DebateGate

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2011/07/sarah-palin-bristol-god-on-her-side/1

Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol, touring to promote her book Not Afraid of Life, tells Christianity Today that mom gets no respect from the media ...

    ...because they're envious of her. She's got a good family, she's got a good husband, she's got awesome support, she's got God on her side, and I think people are envious of that. They're envious that she carries herself so well, that she's smart. There are lots of vicious people out there.

FOLLOW:Faith & Reason blog on Twitter

Sarah Pulliam Bailey, CT's online editor comes back, asking whether the Palin -- who Bristol also says is too busy for church most Sundays now -- "has God on her side because she's a Christian? Or because she prays?"

Actually, Bristol replies, the whole Palin crew has a heavenly lock:

    We all have God on our side. We all know at the end of the day that we're serving him, and we're really confident with our religion.

This is, of course not new for the young mom. During her controversial stint on Dancing With The Stars she told People:

    It is faith that got me through this and just praying all the time and just relying on God and knowing that He is on our side and we'll get through this."

God, being God, can take multiple sides, evidently, since Jennifer Gray won DWTS and Joe Biden is currently U.S. vice president, not her mom.

Sarah Palin herself has commented, with varying degrees of success on all this side-picking. In 2008 she told Charlie Gibson,

    Abraham Lincoln had said, and that's a repeat in my comments, was, let us not pray that God is on our side, in a war, or any other time. But let us pray that we are on God's side.

A historian promptly disagreed. Jim Oakes of the City University of New York, Graduate Centre, told The Guardian that Palin had the context, and hence Lincoln's meaning, all wrong.

    Lincoln isn't just saying we can't know which side God is on. He's saying God doesn't take sides in battles like this, in wars like this... She's not saying that. She's saying, 'let's hope we're on God's side'. The inescapable implication of her remarks is God takes sides, He takes sides with the United States of America, and let's hope we're on that side. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that she does believe that we are fighting God's battles.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Buffeted by high taxes, strict regulations and uncertain state budgets, a growing number of California companies are seeking friendlier business environments outside of the Golden State.

And governors around the country, smelling blood in the water, have stepped up their courtship of California companies. Officials in states like Florida, Texas, Arizona and Utah are telling California firms how business-friendly they are in comparison.

Companies are "disinvesting" in California at a rate five times greater than just two years ago, said Joseph Vranich, a business relocation expert based in Irvine. This includes leaving altogether, establishing divisions elsewhere or opting not to set up shop in California.

"There is a feeling that the state is not stable," Vranich said. "Sacramento can't get its act together...and that includes the governor, legislators and regulatory agencies that are running wild."

The state has been ranked by Chief Executive magazine as the worst place to do business for seven years.

"California, once a business friendly state, continues to conduct a war on its own economy," the magazine wrote.

That is about to change, at least if Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom has anything to say about it. Newsom is developing a plan to address the state's economic Achilles heels, and build on its strengths. It will be unveiled at the end of July.

"California has got to get its act together when it comes to economic development and job creation," he said.

While not all companies investing elsewhere are doing so for economic reasons, some are shopping around for lower costs, lighter regulations, stable leadership and government assistance and incentives.

The most popular places to go? Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Virginia and North Carolina, said Vranich. All rank in the Top 13 places to do business, according to Chief Executive.
No budget, no pay for California lawmakers

After 15 years in Monterey Country, Calif., Feel Golf relocated its headquarters to Florida earlier this year after it acquired Pro Line Sports, which was based in the Sunshine State.

"The whole state is a bureaucratic Santa Claus," said Lee Miller, chief executive of the golf equipment company, of his former home. "There's a very high cost of doing business."

In Florida, he found a better work pool, lower operating costs and no personal income taxes.

"Overall, it's just a better environment," he said.

PayPal opened a new customer services and operations center in Chandler, Ariz., in February, bringing 2,000 jobs to the area. The San Jose, Calif.-based tech firm, along with its parent eBay, also added 1,000 jobs in Austin, Texas, and expanded operations in Utah.

"They have business-friendly environments," said Kathy Chui, a spokeswoman for eBay.

Other states, which are revving up their job creation efforts in the weak economy, are making sure California firms know the advantages to doing businesses with them.

Utah, for instance, touts its stable government, balanced budget and AAA debt rating, said Todd Brightwell, vice president at the state's Economic Development Corp.

"We promote predictability," said Brightwell, whose agency features an online comparison between the states in terms of taxes, real estate costs, utility expenses, cost of living and other metrics.

Over the past 18 months, the state become much more proactive in courting California firms. It now visits there regularly to reach out to target companies. The strategy has been successful. Adobe has expanded operations in Utah, as has Electronic Arts.

California companies are also reaching out to other states. Sandra Watson, chief operating officer of the Arizona Commerce Authority, said she's seeing a growing number of California firms looking to expand outside the state.

The economic downturn has forced companies to find ways to reduce their costs, she said. Arizona is trying to capitalize on that by promoting its lower workers compensation and unemployment insurance taxes, as well as its aggressive incentive packages.

"There's a lot of competition out there and companies are re-evaluating their strategies," she said.

California, however, isn't sitting idly by. Not only is Newsom meeting with executives to hear their complaints, he's studying the best practices of other states. Earlier this year, he visited Texas, ranked #1 by Chief Executive, to learn more about its job creation efforts.

Newsom's plan will focus on California's premier industries, including biotechnology, agriculture and digital media. It will highlight the state's strengths in innovation and research and cultivate more manufacturing and exports. It also will examine how to address executives' concerns about regulation, taxes and layers of bureaucracy.

Later this year, California will set up a new agency that will serve as a focal point for economic development and job creation, he said. Among its goals will be to reverse the perception that California is business-unfriendly.

"We're going to start pounding away at this and begin to slowly turn this around," he said.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/28/news/economy/California_companies/index.htm?iid=Lead

One Pennsylvania restaurateur has pulled the car over and told the kids to just get out.

A local ABC affiliate reported that Mike Vuick, owner of McDain's in Monroeville, Pa., sent this email to his customers letting them know that kidlets would soon be non grata:

"Beginning July 16, 2011, McDain's Restaurant will no longer admit children under six years of age. We feel that McDain's is not a place for young children. Their volume can't be controlled and many, many times, they have disturbed other customers."

When there is a loud child in any enclosed space - restaurants, airplanes, chapels - two groups of people emerge. There are those with boundless love for small children - and boundless sympathy for parents - who will abide any amount of noise in the presence of those cherubic little faces. And then there are those who experience the equivalent of road rage when parents don't remove said loud child from said enclosed space. (These impasses can be particularly tense at 30,000 feet).

(MORE: Wondering If Children Are Necessary)

When interviewed, Vuick defended his position. "I think it's the height of being impolite and selfish," he said. "And therefore, I instituted a policy." He also delivered an "oh snap!" quip in response to angry parents: "You know, their child - maybe as it should be - is the center of their universe. But they don't realize it's not the center of the universe." And to clarify, McDain's touts itself as a destination for "cocktails and fine casual dining" that is adjacent to a golf course, so the restaurant may be used to older clientele.

Vuick is by no means the first person to issue a blanket ban on the kiddies. In the 1970s, one Florida city banned families with children under 14 from living in certain "adult community" parts of town; the city council even imposed a jail term and fine on anyone who sold or rented a house to such a family. In the 1980s, a Canadian human rights' commission said a ban similar to Vuick's did not violate the law; while a mother who was refused service felt she was discriminated against, the restaurant owner said "she and her husband were merely ending discrimination against customers who did not like to eat pasta while children whined and cried around them." And, in more recent years, the number of children banned from schools has even been on the rise in some parts of the world.

http://news.yahoo.com/no-small-fries-restaurant-bans-kids-under-six-172003848.html

What the hell does it's time to eat our peas mean? The American people don't need nor want lectures about eating peas or ripping off the band-aid when we didn't make the mess. It's Washington, the politicians, and the Democrat Party, in particular, that has created this mess. Not to mention the Democrat controlled House, Senate, & White house never passed a budget last year and now Obama comes out a blames everybody but himself and his party for the crises.

These people are insane. So what, a lousy $2 trillion or is it $4 trillion in cuts? Let me take a calculator to that. Oh wow, that's a whopping $400 billion a year over 10 years. BFD we are running $1.5 trillion in deficit spending each and every year! We need to cut $10 trillion to do any good! These stupid idiotic moron politician are worthless!

At Thursday’s White House meeting between President Obama and congressional leaders, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner laid out in stark terms the awful economic repercussions of allowing the debt ceiling to lapse. Everyone in the room agreed that defaulting on U.S. debt would be disastrous and that something must be done. At that point, Nancy Pelosi asked: Why couldn’t the debt ceiling be decoupled from deficit reduction?

Her query, after so many weeks of reports and talks centered on deficit reduction tied to a debt ceiling deal, visibly surprised some leaders in the room, several Republican and Democratic sources say. Obama politely informed the House Minority Leader, those same sources say, that that train had left the station weeks ago.

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2011/07/08/has-nancy-pelosi-been-marginalized-in-the-debt-debate/#ixzz1RdgEE1ua

New Incentives to earn less than $1,000,000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Senate Democrats draft debt-reduction plan
By Lori Montgomery, Published: July 8

Senate Democrats have drafted a sweeping debt-reduction plan that would slice $4 trillion from projected borrowing over the next decade without touching the expensive health and retirement programs targeted by President Obama.

Instead, Senate Democrats are proposing to stabilize borrowing through sharp cuts at the Pentagon and other government agencies, as well as $2 trillion in new taxes, primarily on families earning more than $1 million year, according to a copy of the plan obtained by The Washington Post.

With debt-reduction talks under way between Obama and congressional leaders, Senate Democrats are unlikely to adopt the blueprint. However, it has gained broad support among those eager to chart a path to solving the nation’s budget problems without making politically painful cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

“The very strong feeling was we needed to get this into the conversation, because it provides an alternative view,” said a Senate Democrat familiar with the blueprint, who spoke on condition of anonymity because it has not been publicly released. “What’s striking is how modest the changes need to be to get us back on track.”

On Friday, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) visited the White House to brief Obama and Vice President Biden on the blueprint, which differs significantly from the framework under discussion with House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and other leaders.

“I explained to the President and Vice President how the Senate Budget Committee Democrats developed a plan that achieves $4 trillion in deficit reduction in a balanced and fair way,” Conrad said in a statement. “It is my hope the plan will help influence the bipartisan negotiations and help them reach a comprehensive and balanced deficit reduction agreement.”

Republicans dismissed the Democratic blueprint, saying higher taxes would be devastating to an economy already weighed down by a 9.2 percent unemployment rate. In their spending plan, House Republicans proposed to save $4 trillion entirely through spending cuts; they would also eliminate Medicare as an open-ended entitlement after 2021.

“If they’re calling for $2 trillion in tax hikes in the middle of a jobs crisis, it’s little wonder that it’s been 800 days since Senate Democrats passed a budget,” said McConnell spokesman Don Stewart.

Since early this year, Senate Democrats have struggled to draft a spending plan. Moderates refused to endorse any blueprint that included big annual budget deficits or big tax hikes. Liberals, meanwhile, opposed sharp cuts to social programs. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the senior Budget Committee Republican, has relentlessly hammered Democrats for their failure to adopt a budget.

Although the new document is unlikely to be officially adopted, it was embraced by a majority of Senate Democrats when Conrad presented it at a closed-door luncheon earlier this week, aides said.

Under the blueprint, the top income tax rate would rise to 39.6 percent for individuals earning more than $500,000 a year and families earning more than $1 million. That group, which constitutes the nation’s richest 1 percent of households, would also pay a 20 percent rate on capital gains and dividends, rather than the 15 percent rate now in effect.

In addition to raising rates for the very wealthiest families, the blueprint proposes to obtain fresh revenue by targeting offshore tax havens and corporate shelters. It would also scale back the array of tax breaks and deductions known as tax expenditures, perhaps by focusing on the wealthiest households, which claim an average of $205,000 in tax breaks each year on average income of $1.1 million.

The blueprint would take nearly $900 billion from the Pentagon over the next decade — the same amount recommended by Obama’s fiscal commission. It would slice more than $350 billion from domestic programs. And it would produce interest savings of nearly $600 billion attributable to reduced borrowing.

Only about $80 billion would be cut from Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health programs, and nothing from Social Security. But even without touching those programs, the plan would stabilize borrowing by 2014 and begin pushing the national debt down as a share of the economy.

If I'm not mistaken Canada is governed by rightwingers.

http://news.yahoo.com/canada-churns-more-jobs-expected-june-111342474.html

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's economy created a surprisingly high number of jobs in June, but dismal U.S. data and lack of wage inflation may mean the central bank keeps its foot on the accelerator for a while longer with low rates.

Net employment gains in the month totaled 28,400, Statistics Canada said on Friday, compared with the 15,000 expected by markets. The transport and warehousing industry did the most hiring and overall gains were mostly in part-time and public sector jobs.

The unemployment rate held steady at 7.4 percent as more people entered the labor market.

The job market has been stronger than expected for three straight months now, good news for an economy that is seen to have slumped in the second quarter but may regain momentum in the second half of the year.

"It was a pretty decent number. ... It's basically suggesting the economy continues to expand at a fairly decent rate," said Sheryl King, chief economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Canada.

But weakness south of the border, where U.S. employers hired the fewest number of workers in nine months, quickly dampened spirits in Canadian markets.

The U.S. economy actually created fewer jobs than its Canadian counterpart in June despite being many times its size.

The Canadian dollar, which had firmed to a session high against the U.S. dollar after the Statscan release, tumbled on the U.S. numbers to a session low of C$0.9665 to the U.S. dollar, or $1.0347.

The uncertain external environment, combined with the absence of wage pressures, could be more meaningful to the Bank of Canada than employment gains when it plots the path for interest rates, analysts said.

The central bank could opt to postpone rate hikes in the belief the economy can continue to expand without prices getting out of hand.

Wages for permanent employees rose 2 percent in the year to June, down from 2.2 percent in May.

"What matters the most to the Bank of Canada is not the headline jobs print, but any evidence of wage motivated cost-push inflation pressures. Simply put, there aren't any," Scotia Capital economists Derek Holt and Karen Cordes Woods said in a note to clients.

"The fact that both wage growth and hours worked are moderating offers a very different take on what is influencing household spending than any upbeat perspectives on the headline job prints," they wrote.

The Bank of Canada has held its key policy rate steady at 1 percent since last September following three successive hikes to lift it from emergency lows.

In a June 29 Reuters poll, Canada's 12 primary securities dealers unanimously forecast no rate move on July 19. Six predicted a first hike in September and the rest saw no moves until some time in the fourth quarter or even next year.

Yields on overnight index swaps, which trade based on expectations for the central bank policy rate, continued to reflect almost zero chance of a rate move on July 19.

Rate hike expectations for September, October and December briefly rose after the Canadian data but fell again after the U.S. release.

The strongest hiring in June took place in the transportation and warehousing industry, which has led employment gains in the past year.

Employment was flat or little changed in manufacturing as well as in most other sectors with the exception of professional, scientific and technical services, which lost 19,200 workers.

Some other details of the report were less upbeat. Private business continued to lag behind the government in terms of hiring, despite the phasing out of government stimulus projects.

Far more part-time jobs were created than full-time ones, although the 12-month trend has favored full-time positions. Statscan said the majority of the jobs went to women in the 25-54 age group.

(Additional reporting by Howaida Sorour, John Tilak, Euan Rocha and Solarina Ho; Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson)