Good Wednesday to you! Hope everyone is having a good week so far.
Here's an utterly jaw dropping story sent in by our good friend The Ozarker, this morning.
Video at the link and you really have to see it to believe it! Damn, we are some crazy maniacs!
Much thanks today to RJ at the Global Glass Onion and the Ozarker at Conflicted Doomer , and to Doug at 3Es News and David at ETF Daily.
Don't forget to check out their great blogs and sites and support their work.
And also, don't forget to visit the great forums linked at the bottom of this, and every, post.
Peak Oil and Energy News
OilPrice: Texan Shale Boom Leads to Increase in Drug Trafficking - Texas is experiencing great economic benefit from the fracking boom that has seen thousands of jobs created in the southern state; however it has also seen an increase in drug trafficking. Shale plays, such as the Eagle Ford formation, have led to the development of hundreds of miles of private back roads, crisscrossing the once remote ranchlands, stretching all the way from the Mexican border to Eastern Texas. Before the US Border Patrol could set up check points along the few major roadways, and check all traffic, quite effectively controlling the smuggling of narcotics. Now however, the network of service roads created by oil companies to deliver drilling equipment and supplies, as well as tankers, make avoiding these checkpoints an easy job.
Forbes: Air Force Biofuel At $59 A Gallon: Cheap At Twice The Price
I agree that biofuel for jet planes at $59 a gallon when you can buy straight avgas at $3.60 a gallon seems a little expensive. However, this isn’t quite the boondoggle that it might seem. Even I’m not entirely convinced that it’s greatly sensible but it’s not entirely mad either.
UPI: U.S. court protects Iraqi oil contracts
Time: The Power Grid: From Rickety to Resilient
Global Conflict
SeattlePI: Religious Israeli lawmaker tears up New TestamentJERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli lawmaker has torn up a copy of the New Testament in front of cameras in his parliament office.
An aide says Christian missionaries mailed the Christian scripture to Michael Ben-Ari of the ultranationalist National Union Party.
Itamar Ben-Gvir said Ben-Ari, an Orthodox Jew, was enraged to receive the book, in whose name he says millions of Jews were slaughtered. Ben-Ari tore it up, he said, then posed for photographs with the destroyed Bible.
Many Christians over the centuries persecuted Jews, holding them responsible for Jesus' crucifixion.
Hosted: Israel's Netanyahu loses key coalition partner in feud over army draft, left with hard-liners
AFP: Three dead in 'attack' on Israelis at Bulgaria airport
BBC: Taliban blow up 22 Nato tankers
Telegraph: Court demands secret files on US 'black jails’
The United States is facing fresh embarrassment over its use of 'black' detention sites after the European Court of Human Rights ordered Poland to hand over secret documents about its role in the War on Terror, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
NPR: Architect Of Crackdown In Syria And Defense Minister Killed In Bombing
WSJ: US: Syria Violence 'Out of Control'
WSJ: Massive Bomb Strikes at Assad's Inner Circle
StarTribune: Pentagon: 20 nations will take part in minesweeping drill in MideastRawstory: Senate report: HSBC concealed £10 billion in transactions to Iran
WSJ: Centrists Pull Out of Israel's Government
Reuters: Syrian battles rage in capital, Russia pressed
NYT: Syria Hardens Its Response to Rebels in Damascus Clashes
CNN: Syrian defense minister killed in bombing, state-run media report
NYT: Blast Kills Core Syrian Security Officials
WashingtonPost: North Korea gives Kim Jong Eun higher military rank
WSJ: Colombian Tribes Face Off With Soldiers - Indigenous tribes in Colombia's war-ravaged southwest, weary from being stuck in the middle of the country's guerrilla conflict, clashed with government troops, demanding the army leave the region for good.
SeattlePI: Iran admits sanctions are hurting
UPI: Iraq gives stern warning to Turkey
BAGHDAD, July 17 (UPI) -- The Iraqi government reminded Turkey not to violate its airspace or sovereign territory, a spokesman in Baghdad said Tuesday.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki expressed frustration over what he said were "frequent" violations of Iraqi airspace. Turkish daily newspaper Today's Zaman speculated that Maliki was upset with Turkish efforts to take on Kurdish militants who operate in northern Iraq.
Domestic Financial News
TimeBusiness: Bernanke to Testify Again After Warning on Economy
SeattleTimes: Report: 2M jobs lost if automatic cuts kick in
Telegraph: US economy has slowed significantly, says Ben Bernanke
Politico: GOP fears shutdown showdown
SeattleTimes: U.S. economic fears shift from Europe to Congres
MattWeidnerLaw: Catastrophic Economic Collapse- This is what it looks like.....
Businessweek: Consumer Price Index in US Was Unchanged, Core Up 0.2%
ABCNews: Report: US States' Financial Woes Eroding Services
Businessweek: Bernanke: Recession likely if Congress doesn't act
SeattleTimes: Foreign holdings of US debt hit record high - Foreign demand for U.S. Treasury securities rose to a record level in May. China, the largest buyer of Treasury debt, increased its holdings for the second straight month.LAT: Capital One to refund $150 million to credit card customers
CapitalSpectator: Industrial Production Rebounds In June - Several of the June updates on the economy to date have brought discouraging news (retail sales, the ISM Manufacturing Index, and payrolls). Today’s report on industrial production offers a refreshing change for the better.
FDL: HSBC Executive Resigns During Senate Hearing - We got something that looks suspiciously like accountability today in a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing.
Reuters: Bank of America reports second-quarter profit
Rollingstone: MattTaibbi: More on LIBOR: Plus, Spitzer takes on Bartiromo in Japanese Monster-Movie Epic
ConversableEconomist: The Improving U.S. Labor Market - The headline measure of U.S. labor markets, the unemployment rate, remains dismally high. It rose above 8% in February 2009, and so as of June 2012, it has now been above 8% for 41 months. The unemployment rate had been tiptoeing downward from its peak of 10.0% in October 2009 to 8.3% in January 2012. However, under the headline unemployment rate, more detailed labor market data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows signs of improvement.
EconoBrowser: High Inflation at the Gates? - The Federal Reserve needs to raise interest rates to stave off inflation, says Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. "I'm worried they're not going to pre-empt inflation," the House Budget Committee Chairman tells CNBC. .."I'm worried they're going to see it too late and we're going to have a problem." That's a quote from February 2011. It's useful, I think, to consider what has happened since then (or since October 2009).
Zerohedge: Are 401(k) Loan Defaults Set To Resurge?
NakedCapitalism: “Do Business Schools Incubate Criminals?”
Zerohedge: Why I Still Fear Inflation - The Fed is caught between a rock and a hard place. If they inflate, they risk the danger of initiating a damaging and deleterious trade war with creditors who do not want to take an inflationary haircut. If they don’t inflate, they remain stuck in a deleveraging trap resulting in weak fundamentals, and large increases in government debt, also rattling creditors. The likeliest route from here remains that the Fed will continue to baffle the Krugmanites by pursuing relatively restrained inflationism (i.e. Operation Twist, restrained QE, no NGDP targeting, no debt jubilee, etc) to keep the economy ticking along while minimising creditor irritation.
FDL: Republicans May Have Trouble Getting Continuing Resolution for Budget Passed
CalculatedRisk: First Look at 2013 Cost-Of-Living Adjustments and Maximum Contribution Base
WSJ: Vivus Shares Surge On FDA Approval; Time to Take Profits?
ETFDaily: U.S. Dollar: 11 Reasons It Could Be The End Of The Petrodollar
HuffingtonPost: Banking Is a Criminal Industry Because Its Crimes Go Unpunished
ThinkProgress: How Public Sector Layoffs Killed 750,000 Private Sector Jobs
CNN: Get ready to pay sales tax on Amazon
IBTimes: Most Americans Believe Wealth Is Impossible Dream: Poll
(finally, people are getting a clue!)
Global Financial News
WashingtonPost: Geithner did not show evidence of rigged Libor, British bank official says
Mish: Medicine is Killing the Patient; Increasing the Dose is Madness
NakedCapitalism: Yanis Varoufakis: It is Now Official – The Eurozone’s Monetary Transmission System is Broken
EconoBrowser: Whither China? -- Recent economic reports from China are, at the least, mixed. The responses to Friday’s GDP report are illustrative.
Bloomberg: China Echoes 2009 Stimulus With Railway Spending Boost
Telegraph: Fund managers expect more trouble in Germany - The monthly survey of funds by Bank of America Merrill Lynch has picked up a sudden crumbling of confidence in the eurozone core, with France viewed as the country most likely to deliver a nasty surprise later this year.
Mish: Wealthy Flee France Top Tax Rate of 75%; Cameron Lays Out Red Carpet
BusinessInsider: China's Biggest Companies Warn Of Profit Plunges Up To 80%
VOA: EU Threatens Stiff Fine Against Microsoft
Philly.com: New Greek cuts 'almost impossible' BusinessInsider: More of Europe’s Car Plants Will Have to Close: Expert
Commodities/Metals
ETFDaily: “Allocated” Gold Scandal To Shock The World, $5,000 Gold Prices: ‘Crazy’ Jim Willie
Environmental
USGS
M 5.9, 27km ESE of Ndoi Island, Fiji
(we are so doomed)
CNNMoney: Oil: Only part of the Arctic's massive resources
MSNBC: $75 for a block of ice! Sales soar amid heat wave
NYT: Shell Seeks to Weaken Air Rules for Arctic Drilling
ENENews: *Video* Film Crew Near Fukushima Plant: “That was bizarre, I felt it as well” — Camera cuts to black, unidentified screaming after radiation hits 5,000 microSv/h
BBC: Shell urged to pay Nigeria $5bn over Bonga oil spill
UPI: EPA issues fine for Texas oil spill
MSNBC: Iceberg bigger than Manhattan breaks free
CNN: Massive ice island breaks off Greenland glacier
WashingtonPost: How droughts will reshape the United States
CBSNews: Most of Illinois caught in another heat wave
CNN: Natural causes killed penguins along Brazilian coast, scientists say
WashingtonPost: Could we block heat waves with artificial volcanoes?
Rawstory: Geoengineers to release planet-cooling gas into New Mexico atmosphere
(what could possibly go wrong???)
America in Decline
YahooCops shoot man dead — at wrong address
Truthout: We Live in the Biggest Company Town on Earth
Chris Hedges, Truthdig: "The miners in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky ... wanted to be freed from the debt peonage of the company stores, to be paid fairly for their work, to have better safety in the mines, to fight back against the judges, politicians, journalists and civil authorities who had sold out to Big Coal, and to have a union. They grasped that unchallenged and unregulated corporate power was a form of enslavement."
NYT: Unions’ Past May Hold Key to Their Future -Today, fewer than one in 14 private sector workers belongs to a union, half the portion of 15 years ago. Where unions matter most — fighting for workers’ share of the spoils of economic growth — they lost the battle long ago. Despite soaring worker productivity, the typical American worker takes home today only 2 percent more than a quarter of a century ago, after adjusting for inflation.
Chron: More Texas seniors receiving food stamps
Statesman: State looks at privatizing foster care in South and West Texas regions
MotherJones: "Everyone Only Wants Temps" - The office opens at 5:30 a.m., but job seekers start appearing an hour early, hoping to snag a top spot on the sign-in sheet. By the time I arrive, 20 people, all but one of them men, are already inside—the space is essentially a waiting room with a long counter—standing or slouching in white plastic chairs. Behind the counter sits an African American woman with short hair and a bearing that suggests a low tolerance for bullshit. "I can't remember the last time I got eight hours sleep," a bleary-eyed man behind me announces to no one in particular.After signing in, I grab a chair from a stack in the corner and take a seat, studying a sign that implores me to be "true" and "passionate" and "creative." In reality, passion and creativity have nothing to do with it. Labor Ready provides warm bodies for grunt work that pays minimum wage or thereabouts. "Here's a sledgehammer, there's the wall," is how Stacey Burke, the company's vice-president of communications, characterized the work to Businessweek back in 2006. It's not a pretty formula, but it works. With 600 offices and a workforce of 400,000—more employees than Target or Home Depot—Labor Ready is the undisputed king of the blue-collar temp industry. Specializing in "tough-to-fill, high-turnover positions," the company dispatches people to dig ditches, demolish buildings, remove debris, stock giant fulfillment warehouses—jobs that take their toll on a body. (See "I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave.") And business is booming. Labor Ready's parent company, TrueBlue, saw its profits soar 55 percent last year, to $31 million, on $1.3 billion in sales. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that "employment services," which includes temporary labor, will remain among the fastest growing sectors through 2020.
Food and Water
Examiner: Massive corporate welfare for big ag means taxpayer are buying low-quality food
AlertNet: U.S. corn crop shrinking by the hour
BBC: Nestle blames biofuels for high food prices
Bloomberg: Corn Seen Rallying to Record $8.50 as Drought Kills CropsThinkProgress: House Farm Bill Guts Key Food Safety Protections
Science and Technology
PopSci: Reporting From Undersea Base Aquarius
MSNBC: The physics of man's heroic catch of falling girl - 7-year-old fell about 25 feet, which took about 1.25 seconds
NBC: Dolphins appear to do nonlinear mathematics - Marine mammals may use complex method to process sonar echoes, scientists say
BeforeItsNews: Wow, These Images Are Incredible: University Of Minnesota Teams Up With Google To Offer New 360-Degree Images Of Antarctica
Medical and Health
Reuters: Florida health officials deny cover-up in TB outbreak - Florida state health officials have denied they covered up a sharp spike in tuberculosis infections among the homeless in Jacksonville and said the public was not at risk from what is believed to be the worst TB outbreak in the nation in 20 years.
ABCNews: FDA Approves Qsymia for Weight Loss
BigThink: Want to Be Happy? Don't Pursue Happiness
Happiness seems to be all the rage these days. Jonathan Haidt explains how your happiness “set point” can be changed with Prozac or electroshock therapy, Robert Thurman argues that true happiness arrives when you aren’t paying attention, and Will Wilkinson encourages us to reflect on our happiness ...CNN: How officials cracked Cambodia illness
BodyOdd: Here's what paralyzes you during sleep
VancouverSun: Multiple sclerosis drug may not slow disease's progression: UBC study
TheChart: Therapy shows promise for halting Alzheimer's brain decline
Vitals: Missed cantaloupe listeria strain tied to man's death; new crop in stores
A previously unidentified strain of listeria from last year’s deadly cantaloupe outbreak has been linked to the death of a 75-year-old Montana man, even as the new crop of Colorado melons fills store shelves.
BBC: Inactivity 'as deadly as smoking'
Doomsteading, Gardening, Urban Farming
ModernSurvivalOnline: What would you look for in a survival group?
Other News
Here's something from my friend Tube! Boy, this one sure nails me! LOL
Boston.com: Boxed in, wanting out
A new study of American families reveals troubling trends: Too much stuff, too little time
Tell me about it. That sums up Boston parents’ reaction to new research by UCLA-affiliated social scientists concluding that American families are overwhelmed by clutter, too busy to go in their own backyards, rarely eat dinner together even though they claim family meals as a goal, and can’t park their cars in the garage because they’re crammed with non-vehicular stuff.Reuters: Murder suspect kills self after stealing plane in Utah
JPost: Hungary arrests the 'most wanted living Nazi'
CNN: 30 injured in 6-alarm fire at NY apartments
MSNBC: Illegal immigrant shot by US recounts desert 'terror'
AJC: TSA: Needles in food not national security threat
Politics
Boston.com: Romney accuses Obama of casting shame on success
Politico: Dick Cheney: Stop the Pentagon cuts
WashingtonPosta: With or without tax return release, pressure on Romney ramps up from both sides
Chron: Perry: Candidates should be ‘transparent’ about tax returns, transcripts
ABCNews: Ariz. Sheriff Tries to Revive Obama Birth Issue
USAToday: Sheriff's finding about Obama birth certificate draws yawns
Alternet: Revealed: Key Files on Big-Ticket Political Donations Vanish at Federal Election Commission
ABCNews: What You Need to Read: The Mitt Romney Summer Book List
LAT: Rick Perry inadvertently calls on Romney to release tax returns
Hosted: McCain defends Clinton aide against allegations
Forums
TinfoilPalace: Lady Gaga Debuts Creepy, Nude Ad For New ‘Fame’ Fragrance
TinfoilPalace: Smart Phones Are Robots That Track You
TheOilAge: Desperate economic conditions for US young people
TheOilAge: Making bricks
HubbertsArms: TSA security agents to be deployed in UK airports for Olympics
HubbertsArms: These 12 Hellholes Are Examples Of What The Rest Of America Will Look Like Soon
SilentCountry: Exciting Prospects as the Patient Dies
SilentCountry: Lights Out in America
DestinyCalls: Astral Travel
DestinyCalls: Gematria Calculator
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