Sunday, October 16, 2011

Bullies Pretend to Change but are Actually Forever Bullies

Read the comments after you get the gist of the article.

Mel Gibson gets a boost from Robert Downey Jr.

 October 15, 2011 | 12:34am




The slow but methodical rehabilitation of Mel Gibson in Hollywood took another step forward Friday night, courtesy of Robert Downey Jr.

Dozens of famous faces who've performed onscreen with Downey or directed him -- among them Gibson, Jodie Foster, Gary Shandling, Michael Douglas and Jon Favreau -- gathered to pay tribute to (and roast) the "Iron Man" star at the Beverly Hilton as he received the 2011 American Cinematheque Award.

The evening kicked off with a humorous video of Gibson, Shandling and Jamie Foxx poking fun at Downey. That was followed by a video clip of Foster receiving the Cinematheque Award in 1999 -- and receiving a congratulatory call from Downey, who was then incarcerated in a California state prison after several arrests on drug-related charges.

Numerous other presenters, including Foster, Douglas, and Jennifer Aniston came to the stage and made various references to Downey's long battle with addiction as they paid tribute to his abilities as an actor and his strength in overcoming his substance abuse issues.

Last onstage was Gibson, who starred with Downey in the 1990 film "Air America" and reunited with him onscreen in 2003 in "The Singing Detective" -- Gibson reportedly put up the money for Downey's insurance bond on the project when he was considered essentially untouchable by others. 

Gibson has been inching back into the public eye in the last six months, after he settled the ugly custody dispute with his ex-girlfriend that exploded into public view last year and after his movie "The Beaver" (directed by Foster) finally was released.

Gibson joked that people had warned him about Downey's unpredictability but said he just saw a good guy who was "making a few adjustments." Then, he added self-depricatingly, it was essential to remember that this was Mel Gibson making this assessment.

When Downey came to the stage, he acknowledged his long friendship with Gibson and quipped that the two had shared the same lawyer, same publicist and same shrink. We should stage "an intervention" for them, he joked.

Turning more serious, Downey said that "when I couldn't get sober, Mel helped me," keeping a roof over his head and food on his table, and helping him get work. According to Downey, Gibson told him that he needed to find his faith and embrace responsibility for his acts, and if he did so, his life would find new meaning. "Hugging the cactus, he called it," Downey said. "And all he asked was that I help the next guy" in a similar situation.

"It's reasonable to assume," Downey added sardoncially, "that he didn't expect the next guy would be him."

As Gibson looked at his shoes, Downey proclaimed that Gibson himself had "hugged the cactus long enough" and deserved support. Then the two shared a long embrace as the crowd broke into applause.


-- Julie Makinen

Photo: Mel Gibson speaks onstage during the 25th American Cinematheque Award ceremony honoring Robert Downey Jr.  at the Beverly Hilton hotel on Friday evening. Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images


Comments:




Michael
Nope, sorry, not worthy of forgiving, really.


Roger · Pasadena
That's sad and also shallow. It's not healthy to retain all that negative energy toward someone. People who show or have no forgiveness toward someone, shall receive non in return. It's just plain bad Karma.

Michael
Better karma to not give bullies your lunch money so they won't cause bad karma for others.

Michael
Calling other people shallow is not bad karma?

Roger Martin · Pasadena
Michael, you seen like someone with a plate full of issues. So,.. here and now I apologize for slapping you around in the boys bathroom and taking your lunch money every day. No excuses, I had expenses like any other bully. I also want to say I'm sorry for running your pants up the flag pole during brunch, just before Christmas break, remember? The way your popping off, I guess you are now, was then, and always will be, a sniveling little weasel. FREE MEL !

Michael
This has got to be the most ironic posting imaginable. I wasn't refering to you as a bully, dude. It was obviously about Mel Gibson bullying the police and Jews. The reason we shouldn't give him more (lunch) money in movie tickets is that we make people like him, who hate other people, more powerful.



http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2011/10/the-slow-but-methodical-rehabilitation-of-mel-gibson-in-hollywood-took-another-step-forward-friday-night-courtesy-of-rober-2.html

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Suggestion to Super Congress from Buffett

Buffett Shares His Income Figures With Supercommittee

The billionaire tells the panel that the numbers may be helpful as they search for more than $1 trillion in deficit savings.    Slate

Occupy Wall Street Spreads Across World as Buffett merely states the obviously obvious. /md


Warren Buffett's 2010 adjusted gross income was $62,855,038 – $39,814,784 of which was taxable – and he paid only $6,938,744 in taxes, good for 17.4 percent of his taxable income.
The billionaire investor who has urged Congress to increase taxes on the ultra-rich revealed those figures to the congressional supercommitte tasked with finding more than $1 trillion in deficit savings over the next decade. Buffett said he’d go one step further and release his full federal tax returns if the panel could convince other wealthy Americans to do the same.
"If you could get other ultra rich Americans to publish their returns along with mine, that would be very useful to the tax dialogue and intelligent reform," Buffett wrote in a letter to Rep. Tim Huelskamp that he forwarded to the deficit-cutting panel, and that was obtained by the Associated Press.

Read more: http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/10/13/warren_buffett_income_billionaire_tells_supercommittee_how_much_.html?from=rss/&wpisrc=newsletter_slatest

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

It's endlessly silly at the debates. Bachmann's 999/666 segment and full video

Bachmann's 999 -666  segment:


The interesting thing is that Bachmann (with great gravitas right up to her silliness) is against a regressive sales tax by default, that is, if it is a tax, it is an enemy. So, even taxes that would favor her party and their wealthy patrons are really revenue stream thingies that are evil. It's a "gateway" tax, sort of, that will lead to a value added tax (VAT). Well, thankfully she is against taxing the poor to give it to the rich for whatever reason even if it's just because the numbers are kinda odd upside down. :)

Full debate video below:


Washington Post

Republicans to unemployed: "No Jobs, No Jobs, No Jobs"

Republicans block Obama jobs bill

Comments (144)
US President Barack Obama with unemployed construction workers in Orlando, Florida, on 11 October 2011 President Obama made a toast "to more jobs" with unemployed tradesmen in Florida
Republicans in the US Senate have blocked President Barack Obama's jobs bill in a procedural vote.
Forty-six Republican senators joined with two Democrats to filibuster the $447bn (£287bn) package.
Reacting to the vote, Mr Obama said: "Tonight's vote is by no means the end of this fight."

Republicans oppose the measure citing its spending to stimulate the economy and its tax rise on millionaires. The US unemployment rate is jammed at 9.1%. The package failed by a vote of 50 to 49, short of the 60 votes it needed to advance in the 100-member Senate.
The president has spent several weeks promoting the jobs bill in a campaign-style tour across the country.

“I think they'll have a hard time explaining why they voted no on this bill - other than the fact that I proposed it”

But despite his efforts, he did not pick up a single Republican vote in the Democratic-controlled Senate on Tuesday.Democrats Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jon Tester of Montana, facing re-election next year in conservative states, also voted against the measure.

The American Jobs Act includes $175bn in infrastructure spending and aid for local governments to avoid layoffs, as well as Social Security payroll tax cuts for workers and businesses.
Adopting a defiant tone after the vote, Mr Obama said he would work with Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to see that individual proposals in the bill gained a vote as soon as possible.
The president told a union audience earlier in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. "I think they'll have a hard time explaining why they voted no on this bill - other than the fact that I proposed it."
Mr Obama has cited independent economists as estimating the American Jobs Act could create up to 1.9m jobs.
Job seekers line up outside a job fair in Washington state Long queues at jobs fairs, like this one in Washington state, have become a common sight
Analysts say that among the elements of the bill which might be salvaged are a payroll tax cut which Mr Obama wants to extend. Another part of the package that could that attract bipartisan support could be extending unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless.

But the package's proposals for increased highway spending and aid for cash-strapped states are deemed unlikely to pick up Republican support.After Tuesday's appearance in Pennsylvania, Mr Obama travelled to Florida for fundraising, and a beer with four unemployed construction workers to discuss jobs.
The president told the group - three pipe-fitters and a plumber - at an Irish pub in downtown Orlando that he was trying to figure out how to help the building industry. The tradesmen drank Budweiser and Mr Obama had a Guinness as they all toasted: "To more jobs!"
Democrats say that Republicans are more interested in defeating Mr Obama than helping the country recover from the deepest recession since the 1930s. But Republicans, who back a job-creation agenda focusing on loosening business regulations, say Mr Obama's jobs bill is a re-run of his 2009 stimulus.
Almost 45% of the 14 million jobless Americans have been out of work for six months or more.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Study links vitamins to higher death rates in women

Study links vitamins to higher death rates in women



Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Health/20111011/vitamins-women-death-risk-111011/#ixzz1aTZTGmHD

GOP: no jobs if it means taxing the rich.



October 11, 2011 7:43 AM

Senate GOP poised to kill Obama's jobs plan


WASHINGTON - President Obama's $447 billion jobs plan faces an important test on Capitol Hill today. Democrats plan to bring the bill to the Senate floor for a vote, even though it is already in jeopardy.

Mr. Obama has been waging a campaign-style effort to rally public support behind the American Jobs Act. The plan combines payroll tax cuts for workers and businesses with $175 billion in spending on roads, school repairs and other infrastructure, as well as unemployment assistance and help to local governments to avoid layoffs of teachers, firefighters and police officers.

The package reprises parts of President Obama's 2009 stimulus measure and a Social Security payroll tax cut enacted last year.

The jobs measure would be financed by a 5.6 percent surcharge on income exceeding $1 million, raising more than $450 billion over a decade.

The bill requires 60 yes votes to overcome a Republican filibuster, and CBS News Congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes reports that's not likely to happen.

Democrats would need all 53 of their members to vote yes along with seven Republicans, and already three members of the Democratic caucus have said they will vote no. Sen. Joseph Manchin of West Virginia questions the effectiveness of the package, wondering whether we'll get the bang from the buck. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., both don't like the way Democratic leaders have proposed to pay for this bill with a new 5.6 percent surtax on any personal income over $1 million. They say that this is not the time to be raising taxes on anyone, including millionaires.

That's how most Republicans feel as well.

So even if this bill were to surmount these hurdles in the Senate, Cordes said, Republicans in the House are waiting to kill it.

If the proposal dies, Cordes said, the White House's options would include figuring out a different way to pay for the bill that does not include increasing tax revenue from the wealthy, which Republicans simply will not support.

"The actual measures that this bill would take have widespread support - things like a barrel tax cut, increased infrastructure spending, extending unemployment benefits," said Cordes. "So if Democrats can come up with another way to pay for it, they might be able to pass.

"Another option is to break the bill down into pieces, try to pass the most popular measures by themselves. President Obama has said that this bill needs to be passed as a whole in order to be the most effective, but that may not end up being an option."

Appearing on CBS' "The Early Show," senior White House adviser David Plouffe was already looking beyond the bill's fate in the Senate.

"The American Jobs Act is what the economy needs right now - putting teachers back to work, construction workers back to work, tax cuts for small businesses and the middle class. That's what we need to do," Plouffe told anchor Erica Hill. "What the president said last week is if we can't get enough people to vote for it tonight, we're going to keep at it.

"We are going to put as much pressure as we can today on Senators in both parties to vote. Obviously this is just a first chapter in what's going to be an effort over the next couple of months to get as much done for the economy right now," Plouffe said.

In making the case for the bill, the White House cites economists like Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics, who predicts that the measure would add 2 percentage points of growth to the economy, add 1.9 million payroll jobs and reduce unemployment by a percentage point. But Republicans point to optimistic predictions about the 2009 measure that didn't come to pass; unemployment hovers just above 9 percent nationwide.

Republicans say the 2009 stimulus measure was an expensive failure and the current plan is just like it.

The president has been struggling in opinion polls, and his crusade for the measure has always been a long shot, given that Republicans control the House and can filibuster at will in the Senate. Mr. Obama has nonetheless pressed for the bitterly divided Congress to pass the measure in its entirety rather than seek compromise with his GOP rivals.

"This is not the time for the usual games or political gridlock in Washington," Mr. Obama said in his weekend radio and Internet address. "Any senator out there who's thinking about voting against this jobs bill needs to explain why they would oppose something that we know would improve our economic situation."

While Republicans backed the payroll tax cut last year and support elements like continued tax breaks for investments in business equipment, they're adamantly opposed to further spending and say the tax surcharge would strike at small businesses.

"It's not a jobs bill. In our view, it's another stimulus bill," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told Fox News last week. "I don't think it'll pass and I don't think it should."
© 2011 CBS Interactive Inc.


Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500202_162-20118474.html#ixzz1aTWiorRE

Karl Rove vs. the Koch brothers: Clash of Cash

Karl Rove vs. the Koch brothers

By KENNETH P. VOGEL   Politico


By KENNETH P. VOGEL

Karl Rove’s team and the Koch brothers’ operatives quietly coordinated millions of dollars in political spending in 2010, but that alliance, which has flown largely under the radar, is showing signs of fraying.

And with each network planning to dwarf its 2010 effort, Republicans worry that the emerging rivalry between the two deepest-pocketed camps in the conservative movement could undercut their party’s chances of taking the Senate and White House in 2012.

The billionaire industrialist brothers David and Charles Koch plan to steer more than $200 million — potentially much more — to conservative groups ahead of Election Day, POLITICO has learned. That puts their libertarian-leaning network in the same league as the most active of the groups in the more establishment-oriented network conceived last year by veteran GOP operatives Rove and Ed Gillespie, which plans to raise $240 million.

The fault lines revealed themselves this summer, when the camps split on the highest-profile conservative movement issue of the day: The biggest groups in the Rove-Gillespie network supported House Speaker John Boehner’s bill to increase the debt ceiling and the Koch brothers’ primary political group, Americans for Prosperity, pressured conservatives to oppose it.

They also have spent big on seemingly competing infrastructure. The networks recently launched similar initiatives to woo Hispanic voters. And their allies are spending millions to build dueling voter files to help their respective camps get out the vote. The Republican National Committee recently partnered with associates of Rove and Gillespie on a privately run database, which could give them an advantage over the Koch-backed data project.

“With a broad-based conservative movement — or any political movement — it’s obvious that there’s often going to be competition, rivalries, egos involved,” said Art Pope, a Koch intimate who chairs an arm of Americans for Prosperity and has advocated for the Kochs’ voter database, which is called Themis.

“But overall, that competition results in a better work product and better results than a single authoritarian decision that there should be only one product — whether it’s a voter database or whatever — that everyone must use,” said Pope.

Behind the competition are ideological and stylistic differences that have bred suspicion among some in each camp.

Some Koch allies blame what they contend is the Rove team’s win-at-all-costs mentality for the decay of fiscal conservatism under former President George W. Bush. And they roll their eyes at Rove’s high media profile. In turn, some in the Bush-Rove axis accuse the Kochs of clinging to free-market zealotry, even if it backfires on Republicans. Others in Rove’s orbit believe the Kochs are too focused on control and not enough on coordination.

The two camps put their differences aside in the run-up to last year’s midterm elections, which conservatives felt had uniquely high stakes. But it’s not clear if that will last, said a Republican strategist familiar with the Koch’s 2010 coordination efforts.

“The 2010 political environment made for some very strange bedfellows,” said the strategist, who requested anonymity to discuss the notoriously press-shy Kochs. “You’ve got Rove and those guys who are driven by electing Republicans for Republicans’ sake and then you’ve got the Kochs who have this giant corporate empire and say it’s all about the free market.”

In the months preceding the 2010 elections, operatives working with groups that received millions of dollars in Koch-linked funding participated in twice-a-month coordinating meetings convened by Rove that drew an array of conservative groups looking to boost Republicans. Koch-backed groups included Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Limited Government and the 60 Plus Association.
They took place in the downtown Washington office suite housing the flagship outfits conceived by Rove and Gillespie — American Crossroads and its sister group Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, plus a linked group called American Action Network.

The Crossroads groups — for which Rove provides advice and fundraising help but technically plays no formal role — initially focused on backing Republicans and attacking Democrats in competitive Senate races.

A strategist who participated in some of the meetings said: “We were tracking about 120 House races, and the Koch organization, 60 Plus, Americans for Prosperity, American Action Network all took some, and Crossroads came in and invested heavily at the end.”

“It was very coordinated,” the participant said. “There wasn’t one race in which there were multiple groups airing ads at the same time.”

Sean Noble, a Koch operative who worked with a number of groups, was among the active participants in the meetings, according to sources with knowledge of the meetings. The meetings were supplemented with more frequent conference calls in the weeks before Election Day.

But not everyone in Koch land was keen on the unprecedented coordination, as Americans for Prosperity’s President Tim Phillips attended only a couple of the meetings, telling POLITICO he bowed out because he believed they were too partisan for his group.

“We’re very much about the issues and not trying to help anybody win the majority or anything like that,” Phillips said. “It’s just not what we do. There are times when we absolutely go after Republicans who are doing stupid things.”

Phillips said it is unlikely that his group will participate in regular meetings to coordinate on 2012 strategy, either. But he added, “We talk, and there are moments where we absolutely work together and cooperate, but it’s on a project-by-project basis and on an issue-by-issue basis.”

Indeed, last week Phillips’s group found itself in concert with American Crossroads, which debuted a $50,000 television advertising campaign assailing President Barack Obama’s jobs plan, while Americans for Prosperity kicked off a ground-organizing effort partly focused on attacking the proposal.

Phillips acknowledged his group, which does not endorse candidates, may occasionally work at cross purposes with more overtly GOP-aligned efforts but said: “That doesn’t mean that we have a battle going on with any group when that happens. It just means for that period of time, maybe our priorities aren’t aligned. And so, would that be a rivalry? No, of course not.”

Rove, Gillespie and Noble did not respond to questions about the relationship between their respective networks, but Brian Walsh, president of American Action Network, said the occasional policy differences aren’t taken personally.

“Many of the principals who are involved have known each other for years, and even when they disagree on particular issues, there is a professional respect, where one institution fully understands the position of another institution,” he said, though he declined to speculate on the extent to which the groups would coordinate their 2012 efforts.

There have been some signs suggesting how they might divide up the 2012 labor. For instance, during presentations in late June in Vail, Colo., at the latest installment of the twice-a-year gatherings of major donors sponsored by the Koch brothers’ privately owned oil, chemical and consumer products company, Koch operatives signaled they “are going to focus a great deal on the presidential race,” according to someone who attended the meeting.
The meeting drew nearly 300 people, who pledged to contribute more than $70 million into a pool that includes the brothers’ own money that Koch political advisers distribute at their discretion to political and policy groups featured at their conferences, with more cash typically going to groups with the tightest ties, like Americans for Prosperity.

After their January donor summit in Rancho Mirage, Calif., the brothers were aiming, POLITICO reported, to raise and distribute $88 million from the pool ahead of the 2012 elections, but the attendee said the plans presented in Vail called for a budget exceeding $200 million.

The 2012 plans and budgeting were "presented with great clarity at the meeting in Vail, and I think people were impressed,” said the attendee, who characterized the relationship between the Koch groups and the Rove groups as somewhere between rivalry and teamwork.

“It’s a little bit of both,” said the attendee. “The Kochs feel — and, frankly, rightfully so in some ways — that they have a more sophisticated approach to this stuff, more well developed and better financed.”

The brothers, who until recently had kept a relatively low profile and focused their giving on sleepy libertarian policy groups to which they still give, have become more aggressively political in their giving since Obama’s election, attracting more donors and money to their summits.

They’ve also attracted more scrutiny from Democrats, who targeted the Kochs (and Rove, too) as poster children for using secret corporate money to distort the Democratic process and the media. In the wake of a recent Bloomberg Markets Magazine exposé revealing a Koch Industries subsidiary did business with Iran, Democrats tried to turn the brothers’ influence against Republicans, criticizing those who have benefited from the Kochs’ largesse.

There’s no indication the brothers will dial back their political activity as a result, and, in fact, in recent months they have aggressively expanded their political footprint in ways that seem to place them in competition with more establishment GOP-aligned groups.

That’s most apparent in dueling efforts to build databases of likely conservative voters for targeting throughout the campaign and on Election Day. Rather than combine forces, the two camps are building separate, multimillion-dollar files.

Earlier this year, operatives from both camps had conversations with the Republican National Committee about accessing its mega database of voter information, which is both a powerful organizing tool and a valuable asset used as collateral to secure bank loans and lines of credit.

“This is about getting a hold of the most valuable asset that the RNC has,” said former RNC Chairman Michael Steele, who asserted Rove’s allies have for years wanted to “get their hands on this list so bad they can taste it.”

In late August, the party signed a contract to outsource its list management to a new group called Data Trust run by Rove allies Anne Hathaway and Mike Duncan — a former RNC chairman who sits on the board of the Crossroads groups.
Supporters of the plan say it will create better targeting data for both the RNC and approved outside groups, and they minimize concerns expressed by some RNC members about losing control of the party’s list. Sources say that, even though Data Trust is independent, the RNC’s contract with the group, which was written with help from prominent GOP lawyer Ben Ginsberg, gives the party veto power over who can use the list, meaning the party could block anti-establishment tea party groups or others seeking to use it to criticize GOP incumbents, as Americans for Prosperity says it does on occasion.

But, even without control of the RNC list, Koch operatives have privately boasted of the superiority of their Themis database, which was seeded with an initial $2.5 million investment orchestrated by the brothers.

Regardless of which is the better database, Themis is already being deployed by conservative groups, putting it ahead of the pace of Data Trust, which sources say is in its formative stages.

Interestingly, fundraising for Data Trust was assisted by Matt Schlapp, the former head of the Kochs’ Washington operation, who — along with Duncan — referred questions about the group to Hathaway, who, like Ginsberg, didn’t respond to inquiries.

The two sides have also mounted seemingly competing initiatives to target Latino voters. The Libre Initiative, a recently formed Hispanic-voter targeting effort, was funded by one of the Kochs’ foundations, according to a video on its website. Also launching recently was the American Action Network’s Hispanic Leadership Network and the Gillespie-led Republican State Leadership Committee’s $3 million The Future Majority Project, which is intended to attract more Hispanic candidates to run for office.

Around the time of Future Majority’s launch, Koch Industries gave $50,000 to the RSLC, which also got $1.2 million from American Crossroads last year and is run by Gillespie, who sat on an election analysis panel at the January 2010 Koch donor meeting with Noble and AfP director Pope.

Dan Garza, the GOP operative running the Libre Initiative, said he hasn’t spoken with the other groups but didn’t see them as competitors.

Like it or not, the Republican strategist familiar with the Kochs’ 2010 coordination efforts said there is a burgeoning competition between the Kochs and the Rove-Gillespie camp. And the strategist predicted that 2012 electoral prospects — more than divergent styles or visions of conservatism — will determine whether the camps work together or at cross purposes in 2012.

“What they did in 2010 was unique, but they started reverting to their old behavior in 2011,” the operative said, predicting “If they think the House, Senate and White House are all in play in 2012, then the stars will align again and they will come back to the table to coordinate again.”
  © 2011 POLITICO LLC

Financial crisis and stimulus: Could this time be different?

Financial crisis and stimulus: Could this time be different?
Washington Post
Ezra Klein

Christina Romer had traveled to Chicago to perform an unpleasant task: she needed to scare her new boss. David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s top political adviser, had been very clear about that. He thought the president-elect needed to know exactly what he would be walking into when he took the oath of office in January. But it fell to Romer to deliver the bad news.

So Romer, a preternaturally cheerful economist whose expertise on the Great Depression made her an obvious choice to head the Council of Economic Advisers, gathered her tables and her charts and, on a snowy day in mid-December, sat down to explain to the next President of the United States of America exactly what sort of mess he was inheriting.

Axelrod had warned her against pulling her punches, and so she didn’t. It was not a pleasant presentation to sit through. Afterward, Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s friend from Chicago and Romer’s successor, remarked that “that must be the worst briefing any president-elect has ever had.”

read more:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/financial-crisis-and-stimulus-could-this-time-be-different/2011/10/04/gIQALuwdVL_story.html?hpid=z10

Monday, October 10, 2011

State for Sale

State for Sale

A conservative multimillionaire has taken control in North Carolina, one of 2012’s top battlegrounds.

by   New Yorker

In the spring of 2010, the conservative political strategist Ed Gillespie flew from Washington, D.C., to Raleigh, North Carolina, to spend a day laying the groundwork for REDMAP, a new project aimed at engineering a Republican takeover of state legislatures. Gillespie hoped to help his party get control of statehouses where congressional redistricting was pending, thereby leveraging victories in cheap local races into a means of shifting the balance of power in Washington.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/10/111010fa_fact_mayer#ixzz1aOTiwu5j

Deficit 'supercommittee' struggles as clock ticks

Deficit 'supercommittee' struggles as clock ticks
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The supercommittee is struggling.
After weeks of secret meetings, the 12-member deficit-cutting panel established under last summer's budget and debt deal appears no closer to a breakthrough than when talks began last month.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5it-U-E-cZyX7zvr5-XRNrN4y1rwg?docId=a685dd97cba742429b74a671182925ab
Sir Paul McCartney marries US heiress Nancy Shevell


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15230730

Gov. Jerry Brown signs Dream Act for state's illegal immigrants

Declaring the need to expand educational opportunity, Gov. Jerry Brown announced Saturday that he has signed legislation making illegal immigrants eligible to receive state financial aid to attend California universities and community colleges.
Brown said he signed the California Dream Act because it makes sense to allow high-achieving students access to college financial aid.

Read More: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2011/10/gov-jerry-brown-announces-he-has-signed-bill-allowing-illegal-immigrants-access-to-college-aid.html
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