Purveyor
Purveyor's JournalPaul Wolfowitz weighs in on Petraeus; “Forget the gossip: focus on Benghazi.”
Former deputy secretary of defense and World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, now at the American Enterprise Institute, is worried that everyone’s having too much fun with the increasingly bizarre Paula Broadwell/Jill Kelly/David Petraeus soap opera and losing sight of serious matters.
But he forgets that people are still exhausted from the endless, bitter presidential campaign. L’affaire Petraeus is like a peach sorbet, a palate-cleanser, after a very heavy meal.
Wolfowitz, writing on the AEI policy blog, says “Forget the gossip: focus on Benghazi.”
He argues that “fascination with the general’s personal story must not divert attention from the very significant policy failures that helped produce a chaotic security situation in Libya.”
MORE...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/in-the-loop/post/wolfowitz-weighs-in-on-petraeus/2012/11/15/3c14611e-2f4a-11e2-a30e-5ca76eeec857_blog.html
Photos: With Gaza under attack, children pay the price
As I write now, I am back in my home. While I was editing pictures, I could hear the frightening sound of the bombs. The street emptied of cars, and there is almost no light. I moved far away from the window, which can get easily smashed by some of the explosions from nearby.In Al Shifa Hospital, there was total chaos, with so many injured people constantly coming in. When I reached the section where they treated burn injuries, some women collapsed in grief. They had just found out that one-year-old Omar Jihad Masharawi had just died of his wounds. One of the women was his mother.
I had arrived with other photographers. I cannot describe in words what I saw, nor can I post the grim pictures of a burned baby. It is just too horrific.
Later, the father carried Omar to the morgue, sobbing. I went home. I feel nervous, with news coming in about more attacks, more injured. There is nowhere to escape in Gaza.
Israel is attacking a civilian population that has committed no crimes other than being Palestinian. Don’t talk to me about rockets. Palestinians have been dispossessed of most of their lands since 1948. The occupation started in 1967. The rockets started in 2001.
MORE...
http://972mag.com/photos-with-gaza-under-attack-children-pay-the-price/59860/
Russia Threatens Tough Response If U.S. Backs Rights Bill
Source: Reuters
By Steve Gutterman
MOSCOW | Thu Nov 15, 2012 10:48am EST
(Reuters) - Russia warned the United States on Thursday to expect a tough response if Congress passes "unfriendly and provocative" legislation designed to punish Russian officials for human rights violations.
The Foreign Ministry said U.S.-Russian ties were sure to suffer if lawmakers back a move directing the U.S. government to deny visas to Russian officials involved in the detention, abuse or death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in jail in 2009.
"Such a step will unavoidably have a negative effect on the whole range of Russian-U.S. relations," Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told a news briefing.
"We will certainly not leave the introduction of essentially anti-Russian visa and financial sanctions without consequences," he said. "We will have to react, and react toughly, depending on the final version of this unfriendly provocative act."
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/15/us-russia-usa-idUSBRE8AE10Y20121115
Gaza Rocket Hits Area South Of Tel Aviv For First Time
By JPOST.COM STAFF, YAAKOV LAPPINLAST UPDATED: 11/15/2012 17:04
A rocket from the Gaza Strip exploded in an open field outside of Rishon Lezion on Thursday evening, marking the first hit in the center of the country in renewed violence from the Gaza Strip. The rocket, one of over 240 fired from Gaza into the South since the IDF launched Operation Pillar of Defense Wednesday to root out the terror infrastructure in the coastal territory, landed less than 15 km south of Tel Aviv. The operation began with the Wednesday afternoon targeted killing of Ahmed Jabari, the chief of Hamas's military wing.
--CLIP
At an emergency meeting in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, the security cabinet authorized Defense Minister Ehud Barak to mobilize reservists if needed.
The cabinet also agreed that the IDF should continue to act against terrorist infrastructure and activity in Gaza. It instructed the Foreign Ministry to begin a diplomatic public relations campaign to explain that Israel was acting in self-defense against military targets, as the continued rocket barrage had become intolerable.
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http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=291954
Florida Governor Scott Drops Opposition to Health Law
By Michael C. Bender - Nov 14, 2012
Florida Governor Rick Scott dropped his opposition to President Barack Obama’s health overhaul, saying he wants to negotiate on the issue that began his political career.
“I don’t think anyone involved in trying to improve health care should say, ‘no, no, no,’” Scott, a 59-year-old Republican, told the Associated Press. “Let’s have a conversation.”
Scott’s conversion came one week after Election Day, when Florida voters supported Obama’s re-election and struck down a constitutional amendment aimed at making it harder to implement the health law. Governors in just 13 states committed before the election to building their own insurance exchanges, which the law requires to provide coverage to the uninsured. If states fail to act, the federal government will create them.
Scott wants to find “solutions that are good for Florida families by reducing cost and improving quality and access in health care,” Jackie Schutz, a spokeswoman for the governor, said in a statement.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-14/florida-governor-scott-drops-opposition-to-health-law-1-.html
Ohio’s Provisional-Ballot Rule Unfair, Federal Judge Says
By Margaret Cronin Fisk - Nov 14, 2012
The Ohio secretary of state’s new rule on counting provisional ballots risked denying citizens’ rights to vote and ignored state law, a federal judge said.
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, issued a directive to county election officials on Nov. 2 requiring the rejection of a provisional ballot if the voter failed to record the type of identification used when casting the vote.
A labor union and a homeless advocates’ coalition asked U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley in Columbus, Ohio, to stop authorities from rejecting such ballots, citing an Ohio law that requires poll workers, not voters, to record the information. Marbley found the rule “violates substantive due process,” and ordered the ballots counted where voters didn’t provide the type of identification.
“For an executive official of the state to flout state law in arbitrarily reassigning a poll worker’s statutory duty to a voter, with the result being the disenfranchisement of the voter, is fundamentally unfair and constitutionally impermissible,” Marbley said yesterday in a 17-page ruling. The rule “imposes an impermissible burden,” he said.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2012-11-14/ohio-s-provisional-ballot-rule-unfair-judge-says.html
Consumer Comfort in U.S. Advances to a Seven-Month High
By Elizabeth Dexheimer - Nov 15, 2012
Household confidence climbed last week to the highest level in seven months as Americans became less pessimistic about the economy.
The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index rose to minus 33.1 in the period ended Nov. 11 from minus 34.4 the previous week. The gauge has stayed above minus 40, the level associated with recessions and their aftermath, for two months. Twenty-two percent of those surveyed, the most since March 2008, had a positive view of the state of world’s largest economy.
More optimism along with faster job growth would improve the odds of a pickup in retail sales at the start of the holiday shopping season. The risk for consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy, is that the prospect of higher taxes tied to the so-called fiscal cliff prompts households to pull back.
“The long-awaited cyclical recovery in consumer sentiment is gathering momentum, which will likely continue along with what appears to be a quicker pace of labor-market improvement,” said Joseph Brusuelas, a senior economist at Bloomberg LP in New York. “One risk going forward is the fiscal cliff, which has not yet resulted in consumers increasing savings.”
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2012-11-15/consumer-comfort-in-u-s-advances-to-a-seven-month-high.html
Political Gridlock Leaves U.S. Facing Cyber Pearl Harbor
By Eric Engleman and Michael Riley - Nov 15, 2012 12:45 AM ET
There’s almost universal agreement that the U.S. faces a catastrophic threat from cyber attacks by terrorists, hackers and spies. Washington policy makers just don’t seem able to do anything about it.
Even with the consensus about vulnerabilities in U.S. networks, and with hundreds of billions of dollars at stake, Congress failed to pass cybersecurity legislation that was four years in the making and had sponsors from both parties.
The measure succumbed in August amid partisan gridlock and aggressive lobbying, even though lawmakers had heard warnings for years about holes in corporate and government systems that imperil U.S economic and national security.
--CLIP
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, yesterday failed to muster enough votes to revive the measure. The bill’s demise reveals how partisan bickering, tactical errors, industry lobbying, conflicting interests, and ignorance can trump even national security concerns, according to documents and interviews with advocates and opponents in the Senate, the administration and the business community.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-15/political-gridlock-leaves-u-s-facing-cyber-pearl-harbor.html
Wrench Inventor Claims Sears Stole His Idea, Took It to China
Source: ABC NEWS
By DAVID MUIR
Nov. 14, 2012
In the small town of Cabot, Pa., Dan Brown is the proud inventor of the Bionic Wrench, a product made solely in Pennsylvania. His goal from day one was to make his invention in America.
This time last year, Brown's factory was buzzing, with his employees working overtime to fulfill holiday orders. With the help of Sears, Brown's company sold more than 200,000 wrenches at Christmas alone.
"Last year was a great year," Brown said. "We got ourselves on a commercial and Sears had us in stores. We were going crazy."
Brown says he agreed with Sears not to sell his bionic wrench to any other national chain such as Lowe's or Home Depot. Brown's company continued business this year but suddenly there was no deal from Sears for Christmas.
--CLIP
Brown heard from a customer that there was now another wrench on the shelves at Sears with what appeared to be a similar mechanism. But this one, made in China, is sold under the Sears brand, Craftsman.
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/MadeInAmerica/wrench-inventor-claims-sears-stole-idea-china/story?id=17720122#.UKQtDW9my_g
MODS...may not qualify for LBN but this stuff pisses me off.
I'll repost if I must...
Peter Beinart: Barred From Atlanta’s Jewish Book Festival
1:12 pm November 13, 2012, by Jay
UPDATE: As the AJC’s Rosalind Bentley reports, tonight’s presentation by Peter Beinart at the Margaret Mitchell House has been sold out.
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Peter Beinart was raised in the Jewish faith, attends an Orthodox synagogue in New York City, keeps kosher and says “I love Israel and believe in the Zionist experiment.” He was also just named one of the “Forward 50” by the Jewish Daily Forward, a listing that marks him among those “who have made a significant impact on the Jewish story in the past year.”
So how does Beinart become persona non grata at the Book Festival of the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta, his invitation to speak this week suddenly withdrawn? Beinart himself is in some ways mystified, noting that “I speak to Jewish audiences all the time — at synagogues and community centers,” and had never previously been disinvited. However, he also recognizes that in his new book “The Crisis in Zionism,” he says things that have angered and perhaps even frightened America’s Jewish establishment.
In brief, Beinart sees Israel becoming less and less democratic — both in spirit and reality — as it attempts to swallow the occupied territories without granting basic human rights to the millions of Palestinians who live there. And he warns that over time, an abandonment of Israel’s democratic heritage will jeopardize its support among young Jewish Americans by forcing them to choose between Israel and their support for democracy and equal rights.
Last month, an opinion poll released in Israel highlighted the risks cited by Beinart. The poll found that 42 percent of Israeli Jews did not want their children to attend class with the children of Israeli Arabs; only 19 percent would give Palestinians the right to vote if the territories were permanently annexed into Israel. And just six years after Jimmy Carter was strongly condemned for using the term “apartheid” to describe Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, 59 percent of Israeli Jews admit point-blank that apartheid now exists in their country.
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http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2012/11/13/peter-beinart-banned-from-the-atlanta-jewish-book-festival/
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