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My favorite band's next concert location

In the name of bridging great divides and of fostering peace and harmony, a proposal has been made to open a gay bar in the commercial space next to Cordoba House.

The grand mosque of Cordoba was built as a monument to the conquest of Spain. By naming this as Project Cordoba are we being told that this mosque is to be the monument to the impending conquest of America? In the name of building bridges and tolerance, should a Knights Templar monastery be built across the street from this mosque?

Must Read: An Economy for AllIn August 2009, I wrote a piece titled Fascist America: Are We There Yet? that sparked much discussion on both the left and right ends of the blogosphere. more »

President Obama has a plan to move our money from banks to students. Every year, taxpayers subsidize student loans to the tune of $9 billion. Banks service these loans, collect the debt, keep the interest, and turn a profit. When borrowers default on their loans, taxpayers foot the bill, and banks still reap the interest. It's a great deal for banks and a terrible one for taxpayers.

Yet another government sponsored "socialistic" "redistribution of wealth" from taxpayers to big business. It's time to do away with it.

Last month, the world was shocked as the Tunisian autocrat Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled his country for 23 years, was overthrown in a protest movement that lasted only 29 days. The event was soon dubbed the "Jasmine Revolution," a symbolic reference to a blooming flower. While many doubted that this revolution would spread, it was only days later that massive protests rocked Cairo, resulting in the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who had been in power for more than 30 years. While the fate of both countries is still unresolved, one thing is clear: the people are demanding democracy, and they have forced massive changes in their government to get it.

Rep. David Schweikert (Ariz.) and two other House Republicans - including supercommittee co-chairman Jeb Hensarling (Texas) - introduced legislation last week aimed at retiring the paper dollar.... According to the proponents the retirement of the US One Dollar Bill could save save billions of dollars over the next few decades by transitioning to a one dollar coin in four years, or as soon as $600 million worth of dollar coins are in circulation. Rep. Schweikert said, "Metal coins would last longer and therefore save money. But two Massachusetts Lawmakers, Scott Brown and John Kerry oppose the suggestion on ground it costs too much too produce the coins.... But it seem to me they would last longer...isn't that what smart business buy, products that are Value Purchased not cost purchased. It is also interesting also The Dollar Coin Alliance, which favors the House bill, said the two Massachusetts senators have a specific reason for wanting to protect the dollar bill, arguing that the Senate bill is aimed at protecting Massachusetts-based Crane & Co., the sole-source supplier of paper used to produce dollar bills. So what else is NEW! More cronyism? A poll conducted this year for the Dollar Coin Alliance showed 65 percent of Americans favored the move to a coin, and that more supported it once they realized the savings associated with the switch. And other countries who have done same have benefited overall in the Cost of Producing currency. "Other countries that have replaced a low-denomination note with a coin, such as Canada and the United Kingdom, stopped producing the note," the GAO said in March. "Officials from both countries told GAO that this step was essential to the success of their transition and that, with no alternative to the note, public resistance dissipated within a few years."

Always appreciate comments on the blog posts

The point of all of this is, if you add up all of the MBS-related liability out there, the banks as it stands are facing an Armageddon of claims from all sides. It can't possibly be less than a trillion dollars, and it's probably much, much more. But the Obama administration's current plan is to let them all walk after paying a few shekels apiece into a $20 billion kitty.

Today, Wisconsin working family voters are taking another step to take back their government from Gov. Scott Walker's (R) radical, anti-family, anti-community, pro-Koch Brothers agenda. And they have to defeat a Republican dirty trick to do it.

Islam is a religion of peace and purity. No doubt every single word of love, affection and optimism can be used for this religion. It is that religion on the earth which is not difficult to follow. What makes a Muslim say that his religion is the best? What is it which attracts a non-Muslim to turn into a Muslim? Surely, there is something! A Jewish living in Australia himself carried a research on all the religions including Islam in depth and the reason for him being so curious about knowing Islam was his neighbor. He was really impressed by him. From the way he lived his life till the way he worshiped the one he believed. He stated, "Islam is the best religion." This was the first half of his sentence but the other half was quite disappointing for him as well as the stupendous Muslims. He stated in the next half sentence, "but unfortunately with majority of worst followers of it." Now what is supposed to be noticed are the words "worst people." These are those people of have ruined the reputation of Islam and are the main cause of American Islamophobia. Their brutal and cruel acts of spreading Islam in the modern era or taking revenge from the non-believers have simply dug the REAL image of the Islamic community, its ethics and culture. Islamophobia is a danger because many Muslims fear the day when rest of the world will completely boycott from them and they will not have any kind of support. No doubt, the religion permits to carry out "Jihad" which is a war in the way of Allah against the non-believers who do respect their religion. All they need is to live peacefully but what annoys them is when a non-believer who does not even know even a bit of their religion, insults them on being Muslims or underestimates their religion along with disobeying the one they worship. On the other way while we observed what the image that Muslims have throughout the world we find that Islamophobia is still having a severe affect on the lives of innocent Mu

By next Wednesday, the so-called supercommittee, a bipartisan group of legislators, is supposed to reach an agreement on how to reduce future deficits. Barring an evil miracle - I'll explain the evil part later - the committee will fail to meet that deadline. If this news surprises you, you haven't been paying attention. If it depresses you, cheer up: In this case, failure is good.

THE nota roja, a section reporting the previous day's murders and car crashes in all their bloodstained detail, is an established feature of Mexican newspapers. It is also an expanding one, as fighting over the drug trail to the United States inspires ever-greater feats of violence. Last month in the northern state of Durango, a group of prisoners was apparently released from jail for the night to murder 18 partygoers in a next-door state. A few days later, 14 inmates were murdered in a prison in Tamaulipas. In all, since Felipe Calderón sent the army against the drug gangs when he took office as president almost four years ago, some 28,000 people have been killed, the government says. There is no sign of a let-up, on either side.

John Oliver says Muslims are allowed to put a mosque near Ground Zero, just like Catholics can build a church next to a playground.

Here's hoping that President Obama goes big next week with new proposals for boosting the economy.

Extending Bush's tax cuts for the rich over the next decades is just a terrible idea, and will do nothing to stimulate the economy.

The President is coming up with programs and plans that sound just like additional stimulus. Just don't call it stimulus!

Incredible foreign policy perspective of our future president, I confidently predict (without lending a comment to my personal preferences), will be the next president of the United States of America

"We have a very difficult gap to bridge here," said Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican. "We just can't afford this. That's the ultimate problem." With Cantor sitting in front of a giant stack of nearly 2,400 pages representing the Democrats' Senate-passed bill, Obama said cost is a legitimate question, but he took Cantor and other Republicans to task for using political shorthand and props "that prevent us from having a conversation." And so it went, hour after hour at Blair House, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House - a marathon policy debate available from start to finish to a divided public. The more than six-hour back-and-forth was essentially a condensed, one-day version of the entire past year of debate over the nation's health care crisis, with all its heat, complexity and detail, and a crash course in the partisan divide, in which Democrats seek the kind of broad remake that has eluded leaders for half a century and Republicans favor much more modest changes. With Democrats in control of the White House and Congress, they were left with the critical decision about where to go next. Obama and his Democratic allies argued at Thursday's meeting that a broad overhaul is imperative for the nation's future economic vitality. The president cast health care as "one of the biggest drags on our economy," tying his top domestic priority to an issue that's even more pressing to many Americans.

Of course the "we" in "We can't afford this" is the big health care monopolies (pharma, insurance, etc.). Supposedly, the country and people can afford the continued gouging by those special interests (up to 40% in some places this year alone!). Too, if the government were to find a way to "afford it" (disregarding that Medicare and Medicaid savings might pay for it altogether!), that would probably be on the "back" of the richest 5% and by reducing corporate and business subsidies (like those to oil companies, the military industrial complex, "big finance" bailouts and sweetheart Federal funds rates and "liquidity" pumping, non-risk underwriting for things like coastal flood insurance, etc., etc., etc.). Since that is the "invisible hand" that feeds most "conservatives" and Republican politicians, that would never do.

"The dangers of "death panels" were explained to Americans on Sarah Palin's Facebook page. Oh, sweet Lord, she must not sleep at night...her grandson could be the next victim of "socialized medicine". Recently released documents from the custody battle show clearly Tripp Palin Johnston has socialized health care through Indian Health Services and the Alaska Native Medical Center."

It's possible to get the mental equivalent of whiplash from the latest medical findings, as risk factors are identified one year and exonerated the next. According to a panel at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, this isn't a failure of medical research; it's a failure of statistics, and one that is becoming more common in fields ranging from genomics to astronomy. The problem is that our statistical tools for evaluating the probability of error haven't kept pace with our own successes, in the form of our ability to obtain massive data sets and perform multiple tests on them. Even given a low tolerance for error, the sheer number of tests performed ensures that some of them will produce erroneous results at random.