Greenspan admits housing buble in some sectors

Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, admitted for the first time that some sectors of the country may face drops in housing prices during the next few years.

WASHINGTON, May 20 - Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, suggested on Friday that the red-hot housing market is becoming a little too exuberant for its own good.

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Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, spoke at the Economic Club of New York at the Hilton New York hotel on Friday.

Text: Greenspan's Remarks

"Without calling the overall national issue a bubble, it's pretty clear that it's an unsustainable underlying pattern," Mr. Greenspan told the Economic Club of New York at the Hilton New York hotel in Midtown.

Mr. Greenspan emphasized that he sees no sign of a nationwide housing bubble, but he acknowledged concerns over "froth" in the market and pointed to a big increase in speculation in homes - particularly in second homes. As a result, he said, there are "a lot of local bubbles" around the country.

The comments of the Fed chairman were the closest he has come to acknowledging the possibility that housing prices may be poised for a fall in some parts of the country.

The issue is sensitive for the Federal Reserve, because its policy of keeping interest rates low has helped propel housing prices upward even when the rest of the economy was dragging.

But the housing issue highlights an unusual quandary for the central bank: even though it has raised short-term interest rates eight times since last June, long-term interest rates and mortgage rates are actually lower than they were one year ago.

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Showdown begins

Filibuster showdown begins in the Senate. Whatever comes down, rest assured it will hurt the Republicans more. They have the most seats in Congress.

Both political parties have begun the showdown over judicial nominations in a weakened position, facing low approval ratings for their performance in Congress that compound the political risks in the confrontation.

Few strategists expect any of the arguments over the GOP's bid to thwart Senate filibusters to sway many voters in the 2006 elections. But many analysts believe the conflict could increase and solidify the public antagonism toward Washington surfacing in polls — especially if the dispute, as is likely, deepens Capitol Hill's partisan acrimony and impedes action on problems more tangible to voters, from gasoline prices to Social Security.

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Senators push for filibuster deal

A bi-partisan group of Senators is pushing for a last minute filibuster deal, threaten to undercut Frist's leadership.

A bipartisan group of senators continued negotiating behind closed doors Thursday to engineer a deal that would head off a showdown vote next week on changing the Senate filibuster rule.

A bipartisan deal would undercut the effort by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to lower the number of votes needed to stop debate on a judicial nominee from 60 to 51.

The group seeking compromise is headed on the GOP side by Arizona Sen. John McCain, Virginia Sen. John Warner, Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, and on the Democratic side by Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas.

Any deal that allows some Bush appeals court nominees to be "thrown overboard" would be unacceptable to Frist, but if six Republicans went along with the Democrats on this, then Frist would be powerless to stop it.

If Frist put the filibuster rule change to a vote next Tuesday, and six GOP senators voted 'no,' the majority leader would have failed. Frist, whom some in Washington think has presidential ambitions, has placed his credibility at stake by arguing so strongly in favor of giving every judicial nominee an up-or-down vote.

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Frist to force vote on fillibuster

Frist is vowing to force a vote on whether filibusters will be allowed for Judicial nominations in the Senate. I think he's just paying bad cop. Once the vote is passed through, the Senate will virtually shut down.

Setting the stage for a politically charged showdown, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist announced Friday he will press beginning next week for the first of President Bush’s conservative court nominees long blocked by Democrats.

“It is time for 100 senators to decide the issue of fair up-or-down votes for judicial nominees after over two years of unprecedented obstructionism,” Frist’s office said in a statement.

Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said he was ready. “The time has come for Republican senators to decide whether they will abide by the rules of the Senate, or break those rules for the first time in 217 years,” he said in a written statement.

Stack up on the Blueberrys and Grean Tea

Ingesting antioxidents or raising the human body's ability to produce them may be the key to longer life.

Mice engineered to produce high levels of an antioxidant enzyme lived 20% longer and had less heart and other age-related diseases, they found.

If the same is true in humans, people could live beyond 100 years.

The University of Washington work in Science Express backs the idea that high reactive oxygen molecules, called free-radicals, cause ageing.

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Judicial Watch calls for an investigation of Hillary Clinton

Conservative watch-dog group Judicial Watch is calling for an investigation of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) NY. The group, made famous by its constant dogging of the Clintons, alleged she knew of

A conservative watchdog group with a history of dogging the Clintons urged a Senate panel on Monday to investigate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton over a Hollywood fundraiser for which a former staffer faces charges.

The fundraiser is the focus of a federal trial set to begin Tuesday in Los Angeles.

Prosecutors charge that former finance director David Rosen understated the cost of the star-studded August 2000 gala, which raised money for Clinton's senatorial campaign. Rosen denies the charges.

Under the campaign finance laws then in effect, underreporting the cost of the event would have given the Clinton campaign more money to spend on the race. The senator has not been charged in the case.

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Senator Schumer pleads for President Bush to intervene in filibuster fight

Senator Charles Schumer of NY pleads for President Bush to intervene in the Senate Filibuster battle. In the speech, the Senator accuses the Republican party of being beholden to a small core of arch conservatives. Perhaps Mr. Schumer is willing to give the President a hand at Social Security in exchange...

Schumer, D-New York, delivered his party's weekly radio address Saturday, in which he decried "a whiff of extremism in the air the likes of which we haven't seen in decades."

Without naming any, Schumer criticized "small groups ... trying to undermine the age-old checks and balances that the Founding Fathers placed at the center of the Constitution."

Democrats have blocked 10 of Bush's appellate court choices with the threat of filibusters, which means those nominees would need 60 votes to be confirmed. Republicans are considering using their majority to change rules to require a simple majority vote for confirmation.

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Tom DeLay: "favor-trader extraordinaire"

The Times explains how Tom DeLay, like Bill Clinton before him, is somehow surviving a growing list of scandals.

Politicians are not always the most courageous lot. The first whiff of scandal, the first taint of defeat, usually makes them run - hence the popular saying that if you want a friend in this town, get a dog.

But Republicans in the House have not run from Tom DeLay, who, like Bill Clinton before him, has defied political gravity in recent months. Three of his former aides have been indicted in an investigation of campaign fund-raising practices; a close lobbyist friend is under criminal investigation; the House ethics committee is preparing to reconsider allegations that Mr. DeLay and his staff members violated travel rules.

Rather than try to protect themselves and engineer a coup, Republican members are throwing a tribute party for him this week. President Bush is also standing firm, even taking him along on Air Force One.

Raising a simple question: Why?

His supporters say that Mr. DeLay, the House majority leader, has done nothing wrong - that he's the target of unfair attacks from Democrats bent on partisan revenge. Yet the volume of outspoken support also speaks to the strong personal loyalty many have for Mr. DeLay. How is it that he is more popular among Republicans than, say, President Bush's proposals for Social Security?

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Negroponte sets up Spy shop

Negroponte is moving swifty to set up the new shop at the New Federal Office Building.

One of John Negroponte's first moves was to set up an organization that includes four deputies for intelligence collection, analysis, coordination with government consumers of intelligence, and overall management of the spy community.

With two weeks on the job, Negroponte has chosen people for all but one of those four slots, according to the senior officials familiar with the new structure, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

That includes the promotion of Thomas Fingar, who has run the State Department's intelligence office since July 2004, to be the deputy for intelligence analysis.

Fingar has been interviewed by Senate investigators regarding how analysts working under him have been treated by John Bolton, the embattled nominee to be U.N. ambassador.

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Microsoft to support Gay Rights

Microsoft will reverse its decision and will support gay rights legislation in Washington State.

In a turnaround Friday, Microsoft Corp. chief executive Steve Ballmer said the company will support gay rights legislation.

Ballmer made the announcement in an e-mail to employees two weeks after gay rights activists accused the company of withdrawing its support for an anti-discrimination bill in its home state after an evangelical pastor threatened to launch a national boycott. The bill died by a single vote in the state Senate in late April. (MSNBC is a Microsoft-NBC joint venture.)

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Bush assualt aginst the Environment continues.

This one needs no comment...


The last 58.5 million acres of untouched national forests, which President Clinton had set aside for protection, were opened to possible logging, mining and other commercial uses by the Bush administration Thursday.

New rules from the U.S. Forest Service cover some of the most pristine federal land in 38 states and Puerto Rico.

Ninety-seven percent of it is in 12 states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

Governors can submit petitions within 18 months to stop road building on some of the 34.3 million acres where it would now be permitted, or request that new forest management plans be written to allow the construction on some of the other 24.2 million acres.

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Travel scandal won't go away

This scandal keeps getting worse...

When House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) left Washington last August to attend a friend's funeral in his home state and give a political speech in Ohio, he didn't wait in long security lines for a nonstop commercial flight.

Instead, he hopped aboard a waiting private jet at Dulles International Airport that belongs to the corporation that owns Cracker Barrel stores -- just one of about 30 companies with legislative interests before Congress that have provided this service to Blunt.

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Filibuster issue ignites Adwars

Interest groups are intensifying the ad in states that are crucial to the eventual winner of the looming Senate debate on the of the filibuster against judicial nominees.

The fight over federal judicial nominees shifts this week from Capitol Hill to America's living rooms, with interest groups escalating an ad war in an effort to swing senators their way.

Progress for America, a conservative advocacy group, launched an ad Monday in the states of five Republican and five Democratic senators considered pivotal to whether the Senate changed its rules to prevent filibusters over some of President Bush's conservative nominees to the federal bench.

People for the American Way, a liberal group, is responding with an ad scheduled to begin running today in the same states. It portrays the filibuster — a parliamentary tactic in which senators talk as long as they want to prevent a vote — as an effective check against one party having too much power.

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The Death of the American Beer Drinker

Sales of beer, once a "slam dunk" economic indicator, is falling behind the increasing sales of wine and hard liquor. The problem, according to Slate's Daniel Gross, is that Americans are trading the "high-carb beer for cardiac-friendly merlot." Are Americans become more and more Yupified? Or is it the Two Americas theme being applied at the mall, where the rich are spending more on wine and the poor less on beer?

When the economy is booming, we pound a six-pack of Bud with our buddies and watch the game. When the economy is lousy, we pound a six-pack of Coors with our buddies and watch the game. When the economy is flat, we pound a six-pack of Miller with our buddies and watch the game. This is why companies that make beer—like those that make diapers, electricity, and cereal—have countercyclical stocks. When the economy hits a soft patch, investors take refuge in them.

But now there's a fear in our beer. Last week, two leading beer companies reported disappointing results. Anheuser-Busch, which claims more than half the U.S. beer market, announced it was suffering from falling demand and rising costs. The volume of Bud and Michelob sold in the U.S. fell 2.7 percent from the year-ago quarter. Newly merged cross-border beer powerhouse Molson Coors reported a loss, with net sales in the U.S. down 2 percent, and U.S. operating income off by nearly one-third. The most recent trading statement of Miller, the No. 2 U.S. beer brand now owned by SABMiller, showed marginal growth. In the past two years, according to Gary Hemphill, managing director of Beverage Marketing Corp., beer volume has risen at a meager 0.5 percent annual rate.

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Rice reassures allies on North Korea

Condiliza Rice got tough with the North Koreans after they tested a short range missile. In her statement, the Secretary of State said there's no doubt the United States can defend its allies in Asia, mainly Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Does Ms. Rice really believe we remain in Iraq, keep Iran at bay with its own nuclear issue, hunt Al Qaeda, protect Taiwan, and use the chainsaw favored by Mr. Bush and his inner circle (see Ms. Bush's comments below.) The answer is no, and the Koreans know it.

Responding to reports that North Korea launched a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan on Sunday, Rice said, "I don't think there should be any doubt about our ability to deter whatever the North Koreans are up to."

And, in reassuring South Korea, Japan and other allies in the Pacific area, Rice told reporters: "This is not just between the United States and North Korea."

A suggestion Thursday by Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, that North Korea might be able to strike American territory with a nuclear-tipped missile also has raised tensions and concerns.

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Bob Hunter, Greanpeace Cofounder

Bob Hunter, one of the founders of Greanpeace, Defender of the Environment, dies at 63...

He helped to found Greenpeace in 1971 and went on to draw global attention with campaigns against nuclear testing and pollution of the world's oceans.
Mr Hunter, 63, was also well-known for his work as a journalist and author.
"Bob was an inspirational storyteller, an audacious fighter and an unpretentious mystic," Greenpeace Canada Chairman John Doherty said.
"He was serious about saving the world while always maintaining a sense of humour."

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Former President Clinton lashes out at Bush Oil Policies

Former President lashes out at Bush Administrataion oil policies, but urges support Democracy in Iraq.

Former President Bill Clinton lashed out at the Bush administration's energy policies Friday, criticizing them as "dumb economics" during a wide-ranging speech to a friendly crowd at Brown University.

But Clinton encouraged Americans to support democracy in Iraq, and said they should encourage the Bush administration to work with the rest of the world in bringing peace to the region.

The former president said those who opposed going to war with Iraq had to put those feelings aside. "You should want it to work now," he said.

Clinton -- received enthusiastically by more than 4,000 students, politicians and top state Democratic fundraisers -- called Bush's energy policy selfish. "I also think it's really dumb economics," he said.

A Bush administration-backed bill passed by the House this month includes tax cuts and subsidies to energy companies, and would open a wildlife refuge in Alaska to oil exploration.

Andrew Card: Democrats are Obstructionists; Should try to work with Republicans Instead

Real easy to talk about working together, after five years of relentlessly shoving legislation down your thought...

Andrew Card, appearing on three talk shows, also reaffirmed the president's support for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the Texas Republican whose ties to lobbyists have raised ethics questions, and John R. Bolton, the embattled nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

"We'd like to see more cooperation from the Democrats," Card said. "We have some serious problems in this country that must be addressed. We'd like to see the Democrats be part of the solution rather than just carp about the problem," he told "Fox News Sunday."

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Former Gov. Cuomo (D) NY reponds to the Republicans threat to end judicial filibustering

In his speech, Cuomo points out that more people voted for Democratic Senators than Republican ones. This is possible because the Senate actaully represents the states in Congress. That's why Montana, with a population of 902,194 (Wikipedia) has the Same number of senators as New York, with a population of 19,190,115 (Wikipedia).

Cuomo, in the Democratic Party's weekly radio address, said Senate Republicans "are threatening to claim ownership of the Supreme Court and other federal courts, hoping to achieve political results on subjects like abortion, stem cells, the environment and civil rights that they cannot get from the proper political bodies."

"How will they do this? By destroying the so-called filibuster, a vital part of the 200-year-old system of checks and balances in the Senate," Cuomo said.

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Laura Bush, Desperate Houswife

Laura Bush complained about the President's sleeping habits (too much) at the White House Correspondents' Association's annual dinner. Notice her reference to Rumsfield and Cheney in her quip about the chainsaw solution her husband likes. Seems to me the Fist Lady knows who the bad guys in the administration are, namely those that may have pushed her husband into hasty decisions, perhaps based on les than credible information.

When Laura Bush wisecracked at the White House Correspondents' Association's annual dinner on Saturday night that she was a "desperate housewife" married to a president who was always sound asleep by 9 p.m., the popular first lady accomplished two things. She brought down a very tough house, and she humanized her husband, whose sagging poll numbers are no match for her own.
Judging from the laughter in the Washington Hilton ballroom at Mrs. Bush's words - "George's answer to any problem at the ranch is to cut it down with a chain saw, which I think is why he and Cheney and Rumsfeld get along so well" - Mrs. Bush has a future in political stand-up comedy.
Whether her cheeky one-liners will shore up her husband as he struggles with Social Security, gas prices and combative Democrats is another question entirely. But her zingers showed how much the White House relies on her to soften her husband's rough edges at critical moments, much as she did with her extensive travels and fund-raising in the 2004 campaign.

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