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Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday to discuss the rising number of "insider" attacks in which Afghan security forces have turned their guns on American and other coalition troops. Spokesman George Little said Panetta encouraged Karzai to work with U.S. commanders to ensure more rigorous vetting of Afghan recruits. Little said Panetta and Karzai agreed that American and Afghan officials need to work together to address a problem that has intensified in recent days. In the latest incident, an Afghan police officer on Friday shot to death two U.S. servicemen during a training exercise in...

Obamacare was supposed to be President Barack Obama’s legacy. But it’s looking like a political millstone. The mammoth and unpopular health insurance overhaul weighed down Democrats in 2010 when Republicans helped turn seniors to their side. ....“This could cost us the election,”...the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s political director wrote in a fundraising email last week. “We have to get the facts out to voters immediately.” .....Right now, Romney might be winning the public-relations war in Florida, according to a poll from Rasmussen Reports,.... Asked which plan “scares you more,” the poll found 54 percent of Florida seniors said Obamacare, while...

If you want to score twenty G’s this summer and garner at least thirty minutes of crazy fame then get busy rooting out Obama’s college transcripts. This past Friday provocateur Brooks Bayne who runs TheTrenches.us asked me if I’d help get the word out about his offer of 20k to anyone who could produce what the White House does not want us to lay our eyes on, namely: BHO’s college docs. I told Brooks, “Let me pray about it and I’ll get back with you.” Being a man of my word I knelt and prayed, “Lord, what would thou haveth...

JasonCharleston wrote: Sociopaths pay off the government so they can act dishonestly. They are always going to find someone to pay off in government to work dishonestly. This should be completely obvious after the Obama administration. Apparently, not for some.- Washington and Wall Street are Broken; Here's ProofDear Jason,I think you might be on to something.While Michael Savage turned the phrase Liberalism is a Mental Disorder, I would take that a step further. I would say that a fair number of people who seek elected office suffer from some sort of mental disorder that involves the ego, such as sociopathy...

Is GOP running mate Paul Ryan the stuff that presidents and commanders-in-chief are made of? Polling shows that many Americans are still making up their minds about the Janesville Republican as a vice presidential pick, though he's not surprisingly getting higher marks from voters in his home state. Ryan has deep knowledge of Congress and the federal budget, brains and vigor, and a telegenic ease with the media. But if called, could he manage the vast federal bureaucracy, protect the nation from peril overseas and inspire citizens across the country? The question isn't an idle one. Polls show it's the...

If Vice President Joe Biden didn’t exist, you couldn’t invent him. You couldn’t invent him because no one would believe such a character possibly could exist. No Hollywood producer ever would believe someone that dumb could rise to that level without an “R” after his name. But if someone did attempt to pitch a TV show with a character like Joe Biden, here is how it might go: We’ve got this guy, and he’s an idiot. But he’s also vice president of the United States. Stay with me. He says things that are provably untrue, and he does it constantly....

China's currency is facing strong downward pressure this year as the country's once surging growth rates slow amid a stalling global economy and signs of capital flight after years of inflows. It is a new development for the yuan, once on a steady upward trajectory on the back of expectations that China's impressive economic strength made the currency a one-way bet. The economy, though, has slowed for six straight quarters and the 7.6 percent year-on-year expansion in gross domestic product for the three months ended June 30 was the worst since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. The yuan has dropped...

At least two people were killed when three car bombs exploded near interior ministry and security buildings in the Libyan capital on Sunday, the first lethal attack of its kind since Muammar Gaddafi's fall last year, security sources said. Ambulances and firefighters rushed to the scenes of the blasts and large numbers of police cordoned off the sites before starting to remove the charred vehicles. The first bomb blew up near the interior ministry's administrative offices in Tripoli but caused no casualties, the sources said. On arriving at the site of the explosion, police found another car bomb that had...

The state Department of Parks and Recreation routinely searched for ways to spend extra money each June despite facing the threat of park closures and forgoing upkeep at its 278 properties, based on newly released transcripts from an internal investigation. Testimony from 30 interviews with state employees portrays parks administrators who appeared to have the opposite problem from one long described by Gov. Jerry Brown – excess cash left over and not enough ways to spend it. ....The documents depict a department that wanted to keep secret a reserve of its own special funds to hedge against future financial problems...

One was an Australian computer hacker; the other a head of state. They did not speak each other’s language; and their first encounter was a videolink conversation across 6,000miles. ....“Welcome to the club of the persecuted!” a beaming Mr Correa[President of Ecuador]told the grinning Australian. ...on Mr Assange’s Russian television chat show in May, the Ecuadorean discussed at great length his resentment of American“imperialism”, and his vehement dislike of big business, media barons and “elites”. ..........Mr Assange nodded knowingly....... The two men laughed and joked as they congratulated each other on their pariah status. ......On Thursday, Mr Correa’s government announced...

NEW DELHI: India's quest for a futuristic stealth fifth-generation fighter, which will see the country spend around $35 billion over the next 20 years in its biggest-ever defence project, has zoomed into the decisive phase now. India and Russia are getting all set to ink the full and final design or R&D phase contract for the 5th Gen fighter by this year-end or early-2013, say sources. It will again underline India's firm rejection of the US offer of its Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) or the F-35 'Lightning-II'. Ahead of the R&D contract, under which India wants to induct over 200...

Democrats say voters need look no further than California's $91 billion general fund budget to see how dramatically they have cut. That spending total is 11 percent below the state's pre-recession peak. But the number can be misleading. While California has cut education and services for the poor, budget writers also have relied on creative revenue streams and accounting maneuvers to move programs off the general fund books rather than cut them. That has made comparisons difficult and, experts say, contributed to state bookkeeping disparities that have emerged in recent weeks. "We've been through a period of extreme financial difficulty...

Listen to this half hour in studio interview from Orange County, California HERE.

President Barack Obama wished Muslims well for the feast of Eid al-Fitr marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. … Wishing Muslims across the United States and around the world "Eid mubarak" (happy holiday), Obama said the celebrations in America speak to "the truth that communities of faith—including Muslim Americans—enrich our national life, strengthen our democracy and uphold our freedoms, including the freedom of religion. That is why we stand with people of all faiths, in the United States and around the world, in protecting and advancing this universal human right." …

Young voters – the ones who so notably turned out for Barack Obama in 2008 – are fed up with being unemployed, and many are beginning to turn against the president’s big-government solutions to America’s economic woes. One group tracking this turnaround is Generation Opportunity, or GO, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that seeks to mobilize Americans aged 18-29 toward “real solutions” to joblessness and the flailing economy. GO boasted this past week that its family of Facebook pages – with names like “We Like Small Government” and “Gas Prices Are too D— High” – have topped over 4 million “likes”...

Following months of confused signals regarding the relationship between China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea), it now looks like their ties has weathered the recent DPRK leadership transition and could even strengthen in coming months. Jang Song-thaek, director of the central administrative department of the DPRK’s ruling Workers' Party of Korea, is on a six-day visit to China designed to revitalize economic relations between the two governments while they consolidate their complex leadership transitions (Xinhua, August 14). During Jang’s visit, China and North Korea announced Beijing will boost its investment in the north through...

<p>The West Nile Virus has hit Dallas County in Texas, which has killed 10 people and infected hundreds of others.</p> <p>Planes began spraying for harmful mosquitoes in Dallas north of Interstate 30 and east of the Dallas North Tollway at 10 p.m. Thursday night and continued until early Friday morning.</p>

August 18, 2012 Obama Camp Wants Petition Signatures to Get Romney to Release Tax Returns Bridget Johnson The Obama campaign is asking supporters to sign a letter to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney release “just five years of tax returns.”In an email to the BarackObama.com list, campaign manager Jim Messina noted the letter he sent Friday morning to Romney’s campaign manager, vowing to get off Romney’s back about the returns if the documents were produced. The Romney camp brushed off Messina’s move.Now Messina has converted his letter into an online petition of sorts.“According to the one full year of returns...

Stunning new footage of six police officers gunning down a Michigan man in an intense, five-second burst of 46 shots was made public Friday, setting off fierce reaction from members of a community still grappling with the incident. "I'm stunned that six human beings would stand in front of one human being and fire 46 shots," victim Milton Hall’s mother, Jewel, told CNN.

We’re living in two Americas. But unlike 50 years ago, when Michael Harrington’s “The Other America” shone a spotlight on poverty among certain groups within the U.S., today’s “other America” is one of profound differences in the most precious of all commodities – the length of our lives. We’ve known for some time now of the health and longevity disparities between blacks and whites. But, as new findings by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on an Aging Society, recently published in Health Affairs, demonstrate, the story about these longevity gaps has gone through some rather startling changes.