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Lost within the tsunami of campaign reporting was a study released by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on October 3, 2012. The report, titled "Births: Preliminary Data for 2011," passed through the 24-hour news cycle with hardly a mention. The only reason I heard about it was due to a short blurb carried by a local outlet, which reported a significant drop in teenage births. This news item was, of course, reported as positive. But the full report and its tables of statistics reveals nothing positive whatsoever. According to the CDC numbers, 2011 was a banner year. It recorded...

A small business that sells plus-size women's shoes took a big hit this week when dozens of the company's shoes were stolen from a car in San Francisco's Mission District. Johanna Nilsson, a spokeswoman for LLXLLQ, said she was parked at 19th and Valencia streets on Monday evening when someone broke into the trunk of her car and stole about 50 shoe samples, all right-footed. The total value of the shoes is about $10,000, she said. The Palo Alto-based company, which sells various shoes crafted in Italy in sizes 10-12, is currently online-only but plans to open a store in...

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Here we go again, it's "American Idol: Presidential Edition." And we can't even resist waiting until 2012 is over. Since the Republican Party clearly needs to amp up its Hispanic outreach, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is a leading contestant for their team. And Hillary, oh Hillary, she is inevitable all over again. Pundits on left-leaning MSNBC who once cast her aside in 2008 are now expecting her to be their next candidate. After viciously attacking the GOP during this year's presidential election, The National Organization for Women is now insisting that President Obama's cabinet be filled with at least 50...

You wouldn’t know it by perusing mainstream media coverage, but now that the 2012 election is out of the way, the Department of Justice is discarding some of the troublesome ATF and DOJ employees responsible for Operation Fast and Furious, the gunrunning operation that put more than 2,000 firearms into the hands of the Sinaloa narco-terrorist cartel. Eric Holder’s chief of staff, Gary Grindler, was the highest-ranking figure to go: A ranking Justice Department official named by Republicans in their probes into the botched gunrunning scheme “Fast and Furious” will resign on Friday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced in a...

The ubiquitous Salvation Army bell ringers who collect donations for charity every Christmas might be booted from the liberal bastion of UC Berkeley, where the student body has accused the Christian group of holding homophobic policies. Last month, the student government passed a resolution saying the bell ringers and their red kettles are persona non grata on campus, claiming the charity organization only serves people who "accept and abide by the Salvation Army's doctrine and discipline,' which excludes homosexuality," according to the resolution. The Campus Reform blog explains that Berkeley officials are now seriously reviewing whether to grant the student...

Game day has come. A place for Old Grads and fans to talk trash and keep up with the game.

Welcome to Zimbabwe.  This is not a parody -- it is an actual report from the Washington Post:   Some economists and legal scholars have suggested that the “platinum coin option” is one way to defuse a crisis if Congress can’t or won’t lift the debt ceiling soon. At least in theory. The U.S. government is, after all, facing a real problem. The Treasury Department will hit its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit by next February at the latest. Unless Congress reaches an agreement to raise that borrowing limit, the government will no longer be able to borrow enough money...

The November employment report appeared to be good news. The unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent, the lowest level since 2009, and the economy created 146,000 jobs. However, a closer reading of the details shows that the labor market is not recovering any faster but instead continuing its long, painful march to full recovery. The only reason that the unemployment rate fell was because more people dropped out of the labor market than actually found jobs. The labor force declined by 350,000 and the labor force participation rate, a measure of potential workers, declined to 63.6, the same level as...

Now that Barack Obama is safely ensconced in the White House for another four years, several items which should have been noticed or revealed before Election Day have come to the fore. Collectively, they tell us two things: that the pre-election economy was worse than voters were led to believe, and that the prospects for meaningful improvement under the current regime are bleak at best. Additionally, in at least one instance, economic activity itself was likely manipulated. The probable gamesmanship occurred at Government/General Motors, which is still effectively under Obama administration control, still on track to saddle U.S. taxpayers with...

Is it discriminatory and degrading for toy catalogs to show girls playing with tea sets and boys with Nerf guns? A Swedish regulatory group says yes. The Reklamombudsmannen (RO) has reprimanded Top-Toy, a licensee of Toys"R"Us and one of the largest toy companies in Northern Europe, for its "outdated" advertisements and has pressured it to mend its "narrow-minded" ways. After receiving "training and guidance" from RO equity experts, Top-Toy introduced gender neutrality in its 2012 Christmas catalogue. The catalog shows little boys playing with a Barbie Dream House and girls with guns and gory action figures. As its marketing director...

A 27-year-old mother of two has been fatally shot by an off-duty sheriff's deputy after he suspected her of shoplifting at a Houston Walmart. Harris County Sheriff's deputies have said that victim Shelly Frey, Tisa Andrews and Yolanda Craig were stealing when they were confronted by Louis Campbell a 26-year veteran of the force who works as a security guard at the store. According to Campbell the women ran to their car and when he rushed to open the door, they accelerated away - at which point he fired the deadly shot into the car which hit Frey in the...

We hear a lot from freshly re-elected President Obama about the importance of a "balanced approach" to dealing with the USA's mounting debt crisis and the upcoming fiscal cliff that America faces in 2013. Bob Woodward's latest book, The Price of Politics, shows that the president laid out his balanced approach many times during the debt-ceiling crisis in 2011. This proposal involves varying mixes of spending cuts (that appeal to the right) and tax increases (that appeal to the left). Since his re-election, Obama has doubled down, saying that he will not accept spending cuts unless they are accompanied by...

So Obama has been re-elected. Did the American people get the government they deserve? I spent several years working in development economics -- specifically in education for development, mostly as a consultant to The World Bank, but also to USAID, UNDP, and the OAS. One question which often was raised, particularly when the project implementation was going badly, was if national groups -- the people -- had the government they deserved. Some specialists in development thought the question was cruel and demeaning. But many others thought that the nature and culture of the national populace were major factors in the...

New York City, N.Y., Dec 8, 2012 / 06:06 am (CNA).- In a Dec. 6 article for the Wall Street Journal, Jesuit priest Father Mark Henninger recounted his time with famed director Alfred Hitchcock towards the end of his life. In 1980, Fr. Henninger was invited by his friend Father Tom Sullivan to visit Hitchcock's house in Bel Air, Calif. one afternoon to say Mass there. Recalling his introduction to the director that day, Fr. Henninger said that “Hitchcock awoke, looked up and kissed (Father) Tom's hand, thanking him.” The priest noted that seeing scripts from Hitchcock's films, such as...

For years, Grover Norquist and Republicans have tried “starving the beast” of the federal government by capping taxes. While they’ve been highly successful at preventing tax increases, they have been less effective at addressing one problematic aspect of fiscal policy: the ability of the Federal Reserve and Treasury to borrow more and more to finance massive spending, as they have done under the Bush and Obama administrations. It’s simple: Borrowing today means a higher tax burden tomorrow when the debt comes due. True fiscal responsibility, then, requires us to curb spending in addition to limiting tax rates. Imagine if instead...

He's making a LinkedIn profile. He's checking it twice. He's gonna find out which employers are naughty or nice. Santa Claus is coming to town -- and he needs a job. While the unemployment rate dropped to 7.7% last month, as the Labor Department reported today, more and more Santa Clauses around the country are going without work this holiday season. There's no official Kris Kringle employment index, but agencies that place Santas at gigs around the country say the prospects for many of the men in red suits is Ho-ho-hopeless. "There's no question about it, the number of Santas...

WASHINGTON, A Washington business etiquette expert says people should learn to put down their smartphones while sitting on the toilet. Kate Zabriskie, owner of Business Training Works, said using the phone for any reason while sitting on the toilet runs counter to the cause of cleanliness, NBC's "Today" show reported Friday. "If you're in the stall touching the buttons on the phone, that's not good," Zabriskie said. "Those just aren't clean hands. And even if they're immaculate hands ... it's just not an image that I would think most people would want to project." However, Zabriskie said convincing people to...

In an interview with Bloomberg TV this week, Obama also hinted at a possible long-range solution, saying lower tax rates for the wealthy could be negotiated as part of broader tax reform in 2013, but only after those rates increase now.

Welcome to the FReeper Recipe Thread. Looking for something new to make or made something new that came out great? Please share a 'tried-and-true' recipe or three- for fellow FReepers to add to their 'go-to' Recipe Stack of Family Favorites! Here's the place to share and explore your latest and greatest favorite recipe.