". . . a republic, if you can keep it."
Kangaroo Court.
Virtually all – 99.74 percent, to be exact – of cases heard by the military courts in the territories end in a conviction, according to data in the military courts’ annual report, which has been obtained by Haaretz.
The report also shows that the military appeals courts decidedly favor the prosecution, with appeals court judges accepting 67 percent of appeals filed by the prosecution, as opposed to only 33 percent of appeals filed by the defense. 
(Read more)
TSA Stops Passenger Over Purse Design
Vanessa Gibbs had no problem getting her Western-themed purse through security at Jacksonville International Airport. But, on her return trip from Norfolk, Virginia, she was told her purse was a federal offense, reports News 4 Jax.
Gibbs, 17, carries the purse, embellished with a faux-gun design, nearly every day.
Agents eventually recognized the gun was fake, but she was told to check the bag or surrender it. The ordeal caused Gibbs to miss her flight and be re-routed to Orlando. (Read more)
The last two years marked a significant shift in central banks’ attitudes toward gold. Since 1988, central banks have been net sellers of the precious metal. Lacking convertibility of their paper currencies into the commodity, this occurrence makes perfect sense. Why hold a physical asset with costly storage fees when there is no risk that it will ever be needed? Better to hold an interest-bearing (and easily stored) asset like a government security to earn a profit in the interim. So goes the typical explanation for why central banks load their balance sheets with financial assets instead of physical ones.
Yet over the last two years a dramatic shift in gold purchases has occurred. In the third quarter of this year alone, net gold purchases by central banks amounted to 150 tons — more than double the amount of the whole yearly total of 2010. For the first time in over 20 years, central banks of the world are buying more gold than they are divesting themselves of.
Yet if central banks deal exclusively in nonconvertible (and fiat) money, what explains the sudden change of heart? (Read more)
A group of customs employees at the Suez seaport have revealed that the Egyptian Ministry of Interior is in the process of receiving 21 tons of tear gas from the US. (Read more)
Also: Last week, 5,000 files of private email correspondence among several of the world’s top climate scientists were anonymously leaked onto the Internet. Like the first “climategate” leak of 2009, the latest release shows top scientists in the field fudging data, conspiring to bully and silence opponents, and displaying far less certainty about the reliability of anthropogenic global warming theory in private than they ever admit in public.
The scientists include men like Michael Mann of Penn State University and Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia, both of whose reports inform what President Obama has called “the gold standard” of international climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The new release of emails was timed to coincide with the second anniversary of the original climategate leak and with the upcoming United Nations climate summit in Durban, South Africa. And it has already stirred strong emotions. To Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), for example, the leaker or leakers responsible are attempting to “sabotage the international climate talks” and should be identified and brought “to justice.”
One might sympathize with Mr. Markey’s outrage if, say, the emails were maliciously rewritten or invented. But at least one scientist involved—Mr. Mann—has confirmed that the emails are genuine, as were the first batch released two years ago. (Read more)
CONCORD, NH (The Borowitz Report) – Herman Cain withdrew from the Republican presidential race today, a move that resulted in millions of pro-adultery voters shifting their support to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
The shift in support is significant because pro-adultery voters represent the single largest voting bloc in the Republican Party, experts say.
Tracy Klugian, a prominent adulterer from Concord, New Hampshire, said he was sorry to see Mr. Cain leave the race “because he was very committed to the one issue I care about: namely, adultery.”
But he added that he had been in touch with many other adulterers in the state and that they were all switching to Mr. Gingrich.
“Even when we were supporting Cain, a lot of us were supporting Gingrich behind his back,” the adulterer said. “I guess that’s how we do.” (Read more)
Found this here. Some of this sounds a little conspiratorial. Please follow the links and look at the original sources.
Newt Gingrich is a political chameleon that has inexplicably managed to fool conservatives for 30 years. He is a globalist to the bone and supports every opportunity to erode American sovereignty and the constitution. He disguises his statist positions with an abundance of flip-flopping and pandering as needed. He has a long history of expanding the Federal Government and deficit spending. He is the very definition of an Establishment Insider.
– Card-Carrying member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a globalist think tank
– “Distinguished member” of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (neocon, pro-interventionism group)
– Member of Bohemian Grove
– Member of the World Future Society
– Voted for NAFTA, a blatant circumvention of Congress’ exclusive power to regulate commerce with foreign nations. Took power from American people and put it into the hands of unelected Binational panels, made mostly of foreigners.
– Supported GATT
– Supported WTO
– Continually supported increased federal spending.
– Supported the National Endowment for the Arts;
– Voted for the creation of the Federal Dept. of Education in 1979 under Jimmy Carter.
– Big supporter of Foreign Aid — even to Soviets through the Export-Import Bank.
– In one year (1994-1995) Gingrich voted for nearly $45 billion in foreign aid.
– He helped push through Federally-funded loan guarantees to Communist China.
– Urged the House to repeal the War Powers Act and give the Presidency more power.
– Urged Clinton to expand military presence in Bosnia.
– Supports Afghan War
– Supports Iraq War
– Calls for Iran War
– Supported Clinton’s welfare programs, education programs, labor programs, and environmental programs, as well as most of his foreign affairs programs.
– Supported spending $30B for the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 that shackled gun owners with new restrictions, federalized a number of crimes, and handed the feds police powers that the Constitution reserves to the states.
– Voted to give billions of dollars to United Nations “peacekeeping” operations;
– Pushed for a School Prayer Amendment
– Mentored by Henry Kissinger
– Bailed out savings and loan institutions in 1991. $40B Bank bailout
– He was a draft-dodger during the Vietnam War, yet pushed aggressive foreign interventionism his entire political career, and did say that Vietnam was the “right battlefield at the right time.”
– He cheated on one of his wives while she was suffering from cancer, delivered divorce papers to her in the hospital.
– Worked on the Rockefeller presidential campaign in 1968.
04/02/1987 – He cosponsored the 1987 Fairness Doctrine (anti 1st Amendment legislation)
10/22/1991 – He voted for an amendment that would create a National Police Corps.
03/–/1993 – He was “passionately in favor” of sending $1.6 Billion in foreign aid to Russia.
11/19/1993 – He voted for the NAFTA Implementation Act.
11/27/1994 – He supported the GATT Treaty giving sovereignty to the U.N.
08/27/1995 – He suggests that drug smuggling should carry a death sentence.
01/06/1996 – He himself conceived a secret CIA mission to topple the Iranian leadership.
04/25/1996 – Voted for the single largest increase on Federal education spending ($3.5 Billion)
04/10/1995 – He supported Federal taxdollars being spent on abortions.
06/–/1995 – He wrote the foreword to a book about tearing down the U.S. Constitution and implementing a Fascist World Government.
06/01/1996 – He helped a Democrat switch parties in an attempt to defeat constitutionalist Ron Paul in the 1996 election.
09/25/1996 – Introduced H.R. 4170, demanded life-sentence or execution for someone bringing 2 ounces of marijuana across the border.
01/22/1997 – Congress gave him a record-setting $300,000 fine for ethical wrongdoing.
11/29/2006 – He said that free speech should be curtailed in order to fight terrorism. Wants to stop terrorists from using the internet. Called for a “serious debate about the 1st Amendment.”
11/29/2006 – He called for a “Geneva Convention for terrorists” so it would be clear who the Constitution need not apply to.
02/15/2007 – He supported Bush’s proposal for mandatory carbon caps.
04/04/2007 – He says that there should be a clear distinction about what weapons should be reserved for only for the military.
04/17/2008 – Made a commercial with Nancy Pelosi on Climate Change.
09/28/2008 – Says if he were in office, he would have reluctantly voted for the $700B TARP bailout.
10/01/2008 – Says in an article that TARP was a “workout, not a bailout.”
12/08/2008 – He was paid $300,000 by Freddie Mac to halt Congress from bringing necessary reform.
03/31/2009 – Says we should have Singapore-style drug tests for Americans.
10/16/2009 – He angered conservatives by endorsing super liberal Dede Scozzafava.
07/30/2010 – Says that Iraq was just step one in defeating the “Axis of Evil”.
08/03/2010 – Advocates attacks on Iran & North Korea.
08/16/2010 – Opposes property rights of the mosque owner in NYC.
08/16/2010 – Compares mosque supporters to Nazis
11/15/2010 – He defended Romneycare; blamed liberals
12/02/2010 – He advocates a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens.
12/05/2010 – He said that a website owner should be considered an enemy combatant, hunted down and executed, for publishing leaked government memos.
01/30/2011 – He lobbied for ethanol subsidies.
01/30/2011 – He suggested that flex-fuel vehicles be mandated for Americans.
02/02/2011 – He says we are “losing the War on Terror”; the conflict will be as long as the Cold War
02/10/2011 – He wants to replace the EPA instead of abolishing it.
02/13/2011 – He criticized Obama for sending less U.S. taxdollars to Egypt.
02/15/2011 – His book said that he believes man-made climate-change and advocated creating “a new endowment for conservation and the environment.”
03/09/2011 – He blames his infidelity to multiple wives on his passion for the country.
03/15/2011 – Says that NAFTA worked because it created jobs in Mexico.
03/19/2011 – He has no regrets about supporting Medicare drug coverage. (Now $7.2T unfunded liability)
03/23/2011 – He completely flip-flopped on Libyan intervention in 16 days.
03/25/2011 – He plans to sign as many as 200 executive orders on his first day as president.
03/27/2011 – He says that America is under attack by atheist Islamists.
04/25/2011 – He’s a paid lobbyist for Federal ethanol subsidies.
05/11/2011 – His campaign video said that he wants to “find solutions together, and insist on imposing those solutions on those who do not want to change.”
05/12/2011 – He was more supportive of individual health-care mandates than Mitt Romney.
05/15/2011 – Said GOP’s plan to cut back Medicare was “too big a jump.”
05/15/2011 – He backed Obama’s individual mandate; “All of us have a responsibility to help pay for health care.”
05/16/2011 – He also endorsed individual mandates in 1993 when Clinton pushed Universal Health Care.
05/17/2011 – He has an outstanding debt to Tiffany’s Jewelry of between $250K – $500K.
06/09/2011 – His own campaign staff resigned en masse.
07/15/2011 – His poorly managed campaign is over $1 Million in debt.
08/01/2011 – He hired a company to create fake Twitter to appear as if he had a following.
08/11/2011 – His recent criticism of the United Nations is United Nations by a long, long history of supporting it.
09/27/2011 – He says that he “helped develop the model for Homeland Security”
10/07/2011 – He said he’d ignore the Supreme Court if need be.
11/12/2011 – He advocates assassinating Iranian scientists and covert war with Iran.
MORE SOURCES
The Grinch Who Stole Conservatism
Newt World Order Gingrich supported GATT, NAFTA and WTO while in Congress
Gingrich, Toffler, and Gore: A Peculiar Trio
Newt’s Contract with the Earth: Pseudo-Science, Big Government
Newt Gingrich: The Establishment’s Conservative
Newt Gingrich: The “Anti-Romney” or the “Other Romney”?
Slideshow: The Many Flip-Flops of Newt Gingrich
‘Newt’worthy or Not? Is Newt Gingrich the Best Candidate for President in the Republican Primary?
Good Newt, Bad Newt
Newt Gingrich and his Record
QUOTES
“The idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument.”- Newt Gingrich
“[O]ur government, at all levels, must be modernized to successfully partner, let alone compete, with the private sector.” – Newt Gingrich, A Contract with the Earth (p.196)
“The U.S. government operates endowments for the humanities and the arts…Perhaps, it is time we consider a new endowment for conservation and the environment.” – Newt Gingrich, A Contract with the Earth (pp. 115-116)
“We agree that there is plenty of evidence that global climate change is occurring…While humanity is certainly causing its fair share of the change, scientists are still not able to precisely pinpoint the extent of the change, or the margin of error in their estimates.” – Newt Gingrich,A Contract with the Earth (p. 200)
“In spite of the demonstrated liberal leanings in academia, we have nothing but respect for the nation’s scientists. They represent America’s best hope to protect the environment. We support a dramatic increase in science and technology research and development because we desperately need to understand global climate change and other environmental phenomena.” – Newt Gingrich, A Contract with the Earth (p. 201)
“If you import a commercial quantity of illegal drugs, it is because you have made the personal decision that you are prepared to get rich by destroying our children. I have made the decision that I love our children enough that we will kill you if you do this.” – Newt Gingrich (source)
“What we’re being told is that free trade with Mexico would devastate the U.S. economy. With its low wages, Mexico would unleash a flood of cheap imports into our markets. There would be a mass exodus of U.S. factory jobs, as hordes of American companies fled across the border…. All this is scare talk.” – Newt Gingrich, on the House floor 9/22/1993. (source)
Q: “Will you rally the troops for GATT and the World Trade Organization?”
A: “Yes. In the first place, the Administration has accepted amendments of Senator Dole and myself giving Congress dramatically more oversight of the WTO, including the right to bring up a vote on withdrawal every five years in perpetuity, so at any point that we think it is out of control or inappropriate, we can simply withdraw.” – Newt Gingrich, 11/11/1994 (source)
“The American challenge in leading the world is compounded by our Constitution. Under our [constitutional system] – either we’re going to have to rethink our Constitution, or we’re going to have to rethink our process of decision-making.” He went on to profess an oxymoronic belief in“very strong but limited federal government,” and pledged, “I am for the United Nations.” – Newt Gingrich, July 1995, speech at the Center for Strategic & International Affairs (source)
“I think we’re seeing around the world an emerging Third World War from North Korea to Pakistan to India to Afghanistan to Iraq and Iran to the increasing alliance between Venezuela and Iran to the British terrorists who are getting trained in Pakistan.” – Newt Gingrich, 2006, interviewwith Greta Van Sustren
In March 1993, I got an assistance program I could support: $1.6 billion in direct aid to help Russia stabilize. Although a public poll said that 75% of the American people were opposed to giving Russia more money, and we were already in a hard fight for the economic plan, I felt we had no choice but to press ahead. American had spent trillions of dollars in defense to win the Cold War; we couldn’t risk reversal over less that $2 billion and a bad poll. To the surprise of my staff, the congressional leaders, including the Republicans, agreed with me. At a meeting I convened to push the plan, Senator Joe Biden, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, strongly endorsed the aid package. Newt Gingrich was passionately in favor of helping Russia, saying it was a “great defining moment” for American and we had to do the right thing. – Bill Clinton, 2004 (My Life, p. 506-507).
“Professor Gingrich hopefully will never be called upon to teach a course in the proper role of our federal government. His rare votes against bloated big government usually have been prompted by the partisan wrangling of the moment, not by any great respect for, or understanding of, the Constitution.” –James Toft of “Tax Reform Immediately” (TRIM) (Read more)
Here are Newt Gingrich’s nuanced, compassionate drug policy ideas: Constant drug testing for everyone (especially poor people) and stiff “economic penalties” for use. (Yes, obviously, what poor people need are more ways to incur economic penalties and more barriers to either aid or employment. Newt Gingrich has so many IDEAS.) Also, the U.S. should be more like Singapore, where people carrying enough drugs to qualify for “trafficking” charges are put to death.
I think that we need to consider taking more explicit steps to make it expensive to be a drug user. It could be through [drug] testing before you got any kind of federal aid. Unemployment compensation, food stamps, you name it.
The quick refutation is a one liner: “If Ron Paul is a friend of the elite oligarchs, why is all the lobbying money going to the Romneys, Obamas, and Pelosis of the world?”
Despite a sustained campaign by the Washington media and political establishment to marginalize him, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, is still a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. That has a lot to do with the support he’s receiving from young voters. In almost every survey and activist straw poll, Paul draws big numbers from voters between the ages of 18 and 29.
The laziest way to explain the counterintuitive phenomenon of youth rallying around the GOP’s oldest candidate is to insist that it’s about kids’ silly college fling with unrealistic libertarianism or that it’s about kids’ affinity for drug use — and more specifically, Paul’s support for legislation that would let states legalize marijuana. This degrading mythology ignores the possibility that young people support Paul’s libertarianism for its overall critique of our government’s civil liberties transgressions (transgressions, by the way, now being openly waged against young people), nor does the narrative address the possibility that young people support Paul’s drug stance not because they want to smoke weed, but because they see the War on Drugs as a colossal waste of resources. Instead, Paul is presented as merely a fringe protest candidate, and the young people who support him are depicted as just dumb idealists, hedonistic pot smokers or both.
One problem with this fantastical tale, of course, is that it insults the intelligence and motivation of young voters. But another, even more troubling facet of this tale is how it uses speculative apocrypha and stereotyping about ideology and drugs to suppress concrete social survey data about the far-more-likely foreign policy motivations of young Ron Paul supporters.
. . . .
The new study tracks how younger voters are now strongly rejecting traditional American hubris in favor of Paul’s more empirical views on foreign policy. For instance, it finds that while older citizens embrace American exceptionalism in insisting our culture is inherently superior, younger voters do not. But the key finding as it relates to Paul’s candidacy has to do with blowback, which Paul frequently discusses on the campaign trail. As Pew reports (emphasis mine):
Two-thirds of Millennials (66 percent) say that relying too much on military force to defeat terrorism creates hatred that leads to more terrorism. A slim majority of Gen Xers (55 percent) agree with this sentiment, but less than half (46 percent) of Boomers agree and the number of Silents who share this view is 41 percent. A plurality of Silents (45 percent) believe that using overwhelming force is the best way to defeat terrorism and 43 percent of Boomers share that view.
These findings have been largely ignored by the media and political establishment. Despite a sustained campaign by the Washington media and political establishment to marginalize him, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, is still a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. (Read more)
Reddit comment: “the Fed is running happy hour for alcoholics, and unless you show up drunk and covered in your own vomit, you aren’t included.”
A move by central bankers on Wednesday to contain the European debt crisis resulted in euphoria in global stock markets, but it also prompted skeptics to wonder: will this time be different? (Read more)
Maybe the “99%” are right. Maybe we should take all the money from the richest 1%.
Perhaps, however, the protesters don’t go far enough. We should then find the most beautiful 1% and scar their faces with box cutters. Then we should find the smartest 1% and damage their brains. We should find the most athletic 1% and break their legs. We should find the healthiest 1% and feed them poison. (Read more)