Sorry, Kids. We Ate It All.

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Photo Credit: Josh Haner/The New York TimesEventually this shutdown crisis will end. And eventually the two parties will make another stab at a deal on taxes, investments and entitlements. But there’s one outcome from such negotiations that I can absolutely guarantee: Seniors, Wall Street and unions will all have their say and their interests protected. So the most likely result will be more tinkering around the edges, as our politicians run for the hills the minute someone accuses them of “fixing the deficit on the backs of the elderly” or creating “death panels” to sensibly allocate end-of-life health care. Could this time be different? Short of an economic meltdown, there is only one thing that might produce meaningful change: a mass movement for tax, spending and entitlement reform led by the cohort that is the least organized but will be the most affected if we don’t think long term — today’s young people.

Whether they realize it or not, they’re the ones who will really get hit by all the cans we’re kicking down the road. After we baby boomers get done retiring — at a rate of 7,000 to 11,000 a day — if current taxes and entitlement promises are not reformed, the cupboard will be largely bare for today’s Facebook generation. But what are the chances of them getting out of Facebook and into their parents’ faces — and demanding not only that the wealthy do their part but that the next generation as a whole leaves something for this one? Too bad young people aren’t paying attention. Or are they?

Wait! Who is that speaking to crowds of students at Berkeley, Stanford, Brown, U.S.C., Bowdoin, Notre Dame and N.Y.U. — urging these “future seniors” to start a movement to protect their interests? That’s Stan Druckenmiller, the legendary investor who made a fortune predicting the subprime bust, often accompanied by Geoffrey Canada, the president of the Harlem Children’s Zone, of which Druckenmiller is the biggest funder. What are they doing on a Mick Jagger-like college tour where they don’t sing, don’t dance, and just go through a set of charts showing young people how badly they’ll be hammered if our current taxes, growth rates, defense spending and entitlements stay where they are?

“My generation — we brought down the president in the ’60s because we didn’t want to go into the war against Vietnam,” Druckenmiller told an overflow crowd at Notre Dame last week. “People say young people don’t vote; young people don’t care. I’m hoping after tonight, you will care. There is a clear danger to you and your children.”

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Chase Bank Limits Cash Withdrawals, Bans International Wire Transfers (+video)

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Photo Credit: Infowars Chase Bank has moved to limit cash withdrawals while banning business customers from sending international wire transfers from November 17 onwards, prompting speculation that the bank is preparing for a looming financial crisis in the United States by imposing capital controls.

Numerous business customers with Chase BusinessSelect Checking and Chase BusinessClassic accounts have received letters over the past week informing them that cash activity (both deposits and withdrawals) will be limited to a $50,000 total per statement cycle from November 17 onwards.

The letter reads;

Dear Business Customer,

Starting November 17, 2013:

– You will no longer be able to send international wire transfers. You will still be able to send domestic wires and receive both domestic and international wires. We’ll cancel any international wire transfers, including reccurring ones, you scheduled to be sent after this date.

– Your cash activity limit for these accounts(s) will be $50,000 per statement cycle, per account. Cash activity is the combined total of cash deposits made at branches, night drops and ATMs and cash withdrawals made at branches (including purchases of money orders) and ATMs.

These changes will help us more effectively manage the risks involved with these types of transactions.

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White House: ‘There Are No Winners Here’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: APWhile Democrats are being cast as the early winners in the deal to end the government shutdown and raise the debt limit, the White House doesn’t see itself as the victor.

“There are no winners here,” press secretary Jay Carney said at his daily briefing Wednesday. “We said that from the beginning, and we’re going to say it right up to the end because it’s true. The American people have paid a price for this.”

Earlier this month, a senior administration official told the Wall Street Journal that “we are winning” with a drawn-out shutdown, but the White House pushed back on that quote in much the same way that Carney did on Wednesday.

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The Wannabe Oppressed

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Photo Credit: Yuya TamaiWhat do America’s college students want? They want to be oppressed. More precisely, a surprising number of students at America’s finest colleges and universities wish to appear as victims — to themselves, as well as to others — without the discomfort of actually experiencing victimization. Here is where global warming comes in. The secret appeal of campus climate activism lies in its ability to turn otherwise happy, healthy, and prosperous young people into an oppressed class, at least in their own imaginings. Climate activists say to the world, “I’ll save you.” Yet deep down they’re thinking, “Oppress me.”

In his important new book, The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse: Save the Earth, Punish Human Beings, French intellectual gadfly Pascal Bruckner does the most thorough job yet of explaining the climate movement as a secular religion, an odd combination of deformed Christianity and reconstructed Marxism. (You can find Bruckner’s excellent article based on the book here.) Bruckner describes a historical process wherein “the long list of emblematic victims — Jews, blacks, slaves, proletarians, colonized peoples — was replaced, little by little, with the Planet.” The planet, says Bruckner, “has become the new proletariat that must be saved from exploitation.”

But why? Bruckner finds it odd that a “mood of catastrophe” should prevail in the West, the most well-off part of the world. The reason, I think, is that the only way to turn the prosperous into victims is to threaten the very existence of a world they otherwise command.

And why should the privileged wish to become victims? To alleviate guilt and to appropriate the victim’s superior prestige. In the neo-Marxist dispensation now regnant on our college campuses, after all, the advantaged are ignorant and guilty while the oppressed are innocent and wise. The initial solution to this problem was for the privileged to identify with “struggling groups” by wearing, say, a Palestinian keffiyeh. Yet better than merely empathizing with the oppressed is to be oppressed. This is the climate movement’s signal innovation.

Read more from this story HERE.

U.S. House Passes Bill to Reopen Government, Increase Debt Limit

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By REUTERS.

The U.S. House of Representatives late on Wednesday passed legislation to avoid a damaging default on government debt and to reopen federal agencies shuttered when funding ran out on October 1.

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Photo Credit: Doug Mills/The New York TimesCongress Passes Debt Deal

By JONATHAN WEISMAN and ASHLEY PARKER.

Congressional Republicans conceded defeat on Wednesday in their bitter budget fight with President Obama over the new health care law, agreeing to end a disruptive 16-day government shutdown and extend federal borrowing power to avert a financial default with potentially worldwide economic repercussions.

With the Treasury Department warning that it could run out of money to pay national obligations within a day, the Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday evening, 81 to 18, to approve a proposal hammered out by the chamber’s Republican and Democratic leaders after the House on Tuesday was unable to move forward with any resolution. The House followed suit a few hours later, voting 285 to 144, to approve the Senate plan, which would finance the government through Jan. 15 and raise the debt limit through Feb. 7.

Shortly after the Senate vote, President Obama said he would sign the measure as he soon as he received it. While he praised Congress, he said he hoped the damaging standoff would not be repeated.

“We’ve got to get out of the habit of governing by crisis,” said Mr. Obama, who urged Congress to move forward, not only with new budget negotiations, but immigration changes and a farm bill as well. “We could get all these things done even this year, if everybody comes together in a spirit of, how are we going to move this country forward and put the last three weeks behind us.”

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Rush Limbaugh: GOP ‘So Irrelevant’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: WND Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday blasted the Republican Party as “irrelevant” and responsible for “creating one of the greatest political disasters” he’s ever seen.

“I was trying to think earlier today, if ever in my life I could remember any major political party being so irrelevant,” the conservative radio host said on his show, according to a transcript. “I have never seen it. I have never seen a major political party simply occupy placeholders, as the Republican Party is doing.”

Limbaugh slammed the Republican Party for consistently failing to offer any “serious opposition” to the Democratic Party or President Barack Obama. And now the party has made an “inexplicable political cave-in” with the agreement to reopen the government and lift the debt ceiling, he said.

Read more from this story HERE.

DoD Refuses to Say If It Would Stop Priest from Giving Last Rites to Dying Serviceman—‘We Are Currently Litigating’ Matter

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Photo Credit: AP/Carolyn KasterLt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a spokesman in the Office of Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, is refusing to say whether the Department of Defense would attempt to stop a civilian Catholic priest, who had been a contract chaplain for the military, from administering the last rites to a serviceman on a U.S. military base.

“I feel no particular compulsion to answer outlandish, hypothetical questions in a yes/no fashion nor does the Department, generally, answer hypotheticals at all,” Breasseale said in an email.

“Further, it is a matter of long standing Department policy to not address matters that are currently under active litigation,” Breasseale continued.

Prior to Breasseale sending this email declining to say whether DOD would try to stop a priest from administering the last rites to a serviceman, a spokesman for the National Security Staff at the White House, had responded to the question, by saying: “We’d refer you to our colleagues at DOD for comment.”

“I’m sorry that the NSS sent you to us, but I suspect they might not have known that we are currently litigating,” said Breasseale. “The Department of Justice handles the litigation for all agencies of the Executive, so my recommendation is that you contact them.”

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Goldberg: ‘It’s Never Wise to Underestimate the Degree to Which Obama Does Things for Spite’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube The National Review’s Jonah Goldberg said it is never wise to underestimate the degree to which President Obama launches partisan attacks out of spite for the GOP Wesdnesday on Special Report.

Goldberg said he believes often President Obama cannot “help himself”…

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Christie: If My Child Was Gay, I’d Advise Against Marriage (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube Gov. Chris Christie says if any of his four children came out as gay, he would hug them, tell them that he loved them — and then tell them he didn’t believe they should be allowed to marry their partner.

The Republican governor of New Jersey was speaking in the second and final gubernatorial debate against his Democratic challenger Barbara Buono on Tuesday night.

When asked what would happen if one of his two sons and two daughters announced they were gay, he replied, “I’d grab them and hug them and tell them I love them.” He said he would then tell them: “Dad believes marriage is between one man and one woman.”

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Obama in Wonderland

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Photo Credit: bigfurhat for American Thinker Many people criticize President Obama for spending too much time campaigning, traveling or on the golf course. They are wrong. He spends too much time in a far more removed and unique place: Wonderland. Indeed, he seemingly lives in Wonderland.

The problem is that the rest of us live in the real world.

Over the last five years it has becoming increasingly clear that Barack Obama and his crew of handpicked officials see America and the rest of the world in ways at variance with reality.

We have heard President Obama say that ObamaCare would not add a dime to the deficit, people would be able to keep their doctors, premiums would not rise — and in many cases would be cheaper than a cell phone bill — all demonstrably false; the rollout of ObamaCare is not going great with some minor “glitches” due to the high demand, it is a train wreck and the demand, such as it is, has been pathetic.

Does he read newspapers or watch the news?

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