Scrolling around...November 9, 2012

CBO: Fiscal cliff will mean recession, rise in unemployment
The Congressional Budget Office offered a sobering assessment of the economic implications of plunging off the fiscal cliff Thursday, just as lawmakers prepare for a fight over taxes and spending.
If Congress and the Obama administration allow scheduled tax increases and spending cuts to occur, the economy will shrink by 0.5 percent in 2013. The unemployment rate would soar to 9.1 percent — up from 7.9 percent today...

Sifting Through the Wreckage
The American culture war has been markedly intensified, as those who booed God, celebrated an unfettered abortion license, canonized Sandra Fluke, and sacramentalized sodomy at the Democratic National Convention will have been emboldened to advance the cause of lifestyle libertinism through coercive state power, thus deepening the danger of what a noted Bavarian theologian calls the “dictatorship of relativism.”

Religious freedom and civil society are now in greater jeopardy than ever, as what was already the most secularist and statist administration in history will, unfettered by reelection concerns, accelerate its efforts to bring free voluntary associations to heel as de facto extensions of the state.

Nothing changed? In a pig’s eye.

Europeans understood this, immediately, even if large swaths of the American punditocracy didn’t. One e-mail from Poland, the morning after the election, expressed real fear for the future (as well my correspondent might, given President Obama’s craven whisperings to Dimitry Medvedev that a reelected administration would pull the final plug on missile defense in Europe, as Vladimir Putin has long sought). Another, from London, suggested that Obama’s reelection was a cataclysm for America similar to Henry VIII’s break with Rome: a politico-cultural-economic game-changer the effects of which would be felt for centuries. A Scottish friend (correctly) foresaw serious trouble for the Catholic Church in the United States, to which he had long looked for models of leadership in handling aggressive secularism...

Divorce causes children harm long into adulthood, says study
...Professor Mel Bartley, who edited the paper, said: “Children whose parents remain married
throughout the early childhood years are less likely to suffer from breathing problems such as asthma, to become overweight, or to be injured in accidents by the time they are five years old than children who have experienced a more unstable family situation.”...

Forward! To mass layoffs!
Obamanomics grinds grimly onward, as CNBC brings word that on the day after the election, “Boeing announced a major restructuring of its defense division on Wednesday that will cut 30 percent of management jobs from 2010 levels, close facilities in California, and consolidate several business units to cut costs.” It was sweet of them to keep that under wraps until after the election, wasn’t it?

And that’s not even the dreaded “sequestration” layoffs, which Obama broke the law to convince defense contractors to keep under wraps until after the election. Those are yet to come. The upside to living in a banana Republic with Party-dominated media is that life is full of “unexpected” surprises, to use the word that has come to dominate economic news in the Obama era.

Another round of layoffs announced on Wednesday came from Hawker Beechcraft, which announced it would close facilities in Arkansas, Arizona, and Texas, resulting in 400 jobs lost, while another 170 jobs would be cut from corporate offices in Kansas and Arkansas...
Locally: Syracuse's Crouse Hospital cuts 70 positions

UK Catholics might lose charitable status for not offering communion to everyone
...The Charity Commission alleges that the group’s rule of only giving Holy Communion to full members means that their services are not open to all, a charge which the Brethren deny. The Brethren say that their public services are offered to everyone regardless of religious affiliation. If it is upheld, the rule could be extended to the Catholic Church which also officially restricts Communion reception to members...

Islam Overtaking Catholicism as Dominant Religion in France
France, which is home to an estimated six million Muslims, has the largest Muslim population in the European Union. There are now, in fact, more practicing Muslims in France than there are practicing Roman Catholics...

LGBT Activists Blast Wells Fargo Donation to Boy Scouts
A recent donation of office furniture by Wells Fargo to the Boy Scouts of America Cradle of Liberty Council has raised concern among some activists.
Wells Fargo is a major financial-services center in the country, with a long history of supporting LGBT organizations, programs and causes....