Category: News

Pelo que parece a Volkswagen se esqueceu do Brasil na hora de entregar novas unidades da Parati no mercado. Segundo uma matéria do Jornal do Carro, foram pesquisadas 20 concessionárias da VW no estado de São Paulo e a Parati só foi encontrada em duas lojas, e não entregam novas unidades da Parati há muitos meses.

A marca está morrendo, e ainda assim a linha 2011 da Parati foi feita pela VW. Um dos motivos pela falta de interesse na Parati era o valor do seguro ser alto demais, cerca de R$ 8 mil para perfis conservadores, por ser considerado um carro de alto risco.

A Volkswagen não parece estar muito interessada em dar continuidade à Parati nos próximos anos. O SpaceFox também é um outro veículo que não existe muito nas lojas da cidade. Será que a Parati terá uma nova geração, mesmo com o desinteresse quase total do público?

Via | Blogauto

[JURIST] Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini [official profile] announced Tuesday that Italy will take two more detainees from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility [JURIST news archive]. The announcement came during a meeting the US officials from the National Security Council, including National Security Adviser James Jones. Italy’s Interior Ministry [official website, in Italian] will review profiles of potential transferees before an agreement is made with US authorities on which detainees Italy will take. Italy hinted at the possibility that the selected detainees may be brought to Italy as cleared captives [Miami Herald report] rather than face trial or additional jail time. Last year, Italy accepted three Tunisian detainees [JURIST report] from Guantanamo to stand trial for terrorism charges.

The Obama administration continues its push to close the Guantanamo Bay facility, despite missing its self-imposed one-year deadline [JURIST report] in January. The administration has run into several hurdles in closing the prison, including opposition from members of Congress and the suspension of detainee transfers to Yemen [JURIST report]. Last week, the US House Armed Services Committee [official website] approved a bill [JURIST report] prohibiting the Obama administration from modifying or building a facility in the US to hold detainees currently held at Guantanamo. The bill requires [summary, PDF] that any plan to construct or modify US facilities to accommodate Guantanamo transfers be “accompanied by a thorough and comprehensive plan that outlines the merits, costs, and risks associated with utilizing such a facility.” As the Obama administration has not presented such a plan to Congress, the bill prohibits the use of any funds for the purpose of preparing a US facility for Guantanamo transfers. The number of detainees at Guantanamo has significantly been reduced as the administration continues to transfer detainees to a growing list of countries including Bulgaria, Spain, Maldives, Georgia, Albania, Latvia, Switzerland, Slovakia, Algeria, Somaliland, Palau, Belgium, Afghanistan, and Bermuda [JURIST reports].

Filed under: Classics, Coupe, Auctions, Ford, Racing

Here’s your chance to lay your hands on a piece of muscle car history. One of Dan Gurney’s 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 302 racecars is up for bid on eBay Motors with a chilly Buy it Now price of $1.1 million. The car campaigned in a number of race series, but the biggest feather in its cap is that it helped Ford secure the silver in the 1969 Trans-Am manufacturer championship. According to the listing, this particular example was the prototype for the rest of the Trans-Am Mustangs driven that year, and it was built for Caroll Shelby’s team by Kar Kraft.

Gurney whipped the car around the track at Kent and used it for practice at Sears Point, but Peter Revson piloted the Boss to its best finish of the ’69 season – fourth at Laguna Seca. After Shelby walked away from the Trans Am series, the Ford spent some time as a wind-tunnel test car and made its way around a variety of race circuits, nabbing an SCCA Championship along the way. In 2003, it was restored to its 1969 configuration in concourse condition, complete with a 527 horsepower 302 under the hood.

The auction includes a mountain of documentation, including signed letters of authenticity from Carroll Shelby himself, Kar Kraft engineering drawings and a stack of period photos of the car going fender to fender. Hit eBay Motors to check it out.

[Source: eBay Motors]

eBay Find of the Day: Ex-Gurney 1969 Shelby Trans Am Mustang Boss 302 originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 26 May 2010 11:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

The NYT’s Elisabeth Rosenthal had another front-page “teach the controversy” piece yesterday, “Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britons.”  That has apparently become a specialty of the one-time paper of record (see NYT faces credibility siege over unbalanced climate coverage and The NYT once again equates non-scientists — Bastardi, Coleman, and Watts (!) — with climate scientists).

I asked Dr. Robert J. Brulle of Drexel University, whom the NYT itself quoted last year as “an expert on environmental communications,” for his comments.  Here they are:

It is well known in both sociology and communications that public opinion is largely shaped by media coverage.  So the shift in public opinion about climate change is linked to the nature of mainstream media coverage of the so-called “climategate scandal.”

Several media researchers have documented the persistent bias in main stream media.

(See the links to the AAAS presentations of Max Boykoff and William Freudenberg).

• Boykoff on “Exaggerating Denialism: Media Representations of Outlier Views on Climate Change”:  Freudenburg: “Reporters need to learn that, if they wish to discuss ‘both sides’ of the climate issue, the scientifically legitimate “other side” is that, if anything, global climate disruption is likely to be significantly worse than has been suggested in scientific consensus estimates to date.”
• AAAS:  Understanding Climate-Change Skepticism: Its Sources and Strategies
• Professor bothered by “stunning lack” of balance in U.S. media reports on climate science
• Translating science

Other links from FAIR;

• Media regress to the bad old days of false balance
• NYT Cools on Global Warming Realities
• Media amplify climate change skeptics

Yet none of these independent analyses are noted in the article by Ms. Rosenthal.  Acknowledging the media’s role in facilitating the public relations aims of the climate denialists strikes too close to home for the NY Times to cover.  The aim of the climate denialists public relations campaign is to spread confusion and doubt about climate change.  They have been very successful, aided by, what Dr. Boykoff noted as the exaggeration of outliers and a false sense of balance:

“Such claims are amplified when traditional news media position noncredible contrarian sources against those with scientific data, in a failed effort to represent opposing sides.”

The article by Ms. Rosenthal ends with the observation that “The public is left to struggle with the salvos between the two sides.”  Why is this the case?  Because the media has abdicated its duty to inform the public under a misguided notion of providing “balance” between science and nonsense.

The NY Times doesn’t need to go to European conferences to find out why public opinion on climate change has shifted.  They can save the carbon emissions of the trip.  Just look in the mirror.

I would add that the British media is arguably now worse than the American media on this issue:

• RoseGate becomes DailyMailGate: Error-riddled articles and false statements destroy Daily Mail’s credibility
• BBC asks CRU’s Phil Jones the climate version of “When did you stop beating your wife.”
• Exclusive: Forest scientist fights back against ‘distorted’ UK article on Amazon and IPCC
• DelingpoleGate: Monbiot slams anti-science columnist for leading “Telegraph into vicious climate over email”

Rosenthal herself notes in the article:

In March, Simon L. Lewis, an expert on rain forests at the University of Leeds in Britain, filed a 30-page complaint with the nation’s Press Complaints Commission against The Times of London, accusing it of publishing “inaccurate, misleading or distorted information” about climate change, his own research and remarks he had made to a reporter.

“I was most annoyed that there seemed to be a pattern of pushing the idea that there were a number of serious mistakes in the I.P.C.C. report, when most were fairly innocuous, or not mistakes at all,” said Dr. Lewis, referring to the report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

On top of that, the “British winter was the coldest for 31 years.“  We have had enough warming now that people are surprised by coolish winters, so it’s no surprise that over a short period of time, it will impact public opinion, even when that winter isn’t actually close to record breaking.  Stanford communications expert Jon Krosnick notes that “One factor that can influence opinion is the perception of local changes in the weather” (see “One more reason that recent U.S. polling on global warming is down slightly“).

As long as the NYT diverts so much of its scarce front-page coverage on climate to articles like this one, the prospects remain poor that the public will become informed on the actual state of the science.

Related Post:

• Science Times stunner: “… a majority of the section’s editorial staff doubts that human-induced global warming represents a serious threat to humanity.”
• And the 2009 “Citizen Kane” award for non-excellence in climate journalism goes to …
• Signs of global warming are everywhere, but if the New York Times can’t tell the story (twice!), how will the public hear it?
• MacCracken: The New York Times quote did not represent my views, and it did not even represent the reporter’s attempt to portray my comments
• The New York Times sells its integrity to ExxonMobil with front-page ad that falsely asserts “Today’s car has 95% fewer emissions than a car from 1970″
• Anti-science idealogues spin the NY Times public editor, Clark Hoyt, on “Climategate”

That’s the headline of my new piece in Salon (click here).

The president is in now in genuine political trouble over the BP disaster, some of his own making, some not.

Here are my thoughts — as always, I’d love to hear yours:

The truth is that there’s not much more that President Obama can do to stop the eco-disaster now hitting the Gulf of Mexico. But his response to our fossil fuel-driven crises — so far — can still be deemed grossly inadequate.

That’s because the Gulf spill is actually one of two environmental catastrophes now unfolding, and Obama doesn’t seem to understand how they are related.

The milder but more imminent of the two is the BP disaster. It’s now clear that the Gulf Coast will be ravaged, that the impact will be felt for at least a generation, and that we will probably be testing seafood from the area for decades. If the Loop Current entrains a significant amount of the oil and dispersants to the Florida Keys, America’s great coral reef might suffer irreparable damage.

Most of the blame rests with BP — and with Big Oil’s powerful supporters in Congress, who have created the voluntary, “trust us” self-regulation we now have. Some of the blame also resides with the Minerals Management Service, which became absurdly cozy with the industry under the Cheney-Bush administration.

Because BP and Big Oil deluded themselves (and everyone else) into believing that such a disaster was unthinkable, nobody was prepared for it. The Rube Goldberg contraptions that BP is slapping together now is proof of this. If a single major oil company had thought that any of BP’s jury-rigged solutions made sense, they would have pre-built and prepositioned them a long time ago.

With its reckless cost- and corner-cutting and efforts to hide the magnitude of the gusher, BP has proven itself completely untrustworthy. As millions of gallons of oil and hundreds of thousand of gallons of dispersants cause their inevitable damage to sensitive coastal wetlands, fish, fowl and wildlife, frustration will boil over, a process that has already begun.

Back in April, we wrote about a towing company that got so upset about a Facebook page that it decided to sue the page’s creator for libel. As pointed out at the time, this only served to draw more attention to the claims made by the Facebook page — claiming that the towing company often towed legitimately parked cars. In fact, the controversy has brought out many more people who claim they had legitimately parked cars towed. An anonymous reader let us know that the Detroit Free Press has checked in on the towing company again, and it’s now lost half of its accounts due to this controversy. You might think, at this point, the company would wise up, admit that it was wrong, apologize to the guy it sued, and try to focus on building its reputation back up. But… no luck. The company sticks by its stance. The owner’s lawyer blames the lost business on the “hostility” the situation caused. Um. Or, perhaps it was towing legitimately parked cars, and then suing someone who complained about it. That might have something to do with the lost business too. Oh, and it’s probably worth mentioning that the company, T&J Towing, has an F-rating at the local Better Business Bureau, due to 20 complaints in the last three years… of which it responded to only three. Maybe, rather than suing critics, T&J should learn to respond to them.

And, of course, it appears the situation is getting even worse for the company. Because of all this attention, many others have been stepping up to complain about their own experiences with T&J, leading the lawyer representing the guy T&J sued to look about filing a class action lawsuit against the company. It seems like the company would have been better off apologizing and giving the original guy back his money. Or not towing his car in the first place.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

How does Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop” measure up against timeless classics like “Respect” and “I Only Have Eyes For You?” Rolling Stone Magazine — an authority on all things music — is counting down the 500 Greatest Songs in History in a special collector’s issue, arriving on newsstands this Friday.

In the video below, Rolling Stone contributing editor Alan Light shares the magazine’s top five picks:

Robert Dotson, the CEO of T-Mobile USA, is stepping down a year from now after serving with the company for 15 years, the company announced today.

His resignation will not come as a surprise to some, as the fourth largest carrier has struggled to add subscribers in recent quarters and has failed to come up with a strong identity in the competitive wireless space. T-Mobile’s parent company Deutsche Telekom (NYSE: DT) has also had its own financial problems recently, making the U.S. unit’s results even more disappointing since it used to be the crown jewel of the German telecom giant.

While Dotson expects to stay on board until May 2010, Deutsche Telekom has already named his replacement. Philipp Humm, who is currently responsible for sales and service in Europe as chief regional officer, will become CEO in February.

Dotson joined what was then called Western Wireless in 1996 before it went public and became VoiceStream. Deutsche Telekom bought the company and renamed it T-Mobile USA. In the early days, it was a fast-paced start-up, and as VP of marketing, Dotson relied on his consumer marketing experience from companies like Pepsi to come up with popular ad campaigns focused around actress Catherine Zeta-Jones. Dotson was appointed CEO in March 2003.

Dotson said in a release: “It has long been my intent to step away from the business at this stage in my life in order to devote more time to family and to take on entirely new and unique challenges. That change can only be made possible if a suitable successor is in place. Over the next year, it will be my relentless focus and responsibility to work closely with Philipp to ensure marketplace success, and to enable a seamless leadership transition.”

In the past year, T-Mobile has lost other executives, including T-Mobile USA’s CMO Denny Marie, who stepped down in April. The company has also gone through a number of restructurings, which have led to the scaling back of some programs. Its primary focus is now on the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Android platform, and is relying on its own team of software engineers to differentiate the platform.

In a release, René Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom, said, “I sincerely regret Robert’s decision to leave, however I absolutely respect his decision, and am most grateful that he has offered to stay on for another year in order to work with Philipp to ensure continuity in running the business.”

Humm, 50, will join the team in July. Humm has since served as CEO of T-Mobile Deutschland from 2005 until 2008, and previously worked for a number of U.S.-based companies including McKinsey & Company, Procter & Gamble and Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN).

Showing impressive demand for electronic vehicles, Nissan has sold out its Leaf vehicles that will be produced this year. Just a little more than a month after the automaker started taking pre-orders, it reached the 13,000 reservation mark. That’s not a huge number, but it does indicate that consumers may warmly embrace electric cars.

Nissan’s all-electric Leaf could cost consumers as little as $25,280, after the federal government tax credit. Additional state tax credits might also apply for some buyers, further cutting its price. That makes the Leaf surprisingly affordable, given its technological prowess. Nissan began taking orders on April 20th, which required a $99 reservation fee. The company announced the sell-out yesterday. The vehicles will be available in December.

Thirteen thousand might not sound like a lot, but clearly there are some Americans eager to purchase a car with zero tailpipe emissions. Of course, the power plants that produce the electricity used to power the cars will likely produce emissions, but the vehicles require no gas. The flip side is that you can only drive 100 miles without recharging at home or a charging station equipped with an electric outlet designed for the vehicle. But that must not bother the consumers who rushed to be the first to own the car.

At this point, Nissan is taking orders for its 2011 production. The company hopes to have 500,000 of these vehicles on the road by 2013. So even if this initial burst of production wasn’t big enough to be sure that Americans will broadly demand all-electric cars, we’ll know the verdict before too long.

Electric car – Nissan – Nissan Motors – Nissan Leaf – United States

Here’s an idea I can get behind. Edible crayons! Luxirare created a box of eight colors (flavors?), using household ingredients such as nuts, sesame seeds and melted marshmallow for the white crayon. More »










Business – Crayon – Shopping – Home – Cooking

Not that we really needed it, but it appears that the new iPhone (HD?) is indeed coming to AT&T next month.  Boy Genius Report has stated that AT&T has confirmed to its employees that the new iPhone will indeed be available next month and not in July.  BGR went on to say that they’ve heard that the device will go on sale earlier in June rather than later, which is good news for everyone who can’t wait to upgrade to the iPhone and its new design.  There’s not much else to report here, so we’ll see you all at WWDC at 10:00 AM on Monday, June 7, where we’re sure that we “won’t be disappointed.”

Via Boy Genius Report

In this WBIR-TV story about failing banks in the financial crisis, UT Knoxville Assistant Professor Alvaro Taboada of the College of Business Administration explains why banks throughout the U.S. have failed.

Housing prices continue to reflect the geographic reordering of the Great Reset. The newly released Case-Shiller Home Price Index
shows a very uneven housing market, with significant recovery in some
places and continued decline in others. While the National Index is up
2 percent over the first quarter a year earlier, it is down 3.2 percent
from the end of 2009. The map below, created by Zara Matheson of the MPI, shows the year-over-year change in home prices for the 20 metro areas covered by the Index.

San Francisco, one of the nation’s priciest markets, posted the
largest gain — 16.2 percent over the past year. San Diego (10.8
percent), Cleveland (6.7 percent), Minneapolis (6.5 percent), L.A. (6
percent), and D.C. (5.6 percent) also posted significant gains.

Las Vegas continued to see significant deterioration in its
housing prices, posting a decline of 12.6 percent since last year;
while housing prices which have already fallen back to 1990s levels in
Detroit fell by an additional 4.6 percent.

This suggests that the housing seesaw pattern I discussed here last month continues.

Housing prices across the United States have fallen
considerably since the bubble burst, but the pattern has been far from
uniform. Housing prices have held up better in wealthier and more
productive regions, with higher concentrations of knowledge,
professional and creative work, and high-tech industry as well as
higher levels of amenity (measured as working artists and cultural
creatives) and openness (measured as greater percentages of
immigrants). Housing prices have fallen further in locations with lower
incomes and wages to begin with, with blue-collar manufacturing
economies, lower levels of skill, and lower levels of amenity and
openness. Expect that pattern to continue.

United States – San Diego – San Francisco – Las Vegas Nevada – S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices

By now, I hope the importance of joint mobility is clear, and the benefits myriad. It isn’t the sexiest topic around to be sure. “The Importance of Shoulder Mobility” certainly isn’t as attention-grabbing as “How to Lose 10 lbs in 10 days!,” but it’s one of those often overlooked aspects of fitness that with just a little attention could save you years of pain, frustration, rehab and maybe even surgery – not to mention a boatload of cash in doctor bills. Incorporating just a few minutes of mobility drills a few times each week is a great way to round out an otherwise complete routine. If you’ve missed any of the articles I’ve written over the last few weeks you can catch up here:

The Importance of Mobility: The Hips

How to Regain and Maintain Hip Mobility

The Importance of Thoracic Spine Mobility

How to Improve Thoracic Spine Mobility

The Importance of Wrist and Ankle Mobility

How to Improve Wrist and Ankle Mobility

The Importance of Shoulder Mobility and Scapular Stability

How to Maintain Shoulder Mobility and Scapular Stability

Before I get to how to incorporate the mobility drills into your regular physical activities, a recap of why joint mobility is so important:

By engaging every joint in your body the correct way you drastically decrease your chance of injury. With full joint mobility, there is very little of the “out of position” awkwardness that’s at the heart of many injuries. Too often, injuries occur because we make sudden movements along incorrect joints – twisting with the lumbar spine instead of the thoracic spine, for example – due to lack of joint mobility.

It increases the efficiency of your movement. Learning how to move your joints along their predetermined pathways means smooth, clean, unimpeded movement. When you pick up something heavy with your hips instead of your lower back, your only impediment is the weight itself; there are no structural deficiencies getting in your way and making it even harder and the risk of injury even higher. You still have to work against the load, but your efficiency is no longer hamstrung by the use of the wrong joints in the wrong places.

It increases your performance. Understanding the proper role of each joint and muscle group – and how to engage and activate them in your movements – results in massive performance gains. Your bench press will soar once you grasp the importance of the shoulder blade retraction; your vertical leap will jump once you learn to start extending your hips. And besides, you can’t expect to perform on any level if you’re sidelined with a mobility-related injury or if your movements are grossly inefficient.

It will increase your range of motion – your active flexibility. Static flexibility has its place, but for an athlete (or anyone moderately active, really), mobility is far more important. It’s similar to the question of isolation exercises versus compound exercises. Which are more applicable to the real world? Which more effectively mimic the movements you’ll make in your daily life? Static stretches are a bit like isolation exercises, while mobility prepares you for the rigors of real movement.

Application

If you failed, or came close to failing, the joint mobility tests mentioned in my previous posts, plan on incorporating joint mobility drills into your daily schedule. Off-days, on-days, sick days, vacation – no matter what you’re doing or whom you’re doing it with, make sure you perform a targeted joint mobility session every single day. Mobility must come before everything else. It must precede strength, sports, and even just protracted sessions of sitting. It’s the foundation. Mobility prepares you for life, and unless you plan on leading a completely sedentary existence (complete with sedan chair manned by indentured servants), you’re going to be moving throughout it. On consecutive days, do the drills I mentioned for each particular joint, or complete the suggested programs listed in each article. So, Monday will be hips, Tuesday thoracic spine, and so on. Repeat the cycle once you reach the end. Follow this schedule until you’re mobile or until you can complete the tests easily and move around without stiffness. Then, pick just one or two movements for each joint and incorporate them into your workout warm-ups. They should be quick and easy, but with focus on proper form. This should be enough to maintain mobility.

If you’re an athlete with good “subconscious” mobility, but who’s never really given thought to the issue, work the drills into your warm-ups. Natural, raw athleticism can appear to overcome any mobility deficiencies, but that only works for a while. It may even work for years. Eventually, though, lack of mobility will creep up on you. And when it does, when it finally manifests in the natural athlete, the results will be staggering. New, mysterious pains, long in the making, will appear, seemingly out of the blue. You most likely won’t be struck by an acute injury, but rather by wear and tear from years of improper movement obscured by natural talent. It’s better to address the potential problem before it appears. Do two weeks of intensive joint mobility drills, following the movements outlined in the articles, and then draw it down to warm-ups only. Choose one or two movements for each joint in your warm-up, paying attention to the composition of your impending workout to determine focus. Squat and deadlift days get hip mobility, while pressing days get thoracic spine and shoulder drills, and so on. The initial “shock” of full-on mobility training should cement the pathways in your brain and get the neurons firing, while the warm-up drills will maintain them. Never be content to rest on the laurels provided by natural athleticism.

Don’t get lazy. It’s easy to say “Oh, I’ll skip the mobility drill today,” but don’t do it. If it’s easy to skip, it’s just as easy to take a few minutes out of your life to actually do the drill and reduce your chances of injury. Inconsequentiality goes both ways; what’s easy to shrug off and dismiss is just as easy to address and commit to. Do the drills.

Finally, be mindful of your movements. Picking up a coin off the ground? Use your hips. Twisting to see someone calling your name on the street? Rotate along the thoracic spine. In these situations, you could just lapse into the old, lazy ways and get away with it, but you’d be reinforcing incorrect movement for the times when it really matters. What you do in your daily life will set the tone for the rest of your life. Lazy, incorrect joint movements outside of the weight room or athletic field will establish lazy, incorrect joint movements in the weight room and on the field.

Proper joint movements may feel strange. For a lot of people, mobility training forces their bodies to move in totally new, seemingly unnatural ways. We’ve been moving and sitting and standing so awkwardly and so incorrectly for so many years that natural movement patterns seem unnatural. It’s insane, really, how far we’ve gotten from our natures. Diet gets the brunt of the attention around here, but straying from the body’s natural joint movement pathways has powerful consequences, too.

Have you tried any of the joint mobility drills? Experiences? Results? Thank you for reading!

Get Free Health Tips, Recipes and Workouts Delivered to Your Inbox

Related posts:

1. The Importance of Shoulder Mobility and Scapular Stability
2. How to Maintain Shoulder Mobility and Scapular Stability
3. How to Improve Thoracic Spine Mobility

The HTC Wildfire – which has the sleek look of a miniature HTC Desire with lesser specs – took us by surprise last week after being announced for the Europe and Asia markets somewhere in the Q3 timeframe.  The name of the device was actually picked by consumers when HTC announced they were “working on something new…that is playful and full of youth.”  Wildfire was the name chosen over Festi, Jovi, and Zeal, a good choice if you ask me.  In any case, all that was announced last week was that it would drop in Q3, no pricing or specific availability was mentioned – until today.  According to Pocketnow, Clove – an online wireless retailer based out of the UK – has the Wildfire listed for £210 (£246.75 inc VAT) and availability expected in late June, though they also mention that the “Official Price and Availability [is yet] To Be Confirmed.”  So, while on the one hand this gives us a ball park, there’s certainly enough jargon attached to the site that you shouldn’t be too surprised if things change.  Who’s looking forward to this cute little phone?

Via PocketNow

Economic rebounds sure aren’t what they used to be. If the current rebound had been like those during 1954 – 1982, the U.S. would have already experienced a substantial rebound in employment, as shown by the shaded gray area in the chart from Goldman Sachs below. The U.S. seems to be stuck in a ‘New Normal’, one which for employment has existed since 1991.

In the last two decades, employment gains have remained weak well after the end of recessions. Worse yet 2009 takes the cake as the worst of the worst as shown by the blue line below. We clearly have a long time to wait for the significant employment gains like we used to see in 1954 – 1982.

Join the conversation about this story »

Officially, House leaders are saying they’ll have the support to pass an enormous jobs proposal that would extend the deadline to file for additional unemployment benefits (but not create new benefits) through the end of the year.

“We will have the votes,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters yesterday.

Unofficially, though, they’re struggling to rally the majority they need.

Why? Well, for one thing, the bill isn’t fully paid for, leaving the Blue Dogs reluctant to support it for fear of adding to the nation’s growing debt. On top of that, the proposal would also raise the tax on “carried interest” from 15 percent to 35 percent. The provision is anathema to Wall Street, where investment managers who take a percentage of their clients’ earnings have been taxed at the lower rate for years — meaning that some of these billionaires are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries.

Still, the thought of any tax hike in an election year has given pause to some moderate Democrats facing tough contests in November.

And that’s just in the House. The bill will be an even tougher sell in the Senate, where 60 votes will be required to pass the measure, and conservative Democrats are already wary of the country’s enormous reliance on deficit spending. Complicating passage, Congress is scheduled to begin its week-long Memorial Day vacation on Friday.

“I don’t know that it’s going to get resolved this week,” a senior Senate Democratic aide told Roll Call yesterday.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters Tuesday, however, that lawmakers will stay in Washington until the bill is passed. “We must pass the new jobs bill this week, in the next few days,” Reid said.

That assumes, though, that the House can pass it first.

Zynga has just signed a long-term deal with Facebook ending the mounting hostilities between the two companies. The move was thought to settle things down for a while, but it looks like Zynga doesn’t intend to rest on its laurels soon. The company has just announced a new partnership with Yahoo, a major win for both companies. Yahoo, though stru… (read more)