You have heard it before: “As California goes, so goes the nation.”  If that is the case, the national economy will be harmed for decades to come because of California’s misplaced priorities today.  Indeed, by emphasizing high-speed rail over water and failing to deal with its debt crisis, California poses a long-term threat to our national economy and is on an economic collision course of increased immigration and lack of water.

California has more than 38 million residents. Despite net losses of millions of residents to other states, California continues to grow through immigration.  Latinos now equal the number of non-Hispanic whites in California.  With projections that show California’s population reaching 45 to 50 million within 20 years, you would think job creation would be job one for Jerry Brown.

Sadly, that is not the case today.  Despite a much-heralded recovery in the media and by Governor Jerry Brown, California still has one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates.  Also, more than 30% of the nation’s welfare recipients are Californians – even though California has just 12% of the nation’s population.  It is not surprising, therefore, that California is ranked number one in poverty.

The police response to riots and unrest in Ferguson, Missouri has even shocked apologists for the Chinese government, with state media lecturing the United States about its penchant for pointing the finger at others for human rights abuses while ignoring its own advice at home.

In an editorial for Xinhua, a news outlet described as “a ministry-level department subordinate to the State Council” whose president is “a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China,” the U.S. is chastised for its hypocrisy.

The Ferguson incident once again demonstrates that even if in a country that has for years tried to play the role of an international human rights judge and defender, there is still much room for improvement at home.

In its annual human rights report issued in February, the United States assaulted almost 200 countries across the world for their so-called poor human rights records.

However, the U.S. human rights flaws extend far beyond racial issues. As revealed by famous whistleblower Edward Snowden, the U.S. government has hacked into emails and mobile phones of ordinary Americans as well as leaders of other countries, including traditional U.S. allies.

What’s more, Uncle Sam has witnessed numerous shooting sprees on its own land and launched incessant drone attacks on foreign soil, resulting in heavy civilian casualties.

Each country has its own national conditions that might lead to different social problems. Obviously, what the United States needs to do is to concentrate on solving its own problems rather than always pointing fingers at others.

A 101-year-old man from New Jersey celebrated his birthday with colleagues on Monday after 73 years in the same job.

Herman "Hy" Goldman works four days a week at light fixtures company Capitol Lighting in New Jersey.
Apart from a brief absence to serve in the US Army in World War Two, Mr Goldman has worked at Capitol Lighting since 1941.

(CNSNews.com) – The average price for all types of ground beef per pound hit its all-time high -- $3.884 per pound -- in the United States in July, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

That was up from $3.880 per pound in June. A year ago, in July 2013, the average price for a pound of ground beef was $3.459 per pound. Since then, the average price for a pound of ground beef has gone up 42.1 cents--or about 12 percent.

Five years ago, in July 2009, the average price for a pound of ground beef was $2.147, according to the BLS. In those five years, the average price has climbed by $1.737 per pound--or almost 81 percent.

Former Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) and Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) may not see eye to eye on many political and policy issues, but that didn’t stop Paul, a two-time Republican presidential candidate, from tearing into the indictment:

“This is pure politics, I tell ya. This is really a joke,” Paul told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Monday.

The former Texas congressman made sure to mention that he doesn’t “generally defend our governor very much,” saying Perry’s record on civil liberties and foreign policy is “a disaster.”

But in this case, he added, “the abuse of power comes more from the DA’s office than the governor’s office.”
Paul and Perry ran for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. The two had an apparent confrontation during a commercial break at a September 2011 debate, during which Perry placed his right hand on Paul’s arm and held pointed his left pointer finger at his opponent in a lecturing manner.

Paul later played down the incident, telling a crowd of supporters that he couldn’t recall what he and Perry discussed.

AUSTIN (CBSDFW.COM/AP) — Texas Governor Rick Perry was booked on two felony counts of abuse of power for carrying out a threat to veto funding to state public corruption prosecutors. He was booked-in, fingerprinted and had his mugshot taken, which is standard procedure for every defendant charged with a felony.

His spokeswoman told CBS 11 News they didn’t ask for any special treatment.
Perry, who is mulling a second presidential run in 2016, reported to the Travis County Courthouse on Tuesday. The Republican has called the case a political ploy, and many top Republicans are supporting him.

With Democrat Hillary Clinton Likely 2016 Neoconservative Standard Bearer, Republicans Should Offer a Real Alternative — Such as Rand Paul

By Doug Bandow
This article appeared in Forbes on August 18, 2014.

U.S. foreign policy is a bipartisan fiasco. George W. Bush and his neoconservative allies gave the American people Iraq, the gift that keeps on giving. Barack Obama has proved to be a slightly more reluctant warrior, but he is taking the country back into Iraq.

Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee, appears never to have met a war that he didn’t want Americans to fight. Hillary Clinton, the unannounced Democratic front-runner for 2016, supported her husband’s misbegotten attempt at nation-building in Kosovo and led the drive for war in Libya, which is violently unraveling.

Most of Clinton’s potential GOP opponents share Washington’s bomb, invade, and occupy consensus. The only exception is Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. He stands alone advocating a foreign policy which reflects the bitter, bloody lessons of recent years.

The Islamic State of Syria and the Levant is the latest result of Washington’s incessant and counterproductive meddling in the Middle East. Nowhere has U.S. policy been more disastrous. Indeed, what intervention, under Republican or Democratic administration, has worked well in that region in the last three or so decades?

Yuval Levin and Reihan Salam's outline of a possible compromise approach to immigration has much to recommend it. But they share a bind spot with many conservative immigration skeptics: support for increases in skilled immigration. To be sure, they do not call for an increase in overall immigration, but seek to make up for more narrowly defined family-based admissions with increases in skills-based ones so as to keep the level of immigration roughly where it is now. There are a number of problems with this.

First, consider the politics. Policy aside, Levin and Salam present their compromise vision as a "plausible resolution" of the quandary we're in, a "constructive alternative" that offers something to both cosmopolitans and populists. In other words, they're describing what they hope might become a politically viable package, as well as one that serves the national interest.

Making any broad changes to immigration is politically difficult, as everyone can see, but an approach that increases skilled immigration at the expense of family admissions would be uniquely inflammatory because of its clear ethnic overtones. It's likely Levin and Salam haven't even thought about it in these terms, but what they're proposing is essentially an end to Latin American immigration and its replacement with increased flows from Asia. Many other conservatives, though, who share the goal of reorienting immigration toward skilled workers are explicit in their preference for Chinese and Indians over Mexicans and Hondurans.

Their proposal is certainly not invalidated by this inevitable result; "disparate impact" is an obsession best left to the Left. But it does make it considerably less viable than broad reductions in all categories. This "skilled good/unskilled bad" approach would be — already is — presented as an attack on Hispanics. Combine that with Levin and Salam's idea of a non-citizenship amnesty, where former illegal aliens (overwhelmingly Hispanic) would remain a sort of helot class, albeit a legalized one, and you have a recipe for an even more polarized and inflammatory debate than we have already.

...

Bechar said his firm’s focus is not on the specialised needs of other analytics startups, but on the mass market of bitcoin users. The idea is to offer free visualisation tools to make it easier for the average bitcoiner to make sense of cryptocurrency flows into his or her own wallet, or from major segments of the bitcoin economy like mining pools. This is an area that is currently dominated by Blockchain.info, the wallet provider that also offers a popular free block chain explorer.

Heavily armed robbers have mounted a brazen attack on the motorcade of a Saudi prince in Paris, making off with 250,000 euros in cash and stealing diplomatic papers, French police said Monday.

The spectacular robbery took place in northern Paris late on Sunday as the motorcade was making its way from a plush hotel on the Champs Elysees to an airport in Le Bourget, said police, who confirmed there were no injuries.

A gang of "between five and eight" thieves in two BMWs hijacked the first of around 10 vehicles in the convoy, driving off with the three occupants before letting them go, police said.

A police source and Le Parisien daily had said the men were armed with Kalashnikov rifles but an official later clarified to say they were carrying handguns.

LONDON — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced Monday that after spending two years in the Embassy of Ecuador in London he will "soon" leave the diplomatic safe harbor.

He made the comments during a joint press conference with Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino. Assange did not elaborate on the timing or address whether an impasse over his potential extradition had been resolved.

It was suggested in the British press over the weekend that Assange may need hospital treatment for a heart defect and lung condition and that any move could be to remedy those suspected health problems.

However, Assange refused to be drawn on those specific points Monday, saying only that when he does leave it will "probably not" be for the reasons reported on.

WILLOWS, Calif. — When the winter rains failed to arrive in this Sacramento Valley town for the third straight year, farmers tightened their belts and looked to the reservoirs in the nearby hills to keep them in water through the growing season.

When those faltered, some switched on their well pumps, drawing up thousands of gallons from underground aquifers to prevent their walnut trees and alfalfa crops from drying up. Until the wells, too, began to fail.

Now, across California’s vital agricultural belt, nervousness over the state’s epic drought has given way to alarm. Streams and lakes have long since shriveled up in many parts of the state, and now the aquifers — always a backup source during the region’s periodic droughts — are being pumped away at rates that scientists say are both historic and unsustainable.

WASHINGTON — Almost 8,000 senior enlisted personnel must go before a continuation board later this year to determine whether they can continue to serve or must retire.

The board — the first since early 2013 — will convene Oct. 27, according to a Navy document released Aug. 14.

At risk are between 7,500 and 8,000 retirement-eligible active and reserve E-7s, E-8s and E-9s with at least at least three years' time in rate.

But there is a big upside to the process: Clearing out senior enlisted who have engaged in misconduct or whose performance has slipped noticeably makes way for hot running sailors to move up.