Initial Unemployment Claims edged up slightly for the week, but are still near five year lows. Building contractors in some previously depressed areas are finding it impossible to keep up with the demand for new units. This is partly because of the unavailability of existing homes because underwater owners can't sell, and partly it's pent up demand that is being released by the improving economy.

 

All of a sudden we don't have an immediate debt crisis, at least according to some prominent Republicans in Congress. Basically they're admitting to having lied about the 'debt crisis', literally the day before the new talking points came out, because nothing has changed. A new Continuing Resolution has passed Congress that will take some things off the Sequester chopping block, it still requires the President's signature. Sounds like Obama is a brand new friend to some Republican Congressmen who suddenly don't care about the 'debt crisis!!!', as long as their pet projects get funding. Would this be a good place to insert one of those 'Obama playing chess' metaphors?

First we talked about the lies told by the Bush Regime during the run up to the war. Then we talked about how MainStream Media mainlined those lies directly into the national bloodstream.

Then the war. My son had just turned three years old when the United States shocked, awed, and invaded Iraq. There were photographs from the war all over The Internet but I didn’t want to look at them. I reluctantly clicked on a link and the first picture I saw was of a little boy, about my son’s age, dead in the rubble with his skull hollowed out. He wasn’t killed by a bus. A safe didn’t fall on him. He didn’t have cancer or any other disease. It wasn’t a terrible accident. He was dead because The United States broke into the country illegally, walked up to this little kid, and blew his brains out of the top of his skull.

Then we found out about the torture prisons.

We all remember the scene from A Clockwork Orange: Alex, bound in a straitjacket, strapped to a theatre seat, eyelids mechanically propped open, injected with extreme nausea-inducing drugs, and forced to watch horrific films of beatings, murder, rape, and gore. After his “treatments” he will be conditioned to become uncontrollably sick when he tries to return to his previous life of ultra-violence.

Now that’s Aversion Therapy in wide-screen Warnercolor.

Back in 1990, just up the street from the treatment center I was percolating in for 28 days, was a treatment facility that promised freedom from alcoholism in just 10 days (with a couple of 2-day follow-ups) using Aversion Therapies.

One of my fellow in-mates “graduated” from that place. The fact that he was sitting across from me at this treatment center didn’t speak highly of the other one. But then again a couple of months after we both got out of treatment he was back on the booze and drugs again. There are some people who can only stay sober if they’re locked up. The outside world is a vast mysterious and dangerous place for those who refuse to read the rule book.

by Bev Harris, Founder Blackboxvoting.org

It's been a while since we've done this, maybe too long for people to jump in and roll up their sleeves again for one of these "open source" public investigations, but let's see about that. I'm requesting a little help chasing down some names. If you like doing a little online research or know the terrain in Pennsylvania, and can supply any further information on the situation I outline below, I would appreciate it very much!

You can e-mail me directly ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) or you can share anything you find publicly here:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/166/82399.html

I am interested in finding out who the vendor was for the system that produced the problem below. I have learned that CIBER, a company with connections to the electronic voting industry, also had some deep involvement with the Pennsylvania Dept. of Transportation's technology.

The stock markets were down sharply today on the release of the last Federal Reserve Board minutes that suggest they are are losing their consensus on the continued printing of more money to plump up the bond markets. The Fed has been pumping out $85 billion a month in the effort to hold deflation at bay. The math on what they've been doing is that this is roughly equal to a quarter of the Federal government's budget. Not that the taxpayer is funding this, the Fed just prints it, or rather they move electrons around in some computers to buy bonds from rich people and institutions so that they can show a profit and reinvest.

 

The worry isn't over the fact that the Federal Reserve is doing this, the panic is over the idea is they might stop. You can't let go of the tiger's tail until he's really, really tired. A lot of people on the right think we're just annoying the tiger, if we would only let go he'll be a good kitty and lick our hand. Does kitty want sauce with his finger snacks?

 

The Elite surround themselves with their peers, minions, and court jesters. Their minions are expendable, the jesters replaceable, and periodically they wage war against their peers. But … The Elite can always agree on this:

They never support anything that would thwart whatever it is they want to do. And they want what all gangsters have always wanted … more.

Yesterday I read the latest at the Brilliant at Breakfast Blog:

The rise and fall of prog-talk radio

http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.ca/2013/02/the-rise-and-fall-of-prog-talk-radio.html

She extensively quotes from a column at Truthout.org written by Peter B. Collins.

An Insider's View of the Progressive Talk Radio Devolution

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/14355-an-insiders-view-of-the-progressive-talk-radio-devolution

The blogger and Peter B. got some of it right but most of it wrong.