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Friday 09.28.2012

Gold rebounds sharply on negative US data
LONDON(Commodity Online): Gold rebounds sharply on negativce US data. It has climbed around $15 to $1768.5/oz. Silver has climbed close to 0.5% at $34.34. The US second quarter final GDP is stuck at 1.3% compared to 1.7% previous data. Meanwhile, August durable goods orders dipped 13.2% compared to 5.0% expected.
"Comex Gold December is trading above 200 day moving average at $1741.90 and could creep higher targetting 1780 in the short term", according to Sreekumar Raghavan Chief Commodity Strategist at Commodity Online.

$2 Trillion in New Money (TNM)
By Richard Daughty - GoldSeek.com
Ben Bernanke is the panicked and clueless chairman of the evil Federal Reserve, and he has just shocked the world to announce that, henceforth, the Federal Reserve will create enough money to buy $40 billion per month of mortgage-backed securities.
This comes to a cool $480 billion a year in new money right there.
And this does not even mention the additional $1 trillion or so that the Fed is going to have to create over the next year to buy the tons of new government bonds necessary to pay for what seems to a terrifying $1.4 trillion budget-deficit of the loathsome Obama administration.

Death Knells for the USDollar
By: Jim Willie CB - GoldSeek.com
The recent decision by the US Federal Reserve to contaminate the financial body until it responds favorably was the last straw in my book. Witness a declaration of permanent QE and hyper monetary inflation of the most virulent strain, unsterilized. The USFed is essentially admitting failure. The signal serves as the loudest death knell for the USDollar among many in a sequence. On a similar parallel note, lighter and more humorous, one might be reminded of the pirate swash buckling style of yelling at the swabbies that the beatings will continue until morale improves. The QE bond monetization of USGovt debt has turned viral and entrenched. It is sold as stimulus, when in fact it acts like a giant wet blanket on the USEconomy. It is intended as stimulus to businesses, but the effect is felt on the financial speculation and on Asian direct business investment. In the past the emergency lever device had been successful only because it was used on a temporary basis. But now the USFed high priest assures it is a permanent fixture, a sign of their failure. The public is too ignorant to comprehend the ruin. They can only see the threat to their personal ruin.

Why QE Won't Create Inflation Quite as Expected
BY CHARLES HUGH SMITH - FinancialSense.com
The Fed can create money but if it doesn't end up as household income it is "dead money."
In the consensus view, the Federal Reserve's unlimited quantitative easing (QE3) programs will do two things: 1) boost stocks and other "risk on" assets and 2) generate inflation. The two follow-on effects are related, of course; gold and other hard assets are rising in anticipation of higher inflation.
But all is not quite as it seems when it comes to the inflationary effect of creating money. I'm going to cover a lot of ground here so buckle up and grab your favorite stimulating beverage.

How Crony Capitalism
(Or The 'Undiluted Lunacy' Of The Fed)
Corrupts The Free Markets
Submitted by Tyler Durden - ZeroHedge.com
"This is the final abomination" is how David Stockman begins his epic rant on the Federal Reserve and crony capitalism in this clip.The "undiluted lunacy" of their actions prompted him to address the Fed's decision to "print ourselves to death" by saying "this has gone too far, it's street-fighting time" as he decides, instead of the erudite philosophical view of how capitalism is being destroyed by statist philosophies of one type or another, to launch into a full-strength tirade about The Fed. For starters, "The Fed is being run by the single most-dangerous man ever to hold high office in the history of the United States, "as he opines that Bernanke is more dangerous than Geithner, Greenspan, Summers, Hank Paulson all put together.

How Crony Capitalism Corrupts the Free Market
David Stockman
Archived from the live Mises.tv broadcast, this lecture by David Stockman was presented at the Mises Circle in Manhattan: "Central Banking, Deposit Insurance, and Economic Decline." Includes a welcome and introduction by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

SEC's Gallagher Calls for Floating Price for Money Funds
By Joshua Gallu and Robert Schmidt - Bloomberg.com
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission member Daniel Gallagher, who helped derail efforts to tighten rules for money-market mutual funds, said he would likely support a measure forcing the industry to abandon its marquee $1 share price.
Requiring money funds to have a fluctuating share price "is an attractive option that I am likely to support," Gallagher, a Republican, said in an interview.

The Financial Crisis Of 2015 - A Non-Fictional Fiction
by Tyler Durden Via Oliver Wyman - ZeroHedge.com
The financial crisis of 2008 shook politicians, bankers, regulators, commentators and ordinary citizens out of the complacency created by the 25-year "great moderation". Yet, for all the rhetoric around a new financial order, and all the improvements made, many of the old risks remain (and some are far larger). The following 'story' suggests a scenario based on an 'avoidable history' andwhile future crises are not avoidable, being a victim of the next one is.
"John Banks was woken by his phone at 3am on Sunday 26th April 2015. John worked for Garland Brothers, a formerly British bank that had relocated its headquarters to Singapore in late 2011 as a result of..."

Entering Stage Three for the Euro Crisis?
By Brad DeLong - Project-Syndicate.org
BERKELEY – The first two components of the euro crisis – a banking crisis that resulted from excessive leverage in both the public and private sectors, followed by a sharp fall in confidence in eurozone governments – have been addressed successfully, or at least partly so. But that leaves the third, longest-term, and most dangerous factor underlying the crisis: the structural imbalance between the eurozone's north and south.
First, the good news: The fear that Europe's banks could collapse, with panicked investors' flight to safety producing a European Great Depression, now seems to have passed. Likewise, the fear, fueled entirely by the European Union's dysfunctional politics, that eurozone governments might default – thereby causing the same dire consequences – has begun to dissipate.

Spain's rising debt costs eat up austerity gains
Spain has pushed through €40bn of fresh austerity measures in the teeth of recession, despite violent protests across the country and separatist crises in Catalonia and the Basque region that threaten to break the country apart.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
Premier Mariano Rajoy has frozen public pay in 2013 for the third year in a row. The agriculture ministry and culture expenses will be cut by 30pc and the defence bureacracy by 15pc. It comes on top of a €62bn squeeze already in the pipeline.
He brushed aside warnings that fiscal overkill – at a time when unemployment is already 25pc – could push the country into turmoil, saying he would listen only to the "silent majority" of responsible citizens.

Spain heads towards confrontation with Catalan parliament
Spain's deputy prime minister says government will resist any attempt at unilateral referendum on independence
By Giles Tremlett in Madrid - The Guardian
As Spain's government announced fresh austerity for next year on Thursday, the country was launched headlong into confrontation between central government and a Catalan parliament that pledged to hold a referendum on moves towards independence.
Spain's deputy prime minister, Soraya Saenz de Santamaría, warned that the government would stop any attempt at a unilateral referendum, effectively challenging the Catalans to either desist or break the law and face the consequences.

Spain must leave the euro
Mario Draghi's promise to do "whatever it takes" to save the euro never did look like inducing any more than a temporary lull in the storm; still less did the German Constitutional Court's thumbs up to the European bail-out fund and the trouncing that eurosceptic parties received in the Dutch election.
By Jeremy Warner - Telegraph.co.uk
Yet the eurozone crisis has sparked back into life more swiftly than even I would have anticipated, with the epicentre returning to a fast-shrinking Spanish economy. Political and economic developments are once more threatening to combine into an uncontrollable firestorm.
To understand why, it is first necessary to explode some myths about the nature of the eurozone debt crisis. This is not at root either an isolated banking crisis or indeed a fiscal one, though that's how public policy in Europe attempts to define it.

Spain and Greece Take Steps Towards Austerity
Matthew Feeney - Reason.com
The Spanish government has unveiled its 2013 budget. If the protests of the last few days are anything to go by chances are it might not be as well received as many in the Spanish government might like.
The austerity budget includes the following (the last one in particular sounds oddly familiar):

a 12% average cut in ministerial spending
a freeze in public sector pay for the third consecutive year
a new independent authority to monitor government finances
an increase in pensions funded by drawing on 3bn euros of reserves
a new 20% tax on lottery wins above 2,500 euros (£2,000; $3,200)
a new car scrappage scheme

Welcome to the End of the Euro's Indian Summer
After a few sunny weeks, a political and economic storm is battering the euro zone once again
The Economist
THE sugar-rush brought on by the European Central Bank's pledge to intervene in bond markets to help troubled euro-zone countries—some diplomats call it "Mario Draghi's ice cream"—was bound to fade at some point. But nobody expected it to fade quite so suddenly this week.
Anti-austerity protests in Spain and Greece, uncertainty over their bail-out terms, the resurgence of Catalan secessionism, the likely departure of Mario Monti as Italy's prime minister next year, obstacles to creating a credible banking union (see Charlemagne) and a darkening economic outlook all combined to dispel hope that the euro zone was out of the woods. Spanish and Italian bond yields shot back up and European stockmarkets fell.

Germany on firm footing as rest of eurozone sinks
Germany's unemployment rate remained at 6.8pc in September after a smaller than expected rise in the country's jobless numbers.
By Damian Reece - Telegraph.co.uk
It looks increasingly likely that Germany will avoid recession in the second half of the year, having managed 0.3pc GDP growth in the second quarter compared with a 0.2pc fall in the rest of the eurozone. But while Germany will probably weather the remainder of this year in reasonable shape, the same cannot be said of the rest of the eurozone, especially in its southern states.
Comparing the fortunes of Germany with Greece (unemployment rate of 22.5pc) and Spain (24.8pc) it's clear the euro is now delivering an intolerable dose of social injustice. As Germany sits back and enjoys a relatively benign economic outlook, its neighbours burn.

Ammunition for a Trade War Between U.S. and Mexico
By STEPHANIE STROM and ELISABETH MALKIN - NYTimes.com
Estimates are that nearly one out of two tomatoes eaten in the United States comes from Mexico — a statistic Florida growers would like to change, even at the risk of a trade war.
On Thursday, they got a reason to hope.
The United States Department of Commerce signaled then that it might be willing to end a 16-year-old agreement between the United States and some Mexican growers that has kept the price of Mexican tomatoes relatively low for American consumers. American tomato growers say the price has been so low that they can barely compete.

A Chinese Mega City Is On The Verge Of Bankruptcy
by Tyler Durden - ZeroHedge.com
While most "developed world" people have heard of Hong Kong and Macau, far fewer have heard of China's province of Guangdong, which is somewhat surprising. With over 100 million people, a GDP of nearly $1 trillion - the biggest of all Chinese provinces, this South China Sea adjacent territory is perhaps China's most important economic dynamo. One of the key cities of Guangdong is Dongguan, which as the map below shows is a stone's throw from Hong Kong, has a population of nearly 10 million, and has long been considered Guangdong's boomtown and one of China's richest cities.

China's Great Slowdown Is Really Here—
and It's Worse Than You Think
Welcome to the new normal in Asia.
By Steve LeVine - TheAtlantic.com
For years, global economists have forecast a slowdown in China's breakneck growth. Now that the deceleration is actually here, rich-world investors, companies and government officials, reliant on the Chinese juggernaut for their financial well-being, seem impatient for the revelry to resume, and are hoping that the Chinese government will follow up its stimulus of package of 2008-2009 with another generous injection of capital. (On Sept. 25, the medium-sized province of Sichuan became the latest to announce a¥3.67 trillion [$582 billion] package of measures aimed at giving the regional economy a boost.)
But economists are calling the current rate of growth the "new normal". And there is a betting chance that, for demographic and other reasons, the Asian giant could slow much further and even have a permanent level of far less growth. Even a generous new stimulus may not ignite a new day, analysts say.

PART 1 Secret Maps Of The Ancient World
Our Earth Before The Last Pole Shift!

PART 2 Secret Maps Of The Ancient World
Our Earth Before The Last Pole Shift!

Geithner Urges Regulators to Press on Money-Market Overhaul
By Ian Katz and Cheyenne Hopkins - Bloomberg.com
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner put pressure on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to tighten oversight of the $2.6 trillion money- market fund industry, saying the funds may pose a risk to the stability of the financial system.
The Financial Stability Oversight Council, a group of regulators that includes the SEC and is headed by the Treasury, should release for public comment options for an overhaul of the funds, an alternative to bank accounts for individuals and companies, Geithner said in a letter to the council today.

Treasuries Head for Weekly Gain Before Spending Report
By Wes Goodman - Bloomberg.com
Treasuries headed for a second weekly gain before a government report economists said will show consumer spending in the U.S. was little changed in August after accounting for inflation.
Benchmark yields were 26 basis points, or 0.26 percentage point, from the record low as theU.S. economy shows signs of slowing and European leaders struggled to find ways to pay their debts. Government securities have returned 0.6 percent since the end of June, versus a 3 percent gain in the second quarter, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch indexes.

Keiser Report: Bankstatocracy (E345)
In this episode, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss the bankstatocracy that has led to what the mainstream financial media calls an 'unintended' wealth gap in the consumer sector - between those recovered-from-recession and those still-struggling. To suggest that this gap is intentional, however, is considered now 'suspicious' behavior by the US government. And they also look at the 'wealth managers' for the poor in Australia. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser talks to privacy extremist Frank Braun about sneaker net and privacy, the libertarian case for bitcoin and a flourishing over the counter bitcoin exchange.

Wells Fargo believed to be victim
of cyber-attack over Innocence of Muslims
Group pledging retaliation for controversial online video claims it has targeted several US banks
By Dominic Rushe in New York - Guardian.co.uk
US banking company Wells Fargo is believed to have become the latest victim of a cyber-attack launched by a group pledging retaliation for the controversial Innocence of Muslims video that has triggered anger and violence across the Muslim world.
A group calling itself Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters has claimed responsibility for the online attacks on US banks in protest against the online video. The attacks were launched last week under the name Operation Ababil, meaning "swarm", and have already affected banks including JP Morgan and Bank of America.

Hackers May Have Had Help With Attacks
on U.S. Banks, Researchers Say
By NICOLE PERLROTH - NYTimes.com
The hackers claiming responsibility for cyberattacks on American banks over the past week must have had substantial help to disrupt and take down major banking sites, security researchers say.
Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, U.S. Bancorp, Wells Fargo and PNC all experienced disruptions and delays on their banking sites over the past week because of denial of service or DDoS attacks, in which hackers clog a Web site with data requests until it slows or collapses under the load.

Cyber attack takes down PNC website for second day
By Alex Nixon - triblive.com
A cyberattack that one expert called the biggest of its kind to hit the United States crippled PNC Financial Services Group's website on Thursday.
For the second consecutive day, the Pittsburgh-based bank's website fell victim to a denial-of-service attack, in which a person or group directs a flood of traffic to a website, overwhelming the system and preventing customers from gaining access.
"The volumes have been unprecedented," said Dmitri Alperovitch, a co-founder of Internet security firm CrowdStrike, based in Irvine, Calif.

The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia
How America's biggest banks took part in a nationwide bid-rigging conspiracy - until they were caught on tape
By Matt Taibbi - RollingStone.com
Someday, it will go down in history as the first trial of the modern American mafia. Of course, you won't hear the recent financial corruption case, United States of America v. Carollo, Goldberg and Grimm, called anything like that. If you heard about it at all, you're probably either in the municipal bond business or married to an antitrust lawyer. Even then, all you probably heard was that a threesome of bit players on Wall Street got convicted of obscure antitrust violations in one of the most inscrutable, jargon-packed legal snoozefests since the government's massive case against Microsoft in the Nineties – not exactly the thrilling courtroom drama offered by the famed trials of old-school mobsters like Al Capone or Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo.

U.S. Banks' Leverage Should Be Halved to Cut Risks, Bair Says
By Yalman Onaran - Bloomberg.com
Banks should be required to reduce by half the amount they can borrow against equity to make the financial system safer, according to former Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. ChairmanSheila Bair.
Bair called for a "hard-and-fast" leverage ratio of 8 percent in "Bulls by the Horns," her memoir of the financial crisis published this month. That's double the 4 percent ratio U.S. banks must adhere to currently and more than twice the 3 percent called for by new global rules on bank capital.

Bank of America call center shut down due to threats
by Chad Tucker - WGHP - FOX8
HIGH POINT, N.C. – High Point Police say a man believed to be mentally ill and making suicidal and hostage threats forced the evacuation of the Bank of America call center Friday afternoon.
"He was very irate when he called [911], making some comments about being blown away, his soul and he wasn't afraid to die," said Capt. J.T. Stroud of the High Point Police Department.
The unidentified man, made the threats from the parking lot, first by phone to 911 and second by text message to his wife who works inside the building on Piedmont Parkway.

Fed's Evans wants months of jobs gains above 200,000
By Ann Saphir
HAMMOND, Indiana | Wed Sep 26, 2012 4:04pm EDT
(Reuters) - The Federal Reserve should keep on buying assets to lower borrowing costs until U.S. employers are routinely adding 200,000 or more jobs a month, for at least two quarters, a top Fed policy maker known for his dovish views said on Wednesday.
"I think that would be a good marker - it's a threshold, it's an indication," Chicago Fed President Charles Evans told reporters after a speech in this industrial Chicago suburb. "In combination with (GDP) growth above trend, that would really reinforce and solidify the idea that we are getting substantial improvement."

Tying policy to jobless rate dangerous: Fed's Plosser
(Reuters) - Keeping U.S. monetary policy extraordinarily loose until the jobless rate hits a defined level could be very dangerous, Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser said on Thursday.
"Tying policy to an unemployment rate, a specific unemployment rate, can be very risky and very dangerous," Plosser said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.
Two other heads of regional Fed banks -- Narayana Kocherlakota of the Minneapolis Fed and Chicago Fed President Charles Evans -- have proposed keeping rates low until employment falls to specific levels, as long as inflation stays under control.

Fed Helps Lenders' Profit More Than Homebuyers: Mortgages
By Jody Shenn - Bloomberg.com
The Federal Reserve's latest mortgage bond purchases so far are helping profit margins at lenders including Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) more than homebuyers and property owners looking to refinance.
Since the Fed's Sept. 13 announcement that it would buy $40 billion more securities per month, the rates offered for new 30- year loans have fallen by just 0.13 percentage point, compared with a drop of about 0.7 percentage point for yields on thebonds into which the loans get packaged, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and Bankrate.com. The gap between the two, which typically signals increasing lender revenue when it widens, has reached a record of more than 1.7 percentage point.

Keiser Report: Boom & Bust Vicious Cycle (E346)
In this episode, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss punk rock 'Tall Paul' giving the two finger salute to Ben Bernanke's QE3 and gold adjusting for zero growth, yield, velocity and confidence. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser talks to Detlev Schlichter of PaperMoneyCollapse.com about quantitative easing to infinity, Central Banking 'devils' and the future for the gold standard.

Durable goods drop worst since recession
(Reuters) - New orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods in August fell by the most in 3-1/2 years, pointing to a sharp slowdown in factory activity even as a gauge of planned business spending rebounded.
The Commerce Department said on Thursday durable goods orders dived 13.2 percent, the largest drop since January 2009, when the economy was in the throes of a recession. Orders for July were revised down to show a 3.3 percent increase instead of the previously reported 4.1 percent gain.

Weak orders point to sharp slowdown in manufacturing
By Lucia Mutikani
WASHINGTON | Thu Sep 27, 2012 2:29pm EDT
(Reuters) - Orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods fell sharply in August, suggesting the main engine of the economic recovery was stalling even as a report showing a drop in new claims for jobless aid offered a hopeful sign on the labor market.
While weak demand for aircraft and automobiles accounted for much of the drop in orders last month, the Commerce Department report on Thursday underscored the damage being inflicted by the uncertainty over U.S. fiscal policy, Europe's debt troubles and a slowdown in China.

What Does the Future Hold for Natural Gas Prices?
By Brian Westenhaus - OilPrice.com
Asian demand for natural gas has risen sharply in recent years. Prices in dollars per million BTUs, are about $13.50 in Argentina and $13.80 in Japan and South Korea, and $13.40 in China. Even Argentina has a $13.50 price, but U.S. wholesale prices are about $2.50 to $3.00.
The world price disparity raises a question that swirls just under the surface of the national energy conversation, which whipsaws between relieved happiness that shale gas exists at all and unfounded fears stoked by extremists that the method of extracting it called fracking, is polluting the water.

Justice Department's Warrantless Spying
Increased 600 Percent in Decade
BY DAVID KRAVETS - Wired.com
The Justice Department use of warrantless internet and telephone surveillance methods known as pen register and trap-and-trace has exploded in the last decade, according to government documents the American Civil Liberties obtained via a Freedom of Information Act claim.
Pen registers obtain, in real time, non-content information of outbound telephone and internet communications, such as phone numbers dialed, and the sender and recipient (and sometimes subject line) of an e-mail message. A trap-and-trace acquires the same information, but for inbound communications to a target. No probable-cause warrant is needed to obtain the data. Judges are required to sign off on these orders when the authorities say the information is relevant to an investigation.

ACLU: Government documents
show surge in electronic surveillance
By Brendan Sasso - TheHill.com
Warrantless surveillance of telephone calls, text messages and emails has shot up dramatically in recent years, according to Justice Department documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday.
The ACLU obtained the reports through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The documents show that real-time monitoring of electronic communications jumped 60 percent from 2009 to 2011. The Justice Department said it used "pen register" and "trap and trace" techniques 23,535 times in 2009 and 37,616 times in 2011.

U.S. cyber warrior accuses China of targeting Pentagon
By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON | Thu Sep 27, 2012 9:23pm EDT
(Reuters) - The U.S. Cyber Command's top intelligence officer accused China on Thursday of persistent efforts to pierce Pentagon computer networks and said a proposal was moving forward to boost the cyber command in the U.S. military hierarchy.
"Their level of effort against the Department of Defense is constant" while alleged Chinese attempts to steal corporate trade secrets has been growing, Rear Admiral Samuel Cox, the command's director of intelligence, told Reuters after remarks to a forum on the history of cyber threats.

Rep. Issa threatens to subpoena HHS over Medicare bonuses
By Sam Baker - TheHill.com
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Thursday that he's willing to subpoena documents from the Health and Human Services Department (HHS), alleging a conspiracy to hide the impact of President Obama's healthcare law.
Issa, as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is investigating an $8 billion demonstration project in which Medicare pays bonuses to certain private Medicare Advantage plans based on quality.

Aetna pays $1.5 million for forcing businesses
to pay for abortion, contraception
BY JOHANNA DASTEEL - LifeSiteNews.com
JEFFERSON CITY, MO, September 25, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Aetna will pay $1.5 million in a settlement with the state of Missouri after the insurance giant did not allow employers to opt out of paying for coverage of abortion and contraception.
Missouri's insurance regulators say Aetna had been violating a 2001 law providing conscience protections for employers and individuals seeking policies without coverage for contraception.
They also say the company violated a 1983 state law by illegally providing coverage for abortions in their basic policies.State law mandates that abortion coverage is only permitted when an additional premium is paid.

A Culture of Delusion
By Paul Craig Roberts - PaulCraigRoberts.org
A writer's greatest disappointments are readers who have knee-jerk responses. Not all readers, of course. Some readers are thoughtful and supportive. Others express thanks for opening their eyes. But the majority are happy when a writer tells them what they want to hear and are unhappy when he writes what they don't want to hear.
For the left-wing, Ronald Reagan is the great bogeyman. Those on the left don't understand supply-side economics as a macroeconomic innovation that cured stagflation by utilizing the impact of fiscal policy on aggregate supply. Instead, they see "trickle-down economics" and tax cuts for the rich. Leftists don't understand that the Reagan administration intervened in Grenada and Nicaragua in order to signal to the Soviets that there would be no more Soviet expansion or client states and that it was time to negotiate the end of the cold war. Instead, leftists see in Reagan the origin of rule by the one percent and the neoconservatives' wars for US hegemony.

An Attack on Free Speech
By George Will - PatriotPost.us
RALEIGH, N.C. -- North Carolina is giving Steve Cooksey some choices. He can stop speaking. Or he can get a Ph.D. in nutrition, or a medical degree, or a bachelor's degree in nutrition and then pass an examination after completing a 900-hour clinical internship. Or he can skip this onerous credentialing, keep speaking, and risk prosecution.
He has chosen instead to get a lawyer. His case, argued by the libertarians at the Institute for Justice (IJ), will clarify the First Amendment's relevance to an ancient human behavior and a modern technology.

Obama, the Great Divider
By Jeff Jacoby - PatriotPost.us

"I'm the first one to confess that the spirit that I brought to Washington, that I wanted to see instituted, where we weren't constantly in a political slugfest … I haven't fully accomplished that. Haven't even come close in some cases…. My biggest disappointment is that we haven't changed the tone in Washington as much as I would have liked." --President Barack Obama on "60 Minutes," Sunday, Sept. 23

It was the commitment at the core of Barack Obama's candidacy, the most important promise he made to the American people: He would unify a divided nation. Again and again, he vowed to repair the political breach. To end the bitter polarization of American life, to do away with "slash-and-burn" politics that "tear us apart instead of bringing us together" -- above all else, that was the hope and the change he offered.

How Hitler Became a Dictator
by Jacob G. Hornberger - FFF.org
Whenever U.S. officials wish to demonize someone, they inevitably compare him to Adolf Hitler. The message immediately resonates with people because everyone knows that Hitler was a brutal dictator.
But how many people know how Hitler actually became a dictator? My bet is, very few. I'd also bet that more than a few people would be surprised at how he pulled it off, especially given that after World War I Germany had become a democratic republic.

The Aldebaran Mystery - Nazi UFO Secrets
During Adolf Hitler's rise to power, did a daring group of Nazi scholars and technicians learn the secrets of anti-gravity and space travel from extraterrestrials? If true, these conclusions may shock and amaze you. Get the facts about UFO Secrets of World War II - The 3rd Reich and beyond, in a way that will change the way we stare up at the stars for years to come.

Obama Versus Obama: Part III
By Thomas Sowell - PatriotPost.us
Much puzzling behavior by Barack Obama falls into place when we go behind the image that he projects ("Obama 1") to the factual reality of the man's whole life and thrust ("Obama 2").
Obama himself is well aware of the nature and importance of his image. In his own words, "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." An 18th century philosopher put the matter bluntly: "When I speak, I put on a mask. When I act, I am forced to take it off."

Soros donates $1M to pro-Obama super-PAC
By Cameron Joseph - TheHill.com
Liberal billionaire George Soros has donated $1 million to Priorities USA, the super-PAC backing President Obama's reelection, two sources with knowledge of the donation confirmed to The Hill.
The donation comes as a shift for Soros, who'd donated to other pro-Democratic super-PACs earlier this year and has long bankrolled a number of liberal grassroots organizations — but had yet to give any money directly toward supporting Obama this cycle.

This Presidential Race Should Never Have Been This Close
By Matt Taibbi - rollingstone.com
The press everywhere is buzzing this week with premature obituaries of the Romney campaign. New polls are out suggesting that Mitt Romney's electoral path to the presidency is all but blocked. Unless someone snags an iPhone video of Obama taking a leak on Ohio State mascot Brutus Buckeye, or stealing pain meds from a Tampa retiree and sharing them with a bunch of Japanese carmakers, the game looks pretty much up – Obama's widening leads in three battleground states, Virginia, Ohio and Florida, seem to have sealed the deal.
That's left the media to speculate, with a palpable air of sadness, over where the system went wrong. Whatever you believe, many of these articles say, wherever you rest on the ideological spectrum, you should be disappointed that Obama ultimately had to run against such an incompetent challenger. Weirdly, there seems to be an expectation that presidential races should be closer, and that if one doesn't come down to the wire in an exciting photo finish, we've all missed out somehow.

War by Drone
By Clive Crook - TheAtlantic.com
Conor Friedersdorf's attack on the Obama Administration's drone campaign makes strong points. The Stanford/NYU study he reviewed previously, Living Under Drones, should be widely read. Friedersdorf thinks the policy is outrageous and indefensible.
Obama terrorizes innocent Pakistanis on an almost daily basis. The drone war he is waging in North Waziristan isn't "precise" or "surgical" as he would have Americans believe. It kills hundreds of innocents, including children. And for thousands of more innocents who live in the targeted communities, the drone war makes their lives into a nightmare worthy of dystopian novels. People are always afraid. Women cower in their homes. Children are kept out of school. The stress they endure gives them psychiatric disorders. Men are driven crazy by an inability to sleep as drones buzz overhead 24 hours a day, a deadly strike possible at any moment. At worst, this policy creates more terrorists than it kills; at best, America is ruining the lives of thousands of innocent people and killing hundreds of innocents for a small increase in safety from terrorists.

Iran unveils 'indigenous' drone with 2,000km range
Iran has unveiled what it says is a new "indigenous" long-range unmanned drone capable of flying over most of the Middle East, state media report.
BBC.co.uk
The Shahed (Witness) 129 had a range of 2,000km (1,240 miles) and could be equipped with bombs and missiles, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps said.
It is reportedly capable of carrying out reconnaissance and combat missions.
Last year, the Iranian authorities displayed a US drone which they claimed to have brought down electronically.

THE LIE FACTORY
How politics became a business.
BY JILL LEPORE - NewYorker.com
I, Governor of California, and How I Ended Poverty," by Upton Sinclair, is probably the most thrilling piece of campaign literature ever written. Instead of the usual flummery, Sinclair, the author of forty-seven books, including, most famously, "The Jungle," wrote a work of fiction. "I, Governor of California," published in 1933, announced Sinclair's gubernatorial bid in the form of a history of the future, in which Sinclair is elected governor in 1934, and by 1938 has eradicated poverty. "So far as I know," the author remarked, "this is the first time an historian has set out to make his history true."

The FDR Model for Buying Presidential Elections
Redistributing Wealth and Entitlements for Votes
By Mark Alexander - PatriotPost.us

"A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader." --Samuel Adams (1779)

In the conservative and business media, there is much perplexity and vexation over the inverse relationship between Barack Hussein Obama's rising job approval ratings and our nation's failing economic status. Yes, Leftmedia "Pollaganda" skewed political polls used as propaganda to prop up Obama, are a factor. But what mystifies some are the more reliable ratings which indicate Obama is increasing his lead over Romney.

GoldSeek Radio's Chris Waltzek
with Pastor LINDSEY WILLIAMS

Will Israel Blow Up Something and Falsely Blame It On Iran?
by George Washington - ZeroHedge.com
According to U.S. officials, Israel is training and supporting Iranian terrorists who are trying to topple the Iranian government. Those Israeli-funded terrorists have faked documents to falsely indicate that Iran is building a nuclear bomb. 1
Israel has admitted to previous use of false flag attacks to justify war against Middle Eastern nations.
For example, Israel admits that an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind "evidence" implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed).

'Nuclear Iran same as nuclear-armed al-Qaeda':
Netanyahu full UN 2012 speech
Iran might have enough enriched uranium to build nuclear weapon by next summer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared at the UN General Assembly. He urged the gathering to draw a "red line" for the Iranian nuclear program.

Obama to Jihadists: Be Nicer
By GEORGE NEUMAYR - Spectator.org
He appeared on The View and at the UN to offer sermonettes on civility.
In the first few decades of the country's history, presidential candidates didn't even campaign, seeing the act of shilling for votes as inherently undignified. Surrogates would campaign on their behalf. Now presidential candidates not only campaign but seek out the stupidest shows to retail their demagoguery. "It is dying but it laughs," the Romans said of their disintegrating empire. Obama's America is dying too as it laughs with Whoopi, Joy, and Dave.

Binyamin Netanyahu demands 'red line'
to stop Iran nuclear programme
Israel's prime minister tells UN general assembly that Iran is more than 70% of the way to producing a nuclear weapon
By Julian Borger in New York - The Guardian
Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has called on the international community to set a "clear, red line" to stop Iran making a nuclear weapon, a line he claimed would be reached as early as next spring.
To illustrate those claims, Netanyahu presented the UN general assembly in New York with a diagram of a cartoon bomb, complete with a burning fuse, and used a red felt pen to mark a line near the top of the bomb beyond which he said Iran should not be allowed to pass. That line, representing 90% of the way to making a warhead, would be reached "by next spring, at most by next summer".

Netanyahu draws 'red line' over Iran,
Abbas seeks more independence
The duel of words between Iran and Israel rears its ugly head again at the UN General Assembly, with Prime Minister Netanyahu taking the opportunity to slap Tehran with harsh rhethoric.

Bibi's Subtext: Israel Won't Bomb Iran Before Spring
By Robert Wright - TheAtlantic.com
A number of people, including my Atlantic colleague Jeffrey Goldberg, have noted that Bibi Netanyahu's speech before the United Nations today was weird. What they mean is that he pulled out a chart featuring a cartoonish image of a bomb and then drew a red line on it--kind of like the "red line" he's been demanding that President Obama draw, except more literal.
Yes, that part was weird, and the title of Goldberg's post--"Bibi: The Middle East's Wile E. Coyote"--was deserved. So were such entertaining Photoshop riffs as the one below (taken from the Israeli website 972).

Netanyahu draws "red line" on Iran's nuclear program
By Jeffrey Heller
UNITED NATIONS | Thu Sep 27, 2012 7:39pm EDT
(Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew his "red line" for Iran's nuclear program on Thursday despite a U.S. refusal to set an ultimatum, saying Tehran will be on the brink of a nuclear weapon in less than a year.
By citing a time frame in an address to the U.N. General Assembly, Netanyahu - who has clashed with President Barack Obama over the urgency of military action against Iran - appeared to suggest no Israeli attack was imminent before the November 6 U.S. presidential election.

Coast To Coast AM May 21 2012 -
Financial Crisis Special Part 1
Convergence & Bible Prophecy
In the first hour, author and professor of biblical prophecy, Paul McGuire, spoke about a convergence of events-- a possible WWIII, a one-world govt./economic system, radical earth changes such as tsunamis and volcanoes, which relate to Bible predictions about Armageddon and End Times. In addition to Bible prophecy in books such as Revelation, the works of Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, as well as the Mayans and Hopi, also point to the next 30 years as being a time of accelerating cataclysms, he said.

Coast To Coast AM May 21 2012 -
Financial Crisis Special Part 2
Guests: Peter Schiff, Paul McGuire, Lindsey Williams, John Truman Wolfe
In separate hours, three guests addressed future and current economic crises. First, global financial strategist Peter Schiff argued that the crisis of 2008 is nothing compared to what is coming. The government stimulus programs have made the situation worse, in that they prevent free market forces from correcting the situation, he commented, adding that the real problem with the US economy is that interest rates are too low. These low rates contribute to economic structural problems, he explained-- we borrow and spend too much, and we don't invest or save enough. If we keep the rates low indefinitely, we're going to completely destroy the dollar, which will unleash a far worse crisis than if we actually dealt with the problem, he continued. Schiff favors an overhaul of Social Security (which he called a kind of Ponzi scheme)-- no benefits should go to the wealthy, and further, everyone expecting something from government should take less, he said.

Coast To Coast AM May 21 2012 -
Financial Crisis Special Part 3
Former senior banking officer John Truman Wolfe discussed how the current world economic crisis is an intentional coup designed to take down the U.S. dollar. He cited the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as two organizations that "truly became global predators." Behind the scenes, they created economic crises in third world countries, and then came in on a "white horse" to save these countries with loans, which they knew could never be paid back, he detailed. They have much of the planet in debt, and exert control through this, Wolfe continued, adding that another economic crash is coming. The 2008 US crash as well as the current European crisis were planned scenarios in order to place a global monetary interest in authority, he revealed. He also was critical of the massive derivatives market, which he characterized as unscrupulous casino-like gambling practiced by banking institutions.

Coast To Coast AM May 21 2012 -
Financial Crisis Special Part 4
In the last hour, ordained Baptist minister Lindsey Williams shared his contention that the collapse of the dollar is being orchestrated. According to his "elite" sources, we should be on the lookout for signs that a collapse is imminent. These indicators include a crack in the derivatives market, currency & trade wars, as well as a 1% rise in interest rates. He suggested that people "secure their assets immediately," which means to get out of all paper, and invest in gold and silver (which he was told will be used to back the new world currency).

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