The Committee launched this investigation to seek answers to some persistent questions about the Chinese telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE and their ties to the Chinese government. Throughout the months-long investigation, both Huawei and ZTE sought to describe, in different terms, why neither company is a threat to U.S. national-security interests. Unfortunately, neither ZTE nor Huawei have cooperated fully with the investigation, and both companies have failed to provide documents or other evidence that would substantiate their claims or lend support for their narratives. Huawei, in particular, provided evasive, nonresponsive, or incomplete answers to questions at the heart of the security issues posed. The failure of these companies to provide responsive answers about their relationships with and support by the Chinese government provides further doubt as to their ability to abide by international rules.

This un-politically correct WW2 cartoon book was presented to US soldiers in an easy-to-understand style to teach them valuable information about the very alien enemy Japanese: their ruses, deception tactics, tricks, psychology, antipersonnel measures, and commitment to winning war at any cost. The original was part of a special series distributed this un-politically correct WW2 cartoon book was presented to US soldiers in an easy-to-understand style to teach them valuable information about the very alien enemy Japanese: their ruses, deception tactics, tricks, psychology, antipersonnel measures, and commitment to winning war at any cost. The original was part of a special series distributed to and prepared especially for the individual combat soldier. The tips in the guide were based on “reasonably confirmed information” about the Japanese and their tactics obtained up to July 1945.
The Punch Below the Belt, using common language, real photographs, and cartoons; Japanese ruses, deception tactics, ambushes, snipers, camouflage and dummy installations, antipersonnel mines, and booby traps are explained and comically rendered in order to save US soldiers’ lives in the Pacific Theater in WW2.
The ruses, deception tactics and antipersonnel measures depicted in this e-book have not gone out of style. Some of those same tactics used by the Japanese in WW2 are being used by the muslims in the Middle East today.
QuikManeuvers.com thinks such documents are useful as an example for modern soldiers, even if current western politically correct governments would never dream of issuing such a life-saving cartoon guide today.

Might growth be ending? This is a heretical question. Yet an expert on productivity, Robert Gordon of Northwestern university, has raised it in a provocative paper. In this, he challenges the conventional view of economists that “economic growth . . . will continue indefinitely.”
… What does this analysis tell us? First, the U.S. remains the global productivity frontier. If the rate of advance of the frontier has slowed, catch-up should now be easier. Second, catch-up could still drive global growth at a high rate for a long time (resources permitting). After all, the average GDP per head of developing countries is still only a seventh of that of the U.S. (at PPP). Third, growth is not just a product of incentives. It depends even more on opportunities. Rapid increases in productivity at the frontier are possible only if the right innovations occur. Transport and energy technologies have barely changed in half a century. Lower taxes are not going to change this.
Prof. Gordon notes further obstacles to rising standards of living for ordinary Americans. These include: the reversal of the demographic dividend that came from the baby boomers and movement of women into the labour force; the levelling-off of educational attainment; and obstacles to the living standards of the bottom 99 per cent. These hurdles include globalization, rising resource costs and high fiscal deficits and private debts. In brief, he expects the rise in the real disposable incomes of those outside the elite to slow to a crawl. Indeed, it appears to have already done so. Similar developments are occurrring in other high-income countries.
For almost two centuries, today’s high-income countries enjoyed waves of innovation that made them both far more prosperous than before and far more powerful than everybody else. This was the world of the American dream and American exceptionalism. Now innovation is slow and economic catch-up fast. The elites of the high-income countries quite like this new world. The rest of their population like it vastly less. Get used to this. It will not change.

More than a trillion dollars in cash and short-term investments sits in offshore holding companies, awaiting a repatriation tax holiday. In the meantime, tax professionals spin out ways to manipulate the system.
The tax code provides multinationals based in the United States with many incentives to shift income to foreign low-tax jurisdictions. In theory, American corporations are taxed at 35 percent on their worldwide income. But income earned by an active controlled foreign corporation is not usually taxed until the cash is repatriated to the parent company in the United States as a dividend.
From a policy perspective, the problem is not so much that tax on foreign income is deferred, but rather that United States income is being masqueraded as foreign income.
Many multinationals use transfer pricing to minimize their global tax rate. After transferring intellectual property to low-tax jurisdictions like Puerto Rico, Ireland and Singapore, companies manipulate licensing and cost-sharing arrangements to avoid or reduce United States taxes. Cash from global operations is then parked offshore until the tax professionals can figure out how to get it home tax-free.

In general, we spend about $80 billion a year. About 85 percent of that money goes to technologies, like satellites and drones. …
We’ve thrown $80 billion at the problem of trying to understand the world. The British, for instance, spend $1.6 billion on the same problem. No country has ever spent so much money trying to make sure that the president and others in the government know what is going on. We do a fairly good job of that. But you could spend twice or three times that amount and still not know exactly what is going to happen tomorrow.

Standing in a nondescript conference room in a convention hotel in East Brunswick, N.J., James T. Fitzgerald does what he has been doing for the last 25 years: pitching the Central Intelligence Agency to aspiring recruits.
“It’s not like the James Bond movies,” he explains to 28 men and a woman, college graduates invited to the orientation on the basis of their resumes. “The more you learn about the C.I.A., the more you read about it, the more unromantic it becomes.”
For an hour, Mr. Fitzgerald works with the group but never uses the words “Soviet,” “enemy” or “covert,” or even “espionage.” Rather, he tells his audience that the mission of the agency is now so diverse it “could probably staff a small university.”
Like a secret agent who carries an invented history and clean passport to a new post, the C.I.A. is struggling to create a new, post-cold-war identity. If Robert M. Gates, the Director of Central Intelligence, could have his way, the spy agency would shed its popular image as a hotbed of operators who conduct covert actions around the world, or seduce foreigners into committing treason in the interests of America’s national security.
A child of the cold war nurtured on an us-versus-them mentality, the C.I.A. is longing to be accepted as a benign arm of the government bureaucracy, the place to come for cutting-edge information on everything from the effects of the AIDS epidemic on the emerging leadership of Africa to the possibilities of war in the Middle East over water resources.

This point must be stressed: economic competition is not a threat to national security; it is the preconditionof economic development. Instead of focusing its attention on other democracies and their commercialenterprises, the intelligence community would be better advised to monitor nondemocratic, aggressivelyexpansionist governments and movements–notably those of religious fundamentalism and nationalexclusiveness–that are now sweeping much of the globe. In their intolerance and willingness to resort toviolence, such movements are the heirs of earlier totalitarian regimes, which we fought so hard and solong to defeat. Watching those forces for the emergence of threats to U.S. security is the proper mission ofthe CIA, not spying on economic activities taking place in a capitalist global marketplace.

Whether they are a small startup information-technology company considering what to tell potential strategic partners or the U.S. government deciding what military intelligence information to share with allies and potential coalition partners, every organization faces the enormous challenges of finding their sharing and security balance.

There is an ongoing three way debate between those who believe the Fed should do more to strengthen the recovery, those who believe that the recovery is strong enough to continue on its own, and those who believe that the economy has been so fundamentally altered by the recession that no amount of stimulus can succeed in pushing unemployment down to pre-crash levels. As usual, they all have it wrong (although some are more wrong than others).
The false conclusions are being made by the likes of bond king Bill Gross, who has suggested that the economic fundamentals have changed. They argue that a “new normal” is now in place that sets an 8% unemployment rate as a floor below which we will never fall. This is absurd. America can once again prosper if we put our trust in first principles and let the free markets work. Unfortunately, that is not happening.

I am the Inspector General of Social Security …
Our special agents analyze fraud allegations that we receive from you, the public, and other places, and then we investigate in search of the truth. Sometimes we find that neighbor should never have gotten disability benefits in the first place—but sometimes we find he, in fact, has an illness that may not be visible, but that prevents him from holding down a job.
In essence, our office—like every other Federal agency’s Office of the Inspector General—is the police officer on the corner of the intersection where Federal programs and taxpayer money—your money—meet. We are working to improve programs that benefit you, and to prevent fraud that costs you money.

1. Middle class focuses on saving…
    World class focuses on earning
2. Middle class thinks about money in linear terms…
    World class thinks about money in non-linear terms
3. Middle class believes hard work creates wealth…
    World class believes leverage creates wealth
4. Middle class believes money is the root of all evil…
    World class believes poverty is the root of all evil
…
100. Middle class only focuses on money when they need it…
         World class focuses on money all the time

According to the U.S. Treasury, the U.S. holds about 260 million ounces of gold reserves. At $1,655 an ounce, that’s roughly $430 billion of gold. Our money supply, including cash in circulation and bank deposits, is six times that size—more than $2.6 trillion. For those two numbers to match, the price of gold would have to rise to about $10,000 an ounce, says John Makin, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute. The U.S. would also have to go on a massive gold-buying spree, raising the price significantly. Assuming it couldn’t get the price to $10,000 an ounce, the Fed would have to make up the difference by shrinking its balance sheet and tightening up the money supply by raising rates. The risk of deflation would be significant at that point.

Current discourse on Japan is plagued with diction on “crises,” “challenges,” and “indecision.” While these words may suggest a nation in decline, we do not believe that is a foregone conclusion. It is our view that Japan is at a critical juncture. Japan has the power to decide between complacency and leadership at a time of strategic importance. With the dynamic changes taking place throughout the Asia-Pacific region, Japan will likely never have the same opportunity to help guide the fate of the region. In choosing leadership, Japan can secure her status as a tier-one nation and her necessary role as an equal partner in the alliance.
In a new roles and missions review, Japan should expand the scope of her responsibilities to include the defense of Japan and defense with the United States in regional contingencies. The allies require more robust, shared, and interoperable ISR capabilities and operations that extend well beyond Japanese territory. It would be a responsible authorization on the part of Japan to allow U.S. forces and JSDF to respond in full cooperation throughout the security spectrum of peacetime, tension, crisis, and war.

Let it be known by all that you’re an honest and trustworthy Las Vegas Traveling companion.

I promise to follow the code of Las Vegas by not tweeting, tagging, posting, telling, whispering, emoting, defining, drawing up, writing about or in any way revealing the all-powerful What Happens Here, Stays Here® moment of me or anyone else in my party to others not on said trip during or at any time after said trip’s duration – i.e.: The moment being the part or parts of the trip that should stay in Las Vegas. The other parts are fine …     So sayeth this person.

America has some of the highest labor costs in the world, and saddles workers and businesses with $1 trillion per year in job-destroying payroll taxes. We need a national sales tax — a consumption tax, like the dreaded but efficient value-added tax …
Thirty years of Republican apostasy — a once grand party’s embrace of the welfare state, the warfare state and the Wall Street-coddling bailout state — have crippled the engines of capitalism and buried us in debt. Mr. Ryan’s sonorous campaign rhetoric about shrinking Big Government and giving tax cuts to “job creators” (read: the top 2 percent) will do nothing to reverse the nation’s economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse.

The credit rating agencies are taking advantage of the country’s financial problems to increase their own political power. They want to ensure that regulators do not reduce their autonomy and influence.
Their strategy is brilliant. They are not piling on all at once by downgrading the United States in concert. Standard & Poor’s is the bad cop for now, taking the first swipe at the United States last Friday, and seeing its influence confirmed by the stock market’s dramatic reaction. Moody’s and Fitch are playing the good cop — exercising restraint about a potential downgrade, yet still flexing their muscles by criticizing the government both publicly and behind the scenes.

US President Barack Obama has signed a secret order allowing the CIA and other American agencies to support rebels seeking to overthrow the Assad regime, a US government source told Reuters.
Obama reportedly gave the order, known as an intelligence “finding”, earlier this year. The presidential finding also provides for US collaboration with a secret command center operated by Turkey and its allies.
The full extent of the assistance the “finding” allows the CIA to give the Syrian rebels is unclear. It is also unknown precisely when Obama signed the order.

President Obama’s own work in 1983 for Business International Corporation, a CIA front that conducted seminars with the world’s most powerful leaders and used journalists as agents abroad, dovetails with CIA espionage activities conducted by his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham in 1960s post-coup Indonesia on behalf of a number of CIA front operations, including the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Ford Foundation. Dunham met and married Lolo Soetoro, Obama’s stepfather, at the East-West Center in 1965. Soetoro was recalled to Indonesia in 1965 to serve as a senior army officer and assist General Suharto and the CIA in the bloody overthrow of President Sukarno.

Das von den Medien konstruierte Bild ist einfach, um nicht zu sagen: banal. Assad ist ein Diktator. Demzufolge sind seine Gegner die „Guten“.
Als Sprecherin der syrischen Opposition taucht regelmäßig der Name Bassma Kodmani auf. Wer ist diese Frau? Gehört sie den Opfern des Assad-Regimes an, die nun ihr Leben für Land und Freiheit einsetzt?
Sie war gerade 10 Jahre alt. Schon im Jahre 2008 zählte sie zu den Gästen beim Bilderberg-Treffen, damals noch als Französin. Sie repräsentierte die sogenannte „Arab Reform Initiative“, eine vom Westen gesteuerte Vereinigung verschiedener arabischer „Forschungsinstitute“. Beim 2012-Treffen wurde als Nationalität dann „international“ angegeben und eingeladen wurde sie in ihrer Funktion als „Vorstand der Auslandsorganisation des Syrischen Nationalrats“.
Ungeachtet der dort erfolgten Absprachen, wenn Kodmani als Sprecherin der syrischen Rebellen zitiert wird, sollte es eigentlich der journalistischen Sorgfalt entsprechen, Recherchen bezüglich ihres Umfeldes durchzuführen.
Im Jahr 2005 gehörte Kodmani der „Ford Foundation“ an. Auch die bereits zitierte „Arab Reform Initiative“ erfreut sich namhafter Unterstützer. Gegründet wurde dieser Dachverband nämlich vom US-amerikanischen Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), einem überaus einflussreichen Think Tank, dem praktisch alle großen Konzerne, von ABC-News über Coca Cola, Merck und Google bis zu Goldman Sachs und Deutsche Bank als Mitglieder ebenso angehören wie amerikanische Spitzenpolitiker. …
Wenn eine Frau, die sich derartiger Verbindungen erfreut, nach Interventionen durch westliche Militärs in Syrien verlangt, so kann dies wohl kaum als „die Stimme des Volkes“ gewertet werden.

London’s Olympic Games, praised around the globe for great sport and brilliant organisation, were smeared on Wednesday by the world’s most infamous dealer in sporting drugs.
Victor Conte, jailed in the United States for his role in supplying athletes such as Dwain Chambers and Marion Jones with so-called designer drugs, told The Times that six out of 10 athletes at the Games are taking banned substances.

The scam goes deeper. The big crooks are World Media Group, LLC. But, you say, “World Media Group” is a big respected ISP. That’s World Media Group, Inc.! Totally different. World Media Group, LLC is an ISP that creates fictitious clients who do nasty things. “Not our bad…stupid clients”, is their constant refrain. Nearly every WMG, LLC hosted domain is a scam. You know those fake prize announcement spams? That’s them. … They maintain a store front ISP biz to look good, but no one has ever been happy with that service, as it’s just a cover and they try to rip people off that way too. The guy to put the heat on (and refer to these emails below- make a FBI complaint too- it worked!) is: Gary Millin.

After remaining stable during most of the postwar period, top wealth shares recently have trended upward in the United States. The average net worth–wealth minus debt–of the top 1% wealth class grew by 78% from 1983 to 2004, while for the middle 20% net worth grew by 27%. Financial development is related to wealth accumulation at the top. Non-residential assets are relatively unimportant for the median wealth bracket (24% of net worth), but for the top 1% they constitute 91% of net worth. Hence the recent decline in housing prices is shrinking the wealth owned by the median household. The top 1% owns 42% of net financial assets; the bottom 90 % owns 19 %. The income derived from owning financial assets–especially equities– has risen in recent year. Corporate payouts are up, as are opportunities for capital gains. (A dollar invested in an S&P index fund in 1980 would be worth $1500 today.) In 2004, the top 10% accounted for 61% of all unrealized capital gains. To the extent that the wealthy get better (including inside) information and realize larger financial returns than the less wealthy, their share of finance-derived income will be greater than their share of financial wealth. …
U.S. institutional investors in 1960 owned 12% of U.S. equities; by1990 they owned 45% and the share rose to 61% in 2005. Institutions today own 68% of the 1000 largest U.S. public corporations. Although institutional holdings rose over a long period, it was in the 1980s that institutions first began to flex their muscles as shareholder activists. Because institutional investors rarely own more than 1% of a company, they can and do press companies to pursue riskier business strategies such as heavy debt, the payment of which requires stringent cost-cutting. Indeed, institutional activism is associated with asset divestitures and with layoffs. This does not mean that institutions push firms to the edge of bankruptcy, but even a bankruptcy now and then would not do major damage to their portfolios.

Barbarians at the Gate has been called one of the most influential business books of all time — the definitive account of the largest takeover in Wall Street history. Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s gripping account of the frenzy that overtook Wall Street in October and November of 1988 is the story of deal makers and publicity flaks, of strategy meetings and society dinners, of boardrooms and bedrooms — giving us not only a detailed look at how financial operations at the highest levels are conducted but also a richly textured social history of wealth at the twilight of the Reagan era.

We are well underway toward recognition that property used in production must conform to conceptions of civilization worked out through democratic processes of American constitutional government. Few American enterprises, and no large corporations, can take the view that their plants, tools and organizations are their own, and that they can do what they please with their own. There is increasing recognition of the fact that collective operations, and those predominantly conducted by large corporations, are like operations carried on by the state itself. Corporations are essentially political constructs. Their perpetual life, their capacity to accumulate tens of billions of assets, and to draw profit from their production and their sales, has made them part of the service of supply of the United States. Informally they are an adjunct of the state itself. The “active”— that is, productive —property of an organization increasingly is prevented from invading personality and freedom, from discriminating in employment and service against categories of men, in recklessly using their market control.
Passive property— notably, stock— increasingly loses its “capital” function. It becomes primarily a method for distributing liquid wealth and a channel for distributing income whose accumulation for capital purposes is not required. The corporation may, and indeed is expected to, retain earnings for the maintenance and enlargement of its capital plant and operations. The stockholder’s right to spend the income from or use the liquid value of his shares as he pleases is guarded as a defense of his right to order his own life.

There is in front of you young people today the promise of a greater tomorrow. It is a tomorrow that is brighter than yesterday, and it is a tomorrow that is more challenging than today. This is not a time for timid souls and trembling spirits. We have it within our power to find the best solutions to the worst of problems, and we intend to do just that.
So let your young hearts armed with new weapons join in an old battle against ancient enemies–the enemies of poverty, disease, illiteracy, strife, and bigotry.
And with your courage and with your compassion and your desire, we will build the Great Society. It is a Society where no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled. Where no man who wants work will fail to find it. Where no citizen will be barred from any door because of his birthplace or his color or his church. Where peace and security is common among neighbors and possible among nations.

… a funny thing happened on the way to the predicted fiscal crisis: instead of soaring, U.S. borrowing costs have fallen to their lowest level in the nation’s history. And it’s not just America. At this point, every advanced country that borrows in its own currency is able to borrow very cheaply. …
So what is going on? The main answer is that this is what happens when you have a “deleveraging shock,” in which everyone is trying to pay down debt at the same time. Household borrowing has plunged; businesses are sitting on cash because there’s no reason to expand capacity when the sales aren’t there; and the result is that investors are all dressed up with nowhere to go, or rather no place to put their money. So they’re buying government debt, even at very low returns, for lack of alternatives. Moreover, by making money available so cheaply, they are in effect begging governments to issue more debt.

7月28日、TBSテレビ（中国放送）の「報道特集」で、「知られざる『放射線影響研究所』の実態を初取材」という番組が放映されました。その内容は、

• 「放影研の調査は決して被爆者のためではありませんでした」
• 「福島の人々の不安に応えられない放影研。その原因は、放影研のデータに決定的に欠落した部分があるからです」
• 「内部被曝のデータが欠落した放影研にリスクが解明できるのか疑問です」

など、事実に反するもでした。

With four months to go until Election Day, President Obama’s well-funded campaign on the airwaves is focusing on two broad themes: that he is a fighter for the middle class who needs more time to finish the job, and that Republican rival Mitt Romney is obsessed with corporate profits to the point of being borderline unpatriotic. …
The Obama campaign’s attack on Mr. Romney’s record in the private sector is aided by the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA, which is run by two former Obama White House staffers, Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney. From April 10 through June 28, 100 percent of the ads sponsored by Priorities USA mentioned Bain Capital by name, according to a study by Kantar Media’s campaign media analysis group. …
The campaign spent $12 million on TV ads in a single week last month, after a $25 million, monthlong ad buy that ended in early June. The Obama team has purchased $6.5 million worth of airtime for TV ads during the Olympic Games in London, which begin July 27.

“Take the ‘D’ Train” to be insulted by an American woman.

Companies are investing large amounts of money in programs to increase diversity, especially in upper management—not to be altruistic but because it is more financially successful. They actually tell you that in leadership programs.

It’s no secret that the U.S. housing market has seen better days. From falling home values and impaired labor mobility to backed-up inventories and a flood of foreclosures, the real-estate downturn has affected the economy at large in countless ways.
One of the unfortunate results of a bad housing market are empty homes. Vacant properties have increased by 43.8 percent nationwide since 2000, according to the Census Bureau. Homes can be vacant for many reasons, but are defined by the bureau as both unoccupied rental inventory as well as homes that are unoccupied and “for sale.” As of 2011, there were about 14.3 million year-round vacant housing units in the country, with a 10.6 percent gross vacancy rate that excludes seasonal vacancies such as vacation homes.

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes.
—
The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer… form the great body of the people of the United States, they are the bone and sinew of the country men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws.

An elaborate and illegal camouflaged residence, outfitted with bunk beds and a barbecue patio, has been discovered near a Los Angeles County animal refuge.
The structure, which Robert Downs built with materials he bought at Home Depot, contained four bunk beds built into the walls, tables, shelves and fire extinguishers. Outside were a rock patio, a barbecue grill and more tables.

Since the late 1990s, American landscapes have become dotted with a small forest of shale gas wells — 13,000 new ones a year, or about 35 a day, according to the American Petroleum Institute. In the past decade, this steady stream of development has become a gusher as nearly half the country has staked claim to these energy riches. In 2000, the USA had 342,000 natural gas wells. By 2010, more than 510,000 were in place — a 49% jump — according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Hearing his 5-year-old daughter crying from behind a barn, a father ran and discovered the unthinkable: a man molesting her. The father pulled the man off his daughter, authorities say, and started pummeling him to death with his fists.
With his daughter finally safe, the father frantically called 911, begging a dispatcher to find his rural ranch and send an ambulance.
“Come on! This guy is going to die on me!” the man is heard screaming on the 911 call. “I don’t know what to do!”
The father was never arrested, but the killing was investigated as a homicide.
Philip Hilder, a Houston criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, said he would have been surprised if the grand jury had decided to indict the father. Hilder said Texas law provides several justifications for the use of deadly force, including if someone commits a sexual assault.
“The grand jury was not about to indict this father for protecting his daughter,” he said.

Studies by two research arms of Congress reveal how much the cost depends on the timing for withdrawal. In October, the Congressional Research Service estimated that in 2006 (the latest available figures), it cost $390,000 a year to sustain each American trooper overseas. Clearly, delaying withdrawals would quickly run the tab up.
That report was followed in January by one from the Congressional Budget Office estimating how much the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts would cost from 2010 through 2019 under two assumptions. In one, the number of troops deployed in the two countries draws down fairly quickly, to about 30,000 by 2011. In the other, levels drop to 75,000 by 2013. Both cases represent a huge reduction from the roughly 180,000 troops there now. But the difference in the cost is breathtaking: the office estimates that Congress would have to appropriate $388 billion for the case of a quick withdrawal and more than double, $867 billion, for the slower one.
Because of the huge range of possible costs, and because the logistics of withdrawal are complicated and expensive, the basic elements of that estimate are still unresolved.

An economic blooming often is due as much to an outburst of confidence and optimism with the end of hostilities as to any particular element of industrial or economic rearrangement.
For example, part of the revival after World War II can be attributed to a change in the psychology of private investors; their distrust of New Deal policies began to melt as President Roosevelt drew on wealthy businessmen to run his war effort, and then President Truman signaled that he was warmer to free-market policies than the administration of the late 1930s had been.
It’s more complicated than the war got us out of the Depression, the way most people think it did.

Four points to help us determine the cost of war (i.e., its real effects on the economy):

1. the state of the economy prior to the onset of war,
2. the location of the war,
3. the extent of the mobilization, i.e., manpower and weapons, and
4. the duration of the war, the cost, and how the war is financed.

Simple confidence was again a factor in the economic expansion in the decade after the end of the cold war.
Technological contributions to the economy like the Internet, which was developed by cold war researchers, certainly helped the expansion. But something less definable — an overall sense that history had taken a turn for the better — was at least as powerful.
When you take away the threat of nuclear annihilation that helps things.

Japan Evangelical Association （JEA、日本福音同盟）は、1968年に創設された、聖書信仰に立つ福音的諸教会の交流・協力機関。１億２千数百万の日本人に福音が届くことを祈り、教団、教派、諸教会の主体性を尊重しつつ、国内外での宣教のための環境整備をするように努めている。インターネット倫理、教会学校の生徒の減少、献身者の減少傾向、高齢化の問題など、教会が直面している諸課題について検討し、教会の取り組みを助ける。

World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice.

I also look at that part of the world as of vital interest to the United States for the next hundred years it’s going to be the world’s supply of oil. We’ve got a lot of friends in the region. We’re always going to have to be involved there. Maybe it’s part of our national character, you know we like to have these problems nice and neatly wrapped up, put a ribbon around it. You deploy a force, you win the war and the problem goes away and it doesn’t work that way in the Middle East it never has and isn’t likely to in my lifetime.

I don’t want people in this firm to think that they have accomplished as much for themselves as they can and go on vacation. As the guardian of the interests of the shareholders and, by the way, for the purposes of society, I’d like them to continue to do what they are doing. I don’t want to put a cap on their ambition. It’s hard for me to argue for a cap on their compensation.

In a discussion about morality and markets at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Goldman Sachs International vice chairman Brian Griffiths, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, described giant paychecks for bankers as an economic necessity. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” he said.

• Drinking the Kool-Aid: A tasteless reference to the Jonestown Massacre of 1978, this expression means to blindly accept something, such as a company’s mission statement. … Coming up with tactless expressions for it is horrendous.
• Leverage: ‘Leverage’ is mercilessly used to describe how a situation or environment can be manipulated or controlled. Leverage should remain a noun, as in “to apply leverage,” not as a pseudo-verb, as in “we are leveraging our assets.”
• Empower: What someone above your pay grade does when, apparently, they would like you to do a job of some importance. It suggests that ‘You can do a little bit of this, but I’m still in charge here.: I am empowering you’”
• It is What it Is: Thanks. Idiot.
• Open the Kimono: Some people use this instead of ‘revealing information.’ It’s kind of creepy,
• Giving 110%: The nice thing about effort, in terms of measuring it, is that the most you can give is everything, and everything equals 100%. You can’t give more than that.
• Lots of Moving Parts: Pinball machines have lots of moving parts. Many of them buzz and clank and induce migraine headaches.
• Reach Out: Jargon for “let’s set up a meeting” or “let’s contact this person.” Just say that—and … please don’t reach out unless clearly invited.

AirSea Battle and its most recent manifestation, the Joint Operating Access Concept, are controversial. Some critics see it as an attempt by the navy and the air force, after a decade of relative neglect, to grab the lion’s share of a shrinking defence budget—already being trimmed by about $480 billion over the next ten years.
Others fear that although the concept does not mention China by name, it is the only opponent with the range of capabilities the new thinking is designed to counter. And whereas the 1980s predecessor of AirSea Battle, AirLand Battle, was intended to meet the real threat of a thrust by Soviet forces into Western Europe, the threat from China to America and its regional allies is harder to define. … To some, it’s becoming the Holy Grail but it’s neither a doctrine nor a scenario. Worst of all, AirSea Battle is demonising China. That’s not in anybody’s interest.

The Air-Sea Battle Concept centers on networked, integrated, attack-in-depth to disrupt, destroy and defeat (NIA-D3) A2/AD threats. This approach exploits and improves upon the advantage U.S. forces have across the air, maritime, land, space and cyberspace domains, and is essential to defeat increasingly capable intelligence gathering systems and sophisticated weapons systems used by adversaries employing A2/AD systems. Offensive and defensive tasks in Air-Sea Battle are tightly coordinated in real time by networks able to command and control air and naval forces in a contested environment. The air and naval forces are organized by mission and networked to conduct integrated operations across all domains. … Regardless of anticipated advancements in A2/AD threats, implementation of the Air-Sea Battle Concept will ensure the U.S. can gain access and project power in defense of U.S. interests and those of our allies and partners.

We are living in perilous times: the Great Recession and continued economic stagnation; radical inequality that is destroying the middle class; and a political system so broken that the vast majority of Americans have lost basic trust in government. These problems are on the scale of those faced by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. To combat today’s ills, we need the vision and courage of leaders who, like the Roosevelts, are able to see a better future and bring together the ideas and people necessary to fight for a common good.
The Roosevelt Institute is crafting a New Deal for the 21st century. Three pillars underpin this mission: developing and promoting compelling new ideas and bold long-term visions, developing the next generation of progressive leaders, and grounding today’s policy solutions in an accurate historical understanding of the Roosevelt legacy. Our goals are to promote economic growth now and in the future; push for more equitable distribution of wealth; and foster a political system that celebrates both the role of government and the role of citizens.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

I am surprised you felt it was appropriate to publish Roberto Loiederman’s April 28 column　“Curse of the unpaid prostitute.” His suggestion that it is normal and expected for merchant seamen and Secret Service agents to hire prostitutes is outdated. I am not suggesting that it doesn’t happen, but attitudes and laws are different than they were when he served more than 40 years ago.
Because the U.S. military combats human trafficking, the establishment of a zero-tolerance policy with respect to solicitation of prostitution by U.S. military personnel was taken on Oct. 14, 2005. President George W. Bush signed Executive Order 13387, which amends the Manual for Courts-Martial to specify “patronizing a prostitute” as a violation of Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Please note, this was seven years ago. Even if military personnel are stationed somewhere that prostitution is legal, it is not legal for them!
The military is held to a higher standard than it was 40 years ago. It is no longer a culture of heavy drinking and a woman in every port. The Secret Service has an even higher standard and U.S. and world security are at stake.

In a country where the U.S. military lives by the motto “ready to fight tonight,” the families of servicemembers in South Korea are asked always to be prepared to take flight at very short notice.
It is one of the realities of living in the shadow of North Korea, a country with a history of provocations and unpredictable behavior.
There are 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, along with more than 100,000 other American citizens.
Kim said that in planning for a possible evacuation, “We really don’t know who we’d have to evacuate … (but) our planning figure is 220,000.”

I want to make this place so unpleasant that they won’t even think about doing something that could bring them back.

But we can’t let this continue.

I’m the elected sheriff, … I serve the people. I don’t serve the mayor. I don’t serve some politicians.

To many Russian and Ukrainian immigrants, the cornucopia in the shops along Brighton Beach Avenue — pyramids of oranges, heaps of Kirby cucumbers, bushels of tomatoes with their vines still attached and a variety of fish, sausages and pastries — seems like an exuberant rebuke of the meager produce that was available to them when they lived in the Soviet Union.
This contrast helps explain a striking political anomaly: immigrants from the former Soviet Union are far more apt to vote for Republicans than are most New Yorkers, who often drink in Democratic Party allegiance with their mothers’ milk and are four times as likely to register as Democrats than as Republicans.

The boardwalk in Brighton Beach, one of several Brooklyn enclaves with large numbers of immigrants who speak Russian.

During the American Revolution, the active forces in the field against the King’s tyranny never amounted to more than 3% of the colonists. They were in turn actively supported by perhaps 10% of the population. In addition to these revolutionaries were perhaps another 20% who favored their cause but did little or nothing to support it. Another one-third of the population sided with the King (by the end of the war there were actually more Americans fighting FOR the King than there were in the field against him) and the final third took no side, blew with the wind and took what came.

Yes, Wall Street will crash. Has to. They’re gambling addicts. Dodged the bullet in 2008. But learned nothing. Now killing reforms. Teamed up with the Super Rich, CEOs, lobbyists, and crony politicians. It’s only a matter of time.
Yes, they’ll crash, again. No matter how anemic the recovery. No matter how much more debt they pile on taxpayers. No matter who’s president. Crash.

Time and time again, the Army’s unmanned aircraft systems know how to make a good impression.
From the Soldier operator on console to the commander in the field, one display of the capabilities of an unmanned aircraft system as it performs reconnaissance or surveillance for an advancing unit or for an Army helicopter is enough to convince users of its value on the battlefield.

I wonder how many members of the U.S. Congress have heard of Adam Montoya. In 2009, Montoya was sentenced to a prison term for counterfeiting commercial checks and credit cards. Shortly after arriving at the Pekin, Illinois, federal penitentiary, Montoya began complaining of abdominal pain. For nine days, he pleaded with his guards to take him to the doctor; they refused and instead gave him Tylenol. On the evening of Nov. 12, 2009, Montoya reported having trouble breathing; a prison staffer promised to get him help the next day. But next morning, Montoya was found dead in his cell.
The Montoya case is unlikely to reach Capitol Hill. Our lawmakers have no interest in the death of an “ordinary” victim of the U.S. criminal justice system; they prefer instead high-profile cases in distant countries.

I had to catch a train in Washington last week. The paved street in the traffic circle around Union Station was in such poor condition that I felt as though I was on a roller coaster. I traveled on the Amtrak Acela, our sorry excuse for a fast train, on which I had so many dropped calls on my cellphone that you’d have thought I was on a remote desert island, not traveling from Washington to New York City. When I got back to Union Station, the escalator in the parking garage was broken. Maybe you’ve gotten used to all this and have stopped noticing. I haven’t. Our country needs a renewal.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher. CFR members, including Brian Williams, Fareed Zakaria, Angelina Jolie, Chuck Hagel, and Erin Burnett, explain why the Council on Foreign Relations is an indispensable resource in a complex world.

… a Dallas-area volleyball coach and science teacher was fired by the Christian school at which she worked for becoming pregnant before being married.

Chile is commonly portrayed as the great exception to Latin America’s long and difficult struggle to overcome economic backwardness and instability. In 1982, conservative economist Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago pronounced the market-driven policies of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship “an economic miracle.” Friedman was hardly an impartial observer. He and other Chicago economists had trained many of the dictatorship’s ultra-free-market economic advisors, a group of Chilean economists who became known as the “Chicago Boys.” Other prominent U.S. economists, however, also tout Chile’s “economic miracle.” In 2000, Harvard economist Robert Barro asserted in Business Week that Chile’s “outstanding performance derived from the free-market reforms instituted by … Pinochet.” Even Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, a strong critic of the Chicago School, described Chile in his 2002 book Globalization and its Discontents as an exception to the failure of unregulated free markets and free trade policies in developing nations. Neoliberalism, a term first employed in Latin America, describes the experiment in unregulated capitalism that the Pinochet dictatorship embraced in the years following the 1973 coup that toppled the elected government of Socialist President Salvador Allende. Chile has seen three elected governments since Pinochet’s fall in 1990. None, however, including the present Socialist-led government, has broken sharply with the neoliberal economic model instituted by the dictatorship. For years, these post-Pinochet Concertación governments (a coalition of the Christian Democratic and Socialist parties) were content to administer the economic boom that had begun in the latter years of the dictatorship.

It’s been a bad year for the University of Chicago Economics Department. And I’m not just talking about Alan Greenspan’s remark to Congress that he “made a mistake” about the ability of markets to self-regulate themselves. I’m talking hard, cold, quantifiable facts: Neither themost recent Nobel prize for economics nor the John Bates Clark award given to the best economist under the age of forty went to a card-carrying member of the “Chicago School.”

For any other economics department, missing out on the big prizes wouldn’t be such a big deal. You can’t win ‘em all, you know; any economist knows that down to the marrow of his or her rationally-expecting bones. And the John Bates Clark award, up until this year, was only given out every other year, which makes one’s chances of grabbing one even tougher. Still, for the University of Chicago, these awards have practically become a birthright. No other econ department has racked up nearly so many.

Ever since Milton Friedman, George Stigler, and others founded the Chicago School, in the nineteen-forties and fifties, one of its goals has been to displace Keynesianism, and it had largely succeeded. In the areas of regulation, trade, anti-trust laws, taxes, interest rates, and welfare, Chicago thinking greatly influenced policymaking in the U.S. and many other parts of the world. But in the year after the crash Keynes’s name appeared to be everywhere.

>The Peace Corps traces its roots and mission to 1960, when then Senator John F. Kennedy challenged students at the University of Michigan to serve their country in the cause of peace by living and working in developing countries. From that inspiration grew an agency of the federal government devoted to world peace and friendship.
Since that time, 200,000+ Peace Corps Volunteers have served in 139 host countries to work on issues ranging from AIDS education to information technology and environmental preservation.
Today’s Peace Corps is more vital than ever, working in emerging and essential areas such as information technology and business development, and contributing to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Peace Corps Volunteers continue to help countless individuals who want to build a better life for themselves, their children, and their communities.

>The government released Steve Jobs’ FBI file Thursday, including details of a background check done for a presidential appointment in 1991 and a bomb threat against him in 1985. The document also indicates that Jobs had a Top Secret government security clearance while working at Pixar.
The background check for an appointment to the president’s Export Council, under former President George H. W. Bush, included interviews with friends and colleagues to make sure there was nothing in Jobs’ background that would open him to blackmail.
One interviewee remarked on Jobs’ well-known drug use — which included, by his own admission, the use of LSD during his schooldays.
Others mentioned that Jobs couldn’t be trusted and that he was able to create a reality-distortion field.

Nearly half of the public (49%) says they have had a religious or mystical experience, defined as a “moment of sudden religious insight or awakening.” This is similar to a survey conducted in 2006 but much higher than in surveys conducted in 1976 and 1994 and more than twice as high as a 1962 Gallup survey (22%).

>Out of every tax dollar you pay, 34 cents goes to Social Security and Medicare, 22 cents to national security and our amazing military, and a nickel to paying interest on the national debt.  Just one-tenth of a single penny goes to pay our UN dues.
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The other alternative to the UN is that we do nothing and that these con icts fester, spill over, and create an environment where criminals can operate and where terrorists can nd a safe haven.
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We see human rights and democracy not only as the expression of universal values, but as the only means of achieving the goals of long-term political stability and sustainable economic development on the African continent.

>After the flames were extinguished Sunday night, firefighters made the discovery: a body, deep in an abandoned crew room, in a subway tunnel on the F line just north of 63rd Street and Lexington Avenue.
The victim was obviously homeless. Less apparent were his circumstances and history, but it did not take long for those to emerge. Of all the homeless people in the subway, the victim, Anthony Horton, 43, had been among the least faceless.
Mr. Horton found solace in the blackness of the tunnels. He made the subway the subject of his canvases, the muse for a graphic novel that he co-wrote, and the place he called home for the better part of his adult life, even when he had other places to stay.
… The book was based on his life underground. He told of a dozen or so rules of thumb, including: Always carry a light. Anything you need can be found in the garbage. Always have more than one spot.
Then there was this: Always have a way out that is different from the way in.
“He was a gentle soul, and I admired him.” … “I wanted him to live a long time.”

>Across the country, activists with ties to the Tea Party are railing against all sorts of local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy. They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a United Nations-led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities.
In Maine, the Tea Party-backed Republican governor canceled a project to ease congestion along the Route 1 corridor after protesters complained it was part of the United Nations plot.

>Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the House of Representatives—(1) supports the designation of a ‘‘Pi Day’’ and its celebration around the world; (2) recognizes the continuing importance of National Science Foundation’s math and science education programs; and (3) encourages schools and educators to observe the day with appropriate activities that teach students about Pi and engage them about the study of mathematics.

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>We tell the stories of 97 Orchard Street. Built on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1863, this tenement apartment building was home to nearly 7000 working class immigrants.
They faced challenges we understand today: making a new life, working for a better future, starting a family with limited means.
In recognizing the importance of this seemingly ordinary building, the Tenement Museum has re-imagined the role that museums can play in our lives.
The Tenement Museum preserves and interprets the history of immigration through the personal experiences of the generations of newcomers who settled in and built lives on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, America’s iconic immigrant neighborhood; forges emotional connections between visitors and immigrants past and present; and enhances appreciation for the profound role immigration has played and continues to play in shaping America’s evolving national identity.

>The New York Transit Museum, one of the city’s leading cultural institutions is the largest museum in the United States devoted to urban public transportation history, and one of the premier institutions of its kind in the world. The Museum explores the development of the greater New York Metropolitan region through the presentations of exhibitions, tours, educational programs, and workshops dealing with the cultural, social, and technological history of public transportation. Since it’s inception over a quarter century ago, the Museum, housed in a historic 1936 IND subway station in Brooklyn Heights, has grown in scope and popularity. As custodian and interpreter of the region’s extensive public transportation networks, the Museum strives to share, through its public programs, this rich and vibrant history with local, regional, and international audiences.

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The new H system, so-called utilizes the old subway as its base. On the east side the old subway lines form a connection with the Lexington Avenue subway at the Grand Central diagonal station. The tracks across Forty-Second Street to the Times Square Station are the horizontal bar of the H and are used for shuttle service. At the Times Square Station the new Seventh Avenue subway is joined to the tracks of the old subway, extending up Broadway and forming the west side line of the new system.

>Exactly what is the criminal offenses rate in the area where your home is? Low or excessive? The automobile car insurance quotes online may also be partially influenced out of this factor. Living in a dangerous area, risking potential vandalism and theft will be higher, as well as the rate increases accordingly.

>Regression analyses indicated that negative social well-being was positively associated with levels of uses of media that are centrally about interpersonal interaction (e.g., phone, online communication) as well as uses of media that are not (e.g., video, music, and reading). Video use was particularly strongly associated with negative social well-being indicators. Media multitasking was also associated with negative social indicators. Conversely, face-to-face communication was strongly associated with positive social well-being. Cell phone ownership and having a television or computer in one’s room had little direct association with children’s socioemotional well-being.

>http://www.marines.com/

>http://www.facebook.com/marines

>http://www.marines.mil/news/

>http://www.marines.mil/

>While we have not yet verified the origin or authenticity of this video, the actions portrayed are not consistent with our core values and are not indicative of the character of the Marines in our Corps.

>
For many students, L.A. Unified’s trailblazing introduction of healthful school lunches has been a flop. Earlier this year, the district got rid of chocolate and strawberry milk, chicken nuggets, corn dogs, nachos and other food high in fat, sugar and sodium. Instead, district chefs concocted such healthful alternatives as vegetarian curries and tamales, quinoa salads and pad Thai noodles.
There’s just one problem: Many of the meals are being rejected en masse. Participation in the school lunch program has dropped by thousands of students. Principals report massive waste, with unopened milk cartons and uneaten entrees being thrown away. Students are ditching lunch, and some say they’re suffering from headaches, stomach pains and even anemia. At many campuses, an underground market for chips, candy, fast-food burgers and other taboo fare is thriving.

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>… Yet, for some reason, major Western news channels and newspapers are treating this story in somewhat of a cavalier fashion, placing it way behind the turmoil in Syria, Iraq and Nigeria. This may be because such mutual belligerence between the West and Tehran has been going on for years – or, more likely, news outlets have been advised by governments to avoid incitement.
The real battle is not about the potential of an Iranian nuclear bomb, which even if it existed would be used as a deterrent. It is driven by a fundamental clash of ideologies but at its kernel is domination of the oil-rich Gulf. GCC states are the victims of this power play that’s been ongoing since the folding of the British Empire when its foothold was replaced by the US and its man, The Shah. …
From the US perspective, Iran and its ally Syria together represent the last bastion of anti-Americanism in the area obstructing Washington’s hegemonic ambitions. …
The Israeli point of view is far simpler. …
The question is what’s the end game of this cacophony of saber rattling? …
The bottom line is that there are only two ways this standoff can be resolved: The type of dialogue and carrot and stick diplomacy used to bring Pakistan, Myanmar and, less successfully, North Korea into the fold – or death, destruction and economic suicide. For responsible leaders with a conscience this would be a no-contest decision.

>Students in the popular and provocative human sexuality course at Northwestern University were invited for an optional demonstration after class on Feb. 21 in which a naked woman was penetrated by a sex toy until she reached sexual climax.
About 120 students voluntarily stayed for the extracurricular activity organized by professor John Michael Bailey. Guest speaker Ken Melvoin-Berg, co-owner of Weird Chicago Tours, led the “Network for Kinky People” panel, which included several women.
Before a woman onstage disrobed, students were repeatedly advised that they would see explicit content.
The woman then used a machine with a graphic name to stimulate herself to the point of ejaculation, a topic that had been recently covered in class, Bailey said.

>The five candidates spoke harshly of the United Nations and international treaties.
… When asked about the U.N., Durant said the United States should leave the international body. He believes a new “united body” should be created. “I would take an effort to re-establish a new united body of people across the world that seek freedom and want to be a part of a universal body who emulates what we have established,” he added.
Besides the U.N., international treaties were also not favored by any of the candidates.
… Hekman, a father of 12, said he would fight any effort that would give American sovereignty to an international body, including the U.N.
… Marino added he believes the U.N. is only in it for the money and power. “They want to influence a cash stream for themselves. They inject things like global warming. I’m here to tell you global warming is the biggest hoax.”

>One evening, President Obama and his wife, Michelle, decided to go for an unplanned dinner in a restaurant that was not very luxurious. When they were seated, the restaurant owner asked the guard to Obama, whether it be converted to the first lady in private. Then Michelle and the man’s conversation. After this conversation, President Obama askedMichelle, “Why was he so interested in communicating with you?” She said that in her teenage years, he was madly in love with her. President Obama said, “So what if youmarried him, you would now be able to be the owner of this fine restaurant?”
And Michelle replied: “No. If I married him, he would become president”.

>Japan remains the most closed auto market among developed nations. One way trade in autos accounted for 70 percent of the U.S. trade deficit with Japan in 2010. In fact, Japan already ships more than 200 cars to the U.S. for every one car the United States sends there. Pretending this can be easily corrected is not good for the American economy or America workers.  Japan should demonstrate they are serious about opening their market before the United States grants additional trade benefits.
America’s automakers are competitive, global manufacturers with industry-leading products.  They’re at the forefront of the United States’ economic recovery and add billions of dollars in American manufacturing investment while creating tens of thousands of new American jobs. With the auto sector as a whole serving as America’s leading export sector, providing preferential trade benefits to Japan, while they continue to embrace closed-market policies, would only serve to undermine the competitive gains made by American automakers.

>The American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI) submitted a statement today at the request of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) regarding Japan’s expression of interest in joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement (TPP). While supportive of Japan’s interest in TPP, the submission notes longstanding issues with regard to Japan Post Insurance (JPI) and insurance cooperatives (kyosai) for which TPP offers resolution opportunities.
JPI, through its holding company Japan Post Holdings, is wholly-owned by the Government of Japan. Under the Postal Privatization Law it was in the process of moving toward partial privatization in 2009 when new legislation was enacted to freeze the sale of government shares in the world’s largest life insurer. It is unclear at present whether that process will resume.
ACLI recommends that the U.S. government take no position on whether JPI should or should not be privatized and instead use the TPP process to ensure that JPI–whether publicly or privately owned–does not continue to enjoy government-bestowed privileges which distort competition.

>Michelle Obama was privately fuming, not only at the president’s team, but also at her husband.
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The worse things got for her husband in 2011, the more she rallied to his side, buoying him personally and politically. In August, after the debt ceiling negotiations in Washington reached their painful conclusion, Mrs. Obama gave a party for his 50th birthday, warning guests not to leave early and delivering a stemwinder of a toast in praise of her husband.
As the sun faded, the 150 guests — friends, celebrities, officials — sat on the South Lawn, listening to the first lady describe her version of Barack Obama: a tireless, upright leader who rose above Washington games, killed the world’s most wanted terrorist and still managed to coach his daughter Sasha’s basketball team. The president, looking embarrassed, tried to cut her off, several guests said, but she told him he had to sit and listen.
She also thanked him for putting up with how hard she had been on him. At that line, a few of the advisers glanced at each other in recognition.

>Le procureur de Manhattan, à New York, a inculpé trois banquiers helvétiques pour avoir aidé des contribuables américains à échapper au fisc, dont des clients qui fuyaient UBS de peur d’être découverts.

>His Ph.D. is in pure mathematics, in a subfield so esoteric and specialized that even if someone gets a great result, it can be appreciated by only a few dozen people in the entire world. But he left that world behind and, with no formal training, entered another: the world of molecular biology, medicine and genomics.
As founding director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and M.I.T., he heads a biology empire and raises money from billionaires. He also teaches freshman biology (a course he never took) at M.I.T., advises President Obama on science and runs a lab.
Now 54, Eric Steven Lander grew up in Flatlands, a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, raised by his mother — his father died of multiple sclerosis when Eric was 11.
“Nobody in the neighborhood was a scientist,” Dr. Lander said. “Very few had gone to college.”

>American consumers are running out of tricks.
As the weak economy has trudged on, they have leaned on credit cards to pay for holiday gifts, many bought at discounts. They are dipping into savings to cover spikes in gas, food and rent. They are substituting domestic vacations for international trips, squeezing more life out of their washing machines and refrigerators and switching to alternatives as meat prices have risen.
That leaves little room for a big increase in spending in 2012, economists say, a shaky foundation for the most important pillar of the American economy.

>While 75 percent of men always reach orgasm during sex, only 29 percent of women report the same. In addition, most women are unable to climax through vaginal intercourse, instead needing clitoral stimulation.

>According to a survey of adults aged 20 to 59, women have an average of four sex partners during their lifetime; men have an average of seven.