Friday, October 18, 2013

Everybody lives in a land of make believe where Benghazi and Fast and Furious are somehow impeachable offenses

But while polls point to broad Palestinian support of the demonstrations,they also reveal deep skepticism among Palestinians regarding the prospects of ending settlement expansion or changing the reality in the West Bank and Gaza.Israel has settled some 550,000 people in the West Bank,including East Jerusalem,since 1967. In the latest move,Netanyahu announced this month he would develop an area of the West Bank known as E1,potentially blocking Palestinian contiguity in the territory.Khalil Shikaki,who runs vera bradley lunch bag the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research,said about 70 percent of Israelis and Palestinians support the two-state solution. But at least 60 percent of Palestinians believe it's no longer viable.
The consumer sentiment index,published by the University of Michigan and Thomson Reuters,rose more than 5 percent in September from August,and is up more than 30 percent in the past year. Richard Curtin,the economist who runs the survey,attributed the improvement(PDF) to a combination of (1) consumers optimism about the economy and labor market in the future; and (2) improving balance sheets,as home prices have started to rise along with stock prices.Lynn Franco of the Conference Board,which conducts the Consumer Confidence survey,also said that the uptick in home values has helped shore up consumer confidence,which hit a seven-month high in September. Although Franco described the reading,70.
 Everybody lives in a land of make believe where Benghazi and Fast and Furious are somehow impeachable offenses.Friday Forum: What's the Most Underrated City? A propos of an article about DC,wherein Cindy Adams discovers to her horror that there are poor,somewhat dirty neighborhoods in our nation's capital,Matt Yglesias tweets: "NYC journos' constant DC-dissing is weirdly insecure; DC writers don't feel the need to rag on random much-smaller cities."I snarked back "You know what sucks? Omaha!" But this is a lie. Omaha has very good steaks (though not,alas,as Warren Buffett's favorite steakhouse). It has a charming,if limited,little downtown. And it has my favorite whiskey bar in the United States.
 This year,the Detroit Tigers showered Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera with nonalcoholic champagne.With a team one out away from clinching,the buckets of iced booze are wheeled out of hiding and into the expectant team’s plastic-covered locker room. But games are often blown,as the Washington Nationals found out a few weeks ago,and plan B goes into effect. The crew absconds with the bubbly,lugging hundreds of bottles onto the private jets or out of sight,and dismantling protective tarps. Locker rooms are left without any evidence that a celebration was prepped,so as not to upset superstitious players.As the champagne bashes have escalated,the cameramen and reporters in the locker room sometimes dress like they’re "ready for a torrential rainstorm," says MLB spokesman Pat Courtney.
But when Joe Biden sings the praises of a double-barrel shotgun for home protection,he’s showing that he is not anti-gun. He’s drawing a useful distinction between the abstractions that are used to defend the supposed sanctity of assault weapons with the way most people use guns—for hunting or self-defense. ?In his meandering way,Biden highlighted the idea of reasonable restrictions—something also backed by that notorious liberal Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in the Heller decision,which overturned Washington,D.C.’s functional ban on handguns."Like most rights,the Second Amendment right is not unlimited.It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in anymanner whatsoever and for whatever purpose," Scalia wrote.
 "This approach has failed to prevent the tragic loss of countless lives and the mass displacement and starvation of countless more innocent people. We urgently ask President Obama,together with Special Envoy Booth,to act now to protect innocent civilians from their genocidal government,or to face a stained legacy on genocide."Act for Sudan has a full-blown campaign on the topic entitled "Obama's Stained Legacy," and has begun publishing letters from genocide survivors written to Obama pleading for more help."We hope that this appointment will signal the beginning of a new pro-democracy and civilian-protection-oriented policy on Sudan," the group said.In a statement,vera bradley sale President Obama said that Booth would lead American efforts to mediate between the two countries,ensure the flow of oil,and bring the various conflicts to an end,but he gave no specifics on how that might be achieved.
 His fellow troops testified that they saw Bales return to the base later that morning covered in blood,that he woke up another soldier in the middle of the night and reported that he'd shot several people in one village and was heading out again for more. Army investigators testified that Bales did test positive for steroids three days after the killings,and other soldiers said he had been drinking earlier that evening.That evidence was enough to convince a military judge to refer court-martial charges seeking the death penalty to a jury of commissioned officers. For Bales to be executed,that group would have to unanimously agree that not only is he guilty of the crime but that at least one "aggravating" factor exists that "substantially" outweighs any mitigating circumstances.
 "The presidency thinks the judiciary is out to get them,and it’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy," says Nathan J. Brown,an expert on Egyptian law at George Washington University. "At this point,things have spiraled out of control." Many judges "don’t want to see the emergence of a strong Islamist-leaning government." Tensions between the Muslim Brotherhood and the judiciary have been simmering since June,when Morsi was on his way to becoming Egypt’s first democratically elected president. Though the judiciary was held up as an icon of independence during the revolution,many judges seemed alarmed by the growing power of Egypt’s Islamists,who had won nearly 70 percent of seats in the lower house of parliament in elections earlier that year.
 When last in the prime minister's office,he built a modern highway to link Lahore to Islamabad.America's relations with Pakistan are at an all-time low,yet Washington provides huge quantities of military and economic aid to Pakistan: over $25 billion since 2001. We are on opposite sides of the war in Afghanistan,where Pakistan and the ISI are the Afghan Taliban's key ally,even as we depend on Pakistan for the vital supply line that allows us to withdraw our heavy equipment from Afghanistan as we transition out of the country by 2014. Inside Pakistan,our drones fly daily missions looking for al Qaeda—missions Sharif promised to try to halt during the campaign. He did not endorse his rival Imran Khan's call to shoot down American drones (probably with American-supplied F-16s),but he will face much popular demand to end the drone war.
(LOC 208-223)Well,that's a big shopping list. Now what did the stimulus bring home?The unnerving answer that emerges from the pages of the most impassioned defense of the stimulus likely ever to be offered is: not much.Here's the final anti-climactic conclusion to the story of the smart grid,for example.The grid was not the interstate highway system. It didn't make sense for government to take it over. And a smart grid will require much more than meters and wires. It's a complex merger of modern information technology that distributes 1's and 0's with aging infrastructure that distributes electrons. It's going to be a lot harder to build than Skyline Drive.http://verabradleyoutletsale11017.blogspot.com/ But Obama was right too. His people could do more to accelerate the modernization of the grid - and by harping on the issue,he made sure they did.
 Don has done as much as he can,from his obviously very dramatic beginnings,to alleviate that anxiety that's created in who he is. From the premiere,we can see that this relationship with his neighbor is not doing it for him. The thing that's extra complicated is that he really admires her husband. Did you miss the last season of 'Mad Men'? Here's everything you need to know. When he introduces Arnold (Brian Markinson) to his secretary and says,"He's a friend," there's almost a strange moment,because I don't think we've ever heard Don say that before. He admires him,and he admires what he thinks is his comfort with mortality,and the doctor assumes that Don has the same comfort,but we see that Don doesn't necessarily.