TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) -- U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts said Tuesday the scene at President Barack Obama's first State of the Union address was "very troubling" and that the annual speech to Congress has "degenerated into a political pep rally."
Responding to a University of Alabama law student's question about the Senate's method of confirming justices, Roberts said senators improperly try to make political points by asking questions they know nominees can't answer because of judicial ethics rules.
"I think the process is broken down," he said.
Obama chided the court for its campaign finance decision during the January address, with six of the court's nine justices seated before him in their black robes.
Roberts said he wonders whether justices should attend the address.
"To the extent the State of the Union has degenerated into a political pep rally, I'm not sure why we're there," said Roberts, a Republican nominee who joined the court in 2005.
Roberts said anyone is free to criticize the court and that some have an obligation to do so because of their positions.
"So I have no problems with that," he said. "On the other hand, there is the issue of the setting, the circumstances and the decorum. The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court - according the requirements of protocol - has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling."
Breaking from tradition, Obama used the speech to criticize the court's decision that allows corporations and unions to freely spend money to run political ads for or against specific candidates.
"With all due deference to the separation of powers, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests - including foreign corporations - to spend without limit in our elections," Obama said.
Justice Samuel Alito was the only justice to respond at the time, shaking his head and appearing to mouth the words "not true" as Obama continued.
In response to Roberts' remarks T

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WASHINGTON - Minorities make up nearly half the children born in the U.S., part of a historic trend in which minorities are expected to become the U.S. majority over the next 40 years.

In fact, demographers say this year could be the "tipping point" when the number of babies born to minorities outnumbers that of babies born to whites.

The numbers are growing because immigration to the U.S. has boosted the number of Hispanic women in their prime childbearing years.

Minorities made up 48 percent of U.S. children born in 2008, the latest census estimates available, compared to 37 percent in 1990.

"Census projections suggest America may become a minority-majority country by the middle of the century. For America's children, the future is now," said Kenneth Johnson, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire who researched many of the racial trends in a paper being released Wednesday.

Waiting to have children
Johnson explained there are now more Hispanic women of prime childbearing age who tend to have more children than women of other races.

More white women are waiting until they are older to have children, but it is not yet known whether that will have a noticeable effect on the current trend of increasing minority newborns.

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Nigerian national security adviser replaced after massacre
At least 200 Christian villagers died in the attacks early Sunday
U.S. diplomatic mission to Nigeria calls for killers to be brought to justice
Lagos, Nigeria (CNN) -- Nigeria on Tuesday faced international calls to bring to justice killer mobs armed with guns and knives who massacred hundreds of villagers in the country's rural heartland.

As more details of the atrocities emerged, Nigeria's acting president, Goodluck Jonathan, replaced his national security adviser, although it was not clear whether the move was related to the weekend violence.

At least 200 Christian villagers died in the attacks early Sunday, when groups of men with guns, machetes, and knives attacked people in three villages south of Jos, in the Plateau State, Human Rights Watch said.

Other agencies gave higher death tolls. Sani Shehu, president of the nongovernmental agency Civil Rights Congress, put the number of dead at about 485. And a Christian leader who participated in a mass burial of 67 bodies Monday in one of the towns said about 375 people were dead or still missing.

Explainer: What's behind the violence

Human Rights Watch cited witnesses as saying the attackers were Islamic men and that they targeted Christians, mostly from the Berom ethnic group. The victims were in the villages of Dogo Nahawa, Zot, and Ratsat, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) south of Jos, the state capital.

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Europe may have successfully navigated the latest phase of its sovereign crisis, following last week's oversubscribed bond auctions by Greece and Spain. But the region's fiscal challenges—and those of other highly indebted countries including the U.S.—have only just begun.

Attention has rightly focused on how far countries need to reduce their deficits to achieve debt sustainability—the point at which debt no longer is rising faster than gross domestic product, a measure of an economy's size. That process is likely to take several years in many developed countries. Longer term, a debate is needed over what is a reasonable level of debt-to-GDP.

Key to that debate will be whatever policy makers decide to do about the banking system. The financial crisis revealed society's clear preference that governments bear the costs of failure in the banking system. Yet governments can only provide this catastrophe insurance if their balance sheets are strong enough to absorb the extra borrowing when the crisis hits. As Paul Tucker, deputy governor of the Bank of England, said in a recent speech, historically governments borrowed to go to war but repaid the debt in peacetime to be ready to fight again. Modern societies must similarly decide how much debt to repay. As Mr. Tucker says, "the higher the steady-state level of debt society chooses, the more resilient our financial system would need to be."

That is ominous for many Western countries as they try to make banking systems safer without restricting the flow of credit needed to fuel growth. The U.K. government predicts debt will stabilize at close to 80% of GDP in 2014. Many other industrialized countries will have debt-to-GDP ratios as high as this, according to the International Monetary Fund. That is too high if governments are to be in a position to provide insurance against future catastrophes. So either governments need to reduce debt or they need to make their banking systems safer, potentially stunting economic growth. Either way, the consequences of this crisis will be felt for a generation.

—Simon Nixon
Printed in The Wall Street Journal Europe, page 32

http://online.wsj.com/a

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►	Anonymous 03/09/10(Tue)21:52 No.209139     >>209093 lol soon the world.

►	Anonymous 03/10/10(Wed)03:04 No.209151     Well, serves us right for killing hitler.

►	Anonymous 03/10/10(Wed)11:48 No.209184     >>209151 Hitler killed himself, typical European cowardice.

Greece this past weekend saw the worst rioting since the debt crisis began. After Athens had announced new tax hikes and budget cuts to reduce a deficit of 13 percent of gross domestic product, mobs drove guards from Greece’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and attacked police.

In our own country, students, teachers and administrators at UC-Berkeley held a “Strike and Day of Action to Defend Education” to demand more money from taxpayers—for themselves.

How badly are they suffering?

According to Peter Robinson of Hoover Institution, California spends $13,000 per student in the state system, compared to $6,000 in New York.

Yet riots in Greece and demonstrators in California do portend a time of troubles. For the budget cuts and tax hikes needed to keep the welfare states of Europe operating as populations age and fewer children are born will be staggering and endless.

And, in the U.S., California is where we all are headed.

Nevada, Arizona and New Jersey are staring at budget gaps of 25 percent. New York and Illinois are not far behind. Michigan has an unemployment rate of 14 percent. Detroit is the quintessential sick city.

Republicans may get by this fall surfing an anti-government wave. But they will soon have to reveal where exactly they propose to cut.

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►	Anonymous 03/10/10(Wed)08:26 No.209163     fucking liberals, holy shit

►	Anonymous 03/10/10(Wed)08:27 No.209164     >>209140 Stop bumping blogs, you fags. NNNP

►	Anonymous 03/10/10(Wed)11:15 No.209183     >>209164 you're shitting up a good thread that would probably otherwise not get much attention

I'm posting this because it so strongly echos how I feel and what I've been saying on /n/ and /newsfront/ for a while - that the ADL cries wolf so often that when the real anti-Semites rear their heads no one will be listening to them any more.

ADL's Foxman Crying Wolf?
Brad Hirschfield

Rabbi, Writer, and Expert in Public Life
Posted: March 2, 2010 02:21 PM

According to a Twitter feed from the Jewish Council on Public Affairs' national meeting in Dallas, ADL head Abe Foxman lashed out at Andrew Sullivan, calling him a good example of an educated anti-Semite. While neither I nor anyone else has been able to confirm the veracity of the tweet that carried the quote, nobody will deny its accuracy, either. That's bad.

Andrew Sullivan is many things, and some of his recent analysis of the Middle East conflict has been woefully inadequate. It is his recent musings about the conflict and Israel's role in it that appear to have provoked the attack by Mr. Foxman.

Lately, Sullivan finds it easier to substitute easy moral equivalence for the more complex reality in which there is blame enough to go around, without claiming that all bad acts are equally bad. But be that as it may, bad analysis does not an anti-Semite make, especially since the latter is a claim about a person's beliefs, and inner beliefs cannot be measured by a few comments, no matter how objectionable Mr. Foxman or anybody else finds them.

But a tiff between Foxman and Sullivan is not the real story here. In truth, Sullivan seems to love these dust ups -- they are simply grist for his ever-churning word mill. If anything, he should send Foxman a thank-you note. And the fact that Foxman labels Sullivan a Jew-hater is hardly surprising. It's simply one more case of the old adage that when all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.

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►	Anonymous 03/09/10(Tue)10:35 No.209041     >>209018 What does it depend on?

►	Anonymous 03/09/10(Tue)21:57 No.209141     >>209041 Well the ACLU is another one, but they're probably one of the very few Jewish owned groups that will actually defend Neo-Nazis in a court of law. They'll do shit like that, then the ADL and SPLC will get their panties in a bunch and froth at the mouth about them defending such people, but it's most likely all just for show.

►	Anonymous 03/10/10(Wed)11:14 No.209182     >>209141 Yeah, because we all know that Judaism is just a massive conspiracy and they never have differing opinions or goals.

• Leading US banks blamed for triggering financial crisis
• Policymakers propose a rival European monetary fund

European countries are blocking Wall Street banks from lucrative deals to sell government debt worth hundreds of billions of euros in retaliation for their role in the credit crunch.

For the first time in five years, no big US investment bank appears among the top nine sovereign bond bookrunners in Europe, according to Dealogic data compiled for the Guardian. Only Morgan Stanley ranks at number 10.

Goldman Sachs doesn't make the table. Goldman made it to number five last year and in 2006, and number eight in 2007, the data shows. JP Morgan was in the top ten last year and in 2007 and 2006 but doesn't appear this year.

"Governments do not have the confidence that the excessive risk-taking culture of the big Wall Street banks has changed and they still cannot be trusted to put the stability of the financial system before profit," said Arlene McCarthy, vice chair of the European parliament's economic and monetary affairs committee. "It is no surprise therefore that governments are reluctant to do business with banks that have failed to learn the lesson of the crisis. The banks need to acknowledge the mistakes that were made and behave in an ethical way to regain the trust and confidence of governments."

European sovereign bond league tables are now dominated by European banks such as Barclays Capital, Deutsche Bank, and Société Générale, the Dealogic table shows. Their business model is usually seen as more relationship-based, while US investment banks have traditionally been focused on immediate deal-making.

Being left out of government bond sales means missing out on one of the top fee-earning opportunities this year, given the relative drought in mergers and acquisitions and stock market flotations. Western European governments need to raise an estimated half a trillion dollars this year to refinance debts and pay for bank bailouts and rising unemployment.

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►	Anonymous 03/10/10(Wed)03:55 No.209154     >Implying US banks didn't cause the financial crisis

►	Anonymous 03/10/10(Wed)04:16 No.209156     hey!when shit hits the fan,lets blame it on the muricans investment banks instead on our self for letting them to fuck with the economy in the first place.

►	Anonymous 03/10/10(Wed)09:21 No.209171     This is meaningless. Large American investment banks are owned by families with ties to the old world.

A 101-year-old woman in China has surprised her relatives after growing a 6 centimetre-long horn from her forehead - and it looks like another one may be sprouting on the other side of her head.

101-year-old Zhang Ruifang, with the horn growing out of the left side of her forehead - and another appearing on the right

Centenarian Zhang Ruifang, of Linlou Village in China's Henan Province, first started developing the strange growth in 2009, when a patch of rough skin appeared on the left side of her forehead.

Her youngest son, 60-year-old Zhang Guozheng, said that when the growth first appeared they 'didn't pay too much attention to it'.

'But as time went on a horn grew out of her head and it is now 6cm long,' he said.

The growth is thought to be a 'cutaneous horn' - a tumour composed of keratin, the same substance that makes up fingernails, which most commonly occur in elderly people. Normally cutaneous horns are very small, several larger ones, which can stretch several inches, have been recorded in the past.

The condition has left her family worried - especially now it seems that she is developing a second horn on the right side of her forehead to match the first.

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/816631-chinese-grandmother-grows-devil-horns-family-now-getting-worried

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►	Anonymous 03/10/10(Wed)00:35 No.209150     >>209068 Horns are kickass, and the fact that they'll be semmetrical soo will only make it even more awesone.

►	Anonymous 03/10/10(Wed)08:48 No.209167     File: 126823970942.jpg-(6.45KB, 255x300, UnicornMan.jpg) First the Human Unicorn, now Devil Granny. China is going to have a league of horned superheroes.

►	Anonymous 03/10/10(Wed)09:21 No.209170     DEVIL GRANNY She will be the herald to the end of western civilization.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/mar/10/bbc-gordon-brown-match-day

Gordon Brown is a sports fanatic whose passion for Raith Rovers, the football team he has supported since childhood, is a matter of public record. But the BBC has barred the prime minister from appearing on its Sunday night Premier League highlights programme Match of the Day 2, saying it is too close to an election to have him on as a guest.


Downing Street asked if Brown could appear in the MOTD2 studio alongside the presenter, Adrian Chiles, and pundits, who include Lee Dixon, towards the end of last year. The prime minister's advisors wanted him to talk about England's bid for the 2018 World Cup, but after taking advice, the show's production team declined.


A BBC spokeswoman said: "We made the judgment it wouldn't be appropriate in the run-up to the election".


The BBC must adhere to strict guidelines about impartiality in the months before a general election, giving equal airtime to representatives of the main political parties. Brown's appearance was part of a No 10 campaign to soften his image in recent months by encouraging him to extend his media appearances beyond the news bulletins. Brown's confessional ITV1 interview with Piers Morgan last month was regarded as a success by his advisers.

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Millions of Americans have been forced to rely on unemployment payments for extended periods as the nation struggles through its longest period of high joblessness in a generation, and critics are taking aim, saying that the Depression-era program created as a temporary bridge for laid-off workers is turning into an expensive entitlement.

About 11.4 million out-of-work people now collect unemployment compensation, at a cost of $10 billion a month. Half of them have been receiving payments for more than six months, the usual insurance limit. But under multiple extensions enacted by the federal government in response to the downturn, workers can collect the payments for as long as 99 weeks in states with the highest unemployment rates -- the longest period since the program's inception.

The unemployed say extensions help to tide them over in unusually difficult times when jobs are hard to come by. Although unemployment held steady at 9.7 percent in February, millions of jobs have been lost in the downturn, particularly in the hardest-hit sectors including real estate, construction, manufacturing and financial services. Those jobs are unlikely to return even when the economy recovers, many experts say.

But complaints that extending unemployment payments discourages job-seeking have begun to bubble into the political debate. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) recently single-handedly held up the latest extension, a bill to keep unemployment benefits in place for 30 more days, saying Congress should find other cuts to cover its $10 billion price tag.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) did not join Bunning's effort, but he defended his colleague's point of view. Kyl told the Senate he questioned why anyone would see unemployment benefits as helpful to the economy, or to the job market.

"If anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work," Kyl said. "I am sure most of them would like work and probably have tried to seek it, but you can't argue it is a job enhancer."

Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Center, says there's a good reason people are out of work

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The Brazilian government has announced trade sanctions against a variety of American goods in retaliation for illegal US subsidies to cotton farmers.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) approved the sanctions in a rare move.

Brazil published a list of 100 US goods that would be subject to import tariffs in 30 days, unless the two governments reached a last-minute accord.

It said it regretted the sanctions, but that eight years of litigation had failed to produce a result.

It said it would raise tariffs on $591m (£393m) worth of US products - from cars, where the tariff will increase from 35% to 50%, to milk powder, which would see a 20% increase in the levy.

Cotton and cotton products would be charged 100% import tariff, the highest on the list.

The Office of the US Trade Representative said it was "disappointed" by Brazil's decision and called for a negotiated settlement.

Critics say the US has given its cotton growers an unfair advantage by paying them billions of dollars each year.

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►	Anonymous 03/09/10(Tue)21:13 No.209129     >>209121 Everything I've read about Japanese agricultural protectionism seems to indicate that it is wasteful and pointless. Feel free to provide evidence to the contrary though.

►	Anonymous 03/10/10(Wed)03:07 No.209152     I heard that there are rice farms in California.

►	Anonymous 03/10/10(Wed)08:26 No.209162     In Canada, milk grows in bags.

There is no question about the well-documented history where the Black and Jews have stood together in their fight for civil rights, equality and political power. But not so much is said about the creative alliances in business where Blacks and Jews are and have been forging new businesses and ideas that have helped enable Blacks and Jews to enter the mainstream in American business. These are the partnerships that have and will create goodwill and change the future.

There are many examples of how Blacks and Jews have come together to fight against hatred and bigotry. In fact, as my friend Rabbi Marc Schneier at The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, often states (and he even wrote a book about it called Shared Dreams), Dr. King was an ardent supporter of Israel and the Jewish people, including taking part in efforts to ease discrimination against Jews in the Soviet Union and the safety and security of the State of Israel. Dr. King also spoke out strongly against anti-Semitism in the United States. We all know that no segment of the American population provided as much and as consistent support to Dr. King and to African Americans as did the Jewish community.

But, like any relationship, the bond between Jews and African-Americans has experienced its ups and its downs. However, despite claims to the contrary, the relationship between Blacks and Jews today remains strong.

Maybe it's because the Jewish community has suffered from tremendous anti-Semitism throughout history and as a result of their plight, Jews have been able to better sympathize with the struggles facing Blacks. Or maybe it is because the Jewish community knows that if it happens to the Black community it can also happen to them.

So for generations, Jews and Blacks have marched together in the streets of Birmingham and Washington, and shared the stage at venues in Harlem and elsewhere. Our two communities are not afraid to stand side by side, continually defying those who would prefer to see us behind solitary bars and forgotten, not in front of cheering crowds.

Rabbi Schneier and I travel the country sharing these stories, discussing our tale with anyone who will listen - Blacks, Jews, or othe

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►	Anonymous 03/10/10(Wed)03:08 No.209153     File: 126821931947.jpg-(108.54KB, 388x475, niggers_jews_badnews.jpg)

►	Anonymous 03/10/10(Wed)08:23 No.209160     >The fuck? Russians aren't Caucasian. >that's the joke

►	Anonymous 03/10/10(Wed)08:25 No.209161     >Got news for you - everyone's been using it "incorrectly" since before you were born. Claiming that no one but you uses the term correctly doesn't change what it means in the vernacular - that's how language works. Right on comrade. War is peace, freedom is slavery!

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1970413,00.html

How Obama Is Making the Same Mistakes as Bush
By Mark Halperin


Who would have thought that one of Barack Obama's biggest missteps as President would be repeating some of the bad habits of George W. Bush? No single factor was more instrumental in Obama's 2008 victory than his pledge to completely reverse the nation's course once in the White House. Instead, over the past year, Obama has mimicked some of Bush's most egregious blunders, leading to much of the political predicament in which the present decider finds himself today.

This is not to say that Obama has maintained Bush's policies, although his Administration's continuity on issues ranging from Afghanistan to Wall Street has alienated the left. And he certainly hasn't done himself any favors by failing to inspire the general public to rally around his agenda. But Obama's stumbles atop the high wire of running the federal government have created perhaps the greatest danger to his presidency, and they are oddly reminiscent of the misguided practices that tripped up his predecessor. (See pictures of Obama's first year in the White House.)

Consider all the ways in which the current occupant of the Oval Office has — inadvertently or otherwise — repeated the errors of the recent past:

No Chief Economic Spokesperson. Quick: Name all three of Bush's Treasury Secretaries. Hard to do, isn't it? Like Bush, Obama has failed to install an economics commander in chief who can serve as the public face and the in-house honcho of the Administration's financial team. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, National Economic Council chief Larry Summers and Council of Economic Advisers chair Christina Romer all bring strengths to their positions, but none is especially effective at conveying either a consistent message or a sufficient urgency, and none stands out symbolically or practically as America's economics czar. It is not practical for the President himself to serve as the daily go-to guy on any one issue, and given the short- and long-term consequences of the financial and unemployment c

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►	Anonymous 03/09/10(Tue)22:03 No.209143     File: 126820100724.png-(391.66KB, 1000x1000, US_DOE.png) >>209027 <--- This is what keeps them in the dark, bub. Education being shit in this country is not that way by mere mistake you know. Also, the joke called "news and information" that is received over the airwaves contributes to this as well.

►	Anonymous 03/09/10(Tue)22:53 No.209147     >>209143 What are Brit'un's education standards compared to the U.S.'s? They have the same problem with electing retarded politicians Americans have.

►	Anonymous 03/09/10(Tue)23:00 No.209149     >>209147 The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree bro.

This Chelsea restaurant has gone from brasserie to brassiere.

Chef Daniel Angerer is letting diners at Klee Brasserie munch on cheese made from his wife's breast milk.

"It tastes like cow's-milk cheese, kind of sweet," he told The Post.

The flavor depends on what the cheese is served with -- Angerer recommends a Riesling -- and "what the mother eats," said Angerer, who once bested Bobby Flay on TV's "Iron Chef."

Breast milk doesn't curdle well due to its low protein content, so a little moo juice has to be added to round out the texture, Angerer said.

After blogging about his efforts with the human cheese, customers started demanding a sample, he said.

"The phone was ringing off the hook," the chef said. "So I prepared a little canapé of breast-milk cheese with figs and Hungarian pepper."

The response has been generally positive from those who've tried the cheese, although many customers are too squeamish to attempt it.

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  Good thing disgraced former CBS propagandist Dan Rather is a confirmed leftist. Otherwise it would be awfully racist to say something like this:

DAN RATHER: Part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama's leadership. And the Republicans will make a case and a lot of independents will buy this argument. "Listen he just hasn't been, look at the health care bill. It was his number one priority. It took him forever to get it through and he had to compromise it to death." And a version of, "Listen he's a nice person, he's very articulate" this is what's been used against him, "but he couldn't sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic."

Watermelons? Did you say watermelons? Normally that word in the context of A Person of Color makes liberals explode into incomprehensible paroxysms of thunderous self-righteousness. But it's okay if you're The Dan, since few people listen to him no matter what he says these days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD9uG-ManrY

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►	Anonymous 03/09/10(Tue)20:46 No.209119     lol leftards getting bit in the ass by their own leftard speech codes.

►	Anonymous 03/09/10(Tue)21:00 No.209125     >>209119 no, just their mask slipping.

►	Anonymous 03/09/10(Tue)21:47 No.209137     In b4 Carter calls Obama "boy" when they wheel him out of the morgue next time.