konane's Blog

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Found this interesting.  There are 7 charts in the article so would suggest navigating to the site if you wish to view them and read the rest of the article.

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 Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/16/2010 09:28 -0500
Source Zero Hedge

We are a rather surprised that this morning's stunning Treasury International Capital report has not gotten far more prominent attention. The reason: in it we read that in May 2010, China dumped $33 billion in Treasuries, bringing its total to the lowest since June 2009. Furthermore, Japan also offloaded $8.8 billion in bonds, as did the Oil Exporters. Yet total foreign Treasury holdings increased from $3,957 billion to $3,964 billion almost exclusively as a result of ongoing exponential UK accumulation. It is time someone in the mainstream media asked just who is doing all this "UK-based" buying? It is not hedge funds, which operate out of Caribbean Banking Centers, and which saw an increase in holdings from $151.8 billion to $165.5 billion as risk went completely off in the month of May courtesy of the Flash Crash, Greece, and the general insolvency of Europe. It is also not China due to a diverging pattern in Bills accumulation versus disposition. Additionally, May saw a dramatic decline in total foreign purchases of total US assets, dropping from $110.3 billion to just $33 billion, with Corporate Bonds and Corporate Stocks seeing a rare monthly sell off ($9 billion and $432 million). .........."

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/chinese-treasury-dump-brings-its-total-holdings-one-year-low-uk-continues-exponential-accumu?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29

From Steve Quayle, Q-news photo of the day. 

Look quickly as these never stay up long.

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"how two horses plotted history

http://www.stevequayle.com/News.alert/10_Photo_of_Day/100715.photo.of.day.b.html

My apologies .... I can not find the original post of this video to link to.  I was unable to view it on FoxNews but did find it on YouTube.

While I have never been a Hillary fan from First Lady onward, this video is a documentary showing that Hillary voters of all races were intimidated and turned away all over the country by thugs intent on Obama wining the popular vote.

You decide.

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"Brief for 9 states backs Arizona immigration law

Jul 15, 3:50 AM (ET)
By DAVID RUNK
Source My Way News
 
"DETROIT (AP) - States have the authority to enforce immigration laws and protect their borders, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox said Wednesday in a legal brief on behalf of nine states supporting Arizona's immigration law.

Cox, one of five Republicans running for Michigan governor, said Michigan is the lead state backing Arizona in federal court and is joined by Alabama, Florida, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Virginia, as well as the Northern Mariana Islands.

The Arizona law, set to take effect July 29, directs officers to question people about their immigration status during the enforcement of other laws such as traffic stops and if there's a reasonable suspicion they're in the U.S. illegally.

President Barack Obama's administration recently filed suit in federal court to block it, arguing immigration is a federal issue. The law's backers say Congress isn't doing anything meaningful about illegal immigration, so it's the state's duty to step up.

"Arizona, Michigan and every other state have the authority to enforce immigration laws, and it is appalling to see President Obama use taxpayer dollars to stop a state's efforts to protect its own borders," Cox said in a statement.

Arizona's Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, in a statement released by Cox's office, said she was thankful for the support.

In a telephone interview, Cox said the nine states supporting Arizona represents "a lot of states," considering it was only Monday that he asked other state attorneys general to join him. The brief was filed in U.S. District Court in Arizona on the same day as the deadline for such filings.

"By lawsuit, rather than by legislation, the federal government seeks to negate this preexisting power of the states to verify a person's immigration status and similarly seeks to reject the assistance that the states can lawfully provide to the Federal government," the brief states.

The brief doesn't represent the first time Cox has clashed with the Obama administration. Earlier this year, he joined with more than a dozen other attorneys general to file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of federal health care changes signed into law by the Democratic president.

Like with his stance on health care, the immigration brief again puts Cox at odds with Democratic Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Granholm, who can't seek re-election because of term limits, disagrees with the Arizona law, her press secretary Liz Boyd said. The Michigan primary is less than three weeks away on Aug. 3.

"It's a patently political ploy in his quest for the Republican nomination for governor," Boyd said. "

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100715/D9GVBRK80.html

@ July 15, 2010 8:56 AM

Source Boortz.com 

"Taxes have consequences. Liberals only see taxes as a wonderfully easy way to seize wealth so that they can work their redistribution schemes. For some reason - abject ignorance might be an explanation - liberals just can't see how tax policy might affect people's behavior. This takes us back to that article I shared with you several weeks ago. Some researchers quizzed liberals, conservatives, libertarians and progressives on their economic knowledge. It came as no surprise to Boortz listeners that the further you were to the left, the less you knew about basic economics. By the time you identified yourself as a "progressive" you occupied the position of economic idiot. It's no surprise then that liberals just cannot grasp the concept that if you start to punish small businesses with regulations and taxes these small business owners are going to change their behavior .. and that behavioral change may well include the decision to stockpile wealth instead of sticking your neck out in an expansion effort that might cause you to hire more workers. You might even start firing permanent staff and look to temporary staffing agencies to replace employees.

It's not just businesses that change behavior, individuals do as well; especially the evil and disgusting rich people whom the liberals just LOVE to nail with more taxes. They (politicians) will do anything to get their hands on money that somebody else earned. The problem is that they're just not bright enough to realize that these evil achievers will eventually comes a point where they throw up their hands and say "enough already." That is exactly what is happening in Great Britain.

Remember Usain Bolt? Fastest guy in the world? He won a bunch of track medals at the last Olympics. So this organization in London wanted to set up a race between the fastest guys in the world, including Bolt. Usain Bolt declined. Why? Taxes. Since April of this year, Britain has new tax laws in place that would tax foreign sports stars competing in Britain at a rate of 50% on their earning in Britain. On top of that, athletes are taxed on their global endorsement income. For example, "If Bolt races 10 times in a year with just one event in the UK, the taxman would claim 10 per cent of his multi-million dollar earnings." Presumably this event - this race - would generate income for several British concerns. It won't happen though. The government simply wants too much of the take.

Golf is also having a hard time attracting top athletes to its tournaments. According to the Telegraph of London, "The European Tour will tell the Government that the tax measures disproportionately affect overseas golfers and are a major reason why UK tournaments, including the Welsh Open played over the Celtic Manor course that will host the Ryder Cup, attract fewer overseas stars."

It seems worldwide. There is no limit to government's desire to confiscate the wealth produced by private labor. Governments now look at private property as nothing more than sources of tax revenue. That's why government feels it is proper and appropriate to seize property from one party and transfer it to another if there are additional property taxes to be garnered through the move. Ditto for individuals. We now exist - we now work - for the sole purpose of generating revenue that the political class can use to buy votes. They'll allow us to retain just enough to keep us from sliding into open revolt.

Hopefully more Americans are waking up to this nonsense."

http://boortz.com/nealz_nuze/2010/07/enough-with-the-taxation.html

"First question: How is it that the Treasury Department can go ahead and give the trial lawyers a tax break that Congress didn’t pass?

Second question: Why on earth would we want to give a tax break to trial lawyers for filing speculative lawsuits? It would, in fact, be a subsidy for lawsuits not unlike the mortgage deduction on your income tax is a subsidy for home ownership. That mortgage deduction is one of the chief reasons why our country has had troubles with housing bubbles (unlike Canada which has no such tax deduction).

Can you imagine what a tax-subsidized lawsuit bubble would do to our economy? If anything, we need tort reform in this country to reduce the number of lawsuits filed every year. Not subsidies that will make it cheaper and easier to file lawsuits.

VANCOUVER, Canada (Legal Newsline) – The nation’s trial lawyer group, the American Association for Justice, revealed Tuesday that it expects the U.S. Department of Treasury to soon give its members a tax break on contingency fee lawsuits.

The tax break could be similar to proposed legislation that didn’t make it through Congress last year. That proposal, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., would have allowed attorneys to deduct fees and expenses up-front for filing contingency fee lawsuits.

John Bowman, the Director of Federal Relations for the AAJ, said in response to a question from a state delegate regarding recruiting new members that an administrative order from the Treasury Department could come as soon as tomorrow, sources told Legal Newsline.

So, basically, our elected representatives didn’t pass this tax break but the trial lawyers are expecting to get it anyway through the actions of the unelected bureaucrats at the Treasury Department.

Carter Wood notes that Congress has been considering this legislation for some time and that the politicians have simply not moved it forward:

Congress has had ample opportunity to vote on legislation to change tax law as desired by the trial lawyers. Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) introduced S. 437 in February 2009, and Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) introduced H.R. 2519 in May 2009. The committees of jurisdiction did not take up the legislation because it’s political poison and bad policy — stimulating more economy-sapping litigation. As the American Association for Justice’s top lobbyist, Linda Lipsen, told trial lawyers at the AAJ’s convention last summer in San Francisco, “You cannot have a stand alone bill to help lawyers … so we have to tuck it into something.”

Laws are supposed to be passed by Congress and signed by the President. If Congress doesn’t act, then a given piece of legislation shouldn’t become law. This is Civics 101.

But apparently things work different for the trial lawyers."

http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/trial-lawyers-expecting-treasury-department-to-give-them-1-6-billion-tax-break/

Another perspective the MSM likely won't be presenting.

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"Black tea partiers rebut NAACP

By ANDY BARR | 7/14/10 1:11 PM EDT
Source Politico

"Some African-American tea party candidates are displeased by a resolution that the NAACP approved on Tuesday calling the grass-roots conservative movement “racist.”

“I have not experienced the charges of racism that the NAACP is touting,” Vernon Parker, an African-American tea party congressional candidate in Arizona, told POLITICO.

Parker, former mayor of Paradise Valley, said that he has never felt out of place at a tea party rally because of the color of his skin.

“When I go to tea party events, people don’t look at me any differently,” he said. “They didn’t judge me on the color of my skin, quite frankly, they judged me on my principles."

"The NAACP should be concerned about bringing jobs to people in depressed areas,” he added, “not the tea party.”

Tim Scott, a GOP congressional nominee in South Carolina, echoed Parker’s sentiments in a statement.

“I believe that the NAACP is making a grave mistake in stereotyping a diverse group of Americans who care deeply about their country and who contribute their time, energy and resources to make a difference,” Scott said.

“As I campaign in South Carolina, I participate in numerous events sponsored by the tea party, 9/12, Patriot, and other like-minded groups, and I have had the opportunity to get to know many of the men and women who make up these energetic grass-roots organizations,” Scott added.

“Americans need to know that the tea party is a color-blind movement that has principled differences with many of the leaders in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans.”

The resolution the NAACP approved at its annual conference in Kansas City alleges that tea party groups have used racist epithets in attacks on President Barack Obama and have verbally and physically abused African-American members of Congress."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39729.html

Will be interesting to watch this go through courts as to how it pertains to overall First Amendment rights.

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"Court Tosses Out FCC Rules to Curb Indecent Speech

By AMY SCHATZ And JESS BRAVIN

Source Wall Street Journal

"A federal appeals court threw out the FCC's rules on indecent speech Tuesday, in a big win for broadcasters that could lead to a new Supreme Court test of the government's power to control what is said on television and radio.

A three-judge panel of the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said the Federal Communications Commission's indecency policies violate the First Amendment and are "unconstitutionally vague, creating a chilling effect that goes far beyond the fleeting expletives at issue here." ......."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703834604575365141592489802.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLETopStories

Powerline is THE VERY BEST at laying out facts.  Live links for verification.  Highlighting mine.

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July 13, 2010 Posted by Scott at 5:14 AM

There is one problem with the story: It didn't happen. We believe that we demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt over the course of our 18-part "Don't leave it to Cleaver" series that it didn't happen.The congressmen's story was a fabrication intended to defame the Tea Party movement and distract attention from the resistance to Obamacare.

Under circumstances where such evidence would exist if the incident had occurred, no audio or video recording corroborates it, despite Andrew Breitbart's offer of a $100,000 reward to anyone producing such evidence. And no independent journalist or other eyewitness has stepped forward to vouch for the congressmen's story -- because it didn't happen.

We posted correspondence from reader Greg Farrell providing his own testimony denying that the incident happened in part 7, part 16, and elsewhere in our series. Farrell had sent us his photographs documenting his position at the March 20 protest. Farrell was in a good position to testify: It didn't happen.

Given the involvement of Rep. Clyburn in promoting the story, the fabrication extends to the Democratic congressional leadership. It is a scandal that warrants the attention of the mainstream media, but instead the mainstream media continue robotically to repeat it.

ABC did it again yesterday in a story linked by Drudge and thus read by millions. ABC's Human Khan reported:

First Lady Michelle Obama brought renewed energy to the NAACP today, delivering the keynote speech at the annual convention one day before the nation's largest civil rights group is expected to condemn what it calls racist elements in the Tea Party movement.
First Lady Michelle Obama Addresses NAACP

The nation's largest and oldest civil rights organization will vote on the resolution Tuesday during its annual convention in Kansas City, Mo.

In her speech, the first lady focused on the issue of childhood obesity and her "Let's Move" initiative, but outside of her remarks, anti-Tea Party activism has been a key focus of the gathering, which conservative leaders say is driven solely by a political agenda.

Tea Party members have used "racial epithets," have verbally abused black members of Congress and threatened them, and protestors have engaged in "explicitly racist behavior" and "displayed signs and posters intended to degrade people of color generally and President Barack Obama specifically," according to the proposed resolution.

The NAACP represents some of Barack Obama's hardiest supporters. How thoughtful of the mainstream media to have left the story of the phantom n-word ready at hand for the likes of the NAACP to use it against the resistance to Obama. One might almost think there is method to this madness.

Huma Khan is ABC's "digital editor." Surely she knows that the March 20 n-word story represents a highly disputed assertion of fact, and knowledge of the dispute enters her story. Yet she introduces evidence from elsewhere on the Internet to lend the story credence:

In March, Tea Party protesters opposing the health care bill were alleged to have shouted racial slurs at black House members in the halls of Congress, a charge that Tea Party supporters say has not been proven. Liberal blogs have also seized on signs that have appeared in Tea Party protests, comparing President Obama to a monkey.

Khan does not mention Breitbart's unclaimed bounty, nor does she note that conservative blogs have seized on the March 20 n-word concoction to argue that the story represents an incredibly tired effort to stigmatize opposition to President Obama as racist.

Khan minimally acknowledges the disputed nature of the March 20 incident, but she also quotes the Rev. C.L. Bryant. Bryant is a former president of NAACP's Garland, Texas, chapter who is now a Tea Party activist. Khan quotes Bryant to the effect that the imputation of racism to to the Tea Party is "simply a lie." The NAACP wants to "create a climate where they can say that those on the right are in fact racist and those on the left are their saviors," he added. "This is very much what the liberal agenda is about." As we used to say: Right on!

Some enterprising editor at the Wall Street Journal, or NR, or the Weekly Standard, or Commentary, or the New Criterion, really should commission an article on the pathogenesis and propagation of the lie involved in the NAACP resolution. It would make a highly illuminating case study. It would also slightly complicate the efforts of the NAACP and its ilk to stigmatize dissent from the Obama program of national socialism as racist.

FOOTNOTE: Readers interested in a serious exploration of the larger subject may want to consider Timothy Dalrymple's "Is the Tea Party racist?" Dalrymple writes: "The charge that the Tea Party is racist is a perfect object lesson in liberal misinterpretation of conservatives." And it is misinterpretation with a purpose."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/07/026743.php

  Video shows Congressman Sherman wiping his face, grabbing the podium when called on his feigned ignorance of the case and circumstances surrounding DOJ policies and dismissal of the New Black Panthers won case.  Kudos to his constituents!

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July 13, 2010 Posted by John at 8:26 AM

"If you don't think voters are up in arms about the discriminatory policies of Barack Obama's Department of Justice, check out this video of a town hall meeting held by Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman, CA-27. A constituent asks him about DOJ's dismissal of charges against members of the New Black Panther Party and describes the case accurately. Sherman claims not to have heard about it, drawing fury from the crowd:

*****VIDEO*****

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/07/026746.php

Source The Hill's Healthwatch 

http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/108015-tax-report-rehashes-debate-over-cost-effectiveness-of-health-reform-law

By Matt Cover, Staff Writer

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/69151

Woot, go Sarah! 

"Another Democrat Congressman Loses Temper on Camera ~ Video

http://www.breitbart.tv/another-democrat-congressman-loses-temper-on-camera/

Posted by Karl Denninger in Housing at 12:38

"Is MERS About To Unravel?

"............. In the meantime if you are facing a foreclosure and MERS was involved in some fashion, either in assignment of the paper just before the suit was filed or worse, in bringing the suit itself, you need competent legal advice right now.

You may be able to stop the foreclosure dead in its tracks."

http://market-ticker.org/archives/2490-Is-MERS-About-To-Unravel.html