The Euro climbed on good news for Europe. Despite the S&P’s downgrade of France yields fell.
Comments »Monthly Archives: January 2012
China’s GDP Expands More Than Expected; Markets Hopeful of Easing
Global Markets Rally Full Retard
FLASH: CHINA RIPS HIGHER
4%+–biggest rally in a long time.
Comments »Flash: S&P Futures Bonkers to the Upside
+12 to the good.
Comments »FLASH: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS NOW THE WINO CAPITAL OF THE WORLD
(via NY POST)
Bourbon and Budweiser may be the national staples, but nobody outdoes America in wine drinking either, with the country uncorking 3.7 billion bottles in 2011.
That’s enough vino for the US to pass Italy and France, taking the first place among wine-consuming nations worldwide by volume.
Italy had to settle for second place, while France was third last year, all according to a new study by International Wine and Spirit Research. The Old World still leads in per capita consumption, however.
And America’s grape-swilling ways are expected to keep growing, with the study suggesting 10 percent growth by 2015.
Read more: http://trade.cc/zpv
Comments »LATEST CNN POLL: RON PAUL MUCH CLOSER TO OBAMA AND ROMNEY THAN YOU THINK
Mitt Romney is all tied up with President Barack Obama in a likely general election matchup, with the president showing signs of weakness on the economy and Romney seen as out of touch with ordinary Americans, according to a new national survey.
And a CNN/ORC International Poll released Monday also indicates that Rep. Ron Paul of Texas is also even with Obama in another possible showdown this November. The survey also suggests the Republican advantage on voter enthusiasm is eroding, which could be crucial in a close contest.
Tune in Thursday at 8 p.m. ET for the CNN/Southern Republican Presidential Debate hosted by John King and follow it on Twitter at #CNNDebate. For real-time coverage of the South Carolina primary, go to CNNPolitics.com and on the CNN apps for iPhone,iPad, Android or other phones.
– Follow the Ticker on Twitter: @PoliticalTicker
According to the survey, if the November election were held today and Romney were the Republican presidential nominee, 48% say they’d vote for the former Massachusetts governor, with 47% supporting the president. Romney’s one point margin is well within the poll’s sampling error.
The poll also indicates Paul statistically tied with Obama, with the president at 48% and the longtime congressman at 46%. But according to the poll, the president is doing better against two other Republican presidential candidates. If Rick Santorum were the GOP nominee, Obama would hold a 51%-45% advantage over the former senator from Pennsylvania. And if Newt Gingrich faced off against the president, Obama would lead the former House speaker 52%-43%.
Enthusiasm in voting in the presidential election this November now stands at 54% among registered Republicans, down ten points from last October. Meanwhile, enthusiasm among registered Democrats has risen six points, and now stands at 49%.
“In a race that tight, turnout is likely to determine the outcome, and the Democrats have begun to close the ‘enthusiasm gap’ that damaged their prospects so badly in the 2010 midterms,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
While the Obama re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee have all of the GOP White House hopefuls in their sights, they are directing most of their firepower towards Romney, and the poll indicates why that is the case.
According to the survey, both men are seen as strong leaders, and both are viewed as having the personal qualities that a president should have. Forty-eight percent of Americans say that Obama agrees with them on the issues they care about – not great, but better than the 43% who feel that way about Romney.
“But on the economy – issue number one to most Americans – Romney has a clear advantage. 53% say the former Massachusetts governor can get the economy moving; only 40% say that about President Barack Obama,” says Holland. “But the numbers are reversed when voters are asked whether the candidates are in touch with ordinary Americans. Fifty-three percent say that Obama is in touch; only four in ten feel that way about Romney.”
Obama and Romney are virtually tied on whether they are seen as strong and decisive leaders. The survey indicates that by a 61%-34% margin, Americans say Romney changes his position on the issues for political reasons. By a 56%-42% margin, the public feels the same way about the president.
The poll was conducted for CNN by ORC International from January 11-12, with 1,021 adult Americans, including 928 registered voters, conducted by telephone on January 11-12, 2012. The survey’s overall sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
CNN Political Editor Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
Comments »Mcdonald’s Employee Films Rat in Bag of Buns (VIDEO)
And he was told to serve them.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ksmwi3z7LyY&feature=youtu.be 603 500] Comments »Why Martin Luther King Was Republican
by Frances Rice
08/16/2006
It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks. And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S’s: slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism.
It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize blacks. The Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every civil rights law beginning with the civil rights laws of the 1860s, and continuing with the civil rights laws of the 1950s and 1960s.
During the civil rights era of the 1960s, Dr. King was fighting the Democrats who stood in the school house doors, turned skin-burning fire hoses on blacks and let loose vicious dogs. It was Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who pushed to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent troops to Arkansas to desegregate schools. President Eisenhower also appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court, which resulted in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ending school segregation. Much is made of Democrat President Harry Truman’s issuing an Executive Order in 1948 to desegregate the military. Not mentioned is the fact that it was Eisenhower who actually took action to effectively end segregation in the military.
Democrat President John F. Kennedy is lauded as a proponent of civil rights. However, Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act while he was a senator, as did Democrat Sen. Al Gore Sr. And after he became President, Kennedy was opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King that was organized by A. Phillip Randolph, who was a black Republican. President Kennedy, through his brother Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy, had Dr. King wiretapped and investigated by the FBI on suspicion of being a Communist in order to undermine Dr. King.
In March of 1968, while referring to Dr. King’s leaving Memphis, Tenn., after riots broke out where a teenager was killed, Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd (W.Va.), a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, called Dr. King a “trouble-maker” who starts trouble, but runs like a coward after trouble is ignited. A few weeks later, Dr. King returned to Memphis and was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
Given the circumstances of that era, it is understandable why Dr. King was a Republican. It was the Republicans who fought to free blacks from slavery and amended the Constitution to grant blacks freedom (13th Amendment), citizenship (14th Amendment) and the right to vote (15th Amendment). Republicans passed the civil rights laws of the 1860s, including the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction Act of 1867 that was designed to establish a new government system in the Democrat-controlled South, one that was fair to blacks. Republicans also started the NAACP and affirmative action with Republican President Richard Nixon’s 1969 Philadelphia Plan (crafted by black Republican Art Fletcher) that set the nation’s fist goals and timetables. Although affirmative action now has been turned by the Democrats into an unfair quota system, affirmative action was begun by Nixon to counter the harm caused to blacks when Democrat President Woodrow Wilson in 1912 kicked all of the blacks out of federal government jobs.
Few black Americans know that it was Republicans who founded the Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Unknown also is the fact that Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen from Illinois was key to the passage of civil rights legislation in 1957, 1960, 1964 and 1965. Not mentioned in recent media stories about extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is the fact that Dirksen wrote the language for the bill. Dirksen also crafted the language for the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which prohibited discrimination in housing. President Lyndon Johnson could not have achieved passage of civil rights legislation without the support of Republicans.
Critics of Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater, who ran for President against Johnson in 1964, ignore the fact that Goldwater wanted to force the Democrats in the South to stop passing discriminatory laws and thus end the need to continuously enact federal civil rights legislation.
Those who wrongly criticize Goldwater also ignore the fact that Johnson, in his 4,500 State of the Union Address delivered on Jan. 4, 1965, mentioned scores of topics for federal action, but only 35 words were devoted to civil rights. He did not mention one word about voting rights. Then in 1967, showing his anger with Dr. King’s protest against the Vietnam War, Johnson referred to Dr. King as “that Nigger preacher.”
Contrary to the false assertions by Democrats, the racist “Dixiecrats” did not all migrate to the Republican Party. “Dixiecrats” declared that they would rather vote for a “yellow dog” than vote for a Republican because the Republican Party was know as the party for blacks. Today, some of those “Dixiecrats” continue their political careers as Democrats, including Robert Byrd, who is well known for having been a “Keagle” in the Ku Klux Klan.
Another former “Dixiecrat” is former Democrat Sen. Ernest Hollings, who put up the Confederate flag over the state Capitol when he was the governor of South Carolina. There was no public outcry when Democrat Sen. Christopher Dodd praised Byrd as someone who would have been “a great senator for any moment,” including the Civil War. Yet Democrats denounced then-Senate GOP leader Trent Lott for his remarks about Sen. Strom Thurmond (R.-S.C.). Thurmond was never in the Ku Klux Klan and defended blacks against lynching and the discriminatory poll taxes imposed on blacks by Democrats. If Byrd and Thurmond were alive during the Civil War, and Byrd had his way, Thurmond would have been lynched.
The 30-year odyssey of the South switching to the Republican Party began in the 1970s with President Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” which was an effort on the part of Nixon to get Christians in the South to stop voting for Democrats who did not share their values and were still discriminating against their fellow Christians who happened to be black. Georgia did not switch until 2002, and some Southern states, including Louisiana, are still controlled by Democrats.
Today, Democrats, in pursuit of their socialist agenda, are fighting to keep blacks poor, angry and voting for Democrats. Examples of how egregiously Democrats act to keep blacks in poverty are numerous.
After wrongly convincing black Americans that a minimum wage increase was a good thing, the Democrats on August 3 kept their promise and killed the minimum wage bill passed by House Republicans on July 29. The blockage of the minimum wage bill was the second time in as many years that Democrats stuck a legislative finger in the eye of black Americans. Senate Democrats on April 1, 2004, blocked passage of a bill to renew the 1996 welfare reform law that was pushed by Republicans and vetoed twice by President Clinton before he finally signed it. Since the welfare reform law expired in September 2002, Congress had passed six extensions, and the latest expired on June 30, 2004. Opposed by the Democrats are school choice opportunity scholarships that would help black children get out of failing schools and Social Security reform, even though blacks on average lose $10,000 in the current system because of a shorter life expectancy than whites (72.2 years for blacks vs. 77.5 years for whites).
Democrats have been running our inner-cities for the past 30 to 40 years, and blacks are still complaining about the same problems. More than $7 trillion dollars have been spent on poverty programs since Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty with little, if any, impact on poverty. Diabolically, every election cycle, Democrats blame Republicans for the deplorable conditions in the inner-cities, then incite blacks to cast a protest vote against Republicans.
In order to break the Democrats’ stranglehold on the black vote and free black Americans from the Democrat Party’s economic plantation, we must shed the light of truth on the Democrats. We must demonstrate that the Democrat Party policies of socialism and dependency on government handouts offer the pathway to poverty, while Republican Party principles of hard work, personal responsibility, getting a good education and ownership of homes and small businesses offer the pathway to prosperity.
Comments »MSN latest hit piece on Ron Paul so pathetic, words cannot convey
The very untalented journalists of MSN are out with a hit piece on Ron Paul because, while in service of the public and engaging his usual fight of government spending, he himself logged 49 flights in first class accomodations.
Woah! A millionaire congressman that flies first class? What is this world coming to??
Needless to say, Ron Paul could have saved the U.S. government some totally meaningless amount of money, measuring in the tens of thousands of dollars, had he flown coach. And I’m sure that the authors have nothing but praise for the trillions of liabilities that current U.S. policies have undertaken and will very likely be defaulted on in the near future.
Next up, a wonderful effort on the horrible waste Ron Paul imposes on the U.S. citizenry by offering fresh fruit to his office staff. Or for buying Swiss cheese, as opposed to American. Thank God MSN is always there, keeping us in the loop of the really important things.
Comments »FACEBOOK SUNK COSTA CONCORDIA
EFSF downgraded by S&P
Comments »BRUSSELS (AP) — Rating agency Standard & Poor’s said Monday it has downgraded the creditworthiness of the eurozone’s rescue fund by one notch to AA+, putting the fund’s ability to raise cheap bailout money at risk.
The downgrade follows ratings cuts for AAA-rated France and Austria, whose financial guarantees were key to the creditworthiness of the European Financial Stability Facility.
“The downgrade to ‘AA+’ by only one credit agency will not reduce (the) EFSF’s lending capacity of euro440 billion,” Klaus Regling, the fund’s chief executive officer, said in a statement.
S&P had warned in December that it would cut the rating of the euro440 billion EFSF in line with the downgrades of any AAA country.
Draghi: rely less on ratings agencies
This would be easy, except that lots of these governments have mandated “minimum investment grade” status for investment funds, when their ratings were good, to monopolize investment cash flows into their bonds, which is part of the reason they have so much debt to begin with.
Nobody likes to rely on the ratings agencies when they’re not in favor and their debt is being forced to sell off because of their own regulations. But I notice none of these officials were complaining when they were the only game in town.
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — European Central Bank head Mario Draghi says it’s time for investors and regulators to rely less on ratings agencies.
Draghi, speaking as the chair of the European Systemic Risk Board, told a committee of the European Parliament that “one needs to ask how important are these ratings for the marketplace, for the regulators and for investors.”
Draghi noted that downgrades had largely been anticipated by markets. Standard & Poor’s downgraded nine eurozone governments on Friday, but markets remained calm on Monday.
He said he couldn’t comment on particular ratings, but added that “as regulators we should learn to do without ratings.”
Or people could use ratings as just one piece of information “rather than spend too much time on what they say or do.”
..
Comments »House Republicans furious with Senate brethren over SS tax cuts
Comments »WASHINGTON (AP) — When last seen in Washington, House Republicans were furious with their own leader, Speaker John Boehner, and angry with their Senate Republican brethren over how the showdown over the Social Security tax cut turned into a year-end political debacle.
The holidays and three weeks away from the Capitol have tempered some of the bad feelings, but several GOP lawmakers’ emotions are still raw as Congress returns for a 2012 session certain to be driven by election-year politics and fierce fights over the size and scope of government and its taxing, spending and borrowing practices.
In the week before Christmas, House Republicans revolted against the Senate-passed deal to extend the payroll tax cut for two months for 160 million workers and ensure jobless benefits for millions more long-term unemployed. Facing intense political pressure, Boehner, R-Ohio, caved, daring tea partyers and other dissenters to challenge his decision to pass the short-term plan without a roll-call vote. None stepped forward to stop him.
“A lot of us who went into battle turned around and no one was behind us,” freshman Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., said last week, sounding like the fight was still fresh and insistent that leadership had abandoned them.
“A lot of us are still smarting,” he added.
The two-month extension that Senate Republican and Democratic leaders Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid had characterized as a draw ended up as a big victory for President Barack Obama at the end of a year in which Republicans had forced him to accept a series of spending cuts.
Famous Irish entrepreneur claims bankruptcy
Comments »DUBLIN (AP) — A famed entrepreneur who was once rated Ireland’s richest person was declared bankrupt Monday as a bank pursues him for debts exceeding euro2.1 billion ($2.7 billion).
Lawyers for tycoon Sean Quinn withdrew his opposition to a Republic of Ireland bankruptcy order sought by the former Anglo Irish Bank, the reckless lender at the center of Ireland’s calamitous property crash.
The bankruptcy judgment will force a thorough court investigation of Quinn’s finances, which the bank hopes will reveal capital and assets that it can reclaim from Quinn, his wife and five children.
Quinn, 64, didn’t attend Monday’s court hearing. He issued a statement accusing the bank of pursuing “a personal vendetta” and declaring that the “judgment in no way improves Anglo’s prospects of recovering money for the taxpayer.”
Quinn had a reported 2007 net worth of euro4.7 billion ($6 billion) but sank much of his fortune into Anglo months before the bank — the most aggressive lender to Ireland’s construction barons — suffered crippling losses as the country’s decade-long property bubble burst.
The Quinn family secretly built up to a 28 percent stake in Anglo shares using an ill-regulated financial instrument that hid the scale of their investment from other stockholders. As Anglo’s share price plunged, Quinn says the bank encouraged his family to borrow hundreds of millions specifically to buy more Anglo stock, a charge the bank denies.
Ireland nationalized Anglo in 2009 to prevent its collapse, wiping out a Quinn family investment estimated at euro2.8 billion. The government last year renamed Anglo as the Irish Bank Resolution Corp., or IBRC. Its bailout is expected to cost taxpayers euro29 billion, a bill so great it overwhelmed Ireland’s finances and forced the government last year to negotiate a humiliating loan pact with the European Union and International Monetary Fund.
European Commission to review bank structures
Comments »LONDON/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission launched a review of its policy on bank structure on Monday, a move that follows hard on the heels of Britain’s radical plan to ring-fence the assets of savers against losses from risky investment banking.
The review will be headed by Erkki Liikanen, the governor of the Bank of Finland, the commission said, kicking off a process that could herald more intrusive regulation and upset governments that want to maintain responsibility for their own banks.
So far, new European Union rules for banks have been limited to setting the amount of capital they should keep to cover losses or to regulating how they trade.
But Michel Barnier, the French commissioner in charge of financial reform for the EU, is pushing for ever deeper reforms.
He outlined plans last year for the committee to look at, among other things, Britain’s plans to ring fence the deposit-taking arms of its domestic banks with extra capital.
“I expect this group to make all the recommendations as regards the structure of EU banks it deems necessary to strengthen financial stability and enable banks to fully play their role in favor of the Single Market and European growth,” Barnier said in a statement.
Germany rejects calls to boost bailout fund
Comments »BERLIN/MADRID (Reuters) – Germany, the only major euro zone member to retain a top-notch credit rating, refused on Monday to consider boosting the bloc’s rescue fund, while Greece was under pressure to urgently break a deadlock in debt swap talks if it is to avoid an unruly default.
European leaders vowed to press ahead with a fiscal pact for stricter budget discipline and hasten the launch of a permanent bailout fund for the 17-nation euro area, the European Stability Mechanism, in the light of Standard & Poor’s move last Friday.
The downgrading of France, Austria, Italy and Spain in particular means the European Financial Stability Facility risks losing its AAA rating or having less money to lend, unless remaining triple-A nations raise their guarantees, euro zone officials said.
But German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert told reporters: “The government has no reason to believe that the volume of guarantees that the EFSF has now should not be sufficient to fulfill its current obligations.
Greek talks stall
Comments »ATHENS/LONDON (Reuters) – Greece’s private sector creditors warned on Monday that the Athens government must urgently break a deadlock in debt swap talks triggered by “unreasonable” demands from international lenders if is to avoid a disorderly default.
Barely a month after an injection of bailout funds helped to avert bankruptcy, Greece is back at the centre of the euro zone crisis as fears of a default and a subsequent euro zone exit overshadow a mass credit downgrade of euro zone countries.
Cash-strapped Athens needs a deal with the private sector within days to avoid going bankrupt when 14.5 billion euros of bond redemptions fall due in late March.
But talks with its creditor banks broke down on Friday over the interest rate on new bonds Greece will offer and a plan to enforce investor losses. Negotiations were suspended until Wednesday, and Athens sent senior officials to Washington to consult with the International Monetary Fund.
With a growing number of experts — including a senior Standard & Poor’s official — warning a Greek default was on the cards, the country’s creditors expressed alarm.
OJ SIMPSON’s Bank Foreclosing on His Florida Home
While OJ Simpson rots in the Big House in Nevada … he’s about to lose his big house in Florida.
According to court records, JPMorgan Chase bank is foreclosing on the 4 bedroom, 4bathroom home OJ owns in Miami. Simpson bought the home in 2000 for $575,000 … but the home was recently assessed at $478,401.
OJ is currently serving time in a Nevada prison for kidnapping, armed robbery and other charges stemming from an incident in 2007, in which OJ took a bunch of sports memorabilia at gunpoint.
Comments »Dr. Alveda King: Today My Uncle Would be Considered a Pro-life, Social Conservative
Something to think about as we honor MLK today.
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As we remember the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., his niece, Dr. Alveda King, tells Peter Johnson, Jr. that she believes her uncle would have been considered a pro-life social conservative if he alive today.
Earlier on Fox and Friends, King discussed her uncle’s beliefs and said that since MLK was someone who gave his life to all humanity, “he would really support the best quality of life, and that is conception until natural death.”
“How can the dream survive if we murder our children?” Her uncle believed that man cannot win if he’s willing to sacrifice the futures of his children for immediate personal comfort and safety. She explained how this lead her to believe that he felt that a woman has a right to choose what she does with her body, but the baby is not her body.
King concluded the interview saying, “I have a dream it’s in my genes and the dream comes from the bible, from God, and the principles that are there.”
Watch the video here.
Comments »
