Happy Birthday America!

The 4^th of July is known as Independence Day, not Dependence Day. This is a day we celebrate the Declaration of Independence … proclaiming our independence from Great Britain and the heavy-handed governance King George was inflicting on the colonies. Now we have turned near half of the voters in this country not only supporting, but celebrating another ruler (his words, not mine) who governs with every bit the heavy handedness of the British King we fought for liberty 236 year ago.

My beef with the 4^th of July is that so many of the people who go to such great lengths to celebrate this holiday – perhaps even a majority – are much more tuned in to dependence rather than independence, and security rather than freedom. There’s a reason the word “security” beats “freedom” by a 9:1 margin in presidential speeches.

So you believe in freedom? You’re waving sparklers and flags on the 4^th? Tell me, do you want to be free to make arrangements for your own medical care in a free market environment? No? I didn’t think so. After all, your health care is your employer’s responsibility, isn’t it? You love freedom, yet you think that you have a “right to health care? Tell me, just how are you going to get that health care without some individual either providing services or materials. You have a “right” to those things though  right? Tell me, freedom lover, just how much of that person’s life or property do you have a “right” to?

So you believe in freedom? What did you think about George W. Bush’s idea on partial Social Security privatization? He wanted to take about 2% of the 14% you have yanked out of your earnings for Social Security, and allow you to invest that 2% on your own. The account would have been yours, and you could have passed it on to your spawn when you took the eternal celestial dirt nap! Did you like that idea? No? Wassamatta?  Too chancy for you?  Too much freedom at the expense of your security?

I could go on with this rant but you get the point. By and large Americans are MUCH MORE in love with the idea of government-provided security than they are with government-protected liberty. And these people will be out there tomorrow watching the fireworks and waving their flags.

Know what? Here’s an idea. We actually need two American Flags. We need one for people who value freedom over security, and the other for people who, as Obama said, look at the federal government as their parents. Hey Papa Obama, Mama Michelle! What’s for dinner? Will you come tuck me in?

Neiman Marcus Inc.

See they have filed for another IPO.  Guess they think they can do it all over again.

I hope prospective speculators in this company look and see what happened the first time around.  Ugly.

Call any syndicate desk and ask for 10,000 shares of NEEDLESS MARKUP.   Bet you a C-note they will know what company you mean.

Twisted logic, par for Schumer and the Rube........

MSM boobs currently destroying Paula Deen over the use of an n-bomb 20 years ago (rules to live by, Paula: pull a Bill Clinton, never admit anything, never apologize) while the Cuban connections in the offices of Schumer and Rubio, who built the immigration bill, are singlehandedly insulting an entire race of people over their alleged work habits.   How can Schumer even look in the mirror?   Hideous.

This smells nearly as bad as ObamaCare.  Whoops,  my bad, it doesn't.

Government at work...........

The Pentagon in recent months has delayed, or released at night, or denied all together reports that might make the brass turn red in the face.

Consider some recent examples:

• Last week, the Pentagon inspector general released more than a year after its completion a highly redacted probe of the West Point Superintendent. It found that Lt. Gen. David Huntoon had improperly used his aides to staff private charity events, feed a friend's cats and provide driver's lessons. He agreed to reimburse the employees more than $1,800.
The report, which had been sought by the Washington Post and other news organizations, was completed in May 2012. It was released last week after West Point's graduation ceremony and weeks before Huntoon's retirement. The majority of it has been blacked out.
• Earlier this month, the Pentagon waited until late on a Friday night to announce that the Army's top commander in Japan, Maj. Gen. Michael Harrison, had been suspended for failing to properly investigate an allegation of sexual assault against one of his top aides. Its release, intended or not, came when most reporters had finished working for the week and ensured that it wouldn't get much attention.
It also came within days of his scheduled move to a new assignment.
• An ongoing issue involves John Allen, the recently retired Marine general who was entangled in the adultery scandal that forced David Petraeus to retire as CIA director. Allen, who had led all allied forces in Afghanistan, had been tapped by President Obama to become NATO's top commander.

At issue were emails Allen had sent to Jill Kelley, the Tampa socialite whose complaints to the FBI about harassment from Petraeus' mistress, Paula Broadwell, made the affair public. The FBI referred the emails to the Pentagon inspector general to determine if there had been any wrongdoing on Allen's part.

After weeks of investigation, the inspector general determined that Allen had done nothing wrong, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little announced in January. Little went on to say that then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta "was pleased to learn that allegations of professional misconduct were not substantiated by the investigation."
Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a non-partisan watchdog group, questioned how objectivity of the Pentagon's Inspector General.

"The mere fact that they're withholding it raises questions about the legitimacy of the investigation," she said.

Yet the Pentagon continues to refuse requests by USA TODAY and other media outlets, under the Freedom of Information Act, to release the 21-page report, or a summary of the findings that it says clear Allen.

Jeanne Miller, the chief of the inspector general's Freedom of Information and Privacy Office, wrote to USA TODAY that its release "would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."

The Pentagon's message: Move along. Nothing to see here. Take our word for it.

On Monday, June 24, 2013

If you want to buy a house and you need a conventional mortgage, and if you are not a speculator and want to live in the home,  your financing costs have now risen substantially. 

Never forget...........

My father retired from the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Crow Agency, MT in 1985 and as a kid I spent a fair amount of time at the Battlefield as Crow Agency adjoins the Custer Battlefield monument.

The lesson here is that when you chase returns in markets you aren’t familiar with or chase Indians in country you don’t know very well there is a good chance one can get hurt. Quick and seriously. Stick with what you know and when it looks like you are out-manned, cut your losses and run. Living to fight another day is paramount.

Julian Assange talking some straight..................

"It is getting to the point where the mark of international distinction and service to humanity is no longer the Nobel Peace Prize, but an espionage indictment from the US Department of Justice."

Your money, you should care (IF you pay taxes)

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

Why did the U.S. government spend 2.6 million dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly? Why did the U.S. government spend $175,587 "to determine if cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior"? Why did the U.S. government spend nearly a million dollars on a new soccer field for detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay? This week when I saw that the IRS was about to pay out 70 million dollars in bonuses to their employees and that the U.S. government was going to be leaving 7 billion dollars worth of military equipment behind in Afghanistan, it caused me to reflect on all of the other crazy ways that the government has been wasting our money in recent years. So I decided to go back through my previous articles and put together a list. I call it "The Waste List".

Even though our politicians insist that there is very little that can still be cut out of the budget, the truth is that the federal budget is absolutely drowning in pork. The following are 66 crazy ways that the U.S. government is wasting your hard-earned money...

#1 The IRS is about to pay out 70 million dollars in bonuses to employees even though discretionary bonuses are supposed to be cancelled due to the sequester.

#2 According to the Washington Post, the U.S. government is going to leave 7 billion dollars worth of military equipment behind in Afghanistan.

#3 It is being projected that the trip that the Obamas will be making to Africa will cost U.S. taxpayers $100,000,000.

#4 The NIH plans to spend $509,840 on a study that "will send text messages in 'gay lingo' to methamphetamine addicts to try to persuade them to use fewer drugs and more condoms."

#5 The National Science Foundation has given $384,949 to Yale University to do a study on “Sexual Conflict, Social Behavior and the Evolution of Waterfowl Genitalia”. Try not to laugh, but much of this research involves examining and measuring the reproductive organs of male ducks.

#6 The IRS spent $60,000 on a film parody of “Star Trek” and a film parody of “Gilligan’s Island”. Internal Revenue Service employees were the actors in the two parodies, so as you can imagine the acting was really bad.

#7 The NIH has given $1.5 million to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts to study why “three-quarters” of lesbians in the United States are overweight and why most gay males are not.

#8 The NIH has also spent $2.7 million to study why lesbians have more “vulnerability to hazardous drinking”.

#9 The U.S. government is giving sixteen F-16s and 200 Abrams tanks to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt even though the new president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi (a member of the Muslim Brotherhood), constantly makes statements such as the following…

“Dear brothers, we must not forget to nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred towards those Zionists and Jews, and all those who support them”

#10 During 2012, the salaries of Barack Obama’s three climate change advisers combined came to a grand total of more than $370,000.

#11 Overall, 139 different White House staffers were making at least $100,000 during 2012, and there were 20 staffers that made the maximum of $172,200.

#12 Amazingly, U.S. taxpayers spend more than 1.4 billion dollars a year on the Obamas. Meanwhile, British taxpayers only spend about 58 million dollars on the entire royal family.

#13 During 2012, $25,000 of federal money was spent on a promotional tour for the Alabama Watermelon Queen.

#14 The U.S. government spent $505,000 “to promote specialty hair and beauty products for cats and dogs” in 2012.

#15 NASA spends close to a million dollars a year developing a menu of food for a manned mission to Mars even though it is being projected that a manned mission to Mars is still decades away.

#16 During 2012, the federal government spent 15 million dollars to help the Russians recruit nuclear scientists.

#17 Over the past 15 years, a total of approximately $5.25 million has been spent on hair care services for the U.S. Senate.

#18 The U.S. government spent 27 million dollars to teach Moroccans how to design and make pottery in 2012.

#19 At a time when we have an epidemic of unemployment in the United States, the U.S. Department of Education is spending $1.3 million to “reduce linguistic, academic, and employment barriers for skilled and low-skilled immigrants and refugees, and to integrate them into the U.S. workforce and professions.”

#20 The federal government still sends about 20 million dollars a year to the surviving family members of veterans of World War I, even though World War I ended 94 years ago.

#21 The U.S. government is spending approximately 3.6 million dollars a year to support the lavish lifestyles of former presidents such as George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

#22 During fiscal 2012, the National Science Foundation gave researchers at Purdue University $350,000. They used part of that money to help fund a study that discovered that if golfers imagine that a hole is bigger it will help them with their putting.

#23 The U.S. government is giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the Palestinian Authority every single year.

#24 Federal agencies have purchased a total of approximately 2 billion rounds of ammunition over the past couple of years. It is claimed that all of this ammunition is needed for “training purposes”.

#25 During 2012, the National Science Foundation spent $516,000 on the creation of a video game called “Prom Week” which apparently simulates “all the social interactions of the event.”

#26 If you can believe it, $10,000 of U.S. taxpayer money was actually used to purchase talking urinal cakes up in Michigan.

#27 When Joe Biden and his staff took a trip to London, the hotel bill cost U.S. taxpayers $459,388.65.

#28 Joe Biden and his staff also stopped in Paris for one night. The hotel bill for that one night came to $585,000.50.

#29 If you can believe it, close to 15,000 retired federal employees are currently collecting federal pensions for life worth at least $100,000 annually. That list includes such names as Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Trent Lott, Dick Gephardt and Dick Cheney.

#30 The U.S. Department of Agriculture has spent $300,000 to encourage Americans to eat caviar.

#31 The National Institutes of Health recently gave $666,905 to a group of researchers that is conducting a study on the benefits of watching reruns on television.

#32 The National Science Foundation has given 1.2 million dollars to a team of “scientists” that is spending part of that money on a study that is seeking to determine whether elderly Americans would benefit from playing World of Warcraft or not.

#33 The National Institutes of Health recently gave $548,731 to a team of researchers that concluded that those that drink heavily in their thirties also tend to feel more immature.

#34 The National Science Foundation recently spent $30,000 on a study to determine if “gaydar” actually exists. This is the conclusion that the researchers reached at the end of the study….

“Gaydar is indeed real and… its accuracy is driven by sensitivity to individual facial features”

#35 In 2011, the National Institutes of Health spent $592,527 on a study that sought to figure out once and for all why chimpanzees throw poop.

#36 The National Institutes of Health has spent more than 5 million dollars on a website called Sexpulse that is targeted at “men who use the Internet to seek sex with men”. According to Fox News, the website “includes pornographic images of homosexual sex as well as naked and scantily clad men” and features “a Space Invaders-style interactive game that uses a penis-shaped blaster to shoot down gay epithets.”

#37 The General Services Administration spent $822,751 on a “training conference” for 300 west coast employees at the M Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. The following is how the Washington Post described some of the wasteful expenses that happened during this “conference”…

Among the “excessive, wasteful and in some cases impermissable” spending the inspector general documented: $5,600 for three semi-private catered in-room parties and $44 per person daily breakfasts; $75,000 for a “team-building” exercise — the goal was to build a bicycle; $146,000 on catered food and drinks; and $6,325 on commemorative coins in velvet boxes to reward all participants for their work on stimulus projects. The $31,208 “networking” reception featured a $19-per-person artisanal cheese display and $7,000 of sushi. At the conference’s closing-night dinner, employees received “yearbooks” with their pictures, at a cost of $8,130.

You can see some stunning pictures of GSA employees living the high life in Las Vegas right here.

#38 Do you remember when credit rating agency Egan Jones downgraded U.S. government debt from AA+ to AA? Well, someone in the federal government apparently did not like that at all. According to Zero Hedge, the SEC planned to file charges against Egan Jones for “misstatements” on a regulatory application with the SEC.

Normally, the SEC does not go after anyone. After all, when is the last time a major banker went to prison?

No, the truth is that the SEC is usually just a huge waste of taxpayer money. According to ABC News, one investigation found that 17 senior SEC officials had been regularly viewing pornography while at work. While the American people were paying their salaries, this is what senior SEC officials were busy doing…

One senior attorney at SEC headquarters in Washington spent up to eight hours a day accessing Internet porn, according to the report, which has yet to be released. When he filled all the space on his government computer with pornographic images, he downloaded more to CDs and DVDs that accumulated in boxes in his offices.
An SEC accountant attempted to access porn websites 1,800 times in a two-week period and had 600 pornographic images on her computer hard drive.
Another SEC accountant used his SEC-issued computer to upload his own sexually explicit videos onto porn websites he joined.
And another SEC accountant attempted to access porn sites 16,000 times in a single month.

#39 According to InformationWeek, the federal government is spending “millions of dollars” to train Asian call center workers.

#40 If you can believe it, the federal government has actually spent $750,000 on a new soccer field for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.

#41 The U.S. Agency for International Development spent 10 million dollars to create a version of “Sesame Street” for Pakistani television.

#42 The Obama administration has plans to spend between 16 and 20 million dollars to help students from Indonesia get master’s degrees.

#43 The National Science Foundation spent $198,000 on a University of California-Riverside study that explored “motivations, expectations and goal pursuit in social media.” One of the questions the study sought an answer to was the following: “Do unhappy people spend more time on Twitter or Facebook?”

#44 In 2011, $147,138 was given to the American Museum of Magic in Marshall, Michigan. Their best magic trick is making U.S. taxpayer dollars disappear.

#45 The federal government recently spent $74,000 to help Michigan “increase awareness about the role Michigan plays in the production of trees and poinsettias.”

#46 In 2011, the federal government gave $550,000 toward the making of a documentary about how rock and roll contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union.

#47 The National Institutes of Health has contributed $55,382 toward a study of “hookah smoking habits” in the country of Jordan.

#48 The federal government gave $606,000 to researchers at Columbia University to study how heterosexuals use the Internet to find love.

#49 A total of $133,277 was recently given to the International Center for the History of Electronic Games for video game preservation. The International Center for the History of Electronic Games says that it “collects, studies, and interprets video games, other electronic games, and related materials and the ways in which electronic games are changing how people play, learn, and connect with each other, including across boundaries of culture and geography.”

#50 The federal government has given approximately $3 million to researchers at the University of California at Irvine to fund their "research" into video games such as World of Warcraft.

#51 In 2011, the National Science Foundation gave one team of researchers $149,990 to create a video game called “RapidGuppy” for cell phones and other mobile devices.

#52 In 2011, $936,818 was spent developing an online soap opera entitled “Diary of a Single Mom”. The show “chronicles the lives and challenges of three single mothers and their families trying to get ahead despite obstacles that all single mothers face, such as childcare, healthcare, education, and finances.”

#53 Last year, the federal government spent $96,000 to buy iPads for kindergarten students in Maine.

#54 The U.S. Postal Service once spent $13,500 for a single dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.

#55 In 2011, the Air Force Academy completed work on an outdoor worship area for pagans and Wiccans. The worship area consists of “a small Stonehenge-like circle of boulders with [a] propane fire pit” and it cost $51,474 to build. The worship area is “for the handful of current or future cadets whose religions fall under the broad category of ‘Earth-based’, which includes Wiccans, druids and pagans.” At this point, that only includes 3 current students at the Air Force Academy.

#56 The National Institutes of Health once gave researchers $400,000 to study why gay men in Argentina engage in risky sexual behavior when they are drunk.

#57 The National Institutes of Health once gave researchers $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.

#58 The National Institutes of Health once spent $800,000 in “stimulus funds” to study the impact of a “genital-washing program” on men in South Africa.

#59 The National Science Foundation recently spent $200,000 on a study that examined how voters react when politicians change their stances on climate change.

#60 The federal government recently spent $484,000 to help build a Mellow Mushroom pizzeria in Arlington, Texas.

#61 At this point, China is holding over a trillion dollars of U.S. government debt. But that didn’t stop the United States from sending 17.8 million dollars in foreign aid to China in 2011.

#62 The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave the largest snack food maker in the world (PepsiCo Inc.) a total of 1.3 million dollars in corporate welfare that was used to help build "a Greek yogurt factory in New York."

#63 The National Science Foundation recently gave a whopping $697,177 to a New York City-based theater company to produce a musical about climate change.

#64 The federal government once shelled out $2.6 million to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly.

#65 The U.S. Department of Agriculture once handed researchers at the University of New Hampshire $700,000 to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows.

#66 The federal government has spent $175,587 "to determine if cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior".

Drug testing food stamp applicants?

The House bill would have cut projected spending in farm and nutrition programs by nearly $40 billion over the next 10 years. Just over half, $20.5 billion, would come from cuts to the food stamp program, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
      

The House bill, like the Senate’s, would have eliminated the $5 billion-a-year subsidies paid to farmers and landowners whether they plant crops or not. The billions of dollars saved would be directed into the $9 billion crop insurance program, and new subsidies would be created for peanut, cotton and rice farmers. The bill adds money to support fruit and vegetable growers, and it restores insurance programs for livestock producers, which expired in 2011, leaving thousands of operations without disaster coverage during last year’s drought.

      

Not surprisingly, the nearly $75-billion food stamp program was the focus of most of the farm bill debate. Democrats, led by Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, said that the cuts to the program were too steep and introduced an amendment that would scale them back by cutting funds for crop insurance. Lawmakers rejected the amendment, 234 to 188.

      

The lawmakers did pass two amendments, one to allow states to drug test food stamp applicants, and the other to require food stamp recipients to meet federal welfare work requirements.

Stock Market hit today.............

The shitstorm cometh!!!!

Allen West

#NativeAmericansforAllenWest

Jordan Parisian Runnin for Bass on Lake Lanier

Can Rahm get guns under control?

NUMBER OF HOMICIDES IN CHICAGO IN 2011
441

NUMBER OF HOMICIDES IN CHICAGO IN 2012
535

NUMBER OF HOMICIDES IN CHICAGO AS OF
June 10, 2013

164

NUMBER OF PEOPLE SHOT IN CHICAGO IN 2011
2,217

NUMBER OF PEOPLE SHOT IN CHICAGO AS IN 2012
2,670

NUMBER OF PEOPLE SHOT IN CHICAGO AS OF May 15, 2013

666

Pamelot at Trappers Run

Fathers Day

I learned long, long ago I chose great parents.   Dad loved to eat fresh fish!. 

Our first elk hunt together in the Montana Big Horns on the Crow Reservation.

Dad always tried to get us into the rough stuff.   He did good.

Dad seldom, very seldom ever missed what he was shooting at.   This wasn't his day.

His last deer at over 250 yards.  Great shot Dad!  Montana,  1992. 

Dad loved gunning for waterfowl.  His way.  Dad and Ken Cruse, Morris, MN

It was our biggest harvest.  Getting it done,  South Dakota,  1972

 

Thank you Dad! 

 

Zero Hedge, PRICELESS!

One of the greatest communities I have had the good fortune to be a part of is the gang at Zero Hedge.   I am proud to call some of the crew my friend.    It's a rough and tumble world and the wonderful team that runs the site, whoever they are and whereever they are, should be in line for a Pulitzer.

They dug this up on the Kenyan.  Priceless.  Check it out. 

Who said it?

Drunk on BEER in Pine Ridge

White Clay, Nebraska is just over the state line, a couple miles south of Pine Ridge Village on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. I lived in Pine Ridge for almost 3 years when in high school. White Clay is a small town of 14 people, but sells almost five million cans of 12 oz. beer annually to residents of the Pine Ridge reservation.

In the 40 years since I was attending Oglala Community High School nothing has changed. The cycle of poverty, government dependancy and lack of moral courage is obvious to all.

The question is very simple, so simple in fact that it’s almost universally rejected as simplistic. How bad does Pine Ridge want change? How tired are Ridgers of their own personal insanity, not to mention everyone else around them? How desperate are they to push through the pain to the other side? Only they can answer these questions. Not you, not I.

The active ingredient in this recipe is the will and desire to change. And the change must start within, in first recognizing their own capacity for personal change, which leads to larger and more permanent cultural change. This will be extremely painful no matter what. I wish Pine Ridgers the best in their vote to allow alcohol to be sold on the reservation. I wish them more success in the populace entering treatment programs who need it. May some day the cycle be broken. I hope it is in my lifetime.

 

Syria, Obama and Snowden

What comes after George Bush and George Bush Jr.? Must be George Bush the Third, only this time armed with a Nobel peace prize. Seriously, are they that stupid to think they can rerun the entire Iraq invasion scenario without changing anything? And is the US public really that dumb to let it slide? And how many Syrian citizens and US soldiers have to die in what is the most glaring instance in the past decade of a wag the dog-type distraction from on onslaught of domestic administration scandals?

Can you hear the French and the Brits?  Think the IDF has a plan?

It's all about the money folks.  The natural gas for Qatar, the US military industrial complex,  defense spending (lobbyists) and as we all know, anything, absolutely anything to straighten out the domestic issues facing the White House these days.

I reckon the community organizer has gotten in over his head.   This ought to get good.  I wish all the best to Mr. Snowden.   Chairman Mike Rogers of Michigan sounds like an idiot on speaking about Mr. Snowden tonight.  For God's sake,  who would risk the death penalty or life in prison in order to inflate their resume? Who are you going to believe, a whistle blower  dropout or a Congressman?  So, the NSA hires flunkies and dropouts?   There are over 1 million with top security clearance. That's one million who understand the corruption going on. 

Here is a few noteworthy high school drop outs.

Princess Diana dropped out of school at 16.

Thomas Edison had only three months of formal school. He was then home schooled by his mother.

Benjamin Franklin. He spent two years at the Boston Latin School before dropping out at age ten and going to work for his father, and then his brother, as a printer.

Albert Einstein dropped out of high school at age 15. Deciding to continue his education a year later, Einstein took the entrance exam to the prestigious Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, but failed.

John D. Rockefeller, Sr. dropped out of high school two months before graduation.

Walt Disney dropped out of high school at age 16. He received an honorary high school diploma at age 58.

Sir Richard Branson quit school at age 16.

George Burns left school in the fourth grade to go to work shining shoes.

Colonel Harland Sanders dropped out of elementary school.

Charles Dickens left school at age 12 and began working ten-hour days in a boot-blacking factory after his father was imprisoned for Debt.

Elton John dropped out of school at 16.

Ray Kroc dropped out of high school at age 15.

Ehrich Weiss (aka Harry Houdini) dropped out of school at age 12.

Ringo Starr dropped out of school at 15.

Peter Jennings dropped out of high school at 16.

Dave Thomas dropped out of high school at 15.

Orville Wright dropped out of high school at 15.

and there's plenty more where these came from.....

Bill Clinton

Jennifer and Paula surely thought he was quite an athlete.

If there was a 100  yard dash for an intern my money would have been on Bill.

 

Huffington Post

Could there be a supposed "news" source that is worse?

I often wonder if Ted Turner has had a good nights sleep since the AOL/Time Warner deal was inked.

Steve Case had the last laugh.   A big one.

The Low Information Voting SHEEPLE

In what is likely the most disappointing, if not unexpected, news of the day, we find that according to a just released Pew Research study, a substantial majority, or 56% of Americans, "say the National Security Agency’s (NSA) program tracking the telephone records of millions of Americans is an acceptable way for the government to investigate terrorism." Only 41% object to having every phone conversation intercepted, investigated, analyzed, and recorded for posterity. Sorry Edward Snowden: you just threw your life away for nothing.

The sheep have been properly and thoroughly conditioned and brainwashed, which is why they continue to get precisely the government they so rightfully deserve.

Wild America

June 9, 2011

It's been a couple of years Dad.   I miss you.  We miss you.  Many miss you.

Thank you for your effort, courage, humor and style.  It was a good run all things considered.

Douglas Eugene Parisian.

12-27-1922.

6-11-2011.

I love you.  Give Mom my best.

Douglas retired from the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a Criminal Investigator in 1985 in Crow Agency, Montana and spent his retirement years in Spicer, Minnesota up until April of 2010 when he moved back to Waubun, Minn., the town where he was born and raised on the White Earth Indian Reservation.

Doug was an avid golfer, cherished his association with the Kandiyohi County Historical Society and enjoyed ice fishing and hunting. He enjoyed making Native American cultural crafts and was a talented artist in making porcupine quill chokers, dreamcatchers and totems.

Doug married Betty Dorene Marquart in 1951. His wife, Betty passed away in March of 1999 after a prolonged illness. He was proceded in death by his parents Victor and Josephine Parisian, sisters, Doris Rodwell and Alyce Mae Krueger, and brother, Leonard Parisian. His younger brother Jack Parisian resides in Minnesota.

I admired my father more than any other person on this planet; not for being a Law Enforcement Officer, not for being a tough guy. I admired my father for his ambition. For 20 years he went to work every day and usually was the first guy in the office. He wanted our family to have everything we needed and most of what we wanted.

Dad accepted the inevitability of death with integrity. Most Indians have a strong and natural veneration for old age, as though it were a certificate of approval for winning the long and hard battle of life. In March of 2011 he said that dying was a natural extension of birth, that it was part and parcel, that they went together and that he looked forward to seeing his wife, Betty, in Heaven.

Dad, you were always there for me and you will be missed tremendously. I attribute much of your success in life to your ability to maintain an elevated mood and staying disciplined. You always knew where you stood and you stood there. You taught me well and I will do my best to honor your memory for the rest of my life. In death, as in life, you were a winner. God Bless Douglas Eugene Parisian.

Dean Parisian, June 9, 2011.

STOCK MARKET RALLY

Who would ever believe that you have a couple of titans in American finance, Dr. Alan Greenspan and the former NYSE chief Dickie Grasso come on CNBC and both announce a shit show of errors facing the American investing public and the market rally on a jobs report that showed 122,000 16 to 19 year olds gaining summer employment?   What a country eh?

As well, the number of American households on foodstamps, which rose to a new all time high of 23,116,441 (each collecting an average of $274.30 per month) that perfectly explained the Dow Jones' 200 point surge higher: the transfer of wealth from the poor and middle-classes to the 1% continues without a hiccup.

"1984" update

As of this moment, Obama is making the case that the US government is not eavesdropping on phone calls. Specifically, he said "nobody is listening to your phone calls - they are just looking at phone numbers and duration of calls" and concluded that the NSA was only engaged in "modest encroachments." It was unclear if that clarification was meant to put to rest fears that Big Brother has made personal privacy a thing of the past. He further went on to add that the telephone surveillance program is fully vetted by Congress and supervised by the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA). In other words: Obama is making the case that the NSA's Big Brother supervision is perfectly legal and not only that, there are checks and balances and neither the telephonic snooping nor the internet supervision is anything to be concerned about.

There is one problem: Obama is lying.

Brookshade HOA SCAM Alert

On Thursday, June 6 I left my residence at 801 N. Brookshade Parkway at 10 a.m.

Returning at approximately 1:35 pm I found that someone had spread some bales of pine straw in my flower beds on both sides of the driveway. We had not requested anyone to do so. About 10 minutes after getting home our home phone rang. The caller, Scott Williams, said he was due money for the delivery of 150 bales of pine straw that he delivered to my home.  He said that a "landscaper" had called him and requested he deliver to my address. He furnished me a phone number of the said landscaper but no name. I then called the number that  SCOTT WILLIAMS had given to me for this nonexistent landscaper and though never got a name the person I spoke with stated unequivocally he did not know me nor was he in the landscaping business and that he had no knowledge of a Scott Williams who was in the pine straw business. My landscape firm is Red White & Reeled and I have never bought pine straw from them.

I than returned another call to the SCAMMER. His name is SCOTT WILLIAMS.   He is a black man and was accompanied by another black man during the delivery.  His cell phone number is 678-510-8850.

Scott Williams, Officer Bradshaw of the Milton Police Department wants to talk to you.  Please give him a call.  The rest of the fine officers of the Milton Police Department would like to speak to you as well. 

Googling the phone number gave me enough to rush to the MILTON Police Department to file a complaint. Not only did Mr. Williams threaten me with a mechanics lien on my property if I didn't' pay today he said he would also file suit against my wife Pam and my youngest child, Jordan. He also stated that his employees would be coming by my home today and they would demand to get paid. He said that the name of his company was "Worldwide Services".

He was very aggressive with me on the telephone.  I told him I was going to be on the phone to my attorney after hanging up and that my next move would be to go to the Milton Police Department. I was upset that he knew the name of my wife and child.  It is my belief that he got the names out of my mailbox.   I was very satisfied with the timely response of the Milton PD and their attention to this matter.

We must all be vigilant. Although we have an excellent security system, two dogs and of course am well-armed to protect family and personal property we have to be ever aware. I would also caution Brookshade homeowners against buying pine straw bales from the red-neck thugs who drive around and 9 times out of 10 rip off unsuspecting homeowners with a rigged bale count and/or very cheap straw.

Congratulations Dr. Michael J. Burry..........

Thank you for all you have done to help Chippewa Partners.

Here's wishing you much success ahead in this new chapter.

 http://scionasset.com/

Here are just some of Dr. Burry's great quotes.  They probably ring more true today.
 

I think that derivatives were a huge problem that were run by a bunch of 30 year olds, and there was very little gray hair in the whole process."

"Also understand that when I’m dealing with the Street I tend to think from a lay perspective that they’re all crooks."

"Ben Bernanke continues to backfill this logic and I fear that history is being written wrong yet again that ignorance is willful. Our nation's economic policies are born of a synthesis of theories on how to deal with the great depression of the nineteen thirties yet seem unable to honestly examine the most recent one. Sadly at the highest levels of economic thought in government questions are not tolerated. It is as if we are dealing with the binary judgment of a fundamentalist religion. Finance theory and practice fare no better; the continuing crisis makes a mockery of the principles which have guided credit policy and risk management since the 1960s. As it turns out information is not perfect, volatility does not define risk, markets are not efficient, the individual is adaptable. But the dark ages of finance allow no such light. Mainstream economists and finance practitioners please check your premises. You have contradictions before you. Truthfully I do not expect much to change. Practically speaking, history has demonstrated the ability of sovereign nations to justify themselves and to postpone the moment of crisis."

Dr. Greenspan

Joe Kernan was doing his best this morning.   Dr. Greenspan doing his best not to bash the current Fed Chair.   Hilarious.

America suffers.   They will talk taper till they can't talk taper.

It will unwind faster than Bill Clinton headed for an intern.   

MSM

Over the past few weeks, four major scandals have broken over the Obama administration, and it is a very sad (and frightening) truth that our pathetic, American, lapdog mainstream media are not responsible for breaking even a single one.

Verizon? Nope, not our guys. That was the Brits.  

IRS? Nope, not our guys. The IRS broke their own scandal with a planted question.

The Justice Department's seizure of Associated Press phone records? Nope, not our guys. Believe it or not, the Associated Press didn’t even break that story. Like the IRS, we only found out because the Justice Department sent a letter notifying the AP of what it had done.

Benghazi? Are you kidding. With a couple of rare exceptions (Jake Tapper, Sharyl Attkisson) the media have spent the last eight months attacking those seeking the truth (Congress, Fox News)--not seeking the truth. It was the GOP congress that demanded the email exchanges concerning the shaping of the talking points, not the media.
Left up to the media, we wouldn't know anything about Libya. All of the media's energy was collectively poured into ensuring the truth was never discovered.

For over a year now, conservative Tea Party groups have been complaining about IRS harassment. But because Obama told them to, the media hate the Tea Party. So in the face of these complaints and even a few Congressional inquiries, the media ignored the harassment reports.  

Feels like 1984 to me................

A senior administration official said the court order pertains only to data such as a telephone number or the length of a call, and not the subscribers' identities or the content of the telephone calls.

Such information is "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States," the official said, speaking on the condition of not being named.

Georgia DMV Tag Office

I had to leave the trading desk today and go to the Georgia Department of Motor Vehicles TAG Office for Fulton County.

It was disgusting.  State government, county government, government in general, the employees have zero incentive to be in a hurry. 

What a waste of taxpayers time and hence money.   It was ugly.      

Perfect home for liberals.............

Did you hear??

Obama has been rated the 5th best president, ever.

The details according to a White House Publicist:

• Reagan, Lincoln, and 8 others tied for first,
• 15 presidents tied for second,
• 17 other presidents tied for third,
• Jimmy Carter came in 4th, and
• Obama came in fifth

Bill Gross giving Helicopter Ben Bernanke a reality check........

Bill Gross concludes in his latest monthly letter to Ben Bernanke:   "It’s been five years Mr. Chairman and the real economy has not once over a 12-month period of time grown faster than 2.5%. Perhaps, in addition to a fiscally confused Washington, it’s your policies that may be now part of the problem rather than the solution. Perhaps the beating heart is pumping anemic, even destructively leukemic blood through the system. Perhaps zero-bound interest rates and quantitative easing programs are becoming as much of the problem as the solution."

My bet is simple.   Bernanke exits the Fed and goes to Goldman Sachs for $30 million a year and all will be well.  

Yaaaayyyhhhhh, it's Tuesday tomorrow!

Today stocks marched higher with nothing more than simply front-running the now-ubiquitous Tuesday rally mode.   Stocks recovered almost 50% of their post Friday drop losses. 

This will continue until it doesn't.    I don't even see a healthy floor under the "whoosh" and the HFT crowd should make sure it gets way over-done.

Ugly is coming.

Government at work

Eric Holder and Zero Truth @ ZeroHedge