Close to 10 million receive unemployment insurance, nearly four times the number from 2007. Benefits have been extended by Congress eight times beyond the basic 26-week program. Government anti-poverty programs that have grown to meet the needs of recession victims now serve a record one in six Americans and are continuing to expand. More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state... 

Normally when I cover subjects in the economy, I try to take a “macro” approach, giving an overall view of various financial elements around the world and how they are clearly connected to one another in a greater synchronous social force. That is to say, in Chinese domestic consumption, or European debt obligations, or Russian gold reserves, and in many other factors, is encoded the very future... 

One should not assume that the anger expressed by American voters in recent weeks is somehow limited to a fringe element of this society. While Jews are generally not identified with the Tea Party crowd, there has been a corollary Jewish response these days to the events unfolding in the Middle East and elsewhere. Someone has suggested that this countercultural response could be labeled as a contemporary... 

Barack and Michelle Obama are entitled to vacations, but they are not King, Queen or royalty such as the King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain. The Obamas should remember that US families are suffering from the horrible economy. The last time I checked, the United States of America was a constitutional republic with three co-equal branches of government. Obviously, the President and his wife missed... 

Depending on which path the economy takes – the high growth of the mid-1990s, moderate growth or little growth – joblessness could stay high for up to 11 years, a new study for the Center for Economic Policy and Research says. The study’s results prompted Sen. Al Franken and Rep. Keith Ellison, both D-Minn., to demand again that Congress pass legislation to retain up to 900,000... 

61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007. The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States... 

Equal Opportunity by Martin Kozlowski The NAACP believes the tea party is racist. The tea party believes the NAACP is racist. And Pat Buchanan got into trouble recently by pointing out that if Elena Kagan is confirmed to the Supreme Court, there will not be a single Protestant Justice, although Protestants make up half the U.S. population and dominated the court for generations. Forty years ago, as... 

Russian diplomatic and foreign affairs experts are in shock today over the International Court of Justice (World Court) [symbol top photo left] ruling yesterday that declared the independence declaration of the Serbian province of Kosovo to be legal and not a violation of International Law. According to the World Court’s President, Judge Hisashi Owada, and supported by a majority ruling, “The... 

What are 308,367,109 Americans supposed to do? First of all, despite clamping down on immigration, our population grew by 2.6M people last year.  Unfortunately, not only did we not create jobs for those 2.6M new people but we lost about 4M jobs so what are these new people going to do? Not only that, but nobody is talking about the another major job issue.  People aren’t retiring.  They can’t... 

Illegal immigration supporting Brown Beret protesters harass American patriots in front of Californians rallied in front of Angel Stadium (Anaheim, CA) that are trying to support Arizona’s SB 1070 law on Tuesday July 13, 2010. Nicknamed the Tan Klan or Latino KKK, the Brown Berets are a paramilitary organization founded in the 1960’s that support illegal immigration as a way to forge a racially... 

Mel Gibson is poised to quit the US after selling his mansion near New York. The Lethal Weapon star, who faces allegations of violence from his Russian former girlfriend, sold the mock Tudor property, known as Old Mill Farm, for £16 million – £10 million less than the asking price. Gibson has also put his Malibu home, Lavender Hill Farm, on the market for £10 million, according to a property... 

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview that getting precise data from the security system can be difficult. The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy, and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it, or exactly how many agencies... 

Where's the hope now? And I thought Barack Hussein Obama’s response to the jobs numbers yesterday was clueless. Obama proposed spending $800 million to create 5,000 jobs, which would install broadband technology where it hasn’t already expanded because of demand, which will cost $160,000 per job. Today, Obama has refined his approach in his weekly address, proposing to spend even more money... 

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (R) and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa wave June 25, 2010, in Otavalo, Ecuador, at the end of the ALBA summit. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has warned of US military engagement in secret missions in North Korea and Iran while world focuses on the World Cup. “They put a bomb in a South Korean ship, and the Yankees did it to try to start a war between the two... 

It appears that this thunderstorm is ejecting suspended oil particles into an upper level wind. I’ve seen several of these storms in Florida in the past two weeks. It seems so far that the only storms that display this phenomenon are moving from west to east. Is it raining oil in Florida? This video was captured on June 17, 2010 looking west from Vero Beach, Florida, which is on the east coast...