Now there are multiple power centers. The institutions that buttressed Western power, such as the United Nations, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, are under pressure to allow rising powers more influence.”

What an ill-timed claim. Given what we are reading about financial state of the globe.

As always, the US sneezes and the rest of the world catches pneumonia.

Amazon says 2008 holiday season was ‘best ever’

SEATTLE (AP) — Amazon.com Inc. said Friday that the 2008 holiday season was the online retailer’s “best ever,” with more than 6.3 million items ordered and 5.6 million units shipped during its peak day on Dec. 15.

Amazon’s upbeat take on the holiday season bucked the drumbeat of generally dismal news from retailers. Holiday sales typically account for 30 percent to 50 percent of a retailer’s annual total, but rising unemployment, home foreclosures, the stock market decline and other economic worries led many shoppers to slash their shopping budgets this year.

SpendingPulse – a division of MasterCard Advisors that tracks total sales paid for by credit card, checks and cash – said its preliminary data indicates that retail sales dropped between 5.5 percent and 8 percent this holiday season compared with last year. SpendingPulse said the decline was slightly less steep – between 2 percent and 4 percent – when auto and gas sales were excluded.

Earlier this month, Barclays Capital analyst Douglas Anmuth said Amazon’s competitive position has actually strengthened during the downturn, as some brick-and-mortar retailers were forced to close stores and had difficulty obtaining inventory.

Based on the number of items ordered, Amazon said its holiday bestsellers included the Nintendo Wii, Samsung’s 52-inch LCD HDTV, the Apple iPod touch and the Blokus board game. …

http://customwire.ap.org/dynam.....IDAY_SALES

But I thought electronics were supposed to be the biggest loser in this year’s sales?

Could it be that you could get one particular 32″ Sony HDTV from Amazon for $599 when the best price on the same model all season at Best Buy or “just barely staying afloat” Circuit City was $749?

Or say that DVDs and Blu-Ray discs are routinely marked down 30% or more from what they sell for at other retailers?

Note that other brick-and-mortar retailers that follow similar pricing strategies, such as Wal-Mart, have also done well this season.

However, the real reckoning is yet to come, as retailers have now done what the Big Three did to themselves years ago:

A few years back, the Big Three tried to get rid of rebates but their sales plummeted because American consumers came to expect that $2,000 or more check back when they bought a domestic vehicle and wouldn’t buy one without it.

Likewise, consumers now expect items to be marked down at least 25% if not more, or they won’t buy.

(Even if money is no object, why buy now when you know sometime in the next two to three weeks the same item will inevitably be at least 25% cheaper?)

What’s even worse is retailers like Macy’s and Target who don’t have price match policies that extend beyond ten days but have 30 – 90 day return policies, so their results are skewed by people repurchasing an item on sale and returning it against the original receipt.

So why would customers ever pay full price again when they know a store will have to lower their price on whatever it is they want sometime in the next few weeks?

But the lessons that have carried us through are the same lessons that we celebrate every Christmas season — the same lessons that guide us to this very day: that hope endures, and that a new birth of peace is always possible”

And here I was thinking that the lessons we celebrate every Christmas season had something to do with the Savior of the world coming to Redeem us from our sins.

They could only sucker <60 people to show up?

LMAO.

Honor! Courage! Commitment!. You don’t have it, “Honest Obe”, and no amount of posturing will buy it for you.

Good luck with your charade. You’re going to need it, chump!

How can that be?

From the Los Angeles Times:

Obama urges renewed ’sense of common purpose’ in holiday message

The president-elect draws from U.S. history in a radio address that pays tribute to troops, their families and other Americans enduring tough times.

By John McCormick

Reporting from Honolulu — President-elect Barack Obama used a holiday radio address released Wednesday to remember the nation’s troops serving overseas and citizens at home who are struggling amid a troubled economy.

“Many troops are serving their second, third, or even fourth tour of duty,” Obama said in a recording scheduled for broadcast Saturday. “This holiday season, their families celebrate with a joy that is muted, knowing that a loved one is absent and sometimes in danger.”

Obama, who is vacationing on his native island of Oahu, also talked about what those away from home are missing.

“In towns and cities across America, there is an empty seat at the dinner table,” he said. “In distant bases and on ships at sea, our servicemen and -women can only wonder at the look on their child’s face as they open a gift back home.”

The president-elect has been spending time with troops stationed at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, where he has gone every morning of his vacation for a workout at a fitness center.

He spent a few minutes shaking hands and greeting about 60 people gathered in a parking lot outside the fitness center on Christmas Eve.

“Hey, man, how’s it going?” he asked one person before wishing everyone “Mele Kalikimaka,” a Hawaiian transliteration of “Merry Christmas.”

Then Obama turned to some children and asked, “You guys got your Christmas lists all together?”

In the radio address, Obama said there was a need for collective sacrifice during this time of economic duress: “That is why this season of giving should also be a time to renew a sense of common purpose and shared citizenship. Now, more than ever, we must rededicate ourselves to the notion that we share a common destiny as Americans.”

Obama said that was the spirit that would guide his administration.

“If the American people come together and put their shoulder to the wheel of history, then I know that we can put our people back to work and point our country in a new direction,” he said. “That is how we will see ourselves through this time of crisis, and reach the promise of a brighter day.”

The president-elect recalled an American moment more than 200 years ago, when George Washington and his army faced steep odds to free themselves from the grip of the British Empire.

“It was Christmas Day — Dec. 25, 1776 — that they fought through ice and cold to make an improbable crossing of the Delaware River,” he said. “Many ages have passed since that first American Christmas. We have crossed many rivers as a people. But the lessons that have carried us through are the same lessons that we celebrate every Christmas season — the same lessons that guide us to this very day: that hope endures, and that a new birth of peace is always possible.”

http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....5076.story

It’s too bad those troops away from home are going to learn what it’s like to have fought in vain when you’re pulled out of a war zone for arbitrary reasons before victory can be achieved.

I also don’t think I need to explain what “collective sacrifice” means: dragging all of America down to the same level rather than trying to raise more Americans up.

Or just focus on the word collective.

If George Washington could see what Obama’s planning, I’m not so sure he would have chosen to cross the Delaware…

(Nice that since he had to make up the “Office of President-Elect” out of thin air, apparently he’s now made up the need for the President-Elect to address the nation as well. As if we won’t have to suffer enough of his pablum starting January 20.)

From the Los Angeles Times, labeled “News Analysis”:

Bush a catalyst in America’s declining influence

The president oversaw a period of eroding economic and political power, in which the rise of China, India and others was a major factor, but assisted by an aversion to him and his policies.

By Paul Richter

Reporting from Washington — First in a series of occasional reports on President Bush’s legacy.

As President Bush’s term comes to a close, the United States has the world’s largest economy and its most powerful military. Yet its global influence is in decline.

The United States emerged from the Cold War a solitary superpower whose political and economic leverage often enabled it to impose its will on others. Now, America usually needs to build alliances — and often finds that other powers aren’t willing to go along.

In the 1990s, America exerted leadership in all the remote corners of the globe, from the southern cone of South America to Central Asia. Now, the United States has largely left the field in many regions, leaving others to step forward.

Bush has been blamed widely for the erosion of American prestige. And the decline in U.S. influence is partly the result of the reaction to his invasion of Iraq, his campaign against Islamic militants and his early disdain for treaties and international bodies.

But the shift is also a result of independent forces, though hastened by an aversion to Bush. These include the steady ascent of China, India and other developing countries that throughout the last decade have seen their economies grow, amassing wealth and quietly extending their reach.

As smaller countries have built economic and political ties to these rising powers, they have worked to free themselves from exclusive dependence on the United States.

“There is no return to the time when the United States was the ‘indispensable power,’ ” said Stewart M. Patrick, a former State Department official at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The world has moved on.”

Now there are multiple power centers. The institutions that buttressed Western power, such as the United Nations, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, are under pressure to allow rising powers more influence.

A vivid illustration of the power shift came Nov. 15, when Bush convened world leaders in Washington to develop plans for dealing with the global economic crisis. In the old days, experts said, he would have limited the meeting to a few industrial powers. But Bush realized that the world economy now has a larger cast of influential players, and invited all members of the so-called Group of 20 developed and developing nations, which includes countries such as Argentina, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey.

A decade ago, the U.S. might have been able to bring enough economic pressure on its own to force an end to Iran’s disputed nuclear program, said Nikolas K. Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the Naval War College.

But Iran has built economic ties to China and India, among others, so the United States has to assemble a much larger group if it hopes to force Tehran’s hand.

“Ten years ago, the U.S. was generally the only game in town, and it had the power to close or crack open the door to Iran,” Gvosdev said. “Now other countries have more options. . . . This doesn’t mean the United States is weak, but it can’t unilaterally impose what it wants.”

The U.S. National Intelligence Council issued a report this year, “Global Trends 2025,” that notes a shift of economic power from the West to the East that is “without precedent.” In 2025, the United States will “remain the single most powerful country, but will be less dominant,” it predicts.

Since World War II, the United States has led by its power of persuasion, as well as its economic might. But other countries’ unhappiness with the Iraq war and the conduct of the Bush administration’s “global war on terror,” means that the “American brand is less legitimate and its persuasive powers are compromised,” said Charles Kupchan of Georgetown University and the Council on Foreign Relations.

There also has been a dwindling of U.S. influence as the administration has focused most of its energy and resources on the Middle East and Southwest Asia, leaving much less for Central and Southeast Asia, Latin America and other regions. Many are going their own way, developing new ties among neighbors.

Latin American countries, for example, are building an organization called the Union of South American Nations and a NATO-like defense alliance called the South American Defense Council. The United States, long dominant in the hemisphere, is pointedly excluded from both.

An 8-year-old group called the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with Russia, China, and four Central Asian states, has been slowly developing, in part because some members want a bulwark against U.S. involvement in the region.

Other countries are leading diplomatic initiatives that once would have been the province of the United States.

Qatar has taken the lead in brokering a deal between Syria and Lebanon, and Turkey has been acting as an intermediary between Israel and Syria.

As the United States’ political standing has eroded, its economy has remained powerful. Its gross domestic product of $14 trillion a year dwarfs China’s $7 trillion, adjusted for purchasing power.

Yet American influence on world economic policy is declining, too. One sign: the failure of the United States and its allies to sell a new agreement to the World Trade Organization in the face of opposition from China, India and other nations.

“The influence of the U.S. private sector is as strong as ever,” said Gary C. Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “But the United States is much less able to shape world policy these days.”

Many analysts expect that the economic crisis, for which the U.S. is blamed by much of the world, will convince many countries that they shouldn’t emulate the loosely regulated American economic model. …

http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....3325.story

Cool.

The best way to assure the United States’ future economic superiority is for other countries to adopt say Hugo Chavez’ policies.

The problem is Obama will be in a race with those other countries to do the same.

Not like Bush isn’t trying to get the country there for him first.

We’re also supposed to be embarrassed because other countries are mad at the US for the Global War on Terror.

It remains to be seen if Obama will unilaterally solve that one by making us sitting ducks.

From the AP:

For first time, Christmas official holiday in Iraq

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s Christians, a scant minority in this overwhelmingly Muslim country, quietly celebrated Christmas today with a present from the government, which declared it an official holiday for the first time.

But security worries overshadowed the day for many, particularly in the north where thousands of Christians have fled to escape religious attacks.

Overall security in Iraq has improved markedly in the past year, but a fatal car bombing in Baghdad on Christmas morning was a gruesome reminder that serious problems remain.

The bombing outside a restaurant frequented by police killed four people and wounded 25 others in the Shiite neighborhood of Shula, said a police officer on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give information to news media.

Also today, an oil official said attackers blew up a pipeline in the city of Kirkuk. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the attack happened Wednesday and pumping was expected to resume within three days.

In his homily on Thursday, Chaldean Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly praised the establishment of Christmas as an official holiday as a step toward easing tensions.

“I thank the government for giving chances to all to serve each other for the general benefit, and I thank it too for making this day an official holiday where we pray to God to make us trust each other as brothers,” he said at the Christmas Mass before several dozen worshippers in the small chapel of a Baghdad monastery.

A senior Shiite cleric, Ammar al-Hakim, attended the Mass flanked by bodyguards in a gesture of cooperation with Christians.

“I thank the visitors here and ask them to share happiness and love with their brothers on Christmas; by this they will build a glorious Iraq,” the cardinal said.

“We came here to bring a message of love, respect and gratitude to our Christian brothers and to share happiness with them as we have shared sadness with them during the cruel targeting they came under,” al-Hakim said in an interview with al-Furat TV. “We will do our best for equality between people and a good life for all, whatever their religious, sectarian and ethnic background.”

He is the son and heir-apparent of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, Iraq’s biggest mainstream Shiite party.

Iraq’s Christians, estimated to number only a few hundred thousand of the country’s 26 million people, have often been the target of attacks by Islamic extremists in Iraq. Tens of thousands have fled; many of those who stayed were isolated in neighborhoods protected by barricades and checkpoints.

A coordinated bombing campaign in 2004 targeted churches in the Iraqi capital and anti-Christian violence also flared in September 2007 after Pope Benedict XVI made comments perceived to be against Islam.

For Mariam Polis, who fled her home in Mosul a year ago after anti-Christian threats spread and two priests were killed, this Christmas was a day of bitterness.

“There’s not enough money, no house, no stability to prepare for Christmas Eve,” said the 55-year-old woman who now occupies a one-room clay house in the northern village of Ein Kawa. “It is better for us to die.”

But for another woman who fled to Ein Kawa, there was a bit of cheer thanks to money sent from abroad by her brother.

“We got a bright Christmas tree — it is a symbol we love,” Raeida Anwar Abid said. …

http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....7210.story

Oh yeah, that’s right, to the left this is another Bush failure – helping to spread the horrific spiritual poison that is Christianity.

Times City Room Will Not Mention Caroline Kennedy’s Special Friendship With Pinch Sulzberger

Don’t even bother to leave a comment at the Times local news blog suggesting a sexy patrician affair between the Senator-to-be and the publisher of the Times.

It seems like a mostly legitimate question to ask, doesn’t it? Whether or not they’re having sexy sexy old rich scion sex, the special friendship between Sulzberger and Kennedy is well-documented. And when the publisher of your paper is BFF with a public figure, asking whether that friendship affects coverage of that public figure is certainly fair game.

But no, no comments allowed asking about the affair. When this guy tried, the City Room editors asked him to please not bring it up again. “we don’t report stuff like this, regardless of the people involved.” Stuff like… what? The Times certainly does report on the sexual lives of public figures, all the damn time, from Giuliani to Spitzer to Paterson. But reporting on the Sulzbergers not so much.

http://gawker.com/5115286/time.....sulzberger

Remind me why anyone still reads the Treason Times?

They cited it as an example of her inexperience and why she couldn’t be trusted with such an important job.

Well… from the AP:

NY Times published fake letter from Paris mayor

By Ann Levin

NEW YORK (AP) – The New York Times admitted Monday it published a fake letter purportedly from the mayor of Paris criticizing Caroline Kennedy’s Senate bid as “appalling” and “not very democratic.”

“What title has Ms. Kennedy to pretend to Hillary Clinton’s seat?” the letter in Monday’s editions said. “We French can only see a dynastic move of the vanishing Kennedy clan in the very country of the Bill of Rights. It is both surprising and appalling.”

In an editor’s note posted Monday on its Web site, the Times said the letter signed by Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe should not have been published because it violated the paper’s standards and procedures.

“We have already expressed our regrets to Mr. Delanoe’s office and we are now doing the same to you, our readers,” the Times said.

News of the hoax was first reported by France-Amerique, which published a story on its Web site Monday. Editor-in-chief Jean-Cosme Delaloye said an employee of the French language monthly, which is based in New York City, read it Monday morning and was skeptical.

“When we read the letter it just sounded very surprising, the choice of words sounded very surprising,” he told The Associated Press. “When we called Paris to verify the information … they were very surprised.”

Virginie Christnacht, head of Delanoe’s press office in Paris, told the AP the letter was a fake.

“We have asked The New York Times for a denial and an apology,” she said. “Clearly, this was never sent by Bertrand Delanoe.”

The Times blamed the mistake on a failure to verify the authenticity of a letter that arrived by e-mail.

“In this case, our staff sent an edited version of the letter to the sender of the e-mail and did not hear back,” the paper said. “At that point, we should have contacted Mr. Delanoe’s office to verify that he had, in fact, written to us. We did not do that. Without that verification, the letter should never have been printed.”

The Times said it was reviewing its procedures to avoid such an incident in the future.

Asked to comment, Times spokeswoman Catherine J. Mathis referred the AP to the paper’s Web site.

http://www.breitbart.com/artic....._article=1

I don’t suppose an apology to Palin is coming anytime soon now, is it?