GraphOilogy: Chart of the Day

GraphOilogy: Chart of the Day

Information Warfare: Why Arabs Believe In Force Fields

Information Warfare: Why Arabs Believe In Force Fields
This easy acceptance of fantasies is exploited by leaders throughout the Middle East, and the Moslem world in general. Leaders who know better, build on these fantasies as a way to maintain their control over the population. The problem is a dirty little secret in the Moslem world, that leaders and academics don't even like to discuss it openly, much less with infidels. But it is real, and you can read all about it in the local media, or overhear it in the coffee shops.

Donna Brazile wants to ban ignorant bloggers who “bloviate.” � td blog

Donna Brazile wants to ban ignorant bloggers who “bloviate.” � td blog

John Adams:
Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.

Tom Paine 'Tyranny'

CHARMING, JUST CHARMING: "Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value."

Thomas Paine

South African central bank gold sales dry up_English_Xinhua

South African central bank gold sales dry up_English_Xinhua

Gold Shortage??????

Brutally Honest

Brutally Honest

DDT Environmentalism
Environmentalism kills people and on a massive scale. Remember the ban on DDT? It led to the deaths of millions of people and is still killing millions, mostly children, by allowing Malaria to spread like wildfire, all to “protect” the environment. Do environmentalists regret the millions of deaths that have resulted from the ban? No. They still defend it enthusiastically and their impact is devastating. From Project 21:

But during that global war, dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) was dusted on Allied soldiers and tents to prevent malaria. After the war, it stopped a European typhus epidemic. It then helped virtually eradicate malaria in the United States by 1952 and in Europe by 1961. It was also used - often carelessly and in excess - to protect crops against insects.

However, in the midst of these successes, Rachel Carson and the emerging environmental movement concluded that DDT was building up in wildlife, livestock and humans. They said it would result in devastating consequences. Instead of conducting objective, scientific studies to see if DDT was actually harmful, they mounted a worldwide campaign that ultimately caused DDT to be removed even from the malaria control arsenal.

For these Americans and Europeans, seeking this ban imposed no costs. Malaria was largely gone in their countries. When they visit Africa, they stay in five-star hotels, away from mosquitoes. They have bug sprays and medicines to prevent and treat disease. They rarely visit the hospitals or homes where people are suffering and dying or feel the pain of million of poor people whose cause they claim to champion.

Africa essentially became a sacrifice zone where environmental ideologies demand that only politically-correct tools like bed nets be used to prevent the disease that is still the biggest single killer of our children. It is a crime against humanity to ban DDT and leave over 300 million African mothers, fathers and children to suffer every year from acute malaria.

Even today, 65 years after it was first used in disease control, no other chemical works as well for as long or at a lower cost in stopping malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases than DDT. There is no proof that it is harmful to people or animals when used responsibly. That is why hundreds of physicians, clergy and human rights advocates have demanded that it be put back into the malaria control arsenal.

The people who push the global warming scam today have the same ideology as those who pushed the anti-DDT scam in the 80’s. If the global warming crowd gets its way, not only will Africa be devastated, but the United States will as well because Al Gore and his cronies’ anti-global warming initiatives are business killers.

Killers of capitalism. Killers of the poor.

Socialism, Marxism, Communism & Obama

Socialism, Marxism, Communism & Obama

amazin stuff

The Measure of Our Growth and Decay � Already Not Yet

The Measure of Our Growth and Decay � Already Not Yet: "The Measure of Our Growth and Decay
Posted on December 16, 2008 by Peter Cockrell

“If I have observed anything by experience, it is this: a man may take the measure of his growth and decay in grace according to his thoughts and meditations upon the person of Christ, and the glory of Christ’s Kingdom, and of His love.”

- John Owen, quoted in A Puritan Golden Treasury complied by I. D. E"

Alleged Madoff fraud has worldwide exposure - Yahoo! News

Alleged Madoff fraud has worldwide exposure - Yahoo! News: "'I think now it is very difficult for people to invest in things that are meant to be regulated in America, because they haven fallen down in the job,' Nicola Horlick, the manager of Bramdean Alternatives, which has 9 percent of its funds invested in Madoff's scheme, told the British Broadcasting Corp.

'All through the credit crunch this has been apparent,' Horlick added. 'This is the biggest financial scandal, probably, in the history of the markets.'"

Stand to Reason: The Faith of Our Fathers

Stand to Reason: The Faith of Our Fathers

Benjamin Franklin

Even Franklin the deist is equivocal. He was raised in a Puritan family and later adopted then abandoned deism. Though not an orthodox Christian, it was 81-year-old Franklin's emotional call to humble prayer on June 28, 1787, that was the turning point for a hopelessly stalled Convention. James Madison recorded the event in his collection of notes and debates from the Federal Convention. Franklin's appeal contained no less than four direct references to Scripture.

And have we forgotten that powerful Friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance? I have lived, sir, a long time and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings that 'except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.' I firmly believe this and I also believe that without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel.[2]

Three of the four cornerstones of the Constitution--Franklin, Washington, and Madison--were firmly rooted in Christianity. But what about Thomas Jefferson? His signature cannot be found at the end of the Constitution, but his voice permeates the entire document.

(Thomas Jefferson was this kind of man. In Defending the Declaration, legal historian Gary Amos observes, "Jefferson is a notable example of how a man can be influenced by biblical ideas and Christian principles even though he never confessed Jesus Christ as Lord in the evangelical sense.")

Psalm 35:27 Let them shout for joy and rejoice, who favor my

Psalm 35:27 Let them shout for joy and rejoice, who favor my: "Let them shout for joy, and be glad, that favour my righteous cause: yea, let them say continually, Let the LORD be magnified, which hath pleasure in the prosperity of his servant."

AP IMPACT: How Freddie Mac halted regulatory drive - Yahoo! News

AP IMPACT: How Freddie Mac halted regulatory drive - Yahoo! News

Internal Freddie Mac budget records show $11.7 million was paid to 52 outside lobbyists and consultants in 2006. Power brokers such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich were recruited with six-figure contracts. Freddie Mac paid the following amounts to the firms of former Republican lawmakers or ex-GOP staffers in 2006:

_Sen. Alfonse D'Amato of New York, at Park Strategies, $240,000.

_Rep. Vin Weber of Minnesota, at Clark & Weinstock, $360,297.

_Rep. Susan Molinari of New York, at Washington Group, $300,062.

_Susan Hirschmann at Williams & Jensen, former chief of staff to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, $240,790.

Freddie Mac's chairman and chief executive, Dick Syron, and McLoughlin, senior vice president for external relations, used Clark and Weinstock extensively, Weber said in an e-mail Friday.

"I personally met with the CEO several times and with Hollis and his team regularly," Weber said in the e-mail. "Clark and Weinstock worked effectively and intensely for Freddie Mac under Dick Syron and Hollis McLoughlin."

Get Rich Slowly

Get Rich Slowly

For some, charitable giving might seem like the easiest (and first) expense to eliminate. But giving is even more important this year, and I believe you should consider increasing your efforts now instead of cutting back. You don’t need to be wealthy to make a big difference in the life of someone who lives in poverty.

People on the “edges” are impacted more
People who are already struggling are impacted more by rising costs or the loss of income. You might feel like you’re barely making ends meet, but chances are that if you’re reading this, you are not sleeping in the back of a van with your kids (like a family I saw here in Seattle last week), or raising children in a part of the world where clean water and electricity are a distant dream and low-wage work represents your only opportunity to put food on the table.

This economic downturn is global. Around the world, the people who will be affected most are the people who are already struggling to provide the basics for their families, and the most effective way to support these families is through charities that help provide the means for them to lift themselves out of poverty. This is truly a time when every dollar counts.

I have written a lot on my own blog about why it’s important to address global poverty, but here is the short version: the world’s best minds cannot grow and lead the next generation if the hunger and ill-health that go hand in hand with poverty stop them in childhood.

is gold still a safe haven?

is gold still a safe haven?
ngots are just another commodity

It would be hard to imagine a worse run of events for paper money. Investment banks such as Lehman Brothers have drowned in a sea of subprime debt. Building societies such as Bradford & Bingley, once so dull and safe they made fun of it in their ads, have had to be nationalised. In the case of Iceland, a whole country suddenly went pop. So you might think it would have been a great year for the world’s oldest form of money: gold. Fleeing a bankrupt monetary system, investors would seek the security of ingots and krugerrands.

Except, as it happens, they didn’t. Among the many fascinating sub-plots to the credit crunch has been the way the ‘gold bugs’ — as die-hard enthusiasts for the metal are known in the City — have finally been nailed. Gold turns out not to be the ultimate store of value after all. Nor is it a safe haven in times of turmoil. It’s just another commodity, useful for making jewellery and not much else.

Take a look at the way the metal has performed through these turbulent months. When the crunch started in August last year an ounce of gold would have cost you $667. For a few months, admittedly, the gold bugs had something to get excited about. With the financial system starting to creak, gold steadily climbed all the way up to $1,033 an ounce in mid-March. The bugs started working overtime. Two, maybe three thousand dollars seemed possible. Who knows, perhaps the gold standard would be reimposed. All it would take was a nervous breakdown in the money markets.

It didn’t quite work out. On 15 September Lehman went bust, triggering a wave of bank failures around the world. Then countries started to collapse. And gold? Over the course of that tumultuous week, it pushed up from $770 to $928. Since then, however, it has fallen back to $800 again.

In truth, gold has been a poor investment for a long time. As far back as January 1980 it was trading at $850, but by 1985 it had slumped to $284. It didn’t do much during the 1990s, starting the decade at $399 and finishing at $289. Indeed, so poor was its performance that Gordon Brown famously ordered the Bank of England to sell off 395 tonnes of the stuff, for which it got only an average of $275, close to a three-decade low. This decade was a bit better, with a steady climb back towards the $700-800 range (which means the Brown sale lost the taxpayer a notional £4 billion, by the way). Still, the fact remains that gold today isn’t worth any more than it was 30 years ago. Bear in mind also that your ingot has never paid any dividends or interest, and you’ve had to pay someone to look after it. Compared to just about any alternative, it’s been a rotten investment.

Okay, say the bugs. Thirty years is nothing. Over thousands of years gold has been the world’s most reliable store of value. At some point (as Jonathan Ruffer argues opposite) the conjuring trick of paper money will collapse — and gold may be the only thing worth owning. Larry Edelson, an American financial pundit and über gold bull, predicts, for example, that a return to the gold standard would push the price to $53,000 an ounce.

Which would be nice for small investors who’ve piled into the metal. BullionVault, a website that allows private investors to buy and sell physical gold, has trebled the number of accounts it holds in the last year. The World Gold Council reports that demand from retail investors buying gold bars or gold funds rose 56 per cent in the latest quarter. The trouble is, as they so often do, private investors have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. In fact, gold is steadily losing safe-haven status. After Richard Nixon ended the last formal link between the dollar and gold in 1971, the metal still had some support. In the global recession from November 1973 to March 1975, gold rose by 78 per cent; it spiked again in 1979-80; but in the downturns of the early 1990s and early 2000s it hardly moved at all.

Other safe havens have done much better. Government bonds have gone up — foreigners have been pumping $1.5 trillion a week into US Treasury bills since the start of the crunch. So has the Swiss franc, a traditional financial port in monetary storms. Some new safe havens may be emerging: intriguingly, the Israeli shekel has risen strongly, and Merrill Lynch now describes it as among the world’s safest assets. But not gold. It went up in price during this decade in line with the commodity boom. When that burst, it headed down again. What’s happening on the money markets no longer makes much difference. Gold rises and falls with oil, copper and wheat, and all the other things that get turned into stuff in factories. It is still a useful metal. But it is not money — and after its failure to rally in this crisis, even the most dogmatic gold bug may well have to admit that.

BizzyBlog

BizzyBlog

Unemployment!

Nancy, Barry, and Harry must be so proud. It’s simply amazing what promising to choke off a country’s energy supplies (all three of them did so in June), promising to radically raise taxes (Obama did, and the others have been on board, for at least 18 months before the presidential election), and having a decades-in-the-making wreck of the housing and mortgage-lending industries come to a head (a Democratic Party group effort going back to the late 1970s) can do.

Never forget this: They broke it.

Now let’s see if they can fix it.

Econbrowser: The Employment Situation in Pictures

Econbrowser: The Employment Situation in Pictures: "he Employment Situation in Pictures"

You, too, can arbitrage the premium-midgrade-regular gasoline price spread - Knowledge Problem

You, too, can arbitrage the premium-midgrade-regular gasoline price spread - Knowledge Problem

Atlas Shrugs: HOW COULD STANLEY ANN DUNHAM HAVE DELIVERED BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA JR. IN AUGUST OF 1961 IN HONOLULU, WHEN OFFICIAL UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON RECORDS SHOW HER 2680 MILES AWAY IN SEATTLE ATTENDING CLASSES THAT SAME MONTH?

Atlas Shrugs: HOW COULD STANLEY ANN DUNHAM HAVE DELIVERED BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA JR. IN AUGUST OF 1961 IN HONOLULU, WHEN OFFICIAL UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON RECORDS SHOW HER 2680 MILES AWAY IN SEATTLE ATTENDING CLASSES THAT SAME MONTH?

Hypothetical solution to the delimma

Mega-Bear Comparisons

Mega-Bear Comparisons

http://dshort.com/charts/mega-bear-comparisons.html?mega-bear-quartet-extended

Comparison of curves of crashes of stock market.

Moonbattery: Bailed Out Banks Paid Slick Willie $Millions for Speeches

Moonbattery: Bailed Out Banks Paid Slick Willie $Millions for Speeches

Four major banks, including one that collapsed, two that received federal bailout money and one that filed for bankruptcy this past September, paid former President Clinton $2.1 million for 13 speeches he delivered on their behalf between 2004-2007, according to Senate financial disclosure statements filed by Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.).

Citigroup paid Bill Clinton $700,000; Goldman Sachs paid $950,000; Lehman Brothers paid $300,000 and Merrill Lynch paid $175,000 to the former president for speeches during that time period. Sen. Clinton's 2008 financial disclosure reports are not yet available.