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WHAT'S IN STORE FOR US: Japan of the 90's or Argentina of 2002? by John Lee, CFA Portfolio Manager, Mau Capital July 2, 2009 Introduction The inflation / deflation debate in the US is still alive and well. In deflation camp, there is the rising star du-jour Nouriel Roubini and old timer Robert Prechter. They argue the debt collapse would cause price deflation and depress world economies for years to come. The inflation camp includes Jim Rogers and Marc Faber, who said on May 27 2009 that "I am 100 percent sure that the U.S. will go into hyperinflation "...

The man known as Joe the Plumber said in an Austin speech Friday that in his profession, if you don't do the job right, you'll get called back to fix it.

In the snow-covered parking lot of a McDonald's in Detroit two years ago, City Council member Monica Conyers met with a waste-management consultant who slipped her an envelope stuffed with as much as $3,000 in cash. The under-the-table payment, made shortly after she cast the swing vote on a $1 billion city sludge deal, drove Conyers's guilty plea to a bribery charge that could send the Democratic politician to prison for up to five years. Conyers emerged for her court hearing late last week in the same building where her husband, John Conyers Jr. (D), who has served in the...

The talk on Death and Resurrection: Gifts from a Loving Heavenly Father can be heard or watched

MONTE CARLO, Monaco: “I’m ready.” So says Lance Armstrong as he prepares to roll down the start ramp of the first stage of the Tour de France on Saturday. But he’s 37 years old (older than any Tour winner), took four years off, suffered a broken collarbone just a couple of months ago, and became a father again in June. So, you might excuse the doubters. But when it comes to Lance Armstrong, normal rules don’t apply. After all, he came back from much tougher odds, near death from cancer, to win his first Tour in 1999. After all he’s...

Mobile machines, remote hookups help Lahey Clinic cope with shortage of specialists BEVERLY - The robot glides past the beeping heart monitor, past a row of patients supine on their electric beds, past the beehive of the nurses’ station. The sleek, metallic body, dusky blue, stops outside Room 9 and slowly rolls through the doorway. Discuss COMMENTS (33) “Mrs. Morash, Dr. Liesching’s here,’’ says nurse Dawn Deschenes, announcing the arrival of the robot to a gray-haired woman breathing behind an oxygen mask. The face of Timothy Liesching, a pulmonary critical care doctor, gazes at his patient from a computer screen...

An MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew from Air Station Kodiak prepares the rescue of a French kayaker from the Bering Sea Saturday July 4, 2009. The crew hoisted Jean Gabriel Shelala, 28, from his kayak 40 miles north of St. Lawrence Island at about 4:15 p.m. The 28-year-old is attempting to circumnavigate the world using a specially designed kayak. He departed from Emmonak on June 27. Chelala is reportedly in good condition, but asked for the assistance Saturday. (AP Photo/US Coast Guard - Brian Myers)

Here is a video report on former President George W. Bush's speech yesterday in Woodward, Oklahoma, where he received a warm welcome on the 4th of July. Bush showed a good sense of humor with some jokes during his speech. . . . . (Watch Video)

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth said yesterday that a hasty time frame, haphazard planning and miscommunication led to the release of a promotional flier that inaccurately described the newspaper's plans for a series of sponsored "salons" with influential insiders. "We decided to throw this particular event very recently," Weymouth said in an interview. "We said, 'Let's not wait. Let's pick a date and let's go for it.' When you rush like that, you make mistakes." Weymouth said she takes responsibility for the controversy, and she took the rare step of writing a letter to readers, which appears today on the...

Mossad head Meir Dagan assured Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that Saudi Arabia would allow IAF jets to fly over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran's nuclear facilities, The Sunday Times reported.

Muslims apparently angered because a Christian man driving a tractor reportedly tried to pass a Muslim on a motorcycle have rampaged in one village in Pakistan, destroying Christians' homes and throwing acid on women and children as they fled, according to a new report from Barnabas Aid. The ministry reported that the violence this week happened in the village of Bahmani Walla in Punjab state in Pakistan, which is dominated by Islamic influences. The report said 600 Muslims used gasoline bombs to vandalize 117 homes belonging to Christians – including 48 damaged by fire, and sabotage water pumps and cut...

Don’t Plan Without God "Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass" —Psalm 37:5 Don’t plan without God. God seems to have a delightful way of upsetting the plans we have made, when we have not taken Him into account. We get ourselves into circumstances that were not chosen by God, and suddenly we realize that we have been making our plans without Him— that we have not even considered Him to be a vital, living factor in the planning of our lives. And yet the only thing that will...

A suicide attack Thursday on a bus in Rawalpindi was the first that singled out workers of Pakistan’s prized nuclear labs, military analysts and prominent national newspapers said, raising new questions about the government’s ability to withstand increasingly bold assaults by the Taliban against the country’s military complex.

Sunday Poll: When do you have your "daily devotions?" A Daily Poll.

On the eve of ...Obama's first visit to Moscow, Russia and the United States were on Sunday still bargaining on an outline deal to cut Cold War arsenals of nuclear weapons.... ...Medvedev said...Sunday.. that the United States must compromise on plans to deploy an anti-missile system in Europe....This was necessary to get a deal to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) before it expires on Dec. 5, the Russian leader said. "We consider these issues are interconnected,"

The Washington Times Sunday, July 5, 2009 Rick Warren envisions coalition of faith Julia Duin (Contact) The Rev. Rick Warren, one of America's best-known evangelical Protestant pastors, pleaded with about 8,000 Muslim listeners on Saturday night to work together to solve the world's greatest problems by cooperating in a series of interfaith projects. "Muslims and Christians can work together for the common good without compromising my convictions or your convictions," Mr. Warren said during an evening session of the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) at the Washington Convention Center. "I am not interested in interfaith...

If the universe obeyed Newton's laws of gravity, there would be about a 60% chance that Mercury would head toward the Sun or Venus during the Sun’s lifetime. But according to a new study, corrections to Newton's laws using Einstein's theory of gravity (general relativity) lower these chances to about 1%. That’s good news, because if Mercury had a near miss with Venus or the Sun, it could wreak havoc on Earth.

Start Mobile has managed to get 18 separate iPhone applications approved by Apple. So you’ll imagine their surprise when one of them was recently rejected. But you may be even more surprised to find out why.Apparently, Apple doesn’t like the way one piece of art in the app depicts President Obama. Is it out of line or tasteless? Well, you can determine for yourself, because you’ve undoubtedly seen the art in question before: It’s Shepard Fairey’s famous “HOPE” image of Obama that was everywhere during his Presidential campaign.So why on Earth would this be rejected? Well, here’s the wording in...

Those who reflexively defend traditional morality are, in the face of change, by definition going to be the ones yelling "stop" most of the time. As Michael Blowhard explains (albeit in a discussion of architecture), that is probably the preferred default position: Tradition: Practices based in experience that almost always succeed. Deviation should only arise when the evidence is unequivocally compelling. Are progressive causes overcoming the moribund opposition of social conservatives in the US? The GSS allows for positions on five major social issues--abortion, capital punishment, drug legalization, wealth redistribution, and school prayer--to be tracked from the seventies to the...