If there’s one thing this administration excels at it’s pissing away taxpayer cash.

(Reuters) — Beacon Power Corp filed for bankruptcy on Sunday, just a year after the energy storage company received a $43 million loan guarantee from a controversial Department of Energy program.

The bankruptcy comes about two months after Solyndra — a solar panel maker with a $535 million loan guarantee — also filed for Chapter 11, creating a political embarrassment for the administration of President Barack Obama, which has championed the loans as a way to create “green energy” jobs.

Beacon Power drew down $39 million of its government-guaranteed loan to fund a portion of a $69 million, 20-megawatt flywheel energy storage plant in Stephentown, New York.

(ABC News) — Using the legal force of an executive order, President Obama is taking action on the health care front as part of his pressure on Congress for action on his jobs plan.

White House officials say at a midday signing ceremony in the Oval Office, the president will address price gouging and the availability of prescription drugs. He will also endorse what he describes as bipartisan legislation awaiting action.

“The shortage of prescription drugs drives up costs, leaves consumers vulnerable to price gouging and threatens our health and safety,” an administration official says.

Obama is to sign “an Executive Order directing the FDA to take action to help further reduce and prevent drug shortages, protect consumers and prevent price gouging. The White House will also announce the President’s support for bipartisan legislation (S. 296 and H.R. 2245) that will give the FDA new tools to prevent drug shortages,” the White House says.

The ball is now in Obama’s court.

(BBC) — The UN cultural organisation has voted strongly in favour of membership for the Palestinians – a move opposed by Israel and the United States.

Out of 173 countries voting, 107 were in favour, with 14 opposed and 52 abstentions.

Before the vote, the US said it would stop its funding to Unesco if the Palestinians’ bid was accepted.

The UN Security Council will vote in November on whether Palestine should become a full UN member state.

Membership of Unesco — perhaps best known for its World Heritage Sites — may seem a strange step towards statehood, says the BBC’s Jon Donnison, in Ramallah, but Palestinian leaders see it as part of a broader push to get international recognition and put pressure on Israel.

This is the first UN agency the Palestinians have sought to join since submitting their bid for recognition to the Security Council in September.

Under U.S. law the government is required to defund any organization that grants the Palestinians statehood, shockingly, the Obama admin is considering asking Congress to waive the law.

(Politico) — Under existing federal law, the American government must cut off funding for any international body that grants membership status to the Palestinian Authority. That includes not only UNESCO, which helps pave the path for U.S. companies to do business in developing countries, but also the related World Intellectual Property Organization, which resolves international disputes over music, movies and software.

That puts the administration is in a bind: The White House supports UNESCO’s mission, but even if it wanted to ask Congress to waive the law — and that would be a big political risk with Jewish voters and donors — there’s almost no chance that a waiver request would be granted. Still, it’s no small thing to just write off UNESCO.

The potential consequences to American businesses are important enough that the State Department has invited representatives of about two dozen technology and pharmaceutical companies and associations to participate in a discussion of the matter in Foggy Bottom Monday afternoon.

This might come as quite a surprise to the Occupiers, the majority of which are self-hating white liberals.

(Motley Fool) — About a year ago, The Wall Street Journal ran an article describing the plight of Americans struggling to rebuild after bankruptcy. The article highlighted Linda Frakes, who filed for bankruptcy after accumulating more than $300,000 in credit card debt.

“Ms. Frakes is now unemployed, living on $330 a week of unemployment benefits and odd jobs,” the Journal wrote. Frakes “struggled to rent a home and buy a car after bankruptcy. A used-car dealer ultimately gave her financing on a Jaguar.”

No one’s hardship should be belittled. Becoming unemployed or losing a home aren’t just financial problems. They’re social and emotional problems that strike at people’s sense of being.

But things always need to be kept in perspective. Only in America, I thought to myself after reading the article, can someone be driving a Jaguar and portrayed as living in an impoverished underclass. Context is crucial with these issues.

The recent Occupy Wall Street protests have aimed their message at the income disparity between the 1% richest Americans and the rest of the country. But what happens when you expand that and look at the 1% richest of the entire world? Some really interesting numbers emerge. If there were a global Occupy Wall Street protest, people as well off as Linda Frakes might actually be the target.

In America, the top 1% earn more than $380,000 per year. We are, however, among the richest nations on Earth. How much do you need to earn to be among the top 1% of the world?

$34,000.

That was the finding World Bank economist Branko Milanovic presented in his 2010 bookThe Haves and the Have-Nots. Going down the distribution ladder may be just as surprising. To be in the top half of the globe, you need to earn just $1,225 a year. For the top 20%, it’s $5,000 per year. Enter the top 10% with $12,000 a year. To be included in the top 0.1% requires an annual income of $70,000.

Keep reading…

HT: Dan

Violent class warfare, how progressive.

(NYP) — Some 50 Occupy Wall Street protesters saw red yesterday — giving an enthusiastic welcome to a genuine communist.

Alex Callinicos, a professor of European Studies at Kings College in London, announced to his rapt audience, “I am a Marxist.’’

Asked if the upcoming revolution can be non-violent, he parroted the party line of the demonstrators, who call themselves the 99 percent of Americans lined up against the “1 percent’’ with power and money.

He said violence could be avoided only if the “1 percent accept the decisions of the 99 percent,’’ which he predicted would never happen.

While he was speaking about the revolution, most of the demonstrators in Zuccotti Park were making plans for a long, cold winter.

“It’s been dumping snow here in NYC. . . high winds and 3 inches of slush on the ground. . . [and] those occupying Liberty Plaza [Zuccotti’s former name]. . . are in need of emergency supplies crucial for cold-weather survival,” organizers said on their Web site.

Their elaborate wish list included “insulated gloves, wool hats, scarves, long underwear/smart wool thermal socks, all-weather sub-thermal sleeping bags [and] all-weather tents.”

And sympathetic supporters were quick to deliver.

“I was feeling really bad for them yesterday,” said Beth Kelley, 47, an ex-Wall Street worker who brought fleece hats and scarves.

But not everyone felt sorry for the soggy masses.

Nick Hommen, 29, a volunteer from Salem, Ore., who was handling donations, said some demonstrators were taking advantage of people’s generosity.

“We can’t afford to keep buying new tents. It’s ridiculous the sense of entitlement people feel,” Hommen said.

First still fully clenched.

TEHRAN (FNA) — A senior member of the Iranian parliament condemned Washington’s plots and allegations against Tehran, and said US President Barack Obama should apologize for fabricating lies and accusations against the Iranian nation.

“Apologizing to the Iranian nation for fabricating the recent scenarios (against the country) is Obama’s duty and the US president should offer an official and formal apology,” member of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Seyed Ali Aqazadeh told FNA on Monday.

He said that the US allegations against Iran aimed to spread the atmosphere of Iranophobia over the world and feed the Zionist-dominated media with new materials against Iran.

The legislator further warned that such anti-Iran moves and actions entail dire consequences for the White House.

Last night, NBC News quoted Iranian diplomatic sources as saying that Tehran has demanded Washington to offer a public apology and pay unspecified monetary damages for its recently declared baseless allegations against Iran.

SeaWorld called, they’re missing Shamu.

A man sleeps at the Occupy DC camp at Freedom Plaza in Washington on October 30, 2011. (NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

Same Haqqani Network that Hillary Clinton recently admitted U.S. officials have met with.

Kabul, Afghanistan (NYT) — Every bomb, they say, has a return address.

When car bombs blew up in West Beirut, or explosions cut down worshipers in Sadr City mosques, survivors generally knew who was to blame, and more or less why — even when no one claimed responsibility.

So, too, with the suicide car bomb that on Saturday delivered the worst blow that NATO forces have suffered yet in Kabul, smashing into an armored bus full of troops and killing 13 foreigners, most of them Americans, and at least four Afghans.

The Taliban immediately took credit, but Afghan and American officials here strongly suspect that, more specifically, it was the fearsome Haqqani faction, whose fighters have proved better trained and organized than many Taliban, and which in recent months especially has focused its attacks on military targets rather than civilian ones.

The message the Haqqanis are sending — to the world and, especially, to the Afghan public — is that they are willing and able to kill foreign troops. And with the Haqqani bombs comes a particularly troublesome return address: Pakistan, where the group is based.

One Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity under diplomatic ground rules, said it was clear that if the Haqqanis were behind the attack, the militants were reacting to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s recent trip to Pakistan. During the visit, she again demanded that the government do something about the Haqqanis, whose bases are in the Pakistani territory of North Waziristan.

“No one goes to this much trouble if they don’t think you’ll get the message,” the diplomat said.

An Afghan political analyst, Haroun Mir, agreed. “These are planned attacks in response to the pressure from the United States on Pakistan against the Haqqani network,” Mir said. Beyond that, he added, “the Pakistanis are sending another message, too: They are not willing to abandon their support of the Taliban.”

Lutfullah Mashal, the spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence service, said about the bombing on Saturday: “Usually these things are the Haqqani network. Kabul is their area of operation, and all the signs and indications point to the Haqqani network.”

Keep reading…

The left in a nutshell.

Via Beltway Confidential:

With the public weary of bank bailouts, stimulus packages, and the federal loan program that produced the Solyndra scandal, Democrats still believe that Congress should play a major role in shaping the economy — with the help of expert planners, of course.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., acknowledged as much when he accused congressional Republicans of “simply standing back while trying to design the bumper sticker for the 2012 election instead of designing the economy to put Americans back to work.” Durbin said this during an interview with the Chicago Tribune.

Durbin’s suggestion that Congress should “design the economy” gets to the heart of a pragmatic disagreement between Republicans and Democrats on matters of economic policy. Nobel prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek explained that economic central planners do a much worse job of “designing the economy” than the decentralized “planners” of the free market — small businessman and consumers, for instance — who make personal economic decisions based on much more complete information. Central planners, in contrast, lack the knowledge to make good decisions for everyone.

Durbin should have learned Hayek’s lesson when his amendment to the Dodd-Frank Bill, ostensibly to protect consumers from big banks, resulted in a new debit card fee for consumers to pay. And the miscalculations don’t stop with Durbin. Vice President Joe Biden, after proposing a bumper sticker slogan for the 2012 elections (don’t tell Durbin), blamed miscalculations by expert advisers for the failure of the stimulus to keep unemployment under 8 percent. He didn’t explain why Americans should trust advisers from the same Administration to commit still more taxpayer money to stimulus spending.

Keep reading…

It’s tough to take this seriously when Politico can’t find a single person willing to go on the record.

(Politico) — During Herman Cain’s tenure as the head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, at least two female employees complained to colleagues and senior association officials about inappropriate behavior by Cain, ultimately leaving their jobs at the trade group, multiple sources confirm to POLITICO.

The women complained of sexually suggestive behavior by Cain that made them angry and uncomfortable, the sources said, and they signed agreements with the restaurant group that gave them financial payouts to leave the association. The agreements also included language that bars the women from talking about their departures.

In a series of comments over the past 10 days, Cain and his campaign repeatedly declined to respond directly about whether he ever faced allegations of sexual harassment at the restaurant association. They have also declined to address questions about specific reporting confirming that there were financial settlements in two cases in which women leveled complaints.

POLITICO has confirmed the identities of the two female restaurant association employees who complained about Cain but, for privacy concerns, is not publishing their names.

(more…)

Obama seen nodding in approval.

(Reuters) — Iran’s supreme leader on Sunday hailed the coming withdrawal of U.S. troops from neighbouring Iraq as a “golden” victory.

U.S. President Barack Obama plans to withdraw his 40,000 troops from Iraq by the end of the year after negotiations on keeping some forces there failed, a move some U.S. politicians say could give Tehran more room to assert its influence.

“The uniform stance of all tribes and religions in Iraq over America’s pressure to get legal immunity for its occupying servicemen, and ultimately the coercion of America to exit Iraq, constitute a golden page in that country’s history,” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said after a meeting with Iraqi Kurdistan President Masoud Barzani, the ISNA news agency reported.

The troops are leaving more than eight years after a U.S.-led invasion toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in 2003.

The merciless persecution of Christians in Islamic lands continues.

(AINA) — In mid-October Egyptian media published news of an altercation between Muslim and Christian students over a classroom seat at a school in Mallawi, Minya province. The altercation lead to the murder of a Christian student. The media portrayed the incident as non-sectarian. However, Copts Without Borders, a Coptic news website, refuted this version and was first to report that the Christian student was murdered because he was wearing a crucifix.

“We wanted to believe the official version,” said activist Mark Ebeid, “because the Coptic version was a catastrophe, as it would take persecution of Christians also to schools.” He blamed the church in Mallawi for keeping quiet about the incident.

Today the parents of the 17-year-old Christian student Ayman Nabil Labib, broke their silence, confirming that their son was murdered on October 16, in “cold blood because he refused to take off his crucifix as ordered by his Muslim teacher.” Nabil Labib, the father, said in a taped video interview with Copts United NGO, that his son had a cross tattooed on his wrist as per Coptic tradition, as well as another cross which he wore under his clothes.

Both parents confirmed that Ayman’s classmates, who were present during the assault and whom they met at the hospital and during the funeral, said that while Ayman was in the classroom he was told to cover up his tattooed wrist cross. He refused and defiantly got out the second cross which he wore under his shirt. “The teacher nearly chocked by son and some Muslim students joined in the beating,” said his mother.

They most certainly are.

(Politico) — Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain stiffened his opposition to abortion Sunday, doubling down on past comments that Planned Parenthood is perpetrating genocide against the black community and insisting that he opposes abortion even in cases of rape, incest and life of the mother.

“I am pro-life from conception, period,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

The candidate told host Bob Schieffer that stands by his vocal criticisms of Planned Parenthood in the past.

“If people go back and look at the history and look at Margaret Sanger’s own words, that’s exactly where that came from,” Cain said, asserting that 75 percent of Planned Parenthood facilities were built in the black community.

“She didn’t use the word genocide,” he added, of Sanger. “But she did talk about preventing the increasing number of poor blacks in this country by preventing poor black babies from being born.”

Cain claimed that the family planning organization does not actually try to talk pregnant girls out of abortions when they come in their clinics.

“Planned Parenthood isn’t sincere about wanting to try to counsel them not to have abortions,” he said.

This is the second time we’ve seen the al-Qaeda flag being proudly flown in Benghazi.

Libyans rally to demand the application of Islamic law by Libya’s interim National Transitional Council (NTC), in Benghazi October 28, 2011. (REUTERS/Esam Al-Fetori)

(Daily Mail) — An extreme Muslim group which caused outrage by burning a poppy last Remembrance Sunday is planning further disruption on November 11, with a twisted ‘Hell for Heroes’ campaign.

The demo, which mocks charity for injured soldiers Help for Heroes, is due to take place outside the Royal Albert Hall, the same location where a poppy was burned last year.

The Muslims Against Crusades protestors, who have sought permission from police to hold the rally, aim to chant and disrupt the minute’s silence held in honour of the war dead.

Firebrand cleric Anjem Choudary, who has links to the Muslims Against Crusades group, said: ‘It’s going to be called Hell for Heroes and it will be around the Royal Albert Hall.

‘It will involve a protest and not observing the minute’s silence. We had a significant amount of support from Muslims around the world last year.

‘It’s one thing to remember the dead from the First World War and subsequent wars but it’s quite another when they say we need to remember the dead from Afghanistan and Iraq.

‘It’s become a political football and if they are going to use Remembrance Day for that purpose it’s only right that we have a counter protest, which we say is for Muslims.

Took my boys to McDonald’s for lunch today and being 6 and 3 they always order Happy Meals. Here’s a pic of the new french fries portion. This picture does it no justice, however, because it’s minuscule. My wife and I burst out laughing when we saw them. It’s less than half what it used to be.

And at the end of it did they eat fewer fries? No, they ate ours after devouring theirs in less than a minute and, shockingly, we couldn’t get them to eat the apple slices that are now included.

Via Rebel Pundit:

On Tuesday, militant, Marxist, anti-war, and gay-rights activists — including some suspected of providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations — led the Occupy Chicago protesters into City Hall to stage an “in your face” protest directed at Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

We caught up with one protester, Roger Fraser, a retired Palatine, Illinois school teacher. Fraser is a proud member of the “99%” who earns a modest $7,792.75 a month from his pension.

Fraser is also known as a militant gay rights activist and a member of the Gay Liberation Network — the same organization founded by Chicago G-8 and NATO protest organizer — and militant, anti-war, social-justice radical — Andy Thayer.

Keep reading…

Don’t worry, Dick, we’ll make sure it is.

(Daily Caller) — Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin told the Chicago Tribune that if the 2012 election is a “referendum” on President Barack Obama, then Democrats are “in trouble.”

In an interview Thursday for the Tribune’s “Chicago Live” series, Durbin was asked about the election.

“If it is a referendum, then we’re in trouble because the economy’s not good and people’ll say, ‘well, I just want to make it clear I don’t like the way things are,’” Durbin said.

Can “the movement” shut down Moore’s attention whoring? I’m guessing, no.

“Over and over and over, all summer long. The debt ceiling. The deficit. The debt ceiling. The deficit.

“Can I ask you honestly? When in the last time in the last few weeks you’ve heard them talking about the debt ceiling? Or the deficit?

“This movement has shut down that bullshit discussion.”

Via RCP