Not Ordinary People: Criminals Do Not Represent Concealed Carriers

(Not) Ordinary People examines the gun lobby's frequent claim that gun owners—and concealed carry permit holders in particular—are the most law-abiding citizens in our country. We grant this is probably true in many cases, but argue that gun owners are human beings—subject to the same issues of stress, depression, substance abuse and mental illness; which can sometimes lead to criminal behavior and tragedy.

OP fail in their argument in that ordinary people don't stalk and attack innocent people. Anti-gun/anti-rights groups like the Brady Campaign and CSGV jump on tragedies like this to promote a misguided campaign of misinformation in an attempt to pervert public opinion. 

March 14, 2012

"These a**holes always get away."

On February 26th, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was an invited guest staying with his stepmother in a gated community in Sanford, Florida. During halftime of the NBA all-star game that evening, Martin walked to a local convenience store to get some snacks. Little did he know he was being followed by George Zimmerman, 28, the self-appointed "captain" of the neighborhood watch program.

How does calling out the shooter as white and the victim as black have any bearing? Gun control is historically racist, which supports the need to do away with restrictive policies to disarm minorities and allow rich white men to have a monopoly on the use of force. An armed society is indeed a polite one. 

Zimmerman, who is white, had been tailing the young African-American in his car because he felt Martin was "a suspicious person." At some point, Zimmerman called 911. During this conversation, he mentioned Martin's race and stated that he was going to detain the youth because "these a**holes always get away." The dispatcher told Zimmerman that a unit was being dispatched to the scene and asked Zimmerman to refrain from approaching Martin.

Zimmerman ignored this direction. He got out of his car and pursued Martin between two rows of townhouses. A fistfight broke out. When police arrived on the scene minutes later, they found Martin dying face down in the grass. In his hands were a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea. He had been shot in the chest by Zimmerman, a concealed handgun permit holder who was armed that night, with a 9mm pistol.

Being a holder of a concealed carry permit does little to tout the danger of the permit system, but does imply that even criminals and unstable individuals can pervert the system that fails to promote public safety. 

If Zimmerman saw anything "suspicious" that night beyond an African-American walking through a gated community in a hooded sweatshirt, he never said. He was detained by the police, but after he claimed he acted in self-defense in killing the unarmed Martin (who he outweighed by 100 pounds), Zimmerman was released without charge. Martin's family and their attorney were told by Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee that Zimmerman avoided arrest because he had a "squeaky clean" criminal record.

Imagine that. He was released. It's alright of you're white!

That statement was fraudulent. It has since been revealed that Zimmerman was arrested in 2005 for resisting arrest with violence and battery on a law enforcement officer. The case was dismissed after Zimmerman attended a pre-trial diversion program and a deal was made with his attorney to get the case dropped. In addition, police have fielded complaints from members of Zimmerman's gated community about his aggressive conduct in the neighborhood. According to Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump, "[The Sanford Police Department] just lied to the family. They just couldn't see why [Zimmerman] would do anything wrong or be violent. But not only do you know the guy killed this kid, because he admitted to it, you knew that he has a propensity for violence because of his past record."

Martin, on the other hand, was squeaky clean. An avid sports fan and horseback rider, he dreamed of attending college and becoming an aviation mechanic. His family still recalls the boy's heroics at age nine, when he dragged his father from a burning kitchen. After the shooting, his father described his son as "a dear friend."

The reluctance of the Sanford Police Department to arrest Zimmerman probably has something to do with Florida's outrageous "Stand Your Ground" law.

The fallacy of this attack on the law is that it really doesn't apply to an act of aggression by Zimmerman. Martin was unarmed, Zimmerman was unprovoked and the aggressor. 

The law removes the duty of individuals to retreat from a confrontation and allows them to use deadly force if they reasonably believe that it is necessary to prevent death or "great bodily harm." "Stand Your Ground" legislation was enacted in 2005 after being championed in the Florida state legislature by National Rifle Association lobbyist Marion Hammer. In support of the law, Hammer said, "Through time, in this country, what I like to call bleeding heart criminal coddlers want you to give a criminal an even break, so that when you're attacked, you're supposed to turn around and run, rather than standing your ground and protecting yourself and your family and your property."

Had Martin been a concealed carrier, the law would have applied to an act of self defense, which the author attempts to twist and lead the reader into a false conclusion. 

But critics in Florida's legal community dubbed it the "Shoot First" law and said that it "encourages people to stand their ground ... when they could just as easily walk away." It has also been pointed out that the law "give[s] citizens more rights to use deadly force than we give police officers, and with less review." A report by the South Florida Sun Sentinel vindicated these complaints, concluding, "several...accused murderers have successfully used [Florida's] 2005 'Stand Your Ground' law to prove they were the real victims."

Citizens should never be considered to have fewer rights than law enforcement. That's a misnomer which should fade away, replaced with a view based on reality. 

Three things are obvious to everyone: 1) Trayvon Martin was not a criminal; 2) George Zimmerman was not protecting either his property or family on the evening of February 26th, and; 3) Not only could Zimmerman have walked away that night; he actively sought out this conflict when told not to do so by law enforcement. No civilian gun-toter has a right to stand above the rule of law and serve as another human being's judge, jury and executioner.

Again, Zimmerman is no more representative of the gun owning community than any criminal, with or without a permit. He was imbalances and aggressive toward others, he should have never been allowed to possess a permit or firearm, which is why the permit system is a failure. 

As of today, George Zimmerman remains a free man, with carte blanche to carry a loaded gun in public. Meanwhile, Trayvon's family continues to mourn. "That was my baby, my youngest son," his mother Sybrina Fulton told ABC News. "He meant a lot to me, I don't think the police department really understands that ... I need justice for my family, I just want justice for my son."

If you'd like to help the Martin family, please do so by signing this online petition that calls on Florida's 18th District State's Attorney to prosecute George Zimmerman for this murder.

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Original Page: http://csgv3.blogspot.com/2012/03/these-aholes-always-get-away.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&m=1

Police say they've dismantled Austin cocaine cell

Authorities say they have broken up a major smuggling ring responsible for moving five kilograms of cocaine per week into the Austin area since last May.

The failed drug war. There's a great way to blow a trillion dollars. That's $1,000,000,000 wasted since it began, yet drugs continue to exist. Prohibition never works, as history shows. Drug prohibition is simply a method of control, but has little to do with drugs. 

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Original Page: http://www.statesman.com/news/local/police-say-theyve-dismantled-austin-cocaine-cell-2237466.html?cxtype=rss_news

CONNECTING THE DOTS « The Burning Platform

There is one thing most TBP members have in common. They reach logical conclusions based upon the facts. The reason we find ourselves constantly frustrated by everything going on around us is that the world is not functioning logically. We see a world drowning in debt and our political and financial leaders' solution to this issue is to create more debt, pretend things are getting better, and further enriching themselves at the expense of a dying middle class. It's clear to any critical thinking person that peak oil has arrived. This chart proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Supply did not and cannot respond to higher prices.

The showdown with Iran over a nuclear bomb that does not exist is not logical. The war rhetoric and the unnecessary sanctions have already added $10 to $20 to the price of a barrel of oil. To attack Iran would threaten to open Pandora's Box and possibly lead to World War III. But logic does not seem to be a necessary ingredient in our world today. As I try to make sense of everything swirling around my head, I can't help but reach the conclusion that things are so bad that the wealthy elite who control the political and financial power in this world are willing to risk it all to retain their wealth and power. War enriches corporate arms makers and the bankers who will supply the debt to fight the war. By successfully crushing the existing Iranian government and installing another puppet regime friendly to the West, the ruling elite believe they can keep the oil flowing for awhile longer. They believe that successfully winning a war against Iran would result in $2.50 a gallon gasoline again.

The three stories below, all published in the last three days, gives me reason to believe that an attack on Iran is inevitable. The info from Stratfor reveals that we will have 3 aircraft battle groups in the Strait of Hormuz by March 21. There are missile destroyers and big deck amphibious warships gathering around Iran. We did not bring all the troops home from Iraq. We positioned thousands of troops in Kuwait and Bahrain. We have airbases completely surrounding Iran. If we are moving naval assets into the Gulf, you can be sure we are also moving bombers and fighter aircraft.

[...]

http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=31441

Wrongful Death Trial in Tech Killings Goes to Jury - ABC News

Jurors began deliberating Wednesday over a lawsuit filed by the parents of two students slain in the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre claiming school officials botched their response when the first reports came in that a gunman was on campus.

Maybe now the university and public can start to think about the reality of gun-free zones...

Attorneys for the university have countered that there was no way to anticipate the man who committed those first two killings April 16 in a dormitory would carry out the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Police had initially concluded the first killings were isolated. Jurors will have to decide whether school officials could have reasonably foreseen that more carnage was going to occur.

And the best way to deal with the lack of ability to defend against that which is unable to be anticipated? Enable law-abiding citizens to practice their natural and Constitutional right to self defense. Of the American universities which allow concealed carry, how many have had shootings? None. Zero. 

Robert T. Hall, an attorney for the parents, said they are interested in holding school officials accountable, not money.

Evidence of the magnitude of the error, Hall said, "were the bodies of the young people on the floors of Norris Hall."

I'd rather those students not been denied the ability to defend themselves based on a baseless and emotional argument. They might still be alive today. 

One of the state's attorneys, Peter Messitt, said Tech officials could not be expected to anticipate the killing spree, calling the slaughter unprecedented "in the history of higher education."

This level of loss of life was partly responsible for the resurgence of concealed carry (Luby's Texas massacre), and has also shown the lack of substance in the restrictions of firearms arbitrarily imposed on college campuses. 

If these students are adults in all other regards, what sense does disarming the make? Concealed carry is regulated by states, so it's on the universities to defend the gun-free zones. 

A jury of seven in the civil trial will also consider damages for the families, but they have not been told the award is capped at $100,000 for each family under state law. The state is the lone defendant. Two alternates were dismissed before jurors began deliberations.

[...]

http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=15919872

Obama: Window for Diplomacy in Iran Is 'Shrinking'

Obama: Window for diplomatic resolution to Iranian nuclear conflict is 'shrinking'

And I thought Bush was a warmonger who couldn't wait to attack the next nation on his shitlist. Obama is worse. Imagine that, the antiwar candidate becomes the warmonger president. 

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Original Page: http://feeds.abcnews.com/click.phdo?i=1380d4641bf71b6ee3dc09166d78e783

Obama: US, Britain Discussing Possible 'Immediate Steps' to Provide Humanitarian Aid to Syria

Obama: US, Britain discussing possible 'immediate steps' to provide humanitarian aid to Syria

Thick as thieves, we are. Remember kids, "humanitarian aid" is what we call it when the Empire bombs the snot out of a nation in an attempt to change the leadership and take resources from them without going through the trouble of declaring war on a country which poses no imminent threat, which makes it hard to justify. In Libya, we supported the terrorists who attacked the WTC, so what's one more false flag among friends?

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Original Page: http://feeds.abcnews.com/click.phdo?i=afef3536f7835867cc1b7ef0ab01a1c5

Fed Stress Test Released: Citi, SunTrust, Ally And MetLife Have Insufficient Capital

When we announced the news of Jamie Dimon's surprising announcement, we said that "Since we are now obviously replaying the entire credit crisis, from beginning to end, must as well go all in. Now - who's next? And perhaps just as importantly, who isn't." Who isn't it turns out are 4 banks that did not pass the Fed's stress test results. These are SunTrust, naturally Ally, MetLife and... Citi. Way to earn that 2011 $15 million comp Vic! To summarize: across the 19 banks taking the test, the maximum losses are projected to hit a total of $534 billion. But at least Jamie Dimon gets to pay his dividend. Also, the European LTRO stigma comes to the US in the form of banks who do dividend hike/buyback, vs those that do not.. and of course the 4 unlucky ones that fail the stress test entirely.

Banks at or below 5% are ooopsie.

From the Fed:

The results of the stress scenario projections suggest that the 19 BHCs as a group would experience significant losses under the assumptions of the Supervisory Stress Scenario. Losses at the 19 BHCs are projected to total $534 billion over the nine quarters of the scenario, including losses across the loan portfolios, trading and counterparty credit losses from the global financial market shock, and losses on securities held in the BHCs' investment portfolios. Losses related to operational risk events such as fraud, computer systems failure, and employee lawsuits, and losses related to mortgage repurchases, which are included in pre-provision net revenue (PPNR), add another $115 billion to this total. Projected PPNR at the 19 BHCs is $294 billion over the nine quarters of the scenario. Together, the high projected losses and low projected PPNR result in projected net income before taxes of $222 billion for the 19 BHCs. This is an extremely low level of net income relative to historical experience in the U.S. banking industry, even in periods of considerable economic and financial market stress.

Despite sometimes significant projected decreases, most of the BHCs maintain stressed regulatory capital ratios including all planned capital distributions above regulatory minimum levels over the course of the stress scenario horizon.24 Overall, 4 of the 19 BHCs have one or more projected regulatory capital ratios (including capital distributions) that fall below regulatory minimum levels at some point over the stress scenario horizon, including 3 BHCs with a stressed ratio of tier 1 common ratio below the 5 percent benchmark established in the capital plans rule. In interpreting these results, it is important to recall that the Federal Reserve's stress scenario projections are deliberately stringent and conservative assessments under hypothetical, adverse economic conditions and the results are not forecasts or the most likely outcomes for these BHCs.

[...] 

Full report (pdf):

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Original Page: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/UdqPA5-_Rfg/fed-stress-test-released-citi-suntrust-ally-and-metlife-have-insufficient-capital

Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago? 80% Say No

Another interesting data point from the poll Bryan highlighted earlier, as caught by NRO's Jim Geraghty:

Just 20% of Americans feel their family's financial situation is better today than it was four yearsago. 37% say it is worse, and 43% say it is about the same.

Obama's efforts to recycle Jimmy Carter's 1976 speech where he asked the same question have shown how inept the administration is. 

Family's Financial Situation Vs. Four Years Ago

• Better today 20%
• Worse today 37%
• About the same 43%

It should also be noted that this poll, as would be expected from CBS and the New York Times, oversampled Democrats. As of 1 March, Rasmussen (full article behind paywall, sorry) found 36% identified as Republicans, only 32.4% identified as Democrats; yet in this poll, CBS/NYT polled 304 Democrats and only 263 Republicans, which has the majority on the wrong side (they also report 442 independents, which could be a way for Democrat-leaning respondents to hide).

A biased poll from state media? Say it ain't so! Most efforts to quell dissension in the overall populace are blowing up in the faces of the statists on both sides of the single party system. 

So, even with Democrats oversampled, more people say they're worse off today than better, and over twice as many say there's been no change rather than improvement in their financial situation. Of course, Harry Reid is spinning so fast that you could hook him up to a generator and power Las Vegas:

"I think this poll is so meaningless. It is trying to give the American people an idea of what 300 million people feel by testing several hundred people. I think the poll is flawed in so many different ways including a way that questions were asked. I don't believe in polls generally and specifically not in this one."

Not buying into polls that sample such a small portion of a population is a good thing. The smaller the sample, the less representative and accurate the data, basic statistics (which is an opinionated and manipulative field anyway, regardless of your political slant). 

Yeah, right, Harry. We all know that if this poll had fallen out the other way, you'd be trumpeting it in front of every camera and microphone you could find. But even with oversampling Democrats, it turned out wrong for you, so you're left with just desperate spin, and worse than that, it's obviously desperate spin.

I'll conclude with some free advice for Santorum and Romney: Whoever the GOP nominee is, he should dust off Reagan's old campaign ad question, and ask Americans, "are you better off now than you were four years ago?"

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Original Page: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/03/13/are-you-better-off-than-you-were-four-years-ago-80-say-no/

Rand Paul To Energy Secretary Chu: “Why Are We Giving $500M Loan To A Billionaire?”

Rand Paul To Energy Secretary Chu: "Why Are We Giving $500M Loan To A Billionaire?"

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Intelwar/~3/Vz8Gooh04o4/rand-paul-to-energy-secretary-chu-why-are-we-giving-500-m-dollar-loan-to-a-billionaire

Citibank, 3 others fail Fed stress test; 15 pass

The Federal Reserve says four major banks failed to show they have enough capital to survive another serious downturn. The list includes Citigroup, the nation's third-largest bank.

[...]

Not that getting the Fed's stamp of approval means that all is peaches and cream, but seeing any major bank take a dive is good for the ones that survive, not for a free market or the taxpayers paying the lion's share of the bailout costs for a industry that needs to be cut loose and allowed to fail or succeed without a safety net, just as small businesses which tend to operate more responsibly in regard to risk. 

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Original Page: http://www.kvue.com/home/Citibank-3-others-fail-Fed-stress-test-15-pass-142530405.html

NSA Hides Google Ties As DARPA Director Takes Google Job

The Intel Hub By Alexander Higgins – Contributing Writer March 13, 2012 As the NSA tries to cover up its ties with Google, in a potential widespread spying scandal, DARPA Director Regina Dugan is leaving the Pentagon to take a post at Google. In the midst of what looks likes a massive spying scandal between [...]

This can't be good...

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Original Page: http://theintelhub.com/2012/03/13/nsa-hides-google-ties-as-darpa-director-takes-google-job/

Why High Gas Prices Are Here to Stay

Think about this for a second and if it doesn't stagger you, I don't know what to say: the U.S. military consumes as much oil every day as the entire nation of Sweden.

Gross inefficiency?

Or take a guess on this question of the week: How much did it cost Mobil and its partners to build the world's largest oil-drilling platform, a 1.2 million-ton monster that sits in 300 feet of water in "Iceberg Alley" in the Canadian North Atlantic and is armored with 16 protective "teeth" designed to absorb the impact of those approaching bergs?  The answer: $5 billion for the Hibernia platform, which is now producing 135,000 barrels of deep sea oil per day.

Peak Energy is here, but we are trying to deny it, down to the last drop. 

If you wanted, you could spend your time turning Michael Klare's new book, The Race for What's Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources, into an energy and resources version of Believe It Or Not that would stagger your friends.  Klare has a way of landing us on a strange new planet called Earth, one stripped to its disappearing resources and filled with insatiable greed.  It's always a bracing experience, even when, as he assures us in his new book, the rush to the planet's Iceberg Alleys to provide energy for the U.S. military and the rest of us fuel guzzlers may be the last "race" of its kind we are likely to undertake. (To catch Timothy MacBain's latest Tomcast audio interview in which Klare discusses his new book and what it means to rely on extreme energy, click here, or download it to your iPod here.)

http://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/quo9h/why_high_gas_prices_are_here_to_stay_why/

Porsche Sets Sales And Profitability Records In 2011

Although the economic climate in both Europe and America may best be described as "less-than-ideal," sales of high-end sports cars grew in 2011. Lamborghini's global sales increased by 23-percent last year, while Italian rival Ferrari sold a record 7,195 automobiles in 2011, an increase of nearly 9.5-percent. Porsche increased...

Further evidence of the increasing wealth gap and shift of resources to the haves over the have nots. 

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Original Page: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MotorAuthority2/~3/PRA2V0UXbHQ/1074035_porsche-sets-sales-and-profitability-records-in-2011

Pigs at the Trough

One of the most sickening kleptocratic rackets to come down the pike are the for-profit "educators." It's a scheme that is almost totally enabled by Government funding via Title IV loans. The loans fit the modern American model of getting people heavily in debt...

[...]

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Original Page: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EconForecast/~3/BISnCfF5G2s/pigs-at-trough.html

The most urgent necessity is not that the state should teach, but that it should allow education. All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly of education. - Frederic Bastiat, from What is Money? 

http://mises.org/daily/5213

Legal Experts Destroy Rationale for Obama’s Assassination Policy … And Slam Democrats for Supporting It

Attorney General Eric Holder announced at Northwestern University law school that the U.S. can assassinate U.S. citizens without any without disclosure of why they are even alleged to be baddies and without any review of any nature whatsoever by any judge, Congress or the American people.

Northwestern University's law school professor Joseph Margulies said:

I defy anyone to read [Holder's] speech and show any differences between Obama and Bush on these issues, They both say we are in a war not confined to particular battlefield. … Both say we can target citizens without judicial oversight and that can happen anywhere in the world.

The mere realization that we are having this discussion reminds me that the anti-war candidate Obama and the pro-war president Obama share little more than the ability to speak with eloquence. 

Columbia law school professor Scott Horton notes that this assassination strategy was created by Dick Cheney, and is being carried out by the Obama administration:

A lot of this seems to have been put in place under the tutelage of Dick Cheney. So here we see one of Dick Cheney's ideas being ratified by Barack Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. 

(Obama is also implementing Cheney and the boys' plans for war in the Middle East and North Africa.)

Top constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley slams the Democratic Party for its complicity:

The choice of a law school was a curious place for discussion of authoritarian powers. Obama has replaced the constitutional protections afforded to citizens with a "trust me" pledge that Holder repeated.

Who would have seen a president with more experience as a lawyer being complicit in this sort of undermining of liberty? Me, I did. A Chicago lawyer would only be marginally better than a Federal Reserve chairman in the oval office... 

Senior administration officials have asserted that the president may kill an American anywhere and anytime, including in the United States. Holder's speech does not materially limit that claimed authority. He merely assures citizens that Obama will only kill those of us he finds abroad and a significant threat. Notably, Holder added, "Our legal authority is not limited to the battlefields in Afghanistan."

The Obama administration continues to stonewall efforts to get it to acknowledge the existence of a memo authorizing the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki. Democrats previously demanded the "torture memos" of the Bush administration that revealed both poor legal analysis by Judge Jay Bybee and Professor John Yoo to justify torture. Now, however, Democrats are largely silent in the face of a president claiming the right to unilaterally kill citizens.

Hipocrits in government? Say it ain't so!

Holder became particularly cryptic in his assurance of caution in the use of this power, insisting that they will kill citizens only with "the consent of the nation involved or after a determination that the nation is unable or unwilling to deal effectively with a threat to the United States." What on earth does that mean?

So, does that mean that our Constitutional rights to due process will be observed when Americans become the focus of the Obama death squads? Does our future have a place for Judge Dredd?

[...]

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Original Page: http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-10-08/legal-experts-destroy-rationale-obama%E2%80%99s-assassination-policy-%E2%80%A6-and-slam-democ

FBI Director: I Have to Check to See If Obama Has the Right to Assassinate Americans On U.S. Soil

Fox News reports:

FBI Director Robert Mueller on Wednesday said he would have to go back and check with the Department of Justice whether Attorney General Eric Holder's "[criteria] for the targeted killing of Americans also applied to Americans inside the U.S.

Kiss your liberty goodbye, America. And due process as well. Wait, isn't there a Constitutional amendment about that in the Bill of Rights?

***

"I have to go back. Uh, I'm not certain whether that was addressed or not," Mueller said when asked by Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga., about a distinction between domestic and foreign targeting

Graves followed up asking whether "from a historical perspective," the federal government has "the ability to kill a U.S. citizen on United States soil or just overseas."

"I'm going to defer that to others in the Department of Justice," Mueller replied.

Indeed, Holder's Monday speech at Northwestern University seemed to leave the door open.

Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley writes:

One would hope that the FBI Director would have a handle on a few details guiding his responsibilities, including whether he can kill citizens without a charge or court order.

***

He appeared unclear whether he had the power under the Obama Kill Doctrine or, in the very least, was unwilling to discuss that power. For civil libertarians, the answer should be easy: "Of course, I do not have that power under the Constitution."

[...]

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Original Page: http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-10-09/fbi-director-i-have-check-see-if-obama-has-right-assassinate-americans-us-soi

Interview with Michael Madsen, director of Into Eternity

Interview with Michael Madsen, director of Into Eternity

Into Eternity The Movie

INTO ETERNITY is a multi award-winning documentary film about long-term safety issues in nuclear energy production. The film is set at 'Onkalo' the world's first permanent storage site for nuclear waste, which is under construction in Finland. However, all countries with nuclear energy facilities have to deal with nuclear waste for at least 100 000 years.

With the Fukushima disaster, Japan now has additional nuclear waste. Onkalo is an underground facility, but Fukushima is above ground, vulnerable to natural disasters, war, and economic crisis. The reactors, that suffered full or partial meltdown, will have to be permanently controlled and maintained for millenia on end.

THE EVENT

The radioactive evacuation zone is now uninhabitable. It has become a blind spot in the middle of
Japan, a symbol of the dangers of blindness in thinking about safety. We cannot secure ourselves
against things we cannot - or will not - see.

A TOTAL OF 150 837 PEOPLE ARE DISPLACED AS A RESULT OF THE FUKUSHIMA DISASTER.

A window of 150 837 seconds of free on-line streaming of the documentary

http://www.intoeternitythemovie.com/

70% of all Ground Beef Contains "Pink Slime" ... and USDA Bought 7 Million Pounds of the Stuff for School Lunches

ABC news notes:

"Pink slime," a cheap meat filler, is in 70 percent of the ground beef sold at supermarkets and up to 25 percent of each American hamburger patty, by some estimates.

But the government says its safe! Does USDA compliance make anyone comfortable eating something called pink slime?

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

The USDA just bought 7 million pounds of pink slime to add to school lunches (up from 5.5 million pounds in 2009).

Jamie Oliver gave a must-watch demonstration on the subject a year ago:

But at least we know where the real meat part of ground beef comes from ... right?

Nope ... the World Trade Organization struck down American laws requiring labeling of beef to disclose the country of origin:

But at least beef is being tested for horrible diseases like mad cow disease, right?

Negatory: the government does very little testing ... and prohibits private citizens such as ranchers or meat packers from testing it themselves.

What Should We Do?

So what's the answer?

You could cook a pot roast or other cut of meat and grind it yourself. That way, you'll be sure there's nothing but real meat.

Or you could buy grass-fed beef. Organic, grass-fed usually contains no pink slime.

And all grass-fed beef - organic or not - has a much lower risk for mad cow than other types of beef.

Why?

Because mad cow disease is most commonly caused by feeding animal products to cows. For example, Wikipedia notes:

A British inquiry into BSE [the scientific abbreviation for mad cow] concluded that the [disease] was caused by cattle, who are normally herbivores, being fed the remains of other cattle in the form of meat and bone meal (MBM), which caused the infectious agent to spread.

If they are fed grass - their natural food - they are much less likely to get sick.

Stores like Trader Joe's label grass fed, so it is easy to find.

Grass-fed beef contains more Omega 3s than beef from cows fed corn, meat or other "modern" feeds. See this and this.

Why is this important? Because eating Omega 3 rich foods can increase gray matter in adults and boost neurological development in children. Conversely, low dietary levels of Omega 3s in mothers can reduce their kids' IQ. (This is not entirely surprising, given that (1) our brains are about 60% fat, and (2) leading nutritionists say that humans evolved to consume alot of Omega 3 fatty acids in the wild game and fish which they ate (more), and that a low Omega 3 diet is a very new trend within the last 100 years or so).

And if you think that asking for organic beef is a counterculture hippy thing, note that Ronald Reagan insisted on organic meat.

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Original Page: http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-10-11/70-all-ground-beef-contains-pink-slime-and-usda-bought-7-million-pounds-stuff

The Disconnect Between Money and Wealth

F. More purchases! and what should we buy? Doubtless, useful articles — things likely to procure for us substantial gratification — such as provisions, stuffs, houses, books, pictures. You should begin, then, by proving that all these things create themselves; you must suppose the Mint melting ingots of gold which have fallen from the moon; or that the printing presses be put in action at the Treasury Department; for you cannot reasonably think that if the quantity of corn, cloth, ships, hats, and shoes remains the same, the share of each of us can be greater, because we each go to market with a greater amount of real or fictitious money. Remember the players. In the social order the useful things are what the workers place under the candlestick, and the dollars which circulate from hand to hand are the counters. If you multiply the dollars without multiplying the useful things, the only result will be that more dollars will be required for each exchange, just as the players required more counters for each deposit. You have the proof of this in what passes for gold, silver, and copper. Why does the same exchange require more copper than silver, more silver than gold? Is it not because these metals are distributed in the world in different proportions? What reason have you to suppose that if gold were suddenly to become as abundant as silver, it would not require as much of one as of the other to buy a house?

[...]

Fictitious, fiat money is amazingly fraudulent in that it takes root in the complacency of the populace as a replacement for real wealth. Does anyone honestly believe that allowing a banking institution to increase the money supply without  a parallel increase in the things is a sustainable effort? History seems to forget the similar efforts to increase the money supply without bounds, such as the former Soviet empire, the former British empire, and the soon-to-be-former American empire. Increasing the sign of wealth without an actual wealth is a disproportionate effort, increasing the social wealth gap. Money is not necessarily the measure of wealth.

A full transcript of the essay by Frederic Bastiat and an audio reading available at the Mises Institute.

Tu Ne Cede Malis...

http://mises.org/daily/

Infrastructure projects in Panama equivalent to $8 trillion in the US

I had dinner the other night with a bank executive in charge of government finance who told me that the aggregate spend of all the infrastructure projects in Panama totals more than $13 billion. This is roughly 50% of the entire Panamanian economy.

The equivalent in the United States would be the government announcing a 'Rebuild America' infrastructure spending initiative in the range of $8 TRILLION! No doubt, it's a lot of money for this small country.

Panama (and particularly Panama City) has been in a seemingly perpetual state of construction for nearly 10-years. The long boom in residential construction created an impressive skyline of condo towers along the new Cinta Costera. But residential demand peaked and petered several years ago.

Panama has gone from a pattern of sustainable growth to a habit of debt, which like other nations that have done the same, rarely ends with cuts in government spending to match the reductions in revenue. 

In an effort to keep the party going, the government has essentially swapped a residential construction boom for an infrastructure boom.

There are so many projects here, you'd think you were in Chonqing, China. And it's made life miserable for anyone who has to get into an automobile– Panama City's already dismal traffic has now become utterly hopeless.

The real issue is that Panama's debt has been steadily rising to finance several projects. In many cases, the debt increase has outpaced the country's dizzying GDP growth. For example, Panama's debt rose 10.3% in 2010, while GDP only increased 7.5%.

According to some of my local attorneys who work on the deals, many of these infrastructure projects are now being creatively financed: selling bonds of off-the-books quasi-government entities that own securitized future cash flows.

It's all an elaborate process to keep the debt from hitting the government balance sheet and obfuscating Panama's true fiscal status. Official debt is now hovering near 50% of GDP, but the actual figure is much higher. [...]

http://www.businessinsider.com/infrastructure-projects-in-panama-equivalent-to-8-trillion-in-the-us-2012-3

Earthquakes Linked to Hydrofracking

(CBS/AP) COLUMBUS, Ohio - A dozen earthquakes in northeastern Ohio were almost certainly induced by injection of gas-drilling wastewater into the earth, Ohio oil and gas regulators said Friday as they announced a series of tough new regulations for drillers.

Among the new regulations: Well operators must submit more comprehensive geological data when requesting a drill site, and the chemical makeup of all drilling wastewater must be tracked electronically.

The state Department of Natural Resources announced the tough new brine injection regulations because of the report's findings on a well in Youngstown...

I've been saying this was more than likely since last year. You can't keep pulling from the bottom of the deck without the deck dropping under its own weight, in this case creating quakes as a result. 

http://m.cbsnews.com/storysynopsis.rbml?catid=57394256&feed_id=0&videofeed=36

Liberty, Property Rights, and State Media

"Unless there's a valid, legitimate and compelling public purpose, I don't know why the government owns so much of this land."

Mitt Romney

While I generally disagree with Romney in policy, his words are often at least slightly correct (the same goes with most major players in the political theater). The government has no place "owning" land, preventing its use by the public. Collectivism has its serious flaws, but statism is no substitute for patriotism. 

Large private ownership is also an issue under certain circumstances, but promoting the best public interest through the government's monopoly on violence and the use of force with imminent domain fails to promote individual liberty and personal property rights, which should remain beyond the scope of interference by the government. 

One need not be a tree-hugger to see why this man should not be put in charge of the United States. He says it all in one sentence. He does not accept the idea that serve to ordinary people is a legitimate and compelling purpose.

The problem with this argument is that it promotes the sort of social thinking that runs rampant in states that push socialism on their citizen subjects. Also, one can hold environmental issues in high regard while also being in support of liberty. Romney is just as unfit for the office of the President of the United Sates as Obama, the man with whom he shares so much in common, yet purports to be the best replacement. 

"Is there any long-held, much-cherished American principle that Republicans/Democrats and their media outlets will not renounce? "— Tim Egan

There, fixed that for you. State media on both extreme Liberal and Conservative side are highly biased and promote agendas that are in conflict with liberty minded people of this nation, the majority of which live in the middle, increasingly finding fault with the state media efforts to divide et impera (Latin for divide and rule) the American people. 

Left and Right are both Wrong. 

http://liberalsarecool.com/post/19011890087/unless-theres-a-valid-legitimate-and-compelling

As Ron Paul says, liberty has been lost in this nation for the better part of the twentieth century. 

Wake up, America. 

Sign of the Times, Retail Edition

When even Costco is capitalizing on the prepper culture, you know it's getting serious.

Costco - Emergency Foods

Six Romney Family Members Hit Campaign Trail… For Ron Paul

No less than six relatives of Presidential candidate Mitt Romney have joined the campaign trail in the race for the GOP nomination, but they're not supporting the former Massachusetts governor, they're campaigning for Texas Congressman Ron Paul.

Three of Romney's relatives will even speak at Idaho caucus sites, declaring their support for Paul in a story that is sure to create a buzz around Paul's campaign as he looks to pick up his first caucus win on Super Tuesday.

The Paul campaign issued a press release Monday introducing five Romney relatives, then issued another release shortly afterwards noting a sixth.

Travis Romney, Troy Romney and Chad Romney, all cousins of Mitt Romney, will speak before Ron Paul crowds in Idaho today. Ty Romney and Jared Romney, whose grandfathers are cousins of former Michigan Governor George Romney, the father of Mitt Romney, have also declared their support for Paul.

http://visiontoamerica.org/8587/six-romney-family-members-hit-campaign-trail-for-ron-paul/

If Romney's own family would not vote for him, don't you imagine there is a good reason?

Warmongers All: Kerry takes aim at Romney over Iran

Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts unleashed some harsh words Tuesday against his state's former governor turned two-time GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

The 2004 Democratic presidential nominee blasted Romney's op-ed in the Washington Post Tuesday in which the candidate sharply criticized President Barack Obama's policies toward Iran and labeled him the most "feckless" president since President Jimmy Carter.

"While Obama frets in the White House, the Iranians are making rapid progress toward obtaining the most destructive weapons in the history of the world," Romney wrote in the op-ed.

Hello pot, this is kettle...

Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday, Kerry lambasted the article, saying it was "as inaccurate as it was aggressive."

He particularly took issue with Romney's characterization of Obama as an incompetent leader and pointed to the killing of Osama bin Laden last year as the president's crowning achievement.

"George W. Bush may have said 'wanted dead or alive' but it was President Obama who delivered it," Kerry said. "I don't know if Governor Romney has checked the definition of the word feckless lately, but that raid ain't it."

The anti war candidate became the biggest warmonger the United States has crowned in decades. Big surprise...

The senator also argued Romney and other Republican presidential candidates were using the simmering Iran-Israel tension as a ploy to appeal to conservative voters on the campaign trail.

"I don't think that we should allow Iran to become another party's applause line on the presidential stump," Kerry said.

While Romney did not specifically spell out the kind of military action he would take in Iran, the candidate said he would complement diplomacy "with a military option that will persuade the ayatollahs to abandon their nuclear ambitions."

He also threatened to "act alone if we must" on "ever-tightening sanctions."

But Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, described Romney's rhetoric as irresponsible.

"Talk of war only helps Iran at this moment and others by increasing the price of Iranian crude oil that pays for its nuclear program," he said. "To create false differences with the president just to score political points does nothing to move Iran off a dangerous nuclear course."

What a false flag effort this is turning into. I only wonder what manufactured scenario will become the spark that drives us into Iran as with so many undeserving nations. The American empire is on the verge of collapse and the warfare state is all that keeps us afloat. 

Romney's op-ed came the same day he and two other Republican candidates-Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich-spoke at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C., and two days after Obama made his remarks to the powerful lobby group.

In his first press conference of the year, Obama echoed Kerry's sentiments and targeted the Republican candidates for using Iran as a campaign topic.

"When I see the casualness with which some of these folks talk about war, I'm reminded of the costs involved in war. I'm reminded of the decision that I have to make, in terms of sending our young men and women into battle and the impacts that has on their lives, the impact it has on our national security, the impact it has on our economy," Obama said. "This is not a game, and there's nothing casual about it."

I forced to rely on our ability to produce rather than invade and consume, America would surely collapse as did the Russian and British before us. At least we have history to reference along the path to self-destruction...

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Original Page: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/06/kerry-takes-aim-at-romney-over-iran/

Survival Necessities

Humans need four things to survive; food, water, air, and information. We now have three out of those four regulated by government in the United States, much to the detriment of those resources. As tyrannical states grow in strength, they move to regulate information as well. Will that happen in this country as well, along with the subsequent collapse that consistently follows?

US Environmental Protection Agency ✓
US Department of Agriculture/Food and Drug Administration ✓
US Department of Information ?

We are one step away from totalitarianism...

Factors that could make $5 a Gallon Gas the Norm

It is hard to miss the recent rise in gasoline (gas) prices in the United States, and the rumblings that it has generated in the national press. It is a concern that has already entered the on-going political debate with one Republican candidate promising that, once elected, he will bring the price of gas down to $2.00. (The unreality of that prediction has been explained earlier.) As a result there have been a number of reasons projected (for example here) as to why, in contrast with most seasons, gas prices are rising at the present, in the season…

Read more...

A usual, no one addresses the real root cause of price increases; the inflation an devaluation of currency by the unaccountable Federal Reserve and it's member banks. Left unchecked, this hyperinflation will be a factor in the collapse of the US, just as in the former Soviet Union. 

They’re Picking Us Off, One-By-One!

Hage, Hiatt, Webb, Kelo, Strouss, Miller, Amos, Sackett, Lakin and Kilpatrick are just a few of the names of the tens of thousands of Americans who have had to fight alone against government abuse, arrogance and irrational and draconian laws, passed by out-of-touch lawmakers that don't read the bills they pass, or take the time to determine whether those new laws, or even all the old ones, are constitutional. Or, they had to fight against government agents working under the color of law with no legal authority, or in some cases, actually breaking the law. The government and special interests know that most Americans won't or can't fight back. They just go on their merry way as if the general population doesn't exist and for the most part, it doesn't.

And if you don't think that government does whatever it pleases, view this "Fox News" segment on AIG, Goldman Sachs, Timothy Geithner, current Treasury Secretary under Obama and Hank Paulson, previous Treasury Secretary under Bush, during the financial meltdown in 2008. Talk about double dealing with the public treasury, someone or several someone's should go to jail, but it isn't likely that they will.

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More: http://bonfiresblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/theyre-picking-us-off-one-by-one

McCain calls for US-led strikes on Syria

The former presidential candidate (R-AZ) becomes the first senator to publicly call for a US-led military strike on Syria in order to halt the nearly year-long conflict there. 

Someone help me here. Tell me what the difference between the statists on the right and the statists on the left, other than the labels...

Read Full Article at RT.com

Facebook CIA Project

With the new timeline feature, I feel like this Onion piece is less fiction than ever...



Facebook CIA Project: The Onion News Network - YouTube

Andrew Breitbart Just Another Weird Death?

Andrew Breitbart Just Another Weird Death - YouTube

Bernanke’s B.S. Bludgeons Bullion

Gold and silver prices plummet because the U.S. economy is so healthy that the Federal Reserve won't have to print any more money, and so there won't be any more inflation. Lol! While it made good fiction for the mainstream pablum-dispensers, it certainly has no connection whatsoever with the real world.

The U.S. economy is "healthy"? As I have pointed out on previous occasions, 0% interest rates are nothing less than an economic defibrillator – a (temporary) desperation measure to attempt to breathe life into a dying economy. Permanent 0% interest rates simply mean that economy is already dead, as we have seen with Japan. All that remains to be done is to put these zombie-economies out of their misery, through debt-default followed by massive restructuring.

The US economy is DOA at this point, but state media will continue to promote spending calling this a recovery. 

As I have stressed in my recent commentaries, it is also beyond absurd for B.S. Bernanke to pretend that the Federal Reserve has ceased its money-printing orgy. The gravity-defying U.S. Treasuries market provides conclusive, mathematical proof that such a claim is tantamount to an admission of massive fraud.

And that printing drives the dollar's value down, leading us to the hyperinflation the USSR experienced before its collapse. 

Maximum bond prices at a time of maximum supply defies every economic principle in the books. Maximum bond prices at a time of maximum supply, when the largest buyer (China) has been selling Treasuries for more than a year, when the "economic surpluses" which financed Treasuries-buying have nearly vanished, when Treasuries auctions have been rigged so that no one knows who the buyers are, and at a time when the U.S. economy is obviously and hopelessly insolvent defies legality.

Someone, somehow is financing the totally opaque purchases of $trillions in U.S. Treasuries, and the list of suspects is rather short: the Federal Reserve. If the Fed is not financing those purchases with its officially/legitimately created funny-money then in must be doing so in some less-than-legitimate manner.

More broadly speaking, it demonstrates the terminal stupidity of the entire mainstream media that they could believe anyone claiming there will be little-to-no-inflation, in a world of deadbeat-debtors – who can only continue to finance their economic Ponzi-schemes through exponentially increasing their money-printing (and thus diluting their currencies, and thus producing inevitable inflation).

The only other mathematically-possible scenario is debt-default: bonds immediately going to zero (or close to it). Otherwise, exponential money-printing takes the underlying currencies to zero, also making the bonds worthless. Either way we are 100% certain to get to the same result. Paying maximum prices for any of these paper time-bombs goes well past idiocy and all the way to deliberate economic suicide.

Read the rest : http://bullionbullscanada.com/gold-commentary/24364-bernankes-bs-bludgeons-bullion

The Venus Project - Future By Design

The Venus Project - Future By Design

The Venus Project - Future By Design - YouTube

The Venus Project

GM Channel Stuffing Soars To All Time High

Did channel stuffing expert AOL quietly merge with a Government Motors without anyone's knowledge? Because making record amounts of cars only to have them amortize rapidly in showrooms must be some New Normal definition of a recovery. 

Recession? What recession? We're in a recovery!

</sarcasm>

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Original Page: http://www.facebook.com/SurvivingCollapse/posts/356630021043458

US: Andrew Breitbart's Fiery CPAC Speech: I Have 'College Days' Obama Videos

Andrew Breitbart took the podium at CPAC Friday afternoon, introduced to the stage with Rage Against The Machine's Guerrilla Radio, and revealed to the audience he had "videos" of Barack Obama from his college days. "I have videos, this election we're going to vet him," Breitbart disclosed to raucous applause. "We are going to vet him from his college days to show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008."

How's that hope and change working out, America?

"The videos are going to come out, the narrative is going to come out, that Barack Obama met a bunch of silver ponytails in the 1980s, like Bill (Ayers) and Bernadine (Dohrn), who said one day we would have the presidency, and the rest of us slept as they plotted, and they plotted, and they plotted and they oversaw hundreds of millions of dollars in the Annenberg Challenge and they had real money, from real capitalists. Then they became communists. We got to work on that. That is a parenthesis. Barack Obama is a radical, we should not be afraid to say that! Okay? And Barack Obama was launched from Bill and Bernadine's salon. I've been there."

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Original Page: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/242341-US-Andrew-Breitbart-s-Fiery-CPAC-Speech-I-Have-College-Days-Obama-Videos

Hillary Clinton Admits US and Al-Qaeda On Same Side in Syria

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has admitted that Al-Qaeda and other groups on the State Department's terror list are on the same side as the United States in Syria and that they are aiding opposition rebels.

In an interview with BBC News (watch video), Clinton states, "We have a very dangerous set of actors in the region, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and those who are on our terrorist list, to be sure, supporting – claiming to support the opposition [in Syria]."

http://www.blacklistednews.com/Hillary_Clinton_Admits_US_and_Al-Qaeda_On_Same_Side_in_Syria/18219/0/38/38/Y/M.html

Half a million UK savers' retirement plans shattered as payouts from 'crippled' with-profits pensions plunge

Hundreds of thousands of savers have had their retirement hopes dashed by the banking crisis and a crash in payouts on with-profits pensions.

Those reaching pension age now are getting £4,975 less a year than an identical saver who retired five years ago, Money Mail research has revealed.

They have been hit by a toxic combination of plunging payouts on with-profits pensions, and a fall in annuity rates — which turn pension savings into an income for life.

http://www.blacklistednews.com/Half_a_UK_million_savers%27_retirement_plans_shattered_as_payouts_from_%27crippled%27_with-profits_pensions_plunge/18220/0/38/38/Y/M.html