WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government slashed its estimate for fourth-quarter growth as consumer spending and exports were less robust than initially thought, leaving the economy on a more sustainable path of modest expansion.
domestic product expanded at a 2.4 percent annual rate, the Commerce Department said on Friday. That was down sharply from the 3.2 percent pace reported last month and the 4.1 percent logged in the third quarter.
Any bad news oncerning thw economy is "unexpected" when it comes to the MSM particularly the clueless MSNBC.
The number of people who applied for U.S. unemployment benefits jumped by 14,000 to 348,000 last week to match a five-week high, the Labor Department said Thursday. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch expected claims to total 335,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis. The average of new claims over the past month, a more reliable gauge than the volatile weekly number, was unchanged at 338,250.
There is now little doubt that the Girl Scout cookie boycott is having an effect on cookie sales this year.Girl Scout spokesman Kelly Parisi went on The O’Reilly Factor this week to try and defuse the mounting controversy, and Girl Scout executives have sent threatening letters to their critics.
Girl Scout CEO Anna Marie Chavez took to YouTube on Thursday to deny all charges leveled by the boycotters and to deny at least one charge they haven’t even made.<.p>
“Recently, various individuals and organizations announced their intention to boycott GS cookies this year, based on mistaken beliefs about our movement," Chavez said. "These same individuals also believe the Girl Scouts has become too political.”
Making a lifelong career out of squatting in Congress....precisely the opposite of what the framers intended.
Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the longest-serving House member in history, will retire at the end of his term, he told the Detriot News in an interview."I'm not going to be carried out feet first," Dingell told the paper. "I don't want people to say I stayed too long."
Dingell, 88, has been in Congress since 1955 and is the longest-serving member in congressional history.
Abortions outnumber live births among African American women living in New York City, according to a new health report.
Newly released Department of Health and Mental Hygiene figures show black women had 31,328 'crude induced terminations' in 2012, compared with 24,758 'live births'.
The terminations comprised more than 42 percent of the Big Apple's total number.
, questions whether global warming is real, arguing that the "data are not supporting what the advocates are arguing."
"The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming. Contrary to all the theories that – that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn't happened," said Cruz.
Cruz spoke to CNN in an exclusive interview following an event here to promote his new energy plan, which he says he will formally introduce in the Senate next week.
BTW Arctic ice is up 30% this year.
Given a chance to do it all over again, only 79 percent of those who voted for President Obama would vote for him again and 71 percent of Obama voters now inclined to vote for somebody else “regret” their vote to reelect the president, according to a new poll.The Economist/YouGov.com poll found that Obama would lose enough votes in a rematch with Mitt Romney that the Republican would win. “90 percent of people who voted for Romney would do it again, compared to only 79 percent of Obama voters who would,” said the poll.
“Clearly Romney fares better, although he had fewer voters to begin with. As a proportion of the voters each of them actually received in 2012 (66 million for Obama and 61 million for Romney), the GOP candidate ends up with 55 million votes retained to Obama’s 52 million. Not exactly a wipeout. It’s also unclear for any poll that hypothetically revisits 2012 how much it says about renewed hope for Mitt Romney – who has notably been liberated from the scrutiny of a presidential campaign – rather than about dissatisfaction with an incumbent president who has spent the last year defending his administration over leaks, scandals and Obamacare roll-outs,” added the poll.
Responding to a recent report that Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America (MDA) and Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) conducted about the dangers of guns in public schools, Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox said the annual risk of gun-related death in school is "well below one in two million," and "many times more youngsters are killed annually in bicycle accidents."Because of this, Fox said he "trusts [MDA and MAIG] would support a national helmet law as quickly as a gun restriction."
According to USA Today, the report by MDA and MAIG claims "44 shootings" took place in schools since the heinous crime at Sandy Hook Elementary in December 2012. Rather than argue with that figure, Fox shows that it is "lower than two decades ago when gang violence was especially problematic at school settings."
Perhaps I spend too much time lurking around left-leaning blogs, but there are many myths taken as fact without any additional analysis.One of the most prominent? The notion that red states take the most aid from the government.
Mitt Romney sparked outrage during the 2012 election for his comments about the “47 percent” of Americans who are dependent on government. Romney was actually quoting the percentage of Americans who pay no federal income tax, not the percentage of people who receive government aid, which is a slightly larger 49 percent.
In an article published before Romney’s gaffe, liberal economist Paul Krugman blogged that “Aaron Carroll of Indiana University tells us that in 2010, residents of the 10 states Gallup ranks as ‘most conservative’ received 21.2 percent of their income in government transfers, while the number for the most liberal states was only 17.1 percent.”
BAGHDAD — A group of Sunni militants attending a suicide bombing training class at a camp north of Baghdad were killed on Monday when their commander unwittingly conducted a demonstration with a belt that was packed with explosives, army and police officials said.The militants belonged to a group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, which is fighting the Shiite-dominated army of the Iraqi government, mostly in Anbar Province. But they are also linked to bomb attacks elsewhere and other fighting that has thrown Iraq deeper into sectarian violence.
WASHINGTON—The labor market in January registered weak gains for the second straight month, a slowdown that could heighten fears about the economic recovery and may lead some to call on the Federal Reserve to reconsider its easy-money strategy.U.S. payrolls increased by a seasonally adjusted 113,000 in January, the Labor Department said Friday. Job growth improved compared with December's gain, which was revised up by just 1,000 to 75,000, but was well below last year's average pace. The November increase was recast up by 33,000 to 274,000.
The unemployment rate, obtained through a separate survey, fell to 6.6% last month from 6.7% in December, the Labor Department said.
There are times where someone actually takes a stand and gives me hope that we can eventually roll back the progressive liberal tide and bring sanity back to our country. One such instance is taking place in California, where nine public school students and their families are suing the state over its laws governing teacher tenure, seniority, and the last hired, first fired practice. The aim is to dismantle a system that keeps bad teachers in the classroom; a system that teachers unions fully support. The lawsuit, filed by an advocacy group called Students Matter on behalf of the students, is arguing that such laws violate the Constitution's equal protection guarantee in that such practices ensures that not all students have access to good education.The system currently in place in California makes it virtually impossible to hire a bad teacher, and student performance isn't even taken into account when reviewing the effectiveness of a teacher. The normal modus operandi is to automatically give each teacher a satisfactory grade. It comes as no surprise to us that the state of California and the teachers union are fighting this lawsuit tooth and nail. There's no way that they're going to have a little something like accountability enter into the equation. Teachers need to live a consequence-free environment to fully indoctrinate the youth of California. The teachers union cries about funding and bellyache about being 49th in the nation (counting all fifty states - unless you're Obama in which case it's fifty-seven - and the District of Columbia) in teacher-to-student ratio. Sounds bad until you realize that the average teacher has a class of 21 students. From kindergarten to high school graduation, I only had three classes that had less than thirty students or more: Latin I, Latin II, and Chemistry II. Somehow I did pretty good as did the vast majority of my peers. Such complaints are distractions that the progressive left makes to brainwash us into throwing more money into the education pit to further fuel their takeover.
Students and parents at a Colorado high school are outraged after administrators turned down their request for a spirit week day honoring America because it might offend non-Americans."They said they didn't want to offend anyone from other countries or immigrants," a 16-year-old member of the student council told me. "They just really did not want to make anyone feel uncomfortable."
The student council at Fort Collins High School had proposed having a day to celebrate the United States during next week's Winter Spirit Week. The young people pitched "'Merica Monday" - and invited their classmates to dress in patriotic colors. Their proposal was promptly shot down by administrators.
"They said they didn't want to be exclusive to any other country," a 17-year-old member of the student council told me.
Sandra Fluke has made it official: she has filed to run for the congressional seat being vacated by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) after 40 years. The birth control advocate who shook up the 2012 presidential campaign does not live in the 33rd district, but is eligible to run for the seat. She will be facing off against local Democratic stalwart Wendy Greuel, who narrowly missed winning the Los Angeles mayor's race last year, among others.
U.S. manufacturing grew at a substantially slower pace in January as new order growth plunged by the most in 33 years, driving overall factory activity to an eight-month low, an industry report showed on Monday.The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said its index of national factory activity fell to 51.3 last month, to its lowest level since May 2013, from a recently revised 56.5 in December.
January's figure was also well below the median forecast of 56 in a Reuters poll of economists, missing even the lowest estimate of 54.2. Readings above 50 indicate expansion.
From the award-winning producers of the record-breaking miniseries The Bible, Roma Downey and Mark Burnett, comes Son of God, the larger-than-life story of The New Testament, to be released by 20th Century Fox on February 28, 2014. Son of God is a major motion picture that brings the life of Jesus Christ to the big screen like never before.Told with the scope and scale of an action epic, the film features powerful performances, exotic locales, dazzling visual effects and a rich orchestral score from Oscar®- winner Hans Zimmer. Award-winning actor Diogo Morgado portrays Jesus as the film spans from his humble birth through his teachings, crucifixion and ultimate resurrection.
