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| Happy Holidays! |
Nearly one in five U.S. households will celebrate Thanksgiving on food stamps this year, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on participation in the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program.As you can well imagine, food stamp usage skyrocketed after Barack Obama--the food stamp president--was sworn in.
Back in fiscal 2000, there were 106,061,000 households in the United States and, according to a USDA report published in November 2012, there was a monthly average of 7,335,000 households—or 6.9 percent—getting food stamps that year.
The entire country knows Michael Brown's name.Turner was a native of Maryland, Riley was from Ohio. May they rest in peace.
They probably don't know the name Wardell Turner. Or Joseph Riley.
On Monday night, even as Ferguson, Missouri erupted in violence, two American soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. The two soldiers - one black, one white - were killed fighting for the freedoms to march, to assemble, to speak out and to protest.
The Pentagon has yet to confirm the names of the soldiers, but families of both men have spoken to the press.
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| Rioting turkeys |
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| Jackson safely at an Occupy Chicago rally in 2012 |
Where is the black leadership now that a grand jury has decided not to indict the police officer that killed Michael Brown?Sharpton and Jackson feed off racial conflict, even when it turns violent. They're poverty pimps.
Where is Al Sharpton? He advertises himself as a spokesman for the best interests of black America. But he is absent.
Where is Jesse Jackson, another popular media personality who says he speaks for black America? He's missing in action, too.
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| Lame duck Gov. Pat Quinn |
Quinn, 65, started working in state government in 1973 as an aide to then-Gov. Dan Walker. He;s worked on and off ever since – also serving as state treasurer, lieutenant governor and, finally, governor – cobbling together nearly 20 years of state-government service.
The way the pension system works in Illinois: State employees contribute a small share of their paychecks (4 percent at a minimum) toward future payouts, and taxpayers and pension investments cover the rest.
Over the years, Quinn has contributed a total of $190,847 toward his state pension, according to interviews and public records.
That means Quinn could recoup his investment in less than two years. And if he lives another 20 years, an average life expectancy for a man his age, he would (absent pension reform) collect a total of more than $3.6 million.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Anthony G. Brown, who took out a $500,000 loan from the Laborers International Union in October to keep his faltering campaign going, did not pay it off as planned, according to a financial report filed Tuesday night.Fools and their money are easily parted.
Brown's campaign manager had vowed to pay back the unusual loan in full by Election Day. But the report showed that the campaign actually made no payments.
To take out the loan, Brown signed a personal guarantee of its repayment, and could be liable if the money can't be repaid. The report showed that Brown had $137,497 in his campaign account as of Nov. 11.
Up to 30,000 missing emails sent by former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner have been recovered by the IRS inspector general, five months after they were deemed lost forever.I never believed these emails were unrecoverable.
The U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed congressional staffers from several committees on Friday that the emails were found among hundreds of "disaster recovery tapes" that were used to back up the IRS email system.
"They just said it took them several weeks and some forensic effort to get these emails off these tapes," a congressional aide told the Washington Examiner.
Committees in the House and Senate are seeking the emails, which they believe could show Lerner was working in concert with Obama administration officials to target conservative and Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status before the 2012 presidential election.
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| Illinois River at Buffalo Rock State Park |
A historic Lake Effect snow storm has the entire country watching Western New York, where hearty residents of Buffalo and towns to the South are bracing themselves for another day of intense winter weather.
The New York State Thruway west of Rochester remained closed Wednesday morning. The devastating conditions have become lethal, with five deaths in Western New York being blamed on the snow storm.
The snow storm has left 150 vehicles stranded on the Thruway, and travel has been cancelled and banned for plane, train and automobile. N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency in the area, extending partially into Central N.Y.
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| Las Vegas |
Two Palestinians armed with knives, axes and a gun stormed a synagogue in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood on Tuesday, killing three Americans — including a prominent rabbi — and a British worshiper in one of the deadliest attacks in years in Jerusalem.
The attackers — identified by Palestinian media as residents of mostly Arab East Jerusalem — were then killed by police in an aftermath that vividly showed the razor-edge tensions in Jerusalem after weeks of bloodshed and clashes.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Palestinian leaders of inciting violence and promised to “respond harshly.” In the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip, calls over loudspeakers praised the attackers.
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| Enough power for a Christmas tree? |
The largest solar power plant of its type in the world — once promoted as a turning point in green energy — isn't producing as much energy as planned.Clouds is the desert? Of course it happens even in one of the sunniest places in America.
One of the reasons is as basic as it gets: The sun isn’t shining as much as expected.
Sprawling across approximately 5 square miles of federal desert near the California-Nevada border south of Las Vegas, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System opened in February, with operators saying it would produce enough electricity to power a city of 140,000 homes.
So far, however, the plant is producing about half of its expected annual output for 2014, according to calculations by the California Energy Commission.
As the nation waits to hear whether a Missouri police officer will face charges for killing unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., the FBI is warning law enforcement agencies across the country that the decision "will likely" lead some extremist protesters to threaten and even attack police officers or federal agents.Meanwhile, the governor of Missouri has already declared a state of emergency.
Peaceful protesters could be caught in the middle, and electrical facilities or water treatment plants could also become targets. In addition, so-called "hacktivists" like the group "Anonymous" could try to launch cyber-attacks against authorities.
"The announcement of the grand jury's decision … will likely be exploited by some individuals to justify threats and attacks against law enforcement and critical infrastructure," the FBI says in an intelligence bulletin issued in recent days. "This also poses a threat to those civilians engaged in lawful or otherwise constitutionally protected activities."