Demi Goddess

She’s no longer the larger-than-life box office star of the Eighties and Nineties, but with a slate of quirky indie roles and a horde of digital followers, Demi Moore is reinventing her career. Call it Demi 2.0.
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Dow jumps to highest level in more than a year

NEW YORK – The Dow Jones industrial average stormed to its highest level in more than a year Monday as a falling dollar boosted prices for commodities including gold and oil. Stocks also jumped as investors grew more confident that governments around the world will keep interest rates low to help the global economy.

Energy and materials stocks led the market higher. Major indexes rose 2 percent, including the Dow, which jumped 200 points for the second time in three days, to its highest level in 13 months.

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Iran charges three detained Americans with espionage

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran has charged three detained U.S. citizens with espionage, the official IRNA news agency quoted a prosecutor as saying on Monday, but Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said there was no evidence to back the charges.

The three, Shane Bauer, 27, Sarah Shourd, 31, and Josh Fattal, 27, were held after they crossed into Iran from northern Iraq at the end of July. Their families said they strayed across the border accidentally. “The three are charged with espionage,” Tehran general prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi told IRNA. “Investigations continue into the three detained Americans in Iran.”

The case comes at a time of higher tensions between Iran and the West over Tehran’s nuclear plans and after Iranian officials accused foreign nations of fuelling the worst unrest for three decades that erupted after a disputed June presidential election.

The United States has sent strong messages to Iran urging the release of the three hikers, calling on the authorities to exercises “compassion” toward the three Americans.

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But apparently not for the role you think…

Exclusive: NCIS Gets Real U.S. Secretary of the Navy for a Cameo

The United States Secretary of the Navy will make a guest appearance on an upcoming episode of NCIS, TVGuide.com has learned exclusively.

Secretary Ray Mabus will appear in the Nov. 24 Thanksgiving episode entitled “Child’s Play,” a rep for the show tells us. Mabus will play an NCIS agent.

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Another troop increase suggestion, this time from General George Casey, Army Chief of Staff on Sunday

More troops needed for Afghanistan: U.S. General Casey

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – General George Casey, Army chief of staff, on Sunday became the latest U.S. military official to advocate sending more troops to Afghanistan as President Barack Obama nears a decision on a new strategy.

General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has recommended a 40,000-troop increase, but Casey would not comment on how many additional troops were needed.

“I believe that we need to put additional forces into Afghanistan to give General McChrystal the ability to both dampen the successes of the Taliban while we train the Afghan civilian forces,” Casey said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

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Cantor Says Rhetoric Harmful, Calls for Inclusion

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) — Eric Cantor, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. House, said his party needs to be inclusive and criticized some comments by talk-show host Rush Limbaugh as inappropriate.

“The Republican Party in its roots is a party of inclusion and we ought to be promoting that and making sure that voices are heard,” Cantor, of Virginia, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing today.

Cantor, when asked about Limbaugh’s comments that “Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate” and his comparison of the administration’s health-care logo to a swastika, said his comparisons were wrong.

“Do I condone the mention of Hitler in any discussion about politics?” Cantor said. “No, I don’t, because obviously that is something that conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful.”

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This might be one of the only redeemable qualities of this legislation…

House votes strict ban on abortion subsidies

WASHINGTON – A bipartisan House coalition voted Saturday to prohibit coverage of abortions in a new government-run health care plan that Democrats would establish to compete with private insurers.

The 240-194 vote on an amendment by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., was a blow to liberals, who would have allowed the Obama administration and its successors to decide whether abortions would be covered by the government plan. Sixty-four Democrats joined 176 Republicans in favor of the prohibition.

Stupak’s measure also would bar anyone getting federal health subsidies from purchasing private insurance polices that included abortion coverage.

“Let us stand together on principle — no public funding for abortions, no public funding for insurance policies that pay for abortions,” Stupak urged fellow lawmakers before the vote.

The amendment would bar the new government insurance plan from covering abortions, except in cases of rape, incest, or where the life of the mother is in danger. The Democrats’ original legislation would have allowed the government plan to cover abortions, if the Health and Human Services secretary decided it should.

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Party-Buckers on Health Care Vote Mostly From ‘Purple’ Seats

Four out of five House Democrats who voted against the health care bill represent districts that voted for John McCain over Barack Obama in the 2008 election.

And the only Republican who bolted from the party line also represents a district that voted both red and blue, sending the GOP candidate to Congress while going big for Obama.

The party-buckers on the 220-215 vote on Saturday night included 39 Democrats who voted against the bill. Of them, 31 represent districts that voted for the opposing party’s presidential candidate. Republicans are targeting many of them for defeat in the 2010 election. Of the other eight, three are serving their first terms in districts in which they defeated or succeeded Republicans in 2008.

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U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama and French First Lady Carla Bruni Sarkozy chat during the G20 Summit earlier this year.

As Asia’s economic and strategic weight has grown, Asians have sought to build multilateral frameworks capable of effectively channeling the region’s energies. But for more than a decade, the United States has mostly watched from the sidelines as proposals multiply and the region organizes itself into an alphabet soup of new multilateral groups.

The Obama administration has an opportunity to help define new roles for the United States in this changing Asia. But to sustain its position in the region, Washington will need to move beyond its traditional “hub and spokes” approach to Asia—with the United States as the hub, bilateral alliances as the spokes, and multilateral institutions largely at the margins of U.S. policy. Otherwise, the United States will pay increasing costs to its interests, credibility, and influence.

Read the full report at the Council on Foreign Relations

Analysis: 10 percent jobless is Obama’s new world

WASHINGTON – For months he had warned it was coming but that didn’t ease the political shockwaves for President Barack Obama when unemployment topped 10 percent.

A year after his election Obama finds it increasingly difficult to blame the sour economy on George W. Bush or offer reassurances that jobless Americans will soon find work.

Never mind that the economy itself grew in the last quarter, that the recession by most accounts is over and that the number of jobs lost in October was less than one-third the number of job losses at the start of his presidency.

At 10.2 percent, the October unemployment climbed to chart-topping heights unseen in more than a quarter century. The bottom line is that more than 15 million Americans are out of work and 3.5 million lost their jobs while Obama was president. Expected or not, this is Obama’s new reality.

“I won’t let up until the Americans who want to find work can find work, and until all Americans can earn enough to raise their families and keep their businesses open,” the president declared Friday.

That’s a hopeful promise but not very realistic.

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House Dems struggle for final votes on health care

WASHINGTON – Amid intense lobbying by the Obama administration, House Democratic leaders struggled Friday for the final votes needed to pass sweeping health care legislation, weighing fresh concessions to abortion opponents and working to ease concerns among Hispanic holdouts.

“We’re very close” to having enough votes to prevail, said Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, although he added a scheduled Saturday vote could slip by a day or two and sought to pin the blame on possible Republican delaying tactics.

“Nice try, Rep. Hoyer, but you can’t blame Republicans when the fact is you just don’t have the votes,” shot back Antonia Ferrier, spokeswoman for the GOP leader, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio.

In a struggle that combined the fate of President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority and a 2010 campaign issue, bipartisanship was not an option.

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Jobs…Jobs…Jobs…whatever happened to that stimulus???

Jobless rate tops 10 pct. for first time since ‘83

WASHINGTON – The unemployment rate has hit double digits for the first time since 1983 — and is likely to go higher. The 10.2 percent jobless rate for October shows how weak the economy remains even though it is growing. The rising jobless rate could threaten the recovery if it saps consumers’ confidence and makes them more cautious about spending as the holiday season approaches.

The October unemployment rate — reflecting nearly 16 million jobless people — jumped from 9.8 percent in September, the Labor Department said Friday. The job losses occurred across most industries, from manufacturing and construction to retail and financial.

Economists say the unemployment rate could surpass 10.5 percent next year because employers are reluctant to hire.

President Barack Obama called the new jobs report another illustration of why much more work is needed to spur business creation and consumer spending. Noting legislation he’s signing to provide additional unemployment benefits for laid-off workers, Obama said, “I will not rest until all Americans who want work can find work.”

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