Purveyor
Purveyor's JournalReform Jews At Odds With AIPAC Over Penalizing Palestinians For UN Move
Two major American Jewish groups are at odds over the prospect of penalties for the Palestinians in the wake of their enhanced United Nations status.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee in recent weeks has backed two congressional bids to at least shut down the Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington in the wake of the November 29 United Nations General Assembly’s overwhelming vote that granted Palestinians non-member observer state status.
Conversely, the Reform movement has emphatically urged President Obama not to retaliate against the Palestinians, JTA has learned. The Reform movement also has resolved to oppose the shuttering of the PLO office.
The lines dividing the two organizations are not necessarily set in stone. The Reform movement has suggested it might back penalties should the Palestinians use their new status to charge Israel in international courts. An AIPAC official suggested to JTA that the organization would wait and see whether the Palestinians go to international courts before it decides its next legislative moves.
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http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/reform-jews-at-odds-with-aipac-over-penalizing-palestinians-for-un-move-1.491254
GOP Cabal Ready to Unseat Boehner: Sources
Source: Newser
(NEWSER) – Was the fiscal cliff deal John Boehner's last stand? Washington has long rumbled with reports that conservatives are ready to oust the House speaker, and now sources tell Breitbart that enough Republicans are ready to do it—provided they can find someone else to take the job. "At least 20 House Republican members have gotten together, discussed this, and want to unseat Speaker Boehner," a spokesman for the conservative group American Majority Action says. "That's more than enough to get the job done."
The problem, the group said, is that these malcontents need a leader to rally behind. Eric Cantor is widely seen as a potential candidate, particularly given his opposition to the cliff deal.
Read more: http://www.newser.com/story/160263/gop-cabal-ready-to-unseat-boehner-sources.html
Gov. Chris Christie adds news conference, with House inaction on Sandy bill likely topic
Gov. Chris Christie has scheduled a 2 p.m. news conference at the Statehouse.
The topic for the event wasn’t announced, but it comes after the U.S. House of Representatives last night opted against voting on the $60.4 billion Superstorm Sandy relief bill approved by the U.S. Senate, meaning the bill will die when the current Congress expires tomorrow and have to start from scratch in the new session.
There’s been nearly unanimous, bipartisan criticism from New Jersey and New York members of Congress to the unexpected decision against voting on the bill.
“Denying emergency aid to Superstorm Sandy victims is a new low for House Republicans,” said U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J. “When our neighbors in other states are knocked down by emergency events, we put partisan politics aside and extend a helping hand to help them get back up. Helping struggling families recover from disasters has never been a partisan issue in Washington and it never should be. New Jersey and New York families have been hurt badly by Sandy and it is shameful that Washington Republicans are adding to their pain by standing in the way of their recovery.”
“I am outraged that at a time when we need it the most, Speaker Boehner could dismiss the need for the same kind of relief has been granted to other regions hit by similar disasters,” said U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-Long Branch. “This bill has already passed in the U.S. Senate and must be brought up for a vote before the end of this Congress, now.”
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http://blogs.app.com/capitolquickies/2013/01/02/christie-adds-news-conference-with-house-inaction-on-sandy-bill-likely-topic/
This should be good. Hope CNN or somebody covers it
When Governing Means Lurching Between Phony Crises
By Clive Crook - Jan 2, 2013
The vote last night in the House of Representatives brought to a close the latest Washington master class in dereliction of duty. After a few days of arguing about who won or lost, we can move on to the next manufactured crisis.
In itself, not much of a surprise, the fiscal-cliff deal avoids most of the tax increases and postpones almost all of the spending cuts that were about to be triggered. Throughout this farce, financial markets had refused to believe that the U.S. government would inflict a recession rather than strike a budget agreement, especially because they knew that, all posturing aside, the distance between the two parties was small. Markets wobbled but didn’t collapse.
Let’s hope they react with similar equanimity to the next pointless quarrel, over the debt ceiling. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congress last week that the current limit on government borrowing was about to be reached. He said “extraordinary measures” (essentially, shuffling funds among government accounts) would be used to prevent the debt from breaking through the ceiling.
How long can that go on? Geithner wasn’t sure. Maybe two months under normal circumstances, he said, but “given the significant uncertainty that now exists with regard to unresolved tax and spending policies for 2013, it is not possible to predict the effective duration of these measures.”
Tax Increase
The latest fiscal deal does little to resolve those uncertainties. The spending-cut part has merely been delayed by two months. The tax increase for couples making more than $450,000, together with other changes and estimated savings in debt interest, shaves about $700 billion from the 10-year deficit. Savings of about $2 trillion will be needed to stabilize the ratio of public debt to national income. Bringing that ratio down to a safer level requires spending cuts and tax increases worth $4 trillion -- the original “grand bargain” ambition.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2013-01-02/when-governing-means-lurching-between-phony-crises.html
Netanyahu Lead Narrows in Israel Poll as Jewish Home Party Gains
By Calev Ben-David - Jan 2, 2013
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-Beitenu election list recorded another drop in a new poll by Haaretz daily, as the Jewish Home faction, which supports building West Bank settlements, continued to gain.
Likud-Beitenu would win 34 parliamentary seats according to today’s poll, down from 35 in a Dec. 31 Haaretz survey and 39 on Dec. 10. Parties likely to support Netanyahu’s efforts to form a new coalition after the Jan. 22 vote would still gain more than half of the seats in Israel’s 120-seat parliament, the Knesset.
Among the parties expressing support for Netanyahu as premier is Jewish Home, which opposes concessions to the Palestinians in the peace process. Jewish Home would gain 14 seats according to today’s poll, up one from Dec. 31 and five from Dec. 10.
Likud-Beitenu’s decline “is in part a result of mistakes in its campaign strategy,” according to Tamir Sheafer, a professor in the Hebrew University’s political science department.
He cited Netanyahu’s criticism of Jewish Home last month after its leader Naftali Bennett said that as a soldier he would refuse orders to evacuate West Bank settlements. “Those attacks only gave Jewish Home more publicity,” Sheafer said.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2013-01-02/netanyahu-lead-narrows-in-israel-poll-as-jewish-home-party-gains.html
Islamists Join Syrian Rebels in Military Airfield Attack
Source: Bloomberg
By Dana El Baltaji - Jan 2, 2013
Syrian rebels, including an Islamist group branded a terrorist organization by the U.S., engaged in “intense” clashes with President Bashar al-Assad’s forces at a military airfield in the northern region of Idlib.
Opposition fighters appeared to be attempting to storm the Taftanaz airbase following heavy shelling, according to an e- mailed statement from the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The intense clashes left at least four rebels dead and one helicopter damaged, the observatory said. The opposition group said Jabhat al-Nusra, designated a terrorist group by the U.S. last year because of ties to al-Qaeda, had joined the attack.
Assad’s military lost barracks, airfields, heavy weaponry and oilfields across the country during the last quarter of 2012. Fighters engaged in a 22-month struggle to topple the government in Damascus also have control of mainly Sunni Muslim towns and suburbs stretching from the northeast outskirts of the capital to the southwest of the city.
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-02/islamists-join-syrian-rebels-in-military-airfield-attack.html
Assad’s military lost barracks, airfields, heavy weaponry and oilfields across the country during the last quarter of 2012.
Yep, these fellows are collecting some of the 'good stuff' that we shall see used in other parts of the world for years to come...
Oil Rises to Three-Month High as U.S. Passes Budget Bill
By Moming Zhou - Jan 2, 2013
Oil rose to the highest level in three months after U.S. lawmakers reached a deal to avert automatic tax increases and spending cuts that had threatened growth in the world’s biggest oil consuming country.
Futures climbed as much as 2.2 percent after the House of Representatives passed a Senate bill to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff after 11 p.m. yesterday in Washington. President Barack Obama said he will sign it into law, undoing income tax increases for more than 99 percent of U.S. households.
“The congressional action has made people feel a lot more optimistic about the U.S. economy and we are seeing a big move up for oil,” said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research in Winchester, Massachusetts. “The big thing is that there is no tax increase for most people.”
West Texas Intermediate for February delivery rose $1.47, or 1.6 percent, to $93.29 a barrel at 9:47 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange after climbing to $93.87, the highest intraday level since Sept. 19. The futures dropped 7.1 percent last year, the first decline since 2008. Trading was closed yesterday for the New Year’s Day holiday.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2013-01-02/oil-rises-to-three-month-high-as-u-s-passes-budget-bill.html
Manufacturing in U.S. Expands After Reaching Three-Year Low
Manufacturing in the U.S. expanded in December at a pace that shows the industry is stabilizing after reaching a three-year low a month earlier.
The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index climbed to 50.7 last month from November’s 49.5, which was the weakest since July 2009, the Tempe, Arizona-based group’s report showed today. Fifty is the dividing line between expansion and contraction. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a rise to 50.5.
Sustained growth in the U.S., in part due to a housing rebound, and steadying overseas markets are helping underpin factory orders and keeping manufacturing from faltering. At the same time, while lawmakers moved to extend tax cuts for about 99 percent of households, corporate confidence in the economic expansion will take time to build as Congress prepares to debate spending cuts and the debt ceiling.
“The worst part of the manufacturing slowdown is behind us,” Bricklin Dwyer, an economist at BNP Paribas in New York, said before the report. “We’re seeing some decent consumer demand.” The possibility of fiscal tightening has been “limiting the ability of businesses to release their cash and increase investment.”
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2013-01-02/ism-index-of-u-s-manufacturing-increased-to-50-7-in-december.html
Best Vehicle Sales Streak Since 1973 Boosts U.S. Dealers
U.S. light-vehicle sales probably rose in December to wrap up a three-year run unrivaled in almost four decades as consumers replaced cars and trucks that are, on average, the oldest ever on the nation’s roads.
Car and light truck sales in the U.S. probably rose 9.8 percent in December, according to a Bloomberg survey of analysts. That would cap a third-straight annual gain of at least 10 percent, the first such industry streak since 1973.
“It sure feels a lot better to be selling cars today than a few years ago,” Geoffrey Pohanka, president of the Pohanka Automotive Group, said in a telephone interview. “The age of the fleet and the attractiveness of a lot of cars that are being designed now are going to help sustain sales going forward.”
That confidence in continued demand has his Washington, D.C.-area dealer group expanding only a few years after retrenchment. Pohanka closed three Saturn stores and a Chrysler- Dodge outlet as part of the 2009 restructurings of the predecessors to General Motors Co. (GM) and Chrysler Group LLC. In 2013, he plans to build a second Honda store in as many years and also will add a new Volkswagen dealership.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-02/best-vehicle-sales-streak-since-1973-boosts-u-s-dealers.html
‘Fiscal Cliff’ Deal Does Little To Tame Threats From Debt Ceiling, High Unemployment Rates
By Zachary A. Goldfarb, Updated: Tuesday, January 1, 8:35 PM
The deal passed by the Senate early Tuesday would head off the most severe effects of the “fiscal cliff” by averting a dangerous dose of austerity but still leaves the economy vulnerable to both immediate and more distant threats.
The agreement, approved only hours after the government hit the limit on federal borrowing, fails to defuse the prospect of a catastrophic national default two months from now. The deal does not raise the debt ceiling, leaving the Treasury to use what it calls “extraordinary measures” as long as it can to pay the government’s bills.
Nor does the package do anything to address stubbornly high levels of unemployment, with 12 million Americans out of work. Instead, the deal could aggravate the problem. By allowing the payroll tax cut to expire, the deal takes money out of the hands of many Americans, sucking it out of the economy and slowing economic activity.
And finally, the deal is too modest to fundamentally tame the government’s soaring debt. The nation’s long-term finances remain in peril with federal spending projected to rise dramatically as a wave of retiring baby boomers turns to the government for help in paying for ever-more-costly health care.
Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at J.P. Morgan Chase, cautioned that the deal is a stopgap measure at most.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/fiscal-cliff/fiscal-cliff-deal-does-little-to-tame-threats-from-debt-ceiling-high-unemployment-rates/2013/01/01/8e4c14aa-5393-11e2-bf3e-76c0a789346f_story.html
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