Daily Archives: January 22, 2015

Radical leftist SYRIZA led conservative New Democracy by 4.2 percent in a new poll conducted by pollster Rass for iefimeriga.gr news website, the Athens-Macedonian news agency reported on Wednesday.

The survey was conducted on January 19 and 20 with the participation of 1003 voters and also pointed to 7 parties reaching the 3 percent mark required for Parliamentary entry.

The poll showed SYRIZA leading with 31.2 percent followed by New Democracy with 27 percent. Center-left To Potami was third with support reaching 6.3 percent, followed by the Greek communist party (KKE) with 5.5 percent, far-right Golden Dawn with 4.5 percent, Socialist PASOK with 4 percent and anti-bailout Independent Greeks with 3.1 percent.

The Movement of Democratic Socialists, founded by former Prime Minister George Papandreou earlier this month, stood at 2.2 percent.

The survey also showed that 9.5 percent of respondents were still undecided.

source: ekathimerini.com

If there were any doubts that President Obama has moved beyond trying to tackle the $18 trillion national debt, his State of the Union address should put them to rest: He’s over it.

The president on Tuesday night pitched an ambitious package of tax hikes for some, tax cuts for others, education aid and other government protections. He plans to hit the road on Wednesday to promote those policies, visiting Boise, Idaho, and after that heading to Kansas.

But absent from Obama’s address was any mention of the national debt.

And, in a break from past addresses, he made no call for reforming entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, the latter being a major driver of deficits and debt. Instead, he pointed to those programs as models for how the government protects Americans from “adversity” and examples of the kind of “middle-class economics” he supports.

“That’s what middle-class economics is — the idea that this country does best when everyone gets their fair shot, everyone does their fair share, everyone plays by the same set of rules,” Obama said.

Senior administration officials, in a briefing before the address, admitted the omission of any call for entitlement reform is an acknowledgement that the chances of a “grand bargain” on the budget is not likely during the next two years. The president also may simply not want to antagonize liberal Democrats, for a slim shot at a deal with Republicans.

But the failure to mention the issue, which still weighs heavily over the country’s long-term fiscal outlook despite shrinking deficits, did not go unnoticed by fiscal watchdogs.

Maya MacGuineas, head of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, said in a statement that while his focus on economic growth was important, “his failure to level with the American people about our serious long-term fiscal challenges was disappointing.”

She acknowledged deficits have fallen – from consistently over $1 trillion every year – to their lowest levels of the Obama administration.

“But they are projected to rise again next year and exceed $1 trillion annually within a decade,” she said. “Meanwhile, debt levels are the highest they have ever been other than around World War II, and without a serious course correction they will only continue to rise over the long run.”

The only references in Obama’s address to debt were related to student debt. And the only references to deficits were to point out how they have fallen under his term.

But Republicans complained that Obama’s plan for the next two years calls for tax hikes not to reduce the deficit further, but fund new programs.

“President Obama has increased our debt by $7.6 trillion over 6 years. Last year the federal government collected a record amount of $3 trillion dollars in revenue. Now he wants even more money to expand his dysfunctional government,” Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said in a statement.

Another subject that has shown up in past State of the Union addresses, but was absent from this one, was Al Qaeda – an offshoot of which claimed responsibility for the recent Paris terror attacks.

Still, Obama said Tuesday night that the U.S. stands “united” with the victims of that attack and others. And he discussed the U.S. military campaign, with its allies, against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

“We will continue to hunt down terrorists and dismantle their networks, and we reserve the right to act unilaterally, as we have done relentlessly since I took office to take out terrorists who pose a direct threat to us and our allies,” he said.

source:foxnews.com

A rarely seen frilled shark known as the living fossil was caught off Australia (SETFIA)

A rare frilled shark, whose species dates back 80 million years, was caught in a fishing trawler off Australia’s coast.

“It’s a freaky thing,” Simon Boag, the chief executive officer at South East Trawl Fishing Association, told Australia’s ABC Rural. “I don’t think you would want to show it to little children before they went to bed.”

The association said the frilled shark is often referred to as a “living fossil.” It is described as having an eel-like body with three fins on its back. It gets its name from the six pairs of gill slits that give it a fringed appearance.

The shark, which reaches about 6 feet in length, has 300 needle-shaped teeth in 25 rows and it is believed to capture its prey by bending its body like a snake. This particular shark was nearly as large as they grow and caught at 2,296 feet below the surface, the association said.

“This guy was just unlucky,” Boag said, since the shark was caught in shallower depths than it is usually found.

David Guillot, the captain of the Western Alliance Vessell, told radio station 3AW Drive that the shark was unlike any fish he’s ever seen.

“I’ve been at sea for 30 years and I’ve never seen a shark that looks like that,” he said. “It was like a large eel, probably 1.5 meters [5 feet] long, and the body was quite different to any other shark I’d ever seen.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1421828030&v=FqE6SevZRjY&x-yt-cl=84411374#t=10

source:foxnews.com