Purveyor
Purveyor's JournalGuest Lineups For The Sunday News Shows
“Meet the Press” on NBC• House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
• Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.)
“Face the Nation” on CBS
• Luci Baines Johnson, daughter of Lyndon B. Johnson
• Dr. Ronald Jones, surgeon for John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald
“This Week” on ABC
• Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)
• Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R)
• Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.)
• Former White House Senior Adviser David Plouffe
• Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (D)
• Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), nephew of John F. Kennedy
Fox News Sunday” on Fox
• Former Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), CEO, National Association of Insurance Commissioners
• Karen Ignagni, CEO, America's Health Insurance Plans
• Liz Cheney (R), Wyoming Senate candidate
• Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, niece of John F. Kennedy
• Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), nephew of John F. Kennedy
“State of the Union” on CNN
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
• Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.)
• Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.)
Assad Gaining Ground In Syrian Civil War
BEIRUT (AP) -- Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad have firmly seized the momentum in the country's civil war in recent weeks, capturing one rebel stronghold after another and triumphantly planting the two-starred Syrian government flag amid shattered buildings and rubble-strewn streets.
Despite global outrage over the use of chemical weapons, Assad's government is successfully exploiting divisions among the opposition, dwindling foreign help for the rebel cause and significant local support, all linked to the same thing: discomfort with the Islamic extremists who have become a major part of the rebellion.
The battlefield gains would strengthen the government's hand in peace talks sought by the world community.
Both the Syrian government and the opposition have said they are ready to attend a proposed peace conference in Geneva that the U.S. and Russia are trying to convene, although it remains unclear whether the meeting will indeed take place. The Western-backed opposition in exile, which has little support among rebel fighters inside Syria and even less control over them, has set several conditions for its participation, chief among them that Assad must not be part of a transitional government - a notion Damascus has roundly rejected.
"President Bashar Assad will be heading any transitional stage in Syria, like it or not," Omar Ossi, a member of Syria's parliament, told The Associated Press.
more...
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_SYRIA_TIDES_OF_WAR?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-11-16-12-15-15
Obama Struggles To Save His Cherished Health Law From The Clutches Of His Own Administration
President Barack Obama's health care law risks coming unglued because of his administration's bungles and his own inflated promises.
To avoid that fate, Obama needs breakthroughs on three fronts: the cancellations mess, technology troubles and a crisis in confidence among his own supporters.
Working in his favor are pent-up demands for the program's benefits and an unlikely collaborator in the insurance industry.
But even after Obama gets the enrollment website working, count on new controversies. On the horizon is the law's potential impact on job-based insurance. Its mandate that larger employers offer coverage will take effect in 2015.
For now, odds still favor the Affordable Care Act's survival. But after making it through the Supreme Court, a presidential election, numerous congressional repeal votes and a government shutdown, the law has yet to win broad acceptance.
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http://www.newser.com/article/daa3se4o1/obama-struggles-to-save-his-cherished-health-law-from-the-clutches-of-his-own-administration.html
DNA Analysis Shows Modern Dogs Descended From Ancient European Wolves
If your dog could talk, he might have a European accent.
A new study out Thursday comparing DNA from modern canines to ancient fossils suggests that today’s pets descended from wolves in Europe.
Man’s earliest best friends likely scavenged bones from scrap piles left behind by hunter-gatherers, said the report by international researchers in the journal Science.
The bolder the wolf, the more he would be able to eat and the more loyal to humans he would become.
Scientists now believe this process of domestication likely began as many as 19,000 to 32,000 years ago.
“All modern dogs have a very close relationship to ancient dogs or wolves from Europe,” lead author Olaf Thalmann, a researcher at the University of Turku in Finland, told AFP.
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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/14/dna-analysis-shows-modern-dogs-descended-from-ancient-european-wolves/
MSNBC Suspends Alec Baldwin’s ‘Up Late’ For 2 Weeks For Anti-LGBT Slur
Variety reports that MSNBC has suspended Alec Baldwin’s “Up Late” program for two weeks after an incident in which the host and actor called a man filming his family a “c**ksucking f*g.”
Baldwin quickly apologized for the remarks, tweeting “Anti-gay slurs are wrong. They not only offend, but threaten hard fought tolerance of LGBT rights … I’m grateful to all of the ppl I meet + hear from who recognize that I would never say something to offend my friends in the gay community.”
He reiterated those sentiments in a statement posted on MSNBC’s website, in which he wrote:
Words are important. I understand that, and will choose mine with great care going forward. What I said and did this week, as I was trying to protect my family, was offensive and unacceptable. Behavior like this undermines hard-fought rights that I vigorously support.
I understand “Up Late” will be taken off the schedule for tonight and next week. “I want to apologize to my loyal fans and to my colleagues at MSNBC – both for my actions and for distracting from their good work. Again, please accept my apology.
Baldwin’s been caught saying and tweeting homophobic slurs numerous times in the past year, though he insists that he is a dedicated ally to the LGBT community.
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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/15/msnbc-suspends-alec-baldwins-up-late-for-2-weeks-for-anti-lgbt-slur/
The Rise Of Far Right Parties Across Europe Is A Chilling Echo Of The 1930s
By John Palmer, The Guardian
Saturday, November 16, 2013 1:15 EST
Having played down their fascist sympathies they’re re-emerging now after a PR facelift. Time is running out to counter them
Since the global banking crisis in 2007, commentators across the political spectrum have confidently predicted not only the imminent collapse of the euro, but sooner or later an unavoidable implosion of the European Union itself. None of this has come to pass. But the European project, launched after the devastation of the second world war, faces the most serious threat in its history. That threat was chillingly prefigured this week by the launch of a pan-European alliance of far-right parties, led by the French National Front and the Dutch Freedom party headed by Geert Wilders, vowing to slay “the monster in Brussels”.
Of course, the growth in support for far-right, anti-European, anti-immigrant parties has been fed by the worst world recession since at least the 1930s – mass unemployment and falling living standards, made worse by the self-defeating austerity obsession of European leaders. Parties that skulked in the shadows, playingdown their sympathies with fascism and Nazism are re-emerging, having given themselves a PR facelift. Marine Le Pen, leader of the French NF, plays down the antisemitic record of her party. The Dutch far-right leader has ploughed a slightly different furrow, mobilising fear and hostility not against Jews but Muslim immigrants. Like Le Pen, Wilders focuses on the alleged cosmopolitan threat to national identity from the European Union. It is a chorus echoed in other countries by the Danish People’s party, the Finns party and the Flemish Vlaams Belang, among others.
For now, the French and Dutch populists are carefully keeping their distance from openly neo-Nazi parties such as Golden Dawn, whose paramilitary Sturmabteilung has terrorised refugees and immigrants in Greece, and the swaggering Hungarian Jobbik, which targets the Roma minority.
According to some pollsters, the far right might win as many as a third of European parliament seats in elections next May. That would still leave the centre parties – Christian Democrats, Social Democrats and Liberals – with many more members. But for the European parliament to form a credible majority, all of these parties might well be forced much closer together than is good for democracy.
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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/16/the-rise-of-far-right-parties-across-europe-is-a-chilling-echo-of-the-1930s/
Elizabeth Warren: Unlikely Radical Giving Hope To Those Disenchanted With Mainstream Democrats
By Dan Roberts, The Guardian
Saturday, November 16, 2013 10:10 EST
Senator’s tough stance against Wall Street is attracting voters on the left who are disenchanted with the party establishment
Not many political “rock stars” inspire audience members to knit, but, even by Washington’s sedate standards, the darling of America’s new left is a quiet revolutionary.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard professor turned Wall Street scourge, is one of a clutch of unlikely radicals giving hope to those disenchanted with mainstream Democrats.
Hours before a rare public appearance last week, one of the largest rooms in Congress begins slowly filling up with an odd mix of groupies: policy wonks, finance geeks, Occupy activists, and, yes, the type of political conference attendee who brings their knitting in.
Warren proceeds to calmly recite numbers that could inspire even librarians to storm a few barricades. The Wall Street crash has cost the US economy $14tn, she says, but its top institutions are 30% larger than before, own half the country’s bank assets and are in receipt of an implicit taxpayer subsidy of $83bn a year because they are deemed too big to fail.
“We have got to get back to running this country for American families, not for its largest financial institutions,” concludes Warren, before noting how little President Barack Obama has done to achieve that.
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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/16/elizabeth-warren-unlikely-radical-giving-hope-to-those-disenchanted-with-mainstream-democrats/
Meningitis Outbreak At Princeton University; (CDC) Is Making An Experimental Vaccine Available...
Princeton University is trying to contain an outbreak of bacterial meningitis that has sickened several students, school and health officials said Saturday.
The New Jersey Department of Health said it has confirmed seven cases of meningococcal disease at Princeton, with all but one of the cases involving students.
The meningitis has been identified as “Type B,” which is not covered by the standard vaccine commonly administered to students in the United States.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is making an experimental vaccine available to Princeton, and officials at the northeastern US university said they are in the process of deciding whether to administer it to students.
“This is a question we have been considering very carefully. We will be discussing it with our trustees this weekend, and when we have something to announce we will make an announcement,” university spokesman Martin Mbugua told AFP on Saturday.
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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/16/meningitis-outbreak-at-princeton-university/
WTI Crude Set for Longest Run of Weekly Losses Since 1998
By Grant Smith - Nov 15, 2013
West Texas Intermediate crude headed for a sixth weekly decline, the longest in 15 years, as rising supplies in the U.S. countered speculation the Federal Reserve will maintain economic stimulus.
Futures have lost 0.8 percent in New York this week, poised for the longest weekly losing streak since December 1998. U.S. crude inventories climbed to the highest level since June as expanding production caused stockpiles to increase at the storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, data yesterday from the Energy Information Administration show. Janet Yellen, the nominee for Federal Reserve chairman, said she will ensure the central bank’s asset purchases program doesn’t end too soon.
“The numbers were mildly bearish as the Cushing build would limit the upside in WTI,” said Andrey Kryuchenkov, an analyst at VTB Capital in London.
WTI for December delivery increased 12 cents to $93.88 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 12:33 p.m. London time. The volume of all futures traded was 35 percent below the 100-day average.
Brent for January settlement declined 30 cents to $107.98 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The December contract expired yesterday after rising 1.3 percent to $108.54. The European benchmark crude was at a premium of $13.49 to WTI for the same month, compared with $14.78 yesterday, the highest based on closing prices since March.
more...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-15/wti-trims-sixth-weekly-loss-as-investors-weigh-stimulus-outlook.html
Gain in Factory Output Signals Sustained U.S. Demand: Economy
By Shobhana Chandra - Nov 15, 2013
Production at U.S. factories picked up in October, indicating the government shutdown did little to impede manufacturing (IPMGCHNG) at the start of the fourth quarter.
The 0.3 percent advance followed a 0.1 percent gain the prior month and exceeded the 0.2 percent median projection in a Bloomberg survey, figures from the Federal Reserve showed today in Washington. Total industrial production fell 0.1 percent as mining and utility use declined.
Increased output of furniture, metals and electronics shows gains in manufacturing are extending beyond the auto industry, underscoring recent reports of improving sentiment at factories. Busier assembly lines are a source of strength for an economy that was restrained by a decrease in government spending tied to the 16-day partial federal shutdown.
“It’s a good start to the quarter,” said Brian Jones, senior U.S. economist at Societe Generale in New York, who correctly projected the drop in total output. Production gains are “becoming broad-based. Are we going at rocket speed? No, but things are generally getting better in the economy.”
more...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-15/factory-production-in-u-s-rose-more-than-forecast-in-october.html
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