• GOP Senate Takeover Now Better Than Even Odds
• China Takes Lead In Patent Filings.
• China Replaces U. S. In Turkey-NATO Combat Exercise.
• Son Arrested For Punching Fire Chief Who Let Dad’s House Burn
• Trump “Absolutely” Thinking Of Run For President
• Iran Says It Could Attack Israel and U. S. With Nukes
• Western Economies Mired in ‘Near Depression’: IMF
• Californians Pessimistic About Future
• Rahmbo’s First Chicago Sortie Bumpy Road.
• Bell Government’s Collapse
• Interest Groups Spend $80 Million So Far on November 2
• Losing LBJ’s “Unconditional” War On Poverty
• AFL-CIO Dramatically Changed Since Meany Era
• Cyber Warfare Danger Grows for U. S.

What once seemed impossible now looks very possible. Republican Senate candidates are ahead in ten states including North Dakota  by 43%; 18% in Arkansas and Indiana; in Wisconsin by 12%; in Pennsylvania by 7%; Colorado  and  West Virginia by 5%;  Illinois  by 4%; Nevada  3%, and Washington by 1%.

And, in Connecticut, Linda McMahon is hot on the heels of Richard Blumenthal.  In New York State, the last published poll had Republican Joe DioGuardi one point behind appointed Senator Kristen Gillibrand, but that poll is now two weeks old.  In Delaware, the last poll is two weeks old and showed Democrat Coons way ahead.
 
The only piece of bad news is that Fiorini is 3 points behind Boxer in California, but Barbara is still under 50% of the vote.
 
Of course if ten win majority control of the Senate shifts to the GOP. Now Republicans need to get their voters to turnout!  

By the  way $3,000,000,000 (billion) will be spent in this campaign cycle.

Christine O’Donnell has a new campaign ad where she says she’s not a witch. Nancy Pelosi was furious. She said, “Hey, that’s my slogan.” — Leno

In 2011 China will become the world leader in patent filings. China achieving this lead in patent filing one year earlier than was previously forecast. The findings are from a detailed intellectual property analysis published Wednesday by the IP Solutions business of Thomson Reuters.

The findings show that China is not only seeing a patent boom at home, its overseas patent filings in Europe, Japan and the U.S. were up 33.5%, 15.9%, and 14.1%, respectively, from 2007-2008. The driver is the Chinese government, which has gradually engineered a shift from agriculture to high technology. Agri-centric patents increased much more slowly than high-tech patents. The utility model (10-year patents) account for much of this growth because they are easier and more affordable to file. Despite this, Thomson Reuters reports that patent quality is improving.

Obama got about the same percentage of white votes in 2008 as Kerry won in 2004. Obama’s victory was entirely due to a big increase in black turnout (from 11 percent of the vote in 2004 to 14 percent in 2008) and in his greater popularity among Latinos. Turnout elected Obama, and turnout will defeat his congressional majority.

In a further example of Obama’s Rodney King-like foreign policy failure China was secretly allowed to participate in a Turkish-sponsored combat air exercise reserved for NATO allies.

Turkish sources said the Chinese Air Force sent several Russian-origin Su-27 fighter-jets to participate in the semi-annual Anatolian Eagle air combat exercise. They said the Chinese were invited after the United States and other NATO members had turned down an invitation to participate in Anatolian Eagle in the late summer of 2010.

“The United States immediately expressed its displeasure in private,” a Turkish source said. Washington

monitored the Chinese air maneuvers and demanded an explanation from the government of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan.

Turkey banned Israel from participating in Anatolian Eagle. Later, the United States and several NATO allies decided to reduce participation in the exercise. The sources said China and Turkey have sought to expand military cooperation. The two countries have been engaged in rocket production, including WS-1, a 302mm weapon with a range of 150 kilometers. Turkey’s state-owned Roketsan renamed the rocket TR-300 Kasirga, later acquired by the Turkish Army.

The University of Southern California shut out the University of South Carolina in the Supreme Court on Monday as the justices let stand a trademark ruling holding that the interlocking letters “SC” are the registered mark of the sports teams of the Los Angeles school.

Adding insult to injury a Tennessee homeowner’s son was arrested for felony assault after he punched out the fire chief who allowed his family’s home to burn down because his father had not paid a $75 annual rural fire subscription fee.

He was held on $25,000 bail.

The South Fulton, Tennessee Fire Department that stood by and let a family’s home burn to the ground is being widely condemned.

The International Association of Fire Fighters said, South Fulton’s firefighters were ordered to stand and watch a family lose its home because the family had not paid an annual $75 rural fire subscription service fee. The South Fulton manager callously said that’s the law - pay to play.

The department did respond to the call but to protect a neighbor’s property who had paid the fee.

Many jurisdictions charge response fees to investigate such things as traffic accidents, or to send emergency medical services and even to fight fires. In Santa Baarbara American Medical Response bills $3,000 for an ambulance call through 9-11.

The first paid fire department in America was established on April 1, 1853 in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Infamously New York’s private fire brigades competed in the 19^th century even sending runners to fires to put barrels over hydrants forbiding competing brigades from access. Brigades sold fire medallions to be posted on structures they would or would not protect. Violence often occurred and the practice was outlawed in favor of taxpayer paid “free” fire protection.

The much-rumored Democratic “dream ticket” of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is “on the table” for 2012, investigative journalist and author Bob Woodward tells CNN. It’s ironic that Obama could depend on Clinton to rescue his presidency. No White House source would confirm his claim. It could set her up to run in 2016 when she’d be 69-years-old.

Billionaire real estate mogul, TV personality and massive pompadoured comb over owner Donald Trump said Tuesday he is “absolutely thinking about” running for president in 2012 because the nation is in such dire economic straits.

“What’s happening is, outside forces are destroying this country,” Trump said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show. “We’re rebuilding China, because everything we make is made in China …. The Chinese people I know tell me, ‘We can’t believe we are getting away with it.’ The valuation of their currency is ridiculous, you can’t compete with it.’”

Trump has been known to harbor political ambitions for more than a decade. His name has emerged in part because there is no clear GOP presidential front-runner for 2012.

Time Magazine political analyst Mark Halperin reported Sunday that residents in the early-primary state of New Hampshire received phone calls last month from an unknown pollster asking questions regarding their views of Trump. Voters were asked, for example, if they were aware he previous had made campaign donations to some Democrats.

Research shows that the No. 1 place you can pick up infections from is a doorknob. That’s why I always lick doorknobs clean before using them. — Ferguson

Dropping all pretext of only developing nuclear technology for peaceful purposes Iran has developed nuclear war plans to deter U.S. and Israeli aggression and retaliate against either or both, a top adviser to Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi announced in a strategic analysis.

Defense Ministry analyst Alireza Saeidabadi’s detailed analysis, published last week on a website that Iran’s intelligence ministry runs, examines several scenarios in which Iran could become embroiled in a shooting war with the United States or Israel.

One of the scenarios Iranian military planners must consider is a strategic nuclear U.S. strike on Iran, he writes. If that occurred, Iranian planning documents call for attacks against U.S. interests “on the world stage,” his analysis says.

The Iranian military should “prioritize its air force and ballistic missile fleet” in dealing with a conventional attack from Israel, Saeidabadi writes.

But in the event Israel uses unconventional weapons against Iran, “then Iran should employ a nuclear strategy.”

Similarly, if Iran and the United States get engaged in naval clashes in the Persian Gulf, Iran should “use its sea power for hit-and-run attacks, commando attacks, and use anti-shipping missiles” against U.S. naval vessels.

“But if the United States launches an unconventional attack, Iran needs to respond with a nuclear strategy,” the Iranian defense ministry analyst contends.

The meaning is clear to former Revolutionary Guards officer Reza Kahlili. “He means that Iran should be prepared with the capability of nuclear weapons to respond” if an enemy were to launch a nuclear strike against Iran, says Kahlili, author of a recent memoir, “A Time to Betray.”

“The use of nuclear technology for peaceful means is just a front,” Kahlili told Newsmax. “They are prepared to go to war and will not give up the bomb project, which they feel is very close to being able to arm their ballistic missiles with nuclear war heads.”

This is the first time that a senior Iranian government official has made an authorized public statement acknowledging that Iran has developed the military doctrine needed to employ nuclear weapons on the battlefield.

President Obama says the Democrats are waking up. Which is great when you’re having a nightmare. — Leno

A new report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) paints a brutally grim picture of the global economic outlook, warning that continued European belt-tightening combined with possible deficit-cutting in the United States could lead to a global double-dip recession.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, international business editor of the Daily Telegraph newspaper, wrote that the report suggests Western economies are stuck in a “near depression.”

In the near term, the report suggested, nations seeking to stabilize their economies by cutting their budgets will only make the global economy worse.

Evans-Pritchard reported the IMF analysis “more or less condemns southern Europe to death by slow suffocation and leaves little doubt that fiscal tightening will trap North Europe, Britain, and American in a slump for a long time.”

“I’ve learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.”- Martha Washington

Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley, a Republican, and San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, a Democrat, face off at noon at The Kalmanovitz Appellate Courtroom at the UC Davis School of Law for a debate.

Cooley and Harris are running neck-and-neck in recent polls, with the majority of voters still looking to form opinions of the two candidates. A recent Field Poll showed Cooley leading Harris by four points, 35 percent to 31 percent.

In the same poll 93% of respondents describe California’s economy as in “bad times.” 26% say things will get worse in 2011; 40% expect things to stay the same while 29% think it will get better. 89% say unemployment is very serious while only 1% say it is not serious.

In nearby Nevada GOP Senate challenger Sharron Angle narrowly leads Senate Majority leader Harry Reid 49 to 46 percent, with just 28 days to go before the Nov. 2 election.

By a 38% to 27% margin Americans say it would be a good thing if Republicans take over Congress next month 32% say it would make no difference according to a ABC-Post poll released 10-5-10,

Rahm Emanuel the former North Side Chicago congressman invited the news media to follow him as he bopped around a carefully selected set of neighborhoods but got an unexpected earful from angry Chicagoans.  Shouted questions about a lack of jobs temporarily overmatched the usually glib if often as acerbic former Obama chief of staff.

After spending most of the last two years living in Washington, Emanuel begins his campaign trying to get voters to view him as a Chicagoan and not an interloper. His problems are legal as well as political for Emanuel, who is likely to face a challenge from rivals over local law that requires candidates for mayor to be a city resident for a year before the February 2011 election.

Rahm owns a home in the city but has been renting it and not living in it so he’s going to have to find a judge who can agree on some sort of jury-rigged opinion about residency or he could be ruled not eligible to even run for Mayor.

Emanuel tried to deflect the residency issue saying “residents aren’t really interested in my residency.” But, unless he can convince a judge and maybe jury his campaign could be over before it starts. But, it is Chicago that’s notorious for its own brand of law.

The resurrected joke there is “things are so bad the Mafia is lying off judges.”

50% still favor repeal of the Obamacare bill, including 41% who strongly favor repeal. In September Over 60% favored repeal.

The government of scandal-plagued Bell collapsed into turmoil Monday night when a City Council meeting was canceled after the afternoon resignation of one member and the failure of another to make bail as he sits behind bars.

The three remaining council members had been scheduled to meet for the first time since last month’s sweeping corruption charges were filed.

But Mayor Oscar Hernandez and Councilwoman Teresa Jacobo called in sick as Lorenzo Velez, the only council member not charged with a felony, sat alone at the dais in the city community center as about 100 angry residents waited for the meeting to begin.

“Due to a lack of a quorum, we won’t be able to have our regular meeting,” Velez told the crowd, some of whom cheered the councilman when he took his seat.

City officials were allowing residents to make public comments even though the meeting had been canceled.

Real men do wear pink and last Sunday NFL teams were wearing pink shoes, and carrying pink towels in a month long campaign to call attention to the American Cancer Society’s pink ribbon campaign for breast cancer.

Interest groups are spending five times as much on the 2010 congressional elections as they did on the last midterms, and they are more secretive than ever about where that money is coming from.

The $80 million spent so far by groups outside the Democratic and Republican parties dwarfs the $16 million spent at this point for the 2006 midterms. In that election, the vast majority of money - more than 90 percent - was disclosed along with donors’ identities. This year, that figure has fallen to less than half of the total, according to data analyzed by The Washington Post.

The trends amount to a spending frenzy conducted largely in the shadows.

The bulk of the money is being spent by conservatives, who have swamped their Democratic-aligned competition by 7 to 1 in recent weeks. The wave of spending is made possible in part by a series of Supreme Court rulings unleashing the ability of corporations and interest groups to spend money on politics. Conservative operatives also say they are riding the support of donors upset with Democratic policies they perceive as anti-business.

Rahm Emmanuel wasted no time announcing his candidacy for Chicago Mayor. His website popped up even before he left Washington DC at ChicagoforRahm.com.  By Nov. 22, the filing deadline in Chicago. Candidates need to collect 12,500 valid voter signatures by that day to qualify for a Feb. 22, 2011 Democratic primary. Teams are already spreading out copying names from tombstones in some of Chicago’s highest voting precincts.

When President Lyndon Johnson declared an “unconditional” war on poverty in America” in January 1964, the country’s poverty rate was around 19 percent and falling.

Since then, the federal government has spent more than $13,000,000,000.000 (trillion) fighting poverty. But a recent report showed that the poverty rate this year is about 15 percent and climbing, and in all the years since “war” was declared, the rate has never fallen below 10.5 percent.

“Welfare spending could arguably be justified if we were actually reducing poverty. But as the recent numbers make clear, we’re not,” Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, writes in an editorial for Investor’s Business Daily.

“Clearly we are doing something wrong. Throwing money at the problem has neither reduced poverty nor made the poor self-sufficient.”

The federal government now has 122 separate anti-poverty programs, with Medicaid the largest. These programs spent more than $590 billion last year - roughly $14,850 for every poor person in the country.

Given that the poverty line is $10,830, it would have been cheaper just to mail every poor person a check for $11,000, according to Tanner, author of “The Poverty of Welfare: Helping Others in Civil Society.”

President George W. Bush boosted welfare spending by about $80 billion over his entire second term, while in just two years President Obama’s administration has increased spending on welfare programs by more than $120 billion, in part by easing eligibility and expanding caseloads. One out of every six Americans now receives some form of government assistance.

“The whole theory underlying our welfare programs is wrong-headed,” Tanner concludes. “We focus far too much on making poverty more comfortable and not enough on creating the prosperity that will get people out of poverty.”

California uses ATM cards for food stamps and other welfare and has discovered millions of dollars being spent in casinos and luxury resorts.

In a cock-eyed moment the male erotic dancer company Chippendales stumbled on Friday when an appeals court ruled that it could not trademark the bow tie and shirt cuffs that the men wear wasting time and taxpayer dollars in federal court.

The AFL-CIO, used to be run by a staunch anti-communist — George Meany. While he had his disagreements with conservatives on domestic issues he mostly agreed with them on foreign policy. He criticized détente with the Soviet Union. He didn’t like communists and refused to allow them into his coalitions.

All of this has changed. When the AFL-CIO staged a “Solidarity Day” rally in 1981, to protest President Ronald Reagan’s domestic policies, then-AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland refused to tell communists they were not welcome.

When John Sweeney, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, became president of the AFL-CIO, the communists and their fellow travelers were officially welcomed in. He hired veterans of the Venceremos Brigades such as Karen Nussbaum and Karen Ackerman. These were the groups of radical young people who had gone to Communist Cuba for indoctrination sessions back in the 1970s. Some went for training in guerrilla warfare. The trips were arranged by Bernardine Dohrn of the terrorist Weather Underground.

Nussbaum, executive director of Working America, a community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, is in charge of getting the unemployed to the ballot box on Nov. 2 in order to prevent a conservative takeover of the U.S. Congress

. Nussbaum, who served under Sweeney at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), has refused to talk about her time in Cuba and the media won’t ask her any questions about it.

Ackerman, AFL-CIO political director since 2003, is also close-mouthed about her Cuba trip.

In this day and age, with the liberal media so willing to act as megaphones for the Obama Administration and left-wing labor leaders, it is not “news” that Ackerman, in charge of overall strategy and the spending of millions of dollars on behalf of liberal candidates, once went to Cuba for indoctrination. Nor is it “news” that the AFL-CIO, now under President Richard Trumpka, has joined a “One Nation Working Together” coalition staging a Saturday rally with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and other openly communist and socialist groups.

Last week the Boston Fire Department received a donation of small oxygen masks designed for pets, which will become standard equipment on every fire truck in the city, officials said. The 60 masks to fit small snouts were a gift from the WellPet pet food company and the Massachusetts Veterinary Medical Association. Like oxygen masks for people, the masks are intended to help lungs recover from inhaled smoke.

The commander of the new U.S. Cyber Command said last week that scores of foreign intelligence services pose an asymmetric threat to U.S. computer networks but that China and Russia are among the “near peers” of the United States in cyber warfare capabilities.

That comes on the heels of Iran rounding up Russian nuclear scientists and technician in the wake of the Stuxnet malware attack on its nuclear facilities.

In his written testimony, the commander said Internet usage since 2000 has grown by 400 percent, with 1.8 billion users in 2009 and 4.6 billion cellular phone subscribers. The number of e-mails sent is roughly 90,000,000,000,000 (trillion), he stated or about 1,500 for every human on earth.

The Pentagon’s computer networks experience about 250,000 penetration attempts every hour and, by 2006, between 10 terabytes and 20 terabytes of information was remotely removed from the NIPR Net, the unclassified but sensitive network.

One terabyte is 1,000,000,000,000 (trillion) bits of information. As reference in February, 2010 the Library of Congress had collected almost 160 terabytes.

Alexander also provided new details on the 2008 penetration of U.S. classified computer networks from a foreign intelligence service, identified by some as Russia’s SVR. Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki or SVR) is Russia’s primary external intelligence agency. The SVR is the successor of the First Chief Directorate (PGU) of the KGB since December 1991 and it is a core of its “spook central.”

He stated that the foreign adversary used an “air gap jumping tool” to plant “some malicious software onto our classified networks.”

Air gap refers to the physical separation of classified networks from non-classified networks.

“The way that happened is if you use a thumb drive or other removable media on an unclassified system, the malware would get on that removable media, ride that removable media over to the other system,” he said.

“And so think of it as a man in the loop wire, and so a person could be taking information they needed from an unclassified system, putting it onto a classified system. And so that software would ride that removable medium and go back and forth. It was detected by some of our network folks with the Advanced Network Ops, our information assurance division at NSA.”

Alexander said cyber weaponry includes different countries specializing in different types of attacks. “One country may be the best at developing worms or viruses,” he said. “Another may be the best at developing tools for exploitation that are stealthy, we don’t see them. Another country may be the best at developing tools that can attack certain specific systems because they see that as in their national interest.”

“We have to recognize that, first, there are other smart people out there,” he added. “And that’s why we’ve got to take this so serious. It is an asymmetric advantage that some could have over us, and we’ve got to put that defense up.”

Alexander said “a number of countries” are near peer competitors to the United States and as a result pose a threat. “This is an area that others can have an asymmetric capability and advantage,” he said.

Both nations and non-state actors are among the threats based on the kinds of software weapons that are created. Some of the software that is used through unintentional distribution “can cause the most problems,” Alexander said.

“Furthermore, while even casual users of the Web have heard of malware to monitor, exploit, and disrupt computers and networks, there are new tools appearing that can damage or destroy systems,” Alexander said. “This recent shift toward operationalizing cyber tools as weapons to damage or destroy is of great concern to us at Cyber Command.”

“We’ve got to be prepared for all of that, for these nations that are out there,” he said. “And we’re not the only smart people in this area. There are others that are just as capable as us and, in some areas, perhaps more capable. And so we have to ensure across that board that we cover that spectrum. China, Russia - and you can just go around the world and pick most of the modern nations - have capabilities that, I think, many could argue are near to us and, in some areas, may beat our capabilities.”

Nepotism (NEP-uh-tiz-uhm) noun: Favoritism shown to relatives and friends, especially in business or political appointments. Etymology from Italian nepotismo, from Latin nepos (grandson, nephew). Ultimately from the Indo-European root nepot- (grandson, nephew) that is also the source of the words nephew and niece. The word originated from the practice of popes in the Roman Catholic Church to confer important positions to their sons. Since a pope had taken the vow of chastity, his son was euphemistically called a nephew. Usage: “What is not siphoned off in corruption is wasted, due to the ineptitude of those appointed on the basis of nepotism and cronyism.” Mahreen Aziz Khan; Demo-crassy Rules; The Express Tribune (Karachi, Pakistan); Sep 25, 2010.