Pat Dollard

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WSJ: Wen Voices Concern Over China’s U.S. Treasurys By ANDREW BATSON and ANDREW BROWNE BEIJING — Premier Wen Jiabao voiced confidence in China’s economy, saying his government’s finances give it room to spend even more to support growth if needed, but expressed concern about the outlook for the U.S. and the safety of its Treasury [...]

Daily Mail UK: South African men are ‘raping women to cure them of being lesbians’ Lesbians living in South Africa are being raped by men who believe it will ‘cure’ them of their sexual orientation, a report has revealed. Women are reporting a rising tide of brutal homophobic attacks and murders and the widespread use [...]

WaPo: Obama Administration Abandons Use of Term ‘Enemy Combatant’ By Del Quentin Wilber and Carrie Johnson The Obama administration today dropped the term “enemy combatant” to describe those held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and increased the legal threshold needed to detain them. The Justice Department disclosed the move in a [...]

FOX: After stumbling slightly at the open, Wall Street pushed stocks higher late Friday to close positive fourth-day in a row. It’s the first time stocks closed in the green four days in a row since Nov. 28. Traders reacted positively to a report that Citigroup (C: 1.79, 0.13, 7.83%) may not need additional capital [...]

Politico: Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s series of gaffes turned into something more serious Thursday, as leaders of a pillar of the GOP—the anti-abortion movement—shifted into open revolt over comments in an interview with the men’s magazine GQ. Steele called abortion an “individual choice” and opposed a constitutional ban on abortion in the Feb. [...]

WASHINGTON – Confronting misgivings, even in his own party, President Barack Obama mounted a stout defense of his blueprint to overhaul the economy Thursday, declaring the national crisis is “not as bad as we think”, so his massive spending bills will not hurt the nation’s economic recovery. Challenged to provide encouragement as the nation’s “confidence [...]

Poli Gazette: Bomb scare in Amsterdam By: Michael van der Galien Early this morning, police surrounded furniture shop Ikea and told employees to get out after it received a tip about a possible bomb attack. Police rushed to the scene – the store was still closed at the moment they arrived. No details about the [...]

Inside Bay Area: Obama names Oakland attorney to head DOJ Civil Division President Obama on Thursday nominated Oakland attorney Tony West, a former federal prosecutor and prolific Obama campaign fundraiser, to head the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil division. West, 43, is a litigation partner at Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco, representing people and [...]

I am noticing there is a snide snort going on, even on the right, in reaction to all the questions surrounding Obama’s missing birth certificate. However, every time I hear someone waving it off I am hauntingly reminded of the Rathergate forged Bush documents that were taken, and by some still taken, so seriously as [...]

Wired: U.S. Jet Shoots Down Iranian Drone Over Iraq By Noah Shachtman An American fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone as it was flying over Iraq, U.S. military sources in Baghdad tell Danger Room. Details of the previously-unreported shoot-down, which occurred last month, are still sketchy. But we do know that American commanders have [...]

Politico: Obama ‘putting in the pillars’ of economy By JOSH GERSTEIN President Barack Obama acknowledged Friday that the economic downturn is causing Americans “incredible pain and hardship” but kept up his attempts to paint a more optimistic picture of the current financial climate. Obama said he’s “putting in the pillars economically to deal with the [...]

NAACP says bank giants steered blacks to bad loans The NAACP is accusing Wells Fargo and HSBC of forcing blacks into subprime mortgages while whites with identical qualifications got lower rates. Class-action lawsuits were to be filed against the banks Friday in federal court in Los Angeles, Austin Tighe, co-lead counsel for the National Association [...]