Lawmakers Bicker Over Budget 'Deal' as Shutdown Deadline Looms

AP

Shown here are House Speaker John Boehner, left, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Lawmakers vied for the political high ground Sunday, as they prepared to enter what could be the final stretch of this year's budget negotiations. 

With Washington careening toward a Friday deadline to either come up with a plan or face a partial government shutdown, Democrats and Republicans continued to bicker over whether there is or is not a compromise on the table. 

Aides to both parties confirmed to Fox News that policymakers are indeed working off a skeleton of a proposal that cuts $33 billion from last year's spending levels -- without such a starting figure, budget staff would be unable to write a bill. But lawmakers performed what amounts to a political dance in describing those negotiations, with Democrats sounding as if all that needs to be done is cross a few T's. 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., repeated the claim Sunday that the two sides have "agreed on a number." 

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., also said lawmakers are working off a proposal to cut $33 billion from last year's levels. "I'm quite optimistic," he said.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, though, has said several times this past week that there is no deal until all the details are worked out. After President Obama called Boehner and Reid over the weekend, Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said the speaker "reminded the president that there is no 'deal' or agreement on a final number, and he will continue to push for the largest possible spending cuts." 

Boehner claims to be pushing for a package that more closely resembles the House-passed bill, which contained $61 billion in cuts. 

Both sides are trying to protect themselves politically in case talks fall through. A failure to draft a bill for the rest of the year means they would have to either craft another unpopular stopgap bill or face a partial shutdown. 

Right now, staffers are trying to whip up a budget proposal that achieves $33 billion in cuts. That number could rise, particularly if Democrats shoot down too many of the Republicans' policy riders -- which targeted organizations like Planned Parenthood for specific spending cuts. 

Some GOP lawmakers are urging the party to hold its ground while others have indicated a willingness to back off the $61 billion figure. 

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Sunday he'd "like to cut more" but that it's up to Reid to take the next step. 

Members of Congress nevertheless kept up the drumbeat of accusations, with the GOP accusing Senate Democrats of dropping the ball and Democrats accusing House Republicans of listening too much to the "extreme" Tea Party. Reid went so far as to call Republicans' House proposal "mean-spirited," saying it goes after "poor little children" by cutting funding to Head Start, an assistance program for low-income children. 

Both parties tried to use the latest jobs report to bolster their arguments. 

That report, released Friday, showed the unemployment rate dipping to 8.8 percent, with the economy adding 216,000 jobs -- nowhere near where the economy was before the recession, but a marked improvement over where it was just a few months ago. 

Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions said the job growth could be imperiled by failing to deal with the national debt. 

The debt "creates a threat of a crisis that could put us back into recession," Sessions said on ABC's This Week." "We have got to make changes now." 

But Schumer, speaking alongside Sessions, said the job gains show why lawmakers can't cut the budget too aggressively. 

"We have to deal with the deficit very seriously. But we also have to deal with the economy and job growth," Schumer said. "And we don't want to snuff that out." 

The ongoing debate over the fiscal 2011 budget is just a prelude to the debate over the 2012 budget proposal. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., chairman of the House Budget Committee, told "Fox News Sunday" that the GOP proposal, set to be unveiled Tuesday, would cut more than $4 trillion over the next decade, through spending caps and changes to entitlement programs. 

Democrats, in response, accused Republicans of protecting corporate interests at the expense of seniors, laying the groundwork for another bitter debate. 

But Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., suggested the course of the long-term struggle over the federal budget will be set now. 

"What we do on the rest of this year's budget will be a strong indicator of how willing and how serious we are about dealing with our debt problem," he told "Fox News Sunday." 

Rubio reiterated his pledge to vote against raising the debt ceiling unless it's "the last time we do it" and is accompanied by "meaningful reforms." 

Cornyn, speaking on CNN's "State of the Union," made a similar pledge. 

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., though, said, "it just frightens the heck out of me that anyone responsible would say, let's go ahead and light the fuse that might create the next economic meltdown." 

"You've got to believe cooler, saner heads will prevail on the debt limit as well," he said on the same program.

7 Car Brands With Bad Reputations for Quality

Fiat

Quality means different things to different car buyers--everything from reliability to fuel efficiency to utility. It's nebulous, but it can make or break the launch of a new vehicle or the success of a car company, affecting everything from positive press to negative word-of-mouth reviews.

Some brands still rise to the top of the charts when shoppers get asked about the quality of different automakers' new vehicles--and some brands sink to the bottom based on those factors.

ALG, an automotive data company specializing in setting residual values for leased vehicles, sets out twice a year to see which brands fare better in the minds of consumers, and which fare worse. Polling between 3000 and 4000 consumers, the company comes up with ALG Perceived Quality Score, which rates auto brands on the "emotional connection" buyers have to the brands, based on a possible score of 100.

The most recent survey gives many automakers a reason to cheer: Toyota and Lexus, despite their recent strings of recalls, still sit at or near the top of the quality charts. As ALG points out, bad press can take years to detach itself from an automaker's reputation, but Toyota seems to have made it through charges of unintended acceleration without much damage. Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Honda and Ford continue to fare very well, as well.

For other automakers, the most recent survey isn't much good news. A trio of struggling brands is now tied up with the new cellar dweller for perceived quality, while two others fight visibility problems. One brand with a relatively poor showing is on the way up, though.

Which ones rank at the bottom? They start with the newest brand on the American car market:

Fiat

Italy's Fiat hasn't even been back on the U.S. market for long, but it's starting in the basement. As ALG points out, the brand will have to erase distant memories of terrible vehicles from the 1970s before it can convince legions of American buyers that the stylish, entertaining 2012 Fiat 500 subcompact is worth its $15,500 base price. Fiat earned the lowest score in the most recent PQS, at 37.5.

Smart

Struggling Smart, with a score of 39.8, hasn't had a great 2011 thus far. Its U.S. dealers are being reabsorbed into Mercedes-Benz, and plans to sell a Nissan-based four-door have been cancelled. The very small Fortwo is selling slowly probably because its lack of utility and gas mileage that's lower than some larger, gas-engined cars. Is a fix in the works? Smart USA says yes, and points to electric Fortwos and other future products as its ticket out of the doldrums.

Dodge

The first of Chrysler's three brands in the survey, Dodge's score of 45.5 doesn't come as much of a surprise, since reliability ratings regularly fall behind those of the other domestics. Significant improvements to its best sellers--the 2011 Grand Caravan, 2011 Journey and the Avenger--could have a dramatic effect on its showing down the road, though.

Suzuki

One of the few Japanese automakers to miss out on the sales boom of the last decade, Suzuki's thin brand presence and lack of distinctive vehicles probably has more to do with its low score of 46.8, since vehicles like the Kizashi sedan have been well-received. 

Chrysler

The flagship brand of Chrysler is down to three vehicles, including the 2011 Chrysler 300. Save that classy sedan, it's the lack of new, differentiated products coupled to less than stellar reliability ratings that's landed Chrysler a score of 47.1 in the study.

Kia

Kia shows how quickly an automaker's reputation can shift. Its rating of 49.3 is on the rise, and the automaker's new vehicles--the 2011 Sorento, Soul, Sportage and Optima--consistently rank high in consumer surveys. The Sorento, in fact, recently earned the company's first Recommended pick from choosy "Consumer Reports."

Jeep

With a clear brand image, Jeep doesn't have the marketing problems that Chrysler's other brands have--but the troubled reliability of its hallmark product, the Grand Cherokee, can't have helped it much in an overall score of 52.7.

Dodgers rally in seventh to take opening series against Giants

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Los Angeles Dodgers scored four runs in the seventh inning to beat the San Francisco Giants 7-5 Sunday and give them a 3-1 opening series victory over their arch-rivals.

Marcus Thames slugged a RBI triple in the seventh to break a 3-3 tie as the Dodgers scored four runs in the inning.

San Francisco, who had tied it by the top of the seventh after Pat Burrell hit a home run to follow Pablo Sandoval's in the second, fought back with a run in the eighth.

The World Series champions also had the tying run at the plate in the ninth after Aaron Rowand's lead-off home run, before Dodgers' closer Jonathan Broxton got the final out.

Giants' starting pitcher Barry Zito, who was involved in a car crash last week, threw six innings and allowed three runs in a no-decision.

Reliever Dan Runzler was credited with the loss after he allowed four runs in one-third of an inning.

Japanese starter Hiroki Kuroda pitched seven innings, allowed three runs and struck out five in his first win of the season for Los Angeles.

The Dodgers took an early 3-0 led in the first, with outfielder Matt Kemp hitting a two-run home run as he continued his powerful start to the season. He finished the four-game series hitting 5-for-12.

"I feel great right now. Our confidence level is up, we had a good series and did what it takes to win ball games," Kemp told reporters.

"We're having a lot of fun. Our main focus is to work hard, and we're pulling for each other and doing what it takes."

Scientists develop genetically modified cows that produce 'human' breast milk

Babies could be fed on ‘human’ milk produced by cows in the wake of the latest developments in genetic modification.
Scientists have bred 300 cattle that have been given human genes to make their milk contain the same nutrients and fat content as breast milk.
They believe the product could offer mothers an alternative to conventional infant formula.

Field of scientific development: Could dairy cows in the UK be producing human milk in the future?

But the move was condemned last night by campaigners who questioned its safety.
Human milk differs from cows’ milk in several important ways. It contains high quantities of nutrients beneficial to a baby’s growth and immune system.
Cows’ milk is much harder for a baby to digest, has less fat and fewer carbohydrates and contains no antibodies that protect against disease.
Prof Ning Li, who led the  research at the China Agricultural University, said the milk they produce would be as safe as ordinary cows’ milk.

Mother knows best: Developers say the new milk could help mothers who cannot breastfeed their babies and do not want to use formula

‘The milk tastes stronger than normal milk,’ he said. ‘Within ten years, people will be able to pick up these human-milk-like products at the supermarket.’
But Patti Rundall, of Baby Milk Action, said: ‘We need to have rules in place to safeguard human health.
‘There could be incredible risks with these products that we don’t know about. Cows’ milk is never going to be like breast milk. It’s never going to be a living product like breast milk.
‘Breast milk is species specific – there is no element of risk.’
Writing in the respected journal Public Library of Science One, Prof Li’s team said they used cloning technology to introduce human genes into the DNA of Holstein dairy cows.
One variety of the GM cows produced milk containing lysozyme – an antimicrobial protein found in breast milk that protects babies from infection. They also created cows that produced human lactoferrin, a protein which boosts the immune system.
A third human milk protein called alpha-lactalbumin was also expressed in the milk. Prof Li claims his team has boosted the milk’s fat content by a fifth and changed the levels of solids to make it close to the composition of human milk.
But campaigners said the creation of GM cattle was bad for animal welfare. In two experiments by the Chinese in which 42 GM calves were born, just 26 survived. Ten died soon after birth and six died within six months.
A spokesman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals said: ‘Offspring of cloned animals often suffer health and welfare problems, so this would be a grave concern. Why do we need this milk – what is it giving us that we haven’t already got?’

 

More...

• ZAC GOLDSMITH: Is my party reneging on its green promises?
• Cloned meat betrayal: Unlabelled dairy and beef products to go on sale here after OUR minister sabotages Europe's call for a ban
• We’re all terrified to criticise the likes of Greenpeace for opposing GM crops, insists Lib Dem peer

Helen Wallace, of watchdog GeneWatch UK, said: ‘There is a question about whether milk from these cows is going to be safe for humans, and it is really hard to tell that unless you do large clinical trials.’
China’s rules on GM food are more relaxed than those in Europe. The GM milk would not be allowed on sale in Britain unless it was approved by the European Union and passed stringent safety tests.
Some British scientists said the research could be of huge benefit.
Prof Keith Campbell, a biologist at Nottingham University and a member of the team that cloned Dolly the sheep in 1996, said GM animals were not a threat to health unless scientists deliberately gave them a gene that made their milk toxic.
‘Genetically modified food, if done correctly, can provide huge benefit for consumers in terms of producing better products,’ he said.
The modified milk could help boost sales of dairy products in Asia, where more than nine in  ten people are lactose intolerant and cannot consume cows’ milk without suffering stomach upsets and cramps.
Prof Li’s team were  working with the Beijing GenProtein Biotechnology Compan

SF Giants fan hospitalized as LA cops seek 2 men

A savage beating by two men outside Dodger Stadium left a San Francisco Giants fan in a medically-induced coma as police on Saturday urged any witnesses to help identify the attackers.

The assault after Thursday's season opener between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the rival Giants left a 42-year-old paramedic from Santa Cruz in critical but stable condition.

Police released composite sketches of the two suspects, who were wearing Dodgers clothing.

Detective Larry Burcher said security cameras had yielded nothing of great value, but investigators were confident there were many witnesses with valuable information. Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrests of the suspects.

The two suspects cursed and taunted three men in Giants gear as thousands of fans left the stadium after the 2-1 Dodger victory, Detective T.J. Moore said.

The Giants fans ran and two got away, but the assailants caught up to one in the parking lot, struck him on the back of the head and as he fell, he hit his head on the asphalt, Moore said.

Both attackers then kicked the victim, then ran, Moore said. They fled in a four-door sedan driven by a woman with a boy, Moore said.

The victim's friends returned and found him on the ground.

Police have not released his name, but friends and family told his hometown paper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, that his name was Bryan Stow, a married father of two who works for a San Jose ambulance company.

Family members were at County-USC Hospital, where doctors put him in a coma to deal with his brain injuries, according to City News Service.

Rebecca Mackowiak, Stow's co-worker at American Medical Response, started a fund to help pay his medical bills.

"He is a really friendly guy and easygoing," she told the Sentinel. "There's not one person in this world who knows him who would think of him as a fighter."

The Dodgers said they were co-operating with investigators and wished the victim a speedy recovery.

After offering the reward, Antonovich called for enhanced security and strict limits on alcohol sales at Dodger Stadium, which is owned by the team and regulated by Los Angeles and the state Alcohol Beverages Control Board.

Dodgers owner Frank McCourt defended the organization, saying the violence was awful but that it can't always be stopped.

"I'm quite confident that all of our measures were in place, and it's just one of those things that you could have 2,000 policemen there and it's just not going to change that random act of violence. It's a sad, sad thing," McCourt said at the dedication of a Dodger-sponsored Little League field in South Los Angeles. "Let's keep in mind that opening day is 56,000 people, it's a lot of people, and the incidents we had relative to that were very, very few. But, that said, one is too many."

Southern California ballparks have seen violence in recent years. In April 2009, a man stabbed his friend in the Dodger Stadium parking lot after the team's home opener. Arthur Alvarez said he acted in self-defense and was acquitted by a jury.

Two months later at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, an off-duty police officer shot and wounded two men who assaulted him in the parking lot after a game.

The West Coast rivalry began on April 18, 1958, the first game played in California after both teams had moved from New York. The Dodgers beat the Giants 6-5 in a game played before nearly 79,000 fans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ First Aired 40 Years Ago Today

via press release:

Sunday, September 19th. One of the most popular sitcoms in television history was first aired on this day 40 years ago — “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Over seven seasons and 168 episodes, the series combined good writing and casting to examine Mary’s struggle to function as a producer in what was then the man’s world of television news. The cast included Valerie Harper, Cloris Leachman, Ed Asner and Ted Knight. In the final episode, everyone in the newsroom except inept anchorman Ted Baxter is fired. Now, 38 1/2 percent of producers and directors are women, as well as 45 percent of reporters and correspondents, and over half of editors.

Sources: Chase’s Calendar of Events 2010, p. 471

Statistical Abstract of the United States 2010, t. 603

SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau

HBO Bet A Lot of Money on ‘Boardwalk Empire’ – How Will Its Premiere Rate?

It’s true that the ratings don’t matter for HBO like they matter for the networks that sell advertising But HBO will be looking at the ratings for Boardwalk Empire and so will all the media covering TV. And both HBO and the media will be looking at that much more than they did for True Blood for a very simple reason: HBO spent a lot of money on Boardwalk Empire. With a pilot that cost between $18 million and $30 million* depending on how you talk to and a marketing budget of $10 million, it was a pretty big bet for HBO.

*This includes the expense of creating the boardwalk set which will wind up being amortized across all the episodes.

Months before the premiere HBO was out championing that it had better success selling Boardwalk Empire out of the gate than any other show in its history. That may matter more for Boardwalk Empire than it’s likely to matter for NBC’s The Event. FlashForward had wide international distribution and at least initially rated very well abroad, but we saw how that worked out.

But HBO isn’t ABC, and Boardwalk Empire isn’t FlashForward and while we in the U.S. haven’t shown a lot of love recently for period pieces, even well done period pieces on HBO (think Deadwood and Rome), the international audiences seem to eat them up. The Pillars of the Earth, which aired on Starz over the summer just premiered to an average audience of over 5 million people in Spain.

Keep in mind that True Blood didn’t always take a big bite out of the ratings. Sure, now it routinely averages over 5 million viewers and around a 3.0 rating with adults 18-49 in each episodes premiere telecast, but when it premiered in September 2008, the initial telecast of the premiere scored just 1.44 million viewers and a 0.7 rating with adults 18-49 in live plus same day DVR viewing.

I could just be imagining it, but given the big production expense and the big marketing expense, there has got to be me more pressure on Boardwalk Empire to perform well out of the gate. I’m still waiting to be convinced that the good old U.S. of A. is ready to embrace a period piece. I personally am a fan of them – I loved Rome and am a big Mad Men fan, but I’m well aware that my personal viewing doesn’t always correlate to the broader viewing community!

I’m betting Boardwalk Empire does OK in its premiere telecast (and HBO will be sure to include all the additional telecasts and DVR viewing when they add it all up). I’ll guess 3.5 million and a 2.0 rating for the premiere. I won’t be surprised if it does even better.

But I also won’t be surprised if Boardwalk Empire is exactly the opposite of True Blood. True Blood’s premiere garnered its worst ratings of the entire series. Boardwalk Empire may see its best numbers in its premiere.