The New Poor – Despite Signs of Recovery, Long-Term Unemployment Rises.
Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.
Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives — potentially for years to come.
Wow, that’s some recovery. Is it just me that thinks government is broken?
Americans overwhelmingly think that the government in this country is broken, according to a new national poll. But the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey, released Sunday morning, also indicates that the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what’s broken can be fixed. Eighty-six percent of people questioned in the poll say that our system of government is broken, with 14 percent saying no. Of that 86 percent, 81 percent say that the government can be fixed, with 5 percent saying it’s beyond repair.
Full results (pdf)
Does that sound odd? Buh bye ACORN. I am sure that POTUS laments this loss.
h/t GP
Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) from the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released this video at CPAC of Barack Obama discussing his close partnership with ACORN. Obama talked about his long relationship with ACORN privately in this video before the 2008 election:
“When I ran project vote, the voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it. Once I was elected there wasn’t a campaign that ACORN worked on down in Springfield that I wasn’t right there with you. Since I have been in the United States Senate I’ve been always a partner with ACORN as well. I’ve been fighting with ACORN, along side ACORN, on issues you care about my entire career.”
But, when Barack Obama was confronted about his relationship with ACORN publicly before the election he had an entirely different story. This is what he said in October 2008:
Reporter: Senator McCain today said there was voter fraud going on in the battleground states. ACORN has been tampering with America’s most precious right. There has to be a full investigation and he also said you need to disclose your full relationship with ACORN. I’m wondering if you have any reaction to Senator McCain’s charge?
Barack Obama: Well, first of all my relationship with ACORN is pretty straightforward. It’s probably 13 years ago when I was still practicing law, I represented ACORN and my partner in that investigation was the US Justice department in having Illinois implement what was called the motor voter law, to make sure people could go to DMV’s and driver license facilities to get registered. It wasn’t being implemented. That was my relationship and is my relationship to ACORN. There is an ACORN organization in Chicago. They’ve been active. As an elected offiical, I’ve had interactions with them. But, they’re not advising my campaign. We’ve got the best voter registration in politics right now and we don’t need ACORN’s help.
POTUS has always feigned ties to ACORN.
FSU layoffs of tenured faculty cause a stir. Shocking, but I suppose there is a first time for everything.
Florida State University lured Mike Wetz away from the University of North Carolina with the offer of an assistant professor position in FSU’s highly regarded Department of Oceanography.
Wetz’s first day at FSU was Dec. 23, 2008. Less than six months later, in June 2009, Wetz received a layoff notice.
Wetz had done nothing wrong, by all accounts. He was one of five faculty members in his 15-person department whose positions were being eliminated as FSU decided to merge oceanography, geological sciences and meteorology in the wake of massive reductions in state revenue.
Two of his colleagues being terminated are tenured, which traditionally means their positions are secure.
Fight HIV with HIV: ‘safe’ virus proposed as vaccine – health – 19 February 2010 – New Scientist.
A company is planning to inject people with an HIV vaccine made of the deadly virus itself, albeit a deactivated version.
Vaccines against many viruses, including flu, are made from deactivated versions of those viruses, but such an approach was previously dismissed as too risky in the case of HIV.
Now VIRxSYS of Gaithersburg, Maryland, is resurrecting the controversial approach, thanks to successful tests of a similar vaccine against SIV – also known as simian HIV – in monkeys.
“We said ‘let’s use HIV against itself’, and that’s what we’re doing,” says Gary McGarrity, VIRxSYS’s vice president of scientific and clinical affairs.
People Putting an Extra 50,000 Miles Or More On Their Cars : Gas 2.0.
2009 was a pretty terrible year for auto sales, and the most obvious culprit is the economic downturn. While things are looking up for 2010 (ignoring the whole recall scandal blown entirely out of proportion), new car sales may not return to pre-recession levels for years, if ever. And while the economy may still be a factor, that may be an important paradigm shift in how people regard their cars.
According to a study by Auto MD, which is owned by the US Auto Parts Network, Inc. (i.e. people who have a vested interest in making parts for used cars) 77% of people are, on average, planning on driving their current cars at least 50,000 miles more than their previous cars.
Ya think?
Dalai Lama to meet Barack Obama as U.S. defies protests from China | Mail Online.
The Dalai Lama and U.S president Barack Obama met for the first time at the White House today, defying furious protests from China.
The two Nobel Peace Prize winners seemed intent on keeping the meeting low-key, in order avoid worsening tensions between the two countries.
The Tibetan spiritual leader, who was also denied a meeting in the Oval office, left via a side entrance where rubbish bags were piled up and The White House didn’t release photos of the meeting until several hours afterwards.
AssClown
That is some hospitality. You ask your guest to leave via the garbage exit? I guess this degrading behavior wasn’t enough for the Chinese because they are unhappy about the meeting with POTUS.
