Friday, January 14, 2011

25 Hard Questions That You Will Not See Asked On CNN, MSNBC o rFox News

25 Hard Questions That You Will Not See Asked On CNN, MSNBC Or Fox News

Wouldn’t you just love it if the big media companies would tackle some of the questions posted below with some real honesty?

#1 The U.S. dollar has lost well over 95 percent of its value since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913. The Fed has failed time and time again from preventing big financial bubbles from being created and then eventually bursting. About the only thing the Federal Reserve seems to be good at is creating more government debt that the rest of us have to pay for. So what possible justification is there for allowing the Federal Reserve to continue to issue our currency and run our economy?

#2 Ten years ago, the “employment rate” in the United States was about 64%. Since then it has been constantly declining and now the “employment rate” in the United States is only about 58%. So where did all of those jobs go? Is this what we can expect from “globalism”?

#3 Thousands of dead birds are falling out of the sky and millions of dead fish are washing ashore all over the globe. So does this mean that there is something seriously wrong with the planet?

#4 If the U.S. economy is getting better, then why did the number of Americans filing for bankruptcy rise another 9 percent in 2010? Why won’t our government officials be straight with us and tell us the real truth about the economy?

#5 Would a failure to raise the debt ceiling really “have catastrophic economic consequences that would last for decades” or is U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner just blowing off a lot of hot air again?

#6 If 71 percent of the American people are against it, and only 18 percent of them are for it, then why in the world are our representatives in Congress overwhelmingly in favor of raising the debt ceiling again?

#7 Will a combination of extreme weather, soaring agricultural commodity prices and rising oil prices lead to a devastating global food shortage at some point in the next few years?

#8 In Algeria, hordes of young people are throwing fire bombs and are shouting slogans such as “Bring us Sugar!“ Are these the kinds of food riots that we should expect to see around the globe as food gets tight this year?

#9 Over the last couple of years, lawmakers in at least 10 U.S. states have introduced legislation that would allow state commerce to be conducted with gold and silver coins. Could this be the beginning of a new trend?

#10 When German Chancellor Angela Merkel says that Germany will do“whatever is needed to support the euro” is that supposed to make all of us feel better about the stability of the failing European currency? If the Euro does fail, won’t that cause another financial meltdown like we saw back in 2008?

#11 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs. How in the world could we allow that to happen?

#12 According to a recent Gallup survey, 7 out of every 10 Americansbelieve that religion is losing influence in the United States. So exactly what does that say about our society?

#13 Now that the State of Illinois has passed a 66 percent increase in the state income tax, how long will it be before other states start passing draconian income tax hikes?

#14 Shouldn’t we be at least a little bit concerned that China has developed a new ballistic missile that can completely destroy a U.S. aircraft carrier nearly 2,000 miles out to sea? Has China become a military threat that we need to start taking very, very seriously?

#15 In 2006, no U.S. banks failed. In 2009, 140 U.S. banks failed. So did things get better in 2010? No. In 2010, 157 U.S. banks failed. Do does that mean our financial system is getting healthier or does that mean our financial system is coming apart at the seams?

#16 On January 1st, the very first of the Baby Boomers started to reach the age of 65. Now more than 10,000 Baby Boomers will be turning 65 every single day for the next 19 years. So where in the world are we going to get all the money we need to pay them the retirement benefits that we have promised them? Isn’t the Social Security system essentially one gigantic Ponzi scheme?

#17 According to a shocking recent survey, 40 percent of all U.S. doctorsplan to bail out of the profession over the next three years. So how in the world is our health care system going to continue to function if that happens?

#18 Why is the federal government spending approximately 6.85 million dollarsper minute if our founders intended for us to have a “limited central government”?

#19 Should we be glad that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency want to lower the amount of fluoride in our drinking water, or should we be furious with them for poisoning us with super high levels of fluoride for all of these years?

#20 The U.S. trade deficit with China during the month of August alone was more than 4,600 times larger than the U.S. trade deficit with China was for the entire year of 1985. Do you think perhaps we should all not be buying so much stuff with “made in China” stamped on it?

#21 If the federal government stopped all borrowing today and began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the U.S. national debt. So does anyone out there actually still believe that the U.S. national debt will be paid off someday?

#22 1180 new snowfall records were set in the United States just this past week. So does that mean that global warming isn’t true after all?

#23 If the U.S. economy is getting better, then why are an all-time record 43.2 million Americans now on food stamps? Are middle class Americans being impoverished by design?

#24 What in the world will a “security perimeter” around the United States and Canada actually look like? Are our leaders slowly trying to turn North America into another version of the EU?

#25 How in the world can Facebook be worth 50 billion dollars? Is Goldman Sachs trying to pull a big joke on all the rest of us?

Bombshell: Government Admits Fluoride Hurting Children

Geithner - U.S. Government will default on debt

MEDIA FAIL: Maddow Attempts To Paint Heroic Responsible Gun Owner As A T...

The Mystery Continues: Dead Birds Found In Alabama

Brady to initiate House bill to protect Congress against threats - National Legislative Watch

Brady to initiate House bill to protect Congress against threats - National Legislative Watch

The Hill reports that Congressman Robert Brady (D-PA), plans to introduce legislation prohibiting "language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a federal official or member of Congress."

Brady is quoted as telling CNN that "The president is a federal official. You can't do it to him; you should not be able to do it to a congressman, senator or federal judge."

A quick search of Google News shows that so far reaction from news media political pundits has been less than warm, with The Boston Herald ("And the real victim here - if they have their way - will be the free speech rights of all Americans."), The Washington Examiner ("We should reject 'solutions' that threaten to criminalize protected speech or increase the distance between the people's representatives and those they serve."), and The Washington Post ("Congress should read the Constitution.") all weighing in against such a bill.



Continue reading on Examiner.com: Brady to initiate House bill to protect Congress against threats - National Legislative Watch | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/legislative-watch-in-national/brady-to-initiate-house-bill-to-protect-congress-against-threats#ixzz1B2TaKtBB



Ellen Brown: The Fed Has Spoken: No Bailout for Main Street

Ellen Brown: The Fed Has Spoken: No Bailout for Main Street

The Federal Reserve was set up by bankers for bankers, and it has served them well. Out of the blue, it came up with $12.3 trillion in nearly interest-free credit to bail the banks out of a credit crunch they created. That same credit crisis has plunged state and local governments into insolvency, but the Fed has now delivered its ultimatum: there will be no "quantitative easing" for municipal governments.

On January 7, according to the Wall Street Journal, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced that the Fed had ruled out a central bank bailout of state and local governments. "We have no expectation or intention to get involved in state and local finance," he said in testimony before the Senate Budget Committee. The states "should not expect loans from the Fed."

So much for the proposal of President Barack Obama, reported in Reuters a year ago, to have the Fed buy municipal bonds to cut the heavy borrowing costs of cash-strapped cities and states.

The credit woes of state and municipal governments are a direct result of Wall Street's malfeasance. Their borrowing costs first shot up in 2008, when the "monoline" bond insurers lost their own credit ratings after gambling in derivatives. The Fed's low-interest facilities could have been used to restore local government credit, just as it was used to restore the credit of the banks. But Chairman Bernanke has now vetoed that plan.

Why? It can hardly be argued that the Fed doesn't have the money. The collective budget deficit of the states for 2011 is projected at $140 billion, a mere drop in the bucket compared to the sums the Fed managed to come up with to bail out the banks. According to data recently released, the central bank provided roughly $3.3 trillion in liquidity and $9 trillion in short-term loans and other financial arrangements to banks, multinational corporations, and foreign financial institutions following the credit crisis of 2008.

20 Shocking New Economic Records That Were Set In 2010

20 Shocking New Economic Records That Were Set In 2010

The following are 20 new economic records that were set during 2010….

#1 An all-time record of 2.87 million U.S. households received a foreclosure filing in 2010.

#2 The number of homes that were actually repossessed reached the 1 million markfor the first time ever during 2010.

#3 The price of gold moved above $1400 an ounce for the first time ever during 2010.

#4 According to the American Bankruptcy Institute, approximately 1.53 millionconsumer bankruptcy petitions were filed in 2010, which was up 9 percent from 1.41 million in 2009. This was the highest number of personal bankruptcies we have seen since the U.S. Congress substantially tightened U.S. bankruptcy law several years ago.

#5 At one point during 2010, the average time needed to find a job in the United States had risen to an all-time record of 35.2 weeks.

#6 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs, which is believed to be a new record low.

#7 The number of Americans working part-time jobs “for economic reasons” was the highest it has been in at least five decades during 2010.

#8 The number of American workers that are so discouraged that they have given up searching for work reached an all-time high near the end of 2010.

#9 Government spending continues to set new all-time records. In fact, at the moment the U.S. government is spending approximately 6.85 million dollars every single minute.

#10 The number of Americans on food stamps surpassed 43 million by the end of 2010. This was a new all-time record, and government officials fully expect the number of Americans enrolled in the program to continue to increase throughout 2011.

#11 The number of Americans on Medicaid surpassed 50 million for the first time ever in 2010.

#12 The U.S. Census Bureau originally announced that 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty and according to them that was the highest number of Americans living in poverty that they had ever recorded in 51 years of record-keeping. But now the Census Bureau says that they miscalculated and that the real number of poor Americans is actually 47.8 million.

#13 According to the FDIC, 157 banks failed during 2010. That was the highest number of bank failures that the United States has experienced in any single year during the past decade.

#14 The Federal Reserve brought in a record $80.9 billion in profits during 2010. They returned $78.4 billion of that to the U.S. Treasury, but the real story is that thanks to the Federal Reserve’s continual debasement of our currency, the U.S. dollar was worth less in 2010 than it ever had been before.

#15 It is projected that the major financial firms on Wall Street will pay out an all-time record of $144 billion in compensation for 2010.

#16 Americans now owe more than $881 billion on student loans, which is a new all-time record.

#17 In July, sales of new homes in the United States declined to the lowest level ever recorded.

#18 According to Zillow, U.S. housing prices have now declined a whopping 26 percentsince their peak in June 2006. Amazingly, this is even farther than house prices fell during the Great Depression. From 1928 to 1933, U.S. housing prices only fell 25.9 percent.

#19 State and local government debt reached at an all-time record of 22 percent of U.S. GDP during 2010.

#20 The U.S. national debt has surpassed the 14 trillion dollar mark for the first time ever and it is being projected that it will soar well past 15 trillion during 2011.

There are some people that have a hard time really grasping what statistics actually mean. For people like that, often pictures and charts are much more effective. Well, that is one reason I like to include pictures and graphs in many of my articles, and below I have posted my favorite chart from this past year. It shows the growth of the U.S. national debt from 1940 until today. I honestly don’t know how anyone can look at this chart and still be convinced that our nation is not headed for a complete financial meltdown….

New World Order Update w Travinyle1 on Freedomizer Radio 1/13/11

FBI Targets Critics Of Government With Home Visits After Arizona Shootings

FBI Targets Critics Of Government With Home Visits After Arizona Shootings

Another victim of the Tucson tragedy – the right to criticize your Congressperson without getting a knock on the door from the feds

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, January 14, 2011

We can add another victim to the Tucson tragedy – the right to criticize government without fear of getting a knock on your door from the feds. Despite the fact that shooter Jared Loughner was not politically motivated, the FBI is now compiling a list of Americans deemed a potential threat because they criticized their representative – and targeting them with home visits.

An Ozark man who ran a blog last year critical of Republican Congressman Billy Long was shocked to see an FBI agent turn up on his doorstep asking questions. The agent was accompanied by Green County Sheriff Jim Arnott, who had stepped outside of his jurisdiction to become involved in this act of political repression directed against Clay Bowler, a resident of Christian County.

The FBI agent wanted to know if Bowler was a threat to Long because he had used an Internet blog to highlight claims of cronyism and corruption involving the Congressman before the southwest Missouri election in November, in which Long defeated Democrat Scott Eckersley to replace outgoing Rep. Roy Blunt.

The most heated confrontation Bowler had with Long was when he asked him a question about political donations Long had made. The video clip of the incident shows Bowler calmly asking Long a question as the Congressman walks away. He ran a website called “Long is wrong” in an attempt to prevent Long from being elected last year. The website has since been discontinued and Bowler hasn’t had any contact with Long since September.

Even the FBI agent who visited Bowler had to agree that his actions represented no kind of threat whatsoever.

“I’m not a threat to Billy Long,” Bowler said Thursday. “I find the whole thought very funny, because I’m such an advocate for constitutional rights that I would never do anything that would put in jeopardy those constitutional rights like the Second Amendment.”

In the aftermath of the Tucson tragedy, the father of Christina Green, the 9-year-old girl killed in the massacre, pleaded with the nation that his daughter’s death should not be exploitedas a justification to crush constitutional rights. In addition, it has been confirmed in triplicate thatshooter Jared Loughner was not motivated by politics. Earlier this week one of his closest high school friends told ABC News that Loughner, “Did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn’t listen to political radio. He didn’t take sides. He wasn’t on the left. He wasn’t on the right.”

9/11 Reporter - NJ Burkett The Other Tower Is Gonna Go (WABC7)

US Mint Reports Unprecedented Buying Spree Of Physical Silver

US Mint Reports Unprecedented Buying Spree Of Physical Silver

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Jan 14, 2011

Three days ago we noted that in just the first week of January, the US Mint had sold 2,221,000 ounces of silver “a number which if run-rated would be an absolutely all time monthly record,” A quick glance at the tally today, shows that something very scary is going on. In the subsequent three days, the number has surged by 50% and has hit 3,407,000 ounces of silver! In just the first 12 days of the month we have already surpassed the total monthly sales of 9 separate months of 2010.

And some additional observations on what is becoming a physical buying frenzy fromCoinNews.net:

An increase in 2010 Silver Proof Eagles and record-approaching 2011 Silver Bullion Eagles are the most interesting aspects in the latest US Mint sales report.

The Proof Eagle coins have seen two weekly adjustments since they sold out in late December. The latest brings them up 3,644 to 860,000, which would seem like a natural stopping point. Collectors will have to wait until the July time frame for the 2011 Silver Proof Eagles to make their appearance, according to the US Mint.

Making the Best of Being Unemployed: Andre the Surfer

Biden arrives in Baghdad 'to celebrate'

Biden arrives in Baghdad 'to celebrate'



US Vice President Joe Biden said on Thursday he had come to Baghdad "to help Iraqis celebrate," as he met with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki hours after arriving in the Iraqi capital.

Biden's unannounced tour of world hotspots had previously taken him to Kabul,where he met Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and to Islamabad, where he met with top Pakistani officials.

He landed at Baghdad airport late Wednesday and, according to reporters travelling with him, his first meeting Thursday morning was with the top US commander in Iraq General Lloyd Austin and US ambassador James Jeffrey.

"I'm here to help the Iraqis celebrate the progress they made. They formed a government. And that's a good thing. They have a long way to go," Biden told reporters during a photo-op with the two officials at the US embassy inBaghdad's highly-fortified Green Zone.

He later in the morning went into talks Maliki -- his first meeting with the premier since he began his second term.

Starkly illustrating Biden's comment that there is still progress to be made inIraq, three bombs exploded near mosques in central and northern Baghdadhours after he arrived, killing two people and wounding 13 others, an interior ministry official said.

According to the White House, Biden is also to meet Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Iyad Allawi, the Shiite Muslim who heads the Iraqiya bloc that won the most votes in Iraq's elections last year.

Biden's visit, his seventh to Iraq since January 2009, comes days after radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a potent force in Iraqi politics, exhorted a boisterous crowd to resist the US "occupation" by all means in his first speech since returning home to the holy city of Najaf.

Maliki was approved for a second term by parliament on December 21 along with a national unity cabinet after over nine months of political deadlock.

Though combat operations have officially ended, som

Now 300 dead birds fall from the sky in Alabama (how much longer can scientists keep saying this is normal?)

Now 300 dead birds fall from the sky in Alabama (how much longer can scientists keep saying this is normal?)

UK Daily Mail
Jan 14, 2011

Up to 300 dead birds have been found on the side of an Alabama highway in the latest mass animal death to be reported.

The bodies of the birds, identified as grackles, were found strewn along the I-65 highway.

Grackles have also been found dead in their hundreds recently in Arkansas, Louisiana and Kentucky.

It appears that the birds died of blunt force trauma – possibly from being hit by a truck, wildlife biologist Bill Gates told local news station WAFF.

He drew his conclusion from the feathers scattered across the snow, which was bloody in places.

A collision with a big rig is also believed to be responsible for the deaths of over 100 birds whose bodies were found at the side of a California highway last weekend.

Full article here

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