Author: Todd

Slate – by Justin Pidot

Continue reading “Wyoming just criminalized citizen science.”

Common Dreams – by Sarah Lazare

What better way to advertise military culture—and recruit teenagers—than by staging heartfelt salutes to “hometown heroes” at professional football games in front of thousands of fans?

That, apparently, is what Department of Defense officials thought when they shelled out at least $5.4 million of U.S. taxpayer’ money to 14 NFL teams between 2011 and 2014—to pay them to promote the military on and off the field.   Continue reading “Patriotism at a Price: US Military Paid NFL Teams to ‘Honor’ Soldiers at Games”

Zero Hedge – by Tyler Durden

Almost exactly three months ago, with much pomp and circumstance, US attorney general Eric Holder, whose department of “justice” made headlines two years ago for refusing to bring criminal cases against big banks due to fears of systemic consequences if any TBTF bank is brought to justice thus spawning the term Too Big To Prosecute, gave his lackeys involved in residential mortgage-backed securities exactly 90 days in which to “develop cases against individuals” for their roles in the financial crisis.   Continue reading “7 Days Before Holder’s “90 Day Ultimatum” Expires, DOJ Declines To Prosecute Citigroup”

Zero Hedge – by Tyler Durden

With the euphoria over Tesla’s electric car fading fast, especially now that competitors are releasing both more exciting (and more expensive for the vain set) cars such as BMW’s i8, Elon Musk has found himself in a pickle: how to distract attention from his epic cash burn…    Continue reading “The Economics Of Tesla’s PowerWall Don’t Make Sense For Most Customers In North America”

Freedom Outpost – by Ed Wood

If you are watching the news, or were listening to Mark Levin’s rant last evening, the subject du jour is the Senate passage 96-1 of the Corker-Cardin bill. Yes, that is Tennessee’s own Republican Senator Corker, who obviously has his political eye set on a future in the White House.

The bill is advertised by Republican leadership as a great victory, giving Congress 30 days to review the President’s secret nuclear treaty negotiations with Iran before enactment. Under present law, the President cannot execute a treaty with a foreign nation unless it has the approval of 2/3 of the Senate. All senate Democrats present, and all but one Republican, voted to approve Corker-Cardin, plus the President has promised to sign the measure into law. That in itself should have raised some Republican red flags. But the only opposition to passage was that of an upstart Republican freshmen senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton. Oh well, he probably didn’t want an office desk anyway.   Continue reading “Treaties: Damned by What Congress has Done – Damned by What Congress is About to Do”

SHTF Plan.com – by Mac Slavo

The motel and hotel industry is not only spying you, it is partnering with police.

This isn’t just routine cooperation when police request information for criminal investigations. Instead, it is apparently everyday data sharing on every guest.

It is a troubling private-public overlap where motel and hotel clerks are systematically sharing “do not rent” lists and helping police to run checks on guests daily for outstanding warrants. Staying at Motel 6, and other chains pursuing similar policies, now includes a hidden guilty-until-proven innocent background check that puts ordinary travelers one step away from a call to police. From the Providence Journal:    Continue reading “Motels Sharing “Daily Guest List with Police” and Aiding Warrant Checks on Every Guest”

Zero Hedge – by Tyler Durden

In “Bursting Bund Bubble: 2 Charts And Some Lessons From History,” we recapped the sell-off in German government bonds, touching on the severity of the yield spike (with emphasis on Thursday’s intraday move above 77bps), the breakdown in the historical relationship between Bunds and Treasurys/Gilts, and parallels between the rout and the 2003 sell-off in JGBs. On the latter issue, we presented the following chart from Barclays which shows the degree to which this most recent incarnation of government bond carnage mirrors the 2003 manifestation.    Continue reading “Two Years Later, The VaR Shock Is Back”

Continue reading “Hillary 2016 (Summed Up In 1 Cartoon)”

Govt.Slaves – by Bill Bonner

Yesterday’s good news was that there will beno 25-year recession. “We should be so lucky,” is the way a New Yorker might react. Because the bad news is much worse. The logic of the “long depression” is simple. Aging populations, debt, zombification – all of which slow growth.

How many old people and zombies do you need before an economy comes to a halt? Nobody knows. But the drag from debt is observable and calculable. Over the last three decades, approximately $33 trillion in excess debt has been contracted – above and beyond the traditional ratio to income – in America alone. And growth rates have fallen in half.   Continue reading “The Next 94 Days Could Be Bad for Your Wallet”

Anti War.com – by Jason Ditz

US State Department officials issued a statement of rebuke to Israel’s newly minted government today, criticizing their planned expansion of settlements in occupied East Jerusalem.

“This is a disappointing development,” noted spokesman Jeff Rathke, saying the US wants to “see a commitment for the two-state solution,” and that the latest construction plans are incompatible with that.

The Ramat Shlomo plan dates back to 2010, when Israel unveiled it during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden. This caused a serious diplomatic row at the time, and the plan is now receiving final approval.   Continue reading “US ‘Disappointed’ by Israel’s New East Jerusalem Settlement Plans”

The Register – by John Leyden

A former NSA staffer turned security researcher is warning that bypassing typical OS X security tools is trivial.

Patrick Wardle, a former NSA staffer and NASA intern who now heads up research at crowd-sourced security intelligence firm Synack, found that Apple’s defensive Gatekeeper technology can be bypassed allowing unsigned code to run. Apple’s Gatekeeper utility is pre-installed in Mac OS X PCs and used to verify code. The tool is designed so that by default it will only allow signed code to run or, depending on settings, only packages from the Mac App Store.   Continue reading “Ex-NSA security bod fanboi: Apple Macs are wide open to malware”

Govt.Slaves – by Steve Straehley

When state governments closed many mental hospitals in the 1970s, it didn’t solve the problem of what to do with the mentally ill, it merely moved it—to jails and prisons.

“There are now more psychologists working in state prisons than (in) state hospitals in this country,” Dr. Jeffrey Metzner, a psychiatrist with the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center, said according to The Crime Report.   Continue reading “Are Prisons the New Mental Health Hospitals?”

SHTF Plan – by Mac Slavo

The Obama administration is feverishly working with foreign lawmakers and officials on a new Trans-Pacific Parternship (TPP) trade agreement. Yet what may seem like business as usual is anything but.

The President has made it a point to keep any details of the agreement completely secret, so much so that what amounts to a gag order has been placed on anyone who has anything to do with the bill. Even members of Congress are unable to discuss the contents of the bill with each other or in public, and anyone who is invited to discussions over the bill must leave cell phones and staff members behind. Since not even Republicans have yet to spill the beans about the details of the agreement, one can only assume that those attending the meetings are doing so under threat of criminal prosecution or worse if they talk.   Continue reading “Shock Report About Secret Obama Treaty: “Unlimited Migration From Mexico… Gun Import Bans… Ammunition Bans””

21st Century Wire

The blog post by Steven Goddard featured below was posted last summer, but we thought it really illustrates the important point of how our political leaders are able jump from one bandwagon to the next in order to suit their own favored popular ideological construction and collectivist movements.

Recently, California’s Governor Jerry Brown has said that the state’s chronic drought proves that “climate change is not a hoax.”    Continue reading “Stuck on Stupid: California Governor Thinks Drought Caused By ‘Global Warming’”

Truthstream Media – by Melissa Dykes

You could say the idea of the so-called “Population Bomb” may have actually exploded in 1974.

That was the year of the first World Population Conference in Bucharest. Effects of the 1973 oil crisis were being felt hard, with the price of oil quadrupled from $3 to nearly $12 a barrel. Oh, and speaking of war criminal Henry Kissinger, ’74 was also the year of his infamous National Security Study Memorandum 200, which listed the “population problem” of unchecked growth in “LDCs” (less developed countries) as a potential risk to U.S. national security.   Continue reading “Who Attempted the Covert Sterilization of Mexican School Children with Vaccines in 1974?”