Sunday, December 4, 2011

Rick Santelli's Chicago Tea Party

Rick Santelli's Chicago Tea Party

Gun sales surge during holiday season

Posted: 03 Dec 2011 12:04 PM PST

By Kay Johnson, WBTV.com

CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) – Black Friday posted record numbers this time around. Big TV’s, video games and even waffle makers. A large variety of top sellers this Black Friday.

But people were buying more than just toys and clothes this year– it appears they were buying guns.

“Several times we had lines waiting to get in the store,” Owner of Hyatt Gun Shop Larry Hyatt said.

Hyatt did the math for his Black Friday sales. It breaks down to a gun sold every 7 minutes for the 8 hours they were opened that day.

“Gun sales are up all over the country and have been for several years and naturally on the biggest shopping day of the year with a popular product…we were slammed,” Hyatt said.

Don Ingram at Carolina Sporting Arms says there was an increase in traffic and gun purchases at his store on Black Friday and the Saturday after too.

“It was a bit of a boost,” Ingram said.

The FBI reports a record number of background check requests on Black Friday – 129,166. The last highest day was on November 28, 2008 with 97, 848 requests.

To read more, visit:  http://www.wbtv.com/story/16177149/gun-sales-surge-during-holiday-season

Republican candidates stand up for states rights regarding marijuana

Posted: 03 Dec 2011 12:01 PM PST

By: Alex Webb, Examiner.com

Medical Marijuana prohibition and decriminalization maybe a thing of the past sooner then we realize. The issue is certainly a hot topic during this election, especially after the flat out lie and total opposite of the support promised by our current administration. President Obama has not only moved to heighten the war on drugs and act against medical marijuana, he is also willing to trump states rights to do it. The issue of states rights is an issue that the Republican candidates aren’t taking with a grain of salt.

Recently Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain took stance on medical marijuana regarding state regulations stating, “If states want to legalize medical marijuana, I think that’s a state’s right,” said Cain to Andrew Rafferty of NBC News, “Because one of my overriding approaches to looking at all of these issues, most of them belong at the state, because when you do something federally… you try to force one-size-fits-all.” It’s a very bold statement indeed, but rings true to the constitution, and Cain is not alone.

To read more, visit:  http://www.examiner.com/cannabis-culture-in-phoenix/republican-presidential-candidates-stand-up-for-states-rights-regarding-medical

Two diverse cases in Sacramento hinge on free speech issues

Posted: 03 Dec 2011 11:57 AM PST

By Andy Furillo, The Sacramento Bee

Flamboyant as usual, Sacramento defense attorney Linda Parisi made her way up and down the courthouse elevator Friday between two cases that seemingly placed her on opposite sides of the First Amendment.

In the morning on the third floor, the bangled Parisi argued for more than a half-hour to keep the press and public out of pretrial hearings in a sensational murder case that’s on the cusp of going to trial after 31 years.

In the early afternoon on the second floor, Parisi appeared in another courtroom as part of a team of lawyers who are basing their defense of dozens of Occupy Sacramento protesters on grounds that the city has trampled on their free speech rights.

Parisi, in both instances, has raised the issue of “time, place and manner” restrictions on free speech and free press rights guaranteed under America’s most fundamental amendment.

When it came to Richard Joseph Hirschfield, accused and facing the death penalty in the 1980 UC Davis “sweetheart” murders of John Riggins and Sabrina Gonsalves, Parisi asked Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael W. Sweet to keep the press out of pretrial hearings.

Parisi based part of her argument on “time, place and manner” restrictions on the free press. She said the press could always look up transcripts of the hearings once a jury has been picked.

To read more, visit:  http://www.sacbee.com/2011/12/03/4096532/two-diverse-cases-in-sacramento.html

Some in GOP Reject Payroll-Tax Cut Extension

Posted: 03 Dec 2011 11:53 AM PST

By Steven Sloan and Richard Rubin, Bloomberg.com

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner will seek in the next week to persuade fellow Republicans to set aside their concerns and support a one-year extension of a payroll tax cut that some members of the party are resisting.

The Ohio Republican presented a plan yesterday to members of his caucus that would extend the payroll tax cut for employees into 2012 and offset the forgone revenue. The proposal hasn't been released publicly, and some of the Republicans expressed skepticism about it.

Boehner is facing a political dilemma of tending to his party's concerns while trying to rebuff Democratic criticism that Republicans are willing to allow taxes for the middle class to increase. Representative Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, said many Republican lawmakers during the caucus meeting cautioned Boehner against pushing a proposal to the House floor.

"Most of the people standing up were troubled with moving ahead on this," Flake told reporters.

Unless Congress acts, the tax cut — which lowered the employee portion of the Social Security payroll tax from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent for 2011 — will expire Dec. 31. The 2011 tax break resulted in $111.7 billion in forgone revenue to the Treasury over 10 years, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

The government transferred money from the general fund to cover the reduced funding for Social Security.

To read more, visit:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-02/some-in-gop-reject-payroll-tax-cut-extension.html

Wall Street Rockets Higher in Best Week Since ’09

Posted: 03 Dec 2011 11:49 AM PST

Written By Adam Samson, FOXBusiness.com

Stocks surged more than 7% this week, Wall Street’s best performance since 2009, as traders grew hopeful that global policymakers are taking action to tackle Europe’s two-year-old debt crisis.

Today’s Markets

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.61 point, or 0.01%, to 12,019, the S&P 500 slipped 0.3 point, or 0.02%, to 1,244 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.73 point, or 0.03%, to 2,627.

Action was fairly subdued on the day, with the major market averages making only small moves. The S&P 500 leaped 7.4% on the week, its best performance since March 13, 2009, which is considered to be the beginning of the current bull market. The broad-market index has nearly doubled since hitting its bear-market low of 666.79 on March 6, 2009, but is still down by 1.1% for the year.

The Dow tacked on 788 points, or 7%, the second-biggest weekly point gain in the history of the blue-chip index, and the best percentage performance since July 2009.

The financial sector posted the best performance on Friday, with big-name investment banks like Morgan Stanley (MS: 15.52, +1.01, +6.96%) and Goldman Sachs (GS: 97.25, +2.82, +2.99%) leaping higher. Indeed, JPMorgan Chase (JPM: 32.33, +1.87, +6.14%) performed the best out of all of the Dow components by a wide margin. Hewlett-Packard (HPQ: 27.68, -0.54, -1.91%) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ: 63.47, -0.98, -1.52%) by contrast, were the worst-performing blue chips.

On a broader level, the health care sector struggled the most, with the Health Care Select Sector SPDR (XLV: 33.51, -0.42, -1.24%), an exchange-traded fund that tracks many healthcare names, falling by more than 1%.

To read more, visit:  http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/12/02/wall-street-rockets-higher-in-best-week-since-0/

Ron Paul won’t take part in Trump-moderated debate

Posted: 03 Dec 2011 11:46 AM PST

By Catalina Camia, USA TODAY

Ron Paul has a message for Donald Trump: You’re fired as a GOP presidential debate moderator.

The Texas congressman’s campaign said today he will not participate in a Dec. 27 debate hosted by the conservative Newsmax website because the participation of the real estate mogul and host of NBC’s The Apprentice is “wildly inappropriate.”

“The selection of a reality television personality to host a presidential debate that voters nationwide will be watching is beneath the office of the Presidency and flies in the face of that office’s history and dignity,” Jesse Benton, Paul’s national campaign chairman, said in a statement.

What’s more, Benton says, Trump dissed the Iowa Republican Party when he reneged on a commitment to headline a big fundraising dinner after Trump decided he would no longer seek the presidency. Benton said that caused “embarrassment” and money to the Iowa GOP, which hosts the first presidential caucuses of the 2012 campaign on Jan. 3.

“Our candidate will not even consider participating in the late-December debate until Mr. Trump publicly apologizes to Iowa party leaders and rectifies in full the situation,” Benton said.

To read more, visit:  http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2011/12/ron-paul-donald-trump-gop-debate-moderator-/1

Teen stopped at airport for design on purse

Posted: 03 Dec 2011 11:39 AM PST

By: News4jax.com

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A teenage girl’s sense of style got her in trouble at the airport.

Vanessa Gibbs, 17, claims the Transportation Security Administration stopped her at the security gate because of the design of a gun on her handbag.

Gibbs said she had no problem going through security at Jacksonville International Airport, but rather, when she headed home from Virginia.

“It’s my style, it’s camouflage, it has an old western gun on it,” Gibbs said.

But her preference for the pistol style didn’t sit well with TSA agents at the Norfolk airport.

Gibbs said she was headed back home to Jacksonville from a holiday trip when an agent flagged her purse as a security risk.

“She was like, ‘This is a federal offense because it’s in the shape of a gun,’” Gibbs said. “I’m like, ‘But it’s a design on a purse. How is it a federal offense?’”

After agents figured out the gun was a fake, Gibbs said, TSA told her to check the bag or turn it over.

To read more, visit:  http://www.news4jax.com/news/Teen-stopped-at-airport-for-design-on-purse/-/475880/4858586/-/qijcv5/-/index.html

Darpa’s Creepy Robo-Blob Learns to Crawl

Posted: 03 Dec 2011 11:35 AM PST

By Katie Drummond , Wired.com

The Pentagon's robo-blob has grown up a lot these past two years. Now the thing's got six legs and some seriously creepy crawling abilities.

In 2008, iRobot, the company behind household vacuum 'bot "Roomba," teamed up with the Pentagon's far-out research arm, Darpa, for a new program called "ChemBots." The idea was to create a team of 'bots whose movements were inspired by the locomotive talents of "mice, octopi and insects," allowing them to slide under doors, squeeze into tight spaces or maneuver other tough-to-navigate terrain.

Already, Darpa-funded researchers have made remarkable progress. A team at Harvard last year unveiled a soft robot that could walk with different gaits, crawl, and deflate itself completely to cram into tiny gaps — on terrain as varied as pavement, mud, or, um, Jell-O.

And in 2009, iRobot and their collaborators at the University of Chicago introduced the first iteration of their robo-blob, which used new technology known as "jamming," whereby a series of pressure changes inside a flexible polymer structure, which is filled with granular particles, make those particles either diffuse or "jam" together, creating a soft structure or a hard one. So as pressure changed inside the round, palm-sized 'bot, it was able to roll on-demand.

Now, robo-blob has blossomed from that rotund, awkward baby-bot into a lean, mean six-legged walking machine. Researchers have affixed legs, made of that same elastic polymer, onto the robot's body. Each leg uses the same jamming technology to alternately soften and harden, allowing the 'bot to crawl — ever so creepily — into a terrorist's nightmares.

To read more, visit:  http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/darpa-chembot/

Report: Arsenic in apple and grape juice

Posted: 03 Dec 2011 11:23 AM PST

By: Elizabeth Cohen, CNN Health

Ten percent of apple juices and grape juices have higher arsenic levels than are allowed in drinking water in the United States, according to a new study by Consumer Reports.

The magazine analyzed 88 samples of fruit juice purchased at stores in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Several well-known brands, including Walmart, Mott's, Walgreens and Welch's, had levels higher than 10 parts per billion of arsenic, the threshold set by the federal government for bottled and tap water.

Twenty-five percent of the samples, including juices from such brands as Gerber, Trader Joe’s and Minute Maid, had more than 5 parts per billion of lead, according to Consumer Reports. Five parts per billion is the standard set for lead in bottled water by the Food and Drug Administration.

“We’re not telling parents to freak out or throw out all their juices, but we are concerned about the public health consequences,” said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumer Reports, who added that children are particularly vulnerable because of their smaller body size and because juice is often a staple of their diet.

Long-term exposure to arsenic, which is odorless and tasteless, has been linked to cancer of the bladder, skin, kidney, nasal passages, liver and prostate, and high levels of lead in drinking water can result in delays in physical and mental development, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Juice Products Association said in a written response to the report that "juice is safe for consumers of all ages."

To read more, visit:  http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/30/report-arsenic-in-apple-and-grape-juice/?hpt=he_c2

Peyton Hillis throws his support toward candidate

Posted: 03 Dec 2011 11:19 AM PST

By Patrick Dorsey, ESPN.com

… and Peyton Hillis’ weird year continues.

First came the Madden cover for the bruising Cleveland Browns tailback. Then the curse, and its fallout: Contract questions; a bizarre strep-throat controversy in which is agent advised him to sit out a game; a long struggle with injury; reports of an intervention from teammates; and the overall question: Are the Browns done with him?

Now this, per The Plain Dealer: At the behest of Tony Pashos — Hillis’ teammate and fervent supporter of Republican Congressman Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential candidacy — Hillis plastered pro-Paul paraphernalia all over himself during Thursday’s media session.

This isn’t to mock Paul. We try not to get political here at Page 2. It’s just … not something you see in most NFL backfields. Even during debate season.

Then again, it does bring a new meaning to the term “running mate.”

To read more, visit:  http://espn.go.com/espn/page2/index?id=7309542
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