Knock Knock

Knock, Knock. Who’s There? Heavily Armed Agents Here to Seize Your Car. Who Are You With? The EPA. 

 http://www.ijreview.com/2014/07/163047-knock-knock-whos-heavily-armed-agents-seize-car-epa/

 The “new-look” EPA is complete with a heavily armed SWAT team that conducts commando-style raids,,,

Best political cartoon I have seen in a while

Record downward revision for home sales slashes second-quarter progress

July 24, 2014, 1:34 PM ET

In a fresh kick to the economy’s guts, a record downward revision to recent data on new-home sales slashed gains that economists had previously thought were made in the second quarter, according to research released Thursday.
It turns out that the annualized sales pace of new single-family homes in May was 442,000 – down 62,000, or 12%, from the government’s prior estimate of 504,000. That cut means that May didn’t post the fastest home-sales rate in six years. Now it looks like May saw the most new homes sold since January.
“The optimism about improvement in the housing market was a bit premature,” Yelena Shulyatyeva of BNP Paribas wrote in a research note.
June’s sales rate was 406,000, just a hair above the pace at the end of the first quarter, according to U.S. Commerce Department data.
“We made no progress,” said Mike Wolf, an economist at Wells Fargo Securities.
But it’s important to note that the monthly series is volatile and, clearly, prone to at-times large revisions. June’s data, for example, will surely be revised. The government estimated Thursday that new-homes sales fell 8.1% last month, with a confidence interval of plus or minus 12.3%, signaling that analysts in their first stab at the data weren’t sure whether the pace of new-home sales actually rose or fell.
“In light of these large revisions, it’s hard to know what to make of today’s report, though we can be sure today’s estimate for June sales will change several times over coming months,” said Richard Moody, chief economist at Regions Financial.
Confusion about how to read the data is one factor behind dissenting opinions among economists over how the housing market will fare this year. There are conflicting macro factors, as well. The labor market is strengthening – a great support for housing. But mortgage rates and prices have climbed over the past year, and it’s still tough for many families to get a mortgage.
–Ruth Mantell

DARPA Wants New Technology to Predict “Societal Unrest”

U.S. Defense Department looks to track "all human activities that can be measured"

 

by Paul Joseph Watson | July 25, 2014

---

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting companies to provide new technology that would allow the U.S. Department of Defense to predict future “societal unrest” by keeping track of “all human activities that can be measured.”

A solicitation posted on FedBizOpps outlines DARPA’s intent to fund research and development of “game-changing technologies” that will “provide a decisive information advantage for the U.S. and its allies,” opening the door to “powerful ways to gain insight into the world.”

“Essentially all human activities that can be measured, from mercantile to military, are being quantitatively re-examined in the context of this new, “big data”, capability. Early demonstrations have produced remarkable insights into human activities and enabled quantitative decision making,” states the solicitation, adding that the agency is looking to develop new algorithms which can forecast “online correlation for societal unrest.”

DARPA has already been heavily engaged in research aimed at forecasting social unrest, most notably the agency’s Crisis Early Warning System (ICEWS), but the results have been patchy, with ICEWS only successful in predicting four out of sixteen rebellions, political upheavals and incidents of ethnic violence during the time period over which it was applied.

Over the past six years, the Pentagon has shown an increased interest in creating models that can forecast domestic and international disorder.

A report produced in 2008 by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Institute warned that the United States may experience massive civil unrest in the wake of a series of crises which it termed “strategic shock.”

“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” stated the report, authored by [Ret.] Lt. Col. Nathan Freir, adding that the military may be needed to quell “purposeful domestic resistance.”

We have also reported numerous times over the past several years on how the federal government is gearing up for civil unrest, including the Department of Homeland Security’s purchase last October of 240,000 pepper spray projectiles, 100 pepper spray launchers, as well as 36 “riot expansion kits.”

In 2011, the DHS announced that it would intensify its monitoring of social media in order to pre-empt social dislocation within the United States.

Back in 2012, we reported on FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations, a U.S. Army manual that describes how political activists in prison camps will be indoctrinated by specially assigned psychological operations officers. The document makes numerous references to how government agencies like the DHS, ICE and FEMA will be involved in the domestic internment of U.S. citizens during “civil support operations.”

A second US Army Military Police manual that was leaked months later also outlined how military assets would be used domestically to quell riots, confiscate firearms and even kill Americans on U.S. soil during mass civil unrest in the aftermath of a crisis.

Thoughts Concerning the Death Penalty

After reading reports on the latest lethal injection screw up, I was wondering if maybe we should revise our thinking with regards to capital punishment. With the numerous legal appeals and the long delays, some convicted murderers are spending years on "Death Row", which has become more like an old folks home. Should we pass laws limiting the review process? How about the lethal injection mess?  What was wrong with the electric chair? Several pundits have advocated returning to firing squads, the once-and-done approach. Others think the problem would be solved by eliminating the death penalty altogether. I have read lately that the anti death penalty crowd are the ones responsible for the mess in the first place, intentionally. Just wondering what some of you think.

Decption is everything. Another crisis buried, divert atention businesses, renounce their citizenship because corporate taxes are to high. Pathetic.

The DACA Magnet

Cari Kelly | July 18, 2014

A recent memo from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirms that major “pull factors” for the current crop of illegal entries includes previously “successful migration attempts.” In other words, the President’s blatant refusal to enforce the law has, as anticipated, resulted in the more than 50,000 unlawful immigrants flooding the border.

Prominent among the administration’s lawless decrees is a program initiated in June 2012 known as DACA: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Under this policy, Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials are instructed to practice “prosecutorial discretion” towards unlawful minors apprehended in the U.S., granting them de facto amnesty. It is this implied promise by the President that unaccompanied alien minors will not be returned home that has led to the current influx.
Many proponents of DACA have pointed out that, for one reason or another, many of the illegal immigrants now entering would not qualify for “deferred action” status under the President’s policy. This fact, however, neither discourages the immigrants from attempting to cross nor will it prevent the President from granting them DACA amnesty anyway.
The Obama Administration has already exhibited willingness to ignore key qualifications for DACA participation in order to unilaterally grant more unlawful minors legal status.
Congress is now debating how to comply with the President’s emergency funding request to correct a situation that his executive fiats have created. For example, though DACA provisions require applicants to provide “educational information,” officials from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently conceded to Congressional aides that current DACA participants need not adhere to the educational standards when they reapply for consideration this September. As Breitbart explains:

At least 560,000 people to date have been granted temporary amnesty under the DACA program, and federal officials also confirmed that that number is likely to increase as applicants who were not eligible in 2012 because they were not 16 years of age will be this year so long as they meet the other requirements. In addition, DACA recipients cannot “age out.”

Given the loose parameters for application approval, and the Obama Administration’s reckless disregard for immigration enforcement in other areas, it only follows logic that residents of foreign lands will illegally enter the U.S. believing they will not be returned home—since, after all, they won’t.

Obama Blasts US Corporations “Renouncing Their US Citizenship” To Avoid Taxes

In remarks on Thursday, President Obama decried US corporations’ use of “tax inversions,” which allow them to reduce their tax liabilities by officially relocating offshore. Obama’s comments received significant print and online coverage, but they were not mentioned during any of the three network newscasts Thursday evening. Reports and analyses describe Obama’s focus on “economic patriotism” as part of the Democrats’ midterm campaign messaging, and they note that Obama’s proposal to limit the use of inversions has almost no chance of getting through Congress anytime soon – even though many Republicans share his concerns about the practice.




Here is a bi partisan issue. Are corporations renouncing their citizenship by relocating off shore?

How to screw your own. Brought to you by the Republican Party of the United States of America.

Nearly 48 million Americans, 15.4% of the total population, lacked health insurance last year, according to a new Census Bureau report. And most of them — 59.4%, to be exact — live in states that have chosen not to set up their own insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare.
The exchanges — online marketplaces where people can compare different insurance plans and buy coverage — are the centerpiece of the law, which remains controversial and not terribly popular three-and-a-half years after its passage. The enrollment period opens on Oct. 1. Under the law, most Americans must either have insurance by the New Year or pay a penalty (though officials have said people who are insured by April 1 won’t be penalized, which effectively extends the deadline to buy coverage to mid-March).
The law envisioned that most states would set up and run their own online exchanges, with federally-run exchanges as a backstop. However, only 16 states and the District of Columbia have done so; seven more are partnering with the federal government to operate their exchanges. In the other 27 states, people without insurance will use federally managed exchanges to shop for coverage.
Those 27 states — many of which have actively opposed the health care law — contain a majority (59.4%) of the nation’s uninsured people; together they account for 54.6% of the nation’s population. Collectively, 16.8% of people in the “federal default” states were without insurance last year, compared with 14% in the states that have organized their own exchanges and 12.8% in the “partnership” states.
That disparity may further complicate the law’s already-complex rollout. Although exchanges (whether state- or federally-run) will be available in every state, a recent Pew Research Center study found that only 44% of people in the “federal default” states said they’d have access to one, versus 59% in the states with state-based health care exchanges or state-federal partnerships. (In at least one default state, Florida, the state government has barred federally funded “navigators” from using its offices for outreach efforts.)
Much as there’s a deep partisan divide among the American public over the healthcare-reform law (Pew Research found that 73% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents support it and 85% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents oppose it), there’s a clear partisan split on implementation. Among the 22 states (plus D.C.) that are running their own exchanges or partnering with the federal government to do so, Democrats control the legislatures of 17 and hold 18 governorships (or mayorship in the case of D.C.). Among the 27 federal-default states, all but two have Republican governors and 23 have GOP-controlled legislatures.








Congratulations William and friends you have screwed your own constituency by fighting Obamacare. as it stands today they get no subsidies and get to pay the extra tax penalty. Most of these same states have refused federal help to expand Medicaid to cover those who cannot afford insurance. So they will stay uninsured. It's really funny. Most of these states don't support Democrats anyway. Yep Ya screwed your own.
When will these poor people figure it out?