Both parties block quick votes on Obama tax plan

WASHINGTON (AP) ? In a day of political maneuvering, Democrats and then Republicans took turns blocking a quick Senate vote on President Barack Obama's proposal to extend expiring tax cuts for a year on everyone but the highest-earning Americans.

With each side trying to embarrass the other on one of the election year's foremost issues, the result was that senators won't vote on Obama's plan this week. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., promised they would vote on it before Congress leaves town for its August recess, despite GOP opposition to the proposal.

"We know Republicans won't do anything that helps President Obama, even if it's good for the economy, because their No.1 goal is to defeat the president," Reid said.

Republicans accused Democrats of blocking the vote because they were afraid of supporting a measure that would in effect boost taxes on high-earning business owners at a time when the country is thirsting for jobs.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he would agree to arrange for votes "just as soon as the majority leader produces a bill to show us what tax increases they have in mind."

The moves came just two days after Obama urged Congress to vote on his proposal. The president would exclude families earning over $250,000 a year from the renewed tax cuts, saying they should contribute to deficit reduction.

Without action by lawmakers, wide-ranging tax cuts enacted a decade ago under President George W. Bush will expire on New Year's Day, which economists say would be a blow to the already weak economy.

The back and forth put the Senate on track to voting Thursday or Friday on a Democratic bill cutting taxes for businesses that hire workers, grant raises or make major investments in equipment. It will also vote on a House-passed GOP version that grants tax deductions to all companies with fewer than 500 employees.

Both measures seem destined for certain defeat.

Wednesday morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., proposed votes on two amendments to the Democrats' business tax-cut bill.

One was on Obama's plan, the other on a Republican alternative that would include top earners in the extended tax reductions. Republicans say excluding the highest earners would raise taxes on many business people and stifle job creation.

Reid blocked the votes on both for now, at a time when a handful of Democrats ? including several in tight re-election races ? are wary of supporting Obama's proposal because their GOP opponents label it a tax increase. Democratic aides said they would vote on the measure by early August, after Obama spends more time bringing public attention to his proposal.

"The president's tax increase plan is not just an economic disaster, it's a political loser and they know it," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, sponsor of the GOP proposal.

Later Wednesday, it was Reid who proposed holding separate votes on Obama's plan and the rival GOP measure. He had a new condition: Letting either measure pass with a simple majority, instead of the 60 votes demanded for many Senate roll calls.

McConnell objected, saying he had not seen details of the bills.

Reid can usually count on votes from 51 Democrats plus two independents.

Late Wednesday, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., who is retiring in January, said he would vote against both parties' tax-cut extensions, saying Congress should instead be working on a major deficit-reduction package. Other Democrats have been unclear about whether they will back Obama's plan, including Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana, who face tight re-election races in November.

"We'll get to the tax issues," Reid said. "That way we'll be able to talk in more detail about Gov. Romney's taxes," a reference to Democratic demands that wealthy GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney release more of his income tax returns.

Trying to take the offensive, Obama's re-election campaign released a television ad it will air in nine states where the election could be close, contrasting the middle-income tax breaks Obama has proposed with the tax cuts Romney's plan would provide for wealthy individuals and corporations. "Two plans, your choice," the announcer says.

Out of 119 million U.S. households, just 2.5 million ? or 2 percent ? reported making at least $250,000 in 2010, according to Census Bureau figures.

Just 3.5 percent of taxpayers reporting business earnings will earn enough money to see their tax rates rise next year unless lawmakers act, according to Congress' nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. Democrats use that figure to show how few businesses would pay higher tax rates under Obama's plan.

The committee also estimated that those taxpayers will account for 53 percent of the $1.3 trillion in business earnings reported in 2013 ? a number Republicans cite to argue that the higher rates will hurt the economy.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-07-11-Congress-Taxes/id-34ad88d4b5a04da08d3b5dbf4e707781

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Fed officials warn of looming crisis for economy

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Federal Reserve is open toward taking further action to support the struggling U.S. economy. But minutes of the Fed's June meeting show policymakers are at odds over whether the economy needs more help now.

A few said the economy may already require additional support. But several others noted that further action "could be warranted" if the recovery lost momentum, if risks became more pronounced or inflation seemed likely to run below the committee's target.

Investors appeared to be disappointed by the division within the Fed.

Stock prices sank after the Fed expressed concerns about the economy. The Dow Jones industrial average had been down nearly 40 points before the minutes were released at 2 p.m. Eastern time. At around 2:30 p.m., the Dow was down 112 points, on track for its fifth straight day of losses.

Fed officials signaled at the June 19-20 meeting their concern that the struggling U.S. economy could worsen if Congress fails to avert tax hikes and across-the-board spending cuts that kick in at the end of the year. And they expressed worries that Europe's debt crisis will weigh on U.S. growth.

More stimulus "won't become a reality unless the recovery loses even more momentum or a more severe flare up in the euro-zone crisis raises the already elevated downside risks," said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics.

Members said the economy will likely continue to grow moderately. But the Fed lowered its growth forecast at the June meeting, noting that the U.S. job market had weakened and consumer spending slowed. It also said it didn't expect the unemployment rate to fall much further this year from its current 8.2 percent.

Since the Fed met last month, the job market's weakness has persisted. The government said Friday that hiring in June was weak for a third straight month. The economy added just 80,000 jobs last month.

Some members noted that defense contractors are already laying plans for layoffs if lawmakers don't address the package of tax hikes and spending cuts by the end of the year. Members warned that tighter government spending could slow the economy well into next year.

At the meeting, the Fed extended a program that shifts its bond portfolio to try to lower long-term interest rates. Policymakers left open the possibility of providing further help, such as launching a new program of bond purchases.

Chairman Ben Bernanke may offer further guidance on the Fed's plans next week when he delivers the central bank's updated economic assessment to Congress. After the June meeting, Bernanke told reporters he was open to another round of bond purchases if the job market didn't improve.

Employers added an average of just 75,000 jobs a month in the April-June quarter ? only about a third of the 225,000 jobs a month created in the first three months of the year.

Many economists predict the Fed will hold off for one more meeting and give the job market a little longer to show improvement. If it doesn't show gains, the Fed could announce some new action at its Sept. 12-13 meeting.

Since the recession, the Fed has bought more than $2 trillion in Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities, expanding its portfolio to more than $2.8 trillion.

After its last meeting, the Fed downgraded its economic outlook. It now expects growth of just 1.9 percent to 2.4 percent in 2012, half a percentage point lower than its April forecast.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-07-11-Fed%20Minutes/id-8dc9ac7dea4f4bb0a17d4d9f44b07615

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Accountability and Reform Efforts at the Afghan National Military Hospital

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://armedservices.house.gov/index.cfm/hearings-display?ContentRecord_id=212245fb-8c6c-4647-911b-6d6c7bc92f6a

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Ouya: The $99, Android-Powered TV Game Console | It Burns when ...

The Ouya console and controller were designed by Yves Behar.

TV videogames are due for a disruption. Is a $99 console called Ouya the device that could do it?

It wasn?t that long ago that the vast majority of portable videogames were purchased much like console games, on a disc or cartridge for $30-40 each. Smartphones have since thoroughly disrupted that market, giving gamers an array of portable devices that play games with an upfront cost of either 99 cents or nothing at all, with much of that money being funneled directly into developers? pockets.

Now that Apple?s crazy idea has become established wisdom, it would seem to make sense that a similar business model could work for television games, doing to the Xbox and Wii what iPhone did to the Nintendo DS. But although rumors have long been swirling about an updated Apple TV box that would introduce 99-cent apps to the living room, nothing has materialized yet. This, at least for the time being, leaves the playing field wide open.

Enter Ouya, a startup founded by Julie Uhrman, the former head of IGN?s digital distribution business and who has also held executive positions at GameFly and Vivendi Universal. The company says it plans to launch an eponymous gaming console, for which it will launch a Kickstarter drive on Tuesday, that brings the smartphone paradigm to living-room gaming. The $99 Ouya is built on the Android platform, will allow developers to easily create and sell their games and be fully ?hackable? ? anyone will be able to pull the machine apart and tinker with it to their heart?s content.

Ouya expects to ship the first boxes in March 2013.

?I grew up playing games on TV, and I wasn?t along in feeling that the game industry is experiencing a brain drain,? Uhrman told Wired in advance of Tuesday?s announcements. ?Developers are leaving triple-A shops and going to mobile, and we feel that?s a shame.?

?The money is in the living room,? Uhrman said. ?Three out of every 4 dollars are spent on TV [games].?

Ouya?s cubic design and game controller were created by Yves Behar, designer of the One Laptop Per Child XO Laptop. The box packs a four-core Tegra 3 processor and 1 GB of RAM.

The controller looks like a standard Xbox 360 pad with a touchpad, which Uhrman says will allow touch-controlled mobile games to be ported to Ouya more easily.

Although Uhrman has secured funding from many private investors, Ouya is attempting to make a splash with a campaign on the crowd-funding website Kickstarter. It has set a lofty goal of just shy of one million dollars, which it says will be spent on the development of the hardware and software, producing the first Ouya machines and funding the development of early games.

Uhrman says that every game developed for Ouya must either be free-to-play or have a free trial version. Thirty percent of revenue will go to Ouya, the rest to the developer.

Ouya has recruited a handful of independent game designers to sing its praises before the launch, giving a little bit of street cred to an otherwise nebulous project.

?I?m excited for Ouya,? said Journey creator Jenova Chen in a statement. ?I am a firm believer that there is always room to challenge the status quo.?

Other indie devs on board with Ouya include Markus ?Notch? Persson of Minecraft fame, Canabalt designer Adam Saltsman and inXile Entertainment?s Brian Fargo. The company says that every Ouya box sold includes a software development kit at no extra cost. The console and controller will even use standard screws so that they can easily be pulled apart, examined and tweaked.

Everything sounds good on paper. But can it work?

Getting into the game console business has generally been a Sisyphean task for startups. The only two companies that have had any success at it since the formative days of the videogame industry have been Sony and Microsoft, established technology giants willing to burn billions just to get a foothold.

Ouya might well be correct that the App Store model is what television games have been waiting for. But even if it has read the tea leaves correctly, it?s also possible that Apple or another major player is preparing a product that will grab all of the mindshare that Ouya is hoping to gather for its project.

The reason that game developers can get rich selling iOS games for a dollar is that they?re selling to a massive userbase, something Ouya doesn?t have. Apple was able to sell iPhones because people need phones, but nobody needs another game console under the TV.

Then again, it?s not as if Ouya is starting entirely from zero. By basing its console on the Android OS, it makes it easy for a wide range of developers to port games to the platform.

The biggest reason that previous attempts at breaking the dominant paradigm of the home game console business have flopped is that they were fighting against established players like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Ouya, if it positions its product correctly, isn?t really competing against any of them. They don?t have to fail for Ouya to carve out a modest success. There?s no $99 game machine on the market today, not even Wii, and nothing with an App Store-style ecosystem.

It?s quite likely that something like Ouya will soon enough be ubiquitous in our living rooms. Whether or not it?ll be Ouya is anyone?s guess.

All images courtesy Ouya

Source: http://www.pvpee.com/ouya-the-99-android-powered-tv-game-console

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Video: Romney under pressure to release more tax documents

>>> democrats and their all out assault on mitt romney 's refusal to release more of his tax returns . democrats went after governor romney demanding he lift the veil of secrecy regarding his offshore investments and other financial transactions . this morning things got heated on " morning joe ." obama campaign advisor robert gibbs .

>> are you suggesting that mitt romney is guilty of some kind of felony here?

>> dale, what i'm suggesting is nobody has any idea because the only person with the tax returns is mitt romney .

>> this wave of attacks against mitt romney , they're a distraction from the real discussion which is we're in a jobs crisis and we're not talking about jobs.

>> release the tax returns . put all of this to rest.

>>> joining me now, "news nation" political columnist for the hill and keith is still with us. amy, will this get traction with people perhaps in the midwest? we know early on the people in washington said the bain capital attacks wouldn't work. the polling shows that to be different. is this the same regarding these offshore accounts and more tax returns that could be released?

>> oh, i think it definitely will get traction. i've spoken with conservatives who are worried about it, worried that the campaign is not realizing the impact it will have. you can make the argument if you work for mitt romney or you're the candidate himself against the bein attacks saying private equity is not a bad thing. there's a risk and reward. you save a lot of bad companies. you do create jobs. with this it's very hard to defend yourself against charges that you sent money overseas to gain the system so that you could pay taxes. he makes $57,000 a day on investment income and he pays a much lower rate than americans do on regular income. this is something that is not going to appeal to americans unless mitt romney comes out and says we must change our tax code because it is so gamable. i am one of the people who learned how to make an end run around the system. i have my money in other places around the world to avoid taxes and so we have to fix this problem. that's not what he's doing and so people are going to react negatively to this. if the bain attacks were working these will work.

>> so the conservative you've spoken with, a.b., who are concerned, are they not able to put pressure on governor romney especially after what we saw? we'll play a little bit in a second of the laundry list of democrats who were on the sunday morning programs hitting him from all sides on this.

>> well, they understand that the romney campaign is under attack from all sides about the flip in the middle of the week on tax and penalty. they understand the mitt romney campaign is defending itself against the criticism of the establishment of the party that's encouraging him to fire people and they know that there's a course correction underway. they hope the romney campaign is going to consider answering these attacks because this offshoring thing is not confusing. it's a straight populus argument that he has found a way to pay less than you and he knows how to game the system. unless they come out and really respond to this, if they think -- if they remain unconcerned, i think that these attacks will have a larger affect than the bain commercials.

>> keith , let me play a little bit for you, i know you saw it, what the democrats had to say on the sunday morning programs. let's play it back to back.

>> they ask themselves, why does an american businessman need a swiss bank account and secretive investments like that.

>> i've never known a swiss bank account to build an american bridge , a swiss bank account to create american jobs .

>> you get a swiss bank account to conceal what you're doing or you believe the swiss frank is stronger than the american dollar .

>> that's just a little bit of it. keith , in response governor romney 's team says president obama 's attacks on mitt romney have been proven false time and again. as job growth slows, manufacturing stalls and our economy sputters, president obama knows he can't make a legitimate run for president, so they're going to go personal. he's saying they won't go personal because things weren't great with this last jobs report.

>> these aren't personal issues, these are real issues that the american people have a right to know. not only did he have a swiss bank account but he has accounts or money in the cayman islands . he also has this shell company that operated in bermuda. the mysteriously transferred to his wife the day before he was sworn in as governor of massachusetts . and people are wanting to know what is it about this money that you're not disclosing? why haven't you revealed your tax returns . why hasn't your father disclosed several years of his tax returns . i think the question is it goes to the core of who mitt romney is. and whether his policies he's advocating tax cuts for the wealthy are just designed to benefit himself or are they designed to help the american people .

>> you know, it's interesting, a.b., robert gibbs pointed out that romney gave 23 years of tax returns to john mccain 's vetting committee when he wanted to be vp. he went on to say perhaps they see something in those returns over 23 years. can governor romney run the clock out on this or will you continue to have investigative reports and eventually, you know, the heat gets to the front door and he's got to do something more than release a statement from a spokesperson on this?

>> i don't know if he will feel enough pressure to release them, but obviously the obama campaign watched what happened in the primary campaign when there was so much pressure on mitt romney to release them before the general election . he kept saying i'm going to deal with this in the general election campaign or maybe in april. he was forced to deliver. he only produced 2010 returns and i guess an estimate for 2011 . that alone caused his numbers with independents and undecided republicans to take a nose dive. his approval from people earning $50,000 a year and less from december from the time he released the tax returns in late winter went way down. that is because the subject turned to subjects like $57,000 a day in investment income. he knows if we see all of those years, this conversation is going to stay on that and democrats will pick up something for attack ads. i don't know if they will let up if he doesn't release them, but i couldn't tell you whether they've decided they're going to be forced to come through with that in the end.

>> i think there's a bigger narrative, too, about who mitt romney is in terms of he's in the hamptons over the weekend, then goes to aspen. this is a guy who, forget about the car elevators, all of the other stuff, this is a guy the american people are still trying to figure out. i think these questions about his money have an impact on the way the american people will see him in the election. i think those are fair questions. i don't think he can push this off forever. even "the wall street journal " is starting to question what he's doing about this. these questions are going to come up again and again and again.

>> keith , a.b., thank you very much. i'm sure i'll see

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/newsnation/48124022/

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Gettysburg College students played role in battle

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gettysburg-college-students-played-role-battle-095604475.html

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Genetic Gamble: New Frontiers of Cancer Treatment Bring Breathtaking Swings

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A drug that in theory should have killed a cancer patient instead seemed to have halted or even reversed her disease.

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=9ae5445abb784b4704a210b6daa4b260

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