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ThinkFast: September 24, 2010

“Senate Democrats said Thursday that they would postpone a highly contentious floor fight over what to do about the expiring Bush-era tax cuts until after the November elections.” “We will come back in November and stay in session as long as it takes to get this done,” said a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The U.S. delegation walked out of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s U.N. speech yesterday after he said “most people believe the U.S. government was behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks” in order to “reverse the declining American economy” and “assure Israel’s survival.” The U.S. delegation said his “vile conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic slurs” are as “abhorrent and delusional as they are predictable.”

Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks — the right-wing group that has coordinated the tea party movement — yesterday endorsed GOP U.S. Senate candidate in Alaska Joe Miller. And in another boost, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) “lashed out” at Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) write-in bid against Miller and Democrat Scott McAdams, asking his supporters to donate money to Miller’s campaign.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) announced yesterday that she will be blocking the nomination of Jack Lew to direct the Office of Management and Budget until the Obama administration lifts its moratorium on offshore drilling. “I find it stunning that the administration was aware that their actions might eliminate nearly 23,000 jobs in an already faltering economy, and proceeded anyway,” she said.

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Yesterday, California’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman said she would vote against Proposition 23, a ballot measure that would roll back California’s landmark greenhouse-gas emissions law, AB 32. But Whitman also “reiterated her call for a one-year moratorium” of AB 32, attacking it as a “job-killer” and implying green jobs come at the expense of “the other 97% of jobs.”

A new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says that the U.S. “is the fattest nation among 33 countries with advanced economies.” Two-thirds of all Americans are overweight or obese while 72 million adults are obese — roughly 30 pounds overweight. “Obesity is a growing threat to public health in all the advanced countries throughout the world,” an OECD spokesman said.

And finally: Rapper Kanye West has “finally broken his silence” over President Obama calling him a “jack — s” last year. “[I]f he said that to relate to the room or lighten the room up and the whole mood, then I’d be more than happy to be the butt of all of his jokes if it in the some way helps his overall mission,” he said in a magazine interview.

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