More Weiner Messages to Young Girls? Evidence the Media Was Duped into Dropping the Investigation

There are new reasons to question whether Rep. Anthony Weiner sent DMs to young girls besides Gennette Nicole — and whether he sent Nicole more flirtatious DMs than just that one picture.

The other day, Tommy Christopher published an interesting article regarding two underage girls who had claimed to have incriminating DMs from Anthony Weiner. Christopher called the girls “Betty” and “Veronica” and said that they had admitted to him that they had lied. That may be . . . but there are some aspects of their claims (and those of their parents) that I think merit some examination.

In short, certain aspects of their claims sound fishy, and/or contradict other pieces of evidence that I have learned about. For example, one of the girls says in her statement that Weiner unfollowed her as a favor, to stop the harassment she was experiencing from Mike Stack aka goatsred, and Dan Wolfe aka PatriotUSA76.

That is not what she was saying at the time. At the time, she was angry at Weiner for unfollowing her. The details of this are set forth below.

Christopher’s piece needs to be questioned. There is evidence that what the girls are saying now is not true. Which could mean that what they were telling Stack at the time — that they had compromising DMs from Weiner — was true.

THE BACKGROUND: “BETTY” CONTACTS TOMMY CHRISTOPHER TO TELL HIM ABOUT DAN WOLFE AND MIKE STACK

Let me quote from Tommy’s piece:

Shortly after the Weinergate story first broke, one of several red flags I noticed, and shared with Breitbart, was the fact that there was only one unique retweet of the picture. My back-and-forth on Twitter caught the attention of a young girl who had information about the story, and she contacted me. Since she is a minor, and at her parents’ request, I will identify her pseudonymously as Betty.

It was Betty who pointed out the activities of Dan Wolfe (@patriotusa76) and his clique, including a man named Mike Stack (@goatsred). She had a lot of information that I could not verify, but those facts that were independently verifiable formed the basis of our reporting on Wolfe Sunday afternoon. Wolfe and Stack, along with several others, had engaged in a campaign of harassing young, mostly-underage girls who were being followed by Rep. Weiner, as well as a constant stream of vitriol, homophobic innuendo, and rumormongering against Rep. Weiner. Betty was one of those young girls, and their unwanted attention, she says, caused her to shut down her Twitter feed.

Betty’s mother (we’ll call her Mrs. Betty) says that she and her husband monitor all of Betty’s internet usage, and were incensed by this group’s behavior. Rep. Weiner, she confirms, never contacted Betty privately, with the exception of a Direct Message welcoming her to his Twitter stream, a message Mrs. Betty assumed was automatically generated.

Just so it’s clear, it is “Betty” who brought up PatriotUSA76 (Dan Wolfe) and goatsred (Mike Stack).

Lee Stranahan did not bring up Stack or Wolfe first. “Betty” did. Which makes you wonder whether anyone had gotten to her. The more you read, the more you’ll wonder about that.

“VERONICA” ADMITS A LIE — BUT WAS IT REALLY A LIE?

Moving on:

A high school friend of Betty’s, whom I will call Veronica (she’s a minor), was also contacted, via Twitter, by a member of the group, Mike Stack (@goatsred). For personal reasons I won’t go into, Veronica saw a means of getting attention, and agreed to follow @Goatsred so that they could speak privately. She told him that she and Betty had incriminating Direct Messages from Rep. Weiner, a claim she now admits was false, and which she made without Betty’s knowledge.

In fact, she was simultaneously telling Betty that @Goatsred had tried to induce her to lie about Rep. W[ei]ner, and to enlist Betty in the plot. Veronica now admits this was also false. Yes, @goatsred did contact her, and she did feed him false information about Rep. Weiner, but this was not at his urging.

Christopher says Veronica “admits” she was lying, and maintains that it is 100% certain that “Veronica” was lying when she said she had incriminating messages. Maybe. But keep reading.

When a tipster, Adam Shriver, sent me a screenshot of this Direct Message from Veronica, from @goatsred’s public YFrog account, I confronted Betty about it, and Mrs. Betty called Veronica’s mother. That’s when Veronica admitted she had been lying.

According to Veronica, she never even followed Rep. Weiner, nor did he ever follow her. “I saw many other girls in the news and I wanted to be famous,” she says. “Nothing I told goatsred was true. I’m sorry to everyone for lying and for embarrassing my mom.”

Immediately below that is a redacted screencap of some of the DMs that “Veronica” was sending to goatsred/Stack.

(Christopher later goes on to explain how a Kos diarist published that screencap without redacting the picture or the name — and recounts how he unsuccessfully tried to persuade Markos Moulitsas to redact it. Kos refused but the diarist ultimately relented. However, unredacted versions of the screencap are still available online. I have seen them and I know the name the girl used when she was talking to Stack. I can further confirm this because I have seen the screencaps that Stack has sent me of the DMs from Veronica. Stack spoke to me for this story and authorized me to use the information he sent me.)

Here’s one question. If you look at Christopher’s redacted screencap, it is clear that “Veronica” is very concerned about keeping her name and the true name of “Betty” out of it. She asks Stack how the revelation will be worded, clearly not wanting to have her real name out there.

So, she wanted to be famous, but wanted to keep her name secret? Perhaps.

Or perhaps her intense desire for privacy explains why, when it turned out that an Internet reporter (Tommy Christopher) had discovered who she was, she suddenly claimed that she had been lying about having DMs from Weiner.

Christopher goes on to explain that Breitbart told him he (Breitbart) had the DMs from goatsred and had been trying to verify them, but did not publish because he could not do the verification. Christopher explains that this was a good thing, because the DMs turned out to be a fabrication (he claims) by Veronica.

How does Christopher claim to know the DMs were lies?

STATEMENTS FROM THE GIRLS AND BETTY’S MOTHER: WEINER DID NOTHING WRONG AND DAN WOLFE AND MIKE STACK ARE THE BAD GUYS

Christopher sets out full statements from Betty’s mother, Betty, and Veronica. The statement from Betty’s mother reads like it could have been written by Weiner’s press people. For example:

We would also like to express our disgust at the harassment of Rep Weiner and hope that everyone remembers this man did nothing wrong. Look at your own behavior and your own mental hang-ups and ask yourself why you find certain things so perverse — it says more about you than it does about the person you are accusing.

And concerning a certain adult actress, we would like to add that this girl did nothing wrong. If you actually read her blog it is about politics and chronic illness. My husband and I read it together with our daughter. Again, ask yourself what your own personal prejudices and hangups are before you make accusations.

This man did nothing wrong? I beg to differ, ma’am.

Here is the most important reason to question the statement: Betty’s mom and Betty both say that Weiner was forced to unfollow Betty as a “favor” because Betty was being harassed by the goatsred/PatriotUSA76 gang. But that is not what “Betty” was saying at the time.

Here is the statement from Betty’s mom to Christopher regarding Weiner’s decision to unfollow Betty:

Soon after she was following Rep Weiner, a group of grown men and a few grown woman who described themselves as “concerned mothers” began harassing my daughter. I can assure you, as a mother, I’ve never heard of such disgusting behavior. My daughter, with our permission, responded to these attacks on Rep Weiner following her with grace and maturity – which is something that cannot be said for these “mothers” and their fellow grown men involved in the attack.

These mothers and their grown male friends attacked the intentions and character of Rep Weiner to our daughter and suggested that he was somehow perverse for following her. This disgusted myself and my husband. They were attacking a man, who has done nothing to them and has done nothing wrong.

Ultimately, Rep Weiner had to unfollow our daughter as a favor to her so these attacks would stop. We were sorry that these bullies caused this and we were disgusted to see that even after he unfollowed her, this group of so called mothers and grown men — continued to try and contact my daughter.

Betty also says that Weiner unfollowed her as a favor due to Stack’s harassment:

I was so excited because we were learning about politics in school and he is a great hero of mine. This excitement turned to fear when a group of women and men started harassing me for following Rep Weiner and for being followed by him. They said the most terrible things about him.

He was forced to unfollow me so they would stop harassing me.

Here is the problem. That’s not what she said at the time.

CONTEMPORANEOUS STATEMENTS FROM “BETTY” REGARDING WHY WEINER UNFOLLOWED HER — OR, THE IDOL WHO DIDN’T LIVE UP TO EXPECTATIONS

On May 18, “Betty” said:

Well @RepWeiner unfollowed me. That was a short time. I defended him from people. Some thanks he gives to his loyal followers.

She sounds upset at Weiner. How is that consistent with Weiner doing her a favor?

Moreover, just a day earlier, on May 17, she had been bemoaning the fact that one of her “idols” had disappointed her:

It really sucks when one of your idols doesn’t live up to expectations.

Here is a screenshot:

The timing of this will become interesting when you meet “Ethel” later on in this post.

How can I tell you this is “Betty”? I think it will help if I first give you a timeline of some of “Betty’s” tweets, and then tell you exactly what Veronica was telling Stack that Betty had.

On May 15, Betty tweeted:

Watchin the game wit [redacted] & [Veronica]! #letsgododgers! #dodgersporvida

On May 16, Betty began a campaign to get Weiner to take her to prom:

Tweeps my progressive idol @RepWeiner is following me! Today is the best day ever!

Today also marks day one of my campaign to get @RepWeiner to be my prom date. Will you be my prom date @RepWeiner?

Everyone please please follow @RepWeiner and tell him to be my prom date!

Tweeps please tweet and follow @RepWeiner and tell him to be my prom date and use #RepWeinerBe[Betty]sDate

Follow the best progressive Congressman @RepWeiner he is a democrat who fights for us & against Republican trolls! #RepWeinerBe[Betty]sDate

On May 17, there was a sudden turn of events, in which Betty expressed extreme disappointment with one of her “idols.” It doesn’t sound like this had anything to do with goatsred/Mike Stack or PatriotUSA76/Dan Wolfe:

It really sucks when one of your idols doesn’t live up to expectations.

Betty wasn’t necessarily talking about Weiner, of course. But . . . on May 18 she was saying this:

Well @RepWeiner unfollowed me. That was a short time. I defended him from people. Some thanks he gives to his loyal followers.

That certainly doesn’t sound like Weiner unfollowed her because of Stack or Wolfe. Also on May 18, Betty tweeted this. In keeping with the Archie comics theme, I will replace the real Twitter handle of the person Betty is addressing with the name “Ethel,” another girl from the Archie strip.

RT @[Ethel]: Funny that you said you had a crush on a married politician. Are you forreal?

You see, Ethel (who still has her Twitter account) had been tweeting numerous starry-eyed tweets about Weiner. Ethel’s name has been published at the Daily Caller, but I would rather not publish it here, as she is of high school age. In April she had tweeted: “Seriously talking to Representative Weiner from New York right now! Like is my life real?” That tweet is now gone, though her account remains. A couple of days later, she wrote that she was “seriously depressed” that Weiner didn’t follow her any more. On May 13 she tweeted Weiner complaining that he used to follow her but no longer did. Two days later she wrote “SERIOUSLY LOVING LIFE AGAIN BUT I GOTTA KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT OR ELSE…” She followed that with “i love today, i really do” and “I’m in love with married men, #thatswhyimsingle.”

This is the same day (May 17) that Betty complained that one of her idols did not live up to expectations. And the next day, there was a message between Betty and Ethel in which one mocks the other for having a crush on a married man. (I can’t quite tell which; the form of the RT suggests that Ethel addressed an unnamed person and was retweeted by Betty, but the context suggests Betty talking to Ethel.)

On May 19, Ethel said: “Sitting in the chair where I first talked to my favorite Congressman. )))))))”

Ethel could have been talking about someone else, right? Wait: I’m not done yet.

VERONICA’S DMs TO MIKE STACK

After the scandal broke, Veronica contacted Stack. She told him:

mike we see whats going on with rep weiner. [betty] has caps of messages from gennette nicole DMs talking about flirting with weienr [sic]

She encouraged Stack to try to message her back. She then sent the series of messages you see on Christopher’s screenshot. Note how the girl supposedly seeking fame (according to her statement to Christopher) was desperately trying to preserve both girls’ anonymity:

she also has some rep weiner DMs she is willing to share if you can guarantee she is anonymous

she just wants to know how it will be worded? who will be named as the source?

so andrew and dana will say they themselves are the source? keep [Betty] and my names totally out of it?

you can say we are high school girls because that’s necessary for the story

Other messages include:

the DMs with that girl gennette are between gennette and [Betty] with gennette telling her how she & weiner flirt

how they flirt on DM

then there are only 3 DMs from Weiner to [Betty] – they are pretty harmless actually. it is when she asked him to prom. that’s all she had

unfortunately she had already deleted the rest when he was accusing her and had [Ethel] harassing her

those were the worst of his tweets to [Betty] and [Ethel]s too

let me know when you are ready for the links – and download the pics instantly. [Betty] will delete within 5 minutes of saying you’re ready

u have permission to say high school girls were talking to college girl about rep weiner i can tell you how it went down as long as no names

we have the links for you mike. we ask that only you see these links not dana or andrew. just download the pics and send to them,

Stack tells me that he never heard from Veronica again — suggesting, possibly, that the parents had gotten involved.

It should be pretty clear by now that Betty is the same Betty I quote above who is asking Weiner to prom. Betty is the one, remember, who said on May 17 that she was disillusioned by one of her idols. Then she got into a dispute with Ethel. Then she complained that Weiner had unfollowed her — saying: “I defended him from people. Some thanks he gives to his loyal followers.”

QUESTIONING THE GIRL’S STATEMENTS: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED? AND, ARE THERE WEINER DMs/PICS OUT THERE WE NEVER SAW?

So I have to question the statement from Betty and her mother that Weiner unfollowed Betty as a favor to Betty. At the time, Betty seemed upset at Weiner because he had unfollowed her.

And if Betty and her mom are lying about that, as they sing Weiner’s praises . . . what else are they lying about?

Now that you have this background, I should add some corroboration. All this is difficult because I want to protect the girls’ identity and not even drop breadcrumbs that could identify them, if possible. But I can note that, although “Betty” has deleted her Twitter account, if you know her Twitter handle, you can do a Google search that shows you her real name. If you know the name of the person who contacted Stack, as I do, you can do a Google search that shows you conversations between Betty and Veronica using the names they used on Twitter (Betty used a clear pseudonym while Veronica used a first and last name as her Twitter handle. Incidentally, the real name she used has Kossacks incorrectly alleging that she is a 20-year-old from Arkansas, which I believe to be false). The Google searches in question identify Betty’s first and last name, and when I quote Veronica’s DMs to Stack, the first name Veronica uses for Betty is the same one associated with Betty’s Twitter handle. That full name is on the Internet page from which I have taken the above screenshots, in which “Betty” asks Weiner to the prom and fights with Ethel.

Another thing I find puzzling in all this: if Veronica really made this up, why did she tell Stack that the DMs to Betty were innocuous? Why did she say: “they are pretty harmless actually. it is when she asked him to prom. that’s all she had.” Why not make up a more juicy lie about those DMs — and again, why does she now claim she wanted to be famous when she told Stack she wanted her identity and Betty’s to be left out of it completely?

Christopher assures me that he has 100% solid evidence that Betty and Veronica are telling the truth. I don’t know what that evidence is, but if it depends on the parents telling the truth, I’m not sure I’d buy it. Protective parents might well delete anything incriminating even if the kids didn’t.

If Veronica was telling the truth, what does all this prove? That Betty had DMs from “college girl” Gennette Nicole in which there were references to Gennette Nicole flirting with Weiner. And possibly pictures as well.

Meaning (if all this is true) that Weiner was flirting with Gennette Nicole, and that there is more picture evidence out there.

I think most people suspect these things anyway. This would just provide further corroboration of Weiner’s guilt.

I’m going to close with this: Andrew Breitbart has been on the radio today saying that he has new information that is going to change the dynamics of this story.

This is not over, folks. Not by a longshot.

UPDATE: Breitbart tweets:

Last chance to join the #FollowBreitbart juggernaut! (Well, not really.) #Weinergate taking new turn tomorrow in AM.

Boom!

Who’s Watching As White House Collects Emails (For Illegal Campaigning?)

The Official White House website has a questionable new addition. When you land on the White House main page a notice fills your screen asking you kindly if you’d like to supply them with your email address so that they can send you “periodic updates from President Obama and other administration officials.”

Well, isn’t that nice? Why, you can give Obama your email address and he’ll send you his “updates.” Gosh. Just before an election, too. Now, I wonder: just where will all those email addresses go? After all, it is illegal to use official government apparatuses for political campaigning, isn’t it?

Doug Ross thinks that the Obama Administration has turned the official White House website into an illegal campaign arm of Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. I can’t say it is too much of a stretch to think this, either.

Certainly we cannot say with certainty that all these email addresses supplied to the White House will *cough* accidentally *cough* end up in the hands of Obama’s 2012 campaign staff, but the big question is, who is watching?

Ross has another good point, too. “There is only one reason that the White House is collecting email addresses,” he writes. “It is to promote, directly or indirectly, the reelection campaign of Barack Obama.”

Too true. Even if these email addresses are not used to directly promote Obama’s campaign efforts, the fact that emails are going out under his name during an election campaign indirectly promotes him anyway.

Perhaps, though, since he is the incumbent and has a job to do during the campaign, this is unavoidable. But in this era of mass communications, it is an all new deal. Instead of just being on TV or the radio, instead of just being mentioned in news stories while simultaneously doing his job and running for reelection, Obama can now flood the personal email inboxes of millions of people individually while “doing his job.”

This level of personal contact was unheard of during past presidential campaigns. Won’t constant emails “from the White House” help sway voters Obama’s way whether they have direct appeals in them from his campaign or not?

Again, who is watching to make sure that Obama’s staff does not *cough* accidentally *cough* take all these email addresses that were meant only for the “White House updates” and put them in with his campaign email database? Is anyone watching to make sure Obama is not breaking campaign laws?

Anyone? Beuller?

What is the difference between the SEIU & an armed robber?:

However, after seeing this L.A. Times passage from last month, one might come to the conclusion that 1) an armed robber usually only has one victim (whereas, the SEIU has millions), 2) an average armed robber does not have politicians in his back pocket, and 3) an armed robber is more intellectually honest—at least he tells you he’s robbing you, where as the SEIU…well, read it for yourself:


Even Democratic leaders and the governor’s union backers, doubting the odds of a tax measure passing at the ballot box, are pushing Brown to break his pledge and forgo voter input.

“Go get a deal done,” said David Kieffer, executive director of the state council of the influential Service Employees International Union, in a challenge to Brown and the Legislature. Californians “would vote the taxes down,” he said, and “they don’t actually need to be involved in this decision.”

Kieffer’s union launched a television ad campaign last week urging that the budget be balanced without “extreme” cuts.

To the SEIU, voters should not be involved in the decision whether or not to raise their own taxes—after all, it’s only the taxpayers’ money.

So, what is the difference between the SEIU and armed robbery?

[Note: If your answer is the SEIU doesn't carry a gun, try not paying your taxes.]

_________________

“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

Weinergate Bombshell: New Woman Comes Forward Claiming Cache of Intimate Photos and Online Communications with Beleaguered Congressman

Weinergate Bombshell: New Woman Comes Forward Claiming Cache of Intimate Photos and Online Communications with Beleaguered Congressman

A new woman has come forward with what she claims are photographs, chats, and emails with Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY). These appear to undermine severely Rep. Weiner’s explanations that he was the victim of a “prank” or a “hack.”

The detailed new information suggests that the Brooklyn- and Queens-based representative and the young woman in question were involved in an online, consensual relationship involving the mutual exchange of intimate photographs.

BigGovernment.com and BigJournalism.com were approached regarding this information more than a week prior to the separate, independent event of Friday, May 27, 2011, when a link to the now-infamous “gray underwear” photograph appeared publicly on Rep. Weiner’s Twitter feed.

We will be updating BigGovernment.com and BigJournalism.com throughout the day with photographs, timelines, and other clarifying details. However, we will not be releasing all of the material because some of it is of an extreme, graphic nature.

Once Again, FBI’s ‘Muslim Outreach’ Welcomes Terror-Tied Man

Despite knowing the Hamas ties of Kifah Mustapha, the FBI gave him a guided tour of a top-secret counterterrorism center and access to classified investigative techniques.

Court documents filed last month by the Department of Justice in a federal civil rights lawsuit shows that Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Robert Grant of the FBI Chicago field office had warned the Illinois State Police: newly appointed Muslim chaplain Kifah Mustapha would never pass an FBI background check.

Mustapha’s long association with terrorist group Hamas occurred at virtually the same time that Mustapha was admitted into the FBI Citizens’ Academy sponsored by SAC Grant’s Chicago office. The Academy program required a background check and included a guided tour of the top-secret National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and the FBI Academy at Quantico.

The statements made by SAC Grant were noted in a motion for a protective order filed with the court and noted in a report published by the Investigative Project. The DOJ’s motion states:

In each conversation, SAC Grant stated that Mustapha would not pass an FBI background check if he applied for an FBI chaplain position and then proceeded to explain the bases for his opinion.

The DOJ motion is in response to the lawsuit filed by Mustapha after his state police appointment as Muslim chaplain was revoked. Mustapha had initially been accepted as state police chaplain, but after a news story aired reporting Mustapha’s terrorist connections and terror support, the state police conducted another background check. During this check was apparently when the conversations with SAC Grant took place, which resulted in the state police revoking Mustapha’s appointment. Mustapha then sued, claiming ethnic and religious discrimination, with his case being supported by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which has also been identified by the FBI as a terrorist front for Hamas.

The FBI, which is not a party to the lawsuit, is seeking to protect the information they shared with the state police on Mustapha, claiming it would reveal sources and collection methods.

There’s not much mystery as to why SAC Grant would tell the Illinois State Police that Kifah Mustapha couldn’t pass an FBI background check. Mustapha is a known Hamas operative, including his prior employment with the Holy Land Foundation, which was listed as a specially designated terrorist group by the U.S. government in December 2001, and whose executives were convicted of terrorism support for Hamas in 2008 and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Mustapha was personally named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator (#31) in the case, and employment records submitted during the trial showed that he received more than $154,000 for his work with the Holy Land Foundation between 1996 and 2000.

Also during the trial, FBI Special Agent Lara Burns testified that Mustapha sang in a band sponsored by the Holy Land Foundation that regularly featured songs dedicated to killing Jews and glorifying Hamas.

In a deposition he gave in a civil trial concerned with the murder of a Chicago teenager killed by Hamas while waiting for a bus in Israel, Mustapha admitted that he was the registered agent for the Holy Land Foundation in Illinois, and also to his involvement with other Hamas front groups, including the Islamic Association for Palestine. He was later hired as an imam by the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, which the Chicago Tribune noted in 2004 has long been a hotbed of Hamas support.

What makes the statements by SAC Grant so puzzling is that at virtually the same time that he was telling the state police that Mustapha couldn’t pass an FBI background check, Mustapha apparently passed an FBI background check when he was admitted to the FBI Citizens’ Academy under the sponsorship of Grant’s office.

The Citizens’ Academy webpage on the FBI’s own website states:

Because of the classified investigative techniques discussed, nominees must also undergo a background check and get an interim security clearance.

In at least some of the FBI programs, each nominee must meet the approval of the special agent in charge. This glaring contradiction has been noted by Mustapha’s attorneys in his lawsuit against the state police, who have issued a subpoena to the FBI requesting all materials involving the FBI background check conducted for Mustapha’s admittance to the FBI Citizens’ Academy.

So how exactly did Kifah Mustapha with his extensive terror ties get cleared to participate in the six-week FBI program? That’s precisely the question I asked when I first broke the story last September about Mustapha being given a guided tour of the top-secret NCTC and the FBI Academy. After my initial story was published, one Homeland Security official contacted me informing me not only that “the plugs had to be pulled” in order for Mustapha to be admitted to the FBI program, but that “the NCTC has Kifah Mustapha on the highest watch list we have.”

Mustapha’s terrorist ties are hardly a secret since much of the information available publicly is from FBI agents testifying in court, court and deposition transcripts, and exhibits entered into evidence by federal prosecutors during the largest terrorism financing trial in American history.

But as soon as my report was published, the FBI began to double-down and defend Mustapha’s inclusion in the program. FBI Chicago spokesman Ross Rice told the Washington Times: “If we thought he was a security risk, we wouldn’t have included him.” But we now know from the DOJ’s filing in the lawsuit that SAC Grant thought Mustapha enough of a security threat to repeatedly mention it to his Illinois State Police colleagues.

Another FBI spokesman, Paul Bresson, also spoke to Fox News, which reported:

“He’s a prominent figure in the community,” Bresson said, adding that the sheik has not been convicted of a crime. “It’s not like we gave him secret access or classified information.”

But the FBI did give him access to the top-secret NCTC, which even many Homeland Security and federal law enforcement officials are not able to enter and whose location is secret. And by its own admission posted on their own website, the FBI gives Citizens’ Academy participants access to “classified investigative techniques,” which is precisely their stated reason why they must first pass a background check and receive a limited security clearance.

After all, the FBI itself advertises its academies with the promise: “Want to find out first hand how the FBI works? Hear how the Bureau tracks down spies and terrorists?” No doubt, terrorist operatives like Kifah Mustapha are very interested in how the FBI conducts terrorist investigations, and in this case the FBI knowingly let at least one terrorist operative in on those secrets.

No wonder then that as soon as the media started asking questions, both FBI Director Robert Mueller and National Security Advisor James Clapper refused to address the issue just a few days after I broke the story.

Kifah Mustapha’s lawsuit and the admission by the DOJ about SAC Grant’s statements about Mustapha to the Illinois State Police, along with the FBI’s inclusion of Mustapha in their Citizens’ Academy program, expose the pure schizophrenia that characterizes the U.S. government’s “Muslim outreach” efforts. Time and again we see government agencies knowingly and willingly reaching out to terrorist operatives as official representatives of or interlocutors with the Muslim community (eg., Abdurahman Alamoudi, Anwar al-Awlaki, Louay Safi, et al).

But what we see in this most recent court filing is that what law enforcement and Homeland Security officials are willing to say in private to their colleagues about their “outreach partners” is the exact opposite of what they say when they repeatedly get caught in their own “outreach” traps and begin publicly defending terrorist operatives when asked about it by the media.

It is clearly time for Congress to get to the bottom of the U.S. government’s hopelessly failed and utterly counter-productive Muslim outreach programs that empower and legitimize terrorist operatives like Kifah Mustapha and expose other law enforcement agencies that are unwilling to participate in such duplicity to lawsuits by terrorist fronts masquerading as “civil rights organizations” such as CAIR. The FBI has established mutually exclusive positions on their outreach partner Kifah Mustapha and it is long past time that these agencies are held to account.

Schools to kids: You can be boys or girls or both

Pro-family organizations across the nation are expressing shock and alarm over a new wave of homosexual indoctrination developing in public schools – especially in California – where parents are not even given the option of withdrawing their kids from the mandatory lessons on being "gay" or more.

"Young children are being taught that they can choose to be a boy or a girl – or both," said officials at Mass Resistance, one of the leading organizations across the country defending the fact that students are boys or girls.

"Boys, for example, should be comfortable wearing girls' clothes and nail polish, etc. And there aren't just two genders, there can be a range. And, of course, the school does not allow parents to opt their kids out," the organization said.

How did America come to this? Read about it in "The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom"

It was citing the work of an elementary school in Oakland, where officials allowed an outside advocacy organization, Gender Spectrum, to tell young students that sexuality is what they want it to be, not necessarily what nature endowed them to be.

A Fox News report on the issue said the school officials defended their actions by explaining that all student "behaviors" have to be accepted and reinforced.

Baloney, said Brad Dacus, of Pacific Justice Institute. He said such indoctrination just creates gender "confusion" for young children.

Officials with SaveCalifornia.com also have been highlighting the egregious results when mandatory gender lessons are adopted by public schools.

The organization's president, Randy Thomasson, is concerned because of previous mandatory teaching standards adopted in California, as well as pending legislation that would require profiling as role models lesbians, homosexuals and those with other alternative sexual lifestyle choices.

His organization has published a resource page for links to answers on questions such as, "Is there a 'gay gene'?" and "Is homosexual healthy?"

Thomasson has reported that there have been developing significant issues over the state's legally recommended recognition of "Harvey Milk Day," too. Milk was an openly homosexual elected official.

The organization has documented that even though there is no scientific or biological basis for homosexuality, bisexuality or transsexuality, the schools teach it as a normal lifestyle choice.

In honoring Milk, Thomasson organization notes, schools are advocating for the acceptance of what Milk sought: the entire homosexual, bisexual, and cross-dressing agenda, a refusal to acknowledge sexually transmitted diseases spread by this behavior, his behavior as "a sexual predator of teenage boys, most of them runaways with drug problems," advocacy for multiple sexual relationships at one time, and "lying to get ahead."

A 1982 biography of Milk states: "...sixteen-year-old McKinley was looking for some kind of father figure...At 33, Milk was launching a new life, though he could hardly have imagined the unlikely direction toward which his new lover would pull him."

It also explains, "It would be to boyish-looking men in their late teens and early 20's that Milk would be attracted for the rest of his life."

Under the state's SB 572, which already is law, schools are to have "suitable commemorative exercises" regarding Milk's "contributions" during May.

SaveCalifornia.com warns that since those exercises are undefined, what could happen in a public school would be assignments to write about Milk, watching the film about him in class, "having children participate in cross-dressing contests, mock gay-pride parades and mock gay weddings," or others.

The consequences of refusing to accept the state's beliefs about homosexuality can be devastating, SaveCalifornia documents.

In a report from Thomasson, he said got an email from a parent whose daughter had objected to attending a "gay straight alliance rally to honor Harvey Milk at Moreno Valley High School."

Said the email, according to Thomasson, "You were right our daughter was told she had to attend a gay straight alliance rally to honor Harvey Milk. … She shared she was a christian with the teacher and only after she saw Lauren was clearly upset about going to this rally did she issue her a hall pass. She was persecuted by another student but made it out of the class. I picked up her and she was very upset. How many other Christians were forced to go to this rally?"

The account from 16-year-old Lauren provided more details, Thomasson reported.

"When she walked into her U.S. History class Monday, May 23, she saw the words 'Gay-Straight Alliance Assembly – Harvey Milk' on the blackboard. Her teacher, obviously a pro-homosexuality agenda sympathizer, told Lauren and every other student walking in to go to the assembly. Lauren protested, but the teacher didn't listen to her at first. Lauren again said she didn't want to go, and finally the teacher exempted her, but only her," he reported.

"Lauren got out of that one, but her fellow students were corralled into the brainwashing assembly, like cattle going to slaughter, where the homosexual sponsor of the on-campus Gay-Straight Alliance told them how they must support the homosexual-bisexual-transsexual agenda of Harvey Milk. Later, a Muslim classmate told Lauren she wished she had refused to go to the assembly, too."

The report described how the teacher, several days earlier had "played several minutes of the R-rated Milk film, which showed two homosexual men in bed together."

"Parents, realize there was NO advance parental notification of this happening or the opportunity to opt out your children. Even more, realize there was no parent permission sought, no opt-in form to sign. No, Harvey Milk sexual indoctrination, and other sexual indoctrination implemented, because of other perverse laws are being done behind parents' backs and despite parents' objections," Thomasson's report said.

WND previously reported what happened to one irate parent who found out about a public school's sexual indoctrination of his children and demanded changes – he spent the night in jail.

That case involved David Parker, who brought a case against Estabrook Elementary school in Lexington, Mass., several years ago. Parker eventually ended up withdrawing his children from the school because of the harassment they endured because of the dispute.

An appellate court said the indoctrination was appropriate because same-sex "marriages" are legal in Massachusetts following the work of former Gov. Mitt Romney and others, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene.

That left the school district not only teaching behaviors the Parker family considered immoral, but deliberately refusing to tell them when it would be taught so they could keep their children home.

Parker noted the results say teachers "have a constitutional right to coercively indoctrinate little children [into whatever they choose to teach]."

According to Mass Resistance, there is one significant sexual orientation bill pending in California now, SB 48, which would require those alternative sexual lifestyles being taught to young children as role models. Another pending plan, AB 433, would allow the issuance of new birth certificates to an individual who changes his or her sex and name.

"Is this your future?" the organization asked. "It is unless you stop it. The 'transgender rights' bills being pushed in Massachusetts and other states bring much more than just 'bathroom' problems."

The "bathroom" reference recalls several major disputes that have developed in Maryland over a county's plan banning to ban "gender" discrimination in public facilities. That effectively would have allowed men who say they are women to use women's locker rooms in any "public facility," and vice versa.

Mass Resistance explained how many of the promotions for sexual alternatives are disguised as "anti-bullying" campaigns.

"It's no secret that the main force (and funding) behind this national push has been the homosexual and transgender movements. In Massachusetts, the overwhelming number of groups testifying at the public hearing on the anti-bullying bill were homosexual and transgender groups. In every situation we know about, these groups were even involved in the actual writing of the legislation. These laws rarely are crafted by actual behavioral scientists, always by activists," the organization reported.

Thomasson's organization offers an instant solution, at the RescueYourChild.com website, where parents are encouraged to move their children to a private school, Christian school or homeschooling.

"California laws have changed so radically in the last few years that your child WILL be sexually indoctrinated and subjected to very negative influences if left in the government school system," the organization said.

The steps are being taken even though people disapprove of such indoctrination.

A WND/Wenzel Strategies poll just weeks ago revealed an overwhelming majority of Americans say elementary school is no place to promote the homosexual lifestyle, and even among liberals there is the strong belief that such lessons should be left outside the door of the classroom.

"Whether they object on moral grounds or simply out of concern that many U.S. schools are failing in their core missions of teaching basics doesn't really matter – the vast majority of American adults want this type of curriculum kept out of the classroom," Wenzel chief Fritz Wenzel said.

The scientific telephone survey was done April 19-21, and had a margin of error of 3.23 percentage points. It found that 65 percent of all respondents objected to teaching elementary school children that homosexuality is a "normal alternative lifestyle."

The question was, "Do you believe elementary school children should be taught that homosexuality is a normal alternative lifestyle?"

Only 22 percent agreed that would be right, and only 13 percent were unsure.

DOW plunges into longest weekly losing streak since 2004 as Obama blames 'Europe, earthquake and gas prices' for economic woe

The Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor's 500 index are both headed for a fifth straight week of losses - the longest losing streak for the Dow since July 2004.

The slump follows jobs data published on Friday showing employers added only 54,000 new workers in May, the fewest in eight months and well below what analysts were expecting.

The news comes as President Barack Obama today blamed high gasoline prices, the Japanese earthquake and Europe's financial crisis for economic 'headwinds' at home.

As inspiration for a broader recovery, he's citing the American auto industry's resurgence.

'We're a people who don't give up, who do big things, who shape our own destiny,' the president said in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday.

The message, taped Friday during Obama's visit to a Chrysler plant in Toledo, Ohio, was hardly different than the remarks he offered to about 350 Chrysler workers.

The White House has spent almost every day this past week drawing attention to the industry comeback and taking credit for Obama's unpopular decision to bail out Chrysler and General Motors and guide them through bankruptcy in 2009.

Like his words to Chrysler workers, Obama's address did not mention the bleak unemployment numbers announced Friday for the month of May. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said the economy last month created only a net 54,000 jobs and unemployment inched up to 9.1 percent.

'We're facing some tough headwinds,' Obama said.

'Lately, it's high gas prices, the earthquake in Japan and unease about the European fiscal situation. That will happen from time to time.'

Far fewer workers than expected were hired last month painting a bleak picture for the U.S. economy while the unemployment rate edged up to 9.1 per cent.

Even more worryingly, of the 54,000 new jobs in May, 20,000 were created by McDonald's.

The President visited the Chrysler plant in Ohio to highlight the auto industry's rebound, a rare bright spot in an otherwise sluggish economy.

He told plant workers: ''We can live out the American dream again… that’s what drives me every day I step into the Oval office.

We’ve got to live within our means, everybody’s got to do their part. Middle-class workers like you, though, shouldn’t be bearing all the burden. You work too hard for someone to ask you to pay more so that somebody who’s making millions or billions of dollars can pay less.'

Republicans mocked Mr Obama’s speech and economic record.

Former GOP Rep. Fred Grandy told Fox News: '[The speech] was political response to an economic question… an attempt to distract our attention from the looming financial crisis that we’re capable of handling.'

Today's monthly employment report revealed the jobless rate increased and employers hired the fewest number of workers in eight months in May, raising concerns the economy might be stuck in a painful slow-growth mode.

The 54,000 jobs created in May are only one-quarter of the February-April pace, the Labour Department said.

Economists had expected payrolls to rise 150,000 and private hiring to increase 175,000. The government revised employment figures for March and April to show 39,000 fewer jobs created than previously estimated.

Economists said the report did not suggest the economy was heading into recession, but they said job growth could prove frustratingly slow.


With downwardly-revised figures for employment in the previous two months, today's report confirmed the sharp slowdown in economic growth since the beginning of 2011, despite government efforts to power up a job-creating recovery.

The bad numbers could in part be blamed on the impact on U.S. manufacturers of Japan's March 11 earthquake-typhoon disaster, as well as the jump in oil prices, economists said.

Stocks had a strong start to the year, hitting their highest levels in nearly three years in late April. But the market has been sputtering since then as troubling signs emerged about the economy.

Investors probably overreacted to strong corporate earnings in driving stocks higher, Wilkinson said.

'I think what investors need to do is get accustomed to a more sluggish pace of growth,' he said.

Trouble: A graph on unemployment. The jobless total rose 0.1 per cent in May

But they were likely to fuel the raging political battle over government spending and how to repair the economy while nearly 14 million people remained unemployed, more than a year after the country's deep recession ended.

Underscoring the challenge to President Obama as his campaign for re-election in 2012 gets under way, Republican House leader Eric Cantor blamed the White House's poor policies for the high jobless rate.


'It is astounding that despite the warning signs and economic indicators, President Obama and congressional Democrats still have failed to offer any concrete plan to create jobs, reduce our debt, or grow our economy,' he said in a statement.

The chairman of the White House's council of economic advisers, Austan Goolsby, played down the report.

He said: 'There are always bumps on the road to recovery, but the overall trajectory of the economy has improved dramatically over the past two years.

'The monthly employment and unemployment numbers are volatile and employment estimates are subject to substantial revision. Therefore, as the administration always stresses.'

'Overall, this is horrible,' said Ian Shepherdson, U.S. economist for High Frequency economics. But he said it was likely a short-term dip.

'We think it is largely a reaction -- an overreaction we would say - to the rise in oil prices, and a very real hit to autos and tech from the Japan earthquake.'

NEW DATA SHOWS AMERICANS' EXPECTATIONS FOR MAKING MONEY IS AT LOWEST POINT IN 25 YEARS

Consumers believe the chances of bringing home more money one year from now are at their lowest in 25 years, according to analysis of survey data by Goldman Sachs.

Goldman’s economist Jan Hatzius looked at the University of Michigan and Thomson Reuters poll, which asks consumers whether they believe their family income will rise more than inflation in the next 12 months.

Wage pessimism is at its lowest in more than two decades as real hourly wages have dropped 2.1 percent on an annualized basis over the past six months, a rate of decline not seen in 20 years.

A typical recovery pattern goes like this: stock market bottoms, economic growth bottoms and then hiring and wage increases return. What’s unique and scary about this recovery is that the last piece of the recovery is not there.

'Households are already very pessimistic about future real income growth. A slowdown in job growth would presumably translate into a further deterioration in (expected and actual) real income growth.' Wrote Goldman’s economist to clients.

Obama tunes out, and business goes on hiring strike

Last week I noted that various forms of the word "unexpected" almost inevitably appeared in news stories about unfavorable economic developments.

You can find them again in stories about Friday's shocking news, that only 54,000 net new jobs were created in the month of May and that unemployment rose to 9.1 percent.

But with news that bad, maybe bad economic numbers will no longer be "unexpected." You can only expect a robust economic recovery for so long before you figure out, as Herbert Hoover eventually did, that it is not around the corner.

Exogenous factors explain some part of the current economic stagnation. The earthquake and tsunami in Japan caused a slowdown in manufacturing. Horrendous tornadoes did not help. Nor did bad weather, though only a few still bitterly cling to the theory that it's caused by man-made global warming.

But poor public policy is surely one reason why the American economy has not rebounded from recession as it has in the past. And political posturing has also played a major role.

Barack Obama and the Democratic congressional supermajorities of 2009-10 raised federal spending from 21 to 25 percent of gross domestic product. Their stimulus package stopped layoffs of public employees for a while, even as private sector payrolls plummeted.

And the Obama Democrats piled further burdens on would-be employers in the private sector. Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill are scheduled to be followed by thousands of regulations that will impose impossible-to-estimate costs on the economy.

That seems to have led to a hiring freeze. The Obama Democrats can reasonably claim not to be responsible for the huge number of layoffs that occurred in the months following the financial crisis of fall 2008. And Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke did manage to help stabilize financial markets.

But while the number of layoffs is now vastly less than in the first half of 2009, the number of new hires has not increased appreciably. Many more people have been unemployed for longer periods than in previous recessions, and many more have stopped looking for work altogether.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the threat of tax increases and increased regulatory burdens have produced something in the nature of a hiring strike.

And then there is the political posturing. On April 13 Obama delivered a ballyhooed speech at George Washington University. The man who conservatives as well as liberal pundits told us was a combination of Edmund Burke and Reinhold Niebuhr was widely expected to present a serious plan to address the budget deficits and entitlement spending.

Instead the man who can call on talented career professionals at the Office of Management and Budget to produce detailed blueprints gave us something in the nature of a few numbers scrawled on a paper napkin.

The man depicted as pragmatic and free of ideological cant indulged in cheap political rhetoric, accusing Republicans, including House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan who was in the audience, of pushing old ladies in wheelchairs down the hill and starving autistic children.

The signal was clear. Obama had already ignored his own deficit reduction commission in preparing his annual budget, which was later rejected 97-0 in the Senate. Now he was signaling that the time for governing was over and that he was entering campaign mode 19 months before the November 2012 election. People took notice, especially those people who decide whether to hire or not. Goldman Sachs's Current Activity Indicator stood at 4.2 percent in March. In April -- in the middle of which came Obama's GW speech -- it was 1.6 percent. For May it is 1 percent.

"That is a major drop in no time at all," wrote Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal.

After April 13 Obama Democrats went into campaign mode. They staged a poll-driven Senate vote to increase taxes on oil companies.

They began a Mediscare campaign against Ryan's budget resolution that all but four House Republicans had voted for. That seemed to pay off with a special election victory in New York's 26th Congressional District.

The message to job creators was clear. Hire at your own risk. Higher taxes, more burdensome regulation and crony capitalism may be here for some time to come.

One possible upside is that economic bad news may no longer be "unexpected." Another is that voters may figure out what is going on.

U.S. Mortgage Proposal May Result in ‘Rental Entrapment’

(Updates with extension of public comment period in the fifth paragraph.)

June 2 (Bloomberg) -- Minorities and the working class may find it harder to buy homes under a U.S. plan that would require larger down payments to qualify for lower-cost mortgages, according to lenders, consumer groups and lawmakers.

Bankers and consumer advocates, often at odds on policy issues, united today to make the case for revising the government proposal and released data that they said shows the rule would deny loans to millions of borrowers while doing little to reduce defaults.

“This is a civil rights issue,” John Taylor, chief executive officer of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition in Washington, said in an interview. “It falls around people of color. It’s a class issue.”

The rule could lead to “long-term rental entrapment” for “large numbers” of Americans who would need at least a decade to save for a 20 percent down payment, said David Stevens, president of the Mortgage Bankers Association. It would take at least a decade for a family to save that much in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Birmingham, Alabama, he said, citing U.S. and industry data on household incomes and home prices.

Deadline Extension

Regulators plan to extend the deadline for public comment on the proposal from June 10 to Aug. 1, according to a person familiar with the matter, who declined to be identified because the decision hasn’t been made public. That may delay the law from taking effect.

Spokesmen for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Securities and Exchange Commission declined to comment. Spokesmen for the Federal Reserve and the Federal Housing Finance Agency didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Taylor and Stevens, former commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration, were among mortgage-finance professionals who held a press conference in Washington where they accused regulators of overreaching and asked that the proposal be rewritten. More than 200 Republicans and Democrats in Congress have expressed similar concerns in letters to regulators.

Reduced housing demand ”due to an overly burdensome dictate, could threaten a full-fledged economic recovery,” more than 160 House lawmakers wrote in a May 31 letter to regulators.

Risky Lending

The Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul enacted last year required lenders and bond issuers to keep a 5 percent stake in the loans they bundle for sale to investors. Forcing the industry to share potential losses was meant to encourage less risky lending and avoid mistakes that led to a flood of subprime mortgages, which helped trigger the 2008 financial collapse.

The law requires regulators to exempt home loans that are deemed safe, including those with fixed interest rates and long repayment terms. Those exempt loans, known as qualified residential mortgages, or QRMs, in theory would have lower interest rates because they would be considered less risky.

Regulators responded to the law with a proposal to exempt mortgages only if borrowers make a 20 percent down payment and spend less than 36 percent of their income on debt payments.

Neither rule would lead to fewer defaults, Stevens said. A quarter of 2009 mortgage borrowers would have been disqualified under the new rule, said Stevens, citing FHFA. At the height of the housing bubble in 2006 and 2007, the rule would have cut delinquencies by less than 3 percent while reducing mortgages by more than 15 percent, according to the data.

No Down Payments

Today, some lenders are offering loans with little or no down-payment requirements. Last year, the Navy Federal Credit Union began offering loans requiring no down payments to borrowers with good credit and income.

Those opposing the rule are doing so for different reasons.

Industry executives, including mortgage bankers, real estate agents and builders, have said they’re concerned that a decline in lending may hurt housing and the economic recovery.

That would disproportionately affect middle-class and minority borrowers, consumer advocates say. Groups that advocate for limited government, including the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, say the plan may drive home lending to federally insured programs such as the FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which Dodd-Frank exempted from the risk-retention rule.

The Heritage Foundation, in a May 31 letter to regulators, called the 20 percent down payment requirement “utterly at odds with the realities of today’s housing market,” where only 16 percent of first-time buyers in 2010 would have met the standards for a lower-cost qualified mortgage.

The National Urban League said the plan would create a category of “‘high-risk’ borrowers formerly known as the responsible middle class.”

“Adding high minimum down-payment requirements will only exclude hundreds of thousands of consumers -- including legions of minority renters -- from homeownership, despite their creditworthiness and proven ability to afford the monthly payment,” the group wrote in a June 1 letter to regulators.

--With assistance from Jesse Hamilton in Washington. Editors: Peter Eichenbaum, Gregory Mott

White House.gov is an arm of the Obama Campaign collecting emails

The Learn More button and No Thanks button take you to the exact same place one of the four front pages of: http://www.whitehouse.gov/ but meanwhile they captured your email if you write it in and put a cookie on your computer.

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Towards a Worldwide Inflationary Depression, Collapse of the Anglo-American Empire

According to our calculations we have been in an inflationary depression since February of 2009. Everyone looks back on the deflationary depression of the 1930s as a benchmark or a reference. As far as we are concerned the 1930’s depression only ended when the powers behind government arranged another war. Few talk about the recession of the early 1920s, which only lasted two years and was caused by the newly formed Fed, which financed US participation in World War I. They raised interest rates, which enticed citizens to save, which provided money for loans for research and expansion. The Fed, other than raising rates, stayed neutral, as did the Treasury. The result was the recession ended quickly. A bad story with a happy ending, which contributed to the roaring 20s, which the Fed eventually turned into a depression via their interference.

There was no deficit spending in the 1920s and funded debt fell by 1/3rd. That went on from 1945 to 1960. Today we have a different kettle of fish, which consists of perpetually kicking the can down the road, hoping some miracle will save the day, when those who caused these problems know full well the situation cannot now be saved without purging the system and allowing maleinvestment and speculation to die a normal death in bankruptcy. The Fed, Wall Street and speculators cannot bring about recovery, but they try anyway. Those who agree with these elitists are fools and they will pay a high price for not listening.

The Treasury is issuing $2.16 trillion in debt annually and if the Fed purchases 80% that works out to $1.7 trillion a year. As QE2 comes to end this month there will be few to buy that $1.7 trillion in treasuries and the system will collapse into deflationary depression. That means the Fed has to keep doing what it is doing. If the Fed stops we’ll have deflationary depression with a year. If they continue doing what they are doing we will have hyperinflation in 2 to 2-1/2 years.

Today’s worldwide crisis centered in the US, UK and Europe did not have to happen. It was not caused by incompetence and greed. It was designed to destroy the economic and financial system to a point where the inhabitants of these countries would beg for world government. It began, as we know it on August 15, 1971, when the US went off the gold standard. Since then the dollar has lost 98% of its value versus gold, silver and in some cases other currencies. As this became the monetary future, events were put in place to move almost all industry and some services out of the US, UK and Europe, better known as free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing. In addition unsustainable debt was created to make sure the system collapsed. Of course, as far as the elitists are concerned, there is no problem - there is just a period of adjustment. Part of this adjustment is the extension of the short-term debt limit to $16.3 trillion from $14.3 trillion.

When, we ask, will Social Security and Medicare be cut? Trillions in taxes were paid for this old age and survivor’s pension. From its very inception the money was looted from the general fund and the bonds issued are not worth the paper they are written on. Mandated benefits can never be covered as the taxes are at this very moment being looted. This is a reflection of what is happening in the entire global system, a hallmark of socialism. As the debate rages, we can assure you the elderly will get screwed again with major cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

As we said earlier the longer the inevitable is delayed the worse the result will be. We do not know what untoward event will bring on the inevitable, but it is there lurking somewhere. When it happens it will be like a bolt out of the blue.

The Anglo American empire is in an ongoing state of collapse, which they deliberately caused themselves in order to subdue and enslave humanity. We saw the faux adulation afforded to the illegal alien who calls himself president. The Anglo American special relationship still is firm at the upper levels. This includes their joint role of guardians of civilization. Just more Illuminist sanctimonious crap. The key to globalist power is control of the world banking system and we plan to take that away from them. This is not 1348, and there will be no exile from Venice. There will only be long prison terms, a confiscation of all family wealth and execution for those who have betrayed our country. This time the Illuminists will suffer the unthinkable. Something they have not suffered in the last 1,000 years.

The Fed is now holding just under $2.8 trillion in bonds of which they say $1.6 trillion is in Treasury paper. The rest is in Agency securities and toxic bonds. By the end of June they should be over $3 trillion. Our question is what is the real figure? How much do they have or are they committed for with other nations that are not visible? Remember, it took two years and a trip to the Appeals Court to force the Fed to tell us what they were secretly hiding from us. As a result they have no credibility, so anything they say has to be taken with a grain of salt. From June to June, we expect that $1.6 trillion to grow to $3.3 trillion and the Fed may well have to disperse another $500 to $850 billion to keep the system afloat. That would bring to figures to $3.8 to $4.15 trillion. That should be enough to keep the system afloat, provide 50% hyperinflation and tend to the beginnings of WW III. The creation of war will be the distraction needed to force inflation, debt and monetary problems into a second position. Who worries about money and purchasing power when they may be dead shortly? This is the pattern the elitists have followed for centuries.

At the same time the amount of Treasuries purchased by foreign investors and other nations are falling and that we believe will continue. The question then arises how much additional paper will the Fed have to absorb – another $600 billion a year? We do not know that answer, but it doesn’t look good.

We believe after having seen Mr. Strauss-Kahn set up for extinction as head of the IMF and as the main challenger to Mr. Sarkozy, that there is a power struggle going on between the European and the Anglo American interests to above all make sure that the dollar remains the world reserve currency no matter what the circumstances. This is really the main battle that is going on. The Europeans want the SDR, the British and Americans the dollar. The latter’s thinking is that since WW II the US has again and again saved the world economy, being the engine that has driven all economies. In the recent case of China it is the same as well. If US markets had not approved and opened their markets to China’s exports and most favorite nation treatment, China would not be where it is today. The American elitists believe the dollar deserves its position no matter how much they have damaged it.

You can see Europe going all out to make sure French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde becomes head of the IMF. They want a European running the IMF in spite of the fact that Strauss-Kahn said in 2007 that the next leader of the IMF would not be a European. That is why the Mexican finance minister, Mr. Carstens, threw his hat in the ring. He is in reality the US designate. An additional reason that has brought Lagarde strong European support is that Sarkozy wants to get rid of her, because she is doing a good job. Another reason we see conflict within the inner sanctum is that Greece could bring down the ECB and the euro and it seems the elitists would like that. It switches focus away from a falling dollar and destroys its main competitor, the euro. This is a titanic struggle that most observers are missing. It makes Strauss-Kahn’s arrest and termination at the IMF and his fall from socialist party grace a diversion. The battles are for the continued supremacy of the US dollar and more control over the IMF via Carstens. US interests want a Greek default and a euro breakup. The US rating agencies continue to attack the ratings of all of the weak euro counterparts and at the same time short European country bonds. The UK is in this with the US up to their eyeballs. The US and UK have left Europe to swing in the wind. This is what is really going on in Europe. Remember, there is no honor among thieves.

Late developments from our contacts in Greece tell us the bankers, EU and IMF had best forget about collateralizing debt (Mnemonic). The entire country is now aware of what the bankers are up too. What put the frosting on the cake was that a publication in the Netherlands said as a result of the secret deal, the Turks would get a Greek Island and raise their flag over it. That has really enraged the Greeks. PM Papandreou told 30 of his party legislators (Voulefles) that if they didn’t vote for collateralization he will fire them and replace them with people off the street. He obviously thinks he is a dictator because that is beyond his legal authority. Each day 150,000 people are surrounding the Vouli, the Parliament and the members are growing. PM Papandreou now only moves by helicopter, obviously fearful of assassination. One thing is for certain he will have difficulty ever living in Greece again. A woman professor said on TV that a Patriotic resistance has already started in Crete and in many smaller cities; people are signing up in the new movement. The police cannot handle the massive crowds and the military is securely behind the people. The bankers had best give it up and walk away. They are going to lose this one and it means the end of the euro zone and the EU.

Switching back we must remind you again that the Fed is monetizing $900 billion, not $600 billion as you have been told. Without that number the Fed could not have accomplished all of its Treasury buying. Of the almost $2.8 trillion in bonds some $900 billion are toxic waste, that is about 33%. We do not know their value, but we would guess it to be close to $200 billion, which the American taxpayer will get to pay for – that is a $700 billion loss, if that is what it works out to be. By what has happened over the last few years we conclude the Fed is the main source of economic instability. There is very little savings and that is understandable with virtually zero deposit interest rates. The Fed can throw money and credit at the problems, but in the final analysis you have to have a large pool of savings to borrow from. For some time there was negative savings. Presently they are 4% to 5%, which is inadequate to launch a permanent recovery. Quantitative easing only temporally solves the problem. The Fed’s approach has driven what savings there are and funds from QE2 into speculation and that does not create recovery. Loose monetary policy diverts funding away from positive recovery activities to speculation and into bubbles. The Fed’s policies will bring about one or two conclusions: hyperinflation is obvious as an extension or present policies. The other is a cessation of creation of money and credit, which will bring about a falling economy and economic contraction. At least at this juncture the Fed continues on Plan A – expansion. At the same time we are told an increase in interest rates are a long way off. Toward this end the Fed’s balance sheet is quickly expanding and we do not see any slowdown ahead. An increase from 15% to 17% might not seem like much, but it is, especially when savings numbers are falling causing a loss in underlying momentum. This is negative for Treasuries because 80% of buying has to continue to come from the Fed via monetized money created out of thin air.

If anyone believes higher inflation is going to act as a governor on monetary growth they are mistaken. The Fed has little concern regarding inflation and price stability, if they did they wouldn’t be doing what they are doing. The government lies about the CPI figures and the Fed swears to it. The figures are far higher than stated and anyone who believes official figures is very remiss in professional evaluation.

Between the Fed and Congress $1.8 trillion has been spent to achieve 1.8% growth in the first quarter and all indications are that the economy is slowing again. We thought the carryover in the first quarter would have been 2-1/2% to 3-1/4%, but that didn’t happen. We expected a further slowing in the second quarter to 2% and then negative growth for the remainder of the year. We’ll stick to that projection, but the slippage will come from a lower level. Unless QE3 is already underway we should see minus 2% for the second half of the year. What professionals and investors have to understand is that what the Fed is doing doesn’t work and the Fed knows that. The longer they create money and credit the higher inflation will rise along with gold, silver and commodities and the lower the dollar will fall versus other currencies, but more importantly the lower the US dollar will fall versus silver and gold.

The same kind of condition exists in Europe with the same systemic corruption we see worldwide. The current Greek government is an excellent example. It is probably the most dishonest since WWII. And that includes the mid-80s communist government of George’s father, Andres of the Papandreou crime family. As we look back we wonder what EU countries were thinking of when they knew they were subsidizing a lifestyle Greeks could never afford? Government workers were retiring at 50. Living standards have been cut 30% to 40% and retirement is now 70 years. These are appropriate measures, but the changes should have been stretched over years. The shock has essentially crippled the economy. Even Draco was not that cruel. The very concept agreed to by the Greek administration to put $400 billion in assets into the hands of foreign experts is something that will harbor strife for years to come. It must be remembered that the banks and governments should have never made those loans in the first place. Who is to know whether these fellow EU socialists are going to do any better than the Greeks have done? The European and British banks want their money back, and it will be interesting to see if they are successful.

In the US a similar situation exists. Even if there is debt approval on August 2nd, the damage caused by the impasse will continue far into the future because printing of money and credit by the Fed is certainly not the answer and financial people worldwide are well aware of that. If legislation is not passed, real interest rates will rise from today’s ridiculously low levels very quickly. That means bonds would plunge along with the stock market, which in turn means all Treasury fiscal needs would have to be filled in a vacuum by the Fed. Hyperinflation and a dollar collapse would be the final outcome.

As a result of this predicament the only real asset the US has that is worth anything are the portfolios of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae and FHA. Instead of nationalization their holdings would be sold off to collateralize outstanding US debt to the debtors. That would be $6 trillion worth. Or perhaps 401Ks and IRAs could be commandeered by Congress in behalf of the state and given to creditors. The Americans thus robbed of their lifetime assets would receive worthless government guaranteed annuities. Those assets would probably be exchanged for perhaps $0.50 on the dollar or $0.33 on the plunging dollar. Can you see what your government has been doing and continues to do to you in order to further enrich those in government, on Wall Street and in banking? This is what you have worked so hard for – betrayal. This is probably where this is all headed and you are the victims. You cannot do much about the situation, as the Greeks and others cannot, short of a military coup. This is where you stand and this is where this is all headed and you had best prepare for it, because if you do not you will be very sorry.

Texas makes losers pay for frivolous lawsuits

It’s no wonder that Texas Gov. Rick Perry has recently been the focus of speculation about whether he might run for president in 2012. Texas has been on an economic roll since 2001, creating far more new jobs than any other state in the nation even as its population increased to 25 million. Love him or hate him, Perry is in his fourth term in Austin and thus deserves a big chunk of the credit for many of the good things happening in the Lone Star State.

Texas also has implemented some of the nation’s most significant state-level reforms aimed at reducing or eliminating lawsuit abuse.

The latest of these is a “loser pays” provision requiring plaintiffs to pay the winners’ legal costs in civil suits seeking punitive damages. The provision is included in the 2011 Omnibus Tort Reform Act Perry signed Monday. In addition to the provision, the new law:
Allows a trial judge to send a question of law directly to the appellate court without requiring all parties to agree if a ruling by a court of appeals could decide the case.
Allows plaintiffs seeking less than $100,000 in damages to request an expedited civil action.
Allows a trial court to dismiss a frivolous lawsuit immediately if there is no basis in law or fact for the lawsuit.

Because such litigation is controlled at the state level, the U.S. is unique among the industrialized nations in not having a national loser-pays law. That fact is likely among the key reasons why the American media so frequently report new examples of people suing for the most outrageous of reasons. Take, for example, Mark S. Gold, a Miami traffic court lawyer who got drunk at a local strip club in November, then woke up the next morning with a tab of nearly $19,000. He promptly sued the strip club’s corporate owner, claiming he should not be held responsible for the huge bill because the bar “continuously served plaintiff alcoholic beverages to the extent that he was rendered intoxicated, partially or temporarily unconscious, and further to the extent that he had a complete loss of judgment, rational thought or ability to enter into lawful contracts or agreements.”

Odds are Gold will walk away with most, if not all, of his bar tab forgiven since the defendants know it could lose big-time if he convinces a jury to award him punitive damages. As things now stand, plaintiffs like Gold have nothing to lose and everything to gain by clogging the courts with frivolous litigation. How many such suits would be filed if losing plaintiffs everywhere that they would have to pay the defendants’ legal fees?

The absence of loser-pays provisions in the vast majority of states helps explain why class-action plaintiff litigation cost more than $248 billion last year, according to the Towers Watson 2010 Update on U.S. Tort Cost Trends. That’s $808 for every man, woman and child in the country. It also makes the U.S. legal system twice as expensive — measured as a percentage of gross domestic product — as those of other industrialized nations, according to the Institute for Legal Reform.

Arrested and fined for paying a bill?

When did it become illegal to pay a doctor bill in legal U.S. coinage? He could have been like many, and not paid for the medical service at all. What part of this event was illegal?

VERNAL, Utah - A Utah man has been charged with disorderly conduct for allegedly trying to pay a disputed doctor's bill in pennies, the Deseret News reported Friday.

Police said 38-year-old Jason West went to a clinic in Vernal, Utah, on May 27 to dispute an outstanding bill for $25.

"After asking if they accepted cash, West dumped 2,500 pennies onto the counter and demanded that they count it," Vernal Assistant Police Chief Keith Campbell said. "The pennies were strewn about the counter and the floor."

West left the office as employees told him they were calling the police.

Officers eventually found West and cited him for disorderly conduct, an infraction with a potential fine of $140.

Protesters Dance, Sing, Slaughter Cows

WAIT!!! Slaughtering cows? Ain't that like some religion's version of Mohammad or something? You gotta love the heart filled sensitivity on display..........

Yemeni army soldiers lifted by anti-government protestors, chants slogans and wave their national flag as they celebrate President Ali Abdullah Saleh's departure to Saudi Arabia, in Sanaa, Yemen, Sunday, June 5, 2011. (Hani Mohammed/AP Photo)

Protesters danced, sang and slaughtered cows in the central square of Yemen's capital Sunday to celebrate the departure of the country's authoritarian leader for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia after he was wounded in a rocket attack on his compound.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was taken to a military hospital in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, underwent successful surgery on his chest to remove jagged pieces of wood that splintered from a mosque pulpit when his compound was hit by rockets on Friday, said medical officials and a Yemeni diplomat. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not have permission to release the information.

Vice President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi was acting as temporary head of state, said the deputy information minister, Abdu al-Janadi. The minister said the president would return to assume his duties after his treatment.

"Saleh will come back. Saleh is in good health, and he may give up the authority one day but it has to be in a constitutional way," al-Janadi said. "Calm has returned. Coups have failed. ... We are not in Libya, and Saleh is not calling for civil war."

But in the streets of the capital, joyful crowds were celebrating what they hoped would be his permanent exit after nearly 33 years in power.

Saleh's absence raised the specter of an even more violent power struggle between the armed tribesmen who have turned against him and loyalist military forces. Street battles between the sides have already pushed the more than three-month political crisis to the brink of civil war over this deeply impoverished and unstable corner of the Arabian Peninsula.

But for one day at least, the capital was celebrating. Protesters thronged Sanaa's Change Square, the epicenter of the nationwide protest movement since mid-February calling for Saleh to step down immediately. Some uniformed soldiers joined those dancing and singing patriotic songs and were hoisted on the shoulders of the crowd. Many in the jubilant crowd waved Yemeni flags, joyfully whistling and flashing the "V'' for victory signs.

"Who would have believed that this people could have removed the tyrant?" said 30-year-old teacher Moufid al-Mutairi.

Women in black veils joined demonstrators carrying banners that hailed Saleh's departure. One read: "The oppressor is gone, but the people stay."

Activist and rights lawyer Khaled al-Ansi said families and children were arriving in the square in party clothes.

"People have trickled in since dawn to the square. Some have not slept yet. It is like a holiday," he said.

But there were also fears that the president would attempt a comeback or that his son Ahmed, who heads the Republican Guard, would take power or even try to leave the country in ruins if he feels he has no way out.

"I fear the battle of the desperates from the regime," said human rights activist Majed al-Madhaji. "This is the biggest fear, that they decide to bring down the temple."

Yemen's conflict began as a peaceful protest movement that the government at times used brutal force to try to suppress. It transformed in recent weeks into armed conflict after the president's forces attacked the home of a key tribal leader and one-time ally who emerged as a dangerous rival after throwing his support behind the uprising. The fighting turned the streets of the capital, Sanaa, into a war zone.

Other forces rose against Saleh at the same time. There were high-level defections within his military, and Islamist fighters took over at least one town in the south in the past two weeks. Saleh blamed the tribal rivals for the attack on his compound Friday that killed 11 bodyguards and wounded at least five senior government officials in addition to the president.

In Taiz, Yemen's second largest city, dozens of gunmen attacked the presidential palace on Sunday, killing four soldiers in an attempt to storm the compound, according to military officials and witnesses. They said one of the attackers was also killed in the violence. The attackers belong to a group set up recently to avenge the killing of anti-regime protesters at the hands of Saleh's security forces.

Nine soldiers were killed when gunman ambushed a military convoy in the south, officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Saleh has been under intense pressure to step down from his powerful Gulf neighbors, who control a large share of the world's oil resources, and from longtime ally Washington. They all fear Yemen could be headed toward a failed state that will become a fertile ground for al-Qaida's most active franchise to operate and launch attacks abroad.

In a display of the kind of political maneuvering that has helped keep in power through numerous perils, he agreed three times to a U.S.-backed Gulf Arab proposal for ending the crisis only to back out at the last minute.

Now, Saleh's injuries and his treatment abroad provide him with what could turn out to be a face-saving solution to exit power.

A Yemeni official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information, said Saleh left with his two wives and some of his children. The official said he and others learned about Saleh's plans only after the president left. A Saudi medical official said his condition was "not good."

Saleh did not issue a decree putting his vice president in charge while he is away in Saudi Arabia. A terse statement from his office only said he had arrived in Saudi Arabia for medical tests and that he was in good health.

The president's departure was shrouded in extreme secrecy and many in the government did not know of his early Sunday departure until he had actually arrived in Saudi Arabia.

Significantly, military officials said Hadi, the vice president, met late Saturday night in Sanaa with several members of Saleh's family, including his son and one-time heir apparent Ahmed, who commands the powerful Republican Guard. Others who attended the meeting included two of the president's nephews and two half brothers. All four head well-equipped and highly trained units that constitute the president's main power base in the military.

That such powerful members of Saleh's family have been left behind in Sanaa suggests that the president's departure will not necessarily end the crisis in Yemen and that he could be trying to maintain control and planning to try to return.

For one thing, fighting could continue between the tribal forces and pro-regime units led by loyal members of Saleh's inner circle. In his more than three decades in power, Saleh administered an elaborate patronage system to ensure the loyalty of military officers and some of those beneficiaries would be tempted to continue the fight in the hope of keeping the perks they had enjoyed under the president.

If Saleh's departure causes the regime to collapse, tribal chieftains would want to take credit for the ouster of the regime and get a dominant role in the country's future. Given the conservative politics of tribal leaders, that could well place them on a collision course with the youth groups that have for months staged peaceful demonstrations in Sanaa and across much of the country to demand Saleh's ouster and political reforms.

Saleh's tribal opponents are led by Sheik Sadeq al-Ahmar, who heads Yemen's most powerful tribal confederation, the Hashid.

Al-Ahmar announced the Hashid's support for the protest movement in March after widespread outrage at a sniper attack that killed dozens of protesters in Sanaa. But his fighters remained on the sidelines for weeks.

Then last week, Saleh's forces moved against al-Ahmar's fortress-like residence in Sanaa, and the tribe's fighters rose up in fury. They fought pitched battles that engulfed the Sanaa in violence.

The battles reached a crescendo Friday when a rocket slammed into the mosque in the presidential compound during a prayer service, killing 11 bodyguards and seriously injuring five top officials who were worshipping along with Saleh. The five officials wounded were taken to neighboring Saudi Arabia for care.

The president delivered an audio address hours after the attack, his voice labored, with only an old photo shown. His failure to appear in public despite repeated promises raised speculation that his injuries were more severe than acknowledged.

Saleh arrived in Saudi Arabia around 1 a.m. and was immediately taken to a nearby military hospital, according to a Saudi medical official, who described the president's condition as "not good." The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters, did not elaborate.

Sheik Mohammed Nagi al-Shayef, a tribal ally, said he met the president Saturday evening at the Defense Ministry compound in the capital.

"He suffered burns, but they were not serious. He was burned on both hands, his face and head," al-Shayef told The Associated Press. About 200 people were in the mosque when the rocket struck, he said.

Saleh's departure likely means his rule is over, said Christopher Boucek, a Yemen expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"I'd hate to rule anything out for President Saleh," Boucek said, noting that Saleh is a proven political survivor who has often beat overwhelming odds. "But I can't see how he can come back and still be president."

BTW That Bus You People Keep Throwing Each Other Under... Palin Now Owns It!

Palin turns reporters into shills
Of course The Donald would invite The Sarah up to his New York penthouse. She is, after all, taking her Clampett bus expedition to American shrines, and that's what Donald Trump considers himself.

Sarah Palin and Trump also share two interests: presidential politics and sham reality shows. Actually, that's just one.

"What do we have in common?" she responded after the get-together. "Our love for this country, a desire to see our economy put back on the right track."

They both also have a remarkable ability to turn reporters into shills who chase after them to snap up whatever crumbs they toss.

Palin can even keep a straight face when she tells her Fox News BFF Greta Van Susteren that her bus jaunt isn't "a publicity seeking tour." All the while she's getting disproportionate publicity from the very news people she disparages.

"I don't owe anything to the mainstream media," she gloats.

Actually, she might feel she owes us a measure of sweet revenge for making her squirm in the 2008 election, when she ran as the Republican vice presidential nominee. According to her disenchanted former top aide Frank Bailey in his new book "Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin," the former governor of Alaska is someone who would "routinely set out to destroy those who criticized her or her loved ones."

If that's what she wants to do to news coverage of political campaigns, more power to her. Her relentless attacks on the news media could result in some reforms that are long overdue.

It's high time that the usual candidate-journalist symbiosis is ripped apart. For too long some of us have been the lazy "Boys (and girls) on the Bus." Sarah Palin would be doing a great service if she continued to keep reporters off her bus and disrupted the inevitable Stockholm Syndrome that results from such extended captivity.

Less dependence on spoon feeding would allow us to look more aggressively past the superficiality of her compelling personality, get beyond her lowest common denominator bromides while we sift through her background, policies and, dare I say it, comprehension of the compelling issues of our times.

Right now, she's playing us a like a fiddle. Call it Reverse PR. By disdaining the media, she creates more media interest. Imagine the frustration a Tim Pawlenty must feel when at every stop he's met with questions about Palin.

In fact, you don't have to imagine it. On MSNBC's "Morning Joe" he complained: "We need to quit worrying about polls and bus tours and get onto the issue of how we're going to fix the country and get the country back on track."

The latest Gallup Poll of Republican and leaning Republican respondents show that newly announced old shoe candidate Mitt Romney is leading the GOP presidential pack at 17 percent. Unannounced Palin is breathing down his neck at 15 percent. Pawlenty is at 6 percent. By the way, that's the same poll that Trump led in April, before he folded his tent.

If Sarah Palin bails, we would still have Michele Bachmann waiting in the right wings, denying that she's simply Palin-lite. Newt Gingrich is also out there firing away, but Newt's not new and definitely not the extremist novelties that Palin and Bachmann are.

Palin has managed to stay fresh partly because she looks like she's not traveling the traditional path of presidential politics. Those of us who cover elections shouldn't get stuck in that rut, either. Instead, we should be keeping the players at arm's length while we carefully examine whether they're worthy participants.

We shouldn't care at all whether she or other candidates are vindictive, because we should not be beholden to anyone of them for anything. Including their bus schedule.

Who Needs Job Creation?

Delinquent Homeowners to Get Mortgage Aid from Government

The Obama administration wants to help more struggling Americans stay in their homes by reducing the amount they owe on their troubled mortgages, a top Treasury official said Saturday.


Fuse | Getty Images


"We are very definitely trying to facilitate more principal reductions," said Timothy Massad, Treasury's acting assistant secretary for financial stability. "It is a very important piece of the overall solution," he said.

The administration is trying through taxpayer-funded programs to prevent homeowners from losing their homes. Nearly $50 billion has been set aside from the $700 billion bank bailout known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, to help distressed homeowners.

Persistently high unemployment and a weak housing market pose a threat to President Obama's re-election prospects next year.

So far, one of the programs has helped some 670,000 distressed homeowners win lower mortgage payments. But that has done very little to help the overall housing market, which remains depressed even as other parts of the economy have started to recover.

A glut of houses for sale, foreclosures, tight credit and little demand have impeded the housing recovery. Recent data showed that home prices dropped below the low seen in April 2009 during the financial crisis.

"This has been a very, very tough housing market as a result of the fact that we went through a horrible financial crisis," Massad told reporters on the sidelines of a foreclosure prevention event in Washington.

One of the administration's programs helps distressed homeowners avoid foreclosure by providing permanent loan modifications.

Another program, now ramping up, gives states that have been the hardest hit by falling home prices funding to help reduce the principal of a borrower's loan, among other things.

"I think those will make a big difference in terms of the problems of unemployed homeowners and falling house prices," said Massad. But he added the process was tricky.

"There are issues of how you do it, making sure it's fair, making sure you don't create the wrong incentives," Massad said.

At the event, dozens of homeowners seeking relief waited to talk to housing counselors and their mortgage servicers, who collect housing payments and negotiate new terms for troubled loans.




One housing counselor expressed frustration with the servicers, saying more people would still be in their homes if their principal was reduced.

"Servicers are not required to do it," said Shaneece Hudson, a mortgage adviser with the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. "Principal reduction is an option (for the servicers.) But they don't do it. They will do everything else first," she said.

More than 120 servicers are participating in the administration's program, including the largest such as Bank of America [BAC 11.28 -0.01 (-0.09%) ], Wells Fargo [WFC 26.86 -0.30 (-1.1%) ], JPMorgan Chase [JPM 41.57 -0.04 (-0.1%) ] and GMAC.

"There is no silver bullet. But I think there are a lot of programs out there that are providing help to people," said Massad. "If anyone has specific ideas that haven't been tried, I am happy to hear about them."

TIME MAGAZINE IGNORES BLACK CANDIDATE IN GOP RACE

Are Time and Mark Halperin Racist? Herman Cain Omitted Twice in GOP Oddsmaking

Twice in the last two weeks has Time magazine devoted a page to Mark Halperin's oddsmaking on who will be the Republican nominee -- the May 23 issue (page 35) and the June 6 issue (page 16). Twice, there's been no mention of Herman Cain. The GOP cast of contenders is lily-white. This seems odd, since Cain participated in the first presidential debate on May 5 to high praise and formally announced on May 21. Are Time and Halperin racists? They can't say they're unaware that Cain is running.

They can't say that Cain is too much of a long shot. In the first set of odds, Halperin put Michele Bachmann at 1,000-to-1. (The best odds in order were to Romney, Huckabee, Daniels, Pawlenty, Huntsman, Gingrich, and Palin, second to last at 60 to 1.) In the second set, Huckabee and Daniels were removed from the list, and Santorum (at 500 to 1) and Ron Paul (at 2,000 to 1) were added. Bachmann was still at 1,000 to 1. Halperin also added "Mystery Candidate" -- but named those (Rick Perry, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, and Jeb Bush.)

Time magazine should really have to explain this remarkable (double) oversight of a black Republican.

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Video: Koran-pushing "Mohammad Freak" Muslim woman stabs 2 outside library

Hat tip Vlad Tepes for the video via Police: Woman Stabs 2 Outside Bloomington Library « CBS Minnesota.

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More proof Islam is a satanic death cult!

On a side note I took one of the Qurans she handed out and soaked it in bacon grease and burned it.

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. (WCCO) — Two people were stabbed in a seemingly random attack at a Twin Cities library.

After the incident Wednesday night at the Oxboro Library in Bloomington, 35-year-old Samira Abdalla Salim was arrested.

Salim was no stranger to the Oxboro Library. She had a reputation for handing out the Koran and talking religion outside the building.

“They had some issues with her harassing other patrons,” said Bloomington Police Commander Mark Stehlik.

But it’s what investigators say she did on Wednesday night that surprised everyone.

“I never thought she would do that. She was very nice,” said Anisa Ahmed, Salim’s neighbor.

Salim is accused of stabbing two people. The first victim was a woman who was walking into the library.

“The next thing she knew, she felt a sharp pain in the middle of her back and realized she had been stabbed,” said Stehlik.

The second was a security guard who heard the victim’s cry for help. He went to talk to Salim in the parking lot.

“Spoke to her briefly and then she actually stabbed him as well. Stabbed him in the abdomen,” said Stehlik.

Because Salim lived next door to the library, witnesses identified her right away and she was arrested in minutes.

“Nobody was worried about her committing a violent act,” said Stehlik.

Fourteen-year-old Ahmed lives next door to Salim and only knows a friendly lady whose kids were friends with her sisters.

“She’d greet us every morning … and she’d get to know us,” said Ahmed.

Now the question everyone wants answered is why a woman who was not seen as a threat suddenly became violent.

“It’s unusual. Somebody minding their own business, walking into library, it doesn’t happen too often where they become victim of assault like this,” said Stehlik.

The victims had minor injuries. Police say they weren’t stabbed with a knife but a sharp, pointy object.

Islam is a religion of peace – until it’s not. Coincidentally, one-person jihads are being promoted by Islamic terrorist groups. via MEMRI:

On June 3, 2011, jihadi websites posted a two-part video – the first part 55 minutes long and the second 45 minutes long – produced by Al-Qaeda’s Al-Sahab media company and titled “Do Not Rely on Others, Take [the Task] Upon Yourself.” The first part is devoted to the topic of al-jihad al-fardi (“individual Jihad”), namely jihad operations performed by a single individual or by a small group. It features excerpts from old videos by Al-Qaeda leaders (including Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Abu Yahya Al-Libi, Attiyat Allah Al-Libi, Anwar Al-Awlaki, and Adam Gadahn) who speak in praise of one-man operations and call upon Muslims in the West to carry them out. Interspersed with this is footage from Western media intended to illustrate the West’s crimes against the Muslims.

Videos readily available on Google’s JihadTube.

Another Minnesota Muslim made the news yesterday when the terror group al Shabaab posted audio of a Minnesota Muslim man who reportedly became a suicide bomber, killing two African Union soldiers in Somalia.

Ron Paul: We're Defaulting On The Common Person All The Time

Rep. Ron Paul spoke to Bloomberg's Al Hunt on Friday, on the issue of the debt ceiling and U.S. government spending.

1:00 The Congress will pass the debt ceiling, probably at the last minute. The catastrophe is coming regardless, because the U.S. government spending will continue to rise.
1:40 Doesn't believe the one-for-one cuts Boehner talks about won't happen.
2:20 "We're defaulting constantly;" "The default comes when we devalue the currency." We're defaulting on the common person all the time.
4:20 Politically, those backing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya are making a mistake. We can't pay for it, and people know that. "We'll run out of money. That's how all great nations and empires end."
5:20 You target all foreign welfare and corporate welfare before you target child health care. That sells. Look at all the atrocious spending we do overseas.


Paul also talks extensively about his opinions on the Fed, and other candidates in the Republican field.

Housing slide worse than Great Depression?

That’s the assessment of the US housing market decline from the British newspaper The Independent, and it’s true … technically. From peak to trough, the fall in average single-family home values since 2007 has hit 33%, surpassing the 31% drop in housing prices during the Great Depression:

The ailing US housing market passed a grim milestone in the first quarter of this year, posting a further deterioration that means the fall in house prices is now greater than that suffered during the Great Depression.

The brief recovery in prices in 2009, spurred by government aid to first-time buyers, has now been entirely snuffed out, and the average American home now costs 33 per cent less than it did at the peak of the housing bubble in 2007. The peak-to-trough fall in house prices in the 1930s Depression was 31 per cent – and prices took 19 years to recover after that downturn.

The latest Case-Shiller house price index was just one of a slew of disappointing economic data from the US yesterday, which suggested ebbing confidence in the recovery of the world’s largest economy. The Chicago PMI manufacturing index showed a sharp slowdown in the pace of expansion in May, missing Wall Street forecasts and sending the index to its lowest since November 2009.

We should keep a couple of things in mind when making comparisons to the Great Depression, however. First, this collapse in home values follows a lengthy bubble that mainly applied specifically to home values. What followed in this case was a recession, not the serious deflation seen in the Great Depression that lowered all asset valuations, not just homes. That’s one reason why it took 19 years for home values to recover from the Great Depression.

Housing values still seem to be searching for a bottom, but we’re probably getting closer to it now. Adjusting for inflation, we’re still a little ahead in home value than at the start of the bubble in 1997-98. The actual data from the Case-Shiller report puts average single-family home value at the mid-2002 level. What we’ve lost is most of the irrational valuations created by government-warped lending incentives and the loose money that fueled them. The crash in the 1930s set homeowners much farther back, as most of those losses were in real valuation and not just a correction against the irrational.

In other words, the issue is less how much prices have fallen than about how much prices irrationally rose in the first place.

Still, this news does show the folly of the attempts by the Obama administration to use tax money to keep the revaluations from proceeding as they were inevitably going to do anyway through gimmicky tax credits on home sales. All that did was postpone the inevitable, incentivize purchases that would have been made anyway, and end up costing those buyers more than they saved in paying for a house with the credit. It also reminds us that government intervention in markets to pick winners for political purposes does much more damage than good, and almost always hurts the very people that intervention advocates claim to be assisting.

Marxist Democrat Cringes As Russian Immigrants Compare Communism to…Democrats!

There is just no way to describe this without a smirk and a chuckle. When you read how some of New York’s Russian immigrants (who know Soviet-style Communism all-too-well) are aligning with Republicans—because they view Democrats’ policies to be too similar to the failed policies of their homeland—there is just something richly ironic there. However, when you read how their never-met-a-Marxist-she-didn’t-love Democrat legislator reacts to be having her party compared to Soviet Russia, now that is just over-the-top funny:


Businessman Arkadiy Fridman said that the newly formed Citizens Magazine Business Club, a confederation of more than 50 Russian-owned businesses here and in Brooklyn, has aligned itself with the Molinari Republican Club (MRC) in an effort to increase the Russian community’s political and economic clout.

CLOSE TO OWN VISION

“We decided we had to support this club,” said Fridman, a former Soviet Army officer who came to the United States in 1992. “They are very close to our political and business vision.”

Fridman said that the Democrats “are going in an absolutely different direction,” focusing on “income redistribution” and rich-versus-poor “class war.”

“It’s too socialistic,” said Fridman, head of the non-profit Staten Island Community Center and president of Citizens Magazine, a public affairs publication. “It’s very painful for us to see.”

And, if that weren’t bad enough, the Democrats’ are reminding the Russian immigrants of something they thought they left behind:

The Big Brother approach reminds Fridman too much of what he left behind in the former Soviet Union.

“It’s the same rule like it was there,” said Fridman, who estimates there are around 55,000 Russian immigrants here.

Michael Petrov of the Digital Edge data management firm in Bloomfield, said that he objects to the “micro-managing of the economy” he’s seen from city as well as federal officials.

“Government is affecting small business more and more,” said Petrov, who came to the United States in 1994. “It’s the same as what’s happening in Russia.”

The Russian immigrants seem to know the path the Democratic Party is leading the nation down far better than many Democrats, which is why it seems the GOP is a better fit for the Russians.

Of course, the danger of being exposed is not lost on their Marxist legislator, union-boss-turned-Democrat-politician, State Sen. Diane Savino (D-North Shore/Brooklyn), who just seems to cringe at the thought of being exposed and being labeled either a Socialist or a Communist:

State Sen. Diane Savino (D-North Shore/Brooklyn) said she understands the Russian aversion to anything that looks like big government, but thinks the criticism of the Democratic Party is off-base.

“You can’t ignore the fact that the Russian population here came of age during the Soviet era,” said Ms. Savino, who counts many Russians among her Brooklyn constituents.

“They have different thoughts on what communism and socialism mean. They are a little more sensitive to it.

“But, that being said,” she added, “you can’t compare the policies of the Democratic Party with communism. It’s absurd.”

Ummm. Does Yes We Can! fit here?

via SILive.com.

[Emphasis added throughout.]