war raged for years. —JCL The New York Times: President Daniel Ortega’s push to stay in power using a contested interpretation of the Constitution has reignited the furor of former contras who fought his Sandinista government in the 1980s, with one former rebel taking up arms in the mountains and another vowing to oust him at the polls. But in the absence of a post-cold-war sponsor, Nicaragua’s opposition is struggling to coordinate an electoral offensive against Mr. Ortega, whose approval ratings rose to 45 percent last month with the help of his Venezuelan-financed response to flooding that killed scores of people and forced thousands to flee their homes. Mr. Ortega’s critics contend that he is disregarding the Constitution and turning his role as the largest Central American beneficiary of Venezuela’s leftist president, Hugo Chávez, into political capital for next year’s vote, in November. Read more Related Entries November 12, 2010 ‘Left, Right & Center’: Debt Commission; Obama’s Overseas Bust November 12, 2010 Connecting the Dots on the Great Disconnect
Continue reading …Being a train buff I had to go see the new Denzel Washington movie Unstoppable .
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Netflix has always been something of a fickle beast, lavishing treats upon just one platform at a time, but now that iOS , Windows Phone 7 and every game console under the sun are streaming its video, the firm’s finally turned its gaze on Android. Come early 2011, Netflix will appear on “select Android devices,” according to the company’s official blog, which also promises a “standard, platform-wide solution” for Android in the unspecified future. What took so long, and why will Netflix be limited to particular handsets when it first rolls out? “The hurdle has been the lack of a generic and complete platform security and content protection mechanism available for Android,” says the blog, stating piracy concerns. Apparently content holders aren’t too keen on making movies available unless devices have DRM baked right in, so the solution is equip new phones with padlocks one at a time. Expect next year’s high-end Android devices to have “Netflix” as a nice big bullet point. [Thanks, Connor B.] Netflix headed to ‘select Android devices’ early next year originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 13 Nov 2010 12:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Charles Krauthammer Schools Carlson and Krugman on Raising Social Security Retirement Age
November 13, 2010 No Comment
Charles Krauthammer on Friday gave a much-needed education to Bloomberg's Margaret Carlson about why the age at which one can receive Social Security benefits must be raised. His words on PBS's “Inside Washington” also refuted Paul Krugman's foolish claims on this matter published in Friday's New York Times (video follows with transcript and commentary): read more
Continue reading …After primary challenges knocked Arlen Specter into the Dem Party, Charlie Crist into a failed independent race, Bob Bennett completely out of the Senate and Lisa Murkowsky into an apparently winning independent bid, Tea Party activists have their sights set on a number of other squishy Republicans : Another bloody Republican Senate primary election season is taking shape for 2012, with potentially serious intra-party challenges percolating in close to a half-dozen states. Polls indicate that at least two veteran GOP senators are highly vulnerable to challenges on their right flank — Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe – and there are rumblings about potential GOP bids against Nevada Sen. John Ensign, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar as well. On the whole, the 2012 map looks extremely promising for the GOP. After posting a six-seat gain in 2010, Republicans are in a position to pick up even more seats in the 2012 cycle, with 21 Democratic senators up for re-election, including two Independents who caucus with them, compared to just 10 Republicans. But the possibility of multiple fractious primary challenges casts a shadow over the 2012 cycle after an election season marked by two GOP Senate incumbents who were denied renomination, a third who switched parties to avoid a tough primary and several other messy primaries that likely cost the party a chance at winning a majority. The obvious risk in this is we could have another Delaware in which a weak candidate knocked off the establishment Republican and a sure win was turned into a defeat. That sort of thing could happen in Maine with Sen. Snowe. A more conservative candidate might not be able to win up there.
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Highlights of this day in history: Vietnam Veterans Memorial dedicated; Taliban regime flees Afghan capital; President Bill Clinton to pay Paula Jones; Alabama’s top judge removed amid Ten Commandments flap; ‘Lion King’ opens on Broadway. (Nov. 13)
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In the Republicans’ weekly address, Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon outlined the GOP’s top priorities: creating jobs, cutting spending and reforming Congress. (Nov. 13)
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