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Last Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in the first month of this year 243,000 jobs were created and the unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent. This good news is a mirage. It is due to faulty seasonal adjustments and to the BLS birth/death model. In a prolonged downturn, seasonal adjustments and the birth/death model produce nonexistent employment. The unadjusted data show a rise in the unemployment rate. The birth/death model, which estimates the net effect of jobs lost from business failures and jobs created by new start-ups, was designed for a normal growing economy, not for...

A-Rod just stuck out swinging to give Detroit the series and a trip to the ALCS finals. Final score 3-2.

A group of 14 acclaimed Russian intellectuals, including human rights activists, artists, film directors, writers and aides of the late President Boris Yeltsin have published an open statement condemning the present regime for “completely destroying the institution of democratic elections in Russia.” Election results are shamelessly falsified by the authorities, while opposition parties and activists are “unconstitutionally” denied registration to run in elections under cooked up pretexts. As a result, subjects of the Russian state are disfranchised from the political system rendering it illegitimate. The statement describes as “vicious” the so called “vertical of power”—a system of personalized authoritarian rule...

What is the world coming to? Pat Dollard reports the Russian leader warned the US against adopting socialism because it doesn't work: Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin has said the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise “excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence”. “In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute,” Putin said during a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us...

Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin has said the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise “excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence”. “In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute,” Putin said during a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.” Sounding more like Barry Goldwater than the former head of the KGB,...

Most Americans believe, as they were told by the media and taught in schools and colleges, that the Cold War “ended” with events including the so-called “collapse” of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the demolition of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. However, those who are aware of the true scope and nature of the international communist menace know that the Soviet Union truly never collapsed, but instead, has metastasized and adopted new and deceptive forms in the Russian Federation. KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn has made the supposed “collapse” of the Soviet Union the subject of his 1986 book,...

Vladimir Putin gave a traditional interview to French journalists prior to his visit to Paris. In the interview, the chairman of the Russian government said that the Western model of democracy does not exist per se. Below you can read several most intersecting excerpts from Putin’s interview. About democracy “Can you tell me what it is – the Western model of democracy? France has one model of democracy, the USA has another one. A French politician told me once: one can not do anything at the elections in the USA without money – whether they are elections to the Senate...

February 18, 2009 Putin warns US to eschew socialism Clarice Feldman What is the world coming to? Pat Dollard reports the Russian leader warned the US against adopting socialism because it doesn't work: Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin has said the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise “excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence”. “In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute,” Putin said during a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “In the long run,...

Russia, island of stability, may save the world from global crisis 24.01.2008 Source: Pravda.Ru URL: http://english.pravda.ru/russia/economics/103625-russia_crisis-0 Russia’s Minister for Finance, Aleksey Kudrin, released a sensational statement Wednesday. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Russian minister offered to mitigate the world credit crisis with the help of Russia’s reserves. Kudrin stated that Russia was an “island of stability in the sea of the world crisis.” “Investors will continue to invest billions of dollars in the rising Russian economy. Stock market crises and their consequences will not be utterly negative for us,” Kudrin said. “Our country managed to achieve...

Speaking to the National Association of Evangelicals Orlando, Florida - March 8, 1983 The phrase 'evil empire' was first applied to the USSR and Soviet "captive states" by President Ronald Reagan, who had been calling for a far more aggressive posture towards the communist enemy since the early Sixties. Once in office, Reagan put into action a plan that called for matching and/or exceeding the Soviet Union's strategic and global military capabilities worldwide, rolling-back relentless Soviet expansionism, and in doing so helping to write the final pages in the history of the Soviet Union... "So, in your discussions of...

(CNSNews.com) - Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has released a guide to what he believes to be some of the government’s most wasteful spending projects of 2010. The list includes poems in zoos, a museum of Grateful Dead memorabilia and a graveyard for neon signs. In his introduction to the “Wastebook 2010” report, Coburn writes: “As 2010 ends, millions of Americans are still struggling to find work. Even those lucky enough to have jobs have had to tighten their belts and trim household budgets. For some this has meant cutting out luxuries; for others, having to make tough choices between necessities....

A pilot with a major United States airline was confronted at his home in early December by four Federal air marshals and two sheriff’s deputies who were there to confiscate his Federally-issued firearm and his state-issued permit to carry a concealed firearm. His crime? He posted a series of videos to YouTube that showed flaws in the Transportation Security Administration’s screening procedures. The videos — since removed from YouTube — demonstrate how the flight crews are subjected to intensive pre-flight TSA screenings while the ground crews that service the aircraft are able to access secure areas by swiping a card,...

20 trillion roubles (over $650 billion) will be allocated to equipping the Russian army in the next 10 years. At a meeting dedicated to establishing the state armament programme for 2011-2020, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called this figure “frightful”, but the Russian army should become completely modernized as a result. “We must finally overcome the legacy of those years when the Army and Navy were hugely underfinanced”, declared Vladimir Putin at the meeting in the Arkhangelsk Region. Vladimir Putin visited the town of Severodvinsk to look at the new fourth generation Alexander Nevsky nuclear submarine and also to highlight...

We have two branches of government—Congress and the courts—expressing grave concerns with our agency becoming increasingly unmoored from our statutory authority. By seeking to regulate the Internet now, we exceed the authority Congress has given us, and justify those concerns. —FCC Commissioner Meredith Atwell Baker[1] Should regulators in Washington, D.C., set the rules for the Internet? Julius Genachowski, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), thinks so. He has crafted a plan to impose so-called “net neutrality” rules on Internet service providers, setting an FCC vote on the proposal for next Tuesday.[2] Details of the plan are not yet known...

A conservative activist and former presidential candidate says Tuesday night's election results have put a "restraining order" on President Barack Obama's radical agenda. Gary Bauer, chairman of American Values, thinks the landscape in Washington will be quite different in January, now that Republicans have control of the House of Representatives. But though the GOP narrowed the gap in the Senate, it fell short of its needed ten seats to get the majority. Meanwhile, the party scored big in gubernatorial races across the country. "The bottom line is this whole evening [Tuesday] has been a restraining order against President Obama. The...

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said on Sept. 12 that he is willing to support President Barack Obama’s plan to extend tax breaks for the middle-class and increase rates for the wealthiest Americans —but only if that’s his only option. Appearing on the CBS program Face the Nation, Boehner stated that his preference is to extend all of the tax breaks approved by President George W. Bush in 2001. If presented with a bill that doesn’t include continued tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000 annually, Boehner said, "of course I’m going to do that," but added that...

Federal investigators say the state is violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act by shortchanging thousands of students whose first language is not English. Unless changes are made, the violations could lead to a loss of federal funding for state education. The Arizona Republic reports one complaint alleges the Arizona Department of Education has reclassified "many thousands" of children as proficient in English even though tests indicate they aren't. The second complaint says federal departments found the state eliminated two questions from its home-language survey in 2009. The result was that students who are eligible for English-language services "are not being...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved on Friday Ulipristal Acetate, which will be marketed under the brand name as “ella,” as an acceptable emergency contractive for the American market. Watson Pharmaceuticals, a specialty drug company located in California and New Jersey, will introduce the drug by the end of the year. The FDA’s decision came down despite numerous concerns and warnings related to ella‘s deceptive marketing and its detrimental impact on women and the preborn. DECEPTIVE MARKETING Even though it is being marketed as a 5-day emergency contraceptive – potentially preventing ovulation or fertilization, or causing an early...

(CNSNews.com) – At an event celebrating Gay Pride Month on Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton encouraged State Department employees to let teenagers know homosexuality is okay. “We’ve come such a far distance in our own country, but there are still so many who need the outreach, need the mentoring, need the support to stand up and be who they are and then think about people in so many countries where it just seems impossible,” Clinton said. “So I think that each and everyone of you, not only professionally, particularly from State and USAID and every bureau and every embassy...

Kalamazoo, Mich. (AP) - Don't mimic Washington by making excuses, President Barack Obama advises graduating high school students, and take responsibility for failure as well as success. In remarks to be delivered Monday evening at Kalamazoo Central High School, Obama says it's easy to blame others when problems arise. "We see it every day out in Washington, with folks calling each other names and making all sorts of accusations on TV," the president said. He said the high school kids can and have done better than that. The 1,700-student school in southwest Michigan landed Obama as its commencement speaker after...

Following the tragic death of Polish President Lech Kaczynski in a plane crash, Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev has expressed his condolences to the whole Polish nation. Speaking on behalf of all Russians, Medvedev promised a most thorough investigation of the tragic accident. “Dear friends, the citizens of Polish republic. I and all the citizens of Russia are shaken by this terrible tragedy, the death of Polish President Lech Kachinsky, his wife Maria and all the Polish citizens on board the crashed plane. “In these days we were holding remembrance ceremonies together, mourning the victims of totalitarian times. Lech Kazcynski was...

MOSCOW � The British Embassy says British, French and U.S. troops will march with Russian soldiers on Red Square to mark the 65th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. It said in a statement Thursday that the May 9 parade will include a Royal Air Force band and a detachment of Welsh Guards. The statement said the parade may mark the first time British troops have marched in Red Square. The U.S. Embassy confirmed that U.S. soldiers will take part in the parade. Victory Day is Russia's most important secular holiday. The Kremlin plans a larger parade than usual...

Today marks the 99th birthday of former President Ronald Wilson Reagan. Ronald Reagan was a movie star, television star, the 33rd Governor of California and two-term 40th President of the United States of America. Ronald Reagan was an American legend, icon and the perpetual hero in the white hat. For many he represents that ideal of a great leader we find severely lacking in today's political culture...

Cold War: The White House has announced our absence at ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, Russia has been practicing a nuclear invasion of an abandoned Poland. The Berlin Wall has been a famous backdrop for American presidents sounding the battle cry of liberty in the struggle against tyranny. It was there that John F. Kennedy expressed our solidarity with the encircled residents of that outpost of freedom with his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner." And it was there that Ronald Reagan, with a defiant "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," voiced our...

A Republican-oriented political action committee says if ObamaCare can be defeated, the rest of President Barack Obama's radical agenda can also be derailed. During the August recess, Democratic lawmakers have found themselves in the unusual position of seeing their efforts to push the Obama healthcare agenda challenged by ordinary citizens, whom they have described as "angry mobs." In addition, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) accused town hall protestors of "carrying swastikas" and being "un-American" in the way they are voicing their opposition. Republicans have seized on the protests as evidence of a lack of public support for President Barack Obama's...

In an interview five years ago with the Weekly Standard magazine, former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky described the “brilliant moment” when he and his fellow prisoners in Siberia learned of Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech. Speaking to the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983, president Reagan urged delegates against taking a moral equivalence stance on nuclear proliferation. When voting later in their convention on whether to support a freeze in the nuclear arms race, it would be too easy, Mr. Reagan said, to "label both sides equally at fault." That would "ignore the facts of history and the aggressive...

MOSCOW — Negotiations over gas prices between Russia and Ukraine unraveled Wednesday and executives at Gazprom, the Russian natural gas monopoly, said they were preparing to halt supplies early Thursday morning. If they do, customers in Western Europe will see shortages as the same pipelines in Ukraine are used for export and internal distribution. It is a problem that has bedeviled Europe’s energy supplies from Russia for years. How quickly Western Europe would feel a shortage of natural gas was unclear, and would depend on the scale and duration of any Russian embargo of Ukraine. The fuel is used for...

Georgian Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili said Wednesday that Russian forces were erecting a "Berlin Wall" as part of a campaign to cut off rebel regions from the rest of the country. Russia is trying to divide Abkhazia and South Ossetia from the rest of Georgia, she said in a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank in London. Tkeshelashvili said Russia was building a wall at Zugdidi, a city at the Abkhaz border. "Russia physically destroys physical links between the regions of Georgia," she said. "It is blowing up bridges in Gali region so that it is harder...

Relations between Russia and Germany have not been good since Vladimir Putin's nationalist sabre-rattling this summer, but they are about to get a whole lot worse. A new film about to be released in Germany will force both countries to re-examine part of their recent history that each would much prefer to forget. Yet it is right that the ghastly truth should finally be acknowledged. The movie, A Woman In Berlin, is based on the diary of the German journalist Marta Hillers and depicts the horror of the Red Army's capture of the capital of the Third Reich in April...

MOSCOW — Russia’s stock market is suffering its worst correction in nearly a decade as sliding oil prices, political attacks on private companies and instability after last month’s war in Georgia spook investors. On a bad day globally for stocks, Russia’s markets took an exceptional fall Friday. The Russian Trading System index lost 7.6 percent and recovered later to close down 4.45 percent after rumors circulated that the government would use state oil money to halt the decline. A Russian central bank official said the bank had sold large amounts of foreign currency a day earlier to shore up the...

Moscow-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, speaking in the midst of one of the lowest points in the Russia-West relationship since the breakup of the Soviet Union 17 years ago, said Tuesday that his country did not seek a new Cold War-but neither was it afraid of one.

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Fears that Russia might sell advanced weaponry to Syria kicked up a mini-storm of concern in Israel on Thursday. Syrian President Bashar Assad, in Russia for talks with President Dmitry Medvedev, has been campaigning to acquire weapons systems that include long-range surface-to-surface missiles, according to Russian media reports. The news of Assad's reported ambitions prompted immediate hand-wringing among Israeli officials and analysts. Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel was "analyzing the ramifications" of Assad's visit.

IGOETI, Georgia -- Russia and its allied forces today destroyed a key railway bridge linking war-weary Georgia's capital to the Black Sea coast, effectively severing all east-west transportation routes within the small country, the Georgian Foreign Ministry announced.

President Saakashvili was forced to accept defeat yesterday as he signed a peace agreement that gives the Russian Army the right to patrol on Georgian soil.

IGOETI, Georgia (Reuters) - A Russian military convoy advanced to a village 45 km (30 miles) from Tbilisi on Friday, in the deepest incursion since conflict with Georgia erupted last week.

Russia is a resurgent competitor for strategic importance. They are going to gobble up as many non-nato countries as possible in order to gain strategic value to counter the USA. Expect more brush wars and trouble from Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and others. WHY ARE WE NOT DEFENDING OUR ALLIES... PUT SOME PARA's INTO TBLISI MR. PRESIDENT!!!!

U.S. to take control of Georgian ports: Saakashvili Wed Aug 13, 2008 1:07pm EDT TBILISI (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's pledge to send aid to Georgia means that the U.S. military will take control of the ex-Soviet state's ports and airports, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said on Wednesday.

Solzhenitsyn's Warning The faculty of Harvard University admired Alexandr Solzhenitsyn for his literary achievements, so they were thrilled that he agreed to deliver the university’s 1978 commencement address. But almost as soon as he began to speak, the professors changed their minds: too late. As I wrote this month in Christianity Today, they realized that Solzhenitsyn was charging them with complicity in the West’s surrender to liberal secularism, the abandonment of its Christian heritage, and of all the moral horrors that followed. For example, describing the Western worldview as “rationalistic humanism,” Solzhenitsyn decried the loss of “our concept of...

RUSSIA is preparing to deploy 9000 troops to bolster its forces inside the separatist Georgian region of Abkhazia, reports say. "The group is based on a subdivision of paratroopers. It consists of more than 9,000 troops and more than 350 armoured vehicles,'' Alexander Novitsky, a spokesman for Russia's peacekeeping forces in Abkhazia, was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying. "The strengthening of the peacekeeping force is aimed at ruling out a repetition of the situation Russian peacekeepers faced in Tskhinvali," Mr Novitsky was quoted as saying. Tskhinvali is the capital of South Ossetia, another breakaway region of Georgia where...

After 50 years, an American state secret has been revealed, about the arrest of 12,000 people because of Hoover’s “red” paranoia. The former director of the FBI, Edgar Hoover made plans for the arrest of 12,000 American citizens which he considered to be threats to national security – documents reveals that no longer bear the status of state secret. Hoover sent this request to the president at the time Harry Truman at the beginning of the Korean war during the 50s. He justified the move as necessary for protection from “treason, spies and sabotage”. For now there is no evidence...

Russia’s G5 system of missile defense leaves far behind the S-400 systems that are coming into operation today. It is able to counter space attacks, said Russia’s Air Force Commander-in-Chief Col.-Gen. Alexander Zelin.

Russian and Chinese troops are joining forces this week in the first military exercises by an international organisation that is regarded in some quarters as a potential rival to Nato. Thousands of soldiers and 500 combat vehicles will take part in “Peace Mission 2007”, organised by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia. Russian officials have also proposed an alliance between the SCO and a body representing most of the former Soviet republics. Scores of Russian and Chinese aircraft begin joint exercises tomorrow before a week of military manoeuvres from Thursday that will include Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan...

MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- An expedition aimed at strengthening Russia's claim to much of the oil and gas wealth beneath the Arctic Ocean reached the North Pole on Wednesday, and preparations immediately began for two mini-submarines to drop a capsule containing a Russian flag to the sea floor.

Now in their 70s and 80s, children of the victims of Josef Stalin's political repressions remembered one of the darkest pages of Russia's history at a ceremony Wednesday in central Moscow. Several hundred people laid flowers and lit candles to honor the victims of the Great Purge of 1937, when millions were labeled "enemies of the state" and executed without trial or sent to labor camps. The 70th anniversary comes as the Kremlin, focused on restoring Russians' pride in their Soviet-era history, has been trying to soften public perception of Stalin's rule and hushing up the full horror of his...

(On This Day In History) June 26, 1948 : Berlin Airlift Begins In response to the Soviet blockade of land routes into West Berlin, the United States begins a massive airlift of food, water, and medicine to the citizens of the besieged city. For nearly a year, supplies from American planes sustained the over 2 million people in West Berlin. On June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union blocked all road and rail travel to and from West Berlin, which was located within the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany. The Soviet action was in response to the refusal of American...

Russia is deploying a new series of nuclear tipped missiles with warheads designed with the aid of US supercomputers. The new Russian SS-X-27 missile is being moved directly into deployment with an advanced 550 kiloton nuclear warhead made by the Arzamas-16 nuclear design bureau. The original version of the TOPOL - mod 1 version - is designated the SS-25. This mobile missile is quite capable and can reach the US with a variety of weapons packages, including nuclear warheads of Russian design. In early 1997 Russian Atomic energy officials (MINATOM) admitted that an IBM super-computer was purchased from Europe by...

FROM the day Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. officer, died of polonium poisoning in London last November, officials in Russia treated the investigation of his death as if it were simply a matter of bad public relations. They dismissed accusations of Russian involvement as nonsense fabricated by President Vladimir V. Putin’s enemies. Britain last week punctured Russia’s strategy. A decision by the Crown Prosecution Service to accuse another former K.G.B. officer of the murder and demand his extradition pushed Russia out of the international court of public opinion and into the international court of law. If recent history is...