• Big Buck Losers: Most Costly Midterm Election Ever - For Some.
• Holder’s Prevarication No Trial Now For 9-11 Mastermind
• Tea Party Singled Out by China’s Ministry of State Security
• China Has Big Plans For Blue Water Navy: “Increase Living Space”
• North Korea and Iran Arms To Gaza For War With Israel Within Year
• “RAT Board” Scrubs Ritz Waste Study Meeting
• As Obama Pulls Out Iran Moving Into Iraq
• 2011s ‘Purse String’ Politics About To Begin.
• Obama’s Asian Trip Flops: Deficit Commission Flares Up
• Israel Puts Hold On Iron Dome Until War Starts.
• 20/20 Says BBB Ratings Fake.
• US-Born Al Qaeda Leader Target Of U. S. Drones in Yemen

A new pricing survey of 86-grocery products sold at WALMART,  the world’s largest retailer, showed a 0.6 percent price increase in just the last two months. At that rate, grocery prices would be close to four percent higher a year from now, double the Fed’s mandate. The biggest dollar increase was on a jug of P & G ’s Tide Original laundry detergent

Republican Senatorial candidates Sharron Angle and Linda McMahon’s campaigns were the midterm elections’ most expensive on a per-vote basis - $97 spent for each vote they received.

Yet both lost, demonstrating that money was no guarantee in the most expensive midterm elections in U.S. history, with a total nationwide tab of close to $4 billion, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Spending totaled about $2.8 billion in the 2006 midterms.

The successful campaign of Angle’s opponent in Nevada, Majority Leader Harry Reid, spent $69 for each vote he received.

McMahon, former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, lost to Attorney General Dick Blumenthal after spending some $47 million of her own money, The Washington Post reported.

Republican Meg Whitman, former eBay chief executive, spent $140 million of her own money on her unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign in California. But she was running in the nation’s most populous state, so her per-vote spending was significantly less than that of Angle and McMahon. Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina also spent a bundle and lost to Boxer.

Whitman and Fiorina are just the latest free spender Republicans to get thumped in California where Republicans generally get the snot pounded out of them.

Rep. Scott Murphy, an upstate New York Democrat, spent $66 for each of the 99,000 votes he received, a total of about $6.5 million. But he lost by nearly 10 percentage points to Republican challenger Chris Gibson, who spent just $4 million, or $33 per vote.

In fact, among the 17 congressional campaigns that cost more than $60, what used to be a benchmark set my California Republican Michael Huffington when he got smashed by Diane Feinstein, for each vote received, 10 were Democrats and only three of them won.

“Money doesn’t guarantee victory,” pollster Mark Mellman, who worked for Reid and other Democrats, told the Post. “You can lose with it, but it’s hard to win without it.”

At the other end of the spending spectrum, Minnesota Republican Chip Cravaack beat 18-term congressman Jim Oberstar after spending just $5 for each vote he received, a total of $610,000.

Oberstar spent $2.3 million - about $18 per vote.

There are now over 513,000 elected officials in America the biggest number ever.

The self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks will remain in military detention without trial for the foreseeable future, The Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing Obama administration officials. On that day 2,752 victims died in attacks on the World Trade Center; 184 people were killed in the attacks on the Pentagon, and 44 died on United Flight 93 that crashed in western Pennsylvania when passengers tried to regain control from highjackers..

The Obama administration has concluded politically that it cannot put Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial in federal court in New York City because of opposition from members of Congress and local officials, the Post said. On Nov 11 NY Governor elect Democrat Andrew Cuomo strongly opposed a trial in New York.

There is also little support within the administration for a military prosecution at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, over concerns it would alienate Obama’s liberal supporters, the paper reported.

Attorney General Eric Holder said last week he was close to deciding where Mohammed would be tried and whether he would face a military tribunal. Then the phone rang and the whole smelly, oozing pile was plopped back onto his desk.

The defecation originally hit the impeller over Holder’s initial plan to try Mohammed and four other accused plotters in New York federal court was put on hold after local officials and lawmakers in Congress raised security and cost concerns.

The Post said Obama administration officials acknowledge that a trial is unlikely to happen before the next presidential election in 2012 and would require a different political environment after Republicans won a majority in the House of Representatives in last week’s elections.

Holder is making Clinton AG Janet Reno look like a paragon of legal knowledge and ethics. So far Reno’s morgue inventory list is longer.

They finally found a place to put the inmates from Guantanamo Bay: a Carnival cruise ship.- Leno

Chinese think tank related to the Ministry of State Security, the civilian intelligence service, has identified the U.S. Tea Party movement as an outgrowth of polarization in U.S. politics.

Yuan Peng, head of American Studies department, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), told Chinese state-run television Nov. 2 that: “Over these years the Republican and Democratic parties have become polarized and highly antagonistic toward each other, so the Tea Party phenomenon has appeared.”

“[People] are already fed up with the two parties’ lack of attention to national interest,” Yuan said. “Polarization has reached an extent where the two parties are ferociously attacking each other, and this time that’s meant that the Republicans have taken the most seats in the House of Representatives. There are forecasts that suggest this could reverse again in the next two years, because voters are extremely apprehensive and don’t know who they should vote for.”

China’s intelligence service has run successful covert action influence operations against both parties. For instance: during the 1996 re-election campaign for President Bill Clinton, China funneled money into the party in what came to be known as Chinagate.

For the Republicans, documents made public in the spy case of Katrina Leung, a long-time FBI informant, disclosed that Leung met with senior Chinese leaders and was authorized to pay tens of thousands of dollars to join a high-level Republican party donor group as part of efforts to influence the party.

She was arrested in 2003 but the case was mishandled and she eventually pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and filing false tax returns.

It is not new that foreign intelligence groups work to influence U. S. elections. A recent book, “The Manchurian President” ties Obama to radical groups and individuals known or believed to be tied to foreign interests or certainly sympathetic. For years the USSR shoveled millions into the US to develop the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) not knowing its champion was an FBI double agent Morris Childs who facilitated tracking every soviet supplied dollar.

The first telephone directory was issued in February 1878 listing 50 customers in New Haven, Connecticut. Now Verizon is seeking an OK in the 12-states where it operates to end its white page directories. In addition to saving 17,000 tons of paper a year a Gallup Survey found only 11% rely on residential white pages. Utility regulators in parts of 15 states have already OK’d ending white page directories.

Yellow pages printers insist they are doing fine even as home phone land lines are  being removed at a rate of 11% per year as cellular services boom.

By the way you can save up to $2 per call on your cellular phone by dialing 1-800-FREE411 to look up numbers. It works fine — put it in your phone’s speed dial.

A recent book published in China is raising new fears over Beijing’s efforts to aggressively lay claim to large areas off the Chinese coasts.

The 347-page book titled “Zhongguo Haiquan, China’s Maritime Rights,” was written by Zhang Shiping and published in May 2009.

A translation of its table of contents suggests that China is preparing to take forceful action against other nations that it perceives as encroaching on its maritime claims. It contradicts public statements by China that the communist government has no expansionist ambitions or hostile intentions.

China is claiming large areas of what the book calls the ‘three seas” - the South China Sea, East China Sea and Yellow Sea - that the book claims have suffered “serious violations” of sovereignty.

It also states that law enforcement and ‘right defending” forces are insufficient, a sign China plans to further increase its naval forces.

According to the book, the United States, Japan, and India are “three elements” restricting China from ‘going out to the sea” and stated that China’s plans to build an aircraft carrier fleet are “a sharp sword for maritime rights,” noting that carriers are the symbol of overall national strength and the core of modern sea power.

One chapter is titled “Chinese People Should Have the Concept of Actively Expanding Their Living Space,” and another stated that “peaceful rise is a fine ideal but must it be supported by superior military strength.”

This has to be considered against the background of People Republic of China  President Hu Jintao’s latest dictum on foreign policy: “Insist upon hiding one’s capacities and biding one’s time; enthusiastically seek [concrete] achievements.”

China’s improved inventory of short- and medium-range missiles provides a “dramatic increase” in its ability to stifle U.S. military operations in the western Pacific, according to excerpts from the draft of the 2010 annual report that the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission that is scheduled to release on Nov. 17.

The Chinese military’s nonnuclear missiles have “the capability to attack” and close down five of six major U.S. Air Force bases in South Korea and Japan effectively neutralizing U. S. air assets and leaving ground forces vulnerable.

Israeli intelligence says North Korea has been supplying Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Pyongyang has been contributing bomb and rocket technology to the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip, ISA said.

“Terror groups in Gaza like Hamas and Islamic Jihad purchase advanced weapons from Iran and North Korea and other countries,” Israel Security Agency said.

“These weapons are sent by Iran via land, sea and air to Yemen and Sudan and from there through a network of international smugglers,” ISA said. “They cross through Egypt to the Gaza Strip.”

ISA said Jihad was becoming one of the greatest Islamic insurgency threats to Israel. Jihad was developing explosives and surface-to-air missiles against passenger aircraft.

“The availability of weapons serves terrorism,” ISA said. “Everything is more available including advanced explosives, UAVs, anti-tank missiles, anti-aircraft missiles and rockets of different ranges.”

Officials said the North Korean effort was being coordinated and financed by Iran. They said North Korea was supplying all of the members of the Iranian-led coalition expected to wage war on Israel over the next year.

Americans are stranded on a cruise ship for two days, and they have to haul in 60,000 pounds of food. Meanwhile, the Chilean miners were underground for 69 days with nothing but a can of tuna fish and they were fine.- Leno

Under intense pressure members of a key panel created by Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus bill, have cancelled a  scheduled meeting on November 22 to consider ways to prevent “fraud, waste, and abuse of Recovery Act funds.” The meeting was tobe held at the super-luxe Ritz Carlton Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona.

The group is the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, a sub-committee of the larger Recovery Accountability and Transparency board (sometimes known as the RAT board). The stimulus bill set up the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, or RIAP, to make recommendations to identify and prevent waste of the bill’s $814 billion in stimulus spending.

Room cost are up to $500 a night at the luxury hotel that said it gave RAT a deal for only $109 per night. How much airfare. food and booze would add for RAT members and staff can only be guessed at - but bet it would be a lot.

Only weeks ago some around Obama were calling for a boycott of all things Arizona, and of course Holder sued Arizonans over their get tough on illegals law.

So RAT can now say it has saved waste by not meeting.

A Russia newspaper says a murder squad has been ordered to kill the former spymaster who recently “ratted out” the nine deep cover Russian spies he bossed in the U. S. Others point to Russian spying against USA as more intense now than even in the most frigid days of the Cold War.

As predicted and feared as Obama’s self-imposed deadline nears and the U.S. moves out, Iran is moving into Iraq. Iran has significantly expanded its intervention and is ready to transform Iraq into a proxy, a report said.

The Center for New Politics and Policy asserted that Iran was filling the vacuum left by the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq. In a report titled “Iraq’s Shi’a Leadership Crisis and the Iranian End Game,” the Washington-based center said Iran was using both Shi’ite and Sunni militias to destabilize Iraq to prevent the emergence of a pro-U.S. government in Baghdad.

“Teheran is now transitioning to a post-U.S. occupation end game strategy - the transformation of Iraq into an Iranian proxy state,” the report, authored by senior fellow Webster Brooks, said.

“Having emerged as an economic force in Baghdad capitalized by diverse hard and soft power assets

, Iran appears ready to move from condominium with the United States over Iraq to consolidating Iraq as a strategic proxy state,” the report said. “Bridging the divide in Iraq’s Shi’a House

and shaping the next governing coalition is the focus of Iran’s transition to its end game strategy.”  

In a brain dead episode Amazon.com initially defended and then stopped selling an ebook entitled “The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover’s Code of Conduct” by Phillip Greaves, after it was targeted by intense Internet criticism and boycott threats.  Greaves said he only sold one book. Pueblo, Colorado police are both investigating the 47-year-old and protecting him from threats

Nancy Pelosi  (D) CA. who remains determined to be House Minority leaders, and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D) Nevada say they will push passage of the so-called DREAM ACT that gives citizenship to millions even though the idea has been pronounced dead by inside the beltway pundits.In addition the pair is preparing to push hard during the next two weeks’s lame duck session on such  things as:

• The largest tax increase in history
• Repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell”
• Extension in unemployment insurance benefits
• A union worker card check
• Tax cuts for teachers who buy pencils and toilet paper
• A study on the possibility of Chinese currency manipulation
• A bill to make sure Twinkies aren’t poisonous (i.e. food safety legislation)
• A new law to force Americans to buy pricey “green” products to comply with a new renewable electricity standard
• Government control over kids nutrition
• Another flood of cash for our broken education system

The effort, dead or not, is a bald political ploy to curry favor with Hispanic voters. The pair received overwhelming support from Hispanic voters in their recent relection bids, and Obama is undoubtedly supportive of the effort to buff up his 2012 bid and nail a pro-Hispanic (amnesty) plank into his reelection platform.

It is unlikely they can ram many or any of these bills through during the lameduck session and have no chance after the new House is seated.

On the other side of the aisle the new Republican House majority is looking to resurrect bills including: freezing or cutting federal pay, firing federal workers who are delinquent taxpayers and capping or reducing the federal workforce.

But that doesn’t mean those measures will become law after the new Congress convenes in January. In many cases, they will be blocked by Democrats who will still run the Senate or by President Obama, who isn’t going anywhere - at least for now.

The trick will be trading funding, which the House must propose, for other things the new conservative House may want enough to fund some of what Obama wants. It is the House of Representatives that controls the purse strings, and Republicans know it.

At the top of the list is finding a way to extend the Bush tax cuts.

As Obama was flouncing around Asia only 25% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that he was performing his role as president. Forty-five percent (45%) Strongly Disapprove.

The New York Times declared Obama’s Asian trip a failure as he returned to the U. S. from his pointless, ultra expensive ten-day sojourn. Obama left Korea Friday with a trade deal in tatters, some angry words for China over the yuan, and backpedaling to defend the Federal Reserve from charges it is manipulating the dollar. Look for blowback from a major trading partner at any moment.

Despite his bluster and bombast Obama should have his tail between his legs having achieved nothing of significance. G-20 leaders representing the top 20 major economies refused to endorse Obama’s push to get China to let its currency rise and China flipped him off. That keeps alive a dispute that has raised the specter of a global trade war.  In sum Obama’s ideas were almost universally rebuked everywhere he went.

At home his much touted deficit commission conveniently leaked its report to almost universal howls and protests. Former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles and former senator Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) took an axe to planned federal spending to slice more than $3.8 trillion from deficits over the next decade, reversing a rapid run-up in the national debt that many here and abroad fear has the country headed for crisis.

Proposed cuts include: curbing increases in Social Security; raising the next generations retirement age; slashing spending at the Pentagon and other agencies, and wiping out more than $100 billion a year in popular tax breaks for individuals and businesses.

Panels tackling deficit, but doubts remain that consensus can be forged

• The Influence Industry: Many deficit commission staffers paid by outside groups
• Elections put new focus on government spending
• White House, Congress poised for battle over tax breaks in lame-duck session
• Graphic: How the fight over tax breaks affects you
• A bolder deficit plan

To meet that $3.8 trillion - ten year goal, Bowles and Simpson are proposing to slay a herd of sacred cows, including the tax deduction for mortgage interest claimed by many homeowners, the tax-free treatment of employer-provided health insurance and the practice of letting retirees claim Social Security benefits starting at age 62. The blueprint would raise the early retirement age to 64 and the standard retirement age to 69 for today’s toddlers.

Proponent for those sacred cows are bleating loudly setting up an immediate battle on keeping the Bush-era tax cuts including postponing ending cuts for high income Americas. Buried in their proposal is an increase in federal taxes on motor fuels of 15 cents per gallon.

While Obama was on the other side of the globe China cut U. S. credit and South Korea summarily rejected his proposed trade agreement to open it up to U. S. cars and beef imports. Japan made nice but nothing was achieved there either. Indonesia acted silly, and India just smiled and nodded.

Twenty-thousand Indonesians protested Obama’s visit to Indonesia. Apparently, 3 out of 4 Indonesians believe he’s an American. - Conan

Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak has decided not to deploy its Iron Dome short range missile defense now as planned but, will wait to employ it only in times of war lest its enemies fire missiles to test it and find weaknesses before a full scale attack.

Iron Dome, deemed operational, was to have begun initial deployment this month. The military had been preparing an Iron Dome battery to intercept missiles and rockets from both the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.  The system is portable and can reach the area of conflict within hours and be immediately operational.

Iron Dome consists of three launchers, each with 20 interceptors, as well as a multi-mission radar. The radar has been developed by the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries. It is designed to shoot down missiles and even high caliber artillery shells from ranges of up to 80 miles.

The Air force has already identified locations for deployment of Iron Dome along the borders of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. The military plans to acquire up to 10 Iron Dome systems, many of them to be produced in the United States.

Some worry if crews will be insufficiently trained and skilled to use it effectively.

During the 2006 Second Lebanon War, approximately 4,000 Hezbollah-fired rockets landed in northern Israel, including on Haifa, the country’s third largest city. Iran is known to have infiltrated thousands of rockets through Syria and into Lebanon and Gaza o Israel’s northern and southern borders.

Travel + Leisure Magazine says L.A. is the worst city for friendliness and intelligence. All I have to say to that is, “Go to hell,” and “Duh” - Craig Ferguson

The once revered BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU is accused of selling high ratings and punishing those who do not pay it what it demands. An ABC investigation shows a business owner getting an A rating after joining the BBB having been previously been given a C rating while nothing else changed. The BBB gave a neo-Nazi organization and a phony company named Hamas top rankings now calling those “mistakes.” The internet brattle that  BBB had awarded the Hamas terrorist group A- is a hoax.

A quick internet search found similar accusation going back at least to 2006.

Connecticut’s Attorney General has started an official probe that could result in formal charges and prosecution.

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) was founded in 1912 to help consumers cope with medical quackery and the promotions of nostrums and worthless drugs were among the most prominent abuses which led to the establishment of formal self-regulation in business. BBB operates in the U. S. and Canada.

A November 11 news release from ABC’s 20/20 and San Diego Channel 10 news says, in part, “investigation found at some BBB’s, all it takes to get an A is money.”

BBB is almost entirely funded by membership fees. In San Diego those fees amounted to $4 million in a recent year.

The report on 20/20 aired Friday night November 12, 2010 and was excoriating.

Film producer and entrepreneur Dino De Laurentiis died on Wednesday in Los Angeles at the age of 91. During a prolific career that included groundbreaking Italian neorealist films, spaghetti Westerns, literary epics, B movie camp classics, low budget horror films, big budget action films and cutting edge drama, there was virtually no genre he shied away from.

The iconic De Laurentiis produced approximately 500 films over 60 years. His films included: La Strada (1954); War and Peace (1956): Barbarella (1968); Serpico (1973); Death Wish (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975);  King Kong (1976); The Dead Zone (1983), and Blue Velvet (1986) among them.  

US-born Al Awakali, the Yemen-based AQAP leader proclaims himself “the new Osama bin Laden.”

As DEBKA-Net-Weekly reveals in its Friday issue, Al Awkali claims to usher in a new brand of Islamist terror against America, one that is practical and is divorced from religious and moral constraints. Al Qaeda’s Bin Laden-Zuwahiri era is dead, he says. There are more urgent missions than Afghanistan meaning Israel and the USA among others.

Immediately after the discovery of two explosive parcels mailed from Yemen to the United States, Washington moved a squadron of Predator drones to a secret base at the Yemeni Red Sea port of Al Hodaydah. Until now, the covert facility - finished in April on a site CIA director Leon Panetta has selected last January - was allotted to US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) units for mounting clandestine raids against Al Qaeda cells deep inside Yemen.

The new deployment of drones elevates American military intervention in Yemen by another notch reportedly with Al Awakali as a prime target. Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born Islamic cleric has repeatedly urged Muslims to kill Americans now the table has turned.

An Orlando area truck dealership has a bang-up offer for truck buyers offering a voucher for an AK-47 assault rifle to anyone buying a truck from the dealer. Police say it is perfectly legal as long as all background checks and laws are followed. No word on whether you get a gun rack for the back window too.