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Nation
Christine Adkins here with your morning fix:
The US leads the Olympics in overall medals won, but Switzerland currently has the most gold medals.
Speaking of Olympic medals, did you know this year's were made of landfill-bound electronics? Environment win.
Charged in the murders of three University professors, University of Alabama-Huntsville professor Amy Bishop Anderson was originally a suspect in a 1993 bomb attempt on one of her former colleagues.
Ricky, a West Caln Township K-9 who protected two presidents, had to be put down after his owner discovered a soft-ball sized tumor in his spleen. Sad face.
Twelve Afghani civilians died when a high-tech military rocket missed its target. Sorry about that.
Gastric bypass surgery, though still considered an experimental surgery on children, could be the next step in fighting adolescent obesity.
The economy's reverberations are felt on private college campuses, where schools are hacking away at their financial aid programs. Say hello to crushing student loan debt, kids.
Urban citizens are battling their rural neighbors, claiming that allowing the US Census to count prisoners as residents of the town in which their prison resides instead of their actual hometown inflates the population numbers of these heavily white areas.
According to the California Institute of Technology, fruit flies have brains; the first recordings of their brain activity have been studied while in flight and at rest.
And the NY Times, in its classic, understated way, gives tea-baggers some rope and lets them hang themselves on their own crazy.
Hey, so you know that recession? Over: 5.7 percent GDP growth in the last quarter of 2009, bitches. Stock market up 83 points today, according to my iPhone. And hey, this just in from City Controller Alan Butkovitz: Philadelphia's unemployment rate dropped, just a little bit, from 11.1 percent to 10.6 percent. Hot damn.
OK, so the unemployment rate is still way too high. This city still faces a massive deficit, thanks in large part to ridiculous structural problems amassed over several decades. And that GDP growth is partially the result of businesses having cut back their inventories so deeply last year that they had to restock, eventually, and this is it. But as Reuters points out:
The robust performance closed out a year in which the economy contracted 2.4 percent, the biggest decline since 1946.
So, you know, not all good news. But it's a start.
Stocks closed with the Dow dropping over 20 points. Over 6300 showed up at a job fair yesterday that was held by Fox 29. But at least there was some good news. :D
Tonight President Obama will do what he does best and get in front of the cameras and talk to America (actually, he's talking before a joint session of congress, but same diff, right?). The topic of his 8 p.m. speech is, of course, is healthcare. The big challenge, however, will be how to address the moronic misinformation masquerading as debate without actually calling its perpetrators morons. Unless maybe he should call the people who perpetuate myths like Death Squads (please!), Nazism (come on!), socialism (every advanced DEMOCRACY already has universal health care) and unnecessary complexity (we already HAVE that in our current system) what they are.
There are several watching parties scheduled in the area, and you can find them at Organizing for America, but for starters, there's one at Rotten Ralph's, one at the Millcreek Tavern. Remember how involved people used to be with the Obama web site — hosting parties and volunteering — and now not so much? Maybe that's part of the problem the big guy's having getting his healthcare stuff through. The zealous have become content, and the discontented whack jobs have become the zealots.
Where are you watching the speech? You are watching it, right?
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Grant Evans, philly news now and Yancey Grantham. Grant Evans said: Uh, no. Melanie Oudin's playing! RT @citypaper: You are watching President Obamaâs healthcare speech tonight, right? http://is.gd/35tlb [...]
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