New Year’s Eve On the Cliff: Lawmakers Have No Bill and No Deal (+Update)

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photo credit: donkey hotey

UPDATE: Deal in the Works?

Senate leaders and Vice President Biden are putting the finishing touches on an agreement to extend income tax rates for the vast majority of the country, just hours before the “fiscal cliff” deadline.

The agreement will extend Bush-era income tax rates on individual income up to $400,000 and on family income up to $450,000, according to a senior GOP aide. It will adjust the estate tax rate to 40 percent, up from 35 percent, but maintain the exemption for all inheritances below $5 million, the aide said.

GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who is engaged in one-on-one talks with Biden, said the tax portion of the deal was finished, and that a broader agreement was at hand.
“I can report that we’ve reached an agreement on all of the tax issues,” McConnell said. “We are very, very close.”

Republican leaders in the House, meanwhile, said they would not hold a late-night vote even if tax and spending legislation cleared the Senate, guaranteeing that the nation will go over the fiscal cliff at midnight, if only for a few hours. Read more from this story HERE.

New Year’s Eve On the Cliff: Lawmakers Have No Bill and No Deal

Senate leaders are racing against the clock to reach a “fiscal cliff” deal the House and Senate can approve on New Year’s Eve.

Leaders in the upper chamber narrowed their differences Sunday as Republicans agreed to drop a demand to curb cost-of-living increases to entitlement benefits, while Democrats showed flexibility on taxes.

Yet after months of talks on ways to avoid the fiscal cliff of tax hikes and spending cuts at the end of 2012, House and Senate lawmakers find themselves approaching the new year without a bill to present to their members.

Significant differences remain over two key parts of a deal — the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester and the estate tax.

Instead of working through the night, the Senate recessed at 7:27 p.m. Sunday with plans to reconvene Monday at 11:00 a.m., and the House recessed around the same time. Read more from this story HERE.

Biblical Baby Names Fall Out of Favor in US, Uptick in Names from Pop Culture such as Erotic Shades of Grey

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Biblical names are out and pop culture is in for America’s newborns – if this year’s list of most popular baby names are anything to go by. The once hearty trend of parents naming their babies after Biblical scripture has shown a steady decline in recent years according to an annual baby name report by BabyCenter.com.

What can be gathered in supplement shows a perhaps surprising uptick in inspiration from pop culture such as erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey, TV show Downton Abbey and even Apple electronics.

TOP 10 BOYS NAMES:

Aiden
Jackson
Ethan
Liam
Mason
Noah
Lucas
Jacob
Jayden
Jack

TOP 10 GIRLS NAMES:

Sophia
Emma
Olivia
Isabella
Ava
Lily
Zoe
Chloe
Mia
Madison

That’s a stark contrast from 12 years ago when Biblical names dominated the top 10 list, in 2000 it being: Michael, Jacob, Matthew, Joseph, Joshua, and Andrew.
For girls in 2000 it was Hannah, Sarah and Elizabeth.

Read more from this story HERE.

Death of Tea Party Exaggerated? Members in House Appear to Hold Key Fiscal Vote (+video)

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The Tea Party has had an up-and-down political ride since the movement helped Republicans take control of the House in 2010, but those elected in the midterm elections still appear to wield considerable power in the fiscal negotiations.

The roughly 50 members elected to the House two years ago have been a challenge for the more moderate House Speaker John Boehner since they took office. Perhaps most memorably, many of them refused last year to support a debt-ceiling bill because they said it didn’t reduce federal spending enough.

Just last week they squashed Boehner’s fiscal plan by refusing to compromise and vote on a tax increase for any American, despite the House speaker — in his so-called “Plan B” — having suggested extending tax cuts only for those making more than $1 million annually.

And their most powerful vote might be yet to come, should Tea Party-backed House members reject a possible Senate proposal over the next two days to extend tax cuts and perhaps avert massive federal spending cuts that start January 1.

Read more from this story HERE.

Californians’ Support for Death Penalty Goes Against Trend

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photo credit: wootom

Even as Californians voted to maintain the death penalty, the nation’s support for capital punishment continued to wane in 2012, with relatively few states performing executions.

Only nine states executed inmates in 2012, and three-fourths of the executions occurred in Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma and Mississippi, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a monitoring group critical of capital punishment. Connecticut became the fifth state in five years to abolish capital punishment.

California, whose voters rejected a November ballot measure to repeal the death penalty, is not expected to resume executions for three years, according to Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye. Litigation has blocked executions in California for nearly seven years.

Despite its unused execution chamber, California’s death row, already the largest in the nation, continued to swell in 2012. Fourteen inmates were added, mostly from Los Angeles and Riverside counties.

Nationally, there were fewer than 80 new death sentences, the second-lowest number since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, the center said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Palestinian Arab Girl Who Attacked IDF Soldiers Eats Breakfast With Turkish PM Erdogan (+video)

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Awad Tamimi, a thirteen year old Palestinian Arab girl, found internet fame when a video of her cursing at and kicking IDF soldiers was posted on YouTube. Today, the Turkish news agency “Anatolia” reported that “the brave Palestinian girl” and her mother met Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey at a hotel in Istanbul, where they had a short conversation. Erdogan gave some gifts to her family, and the two posed for photographs , before eating a meal together. “I give thanks to Prime Minister Erdogan for his hospitality—and his support for Palestine” she said.

Tamimi came to Turkey last week to receive an award from the Istanbul City Council for “courage”. She said she waved her fist in the face of Israeli soldiers as a way to “liberate Palestine”.

See video below:

See original video:

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Vows to Make Gun Control Priority, Put ‘Full Weight’ Behind Efforts

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President Obama on Sunday said he would make gun control a priority in his new term, pledging to put his “full weight” behind passing new restrictions on firearms in 2013.

“I’m going to be putting forward a package and I’m going to be putting my full weight behind it,” Obama said in an interview aired on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I’m going to be making an argument to the American people about why this is important and why we have to do everything we can to make sure that something like what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary does not happen again.”

In the wake of the Dec. 14 mass shooting at a Newtown, Conn., school, the president has launched a White House task force led by Vice President Biden to present proposals in January to help stem gun violence. Obama has said that he would seek a broad approach to the problem addressing the role of violence in entertainment and measures to improve mental healthcare.

But he has also called on Congress to move quickly to reinstate the federal assault weapons ban and a ban on the sale of high-capacity magazines.

Obama on Sunday repeated those calls and said he would meet with lawmakers on both sides of the aisles to see action.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hillary Clinton, Not Seen for Weeks, Now Reportedly Hospitalized with Blood Clot

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photo credit: medill dc

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is under observation at a New York hospital after being treated for a blood clot stemming from the concussion she sustained earlier this month.

Clinton’s doctors discovered the clot Sunday while performing a follow-up exam, her spokesman, Philippe Reines, said. He would not elaborate on the location of the clot but said Clinton was being treated with anti-coagulants and would remain at New York-Presbyterian Hospital for at least the next 48 hours so doctors can monitor the medication.

“Her doctors will continue to assess her condition, including other issues associated with her concussion,” Reines said in a statement. “They will determine if any further action is required.”

Clinton, 65, fell and suffered a concussion while at home alone in mid-December as she recovered from a stomach virus that left her severely dehydrated. The concussion was diagnosed Dec. 13 and Clinton was forced to cancel a trip to North Africa and the Middle East that had been planned for the next week.

The seriousness of a blood clot “depends on where it is,” said Dr. Gholam Motamedi, a neurologist at Georgetown University Medical Center who was not involved in Clinton’s care.

Read more from this story HERE.

Dogs and Cats Still on the Menu in Switzerland

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Eating Fido – or Tiddles – might be more commonly associated with China and Vietnam, but rustling up a slice of cured dog meat to enjoy as a snack is not unusual in rural areas of central and eastern Switzerland, Tages Anzeiger claims.

There are no statistics on the number of dogs and cats killed every year in Switzerland and social disapproval of dog-eating means the practice is shrouded in secrecy. No commercial abattoirs slaughter dogs or cats, but farmers in the Appenzell and St Gallen cantons in German-speaking Switzerland often slaughter the animals themselves.

The most popular breed of dog for eating is a close relative of the Rottweiler.

“There’s nothing odd about it”, one farmer in the Rhine Valley said. “Meat is meat.”

Another farmer, from Appenzell, tells of how he knocks dogs out with a club before slaughtering them and handing them to a butcher friend for preparation. A perplexed dog and cat-eater protested to the reporter that the practice never used to be frowned upon.

Read more from this story HERE.

How Chicago and Obama Globalized Voter Fraud

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Chicago has a long tradition of padding its vote totals by placing homeless and deceased persons on its voter registration list. Jim Laski, who once served as the City Clerk of Chicago, second in power only to the mayor, noted in his book My Fall From Grace that fraudulent voters were registered to addresses that included cemeteries, municipal buildings, and taverns. The taverns, at least, are understandable: politically connected city workers spent so much time on bar stools the Board of Elections thought they lived there.

Other voters who had died or moved away were also on the voter registration list. Once again, the tendency for the dead to vote in Chicago can be easily explained: the dead cannot be expected to walk to City Hall and remove themselves from the registered voter list. Everyone in Chicago knows they can only walk as far as the local polling place. This tradition was verified in 1983 when the registered voter list was examined and it was found that 3,000 had either died or moved away.

Since 1985 Chicago has pioneered new ways to promote illegal immigration. After 1990 the illegal immigrant population in Chicago and the nation skyrocketed. As illegal immigrants flocked to Chicago, a method was needed to get them on the registered voter list. Although 80,000 illegal aliens voted in 1982, the old-fashioned way, through vote fraud; by 2005 both Cook County and the state of Illinois had moved to allow photo I.D. to be given to illegal immigrants by passing matricula consular laws.

By allowing the matricula consular to function as an official photo I.D., Illinois and Chicago can say they are conforming to any Voter ID requirement. But the Cook County law (most Illinois illegal immigrants live in Cook County) also allows the consulates of Mexico and “any other Latin American country” to issue the consular I.D.s at their discretion. In effect, Illinois has enabled foreign countries to decide who votes in U.S. elections.

Read more from this story HERE.