Sports

The Bengals, in classic fashion, found a way to lose to the Steelers today. I know lots of people found hope with the Bengals last year because Mike Brown loosened his chubby fingers from around the throat this franchise, but anybody who really understood the Bengals, like me, knew it was only temporary. It didn't even last into a second season. Mike is, like he's done for the last 21 years, putting Bungles on the field. Winning sports organizations start with winners at the top therefore the Bengals will never be winners as long as Mike Brown is in charge. Stick to the boycott. It works. Boycott the Bengals. Fire Mike Brown.

Regulation

This report proves that the ground for a principled attack on IP is getting more fertile every day.

Federal Reserve

Is Apple a bubble stock? I think there's a link between the moral breakdown fed by the Fed's easy money policy and the entitlement, selfish, style over substance mentality that Apple has tapped into. But people have been saying Apple is a bubble for a couple of year. I think they were right then and they're right now. The Fed has been inflating a treasury bubble, education bubble, and the Apple bubble.

Norway man sues the state under legal tender laws to pay his bills in cash. This puts the state between it's own rock and it's own hard place. On the one hand, it says bills are legal tender for all payments. On the other, it's trying to outlaw cash to prop up the fractional reserve banking system.

Education

School officials confiscate healthy drink from student, subject him to police interrogation and ultimately suspend him because the drink was in a glass container and they feared it contained alcohol.

"The child’s distraught mother managed to get a meeting with the school’s Vice Principal the next morning who informed her that the Principal had decided to retract the suspension and not pursue the issue further.  The child was then immediately allowed to return to school."

Somebody got to the principal. Too bad. The kid would have been better off home-schooled. Somebody at the school board reminded the principal he was going to lose revenue and possible create another home-schooler. Or maybe someone reminded him he could face lawsuit for the police interrogation with no parent or lawyer present.

Foreign Policy

US officials watched the attack on Benghazi from drones, but chose not to mount a rescue operation.

"The revalations came a day after it emerged that U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens repeatedly pleaded with the State Department to ramp up his security team in Libya -- requests that the Pentagon ultimately denied -- in the weeks, days and hours leading up to the terrorist attack that killed him and three other Americans, newly released cables have revealed.
Stevens, who was killed in the 11 September attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, warned the State Department of a 'security vacuum' in Libya 'that is being exploited by independent actors' in one cable that described rapidly deteriorating security conditions.
'Islamic extremists are able to attack the Red Cross with impunity,' he wrote. 'What we have seen are not random crimes of opportunity but rather targeted discriminate attacks.'"

This is what President Obama has turned Libya into by bombing Qaddafi's government out of power.

"The White House maintained publicly for a week that the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya was a spontaneous mob upset about an anti-Islam video, even though it has now been revealed that they were informed within 24 hours of the attack that it was planned and carried out by militants."

I wonder why they thought they could get away with a cover-up like that. They knew the mainstream media would support them, but they should have realized Republicans and their media wouldn't, and when the people found out, it would backfire on them. One of the big questions I have about this attack is the time. Apparently over 100 militants attacked. They had mortars and RPGs. But they're were only about 10 guys inside, yet every report claims something like this:

"The compound came under heavy mortar and gunfire during the attack, which lasted several hours"

Why would it have lasted several hours? Maybe the attackers were ultra-conservative, but I'm skeptical.

"The briefing from the station chief was written late Wednesday, 12 September and reached intelligence agencies in Washington the next day, intelligence officials said.
Yet on Saturday of that week, briefing points sent by the CIA to Congress said 'demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault.' "

So Petraeus intentionally misinformed Congress as part of the cover-up.

"Thornberry would not confirm the existence of the early CIA report but voiced skepticism over how sure intelligence officials, including CIA Director David Petraeus, seemed of their original account when they briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
'How could they be so certain immediately after such events, I just don't know,'he said. 'That raises suspicions that there was political motivation.'"

I'd say. The article does not tell us why no rescue attempt was mounted. In fact, it never mentions it after the first line. I want to know the answer to that question. If this attack really lasted hours, it might have been successful. Why didn't they at least bomb the attackers? Air support might have repelled them.

War

Pakistani seeks to have US officials arrested for murder via drone attack.

"A damning dossier assembled from exhaustive research into  the strikes’ targets sets out in heartbreaking detail the deaths of teachers, students and Pakistani policemen. It also describes how bereaved relatives are forced to gather their loved ones’ dismembered body parts in the aftermath of strikes."
"According to a report last month by academics at Stanford and New York universities, between 2,562 and 3,325 people have been killed since the strikes in Pakistan began in 2004.
The report said of those, up to  881 were civilians, including 176  children. Only 41 people who had  died had been confirmed as ‘high-value’ terrorist targets."

If you're going to invade a country like Afghanistan and wage war, you have to deny the enemy a safe haven over the border. Of course that risks drawing the neighbor into the war. So the problem is the original war itself. We should get our troops out of Afghanistan.

"I am told the people who push the buttons to  fire the missiles call these strikes “bug-splats”.
‘It is beyond my imagination how they can lack all mercy and compassion, and carry on doing this for years. They are not human beings.’"

Dehumanization of the enemy is a proven tactic of war. Most people don't want to kill others.

Report that Drudge disappeared this article about drone attacks.

Police State

Man put on no fly list for advocating a return to constitutional government.

Description of police state surrounding Romney.

Health Care

Remembering George McGovern for his destructive food guidelines. McGovern supposedly shaped by prairie upbringing. I guess that means a devotion to forcing people to eat grains. He may have been the foreign peace candidate, but he was a big supporter of using violence against Americans. McGovern remembered as a man of principle. If by principle, you mean a man who violence to inflict untold damage on the American people the last 40 years, then I can agree with you.

No science behind McGovern's food guidelines. History of McGovern food pyramid.

"The USDA Food Pyramid has its origins in the practice of agricultural chemistry in the late 1800s. Wilbur Olin Atwater, Ph.D., an agricultural chemist who founded and directed the Office of Experiment Stations (OES) for the USDA, wrote the first dietary guideline. "
"n 1902, Mr. Atwater published a USDA Farmer’s Bulletin which emphasized the importance of variety, proportionality, and moderation in healthful eating in the diets of American males. In his research, he determined that the calorie was a means to measure the efficiency of a diet. He calculated that different types of food produced different amounts of energy, and he stressed the importance of a cheap and efficient diet that included more proteins, beans, and vegetables, and to limit the intake of fat, sugar and other starchy carbohydrates. "

This is just the opposite of government's food pyramid. Eventually McGovern used Ancel Keys corrupt study to promote the grains grown by his cronies.

Global Warming and Energy

Met Office again confirms there's been no global warming for 16 years.

Apparently the dump of iron sulphate by this eco-loon is becoming big news. The articles want us to believe governments are unhappy, but here's the reality:

"John Disney, CEO of the Haida Salmon Restoration Corp. running the experiment, told a media briefing Friday that as many as seven federal departments, including Environment Canada and Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, were aware of the experiment long before the iron was scattered into the sea in July, spawning what is said to be a huge plankton bloom in a patch of ocean about 35,000 square kilometres in size."

This is how government protects our environment, with a wink and look the other way. It sounds very much like he defrauded these tribesmen.

"But Disney vociferously defended both George and the $2.5-million experiment being paid for by the impoverished First Nations community of Old Massett on the north end of Haida Gwaii."

"Old Massett, home to 750 people and with a 70-per-cent unemployment rate, held a vote and agreed to invest $2.5 million in the project.
Councillor Rea continues to support the project, but opposition is widespread in the scientific community and among Haida chiefs.
“The Hereditary Chiefs Council and the Council of the Haida Nation are in no way involved in artificial fertilization through the dumping of iron compounds in the ocean around Haida Gwaii,” says a statement released Thursday by the Council of the Haida Nation. “The consequences of tampering with nature at this scale are not predictable and pose unacceptable risks to the marine environment.”
Old Massett, which Rea says made its own decision to back the project, hopes to recover some of its $2.5-million investment through selling carbon credits for removing carbon from the atmosphere and locking it into the sea."

It would quite the karma comeuppance if Canada or the US extradited to the villagers, but it's unlikely either of those temple's of hubris would allow such a thing.

Here we go again with another meme that weather has become historically bizarre and AGW must be the cause, this time from the UK.

"The driest spring for over a century gave way to the wettest recorded April to June in a dramatic turnaround never documented before.
The scientists said there was no evidence that the weather changes were a result of Man-made climate change."

Then why bring it up? Maybe I'm being overly harsh. This does sound newsworthy, and they did put that line about no evidence of AGW in the second line, not in the last line like they often do. But I'm still skeptical. This sounds like an AGW alarmist wrote the story but a more honest editor demanded the caveat.

Freedom of Speech

ISPs to warn users of illegal downloading of copyrighted material.

Federal Reserve

Both parties agree that neither the Fed nor monetary policy can be mentioned on the campaign trail or in debates because both candidates always work for the bankers.

"Since money is half of every commercial transaction, the failure to address the subject is more than a casual oversight. It means that there is a taboo against addressing 50% of the nation’s economic activity.
The only conclusion that can be drawn from this studious avoidance of monetary policy is that, regardless of the election’s outcome, the fundamental policies that boom and bust the economy will still be decided by the Federal Reserve on behalf of the banking cartel."

Nothing of consequence will change.

Getting your gold out of dodge.

Regulation

The State Department wants to introduce new forms so that will make it virtually impossible for the recipient to obtain a passport.

Freedom of Speech

Kim Dotcom is back in business.

"They’ve been indicted by the U.S. government for conspiracy and briefly thrown in jail, but Kim Dotcom and his partners in the digital storage locker Megaupload have no intention of quitting the online marketplace.
Instead the co-defendants plan to introduce a much-anticipated new technology later this year that will allow users to once again upload, store, and share large data files, albeit by different rules. They revealed details of the new service exclusively to Wired.
They call it Mega and describe it as a unique tool that will solve the liability problems faced by cloud storage services, enhance the privacy rights of internet users, and provide themselves with a simple new business. Meanwhile, critics fear that Mega is simply a revamped version of Megaupload, cleverly designed to skirt the old business’s legal issues without addressing the concerns of Internet piracy."

Good for him.

War

Apparently the US was responsible for Turkish military piracy of a Syrian jet.

"Of course, Turkey was already one of the largest military powers in NATO, and so had a pretty close relationship with the US as it is, but officials now concede that they have been talking with Turkey about the idea of attacking Syria to impose a “no-fly zone.” No decision has been made, and such a move would be an act of war, one likely to spark a major reaction from Russia and China, two close allies of Syria."

Oh my goodness.

Israelis seize ship headed for Gaza. Here's a bizarre line:

""The Navy force operated as planned to guarantee the safety of the soldiers and passengers on the deck. The soldiers did not use force while seizing the ship, and gave the activists food and water," the IDF confirmed."

That's an oxymoron. Of course they used force. That's what seize means.

Theory that either the US or Israel is cyber-attacking US banks in a false flag event and blaming it on Iran make a lot of sense.

"Why would Iran, which wishes to avoid a war, do something that provocative.
But we know that the US and Israel are behind the cyber-weapons like STUXNET, DUQU, FLAME, etc., taht these cyber-weapons were directed against Iran, and that one variant specifically targeted banks in Lebanon and Iran. We also know that the US financial system is stretched to the breaking point, and we know that if the government of either Greece of Spain is driven from office by angry protests, credit default swaps sold by Wall Street against those debts come due, and there is no money to pay the claims. The Euro might even collapse, and that would trigger even more Credit Default Swaps. So the final option, one that strikes me as very likely, is that Israel will take down the US financial computers, and blame it on Iran. This also gets Wall Street and Washington DC off the hook, because now the financial melt-down is an act of war, rather than the result of decades of Wall Street crime and corruption and the predations of Private Central Banks. US banks have already been hit with cyber attacks over the last two weeks, to set the stage. And this would also explain why the US corporate media has paid scant attention to the riots in Spain and Greece so that Americans still dependent on ABCNNBBCBS will remain oblivious to the fact that the Euro is falling apart.
This scenario also explains the testing of means to interfere with DNS to silence websites that may offer opposing interpretations of events (this too will be blamed on Iran).
Such a cyber false-flag also gives the US Government the excuse to take total control of the internet so that those pesky truth-seeking bloggers don’t give the slaves uppity ideas that this is just another war-starting hoax like the attack on the USS Liberty or 9-11."

The US gets a lot of big wins out of this. Iran gets none.

Misc

How actors in the private sector are shutting down scammers by cutting off their funds.

Health Care

Critics call for more FDA oversight of compounding drug producers in the wake of the meningitis outbreak. I'm skeptical. This sounds like a government non-solution to a problem created by government, but I don't know how government created this problem yet. The hint in the article is here:

"Medicare's defenders say the agency may be reluctant to act for a number of reasons. Cutting off compounding pharmacies could aggravate drug shortages. Also it could open Medicare to a political counterattack from industry, even charges of rationing."

So these companies are filling a need that is not filled by Big Pharma.

Judge Napolitano blames the meningitis outbreak on too much regulation.

"It is well known that the state of Masachusetts is the most highly-regulated state in the union, with the government that is most in your face. It has a government that is physically present at the plants of the people and entities that they regulate…I don’t know if they have a person physically present in this facility, but they have the right to do so. So it is obvious that the state cannot keep its people — and others, when [the shots were] shipped outside the state — safe."
"The alternative is to have insurance companies do the regulating because they would be on the hook.Hear me out. When someone is injured because the state drops the ball, the state can’t be sued. when someone is injured because an insurance company drops the ball, the insurance company can be sued. So you darn well believe that they are going to be certain that every batch of chemicals that is mixed in that facility is safe because if it is not, they are going to pay for it."

That's a fine argument, but I bet there's more to it. I bet there was corruption involved.

"The thousands of pharmacies across the country that practice compounding, a method of remixing medicines to cut down on prescription costs, are currently outside of the FDA’s regulatory power. If the FDA had the authority to oversee compounding pharmacies, the agency could ensure that compounded products — like the contaminated steroid shots that were produced in Massachusetts and shipped to over 20 states — adhered to the same safety guidelines they uphold for drug manufacturers’ products. But the pharmaceutical industry has resisted further regulation, even as health advocates have called for increased FDA oversight into a sector of the drug industry they say is ripe for a public health disaster."

FDA regulation is no better than state regulation. Look how deadly Big Pharma has been. Also, heavy regulation drives up the price of drugs. The compounding pharmacy business came into existence to produce lower priced drugs. That's how government created this problem. I still bet there's actual corruption involved.

It looks like the company broke state law.

"Health authorities haven't yet said how they think the medication was contaminated, but they have ruled out other suspects - other products used in administering the shots - and the focus continues to be on that pharmacy, the New England Compounding Center.
Compounding pharmacies traditionally supply products that aren't commercially available, unlike the steroid at issue in the outbreak. And Dr. Madeleine Biondolillo of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health said it appears the company violated state law governing those pharmacies, which aren't supposed to do large-scale production like a drug manufacturer. Instead, they're supposed to produce medication for patient-specific prescriptions, she said."

So the problem isn't a lack of regulations. The problem is the regulations failed. I still bet the regulator was corrupt.

"The fungus is difficult to grow in lab analyses, and health officials on Thursday issued an unusual piece of advice to doctors: If a patient who got the injection starts to develop meningitis symptoms, he or she should be treated, even if testing is negative for the fungus."

"Health officials are hurriedly trying to determine the best way to treat this kind of an illness, and have settled on two very strong anti-fungal medications. Consulting with experts, they're making a best guess as to the dosage and length of time patients will have to be treated."

That doesn't sound promising.

Here are more examples of regulatory failure.

"Officials at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health said NECC was in violation of its license and noted that the company's shipments to other states "bears looking at at a federal level."
Yet the company did not conceal the fact that it was shipping nationwide. The company's website claimed the business was licensed in all 50 states."
"A current employee posted on his online resume that NECC adhered to "USP 797" which is the safety and sterilization standard set by the United States Pharmacopeia that sets standards for pharmacies. Massachusetts is one of 18 states that mandates the 797 standard, according to an expert who advises US Pharmacopeia.."

This just shows again that regulations don't protect us. They make us less safe.

People outside of the western world don't need health insurance because they can buy great health care super cheap.

"The whole experience is also very private. I use an assumed name at the hospital. I’ve never given them any ID. And obviously there’s no insurance company or government agency demanding my records."

That would be awesome.

Politics

Romney risks coming off like a warmonger in the next debate. He's sounded like a warmonger the entire campaign.

More on the neo-con Trotsky connection.

Weirdo Michele Bachmann might lose.

Global Warming and Energy

Some eco-loon dumped a bunch of iron into the ocean to see if it would sequester carbon.

Funny how gasoline prices are coming down right before the election.

"The drop could provide a boost to consumer spending and influence next month's presidential race, where gas prices have been a hot-button issue for much of the campaign. Several battleground states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are enjoying big price drops."

Imagine that.

"Gas prices have remained stubbornly high well past their traditional Memorial Day weekend peak, due largely to supply shortages and refinery woes on the West Coast and Midwest. But with oil inventories rising and production issues ebbing, prices have been easing the past week, a trend likely to accelerate. "This is very much gravity at work,'' Kloza says. "The faster prices soar, the more prone they are to panic sell-offs.""

The refinery problems just happened to get fixed right before the election? That's awful convenient. I don't buy it. The oil price has changed very little over the last quarter. It sounds more like somebody is manipulating the market to me. I bet Obama is releasing oil from the strategic reserve. He did it last year. I imagine he's quietly doing it now and we won't find out about it until after the election. Maybe George Soros or somebody bought up a bunch of futures in the spring and is selling them off now too. I do believe demand is falling because the economy is sinking again.

Here's last week's oil and gas report. According to this inventories, excluding the strategic reserve, are up. Imports are up. Blends are up, meaning that more ethanol is in our gas. The article doesn't provide the status for the strategic reserve. It's like people have been building reserves all summer, during the heavy driving season, which pushes prices up, and now that that season is over, they're reducing reserves, pushing the price down.

Apparently prices are down because the market is expecting Obama to top the strategic reserve.

"The most intriguing aspect of the debate over an upcoming SPR release has gone almost unnoticed. The White House is likely more than happy to have oil traders lose sleep wondering if President Obama will send prices plummeting the next morning. To the extent that this fear can discourage traders from buying oil, the president may have a weak, blunt, but not altogether futile weapon against ever-rising prices that does not require lifting a finger. His decision to tap the reserves last year after Libyan oil production collapsed, even when most analysts did not feel it was justified, signaled to the oil market that the president knows he has some oil in reserve—and he’s not afraid to use it."

Great.

Last year's deadly tornado season was a aberration, not part of a trend.

War

State Department report approved of Benghazi diplomatic security during the US bombing of Libya. So what? The security sucked on 9/11 allowing 100+ armed men to invade and kill four Americans. I don't give a crap about the security and what anybody said about six months before hand. This report is just about confusing the issue.

Tax and Spend

Boortz claims the US spent $1.03 trillion on welfare last year. I wouldn't be surprised.

"For those of you who may be paying attention, that number seems eerily similar to our national deficit.  But that’s not what I’m referring to.  That $1.03 trillion is the amount of money that our government handed out as welfare in 2011 alone.
Now before you get all huffy, let me make sure you understand this: This does not include Social Security or Medicare.  Those are not welfare programs, those are entitlement programs.  You are entitled to that money because you’ve paid into that system.  This $1.03 trillion on welfare spending went toward 83 different means tested federal welfare programs.  That figure represents a 32% increase in welfare spending since 2008."

That sounds like Cloward and Piven to me.

"The Heritage Foundation has another way to try and put this kind of spending into perspective: “If converted to cash, means-tested welfare spending is more than five times the amount needed to eliminate all poverty in the United States"

Don't get me wrong. I understand government creates train wrecks then messes them up. But I'm still skeptical that giving five times the amount needed to eliminate poverty to people in poverty doesn't eliminate poverty. I think the people who made calculation are mistaken.

You know how the PIIGS are dragging the eurozone down, but did you hear how the socialist French government is doing the same?

Food stamp enrollment reaches a new high, just like it has every year Obama has been in office. The problem for conservatives is, this was going up every year Bush was in office too, but you never hear about that in the press because Obama's accomplice press doesn't want to mention the subject at all and Romney's accomplice press doesn't want to mention Bush's record.