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Author James Petras is a respected investigative journalist. This entire article is well worth reading. But I thought well worth highlighting his report that Trump doesn't trust the Secret Service and has hired private security guards.

So according to Bloomberg, JPMorgan's commercial bank was the recipient of 99 percent of JPMorgan's $79 trillion (face value of derivatives) in bad bets. So adding JPMorgan's $78 trillion or so to the $75 trillion in bad bets Bank of America unloaded on its FDIC insured subsidiary, we arrive at $153 trillion in bad bets moved by two investment banks alone under the FDIC umbrella. Meanwhile, FDIC has authority under Dodd-Frank to liquidate these insolvent banks but doesn't, despite several successful lawsuits to recover the value of toxic derivatives that they sold to smaller banks that failed (which implies that FDIC could tell JPMorgan and BoA's investment banksters that they've got to pay off the toxic assets they transferred to their commercial banks, rather than diluting the insurance for normal depositors. Problem: the two big investment banks don't have sufficient assets to absorb those losses, so the too-politically-connected-to-fail factor kicks in. Note that I have not done any legal research in regard to these issues and am basing these observations on what has been stated about legal requirements in various media articles.

So according to this article, the U.S. will be conducting  combat operations in the Sinai Peninsula sometime this weekend. 

The Consent Decree of 1982 is an agreement between the Republican and Democrat parties that prohibits the Republican party from enforcing, providing oversight, or challenging allegations of voter fraud.  The Judge who signed the Consent Decree is retired, but comes out of retirement every election year to renew the decree..... Excerpt: The RNC and DNC made their Consent Decree 30 years ago, in 1982. The agreement in effect gives a carte blanche to the Democrat Party to commit vote fraud in every voting district across America that has, in the language of the Consent Decree, "a substantial proportion of racial or ethnic populations." The term "substantial proportion" is not defined. "Guy Benson of Townhall.com points out that in last Tuesday's election, Obama only won by 406,348 votes in 4 states: Florida: 73,858 Ohio: 103,481 Virginia: 115,910 Colorado: 113,099 Those four states, with a collective margin of 406,348 votes for Obama, add up to 69 electoral votes. Had Romney won 407,000 or so additional votes in the right proportion in those states, he would have 275 electoral votes. All four states showed Romney ahead in the days leading up to the election. But on November 6, Romney lost all four states by a substantial margin, all of which have precincts that inexplicably went 99% for Obama, had voter registrations that exceeded their population, and had experienced  problems with voting machines. This election was stolen by the Democrats via vote fraud. Despite all the evidence of fraud, the Republican Party has been strangely silent about it. Now you know why." Aftermath: It doesn't matter if this "perfect candidate" has dubious Constitutional eligibility to be president. They would see to it that his original birth certificate (if there is one) would never see the light of day. The same with his other documents - his passports, school and college records, draft registration, and medical records (so we'll never know why Obama has that v

Why the anti-war and 99-percenter "progressives" never get around to ending wars and reforming Wall Street. Spot on. An excellent snapshot of where the real political power in the U.S. is. And for Gary, George Soros gets mentioned more than once.

Let's keep in mind that Iran and its predecessor governments have not launched an offensive war in some 300 years. But despite the unchanged consensus of all U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran has made no decision to build nuclear weapons, Gallup informs us that 99 percent of the U.S. public believes Iran is attempting to do so. An Israeli/fellow traveler propaganda triumph in the U.S.

Jaw dropping libertarian analysis.  Hoppe argues that democracy, or more correctly called "mobocracy" results in "The Competition of Crooks".  Fascinating stuff.  I've highlighted some of the more resounding libertarian bites. excerpt: "Are taxes nothing but protection money? The state a kind of mafia? Democracy a fraud? Philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe is not only considered one of the most prominent pioneering intellectuals of the libertarian movement, but also perhaps the sharpest critic of the Western political system. Professor Hoppe: In your essay collection 'Der Wettbewerb der Gauner' ('The Competition of Crooks') you write that '99 percent of citizens, asked if the state was necessary, would answer yes.' Me too! Why am I wrong?"

Absolutely stunning news!!!!  Tea Party Patriots and liberal progressive democrats have combined their efforts and passed the single most significant NDAA nullification Act yet.  AB351 now heads for debate and vote of the general California Assembly. "Today, the California Public Safety Committee voted unanimously in favor of Assembly Bill 351 (AB351), the California Liberty Preservation Act. Introduced by Republican Assemblymember Tim Donnelly, AB351 is a strong stand against "indefinite detention" as supposedly authorized by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012.  It declares such federal power to be unconstitutional and also requires the entire state to refuse to enforce or assist its implementation.  A broad coalition officially supported the legislation and moved the normally partisan, and strongly democratic committee to support the republican-introduced legislation. AB351 was supported by the ACLU, Tenth Amendment Center, San Francisco 99% coalition, San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the Libertarian Party of California - and many others. AB351 establishes the proper constitutional role by first citing the 10th Amendment as limiting the power of the federal government as to that which has been delegated to it and nothing more. The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution authorizes the United States federal government to exercise only those powers specifically delegated to it in the United States Constitution. It then declares the indefinite detention powers under NDAA to be unconstitutional: Sections 1021 and 1022 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA) codifies indefinite military detention without charge or trial of civilians captured far from any battlefield, violating the United States Constitution and corroding our nation's commitment to the rule of law Most importantly, the bill requires the entire state apparatus, including all local governments, to refuse to implement the fede

"The American Left's desire to crush Liberty and dissent in order to "fundamentally transform the United States of America" has reached metastatic levels. In the last three weeks alone, the following stories have surfaced. All of which indicate we are well on our way toward relinquishing our birthright. Even worse, millions of Americans are apparently more than willing to do so. First, this week the Supreme Court heard arguments in the United States v. Texas case that will determine whether a president can unilaterally rewrite immigration law. If SCOTUS rules in Barack Obama's favor, the separation of powers outlined in the first three articles of the Constitution will be rendered moot and, as political analyst Charles Krauthammer wryly observed, "you can send Congress home." And the Left is not content to stop there. A coalition of 118 cities and counties have filed a legal brief asserting they will lose up to $800 million in economic benefits if large numbers of illegal aliens remain subject to deportation. Second, the IRS has admitted it abides the use of fraudulent Social Security numbers used by illegal aliens to process tax payments - and refunds. Third, in New York and California, Democratic attorneys general Eric Schneiderman and Kamala Harris are pursuing fraud investigations against Exxon, based on the premise they can "prosecute persons and institutions with nonconforming views on global warming," writes National Review's Kevin Williams. "Prosecuting political institutions and businesses for political activism is brown-shirt business." Fourth, the Obama administration, already under fire for its determination to flood America with Syrian "refugees," announced it will reduce its vetting process to three months, instead of 18-24 months. They claim the reduced time is necessary to handle a sped-up "surge operation" whose population is 99% Sunni Muslim. Even more insulting, Gina Kassem, the regional refugee coordinator at t

I'll leave well enough alone on Mr. Ahert's positions regarding the U.S. v. Texas case and IRS reliance on fraudulent Social Security numbers; I have not studied those issues. But Mr. Ahert has not done his homework on the Exxon investigations and on the law governing the Syrian refugee situation. Re Exxon, the criminal investigations are to determine whether Exxon committed fraud against *investors* by concealing its knowledge of climate change the company was contributing to --- and knew of decades ago. We don't yet know the outcome of those investigations, but this is a far cry from prosecuting "persons and institutions with nonconforming views on global warming." If pursued, it will be a prosecution of a company -- and conceivably its managers -- who damned well knew through in-house scientific studies it sponsored that global warming was man-made and that their own company was a major causative agent. On the Syrian refugee situation, the right of war refugees to refuge in the U.S. and all other nations is, under the U.S. Constitution's Treaty Clause, "the law of this land." There is nothing in that body of international law created by treaty that permits the U.S. or any other nation to delay providing refuge for purposes of vetting refugees for possible terrorists among them. Vetting can, however, proceed lawfully after refugees are admitted while being held in refugee camps. One need only ask how one would feel were the tables turned and it was yourself fleeing from U.S. violence? Would you want to be forced to linger in the war zone while your anti-terrorism bona fides were established over a period of months? Refuge must be granted when it is needed, not months or years later, regardless of how much "terrorist" hysteria our mainstream media and the military-industrial complex drums up to fan the flames of war and industry profits. And this is all the more a moral case because it is the U.S. and its allies' illegal proxy war in Syria that is creating

Why on Earth is the U.S. still having anything to do with the Israeli government? The racism in Israel is beyond the pale.

Excellent summary of how deep the hole the Federal Reserve has dug for Americans.  Walks us from the 2008 crisis to the Levy Economics Institute $29.616 Trillion Bankster Bailout.  Incredibly well written commentary. excerpt: Bernanke argues we should look only at the lending at a peak instant of time. Think about it this way. A half dozen drunken sailors are at the bar, and the bartender refills their shot glasses with whiskey each time a drink is taken. At any instant, the bar-keep has committed only six ounces of booze. That is a useful measure of whiskey outstanding. But it is not useful for telling us how much the drunks drank. Bernanke would like us to believe that if the Fed newly lent a trillion bucks every day for 3 years to all our drunken bankers that we should total that as only a trillion greenbacks committed. Yes, that provides some useful information but it does not really measure the necessary intervention by the Fed into financial markets to save Wall Street. And that leads to the final way to measure the Fed's commitments to propping up our drunks on Wall Street: add up every single damned loan, guarantee and asset purchase the Fed made to benefit banks, banksters, real Housewives on Wall Street, fraudsters, and their cousins, aunts and uncles. This gives us the cumulative Fed commitments. The final important consideration is to separate "normal" Fed actions from the "extraordinary" or "emergency" interventions undertaken because of the crisis. That is easier than it sounds. After the crisis began, the Fed created a large alphabet soup of special facilities designed to deal with the crisis. We can thus take each facility and calculate the three measures of the Fed's commitments for each, then sum up for all the special facilities. And that is precisely what Nicola Matthews and James Felkerson have done. They are PhD students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, working on a Ford Foundation grant under my direction, titl

excerpt: "While banks opposed the legislation, they should cheer for its passage by the full Congress in the New Year: There are huge giveaways insuring the government will again rescue banks and Wall Street if the need arises. Nuggets Gleaned Here are some of the nuggets I gleaned from days spent reading Frank's handiwork: -- For all its heft, the bill doesn't once mention the words "too-big-to-fail," the main issue confronting the financial system. Admitting you have a problem, as any 12- stepper knows, is the crucial first step toward recovery. -- Instead, it supports the biggest banks. It authorizes Federal Reserve banks to provide as much as $4 trillion in emergency funding the next time Wall Street crashes. So much for "no-more-bailouts" talk. That is more than twice what the Fed pumped into markets this time around. The size of the fund makes the bribes in the Senate's health-care bill look minuscule. -- Oh, hold on, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Secretary can't authorize these funds unless "there is at least a 99 percent likelihood that all funds and interest will be paid back." Too bad the same models used to foresee the housing meltdown probably will be used to predict this likelihood as well. More Bailouts -- The bill also allows the government, in a crisis, to back financial firms' debts. Bondholders can sleep easy -- there are more bailouts to come. -- The legislation does create a council of regulators to spot risks to the financial system and big financial firms. Unfortunately this group is made up of folks who missed the problems that led to the current crisis. -- Don't worry, this time regulators will have better tools. Six months after being created, the council will report to Congress on "whether setting up an electronic database" would be a help. Maybe they'll even get to use that Internet thingy. -- This group, among its many powers, can restrict the ability of a financial firm to trade for its own account. Perha

As though ACLU didn't already have enough lawsuits going. But this takes the cake. Although anti-BDS legislation has been introduced several times in Congress but never got off the ground because of the First Amendment barrier. Similar measures pending in Europe too.  The good news here is that Israel's right-wing government is getting desperate. The BDS movement is mushrooming globally and routinely is achieving success in convincing companies (and recording artists, etc.) to pull out of Israel. More so in Europe, but BDS is off to a great start in the U.S. Kerry warned Netanyahu before the latter blew up the last round of negotations with the Palestinians that BDS would soon make it politically impossible for the U.S. to continue providing cover for Israel on the U.N. Security Council. There's a big shift of public opinion in the U.S. about Israel's abuse of Palestinians well under way. It won't be long before introducing Israel Lobby measures in Congress will stop happening. 

WOW!  Everyday brings new revelations.  We've been robbed! excerpt:  Now we know: Geithner and Friedman interceded on behalf of Goldman and Wall Street (Merrill received $6.2 billion, Societe General - a whopping $16.5 billion) to deliver a stealth bailout, one that wouldn't need Congressional approval, and even better wouldn't require the counterparties to pay any of it back NOR would it require that they issue shares, warrants or any other instrument to AIG (taxpayers) in return for more than $32 billion in free money. In any other time, a sitting Treasury Secretary who interceded on behalf of Wall Street to screw taxpayers out of tens of billions, would not be sitting long.  But Democrats control both the House and Senate, so there are no investiagtions (Issa's letter aside).  Traditional media is content not to rock the boat for President Banks Obama lest they be shunned by their peers, and ultimately, 99% of TV and print journalists don't understand the issues well enough to complain with any conviciton, especially against the merry backdrop of the Dow rising and their deflated 401ks beginning to show life. They fall prey to fear and weakly submit to duplicitous hyperbole (Paulson threatening martial law and blood in the streets), when they should instead be consulting with the objective, critical voices who foresaw the crisis and were prepared with alternative solutions when it finally came (Stiglitz said instead of TARP, create new banks). A pox on Congress, President Banks Obama, Bush, Paulson, Friedman, Bernanke and Geithner (plus Greenspan and Rubin).  You may have gotten away with it for now, but I would wager there are a few million of us, roughly, who do understand everything that went down last Fall, and we're not amused.  We're not just going to let this one pass, and we will not stop filling the vast interweb with the truth (and our distaste and vitriol for your wretched souls) day after day, week after week, all over message boards and fin

Two federal courts of appeals should be issuing opinions soon on the constitutionality of the NSA program at issue. I put the odds at about 99-1 that the government loses both cases.