45% of Americans Want to Skip Christmas

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Photo Credit: Mike LichtDespite a whittling away of consumer debt that has been underway since the recession, many Americans are still entering the holiday season unprepared to cope with the expenses that crop up around this time of year.

Think Finance, a provider of payday loans and other financial services for consumers with limited or no access to banking services, recently surveyed 1,000 Americans across all income levels who use various forms of alternative financial services — including payday loans, prepaid debit cards and direct deposit advances.

Although many of these consumers are on better financial footing and optimistic about their economic future this year, the holidays are still a source of stress and strain on their precarious finances, Think Finance said in the poll.

Some 45 percent of those polled said the holiday season brings so much financial pressure, they would prefer to skip it altogether. Almost half said their level of stress related to holiday expenses is high or extremely high.

That’s probably because nearly the same amount — some 45 percent — say they do not expect to have enough money set aside to cover holiday expenses.

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Video: Democrat Party Chair Says GOP ‘Got Whiter and More Male’

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photo credit: medill dc(CNSNews.com) – Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz said the Republican Party “got whiter and more male” while the Democratic caucus is “majority minority and female.”

“Take a good look when the House convenes after this next Congress is sworn in at what our side of the aisle looks like versus what the Republican side looks like. I mean they got whiter and more male, and we now have a majority minority and female Democratic caucus – first time in history,” Debbie Wasserman-Schultz said Wednesday at a discussion hosted by the Emily’s List, a group known for supporting pro-abortion female candidates.

She said when women run for office, “Democrats win.”

See video below:

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GOP Senators Plot To Control State Nominating Processes

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photo credit: dbaronRead their lips: no more Todd Akins.

In the wake of the GOP’s Election Day beatdown, influential Republican senators say enough’s enough: Party leaders need to put the kibosh on the kind of savage primaries that yielded candidates like Akin — and crippled Republican prospects of taking the Senate in two straight election cycles.

It’s time, they say, for Washington bosses to be more assertive about recruiting and then defending promising candidates. They argue that it’s critical to start enlisting local conservative activists as allies and to ease the tea party versus Washington dynamic that’s wreaked havoc on the party.

All easier said than done, of course. Tea party types have relished showing the chosen candidates of the Washington establishment a thing or two — and it’s hard to see them laying down arms overnight. But after a sure-bet election in 2012 turned into an electoral disaster, Republicans say resolving their primary problem is, well, their primary problem.

Now, top Republicans are considering splitting the difference between the heavy hand they wielded in 2010 that prompted sharp blowback from the right and their mostly hands-off approach of 2012. Both strategies produced a handful of unelectable candidates, so senators are gravitating toward a middle ground: engage in primaries so long as they can get some cover on the local level.

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California Poverty Rate Highest In Nation Based On New Census Department Figures

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California has a poverty rate of 23.5 percent, the highest of any state in the country, according to figures released this week by the United States Census Bureau.

The only other geographic region with an equivalent poverty rate is the District of Columbia, with 23.2 percent. The second most poverty-stricken state was Florida, at 19.5 percent.

The recognition of California’s shockingly high poverty rate comes as a part of a shift in the way the Census Bureau measures its data. When the government began examining poverty back in the early 1960s, the line for determining who fell underneath the threshold was determined solely by looking at food costs.

In the decades since, there’s been increasing criticism this benchmark, as it doesn’t take into account tax rates and assistance programs such as food stamps, child care expenses and medical costs. In examining its most recent data, the Census Bureau considered these previously ignored factors, deemed the “supplemental poverty measure.”

These new metrics have yielded quite different results than in past years. Under the traditional definition of poverty, for example, California’s rate is 16.3 percent.

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While New Jersey Residents Suffer, Governor Christie Goes on Saturday Night Live

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Tens of thousands of New Jersey residents are without power. Many have lost homes and everything else that they have. Some don’t have enough to eat and others are struggling to stay warm.

This is not the time for a responsible leader to go do his self-promoting shtick on Saturday Night Live. But Christie seems so tone deaf that he puts his self-promotion ahead of anything else.

Yes Giuliani went on Saturday Night Live a few weeks after September 11, but that wasn’t a series of gags, it was a serious tribute to those who died in the attacks. It had very little in common with Christie showing off the same routine that he does every time he’s in the vicinity of a video camera. And at a time when New Jersey residents still need help, why is their Governor spending time on a comedy show cracking jokes about what people have been going through?

We’ve got people from Louisiana and North Carolina coming in to help New Jersey, while Christie hops from one photo op to another. Sandy, like everything else, has turned out to be all about the monumental ego of a big man who wants to be an even bigger man.

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Santa Monica forced to Cancel Christmas After Atheist Protest

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A California town has been forced to axe its Christmas decorations after an atheist protester objected to a 14-piece religious display in the town centre and set up his own booths mocking Christianity and preventing church groups from celebrating the holidays.

Officials in Santa Monica, California have snuffed the city’s holiday tradition this year rather than intervening in the religious fight – prompting churches which have set up a 14-scene Christian diorama every year for decades to sue over freedom of speech violations. Their attorney will ask a federal judge on Monday to allow them to reproduce the depiction of Jesus’ birth, while the city aims to have the case thrown out.

‘It’s a sad, sad commentary on the attitudes of the day that a nearly 60-year-old Christmas tradition is now having to hunt for a home, something like our savior had to hunt for a place to be born because the world was not interested,’ said Hunter Jameson, head of the nonprofit Santa Monica Nativity Scene Committee that is suing.

Missing from the courtroom drama will be Damon Vix and his fellow atheists, who are not parties to the case. Their role outside court highlights a tactical shift as atheists evolve into a vocal minority eager to get their non-beliefs into the public square as never before.

National atheist groups earlier this year took out full-page newspaper ads and hundreds of TV spots in response to Catholic bishops’ activism, around women’s health care issues and are gearing up to battle for their own space alongside public Christmas displays in small towns across America this season.

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Huh? Teamsters Called For Secret-Ballot At Hostess While Pushing To Eliminate Secret-Ballots

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For the last several years, union bosses have been fighting to effectively eliminate workers’ right to vote through secret-ballot elections on whether or not to become unionized. Yet, with 6700 members’ jobs about to be wiped out, when push came to shove last week—knowing how unions can manipulate other methods of voting—the Teamsters called for the bakers’ union to hold a secret-ballot vote to let members determine whether or not to continue the strike that would close Hostess.

After buying a Democrat-controlled Congress in 2006, the union-bought House of Representatives passed the delusionally-dubbed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) on March 1, 2007.

EFCA, which gives unions the ability to do away with secret-ballot elections by replacing the secret ballot with so-called ”card-check,” is union bosses’ end game for slowing their 60-year old slide into oblivion.

Over the last seven years, union bosses have spent billions on buying politicians to enact the union-friendly legislation and make workers’ secret-ballots irrelevant.

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Protestors Rally Against Homosexual ‘Marriage’ in France

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Thousands of Catholics and other opponents of French government plans to legalise gay marriage and same-sex adoption marched in Paris on Sunday, a day after more than 100,000 turned out across France for the cause.

Among the banners being held by demonstrators was a large one reading: “France needs children, not homosexuals.”

The protesters included several young people wearing cassocks, a Christian clerical garment. Others waved the French flag and banners depicting the Christian cross and other emblems.

“Our objective is to wage a real battle to protect the family and child,” Civitas official Alain Escada said.

He claimed gay marriage was “a Pandora’s box” that would let others demand extended marriage rights, including polygamists and incestuous people.

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Untold Story of 2012 Election: GOP Thrives Outside Beltway

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Once again, the collective wisdom among the talking heads on TV, editorial boards across the country and the consultant class on both the right and the left is that the Republican Party is on the ropes and basically needs to become more like the Democratic Party if it wants to survive. One hears this “helpful advice” with some skepticism, as it is a verbatim repeat of the voices of 1964, 1974, 1982, 1986, 1992 and more recently 2008. That history and more importantly, a look at the hard numbers tell a different story.

Republicans made historic gains at the state level in 2010, hitting their historical high watermark with a gain of more than 700 seats and securing control of 61 legislative chambers. A look at what happened last Tuesday shows that while Democrats had a good day at the federal level, Americans just reaffirmed the decision they made two years ago to put a majority of state legislative chambers in Republican control. And despite outrage from folks like Rachel Maddow over the reforms enacted by GOP-controlled legislatures over the past two years, in the same election that Americans reelected Barack Obama, they also issued a vote of confidence in what Republicans have done to put state fiscal houses in order.

Standing in stark contrast to the outcome of the presidential and U.S. Senate races, Republicans strengthened their control of state capitols on Nov. 6. The GOP went into 2012 with unified control of the governor’s mansions and legislatures in 24 states and will come out with full political control of 25 states. Democrats will head into 2013 with a disadvantage at the state level, having total control of just 13 states.

This is significant. While we may expect more of the gridlock in Washington that we’ve have seen over the past two years – evidenced by President Barack Obama’s continued insistence on tax hikes on small businesses and a GOP House majority returning to Capitol Hill with a fresh mandate to continue opposing them — the states, over three-quarters of which are completely controlled by Republicans or Democrats, are unobstructed from moving in whichever direction the party in power chooses.

In these single party states, we will get to see each party test its product and observe the results. Californians just voted for a $7 billion annual tax hike and awarded Democrats a supermajority of the Legislature, giving them free reign to pass further tax increases on energy, soda, plastic bags and a host of other new levies that they have long wanted to impose but couldn’t. The fact that California has a two-thirds vote requirement to raise taxes and that the GOP had over a third of the seats in that Legislature was the only thing preventing the tax floodgates from opening in Sacramento. That check is no longer there.

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Outrage: Homeland Security Promotes Welfare to Ineligible Immigrants in Government ‘Welcome’ Materials

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photo credit: jim.greenhillAsk not what you can do for your country, but what your new country can do for you.

“Welcome to USA.gov,” a website maintained by the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), bills itself as the “primary gateway for new immigrants to find basic information on how to settle in the United States” — featuring a prominent section for new immigrants about how to access government benefits.

“Depending on your immigration status, length of time in the United States, and income, you may be eligible for some federal benefit programs,” the Web page reads.

“Government assistance programs can be critically important to the well-being of some immigrants and their families. Frequently, however, there is a lack of information about how to access such benefits. Benefit programs can be complicated and you may be given misleading information about how they operate.”

The DHS page offers links to government websites that explain how to access benefits including food stamps, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Medicaid, Medicare, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and the “official website with information on all available federal benefit programs,” with a nonworking link to Benefits.gov.

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