RSS Feed Twitter
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Ten days after admitting that he lied about sending sexually-charged text messages and photos to women he met online, Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., is preparing to step down.
NBC News confirms that Weiner called Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Rep. Steve Israel last night to inform them he had decided to resign on Thursday.

The New York Times was the first to report that Weiner told friends of his plan to resign under mounting pressure from House Democratic leaders, who were poised Thursday to strip the New York congressman of his committee assignments.
Weiner has scheduled a 2pm ET news conference in New York.
At a regularly-scheduled press conference Thursday morning, Pelosi repeatedly declined to comment on the matter until after Weiner's afternoon event.
NBC reported shortly before the news broke that congressional staff members appeared to be packing up Weiner’s office this morning. Per NBC's Alex Moe, two staff members and two interns left the office with their belongings after turning off lights and locking the door.
Weiner resisted giving up his seat for more than a week, despite calls for his resignation from Pelosi and President Barack Obama.
But the Times reports that Weiner decided to step down after “having long discussions” with his wife, Huma Abedin, who just returned Tuesday from an overseas trip with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. News broke last week that Abedin is pregnant.
Republican House Speaker John Boehner told reporters at a press conference Thursday morning that Weiner had not informed him of his decision to resign, adding that the episode has been a "distraction."
source
When the Age of America will end
The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed.
For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the "Age of America" will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.
And it's a lot closer than you may think.

According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China's economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.
Put that in your calendar.
It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world's hegemonic power.
According to the IMF forecast, which was quietly posted on the Fund's website just two weeks ago, whoever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world's largest economy.
Most people aren't prepared for this. They aren't even aware it's that close. Listen to experts of various stripes, and they will tell you this moment is decades away. The most bearish will put the figure in the mid-2020s.
But they're miscounting. They're only comparing the gross domestic products of the two countries using current exchange rates.
That's a largely meaningless comparison in real terms. Exchange rates change quickly. And China's exchange rates are phony. China artificially undervalues its currency, the renminbi, through massive intervention in the markets.
The Comparison That Really Matters
In addition to comparing the two countries based on exchange rates, the IMF analysis also looked to the true, real-terms picture of the economies using "purchasing power parities." That compares what people earn and spend in real terms in their domestic economies.
Under PPP, the Chinese economy will expand from $11.2 trillion this year to $19 trillion in 2016. Meanwhile the size of the U.S. economy will rise from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion. That would take America's share of the world output down to 17.7%, the lowest in modern times. China's would reach 18%, and rising.
Just 10 years ago, the U.S. economy was three times the size of China's.
Naturally, all forecasts are fallible. Time and chance happen to them all. The actual date when China surpasses the U.S. might come even earlier than the IMF predicts, or somewhat later. If the great Chinese juggernaut blows a tire, as a growing number fear it might, it could even delay things by several years. But the outcome is scarcely in doubt.
This is more than a statistical story. It is the end of the Age of America. As a bond strategist in Europe told me two weeks ago, "We are witnessing the end of America's economic hegemony."
We have lived in a world dominated by the U.S. for so long that there is no longer anyone alive who remembers anything else. America overtook Great Britain as the world's leading economic power in the 1890s and never looked back.

read more here
During the 2008 campaign, questions about John McCain's birth in the Panama Canal Zone on a U.S. military base prompted some to ask whether McCain was eligible to be president, since the Constitution stipulates that anyone not born in the United States is not eligible to be president.
Amid a flurry of news reports, McCain's own campaign announced in February 2008 that it was conducting an investigation. When a bipartisan pair of lawyers announced the following month that McCain was indeed eligible, the issue virtually died--apart from a Senate resolution that pretty much laid the question to rest by attesting to the facts surrounding McCain's birth and citizenship.
But the winner of the 2008 election, Barack Obama, has faced a relentless campaign questioning his U.S. citizenship--and thereby the legitimacy of his presidency--that has disregarded the facts.
Birthers emphatically deny such criticism. But it's difficult to apprehend the ongoing resistance to proof of Obama's citizenship without crediting racial fear as a significant factor. At first, after all, many adherents of birtherism argued that the administration fueled speculation by failing to release the long-form version of Obama's birth certificate, but now that this version has been released to the public, the call continues to go out for other kinds of information about Obama's past to be released--a level of scrutiny that neither McCain nor Obama's 43 predecessors in the Oval Office were expected to face.
Trump, who has railed against Obama as he floats himself as a presidential contender, on Wednesday at a press conference in New Hampshire called for Obama to release his academic transcripts:
Trump and others have accused Obama of not authoring his memoir, while many Obama detractors continue to argue he is secretly Muslim. Both Jackson and Peniel noted that never before has a sitting president's nationality been questioned.

read more here

powerful women in politics
Women Who Wield Political Power. Health care reform has been a battleground in Congress and will soon land in the Supreme Court, where its constitutionality will be determined. Among the justices who will hear the case are three powerful women. Read more about these and other powerful women in politics.


Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama doesn’t hold a political office, but she has a highly visible role in both the national and international political spheres.  Trained as a lawyer, she now works as an advocate  and runs the most famous household in America.

Hillary Clinton
She may not be commander in chief, but Hillary Clinton is one of the highest-ranking members of the United States government. She is charged with managing foreign affairs, which is no small task in today’s international political climate.

Julia Gillard
Julia Gillard is a woman of firsts. She is the first woman and non-native to hold her political position in Australia.  Her background and passion lie in education, which she holds central to her economic agenda.

Elena Kagen
Elena Kagan  is newly appointed to her position  most recently serving as a professor and dean of Harvard Law School, her alma mater. Her first opinion was filed in January 2011.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
The lone female leader in a continent run by men, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf  is known as Liberia’s "Iron Lady". She accomplished a feat that most national governments have failed to do, erasing the country’s external debt.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Bader Ginsburg  has spent the majority of her distinguished career advocating for equal rights for men and women.  Despite rumors of her retirement, she has not announced her intention to step down.

Mary McAleese
In a country divided, Mary McAleese  was the first person elected to her position in Ireland who was born in Northern Ireland. Her two terms in office have been dedicated to building bridges. Named among the 100 Most Powerful Women by Forbes magazine in 2009  she is also a member of the Council of Women World Leaders.

Janet Napolitano
Janet Napolitano has been charged with keeping America safe from terrorism, or what she calls "man-caused disasters." Issues of national security range from airport security to border safety, and these issues have sparked controversy and criticism.

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner
Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner  has been compared to Eva Peron, the former first lady of Argentina, which is the title de Kirchner held before being elected to her current position. She was one half of a presidential marriage with her husband and former president, who stayed active in her presidency until his death in 2010.

Sonia Sotomayor
Sonia Sotomayor became a first for her position and has enjoyed a long career punctuated by highly visible rulings. She has been a champion for ethnic diversity and identity, and many of her speeches focus on these themes.

Angela Merkel
Trained as a physical chemist, Angela Merkel turned to politics after the fall of the Berlin Wall. She rose to the ranks of her current position in 2005, and her tenure has focused on health care reform and future energy development in Germany.

source

Most expensive re-election campaigns
 President Barack Obama has announced he'll run for office again in 2012, launching speculation about how much he'll spend. We've rounded up past incumbents who spared no expense in defending their political posts.


Barack Obama
 The president has officially announced his 2012 re-election campaign, and some say it'll be the most expensive in history.

Michele Bachmann
 Last November, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. beat her challenger to retain this congressional district. The race earned a high-dollar distinction.

Barbara Boxer
 In last year's U.S. Senate race, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., beat her wealthy opponent. It's been reported that the senator spent nearly everything she'd raised

Michael Bloomberg
 Bloomberg was named mayor of New York City the third time in a row having bested his 2009 challenger.

Harry Reid
 Democrat Sen. Harry Reid went all out to secure his Nevada Senate seat last year. This meant aiming for a lofty goal. It was the second-most-expensive Senate race

George Pataki
 Pataki was re-elected New York's governor in 2002, after spending somewhere in the ballpark of this large sum.

Hillary Rodham Clinton
 Then-New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton reportedly spent more than any other Senate candidate when she ran against her 2006 opponent.

John McCain
 During the last midterm elections, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is estimated to have spent more on a successful bid than any other Senate candidate.

source
Nearing a midnight deadline, leaders in Congress strike a deal to cut $38 billion from the budget

A last minute budget deal, forged amid bluster and tough bargaining, averted an embarrassing federal shutdown and cut billions in spending — the first major test of the divided government voters ushered in five months ago.
Working late into the evening Friday, congressional and White House negotiators struck an agreement to pay for government operations through the end of September while trimming $38.5 billion in spending. Lawmakers then approved a days-long stopgap measure to keep the government running while the details of the new spending plan were written into legislation.
Actual approval of the deal would come in mid-week.
"Today Americans of different beliefs came together again," President Barack Obama said from the White House Blue Room, a setting chosen to offer a clear view of the Washington Monument over his right shoulder.

read more here

Biggest liars in history
 Did you know that April 4 is National Tell-a-Lie Day? Don’t try this at home.


Milli Vanilli
 Benedict Arnold
 Richard Nixon
 Janet Cooke
 Frank Abagnale
 Bill Clinton
 Baron Munchausen
 George W. Bush
 Victor Lustig
 Han van Meegeren
 Charles Ponzi
 Rosie Ruiz
 James Frey
 Bernie Madoff
source
Ferraro, first woman vice president candidate, dies at 75

Former congresswoman was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 1998
BOSTON—Geraldine Ferraro, who in 1984 became the first woman to run for vice president on a major party ticket, only to lose in a landslide, died Saturday. She was 75.
Ferraro died at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was being treated for blood cancer. She died just before 10 a.m., said Amanda Fuchs Miller, a family friend who worked for Ferraro in her 1998 Senate bid and was acting as a spokeswoman for the family.


An obscure Queens congresswoman, Ferraro catapulted to national prominence at the 1984 Democratic convention when she was chosen by presidential nominee Walter Mondale to join his ticket against incumbents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.
Delegates in San Francisco erupted in cheers at the first line of her speech accepting the vice-presidential nomination.
"My name is Geraldine Ferraro," she declared. "I stand before you to proclaim tonight: America is the land where dreams can come true for all of us."
Her acceptance speech launched eight minutes of cheers, foot-stamping and tears.
Ferraro sometimes overshadowed Mondale on the campaign trail, often drawing larger crowds and more media attention than the presidential candidate.
"No one asks anymore if women can raise the money, if women can take the heat, if women have the stamina for the toughest political campaigns in this country," Judy Goldsmith, then-president of the National Organization for Women told People Magazine in December, 1984. "Geraldine Ferraro did them all."
But controversy accompanied her acclaim. Frequent, vociferous protests of her favorable view of abortion rights marked the campaign.
Ferraro's run also was beset by ethical questions, first about her campaign finances and tax returns, then about the business dealings of her husband, John Zaccaro. Ferraro attributed much of the controversy to bias against Italian-Americans.
Mondale said he selected Ferraro as a bold stroke to counter his poor showing in polls against President Reagan and because he felt America lagged far behind other democracies in elevating women to top leadership roles.
"The time had come to eliminate the barriers to women of America and to reap the benefits of drawing talents from all Americans, including women," Mondale said.
In the end, Reagan won 49 of the 50 states, the largest landslide since Franklin D. Roosevelt's first re-election, in 1936 over Alf Landon.
 
source
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
Twitter Delicious Facebook Digg Stumbleupon Favorites More