Free Republic

Many conservatives and Republicans are greeting the looming sequestration spending cuts with a collective yawn. "The much-ballyhooed 'sequester' is a cut of $85 billion in a nearly $4 trillion federal budget. Good, let’s do it," writes one contributor to National Review Online's symposium on sequestration. It's true that sequestration is a tiny cut to total federal spending. But it is also true that sequestration is a major cut to defense spending. According to the House Armed Services Committee, the 2011 Budget Control Act (the law that imposed both spending caps and sequestration) will force the Marine Corps to shrink by...

As environmentalists and politicians fret about man-made Global Warming, they may be ignoring another culprit: earthworms. According to a new study by an international team of researchers, earthworms could be contributing to global warming. The study looked at results from 237 separate experiments from published stories to explore earthworms’ role in affecting global warming. “Our results suggest that although earthworms are largely beneficial to soil fertility, they increase net soil greenhouse-gas emissions,” according to the study’s abstract. Worms affect how much carbon dioxide is produced in the soil and how much escapes into the atmosphere...

(Reuters) - Americans blame Republicans in Congress more than congressional Democrats or President Barack Obama for the current "fiscal cliff" crisis, as the deadline approaches for action to avert big tax increases and spending cuts, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Thursday. When asked who they believed to be more responsible for the "fiscal cliff" situation, 27 percent blamed Republicans in Congress, 16 percent blamed Obama and 6 percent pointed to Democrats in Congress. The largest percentage - 31 percent - blamed "all of the above."

I feel like that geekie lower level military guy at one of the three bases about to get nuked by Joshua still playing the game... "Yeah, we're still here"!

Dr Doom Video Link At Link.

Why do I have a vague sense that I've been "played" once again?- As was the case in 2008-when McCain "didn't quite" make it to the winners circle. Romney was much better than McCain at campaigning-but to be honest- the whole time- it just always felt like "something was missing" from their (Romney/Ryan) efortts- Like they were holding back for some reason.Add to this the bizzare coverage of Fox news (calling state after state for O before even 1% of the vote was recorded exc..), and it looked like "the fix was in".The question is: Why?Maybe to collapse our dollar...

What does an Obama re-election mean for the next four years in America? Now that he's in his second and last term, of course, Obama no longer needs to restrain his actions according to popularity. He can simply unleash any desirable executive order and rule by decree, bypassing Congress as he has frequently promised to do.

10. Obama was injected with amphetamines or something before the debate and they wore off about 20 minutes in. Here in Chicago, word on the street for the last month has been that Valerie Jarrett was specifically tasked with getting Obama off coke and other drugs before the debates so that he would not embarrass himself on stage for an hour and a half. So, word is that Obama’s been detoxing since at least September. This explains how haggard he’s looked and how prickly he’s acted for a while now…it’s what addicts look and act like when they’re cut off...

(CBS News) BLTs next year might have to forego the B, according to a British trade group. Britain's National Pig Association, "the voice of the British pig industry," warned recently that a global shortage of bacon and pork "is now unavoidable" because of shrinking herds. The trade group reported Thursday that annual pig production for Europe's main pig producers fell across the board between 2011 and 2012, a trend that "is being mirrored around the world." The group tied the decline to increased feed costs, an effect of poor harvests for corn and soybeans. Even though the pig association issued...

U.S. On The Highway To Hell Politics / US Politics Aug 28, 2012 - 02:19 AM By: Chris Kitze (Monty Perlerin / EconomicNoise.com)The Role of The Government in The Economic Crisis At this point, everything the government is doing – and not just the US government but governments everywhere − is not only the wrong thing but exactly the opposite of the right thing. They’re passing more laws, raising taxes, creating more currency and incurring more debt. They should be doing the opposite. We’re currently still in the eye of the storm. Their actions guarantee that when we go back...

A federal judge has thrown out part of Chicago's gun law, ruling that a section banning permits for people convicted of unlawful use of a weapon is vague and unconstitutional

Here we go again, Groundhog Day. And likely with almost the same result as last time likely. Interesting quote: Condemning the outside interference in the election, Greek blogger Nick Malkoutzis, who is also deputy editor of deputy editor of Kathimerini English Edition, writes that "Europe that has become scared of democracy". UK Guardian is Live-Bogging, with updates every minute: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/greek-election-blog-2012/2012/jun/17/greek-elections-greece-polls-live?newsfeed=true

Helmet time. From Oanda Due to the extreme volatility some market analysts foresee could result in the coming days, OANDA fxTrade will not accept any trading activity from 6:00 AM EST until approximately 3:00 PM EST, on Sunday, June 17, 2012. OANDA believes the convergence of a major market event during off-market hours represents a potential trading risk and has taken this rare step to protect traders from excessive rate fluctuations. Please note that during this halt in trading, you can still access your account details but no trading activity will be accepted. For this reason, OANDA strongly recommends that...

WASHINGTON -- Frankly, I wish the Pew Research Center would occasionally keep its thoughts to itself. Sometimes those thoughts are merely insipid and beneath the attention of serious minds. Sometimes they are alarming and capable of stirring up an already excitable populace. There is talk of cannibalism being practiced by the criminal element. There is Lady Gaga. These are worrisome times. Yet the Pew Research Center has gone and done it again. The Center released a study Monday that employed exhaustive polling and ingenious charts to render my fellow Americans restive, or so it seems. The Pew Research Center's overall...

Dr. Gloom Mellows But Dr. Doom Does Not By Howard Gold June 1, 2012Commentary: Dire warnings on inflation, dollar don’t pan out NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — They are this era’s Dr. Doom and Dr. Gloom, two Cassandras who warned long ago about the housing bust, financial crash and debt explosion that almost wrecked global markets. Marc Faber, the Zurich-born investor and editor of The Gloom Boom & Doom Report, and Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, were lonely voices in the mid-2000s when they predicted the debt-induced party would soon end very badly. Reuters Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul...

When news broke of a 2 billion dollar trading loss by JP Morgan, much of the financial world was absolutely stunned. But the truth is that this is just the beginning. This is just a very small preview of what is going to happen when we see the collapse of the worldwide derivatives market. When most Americans think of Wall Street, they think of a bunch of stuffy bankers trading stocks and bonds. But over the past couple of decades it has evolved into much more than that. Today, Wall Street is the biggest casino in the entire world....

China Investment Corp. has stopped buying European government debt because of an economic crisis on the continent, though it continues to look for new investments there, said CIC President Gao Xiqing. "What is happening in Europe right now is of course of concern," Gao said yesterday in an interview in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during the World Economic Forum on Africa. "We still have our people looking at opportunities in Europe, even though we don't want to buy any government bonds." European leaders are struggling to contain a debt crisis that has entered its third year and led to bailouts of...

BERLIN — Leading German politicians warned Greece on Tuesday that the country would not receive a cent more aid unless it fulfills all the conditions of its international bailout. An election on Sunday in Greece failed to deliver a parliamentary majority for the two big pro-bailout parties, plunging the country into political limbo and increasing the risk that another vote may be required to resolve the impasse. On Tuesday, the leader of the Left Coalition party, which benefited from rising anger over austerity to take second place in Sunday’s poll, declared Greece’s policy pledges under its EU/IMF rescue null and...

HUSSMAN: It Is Now One Of The Worst Times To Invest In History Joe Weisenthal March 3,2012In his latest note, John Hussman argues that it's one of the worst times to invest. Period. Based on his proprietary soup of risk indicators for the market, the current exuberant situation puts it on par with some of the great peaks, including 1998-2000. Importantly, the market is again characterized by an extreme set of conditions that we've previously associated with a "Who's Who of Awful Times to Invest." The rare instances we've seen this syndrome historically are reviewed in that previous weekly comment....

The National Center for Public Policy Research is claiming a scalp today after Ford Motor Co. formally withdrew from the liberal U.S. Climate Action Partnership. The conservative non-profit announces today that Ford has withdrawn from the organization, which uses corporate support form management to work against shareholders' interests by promoting a cap-and-trade framework for carbon emissions.