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--Friday is Women's Equality Day in the US, yet routine street harassment blocks that goal for many women. But we can act
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--“It was important for us that Tintin be likeable, tenacious, almost a little bit of a boy scout. We took all of those Hergé values and worked through many, many iterations of finding the right look for Tintin.”
When billionaire Warren Buffett wrote an opinion article in The New York Times this month that called for higher taxes on the wealthy, his proposal was met with a roar from several conservative pundits, who wondered why Buffett didn't just donate his billions to the government.
"If the government's purposes are so vital, why doesn't he simply give the money to the IRS?" an editorial in the Wall Street Journal asked. "If he's worried about being undertaxed, we'd suggest he simply write a big check to Uncle Sam and go back to his day job of picking investments."
Liberals responded to Buffett's critics by saying they had missed the point entirely, because the government's budgetary problems cannot be solved by Buffett handing over his money.
Do people actually donate money to the government beyond what is required in taxes?
Yes. But not many, and not much.
There are several ways citizens can donate to the United States government. The easiest method is to decline all deductions or tax write-offs when you file your taxes. (Buffett, incidentally, takes quite a few deductions.)
If you're feeling more generous, you can write a check to the Financial Management Service, a bureau of the Treasury Department that accepts unconditional gifts "from individuals wishing to express their patriotism to the United States."
If you want your money to specifically help reduce the government's debts, then send your check to the government's (tax-deductible!) Bureau of the Public Debt.
There is also a "conscience fund," run by the Financial Management Service, that is set aside just for people who feel guilty about the time they short-changed Uncle Sam and want to make up for it. (A note of caution: giving to that fund doesn't mean the government will dismiss a past crime.)
A hand up, not a handout
The Financial Management Service has received nearly $1 million in unconditional gifts so far this fiscal year, which ends in September. That's more than a quarter million dollars more than last year, when citizens donated $698,708.40. So far 815 people have sent some sort of payment to the Treasury's general fund. Most of those arrived during tax season, when people returned their refund. Sometimes the check envelopes even include a letter describing in detail just why they were handing over the money.
"They just didn't feel like they were entitled to [a refund], or they didn't want to accept it," Scott Barber, who manages the accounts for the Financial Management Service, said in an interview with The Ticket.
When the government issued tax rebates in 2008, the FMS saw a spike in gifts, collecting more than $3.7 million that year.
"A lot of U.S. citizens decided to return those checks to the U.S. government," Barber said. "We had a few notes that were included in the checks. Some referred to their religious beliefs and not wanting a handout for the government."
Paying more than the minimum
More money goes to the government's fund to reduce the debt, which Congress established in 1961 when a wealthy Texas woman sought a way to donate her millions to the government in her will. The fund has taken in more than $2 million this year. It topped $3 million in 2009.
An ABC News analysis in July, however, found that the $2 million represents just ".0017 percent of the $2.1 billion the United States pays every day just on the interest of that debt."
Pleading guilty
The Treasury's "conscience fund," available for people "to restore amounts which the donor considers to have been wrongfully acquired or withheld from the Government" and "to ease their conscience from wrongful acts against others" receives the least amount of money. The fund received a little more than $14,000 so far this year, and $25,000 last year. (The fund received more than $380,000 in 1986, according to a 1987 article in The New York Times.)
Guilty souls have sent in checks for all sorts of things, from stolen equipment to postage stamps that were used twice.
No long ago, Treasury officials opened an envelope to find an anonymous letter from a man who had served as an Army line cook during the Vietnam War, Barber said. Before he left the service, the man stashed his ruck sack with a sack of potatoes, some meat and a tub of butter to bring to his family. More than 30 years later, the man tallied up the cost of the goods in today's dollars, stuffed a handful of cash in an envelope with his confession and mailed it off.
While the $3 million in donations to all three funds this year were surely made in good faith, these accounts won't solve the nation's money problems anytime soon. The money is barely a rounding error when put against the federal debt, which surpassed $14 trillion this year.
Not even Warren Buffett can bail us out of this one.
When one professional photographer discovered that his expensive collection of cameras and lenses had gone missing on a shoot in Hollywood, he could have been out $9,000. Rather than giving up, John Heller, a Getty Images photog, smartly decided to put up a chase using a feature provided by GadgetTrak, a company that specializes in ferreting out stolen gadgets through GPS tracking.
GadgetTrak offers apps and software designed to track theft through GPS, but the company also has a new camera serial number search tool that crawls the web for any photos taken with a single camera. By typing in his camera's unique serial code, Heller was able to locate photos online that were linked to his long lost camera.
Photographs posted to the web often include EXIF data, a kind of fingerprint that offers data about the shooting settings, like speed and aperture, but can also include device-specific info like a camera's serial number. While not all manufacturers embed the serial codes into EXIF data, many DSLRs support this feature — and those will set you back the most if they get stolen.
After finding a collection of photos on Flickr that matched his camera's serial number, Heller and the LAPD found that another photographer had unwittingly bought his stolen equipment, and the camera and lenses made it back into the right hands.
[via: BoingBoing]
This heart-wrenching photo shows how a Navy SEAL’s dog refused to leave his master’s side during an emotional funeral.
Petty Officer Jon Tumilson, 35, killed in the major U.S. helicopter crash in Afghanistan this month, was remembered by around 1,500 mourners.
But it was his Labrador retriever Hawkeye that really captured the public’s emotions in the photo taken by Mr Tumilson’s cousin, Lisa.Sadness: Navy SEAL Jon Tumilson's Labrador retriever Hawkeye was loyal to the end, as he refused to leave his master's side during an emotional funeral
Dozens of women applying for air hostess jobs with an Indonesian airline were ordered to strip nearly naked and have their breasts handled in medical check-ups, one of the applicants claimed today.
She said Garuda - Indonesia's main airline - wanted to screen out women who had tattoos on their breasts or who had had breast implants.
As part of the medical check-up, they had to strip down to just their pants, the woman making the allegations claimed.
Declining to be named - because she said she still wanted the coveted job - the woman said the breast checks were carried out at the airline's South Korean branch in Seoul.t
The applicants hoped to snare one of the 18 positions being offered for flight attendants.
'The hand examination on breast was held since those with implants can have health issues when air pressure falls during flights,' the South Korean news agency Yonhap quoted an airline official as saying.
The official said cabin crew were banned from having tattoos and workers hired in other countries such as Japan and Australia were also subjected to a similar examination.
However claims about the check-ups have angered women's rights groups, which described the process as unnecessary and intrusive.
'I wonder if such a practice is acceptable in Indonesia,' said Ms Kim Da-Mi, who works with the Sexual Violence Relief Centre in Seoul.
A spokesman for South Korea's main airline, Korean Air, described the tests as 'bizarre'.
He said: 'We've never heard of or done such check-ups on flight attendants but I wonder if this means that passengers with breast implants should not fly also.'
At Garuda Indonesia's office in Seoul, a spokesman said the medical tests should have followed routine procedures - and those do not include such examinations.
'We are investigating the matter by questioning managers and the doctor who was in charge of the check-up,' said spokesman Park Sung-Hyun. 'This is very embarrassing.'
It has not been revealed whether the doctor is female or male.
Flight attendant jobs are keenly sought by South Korean women, enticed by high pay and travel opportunities.
Thousands prepare for years, attending beauty salons and ensuring they have a high education standard before applying for vacancies.
Silicon Valley legend Steve Jobs on Wednesday resigned as chief executive of Apple Inc in a stunning move that ended his 14-year reign at the technology giant he co-founded in a garage.
Apple shares dived as much as 7 percent in after-hours trade after the pancreatic cancer survivor and industry icon, who has been on medical leave for an undisclosed condition since January 17, announced he will be replaced by COO and longtime heir apparent Tim Cook.
Analysts do not expect Jobs' resignation -- which had long been foreseen -- to derail the company's fabled product-launch roadmap, including possibly a new iPhone in September and a third iteration of the iPad tablet in 2012.
Host to one of the purest strains of conservatism in the nation (ranked only behind Mississippi and Wyoming by Gallup), Utah is the perfect Tea Party test tube. Its primary system, which relies on a nominating convention where party delegates get a say before candidates go to a popular vote, distills the purest form of activist sentiment. The state was the site of the first Republican incumbent defeat in 2010, when the brewsters toppled three-term Senator Bob Bennett, a watershed moment in an election cycle that saw not only Mike Lee claim victory over the establishment, but Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, Carl Paladino, Ken Buck and Joe Miller as well. Utah was ground zero for the whole thing. But on Monday, something surprising happened.
Jason Chaffetz, the Tea-infused two-term Rep. who won his seat in Congress in 2008 by running to the right of incumbent Chris Cannon (endorsed by no less than George W. Bush himself) and who championed the conservative Cut, Cap & Balance fantasy budget, announced he will not challenge veteran Republican Senator Orrin Hatch in a primary next year. (See Souvenirs from the Tea Party.)
Citing a desire to avoid a "multimillion-dollar bloodbath," Chaffetz broke widely held expectations with his decision not to pursue Hatch. While it's true that the 77-year-old entrenched Senator has spent the better part of a year scrambling right - he seemed to take note of Bennett's downfall - and filling a formidable campaign warchest, the nominating convention would have given Chaffetz a decent shot at taking down his opponent without ever facing voters. Besides, being outspent would hardly be novel to Chaffetz, who was up against a six-to-one fundraising disadvantage in '08, and Tea Party types have rarely shied away from fighting above their weight class. Chaffetz's decision to pass on a Senate run may be a leading indicator that the Tea Party's most powerful tool isn't as sharp as it once was.
The Tea Party's potency, in essence, derives from primary threats. 2010 was the year of the Tea Party not because of health reform protests or Nancy Pelosi's ouster from the Speakership, but because Republicans like Bennett in Utah, Charlie Crist in Florida, Mike Castle in Delaware and so on paid an electoral price for their perceived apostasies. Though Chaffetz is just one candidate (and Hatch could still face defeat without him in the race), it's beginning to look as if the Tea Partyers are not the enforcers they once were. Of the eight GOP Senators facing re-election in 2012, six were the subject of Tea Party challenge whispers after last year's coup: Utah's Hatch, Maine Rockefeller Republican Olympia Snowe, Massachusetts' Scott Brown, Dick Lugar in Indiana, and, somewhat marginally, Tennessee's Bob Corker and Mississippi's Roger Wicker. With the most credible challenger out of the way in Utah, Hatch is in good shape; Snowe has attracted several fringe challengers, but they look, at this point, poised to fade; nothing has materialized against Brown yet; the same can be said of Corker and Wicker; and while Lugar has found himself in a legitimate knife fight with Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, there's a possibility that a three-way race might benefit the incumbent. (See pictures of the Tea Party Movement.)
There are, of course, several important caveats to all this. Chaffetz's decision might be a one-off. It's difficult to say what the political environment will be come next November. Effective primary challengers might just emerge from the woodwork. Or not. Wave elections don't happen every cycle.
But ultimately, the success of the Tea Party can be measured by the policy positions it's able to force. Whether Snowe wins re-election or not, 2010 put enough of a scare in her that she flipped to supporting an earmarks ban, a major conservative coup. The 2011 budget process was pushed rightward by the Tea Party; deeper, if unsatisfying to many, cuts were won. Summer debt deal negotiations were drawn out by conservatives, but the majority of Tea Partyers in Congress eventually held their noses and voted for the compromise, despite the fact that it was unpalatable to the grassroots. As with Bennett and the toxic TARP vote in 2008, the debt deal might prove to be a catalyst for future Tea Party insurrections. But for now, it seems that threat, along with the Tea Party's power, has peaked.
Obama virtually tied in re-election match-ups with Romney, Perry, Bachmann and Paul in new poll
President Barack Obama is virtually tied in potential re-election match-ups with four Republican presidential candidates in a new Gallup survey.
Among registered voters, the president leads Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann by 4 percentage points and Texas Rep. Ron Paul by 2 points. He is tied with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and trails former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney by 2 points. The poll's margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Republicans most strongly favor Perry and Romney in a race against Obama, with 92 and 91 percent saying they would vote for those two candidates. But only 86 percent of Republicans say they would vote for Bachmann, and only 82 percent say they would vote for Paul. Independents also favor Romney, Perry and Paul against Obama, but slightly favor the president when he's matched against Bachmann. The president's approval rating continues to hover around 40 percent--a dangerously low total, according to Gallup's calculations.
"This is below the rating that any of the six incumbent presidents re-elected since Eisenhower has had at the time of the presidential election," Gallup writes.
But Obama has more than a year before his re-election race. Gallup notes that in August of the year prior to their re-election campaigns, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were each below the 50 percent approval mark.
Additionally, the candidates in the Republican field have yet to capture many voters' attention. "More Americans at the moment say they would vote for Obama than approve of the job he is doing--perhaps a reflection of the continuing lack of a strong front-runner on the Republican side," Gallup writes.
When Facebook Gets Creepy - Slideshow from PCMag.com
Facebook, while informational and entertaining, can also be creepy. I say this having gotten multiple friend requests from someone whose friend list is comprised solely of people named “Chandra.” But aside from the sometimes borderline-disturbing behavior of Facebook users, the site itself has been accused of violating personal boundaries.
Of course, Facebook is an opt-in social network, and people should be aware of what they’re getting themselves into before joining. But Facebook’s frequent policy changes and shifting site alliances can lead to user confusion, resulting in users sharing more information than they realize.
Facebook users have taken to online diatribes and lawsuits to try to persuade the company to change its ways, but it’s unlikely they’ll succeed. There’s been a steady increase in the company sharing and monetizing user data over the course of its history. This attitude is endemic to Facebook because it comes directly from its founder and CEO.
Mark Zuckerberg, in a very Nietzsche meets Orwell sort of way, declared the death of privacy in an interview with TechCrunch when he said: “People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.” There’s a whiff of hypocrisy there. Just a few months ago, Facebook was caught hiring PR firm Burson-Marsteller to smear Google’s forays into the social realm by questioning its privacy policies. And Zuckerberg signed up for Google+ but has tightened up his privacy settings on that social network to near-invisibility.
Zuckerberg has himself been stalked through Facebook. In February of this year, he filed a restraining order against Pradeep Manukonda, who also targeted Zuckerberg’s girlfriend and sister, in part by sending them all Facebook messages. After the restraining order was issued, Manukonda told TMZ: “I’ll respect his privacy.”
As a Facebook user, you may not even realize what you’re sharing and with whom. To see whose radar you might be showing up on thanks to your Facebook profile, read our story.
NYT: Israelis demand end to staggering wealth gap - World news - The New York Times - msnbc.com
They are mainstays of the society pages and glossy magazines. Some are praised for the hospital wings they have built, others are gossiped about for their quirks.
But these days, the handful of wealthy families who dominate the Israeli economy are assuming a new role: one of the chief targets of the tent-city protesters who have shaken Israel in the past month.
The “tycoons,” as they are known even in Hebrew, are suddenly facing enraged scrutiny as middle-class families complain that a country once viewed as an example of intimate equality today has one of the largest gaps between rich and poor in the industrialized world.
The tent-city protesters, who have shifted the public discourse by demanding affordable housing and other essential goods, issued a document this week calling for a new socioeconomic agenda. Topping their goals: “minimizing social inequalities.”
“What is keeping people on the streets is the question that if we are all having a hard time and we are all working and paying taxes, who is making the profits?” said Daphni Leef, the 25-year-old filmmaker who began this protest movement with a Facebook posting and remains at its center. “We know there are certain families that have a lot of money and a lot of influence and there is no transparency. People feel deceived.”
Those families — the Ofers, the Dankners, the Tshuvas, the Fishmans and others — account for the 10 biggest business groups in the country and together control some 30 percent of the economy. They will doubtless be among the targets at another set of street demonstrations planned for Saturday night.
“It is becoming clearer to more and more people that this issue of concentration of wealth has become more important,” said Einat Wilf, a legislator who submitted a bill last year aimed at tackling the issue. “As a result of the protests, there is much more political will to fight it than in the past.”
Others counter that wealth concentration is only one of a number of factors contributing to the current middle-class lament and that focusing on it exclusively diverts attention from other equally important matters.
They point to things like a swollen defense budget, subsidies for the ultra-Orthodox and the cost of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where the Interior Ministry said Thursday that it would build 1,600 units and announced plans for 2,700 more.
Tycoons borrow heavily
But the issue has had strong populist resonance. Although Israel’s economy is strong, the data on wealth concentration, published by the Bank of Israel, are unsettling.
A small group of family-owned companies control banks, supermarket chains and media, cellphone and insurance companies. They borrow heavily, posing risks for the larger economy and, through a web of interconnecting enterprises, make it harder for others to get into the markets they dominate.
“These are called pyramid schemes because through shares in one company they take control of a second company and, through that, of another one on down a chain of holdings,” said Eytan Sheshinski, an economist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “They are able to move profits through the pyramid, which cannot happen in the United States because of the tax system there.”
Still, the Bank of Israel study shows that while the United States, Britain and Germany have much less concentration of wealth than Israel, it is not so different from several other democracies. Based on the holdings of the 10 largest business families, Israel is in about the same situation as Switzerland, France and Belgium, and its wealth is far less concentrated than is the case in Sweden.
Last fall, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formed a committee to examine the concentration of wealth and find ways to reduce the power of monopolies.
Story: In Israel protests, a surprise Arab-inspired taste“A pyramid is a tool to leverage heavily your capital, and retain control over large economic entities,” said Prof. Eugene Kandel, Mr. Netanyahu’s chief economic adviser, in an interview. “We know from looking at other countries that large and leveraged business groups can slow growth, cause instability and hinder competition. The committee appointed by Prime Minister Netanyahu works to prevent this from growing into a large-scale program in Israel.”
Daniel Doron, who directs the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress, a pro-market research organization, said he was convinced that the way in which failing state assets were privatized in the 1980s and ’90s led to dangerous consolidation, just as it did in the former Soviet Union and some Arab countries, like Egypt and Syria.
Banks, construction and mining companies, all owned by agencies of the state and all in varying degrees of trouble, were sold to those who could afford to buy them.
'Rapacious elites fleecing consumers'
“It was basically selling assets to cronies,” Mr. Doron said. Once the economy started to pick up in the late 1990s, these companies used their powerful market positions to increase fees sharply, he said, adding, “Today, the whole Israeli economy is built on rapacious elites fleecing consumers.”
At the time of the sell-offs, some say, the right favored them for ideological reasons while the left wanted to get the economy out of the hands of the government, which the right often controlled.
The result — a limited number of individuals maintaining a hold over many national assets — has Israelis, both left and right, worried.Perhaps the best example is Nochi Dankner, chairman of IDB Holdings. His group controls Super-Sol, the largest supermarket chain; Cellcom, the largest mobile phone company; Netvision, one of the largest Internet companies; and Clal Finance, one of the largest financial institutions. He just bought a controlling share of Maariv, one of the largest newspapers. Mr. Dankner declined to comment for this article.
Control of media companies, especially as they have become less profitable, is one aspect of wealth concentration that has many here especially concerned.
Commercial television stations are partly owned by tycoons, as are several of the newspapers. Sheldon Adelson, an American Jewish casino owner and friend of Mr. Netanyahu’s, publishes a free Israeli newspaper widely seen as promoting the prime minister’s agenda.
Guy Rolnik, editor of The Marker, a financial daily owned by Haaretz that has attacked concentration of wealth, said the issue had gotten short shrift in the media because of who owned the companies and fears of losing advertising. Often newspapers seem to be the tools of moguls battling one another as well as certain political figures.
Story: Israeli protests, demands at a glanceA television journalist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter, said his station would probably not do a program on wealth concentration to avoid upsetting the station’s owners.
But many of the moguls are somewhat to Mr. Netanyahu’s left on foreign policy, and their newspapers can be merciless on him. Other newspapers accuse the prime minister of being in bed with the rich. Still others say his focus on the tycoons is an attempt to draw attention away from the cost of settlements and his failed peace policies.
Mr. Netanyahu’s committee is expected to make recommendations in the next month or two.
They may include a change in the corporate tax code as well as antitrust regulations making it harder or illegal to own across sectors, resembling steps taken in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. But they will not recommend the kind of income redistribution many protesters are seeking.
“It used to be politically impossible to go after the cartels, but now that 300,000 people have gone out in the street, we have a mandate,” an aide to Mr. Netanyahu said. “But the prime minister is not going to make this a socialist country again.”
This story, "Protests Force Israel to Confront Wealth Gap," originally appeared in The New York Times.
The nearly 42-year rule of Moammar Gadhafi seems to be at a tenuous
spot. Rebels claim they control most of Tripoli and claim three of
Gadhafi's sons have been captured, including Saif al-Islam Gaddafi,
who was considered Libya's heir apparent.
The focus of the fiercest fighting, today, is occurring just outside
the Gadhafi compound in Tripoli. According to the AP, Rebels were
trying to storm the Bab al-Aziziya command center when tanks opened
fire, which led to the big question: Where is Moammar Gadhafi? Is he
in Bab al-Aziziya or is he even in Libya?
Officially, the U.S. and the rebel forces are saying they simply don't know.
"Bab al-Aziziya and the surrounding areas are still out of our
control," CBS News quotes rebel leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil as saying
at press conference in Benghazi. "We have no knowledge of Gadhafi
being there, or whether he is still in or outside Libya."
As we reported in the live blog, the Pentagon said it doesn't believe
Gadhafi has left Libya. "We do not have any information that he has
left the country," Defense Department spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said.
British Prime Minister David Cameron told reporters today that there
is "no confirmation" about where Gadhafi is.
Yesterday, the National Transitional Council offered Gadhafi safe
passage if he decided to leave the country, but there hasn't been any
word on whether that offer still stands.
The Telegraph's Matthew Holehouse reports today that most people in
Tripoli believe Gadhafi is indeed holed up in his Bab al-Aziziya, but
others believe he might have fled to either Sahba, his ancestral home;
Sirte, his birthplace; or to Algeria.
As to where Gadhafi could seek asylum outside of Libya, The Washington
Post published a quick guide, awarding the top choice to Uganda. The
Post reports:
This East African nation was the first to suggest that Gaddafi
could plop down inside its borders. "We have soft spots for
asylum-seekers," a spokesman for Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni
said this past week. "Gaddafi would be allowed to live here if he
chooses to do so." Museveni, who has been in power for 25 years, has
condemned the NATO-led mission in Libya.
The problem could be that Uganda has signed on to the International
Criminal Court, which means they would have to turn Gadhafi over, as
Malta has said they would do if he heads that way.
The Daily Beast put together another list, which puts Zimbabwe at the
top of the list and South Africa as a possibility. South African
president Jacob Zuma made two attempts to get Gadhafi to declare a
ceasefire.
Outside of Africa, there is always Venezuela. President Hugo Chavez
has pledged allegiance to Gadhafi and, yesterday, he strongly
criticized foreign intervention in the country.
Update at 1:51 p.m. ET. Would He Take Asylum?:
Our colleague Liz Halloran talked to David Mack, a former U.S.
diplomat who served throughout the Middle East. Mack said he believes
Gadhafi would choose to live in exile.
"I think that eventually, provided he's offered safe asylum somewhere
for himself and members of his family not already captured, he might
be inclined to take it," Mack said. "It would have to be someplace
like Russia, where the United Nations Security Council could make the
request, and provided he'd be exempt from International Criminal Court
tribunals. Someplace that could be strong and stable enough to keep
him from getting in trouble and keep him safe. I think that the
Russians want to be in on the end game. Our role would be to provide
international endorsement, and to save Libyan lives." (NPR.org)
Oil Market Smells A Rat - Yahoo! News
ibyan rebels, we are told this morning, have captured Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s stronghold in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
On the news this morning, the Dow rallied 125 points and is close to 11,000 again after Friday’s late-day sell-off.
Nothing like a little regime change to take our minds off the prospect of total economic collapse this morning, eh?
So far the undeclared Libyan war has cost the US alone an estimated $6.6 billion – a drop in the bucket of a $3.8 trillion annual budget. But the oil market is sniffing a rat.
With two drawn-out, unaffordable, imperial wars already under way...in addition to the three covert wars in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan...how long’s it going to take and how expensive will it be to “wage the peace” in Libya now?
Getting Libya’s 1.3 million barrels a day of light sweet crude production back online will be no small task, either.
As a result, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is $83.40 this morning – up nearly 1.5% from Friday.
File Libya under “unresolved issues.” We’re kicking Monday off with a bunch of them this week.
Israel and Egypt, at peace since 1979, are tiptoeing closer to conflict this morning too.
Last week, while Israel was mixing it up with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops shot and killed five Egyptian soldiers just across the Gaza-Egypt border. Israel says it “regrets” killing the Egyptians. Egypt calls the matter “unacceptable” and is threatening to withdraw its ambassador to Israel.
As we’ve pointed out before, the new military government in Egypt is trying to stay on the good side of the Egyptian people in part by taking a tougher line with Israel. Well worth keeping an eye on.
Oil Market Smells a Rat originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning.
Well, I will try to get the books that he is reading now. "The Bayou Trilogy," a mystery collection by Daniel Woodrell set in Louisiana, and "Rodin's Debutante," a novel by Ward. But, I am not sure I will find here..maybe I have to check it at amazon.com
Obama summer reading list leans toward fiction - Yahoo! News
Obama's reading list -- like the criticism from Republicans for vacationing while the economy is stumbling -- is a rite of the summer.
But his choices ignored the weighty biographies of great Americans typically on a president's reading list.
Related: What to do on Martha's Vineyard when you're not POTUS
Obama picked up two of the books on an outing with daughters Sasha and Malia on Friday: "The Bayou Trilogy," a mystery collection by Daniel Woodrell set in Louisiana, and "Rodin's Debutante," a novel by Ward Just with a character who becomes politically conscious after moving to a rough neighborhood on Chicago's south side, echoing Obama's time there as a community organizer before he entered politics.
The president also bought along books: "Cutting for Stone," a novel by Abraham Verghese that traces the lives of two boys who are born joined at the skull in Ethiopia, and "To the End of the Land," a novel by David Grossman of a mother who tries to keep her son alive while he is at war by hiking the length of Israel, hoping that if she cannot be reached to be told of his death, he won't die.
He also brought "The Warmth of Other Suns," by Isabel Wilkerson, the only non-fiction work on the list, which describes America's migration of blacks from the South.
Republican critics have slammed Obama for vacationing for the third consecutive summer on Martha's Vineyard, an upscale island off the Massachusetts coast which was also favored by Democratic presidents John Kennedy and Bill Clinton.
They say vacationing at the scenic island, a stomping ground for movie stars and other wealthy Democratic Party backers in August, shows Obama is out of touch while 14 million Americans are out of work and unemployment is pinned above 9 percent.
The White House says the country does not begrudge Obama some time with his family, but it has been careful to allow no pictures so far of him at play on the golf course.
(Reporting by Alister Bull and Laura MacInnis; editing by Vicki Allen)
