Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Gallop: Romney 50%, Obama 49%, Abcwashpost: Obama 50%, Romney 47%,Rasmussen: Romney 49%, Obama 48%
Most polls are predicting a Romney President.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
50 ultra-Orthodox Jews enlist in Israel's Air Force unit
A significant number of ultra-Orthodox Jews enlisted recently in Israel’s Air Force unit, according to the IDF.
In two weeks, about 50 ultra-Orthodox Jews will begin to serve in the IDF Technological and Logistics Directorate through the Shahar project, a program designed to balance the religious obligations of the ultra-Orthodox Jews and the desire to serve the country, which has already enrolled about 300 young ultra-Orthodox Jews.
The program was launched in 2007 by the then commander of the Israeli Air Force Elazar Shkedy, who looked to the ultra-Orthodox Jews to fill the shortage in the technical services field of the Air Force. Soldiers in this program will serve as mechanics, programmers and electricians.
What makes this unit different from your average IDF unit is that this unit will never mix genders and no female bosses or teachers are allowed in the unit. Also, soldiers are given time during the day to pray and study Torah and all food served is kosher according to an extreme standard.
"This is a significant increase from the previous recruitments, which ended two months ago, during which 29 ultra-Orthodox Jewish soldiers enlisted," Yossi Cohen, the Shahar project manager said.
"Those soldiers, some of whom took an English course over two months have been integrated
into military bases, where they are taking the right courses to fill their role during their military service."
Cohen said that every day in the afternoon, soldiers study the Daf Yomi, a page of Talmud every day and the laws of Chanukah.
Most soldiers are between the ages of 22-27, and after completing two years of service, will receive a certificate highlighting their technical trade.
Jewish News Blog "Vos Iz Neias" continues to pander to Obama
It's a Satmar blog.... and is nauseating.... they hate Israel, but when the equally hating Israeli newspaper Haaritz endorses Obama, they report it. They didn't report that the Jerusalem Post endorsed Romney, and here in New York, The New York Post, New York Daily News, and the Wall Street Journal, all endorsed Romney, but you wouldn't know it reading Vos Iz Neias.
The Daily News endorses Mitt Romney for president
America’s heart, soul, brains and muscle — the middle- and working-class people who make this nation great — have been beset for too long by sapping economic decline.
So, too, New York breadwinners and families.
Paychecks are shrunken after more than a decade in which the workplace has asked more of wage earners and rewarded them less. The decline has knocked someone at the midpoint of the salary scale back to where he or she would have been in 1996.
Then, the subway fare, still paid by token, was $1.50, gasoline was $1.23 a gallon and the median rent for a stabilized apartment was $600 a month. Today, the base MetroCard subway fare is $2.25, gasoline is in the $3.90 range and the median stabilized rent is $1,050, with all the increases outpacing wage growth.
A crisis of long duration, the gap between purchasing power and the necessities of life widened after the 2008 meltdown revealed that the U.S. economy was built on toothpicks — and they snapped.
Nine million jobs evaporated. The typical American family saw $50,000 vanish from its net worth, and its median household income dropped by more than $87 a week. New Yorkers got off with a $54 weekly hit.
Our leaders owed us better than lower standards of living, and we must have better if the U.S. is to remain a beacon of prosperity where mothers and fathers can be confident of providing for their children and seeing them climb higher on the ladder.
Revival of the U.S. as a land of opportunity and upward mobility is the central challenge facing the next President. The question for Americans: Who is more likely to accomplish the mission — Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?
Four years ago, the Daily News endorsed Obama, seeing a historic figure whose intelligence, political skills and empathy with common folk positioned him to build on the small practical experience he would bring to the world’s toughest job. We valued Obama’s pledge to govern with bold pragmatism and bipartisanship.
The hopes of those days went unfulfilled.
Achingly slow job creation has left the U.S. with 4.3 million fewer positions than provided incomes to Americans in 2007. Half the new jobs have been part-time, lower-wage slots, a trend that has ruinously sped a hollowing of the middle class.
The official unemployment rate stands at 7.9%, marking only the second month below 8% after 43 months above that level. Worse, add people who are working part-time because they have no better choice and the rate leaps to almost 15%. Still worse, add 8 million people who have given up looking for employment and the number who are out of jobs or who are cobbling together hours to scrape by hits some 23 million people.
Only America’s social safety net, record deficits and the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented low-interest policies have kept the label Great Depression II on the shelf.
New Yorkers have fared no better. The state is alone among the 50 in suffering significantly rising unemployment over the last 12 months, with the rate now at 8.9%. The city’s pain index is 8.8%, and the five boroughs have been trading down in salaries.
New York, New Jersey May Get Hit By Snow Storm Around Election Day
With coastal communities in New York and New Jersey still reeling from the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy, the last thing the area needs is another storm. But that's exactly what it might get.
A nor'easter is predicted to potentially hit the East Coast next Wednesday (Nov. 7), and beach erosion experts are concerned about further damage to shorelines devastated by Sandy.
As Sandy came ashore, its record surge and pounding waves tore apart or eroded hundreds of miles of dunes and protective sea walls along the East Coast. Hundreds of homes and buildings, which also provided some protection, were destroyed.
The lack of protective dunes and damage to sea walls could lead to lowland flooding near the coast, depending on the wind direction and storm surge from the new storm, even one that isn't expected to approach Sandy's strength.
"The beaches and sand dunes are the first line of defense for coastal communities against storm surge and waves. They're going to take the first brunt of the storms," said Hilary Stockdon, a research oceanographer with the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va. [Infograpic: Timeline of Sandy's Week of Destruction]
First line of defense
Many of the sandy beaches along the Atlantic Coast have become increasingly vulnerable to significant impacts due to erosion during past storms, including Hurricanes Ida (2009) and Irene (2011), as well as large storms in 2005 and 2007, according to the USGS.
Stockdon said Sandy caused extensive erosion to beaches and dunes. The USGS and other agencies are now running aerial and ground surveys to assess the damage.
"There are dunes that have been eroded away completely, so now their protection is gone," Stockdon told OurAmazingPlanet. "That will make these communities more vulnerable to future storms that may not be as strong."
Quick repair and restoration of the coast could be essential to minimizing damage from future storms, whether the one currently brewing or any others that could develop later in the winter. In New York, the Department of Environmental Conservation is issuing emergency permits for storm-related repairs in coastal areas and wetlands.
Natural repair weakened
Farther north, front-end loaders are already pushing sand back onto the beach, said Greg Berman, a coastal geologist with the Woods Hole Institute Sea Grant program in Falmouth, Mass.
During powerful storms like Sandy, surging waves throw sand up and over the beach, where it remains stuck. The beach can't restore itself without access to sand. However, this is also a natural process; beaches aren't stationary, and their location migrates with time, Berman told OurAmazingPlanet. "When you push it back onto the beach, you're circumventing that migration, and it gets harder and harder to do over time," he said.
Sandy's late October arrival also increased coastal vulnerability by removing sand that had been naturally stored offshore for summer beach replenishment, Berman said. During the winter, sand is stored in sandbars and comes back in the summer. "After Sandy, instead of going into a nor'easter system at our best, we're going into it at a weakened condition," Berman said.
Election night downpour
The new storm's path is predicted to move from the Southeast Tuesday night into New Jersey on Wednesday, said Brian McNoldy, a weather researcher at the University of Miami.
"It looks like your average Nor'easter that comes in off the coast," he told OurAmazingPlanet. The forecast is from the same European computer model that eyeballed the projected path of Hurricane Sandy. Its precise strength and route is still uncertain, but the storm will be nowhere near the level of Sandy's tropical-force winds.
Coastal communities hit by the Frankenstorm will see strong onshore winds and waves, though whether the storm will come on land or stay out at sea is still uncertain.
"I think by far the worst impact will be the coastal flooding and erosion, and that's a concern regardless of how far off the coast it is. You'll get pretty strong winds and enhanced swells and waves. I think that's looking pretty certain," McNoldy said.
History of erosion
Beaches on the East Coast have been steadily eroding for 150 years, according to a USGS report released in February 2011. On average, the beaches in New England and the Mid-Atlanticare losing about 1.6 feet (0.5 meters) per year. The worst erosion case was about 60 feet (18 m) per year at the south end of Hog Island, in southern Virginia.
According to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office, Rockaway Beach (on a peninsula in New York City's borough of Queens) was almost completely washed away and the boardwalk was destroyed. Jones Beach (a barrier island off Long Island) was overwashed by ocean. Gilgo Beach's dune system (on Long Island) was almost destroyed, and Ocean Parkway (which runs along the southern end of Long Island) was overwashed. [Video: Sandy's Flooding Aftermath]
In New Jersey, Long Beach Island, a barrier island and popular vacation spot, sustained severe damage, with boats and cars tossed into streets and several feet of sand piled against houses. The island was evacuated before the storm.
Before Sandy's landfall, USGS scientists predicted different types of coastal erosion. Collision is when waves attack the base of dunes and cause erosion. Overwash is when waves and water from storm surges rush over dunes and carry sand farther inland. Inundation is when the storm surge floods the beach and dunes.
Muslim clerics say Sandy is 'God's way of punishing America for anti-Muhammed film'
Some anti-American Muslim clerics have cast the deadly Superstorm Sandy as divine punishment for 'Innocence of Muslims,' a film mocking the Prophet Muhammad or for other perceived ills of American society.
The remarks by some on the fringe brought a backlash from other Muslims who said it was wrong to relish the suff1ering of others.
In Egypt, one radical cleric described the hurricane as revenge from God for the crude, anti-Islam film made in the U.S. that sparked waves of protests in the Muslim world in September.
Radical cleric Wagdi Ghoneim described Hurricane Sandy as revenge from God for the crude, anti-Islam film made in the U.S. that sparked waves of protests in the Muslim world in September
'Some people wonder about the hurricane in America and its causes,' Egyptian hardline cleric Wagdi Ghoneim tweeted twice this week in the aftermath of the storm.
'In my opinion, it is revenge from God for the beloved prophet,' he added, alluding to the film.
Some praised the post, but others condemned it.
Another Twitter response to Ghoneim compared Sandy to a divine wind sent to destroy a sinful nation and strike at the seat of the United Nations in New York.
'We ask God to destroy the U.N. building for its injustice, corruption, tyranny ... with Sandy.'
28 papers have quit Obama to endorse Romney
Do newspaper endorsements mean what they used to? Maybe not. But Mitt Romney has over one hundred of them, which is an impressive feat for a Republican. However, Romney’s ability to convert editorial boards away from their decisions to endorse President Obama four years ago is truly impressive.
To date, twenty-eight large newspapers have decided to drop their endorsement record with President Obama and put their chips all in on Romney. The blunt explanations for their decisions often gives way to some blistering critiques of the president, leaving the reader no doubt why these papers lost their faith over the last four years.
According to Editor & Publisher, Republican Mitt Romney is stunning the newspaper world, earning 112 endorsements from editorial boards around the country compared to the President’s 84. Most large market newspapers like the The New York Times and The Washington Post have stuck with Obama, but have run less than glowing assessments of his accomplishments. So while a newspaper endorsement may not mean what it once did, these conversions could be telling of a national trend.
Read more:http://times247.com/articles/28-newspapers-abandon-obama-back-romney#ixzz2BCyulUqX
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