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Famed Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson had some tough words this morning for Republican presidential candidates and their supporters. While speaking on the air on CBN’s “The 700 Club,” he said that GOP candidates are being pushed into positions that they won’t be able to successfully defend in the 2012 general election. This comment is especially intriguing because Robertson, himself, was once a GOP presidential contender. Also, the famous religious broadcaster recently claimed that he will no longer be making political endorsements. One wonders if he has dissatisfaction with the GOP or if his views have moderated over time — or,...

Former U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter has been outside the Beltway for more than a year, but the longtime politician is still in the loop. “The gridlock in Washington is really more like a war,” said Specter during a speech Wednesday at an annual fundraiser at the Abramson Center for Jewish Life in Horsham. Politics was just the tip of the iceberg. The 81-year-old and longest serving senator from Pennsylvania offered the crowd of 150 guests a state-of-the-nation type speech, addressing everything from the economy and Occupy Wall Street movement to the 2012 presidential election and Israel. Specter spent most of...

HARRISBURG -- A generic or "nameless" Republican would beat President Obama in Pennsylvania, according to a statewide poll out today. The poll by Susquehanna Polling and Research shows that a Republican would defeat Obama 45 percent to 38 percent with 15 percent undecided and 3 percent saying they didn't know. The poll didn't further define "nameless Republican," nor did it match up the current GOP presidential candidates against Obama. Obama's job approval rating -- 41 percent approving and 54 percent disapproving -- shows little change from a June poll, said Jim Lee, president of the Harrisburg-based polling firm. What changed...

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0c73f10e-f8aa-11e0-ad8f-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1b6DTpeKa Recently I met a retired British diplomat who claimed with some pride that he was the man who had invented the phrase, “the management of decline”, to describe the central task of British foreign policy after 1945. “I got criticised,” he said, “but I think it was an accurate description of our task and I think we did it pretty well.”...

Rick Santorum raised $704,000 for the third fundraising quarter that ended in September, his campaign said, adding that most of it was raised in the final three weeks of that period. But he also spent $743,000, leaving his account with $189,000 in cash on hand. Continue Reading Santorum has been running a by-the-bootstraps effort that focuses heavily on Iowa and scoring among the top finishers in the Iowa caucuses. And he's been using the debates to try to vault himself ahead. UPDATE: Santorum also has just over $70,000 in debt.

In the spot, titled “Agree,” Santorum highlights all of the areas where he and his fellow GOP candidates don’t arrive at a consensus. He notes his disagreement with former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney on “government run Romneycare.” He calls Texas Governor Rick Perry “dead wrong” for supporting in-state tuition rates for illegal immigrants. Santorum also vehemently opposes the Wall Street bailouts, which former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain supported. However, the take away message of the ad is that Santorum and his fellow GOP contenders do agree on perhaps the most important issue: defeating Barack Obama in 2012. “Barack Obama...

Perry live interview comming up after break.

Today is the day Kanye went on down to join the 99% (of which he’s not a part, despite having taken out loans recently) at Occupy Wall Street. He wore plaid. Givenchy plaid. The rapper paired his $355 shirt with what we believe are Balmain jeans, as well as man bracelets and the Yeezy-not-Weezy necklace he debuted at his Paris fashion show. The internet also reports Kanye was sporting a gold grill, but we know those are just his (permanent) gold and diamond crowns.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett is one of 11 Republican governors who have signed a letter to President Barack Obama, asking him to withdraw proposed rules that would reduce toxic pollutant emissions from coal-burning power plants. In their letter Oct. 7, the governors claim long-delayed rules limiting emissions of mercury and other toxics -- originally mandated in the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 -- would cost $11 billion annually, risk millions of jobs, hurt electric power reliability and result in only marginal air quality improvements. "Any new rule must reflect information on how it will impact the economy and include...

Well, now the British paper The Daily Mail is helping answer that question. The answer? Some of them seem to be quite privileged. “A closer look at some of the impassioned protesters is starting to suggest that while many of them have genuine grievances,” the Daily Mail writes, “all may not be completely as advertised. “ Here’s what it means: Among the hardcore of well-intentioned protesters sleeping rough in Zuccotti Park are also the children of the wealthiest ‘one per cent’ – taking a break from classes at private schools to show their solidarity… and join the fun. As millionaire...

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama never met to discuss the federal health care law, but Romney's advisers did. New records reviewed by NBC News's Michael Isikoff point out that "White House officials had a dozen meetings in 2009 with three health-care advisers and experts who helped shape the health care reform law signed by Romney in 2006." One meeting, NBC News reports, "was in the Oval Office and presided over by Barack Obama." Jon Gruber, one of the advisers who attended the Obama meeting, said that the White House "really wanted to know how we can take that same approach...

Many people ask: What could the government have done better to cushion the blow from the recession? Of course a sizable group would say that the government should have done nothing in the first place, but that is a different article for a different day. One side of the political aisle argues that pouring billions of dollars into various stimulus schemes was an appropriate response. The other side argues that it was a fruitless waste of taxpayer money. However, both sides seem to unanimously agree that it’s not so much that the Obama administration dealt poorly with the recession, it’s...

Midnight on St Mary Street in Cardiff and everything is exactly as expected. Half a dozen young women slump in a gutter, men urinate outside a health-food shop and, as hordes stagger between nightclubs, someone lifts up a blow-up doll with a sex toy protruding out of it. The street smells of urine and lager, police struggle to break up a fight outside the Walkabout bar and a paramedic bundles a comatose girl on to a wheelchair. But it's a quiet night for 20-year-old Naomi Jenkins. She has 'only' drunk three shots of peach schnapps, cider and three shots of...

On Saturday at the ANSWER Coalition’s Anti-war Socialist protest and march, we asked this protester if she thought the protest was patriotic. She claimed she didn’t think they knew why they were there, in fact, she didn’t seem to know much at all. Video at link.

The final segment of Martin Bashir‘s eponymous MSNBC show is titled “Clear The Air,” and in it the newish MSNBC anchor offers his own special commentary on a variety of topics, usually culled from the day’s news. In today’s segment, he compared the lives and contributions of two disparate, and contrasting, public figures, both of whom were in the news yesterday, though for very different reasons. Sarah Palin announced that she would not be running for President came along with the sad news of Steve Jobs death. Oddly, Bashir saw the death of the Apple founder as a means to...

Five Republican presidential candidates said they will boycott a proposed Univision-sponsored debate in January after allegations emerged that the Spanish-language network tried to blackmail Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio over a story about his brother-in-law. GOP contenders Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman and Michele Bachmann all said Tuesday they will not participate in the planned debate until the alleged ethical breach involving Rubio — widely thought to be on the short list for the vice presidential nomination — is resolved, the Miami Herald reported.

They just teased on FOX News Channel Red Eye that Herman Cain is the next interview.

Don’t wear short skirts — you could get raped. That’s essentially the advice the New York Police Department is giving young women in one Brooklyn neighborhood following a slew of unsolved sexual attacks in the past few months. The warnings are being met with outrage, with residents saying police should be focusing on catching the suspects, not criticizing women for what they choose to wear. One South Park Slope resident told the Wall Street Journal about an encounter she had with an NYPD officer this past week:

In what seems an unthinkable move, MTV — the network that hosted a youth town hall last October called “A Conversation With President Obama“ and made ”Rock the Vote” famous — has reportedly declined a request by President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign to help the president connect with young Americans. What’s more, the network allegedly did so on the grounds that it does not get involved with political campaigns. According to the New York Post, Obama’s Get Out the Vote campaign, run by Buffy Wicks, feared that the high unemployment rate among millennials will turn young voters off to the...

The Obama administration chose not to ask the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to re-hear a pivotal health reform case Monday, signaling that it’s going to ask the Supreme Court to decide whether President Barack Obama’s health reform law is constitutional. The move puts the Supreme Court in the difficult position of having to decide whether to take the highly politically charged case in the middle of the presidential election. The Justice Department is expected to ask the court to overturn an August decision by a panel of three judges in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that found the...