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IN 1975, a 26-year-old singer who called herself Donna Summer floated onto the scene with “Love to Love You Baby.” Produced by the Italian disco pioneer Giorgio Moroder, it became a sensation, 17 minutes of a woman oohing and aahing as if in a state of ecstasy.
For the next half a decade, there almost wasn’t a nightclub in America that didn’t play Ms. Summer’s songs or anyone who came of age during the disco era who won’t forever associate her with that hedonistic time.

On Thursday, after news of Ms. Summer’s death, some of the last remaining denizens of the legendary New York dance clubs Studio 54, the Paradise Garage, 12 West, Flamingo and Xenon recalled their fondest memories of dancing to Donna Summer. At least, as much as they could remember.

Jellybean Benitez, D.J. and executive producer at “Studio 54 Radio,” at Sirius XM “You had this woman moaning and groaning, like she was having an orgasm. And it went on forever. But no one seemed to mind. You’d just play that record and turn the lights off. Seventeen minutes was enough time to fulfill a lot of fantasies.”

Patricia Field, clothing designer and stylist “Her music embodied that era. Dancing and drugs, it all went together like a beautiful salad. I was never that heavy a drug user. But poppers I used to enjoy when I was on the dance floor shooting for the stars. I was having a mad love affair with a woman named Dorothy that lasted a year and a half. We’d go to 12 West together and dance and get lost. We loved ‘Love to Love You Baby.’ ”

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BY NELSON D. SCHWARTZ AND JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG

Tim Boyle/Bloomberg News
Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase.
The trading losses suffered by JPMorgan Chase have surged in recent days, surpassing the bank’s initial $2 billion estimate by at least $1 billion, according to people with knowledge of the losses.

When Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive, announced the losses last Thursday, he indicated they could double within the next few quarters. But that process has been compressed into four trading days as hedge funds and other investors take advantage of JPMorgan’s distress, fueling faster deterioration in the underlying credit market positions held by the bank.

A spokeswoman for the bank declined to comment, although Mr. Dimon has said the total paper trading losses will be volatile depending on day-to-day market fluctuations.
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(CNN) — Mitt Romney continued his blitz against President Barack Obama over the federal deficit on Tuesday, signaling a GOP shift away from social issues and back to what Republicans consider the president’s Achilles’ heel: the economy.
The presumptive GOP presidential nominee gave a speech on government spending in the battleground state of Iowa, the same day as House Speaker John Boehner cautioned of another battle brewing in Congress over the national debt ceiling.
Romney targeted the president over the $787 billion stimulus package Obama signed soon after taking office in 2009, a move Romney described as the “most careless one-time expenditure by the federal government in history.”
“We still owe the money, we’re still paying interest on it, and it’ll be that way long after this presidency ends in January,” he said.

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The Obama campaign’s assault on Mitt Romney’s private sector career is meant to accomplish two goals: tarnish the cornerstone of the presumptive GOP nominee’s political biography, and play into middle class voters’ economic anxieties over the actions of large financial institutions.
The president’s re-election team sent notice Monday morning that its new ad, which took aim at Bain Capital’s involvement at a Kansas City steel plant, was only the first in a sustained wave of attacks on the company Romney co-founded
Most Americans know that, even in the real world, when you bankrupt a company, you don’t walk away with millions of dollars for yourself and others while workers are left holding the bag,” said Stephanie Cutter, the deputy campaign manager for the Obama team, in a conference call Monday morning.

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By Tom Curry, msnbc.com National Affairs Writer
President Barack Obama’s words of personal support Wednesday for same-sex marriages don’t change the laws in 38 states that define marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
Obama aides told The Associated Press that he continues to believe that marriage is an issue best decided by the states. But the president’s comments are also a reminder that at least some aspects of the marriage issue will almost certainly be decided by federal judges, not voters.
For example, there’s ongoing litigation in two federal appeals courts over the constitutionality of the 1996 law signed by President Bill Clinton, the Defense of Marriage Act.
The plaintiffs contend that the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection by requiring the federal government to deny recognition of the legal marriages of same-sex couples in Massachusetts and other states.

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Democrats are working hard to pin Mitt Romney to some of his party’s more unpopular elements just as the presumptive GOP nominee makes the shift to the general election.
President Obama’s re-election team is taking strides toward linking Romney to Republicans in Congress and shadowy super PAC groups, painting the former Massachusetts governor as essentially inseparable from their words and deeds.
“After a long and spirited primary, Republicans in Congress have found a champion,” Obama said Saturday in Virginia. “They have found a nominee for president who has promised to rubber-stamp this agenda if he gets a chance.”
And on Monday, the high command for the president’s re-election campaign sent notice that Romney would be held responsible for ads run by outside conservative groups.
“We will treat every ad that comes from those entities as an ad from Gov. Romney,” senior adviser David Axelrod said in a conference call with reporters.

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CBS News) Mitt Romney’s spokesman on foreign policy issues abruptly quit Tuesday after anti-gay conservatives made an issue of his outspoken support for gay marriage. Richard Grenell resigned on what was to be his first official day on the job, citing the “hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues.”
Grenell, who is openly gay, was hired by the Romney campaign less than two weeks ago. He was a Republican communications strategist for over a decade, including a stint as the national security and foreign policy spokesman in the George W. Bush administration.

Some prominent conservatives criticized Grenell’s role in Romney’s campaign after he made comments via Twitter and other media in support of same-sex marriage. Last week, Matthew Franck wrote in the National Review, “I agree that Grenell’s being openly gay is, in itself, of no consequence for his service in the Romney campaign. Nor is the fact that he supports same-sex marriage. … But Grenell has made a particular crusade of the marriage issue, with a kind of unhinged devotion that suggests a man with questionable judgment.”
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