From the Trenches World Report

Testosterone Pit

The asset bubbles the Fed’s money-printing and bond-buying binge has created are spectacular, the risk-taking on Wall Street with other people’s money a sight to behold. Among the big winners were mortgage Real Estate Investment Trusts – and those who got fat on extracting fees. But now the pendulum is swinging back, and the bloodletting has started.   Continue reading “Mother Of All Bubbles Pops, Mess Ensues”

The Washington Post – by Ed O’Keefe

House Republicans successfully passed a Farm Bill Thursday by splitting apart funding for food stamps from federal agricultural policy, a move that infuriated the White House and congressional Democrats who spent most of the day trying to delay a final vote.

Lawmakers voted 216 to 208 make changes to federal agricultural policy and conservation programs and end direct subsidy payments to farmers. But the measure says nothing about funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, which historically constitutes about 80 percent of the funding in a Farm Bill.   Continue reading “Farm Bill passes in House, without food stamp funding”

Huffington Post – by Matthew Katz

CHINATOWN — As many as 20 exploding bug bombs partially destroyed a Chinatown building and left eight people hurt Thursday afternoon, police sources said.

The explosion occurred at 17 Pike St. about 12:50 p.m., where the rear of the first floor collapsed, leaving three of the injured people in serious condition suffering from burns and smoke inhalation, fire officials said.   Continue reading “Chinatown Fire Causes Multiple Injuries After Partial Building Collapse”

Arizona Daily Star

A pair of Wisconsin legislators, among others, are up in arms over a heavily armed, Scottsdale-based private security force hired to protect a new iron-ore mine under construction in northern Wisconsin.

Mining company Gogebic Taconite hired Bulletproof Securities to secure its property following an incident during an otherwise peaceful protest in which a 26-year-old woman was charged with robbery with use of force and three other misdemeanors after allegedly wrestling a camera away from a mine worker.

Photos, including the one attached, show guards wearing camouflage and masks and sporting semi-automatic guns. Bulletproof’s website states its personnel are equipped with armor and high-tech gear and can be trained in the use of handguns, medium-sized weapons, heavy weapons, sniper rifles and edged weapons.    Continue reading “Hiring of Arizona security firm raises Wisconsin mine controversy to new heights”

Politico – by REID J. EPSTEIN

President Barack Obama told members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that he is considering taking a more public role in pushing immigration reform in the House than he did during Senate negotiations, CHC members said Wednesday after meeting with Obama at the White House.

Obama didn’t lay out a legislative strategy beyond reiterating his support for the immigration bill that passed the Senate last month, though he said he is considering traveling to back the legislation, said the CHC’s chairman, Rep. Ruben Hinojosa (D-Texas). Continue reading “Obama considering travel to back House immigration reform”

White House Dossier – by KEITH KOFFLER 

It’s trust and don’t verify time for Obamacare.

I wonder, truly, why the enforcement mechanisms for Obamacare are going straight out the window until whenever without the whole thing being bumped back.

COULD IT BE THAT WE WANT TO SIGN UP AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE FOR FREE HEALTH CARE??   Continue reading “Get Your Free Health Care! Step Right This Way!”

Raw Story – by Agence France-Presse

A Russian state service in charge of safeguarding Kremlin communications is looking to purchase an array of old-fashioned typewriters to prevent leaks from computer hardware, sources said Thursday.

The throwback to the paper-strewn days of Soviet bureaucracy has reportedly been prompted by the publication of secret documents by anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks and the revelations leaked by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.   Continue reading “Kremlin turns back to typewriters to avoid security leaks”

RT News

The military could soon be patrolling the streets of Chicago, Illinois if a local lawmaker has her way. State Rep. Monique Davis has asked the governor to deploy the National Guard among an epidemic of violent crime.

Davis, a 76-year-old Democrat who represents Chicago in the Illinois House of Representatives, said Tuesday that Gov. Pat Quinn should order both the Illinois State Police and the Illinois National Guard to assist with law enforcement efforts in her city aimed at curbing crime.   Continue reading “Lawmaker demands the National Guard patrol the streets of Chicago to stop gun violence”

The Hill – by Pete Kasperowicz

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) introduced legislation this week to block federal funding for schools that enforce rules that punish students for playing with imaginary weapons.

The Student Protection Act, H.R. 2625, is a reaction to what Stockman says is the zero tolerance policy at some schools that has led to several suspensions of very young children who engage in these activities, including cases where students pretended their thumb and index finger is a gun.    Continue reading “GOP bill would defund schools with rules against playing with imaginary guns”

RT News

Approval for Barack Obama’s foreign policy has dropped to an all-time low, with just 40 percent of Americans backing the president’s handling of international affairs, while 52 percent disagree with his performance on the global stage, a new poll reveals.

The survey, released by Quinnipiac University on Thursday, shows that overall assessments of Obama’s foreign policy are equally bleak when broken down on an issue-by-issue basis.    Continue reading “Majority of Americans disapprove of Obama’s foreign policy handling”

RT News

Despite having fewer resources and a fraction of the customers that broadband giants like Verizon and AT&T boast, one small internet service provider has resisted pressure from the NSA and refused to turn over customer data without a warrant.

Xmission, an independent company based out of one office in Salt Lake City, Utah, has spent nearly two decades protecting its customers’ privacy as the National Security Agency, Department of Justice, and prosecutors have ramped up pressure on internet service providers (ISPs).    Continue reading “Small Utah ISP firm stands up to ‘surveillance state’ as corporations cower”

Mail.com

MOSCOW (AP) — The tax-evasion conviction of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky more than three years after his death in a Russian prison was the first under a 2011 Russian law allowing posthumous trials, but not the first time the dead have been put on trial.

The Russian law allows such trials under the principle that a dead defendant’s relatives should have the opportunity to seek to clear the departed’s name — an echo of the Soviet practice of “rehabilitating” those executed for political crimes or who died in labor camps.   Continue reading “The dead aren’t always excused from trial”

Natural Society – by Christina Sarich

If you want to keep eating poison food, you can join the ‘scientists’ who keep spewing Monsanto-funded lies. They are telling us that genetically altered crops are good for us and the environment – that they are, in fact, a necessity to feed the world population. They say all of this, even though we seemed to feed the masses just fine without chemical quackery until about 60 years ago, all while dumping millions of tons of unaltered food right into the trash bin. If however, you believe GMOs are toxic, cancer-causing substances, you have another option.   Continue reading “Over 400 Companies who Aren’t Using GMOs in their Products”

Sipsey Street Irregulars

For some weeks my insomniac reading has been a marvelous volume my friend Stewart Rhodes sent me, which I have just finished reading: As If an Enemy’s Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution by Richard Archer.

There are many lessons for us today, beginning with understanding the growing sense of alienation of the colonists from the mother country caused by the force of occupation which was forced upon Bostonians with landing of the Regulars on 28 September 1768.   Continue reading “As If An Enemy’s Country.”

Politico – by JAKE SHERMAN, SEUNG MIN KIM and JOHN BRESNAHAN

The House Republican leadership is reaching out to top House Democrats to assess their support for a piecemeal approach to immigration reform, according to sources involved in the discussions.

The House’s immigration game plan is to pass individual bills rather than take the comprehensive approach advocated by the Senate. Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) team isn’t trying to cut a deal with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), these aides caution. But deeply-divided Republicans want to get a read on what members of the minority party would back when immigration reform comes to the floor.   Continue reading “GOP reaching out to Dems on immigration”