The New York Times reports that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke predicts that unemployment will stay elevated for the entire term of President Barack Obama.

The chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said Wednesday that the recovery was continuing at a modest pace, though with a “somewhat weaker outlook.”

He projected that the unemployment rate would remain well above 7 percent through the end of 2012, and the duration of President Obama’s current term. That, too, was a discouraging note to Washington incumbents facing tough re-election fights….

In presenting the Fed’s semiannual monetary policy report to Congress, Mr. Bernanke said that it would take “a significant amount of time” to restore the 8.5 million jobs lost in the United States in 2008 and 2009, and that “the economic outlook remains unusually uncertain.”

He also warned that financial conditions, particularly the European debt crisis, had “become less supportive of economic growth in recent months.”

……Minutes from the June meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s main policy-making arm, indicated that a few officials had a new worry: deflation. Those officials believe that inflation — which is running at about half the Fed’s desired range of 1.7 to 2 percent — has been so low that it could turn into a dangerous spiral of falling prices like the one that has plagued Japan since the mid-1990s.

“Forecasts are very uncertain, but I don’t view deflation as a near-term risk for the United States,” Mr. Bernanke told Mr. Shelby, noting that inflation expectations had remained stable.

If you’ve been listening to the radio or TV show you know that Beck has been speaking off and on about difficulties that he has with his vision.

Well now it’s official.  Fox News reports that Glenn has Macular Dystrophy.

Yes, I have a problem with my eyes,” Beck said in his announcement. “A couple of weeks ago, I went to the doctor because I can’t focus my eyes … So I went to the best doctor I could find … he did all kinds of tests, and he said I have macular dystrophy.”

Keep him in your prayers.

Last week the NAACP voted to condemn racism by the Tea Party movement even though there was little or no evidence of racism.  Well pot, meet kettle.  According to a CBS News report there actually is evidence of racism at NAACP events.   CBS News reports:

The NAACP’s action caught the attention of Andrew Breitbart of BigGovernment.com, who said the controversy was “absolutely manufactured for political gain,” in a summer “in which the economy is the number one issue affecting blacks and whites in this country. This country can ill afford the schism of race to be exploited the way [he is] based upon the false premise of the Tea Party being racist.”

He also claimed to possess recorded evidence of racism from the NAACP.

On Monday, Breitbart posted a video of a speech by Shirley Sherrod, USDA Rural Development Georgia State Director, delivered at the NAACP’s 20th Annual Freedom Fund Banquet. The video shows Sherrod speaking of racial considerations being a factor for how much help she would give.

Sherrod tendered her resignation Monday.

After promising not to raise the taxes on people making less than $250,000  “one thin dime” the Obama Administration is trying a new tack in Court when it comes to defending the health care mandate.  According to the New York Times, they are calling the comprehensive requirement imposed on every American regardless of income — you guessed it –  a tax.

When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”

And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.

Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.

Under the legislation signed by President Obama in March, most Americans will have to maintain “minimum essential coverage” starting in 2014. Many people will be eligible for federal subsidies to help them pay premiums.

In a brief defending the law, the Justice Department says the requirement for people to carry insurance or pay the penalty is “a valid exercise” of Congress’s power to impose taxes.

Congress can use its taxing power “even for purposes that would exceed its powers under other provisions” of the Constitution, the department said. For more than a century, it added, the Supreme Court has held that Congress can tax activities that it could not reach by using its power to regulate commerce.

Yesterday the Senate passed a 2300 page financial services reform bill.  According to the Wall Street Journal it will “remake the U.S.  financial landscape.”

The bill, to be signed into law soon by President Barack Obama, marks a potential sea change for the financial-services industry. Financial titans such as J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bank of America Corp. may be forced to make changes in most parts of their business, from debit cards to the ability to invest in hedge funds.

The Senate passed the bill 60-39 Thursday, following House passage last month. Earlier in the day, three northeastern Republicans joined with Democrats to block a filibuster, allowing the bill to squeak through…..

Now, the legislation hands off to 10 regulatory agencies the discretion to write hundreds of new rules governing finance. Rather than the bill itself, it will be this process—accompanied by a lobbying blitz from banks—that will determine the precise contours of this new landscape, how strict the new regulations will be and whether they succeed in their purpose. The decisions will be made by officials from new agencies, obscure agencies and, in some cases, agencies like the Federal Reserve that faced criticism in the run-up to the crisis……

The legislation creates a council of regulators to monitor economic risks; establishes a new agency to police consumer financial products; and sets new standards for the way derivatives are traded. “These reforms will benefit the prudent and constrain the imprudent,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a press conference. “Strong banks, the well-managed financial innovators, will adapt and thrive under the new rules of the road.”

….Regulators will have multiple questions to answer. What types of trades can banks conduct, and what types will be illegal? At what level should regulators cap the fees that retailers pay to banks to process debit-card transactions? On which companies will the Fed apply stricter regulations? What will be the new standards for mortgages, credit cards and ATM fees?

CNS is the first to break the news that the vaunted health care law will actually provide for taxpayer support for abortion services.

If you want proof that President Obama’s Executive Order on taxpayer-funded abortion was a sham, look no further than Pennsylvania, says House Republican Leader John Boehner (Ohio).

Boehner and other Republicans point to reports that the Health and Human Services Department is giving Pennsylvania $160 million to set up a new high-risk insurance pool that will cover any abortion that is legal in the state.

“The fact that the high-risk pool insurance program in Pennsylvania will use federal taxpayer dollars to fund abortions is unconscionable,” Boehner said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Just last month at the White House, I asked President Obama to provide the American people with a progress report on the implementation of his Executive Order, which purports to ban taxpayer-funding of abortions. Unfortunately, the President provided no information, and the American people are still waiting for answers.”

President Obama pledged that under his health care plan “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.”

The Financial Times headlined a news story about the political collapse of the Obama White House yesterday: Obama faces growing credibility crisis.

Robert Gibbs, Barack Obama’s chief spokesman, got into hot water this week for daring to speak the truth – that the Democrats could lose control of the House of Representatives in November. But it could be even worse than that.

Contrary to pretty much every projection until now, Democratic control of the Senate is also starting to coming into question. While Mr Obama’s approval ratings have continued to fall, and now hover at dangerously close to 40 per cent according an ABC-Washington Post poll published on Tuesday, the fate of his former colleagues in the Senate looks even worse.

In the past few days polls have shown Republican challengers taking the lead over previously safe Democratic incumbents, such as Barbara Boxer in California and Russ Feingold in Wisconsin. Indeed, given the uniformly negative direction in the numbers, it is now quite possible the Republicans could win the Senate seats formerly held by both President Obama in Illinois, and Joe Biden, vice-president, in Delaware.

“If you ask me where the silver lining is for President Obama, I have to say I cannot see one,” says Bill Galston, a former Clinton official, who has been predicting for months the Democrats could lose the House. “Just as BP’s failure to cap the well has been so damaging, Obama’s failure to cap unemployment will be his undoing. There is nothing he can do to affect the jobless rate before November.”

After losing in federal court over the issuance of the last mora- torium on drilling, President Obama is trying again according to the Fox Cable Network.

The Obama administration issued a new moratorium Monday on deep-water offshore drilling that is no longer based on water depth and stresses new evidence of safety problems, hoping the revised ban will pass muster with the courts after the initial one was rejected.

“More than 80 days into the BP oil spill, a pause on deep-water drilling is essential and appropriate to protect communities, coasts, and wildlife from the risks that deep-water drilling currently pose,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in announcing the new moratorium. “I am basing my decision on evidence that grows every day of the industry’s

inability in the deep-water to contain a catastrophic blowout, respond to an oil spill, and to operate safely.”

The new moratorium was panned by industry groups and supported by environmentalists.

Last week, a federal appeals court rejected the government’s effort to restore its initial offshore deep-water drilling moratorium, which was issued after the catastrophic Gulf oil spill in April. The moratorium was blocked first last month by U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman.

The Justice Department said Monday that it will file a motion with the U.S. District Court seeking a dismissal of that case, because the old moratorium is no longer operative, making the challenge moot. The department also will ask the appeals court to set aside Feldman’s order of last month.

The Interior Department said that like the original ban, this one applied to most deep-water drilling activities. The department also said the suspensions in the new moratorium “are the product of a new decision by the secretary and new evidence regarding safety concerns, blowout containment shortcomings within the industry, and spill response capabilities that are strained by the BP oil spill.”

The new moratorium also establishes a process to gather and analyze new information on safety and response issues, which could allow for identifying conditions to resume certain deep-water drilling activities. Unlike the last moratorium, which applied to waters of more than 500 feet (150 meters), the new one applies to any deep-water floating facility with blowout preventers.

This week Glenn Beck exposes Charles Ogletree:

Now, we’ve shown you this picture, the president with Charles Ogletree. Who is he? Well, he was a prominent lawyer, he still is; professor of Harvard University. He’s a respected guy.

But let’s look at his past. He grew up in California. He went to college in the early 1970s. He attended Stanford University.

It was when he was at Stanford University that he started hating the elitism of the university, and became involved in the Black Power movement — Black Power. It emphasized the radical pride and promoted black collective interest.

He edited the Black Panther newspaper. Here’s a copy of it, The Real News. OK? He was an editor.

Ogletree also attended every single day of the trial of this woman. This woman is Angela Davis, OK? She was a Black Power activist.

She was also a communist. You might remember her name. She was fired from UCLA in 1969 after she admitted she was a communist.

OK. We go back now to 1991. NAACP approached Ogletree and asked him to make a case for the NAACP to support Clarence Thomas. They asked him, can you write something? Because even though he was a conservative, at the time, the NAACP wanted to support him because he was black.

Ogletree instead ended up writing a 30-page report that was a key to the NAACP’s eventually vote of no confidence. In this report, it says, “Thomas’s revealed hostility to principles affecting civil right protection, including the use of meaningful remedies for both past and present discrimination.” In other words, a simple translation of that is he’s not a supporter of affirmative action.

OK. Well, the guy who wrote this for the NAACP later became the attorney for Anita Hill.

Ogletree is also in to the redistribution of wealth. Socialist?

His Harvard bio also says he is the co-chair of the Reparations Coordinating Committee, which he joined in 2000 — in the year 2000. Now, this is a group pursuing a lawsuit to win reparations for descendants of slaves.

Here’s the latest opportunity to see Glenn Beck. It’s easy – just be the winning bidder at Glenn’s charity auction for the 8/28 Restoring Honor Rally in Washington, DC. If you aren’t the lucky winner who will enjoy Tania’s Lasagna, you still have a chance to hang with Glenn and millions of others who are concerned with the direction our country is heading. Take a stand for honor, principle and freedom this August 28th in Washington DC – get all the details HERE.