Meanwhile, At The Huffington Post:

Two-Thirds Of America's Biggest Retailers Are Worried About Flat Wages

There is an easy way to cure this guys. Give your workers a living wage rather than tips on how to get government assistance.

McConnell has long been legislatively allied with Wall Street. He voted to repeal the Glass-Steagall separation between traditional lending and risky securities trading in 1999. He voted to bail out the banks in 2008 and to release an additional round of bailout funds in 2009. The next year, he voted against Dodd-Frank. For the 2014 elections, he raised $6.4 million from the financial sector, more than double what he brought in from any other industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Six of his 10 biggest donors for this election cycle were political action committees tied to large financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.

This is the disturbing part from that article:



So why should we take this guy seriously? if not have a trial for him for treason against the people?

Call them the floating dead.

Rescue crews in Chicago have been hard at work pulling zombies out of Lake Michigan after a Halloween barge sank off Navy Pier on Oct. 31. The roughly 50 zombies on the boat have continued to surface throughout the week, WGN reports.

“It’s an unbelievable amount of effort from painters to costume makers,” owner John LaFlamboy told WGN Wednesday, estimating the investment in the barge to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. “So to watch it sink was very heartbreaking for a lot of us.”

Winds above 70 mph ripped through the city on Halloween, causing 21-foot waves in some parts of the lakeshore. The Zombie Containment, a floating haunted house docked outside Navy Pier, was among the casualties of the rough weather dubbed a "Halloween Howler."

After the haunted house was damaged Friday, officials closed other attractions, including the Ferris wheel, Grand Ballroom and East End Plaza, due to the weather, the Chicago Tribune notes.

This is the disturbing part from that article:



So why should we take this guy seriously? if not have a trial for him for treason against the people?

Just in case you thought none of the incoming Republicans are wackos:

Here Are Some Things That Soon-To-Be Iowa Senator Joni Ernst Actually Said

But this crop are careful wackos. Not loose lip shoot from the lip wackos.

All this is old, and reported on, news. But nary a word from the mainstream media. And in the last week or two before the election the allegedly liberal NY Times ran what could best be described as a fawning puff piece on her.

You do realize that this is a Huff Post article, right?

They are about as accurate as Giorgio Tsoukalos is.

Just in case you thought none of the incoming Republicans are wackos:

Here Are Some Things That Soon-To-Be Iowa Senator Joni Ernst Actually Said

But this crop are careful wackos. Not loose lip shoot from the lip wackos.

All this is old, and reported on, news. But nary a word from the mainstream media. And in the last week or two before the election the allegedly liberal NY Times ran what could best be described as a fawning puff piece on her.

All this is old, and reported on, news. But nary a word from the mainstream media. And in the last week or two before the election the allegedly liberal NY Times ran what could best be described as a fawning puff piece on her.

You see, I, like many others like me, endure one of the few remaining acceptable forms of discrimination.

They treat me differently than they treat thinner, more attractive women.

The key difference is there are laws and social pressure against racial discrimination (which is still far too prevalent!). Discriminating against fat people is still socially acceptable, and in fact, it is done all the time.

I am amazed at how inferior I feel now. I feel invisible. People avoid eye contact with me. I am often treated rudely or dismissed. I live in daily fear that my weight will be the thing that results in my long list of fears, which now rule my every thought. I fear things like being let go from my job because "I don't represent the company well," or of never finding a man to love me again because I am no longer attractive.

Some people may judge me by the way I look and assume that I am stupid, lazy or that I eat chips and ice cream all day.

....
It is impossible to stay fat without overeating. Steroids may increase your appetite, but overeating makes you gain weight.

I, too, was oblivious to fat people and even shared some of these cruel misjudgments toward them.

Some people are fat due to overactive thyroid glands.

But true, most are fat due to overactive mouth glands.

That's false. There are medical conditions causing weight gain.

An 84-year-old New Yorker's date with two 17-year-old twin sisters ended with the senior citizen tied up and robbed, according to police.

The New York Times reports that Paul Aronson met up with 17-year-old Shaina Foster last month through SeekingArrangement.com, a sugar daddy site that bills itself as a place “where beautiful, successful people fuel mutually beneficial relationships,” according to the Times.

After a first date, Shaina brought her twin sister Shalaine along to the second. The trio dined at an "expensive restaurant" and then Aronson invited them back to his apartment for a drink, court documents said.

That's when Shaina told authorities things got out of hand.

“He asked to do things I wasn’t going to do,” she told Detective Darryl Ng. “He is ugly, old and disgusting. I tied him up. I took his money and left. He was starting to creep me out.”

The New York Daily News reports that the sisters allegedly tied Aronson up with zip ties, stole $420 worth of cash from his wallet and took his credit card. They then went on a shopping spree and bought makeup, police said.

Shaina Foster told authorities she was surprised Aronson called police.

"The old man reported me? I don’t understand why he reported me," she said, according to court documents.

The New York Post reports that on Wednesday, Shalaine Foster's lawyer said his client was brought along by her sister and didn't take part in any of the crimes her sister allegedly committed.

"There’s always that story of the good twin and the bad twin, who goes right and who goes wrong,” Brian Kennedy said. ”​My client Sh​alaine was always going right but it seems she got caught up in something that was not of her making.”

The pair are charged with kidnapping, burglary, robbery, assault and grand larceny. They are being held without bail.

The age of consent in New York is 17, which may at least partially explain why Aronson isn't facing any charges.

You do realize that this is a Huff Post article, right?

They are about as accurate as Giorgio Tsoukalos is.

....did you forget to take your pills this morning?

Did you forget the thread we are posting in?

Women of a certain age no longer need those morning pills.

I am WAY past that certain age.

WASHINGTON -- Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said on Sunday that there is "no question" that unjustified shootings happen more often in black communities, but said those communities have the responsibility to prevent the need for more police officers in their neighborhoods in the first place.

"There's no question that individual cases have situations that are unjustified, but you've got to put it in proper context," Giuliani said on "Fox News Sunday" when asked about a video showing an officer in Cleveland killing 12-year-old Tamir Rice as he was holding an Airsoft pellet gun. "Why is it happening? Why is it happening more often in the black community? And doesn't it actually logically make sense that it's going to happen more often in the community where there is five, six, seven, eight, nine times more violence than in another community?"

Giuliani, who said last week that more white officers are needed in certain neighborhoods to keep black people from killing one another, also admitted there is "more unfair interaction" between police officers and people in black communities. But he said that while some of the responsibility is on police departments to better train their officers and diversify their police force, "just as much, if not more, responsibility is on the black community to reduce the reason why the police officers" were assigned to black neighborhoods to begin with.

Giuliani also said he had changed his mind about the need for body cameras because he believes they would show that 90 or 95 percent of police shootings are justified.

Other winners were big banks, who won a rollback of some portions of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulation law, and political parties, which may now accept huge donations from individual donors.

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Friday prepared to pass a $1.1 trillion spending package notable for its expansive spending on military and disease fighting abroad, as well as its scaling back of financial and environmental regulations at home.

In contrast to the raucous process in the House the night before, the bipartisan deal met relatively muted dissent in the Senate, which was on track to approve the legislation by early next week. Despite objections by some of the Senate’s most liberal and most conservative members, the party leaders appeared firmly in control. They were pushing for swift approval of the spending bill, which includes dozens of policy measures that underscore the power of the Republican majority in the next Congress.

As a precaution, the House passed another short-term funding measure on Friday that would give the Senate until Wednesday evening to push through the spending package.
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The congressional leaders, from left, John A. Boehner, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi at a ceremony Wednesday.
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The bipartisan budget agreement passed by the House would keep most of the government operating through the fiscal year, averting a shutdown of the government and providing Republicans with a fresh slate when they have control of both houses of Congress in January.

The deal provides $64 billion for military operations in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and $5.4 billion to combat the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Other winners were big banks, who won a rollback of some portions of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulation law, and political parties, which may now accept huge donations from individual donors.

In a concession to Republicans, many of whom were outraged over President Obama’s unilateral decision to defer the deportation of as many as five million undocumented immigrants, the package only funds the Department of Homeland Security — the primary agency responsible for carrying out the president’s order — through February. At that point, Republicans will have the Senate majority, and believe they will be in a better position to challenge Mr. Obama’s policy.

Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada and majority leader, said that the legislation was “far from perfect,” but much better than the likely alternative — a three-month extension of federal spending at current levels.

The bill, Mr. Reid said, “gives the Affordable Care Act the secure financial footing that it deserves,” and provides money for military operations against the Islamic State and for public health efforts against the Ebola virus. He added that while he did not support the provisions of the bill that roll back Dodd-Frank restrictions on big banks, “legislation is the art of compromise.”

But the bill brought together unlikely allies, uniting progressive Democrats with Tea Party Republicans against a provision that would scale back part of the Dodd-Frank Act that limits the ability of big banks to trade certain risky financial instruments.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, in a show of her emerging strength as a leader among progressives, spoke defiantly against the financial regulation provision, but did not seem likely to summon enough colleagues to her cause to stop the bill. She drafted an amendment to eliminate the provision in the spending bill that deals with the Dodd-Frank law.

“Ever since the new financial regulations went into place,” Ms. Warren said, “Wall Street has been working behind the scenes to open another loophole so they could gamble with taxpayer money and get bailed out when their risky bets threaten to blow up our financial system. Congress should not put taxpayers on the hook for another bailout.’“

Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, joined Ms. Warren, saying that Congress should not be “handing out Christmas presents to the megabanks and Wall Street.”

On immigration, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, threatened to delay the spending package unless he received a vote on an amendment that would prevent the president from implementing his executive action. He said he was doing “everything humanly possible” to ensure “the opportunity to make clear each senator’s views on whether we will be complicit in funding President Obama’s illegal amnesty.”

The bill also reduces funds for the Environmental Protection Agency for the fifth straight year, trimming $60 million from 2014 levels; prohibits the agency from regulating the lead content of ammunition or fishing tackle; and exempts livestock producers from greenhouse gas regulations.

Even as Congress tried to negotiate the final timing of the spending bill on Friday, it also gave final approval to a bill that sets policy for military spending, authorizing up to $577 billion in the current fiscal year.

By a vote of 89 to 11, the Senate approved the annual defense authorization bill, which the House passed last week, 300 to 119.

The bill authorizes nearly $64 billion for overseas military campaigns, including money to train and equip Syrian rebels fighting the Islamic State. It also allows a 1 percent pay increase for military personnel and establishes new procedures to improve the handling of sexual assault cases in the military.

Several conservatives, led by Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, objected to unrelated provisions of the bill that expand national parks, wilderness areas and other federal lands. “A bill that defines the needs of our nation’s defense is hardly the proper place to trample on private property rights,” Mr. Coburn said.

In addition to the spending bill, the Senate has other business before members can head home for the holidays. The Senate is expected to approve a House-passed bill retroactively ending dozens of tax breaks. The tax breaks — like the research and development tax credit for businesses and the deduction for state and local sales taxes for individuals — will expire all over again on Jan. 1 under the one-year plan approved by the House.

The Senate is working its way through some remaining judicial and other nominations as well, and hopes to pass a terrorism risk insurance package, which would raise the threshold of terrorism damage at which federal aid is available, to $200 million from $100 million, and is set to expire at the end of this year.

WASHINGTON, Dec 31 (Reuters) - As Republicans assume control of the entire U.S. Congress in the new year, they are expected to push a controversial change to use more macroeconomic projections in determining the impact of tax and budget legislation on the federal deficit.

Critics say wider use of "dynamic scoring," as the Republican-favored approach is known, would introduce new uncertainties into fiscal policy and degrade the value of present analysis now done by Capitol Hill staff experts.

Republican advocates argue it would make fiscal analysis better reflect what they call economic realities. Dynamic scoring, as they envision it, would assumes that lower tax rates boost growth, offsetting some lost revenue.

The "scoring" of tax and budget bills matters because it can influence whether a bill becomes law. Lawmakers shy from measures that would balloon the deficit. So any math that makes scores look less worrisome has political appeal.

House Republicans were scheduled to meet on Monday to consider rules for the new Congress that convenes in January. One proposed rule, quietly unveiled two days before Christmas, is to require more dynamic scoring.

The top Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee has been sharply critical of this approach.

"In the guise of dynamic scoring, Republicans are trying to rig the system in ways that can be very destructive," said Michigan Democrat Sander Levin in a recent statement.

"The proposed change would undermine fiscal responsibility and further embrace Republican trickle-down economics," he said.

At the moment, when a U.S. lawmaker wants to raise or lower a tax or change the budget, the proposal has to be "scored" by the non-partisan staff experts of Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) or the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

JCT and CBO scores estimate how much a proposal will raise or lower projected government revenues and spending, a crucial factor when considering such measures because of the large federal budget deficit.

Scores currently are based on projected alterations in behavior due to changes in tax law and the budget, but not on changes in the broad economy. For instance, standard JCT scores hold gross domestic product (GDP) constant. GDP measures the economy's total output.

Dynamic scoring, as Republicans urge, would include more projected macroeconomic impacts.

JCT is already doing some of this, under 2003 orders from Congress, in supplemental materials it issues, but it does not include the results of dynamic scoring in official scores. (Reporting by Kevin Drawbaugh; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)