With election over, less attention to jobs report

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Reaction to the monthly jobs numbers isn't what it used to be.

The first unemployment report since President Barack Obama's re-election barely got a mention from the White House and Republicans after Friday's release. Gone was the frenzy of political posturing that followed every release throughout the presidential campaign.

Obama would try to cast each economic snapshot as a sign of slow but steady recovery, while Republican rival Mitt Romney bemoaned the unemployment rate as a sign that the country needed fresh economic leadership.

But there's a new postelection, political reality in Washington: Obama is sticking around for four more years no matter what the unemployment rate is.

Economic drivers are also behind Washington's muted response Friday. While economists project a continued drop in unemployment and an uptick in economic growth through next year, that could all be at risk if Obama and congressional Republicans can't reach a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff"- a series of automatic tax increases and spending cuts due to take effect at the end of the year.

Perhaps with that in mind, the White House made no plans for the president to comment publicly on the news that the unemployment rate fell to a nearly four-year low of 7.7 percent in November. Instead, Obama spent the day in private meetings with his advisers - including some on the fiscal cliff. He left his administration's response to top White House economist Alan Krueger.

"Today's employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to heal from the wounds inflicted by the worst downturn since the Great Depression," Krueger said in a statement.

Vice President Joe Biden also chimed in briefly during an event Friday afternoon, saying: "I think we have turned the corner."

Even before his re-election campaign kicked into high-gear, Obama made a point of addressing the jobless rate most months, regardless of whether it had climbed or dropped.

He'd speak from the White House, at small businesses in the Washington area or, often this year, at the start of campaign rallies in political swing states. He used his remarks to reassure the public and financial markets, or press Republicans to pass his proposals for jumpstarting the economy.

Congressional Republicans, and eventually Romney, would respond with vigor and cast the unemployment rate - which peaked at 10 percent during Obama's first year in office - as a sign that the president was leading the economy down a dangerous road and needed to be replaced.

With that opportunity gone following the Nov. 6 presidential election, and the unemployment picture improving, Republicans barely mentioned the jobless rate Friday. Instead, they used the monthly report to criticize Obama's willingness to go over the fiscal cliff unless Republicans drop their opposition to higher tax rates for the top 2 percent of income earners.

"The Democrats' plan to slow-walk our economy to the edge of the fiscal cliff instead of engaging in serious talks is a threat to our economy," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Friday.

Fiscal cliff negotiations between the White House and Republicans are at an impasse. Despite Obama's warning that he's willing to go over the cliff unless Republicans come around on taxes, the GOP is holding firm in its opposition to higher tax rates on the wealthy.

---

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

Source: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_JOBS_REPORT?SITE=TXCOL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

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Dragon Age: Inception

A currently private rp between Madmoiselle and Carlos_Joaquin.

---

Dragon Age: Inception

E u r e o s:

A fertile land in Thedas, located between Rivain and Antiva. Lush green jungles cover most of the country, with tempatures averaging 80 degrees, and enough rain to fill a Chantry. A country of warriors known for their fierce strength and shrewd minds; a most unwelcoming place to those who are non Eurosians.

Those with no purpose will find themselves thrown into a conflict none would ever expect, and positions of power they could only dream of. Neither human, elf, or dwarf involved in this tale is a hero just yet, but with a bit of luck, skill, and time, all of Thedas will soon know their names.

Will these mortals survive the tasks put before them, or will they perish before the adventure has even begun?

C H A R A C T E R S:

Rowan Hail- //Rouge

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/ZF-y_HXJrrA/viewtopic.php

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La Scala inaugurates season with 'Lohengrin'

MILAN (AP) ? The famed La Scala opera house inaugurates its 2012-13 season Friday with the Teutonic classic "Lohengrin" as it launches dual bicentennial celebrations of its own Giuseppe Verdi and German icon Richard Wagner.

Daniel Barenboim, La Scala's music director and a Wagner aficionado, conducts the gala season opener, one of the premier events on the European cultural calendar.

German bass Rene Pape appears as King Heinrich and tenor Jonas Kaufmann as Lohengrin. Evelyn Herlitzius plays Ortrud and German soprano Annette Dasch will sing the role of Elsa after headliner Anja Harteros was forced to cancel due to the flu.

Dasch, who has sung the role at Bayreuth since 2010, was brought in after Harteros' understudy, who sang Tuesday in a preview performance for the under-30 crowd, also caught the flu, the opera house said in a statement.

The performance on Tuesday was strongly applauded. German director Claus Guth's nontraditional staging sets the tale in the Victorian era.

The opener will be broadcast live in 600 cinemas around the world, as well as on Italian state television and radio. Large screens have also been placed in the nearby Galleria to allow Milanese to participate in the gala event.

Opera house management has dismissed criticism by Italian media over the decision to launch the season honoring Verdi, who called La Scala home, with a Wagner opera.

Even President Giorgio Napolitano was drawn into the fray after media speculated that he would miss the opening as a personal protest over the Wagner staging. Napolitano denied any snub, calling the polemics "futile" and "pathetic." He said he had state business to attend in Rome.

Both composers were born in 1813, and La Scala has included seven Verdi productions and six by Wagner in its program this year to honor their shared anniversary.

Verdi gets his season premiere on Jan. 15 with "Falstaff." Perhaps anticipating the Wagner hostility, La Scala has already announced its 2013-14 gala premiere to be Verdi's "La Traviata" conducted by Daniele Gatti.

Despite Napolitano's absence, the government will be well-represented Friday. Premier Mario Monti, a La Scala regular, is due to take a break from the grueling job of reforming Italy's economy and after Thursday's criticism of his government by the Silvio Berlusconi's center-right party. Five ministers also are expected.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/la-scala-inaugurates-season-lohengrin-104911047.html

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Obamacore: The substitution of propaganda for great literatiure in our schools (Powerlineblog)

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Urban Outfitters Buys Yard Sale Clothes - Business Insider

Urban Outfitters buys clothes in bulk at yard sales and flea markets and then sells them in stores as "vintage."?

The retailer has done this for years, usually selling the used goods as promotions for about two weeks.?

But an incredulous shopper recently posted a picture on Reddit of a?tag attached to one of the items. It reads "this unique found item was hand-selected for you from a yard sale or flea market. Any tears, holes, paint stains or other 'defects' we consider a virtue and not a flaw. Wear it well."?

Some used items at Urban are sold under the "Urban Renewal" brand, which includes garments hand-crafted from "from vintage, deadstock and surplus materials sourced from around the world," according to the retailer.?

Current promotions include $44 ripped Levi's denim shorts and a $69 Christmas dress. Urban notes that you can find "one-of-a-kind vintage items in select stores."

On Reddit, the post garnered thousands of comments. The general sentiment was that it's dumb to pay a huge mark-up for something a shopper could get at a Goodwill or Salvation Army store for under $5.?

"Urban Outfitters putting on some crazy markup and charging $50 for a shirt you could've gotten for $5," one commenter noted. "They're basically selling old clothes to people for a new clothes price, and calling it vintage."?

Hipsters aren't just lining up to buy items curated from yard sales.?

We interviewed a "vintage seller" at the Artists & Fleas market in Williamsburg, Brooklyn about how he got his merchandise.?

He was selling vintage Lacoste and Polo sweaters for $45.?

"Basically I just go to Texas once a year, go to the Goodwill store in a nice suburban neighborhood, and load up on stuff that just costs a few dollars," he said. "Then I come here and people go crazy for it."

Thus, the sweater of a banker dad in the suburbs of Texas can end up being worn by a Brooklyn millennial.

DON'T MISS: The Fabulous Life Of Amancio Ortega, The Billionaire Founder Behind 'Zara' >

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/urban-outfitters-buys-yard-sale-clothes-2012-12

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Capitalism and socialism wed as words of the year

The word malarkey, from the 11th edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, is shown in this photograph, in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2012. Thanks to the election, socialism and capitalism are forever wed as Merriam-Webster's most looked-up words of 2012. Democracy, globalization, marriage, meme, malarkey and bigot also made the Top 10. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

The word malarkey, from the 11th edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, is shown in this photograph, in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2012. Thanks to the election, socialism and capitalism are forever wed as Merriam-Webster's most looked-up words of 2012. Democracy, globalization, marriage, meme, malarkey and bigot also made the Top 10. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

The word bigot, from the 11th edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, is shown in this photograph, in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2012. Thanks to the election, socialism and capitalism are forever wed as Merriam-Webster's most looked-up words of 2012. Democracy, globalization, marriage and bigot also made the Top 10. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

The word capitalism, from the 11th edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, is shown in this photograph, in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2012. Thanks to the election, socialism and capitalism are forever wed as Merriam-Webster's most looked-up words of 2012. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

The word meme, from the 11th edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, is shown in this photograph, in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2012. Thanks to the election, socialism and capitalism are forever wed as Merriam-Webster's most looked-up words of 2012. Democracy, globalization, marriage, meme, malarkey and bigot also made the Top 10. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

The word socialism, from the 11th edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, is shown in this photograph, in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2012. Thanks to the election, socialism and capitalism are forever wed as Merriam-Webster's most looked-up words of 2012. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

NEW YORK (AP) ? Thanks to the election, socialism and capitalism are forever wed as Merriam-Webster's most looked-up words of 2012.

Traffic for the unlikely pair on the company's website about doubled this year from the year before as the health care debate heated up and discussion intensified over "American capitalism" versus "European socialism," said the editor at large, Peter Sokolowski.

The choice revealed Wednesday was "kind of a no-brainer," he said. The side-by-side interest among political candidates and around kitchen tables prompted the dictionary folk to settle on two words of the year rather than one for the first time since the accolade began in 2003.

"They're words that sort of encapsulate the zeitgeist. They're words that are in the national conversation," said Sokolowski from company headquarters in Springfield, Mass. "The thing about an election year is it generates a huge amount of very specific interest."

Democracy, globalization, marriage and bigot ? all touched by politics ? made the Top 10, in no particular order. The latter two were driven in part by the fight for same-sex marriage acceptance.

Last year's word of the year was austerity. Before that, it was pragmatic. Other words in the leading dictionary maker's Top 10 for 2012 were also politically motivated.

Harken back to Oct. 11, when Vice President Joe Biden tangled with Mitt Romney running mate Paul Ryan in a televised debate focused on foreign policy ? terror attacks, defense spending and war, to be specific.

"With all due respect, that's a bunch of MALARKEY," declared Biden during a particularly tough row with Ryan. The mention sent look-ups of malarkey soaring on Merriam-webster.com, Sokolowski said, adding: "Clearly a one-week wonder, but what a week!"

Actually, it was more like what a day. Look-ups of malarkey represented the largest spike of a single word on the website by percentage, at 3,000 percent, in a single 24-hour period this year. The company won't release the number of page views per word but said the site gets about 1.2 billion overall each year.

Malarkey, with the alternative spelling of "y'' at the end, is of unknown origin, but Merriam-Webster surmises it's more Irish-American than Irish, tracing it to newspaper references as far back as 1929.

Beyond "nonsense," malarkey can mean "insincere or pretentious talk or writing designed to impress one and usually to distract attention from ulterior motives or actual conditions," noted Sokolowski.

"That's exactly what Joe Biden was saying. Very precise," especially in conversation with another Irish-American, Sokolowski said. "He chose a word that resonated with the public, I think in part because it really resonated with him. It made perfect sense for this man to use this word in this moment."

An interesting election-related phenom, to be sure, but malarkey is no dead Big Bird or "binders full of women" ? two Romneyisms from the defeated candidate's televised matchups with Obama that evoked another of Merriam-Webster's Top 10 ? meme.

While malarkey's history is shaded, meme's roots are easily traced to evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, a Brit who coined the term for a unit of cultural inheritance, not unlike genes and DNA. The retired professor at the University of Oxford made up the word in 1976 for "The Selfish Gene," a book he published light years before the Internet and social media's capacity to take memes viral.

Sokolowski said traffic for the word meme more than doubled this year over 2011, with dramatic spikes pegged to political-related subjects that included Romney's Big Bird and binders remarks, social media shares of images pegged to Hillary Rodham Clinton texting and Obama's "horses and bayonets" debate rebuke of Romney in an exchange over the size of the Navy.

Dawkins, reached at home in Oxford, was tickled by the dictionary shoutout.

"I'm very pleased that it's one of the 10 words that got picked out," he said. "I'm delighted. I hope it may bring more people to understand something about evolution."

The book in which he used meme for the first time is mostly about the gene as the primary unit of natural selection, or the Darwinian idea that only the strongest survive. In the last chapter, he said, he wanted to describe some sort of cultural replicator.

And he wanted a word that sounded like "gene," so he took a twist on the Greek mimeme, which is the origin of "mime" and "mimesis," a scientific term meaning imitation.

"It's a very clever coinage," lauded the lexicographer Sokolowski.

Other words in Merriam-Webster's Top 10 for 2012:

? Touche, thanks in part to "Survivor" contestant Kat Edorsson misusing the word to mean "tough luck" rather than "point well made," before she was voted off the island in May. Look-ups at Merriam-webster.com were up sevenfold this year over 2011.

? Schadenfreude, made up of the German words for "damage" and "joy," meaning taking pleasure in the misery of others, was used broadly in the media after the election. Look-ups increased 75 percent. The word in English dates to 1895.

? Professionalism, up 12 percent this year over last. Sokolowski suspects the bump might have been due to the bad economy and more job seekers, or a knowing "glimpse into what qualities people value."

___

Online: http://www.merriam-webster.com/

___

Follow Leanne Italie on Twitter at http://twitter.com/litalie

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2012-12-05-Words%20of%20the%20Year/id-6820315d39274cc3b84032989793f409

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Clinton revisits family legacy in riot-torn Belfast

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton meets Friday with Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson, right, and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, left, at Stormont Castle in Belfast on Friday.

By Reuters

BELFAST -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled Friday to Northern Ireland to lend her support to the British province's fragile peace, the frailty of which was underlined by overnight rioting on the eve of her visit and the seizure of a bomb.

Making one of her last foreign trips in her current job, she visits a province transformed by the 1998 peace agreement that her husband helped bring about in what was regarded as one of the greatest successes of his presidency.

But Northern Ireland remains riven by sectarian tensions and Clinton arrives in a week that has seen three riots, the appropriation of a bomb over 62 miles outside Belfast, and the arrest of four militant nationalists.

The latest riot erupted Thursday night when a policeman was injured after protesters hurled missiles to vent their anger against nationalist councilors who voted to remove the British flag atop Belfast City Hall.

'It pains me': Clinton decries plight of women in male-dominated countries

Two people were arrested and four vehicles damaged. Militant nationalists also shot dead a prison officer last month.

Important for 2016?
However, Clinton's visit, during which politicians from both sides of the political divide will brief her on the peace process, will be a reminder of the huge popularity of her family in Ireland, a potential asset in attracting the Irish-American vote if Clinton decided to run for the U.S. presidency in 2016.

The province has suffered one of the world's worst property market crashes and its leaders are hoping for the kind of U.S. foreign investment that has transformed the rest of Ireland.

"Our need is more economic now than political," said Reg Empey, Chairman of the Ulster Unionist Party, who was a senior figure in the peace process.

Cops hurt as British unionist protesters try to storm Belfast City Hall in flag spat

"But we also have to be aware that there is still a degree of volatility ... and in those circumstances I think we should make sure we keep the relationship going," he said.

Peace process
Hillary Clinton traveled to Northern Ireland several times in the mid-1990s while her husband helped broker the 1998 Good Friday peace accord. His hands-on approach was widely recognized as crucial at moments when the agreement looked like crumbling.

Bill Clinton's work helped win over the Irish vote during his re-election campaign in 1996 and his popularity among Irish-Americans could rub off on his wife if she needed it.

Clinton on Thursday told journalists in Dublin she was "too focused on what I'm doing" to think about a run for the presidency and declined to comment on U.S. newspaper reports that her husband may be appointed as Washington's next ambassador to the Republic of Ireland.

Complete World coverage on NBCNews.com

Personal ties
As first lady, Clinton lent support to pro-peace women's groups in Northern Ireland and visited people wounded in the 1998 Omagh bombing, the deadliest attack in three decades of violence commonly known as the "Troubles."

At least 3,600 people were killed during that time as Catholic nationalists seeking union with Ireland fought British security forces and mainly Protestant Loyalists determined to remain part of the United Kingdom.

"The lessons learned here in Ireland about how to build peace could be of great use to other peoples and nations," Clinton said Thursday in a speech in Dublin in which she recalled a meeting between Catholic and Protestant women in Belfast in the 1990s.

"There are so many more ties that bind us than divide us, and that is what has motivated me over many years now," she said.

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Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/07/15749806-clinton-revisits-family-legacy-in-trip-to-riot-torn-belfast?lite

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