Free Republic

By now everyone knows that a $17 trillion economy has no greater nemesis than snow... in the winter... which in the first quarter of 2014 managed to lob off some $50 billion in growth from the world's largest economy, and instead of allowing the US to expand at its priced to ultraperfection 3.0% rate, resulted in a screeching halt in growth. But did you know that the one thing that the economy of the centrally-planned world can't stand more than cold is... heat. That is what Italians found out today when they read daily publication Ansa which "explained" that March...

While the NSA is busy justifying its spying of every American its existence thanks to famous Moscow resident Edward Snowden, its Russian counterparts have been busy intercepting even more phone Ukrainian conversations. After a month ago a leaked phone call between US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland and the US envoy to the Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt confirmed that it was the US that was pulling the strings in what was about to be a violent coup overthrowing Ukraine's president Yanukovich, "someone" has just leaked another phone conversation, this time between parliamentarian Nestor Shufrych and former PM and ideological leader...

They say those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. As a student of market history, I’ve seen that maxim made true time and again. The cycle swings fear back to greed. The overcautious become the overzealous. And at the top, the story is always the same: Too much credit, too much speculation, the suspension of disbelief, and the spread of the idea that this time is different. It doesn’t matter whether it was the expansion of railroads heading into the crash of 1893 or the excitement over the consolidation of the steel industry in 1901...

Several prominent voices in the alternative media are speculating that former CIA analyst and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden could be a double agent whose revelations are only serving to distract from the much bigger issue of the imminent escalation of the war in Syria.

Perhaps nothing more illustrates the evolving inner class conflict within the progressive political movement than the recent embrace of California as a role model for the rest of the country. The Golden State, maintains John Judis of the New Republic, should provide the game plan for the Obama administration as it seeks a path back to relevance. As an old-style, and increasingly marginal, Democrat, my response is "say what?" After all, even by the standards of the tepid national recovery, California, for all the celebration, still lags. The state has consistently suffered among the highest unemployment rates in the country...

Two weeks ago, a state law went into effect terminating the jobs of the two full-time New York City Housing Authority board members who make six figures and are assigned their own drivers. Somehow, they didn’t go away. This week, NYCHA board members Margarita Lopez and Emily Youssouf — who each made $187,000 last year — were still on the city payroll, the mayor’s office confirmed. Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/eliminated-nycha-board-members-paid-article-1.1401657#ixzz2ZXLgKiCg

China is increasingly giving signs that a hard landing could be in the cards, as the government cracks down on financial excesses and overheating markets amid a global slowdown. If the world’s second largest economy were to slow down dramatically, it would have a substantial effect on commodity prices, given China’s outsized influence in those markets. Under an extreme scenario, oil prices could drop to around $70 per barrel while copper prices would collapse 60%. On the flip side, gold would potentially benefit from a steep sell-off in renminbi-denominated assets, according to Barclays BCS +0.28%’ economics research team. After several...

For the US, UK, France, and its regional partners including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, nothing would have suited their interests more than if the recent chemical attack reported in Aleppo Syria turned out to be (or could have been portrayed as being) the work of the Syrian government, or even "loose" weapons that had fallen into the hands of Al Qaeda terrorists the West both arms and condemns simultaneously. However, a strange silence has fallen across the Western media regarding the chemical attack which Israel had even claimed to have "confirmed." Now, a recent report published in the...

In 2014, all EU countries will hold parliamentary elections that may be won by the opponents of European integration. Recent EU measures to stabilize the situation in Cyprus showed that the foundations of the ideology of the Western world based on the Catholic and Protestant faiths have been undermined. The West is trying to explain its hurried decisions with the pressure from the Russian Federation. After the summit in Brussels approved a plan of Cyprus "rescue" (by providing a tranche of 10 billion euros in exchange for the withdrawal of 10 percent of all deposits in the country), it became...

The Venezuelan Minister of Correctional Services, Iris Varela, has announced on her Twitter account the expulsion of a French citizen known as Frédéric Laurent Bouquet, December 29, 2012 Mr. Bouquet (photo) had been arrested in Caracas on June 18, 2009, with three Dominican nationals in possession of an arsenal. In the apartment he had acquired, forensic police seized 500 grams of C4 explosives, 14 assault rifles including 5 with telescopic lenses, 5 with laser sighting and one with a silencer, special cables, 11 electronic detonators, 19,721 cartridges of different calibers, 3 machine guns, 4 hand guns of different calibers, 11...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=11hv3q08ASo

The term fiscal cliff has hit the airwaves, print media, business reports, and articles. Not a minute goes by without these two words being thrown at the listener. But how many people really understand where the expression started and how it became so popular? “Judging by media coverage, the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ is the only thing driving the U.S. stock market these days. Unfortunately, a lot of the coverage is either alarmist, erroneous, or focused solely on the daily (or even hourly) micro-developments in the story,” a Dec. 4 article on the Motley Fool website states. The expression “Fiscal Cliff”...

Blah blah Fiscal Cliff blah. Blah blah blahdy blah Cliff. Cliff blah blah republicans blah democrats blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah, blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah, Cliff. Blah blah blah blah, blah blahdy blah.... Blah. Meanwhile in Europe: The only data point confirms what everyone knows - reality sucks, hope surges. As usual. German Ifo business confidence rises to 102.4 from 101.4, on expected rise of 102. Why the rise? Because forward expectations spike from 96.4 to 97.9. As for the "current assessment"? Why down of course from 108.1 to 107.1, on expectations...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Ever since the Reagan years, America has played a singularly important role in the global economy as its largest net borrower. Thanks to the shale energy revolution, that’s beginning to change. The implications for the dollar are profound. The U.S. is on track to become the world’s largest oil producer in eight years and the biggest producer of gas in five, according to the International Energy Agency, which projects energy self sufficiency in 25 years. That remarkable turnaround not only shifts the U.S. relationship with the Middle East but, as economists at RBC Capital Markets predicted...

Daniel Yergin, a well known and recognized expert in the oil industry often states that most of the problems involved in producing more oil today are 'above ground and not below ground'. To a great extent he is right, but I am sure that he would also agree that there is a lot of oil trapped in global oil fields and today's oil recovery technology has not been successful in recovering a significant portion of remaining original-oil-in-place. A significant percentage (an average of 65%) of discovered oil resources remain trapped and cannot be recovered using conventional methods and processes -...

Years worth of work could be washed away upon approval of a proposal to flood the wetland WINTER LAKE — Every resident learns to live with the flood. Each year, with cruel seasonality, this peat-land is transformed into a 1,700-acre soup. But this year, emotions have piqued over a different deluge. Next year, earthworks are slated to begin on a $3.5 million project to restore 400 acres of pasture to wetland. Sarah Crawford, an organic farmer on Garden Valley Road, worries that new body of water will radically alter the valley's water table. 'That would ruin us," Crawford said. 'That...

UPPER DARBY, Pa. - July 30, 2012 (WPVI) -- Police have arrested one person and are looking for another after a man in a wheelchair was beaten and robbed inside his home in Upper Darby. The attack was caught on video, which was released at a news conference on Monday. "It's cruel and inhumane. If they get caught and convicted they should throw them away forever," said Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood. "They're bad guys." Upper Darby police say it all began around 5:30 a.m. Thursday when the victim, a 37-year-old man suffering from muscular dystrophy, received a telephone...

Grant J. Kidney — The world’s first ‘smart city’ is being built in Asia- and it promises to serve as an experiment for the high-tech tyranny that is surely to come about as a response to the collapse of this present era of human industrial civilization. Dubbed ‘Songdo’, the city will rest upon a wholly man made island in the Yellow sea and will incorporate just about every aspect of an Orwellian ‘super state’ imaginable. Millions of wireless sensors and microchips will be embedded throughout the sprawling city-scape. ‘Smart appliances’ such as refrigerators that let you know when you’re running...

MIAMI — Lawyers for accused Sept. 11 attacks mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his four co-defendants are seeking to postpone their Aug. 8-12 hearing at Guantanamo, noting it falls toward the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The trial judge, Army Col. James Pohl, set the date for the hearing in May and specifically ruled out an extension on grounds that it coincided with Islam’s fasting month. He noted in his order then that no defense lawyer at that point had raised objection to a hearing that coincided with Ramadan. But the attorneys do just that in a...

Police removed a mentally disturbed man in an Elmo costume from New York City’s Central Park Zoo on Sunday afternoon. The man was spouting anti-Jewish insults, including encouraging visitors at the zoo to read “The International Jew” — an anti-Semitic series of pamphlets published by Henry Ford. The anti-Semitic Elmo made his first appearance in 2009 in Times Square, demanding people give him money to take pictures of him. Berating people who refused to give him money, Elmo said, “Elmo needs to make a living too.” He popped up again in 2010. When observers Sunday told the Elmo to get...