It's Friday already! This week sure has flown by!
I hope those who can have had a good week working in their gardens.
Been eating sweet peas, and salads, and some beautiful kale! Lord, how I love this time of the year!
Don't forget to watch the Super Moon tomorrow night. Cameras at the ready! LOL
If you get good pics, be sure to post them in one of the excellent forums linked at the bottom of the blog here. Or send them to me and I'll put them up on Monday. I'm hoping we have a clear night and can see it come up in all it's Super Moon Glory!
I hope those who can have had a good week working in their gardens.
Been eating sweet peas, and salads, and some beautiful kale! Lord, how I love this time of the year!
Don't forget to watch the Super Moon tomorrow night. Cameras at the ready! LOL
If you get good pics, be sure to post them in one of the excellent forums linked at the bottom of the blog here. Or send them to me and I'll put them up on Monday. I'm hoping we have a clear night and can see it come up in all it's Super Moon Glory!
As always, I'd like to thank RJ at the Global Glass Onion and the Ozarker at Conflicted Doomer , and to Doug at 3Es News and David at ETF Daily. Please be sure to visit their blogs and websites and support their work.
Peak Oil and Energy News
here's a great one from RJ this morning.
ThinkProgress: T. Boone Pickens: ‘The Biggest Deterrent To An Energy Plan In America Is Koch Industries’ from Climate Progress by Joe Romm - Billionaire energy investor T. Boone Pickens has a bone to pick with the country’s leading pollutocrats. Pickens said in an interview Wednesday with Yahoo’s Daily Ticker that Koch Industries, the company owned by Charles and David Koch, is the major stumbling block to a coherent U.S. energy policy:“The biggest deterrent to an energy plan in America is Koch Industries,” the BP Capital founder tells Yahoo’s Aaron Task. “They do not want an energy plan for America because they have the cheapest natural gas price they’ve ever had, and they’re in the fertilizer business and they’re in the chemical business. So their margins are huge. And they do not want you to have an energy plan, because if you had a plan, then natural gas prices would come up.” Watch it:
NYT: Japan’s Leaders Fret as Nuclear Shutdown Nears
ETFDailyNews: Marin Katusa vs. Porte Stansberry On Oil Prices
EarlyWarning: Natural Gas shutting down Coal Power Plants
CommodityOnline: Iran Oil output hits 20 year lows as EU sanctions near
Global Conflict
Counterpunch: The Man With Messianic Tendencies
LegitGov: Military commanders warned to get troops in line
MSNBC: Russia threatens preemptive strike over planned US missile shield
Guardian: Four journalists murdered in Mexico in a week
CBSNews: Chen makes direct appeal to Congress to come to United States
USAToday: Standoff in China over dissident inching toward resolution
NYT: Chen Guangcheng Can Apply to Study Abroad, China Says
JerusalemPost: Settlers dismayed Amir to spend Shabbat in their community
VOA: Syrian Violence Exposes Sectarian Divide
AlHaq: Palestinian Political Prisoners Subject to Collective Punishment as Mass Hunger Strike Continues
As organisations dedicated to the promotion and protection of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), the Palestinian Council of Human Rights Organisations (PCHRO) is gravely concerned about the series of collective and punitive measures taken by the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) against Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons currently engaged in a mass hunger strike. These measures include solitary confinement, daily fines of up to 500 NIS (€100), confiscation of salt for water, the denial of electricity supply and random cell and body searches.CTV.ca: Army nurse in Afghanistan dies while chatting with wife via Skype
OWS
NPR: OWS: A Case Study In Social Movements
MK Occupy Minnesota: Drugs & the DRE Program at Peavey Plaza
Video documentation by local activists and independent media shows that police officers and county deputies from across Minnesota have been picking up young people near Peavey Plaza for a training program to recognize drug-impaired drivers. Multiple participants say officers gave them illicit drugs and provided other incentives to take the drugs. The Occupy movement, present at Peavey Plaza since April 7th, appears to be targeted as impaired people are dropped off at the Plaza, and others say they've been rewarded for offering to snitch on the movement.
Hacker News
ArsTechnica: "Literally" the day he was arrested, hacker Sabu helped the FBI
It didn't take much time to turn Hector "Sabu" Monsegur into an FBI informant—just a few hours, in fact. “Since literally the day he was arrested, the defendant has been cooperating with the government proactively,” Assistant US Attorney James Pastore told a federal judge last August.
Monsegur had been a key member of Anonymous and later the “happy hackers” of LulzSec, a spinoff group that broke into servers around the world during the summer of 2011 and taunted the FBI about it. But the moment that Monsegur was arrested at his public housing apartment in June, his life took a dramatic turn.
"The defendant has literally worked around the clock with federal agents,” Pastore continued. “He has been staying up sometimes all night engaging in conversations with co-conspirators that are helping the government to build cases against those co-conspirators.”
Domestic Financial News
DealBook: DealBook: Offering Price Sets Facebook Value at $86 Billion
CNNMoney: Lying to your spouse about money? Join the club
Zerohedge: US Added 115,000 Jobs In April, Huge Miss Of Expectations; Unemployment Rate 8.1%
LAT: Government stimulus moves may have ended recession - Without the unprecedented stimulus actions by the federal government triggered by the 2008 financial crisis, the Great Recession might still be going on, according to a study by Fitch Ratings.
Reuters: Fed's Williams: need 'strong' stimulus for "quite some time" - SANTA BARBARA, California - With the U.S. jobless rate "far too high," the Federal Reserve will need to keep its foot on the monetary gas pedal for quite some time, San Francisco Fed President John Williams said on Thursday.
WSJ: Why Did the Unemployment Rate Drop? - The U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 8.1% in April but a broader measure was unchanged at 14.5% and a separate survey noted that the economy added a paltry 115,000. Why the drop? This month, the decline in the jobless rate wasn’t a positive sign, as it primarily came from people dropping out of the labor force.
RepublicReport: Behind The Lobbying Effort That Helps Save Apple $2.4 Billion In Taxes A Year - The New York Times dropped another bomb on Apple’s “iEconomy” this weekend with an expose that shows how the world’s biggest corporation evades billions of dollars in taxes by creating subsidiaries in low-tax states and countries like Nevada, Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and the British Virgin Islands. While some of Apple’s monumental success is due to the undeniable popularity of its products, the Times reports that Apple “has devised corporate strategies that take advantage of gaps in the tax code.” This has ultimately saved the company (and thus cost the public) as much as $2.4 billion a year, according to a recent study by a former Treasury Department economist. Apple fights for favorable tax policies in the United States with a formidable army of lobbyists.
Reuters: Factory growth best in 10 months; bolsters outlook - NEW YORK - Manufacturing grew in April at the strongest rate in 10 months, easing concerns the economy had lost momentum at the start of the second quarter.
MarketWatch: What stimulus? Government is holding us back - Everyone’s worried that the economy may go over a “fiscal cliff” next year, but they’re missing something essential: We’ve been falling down a “fiscal hill” for two years already.
BusinessPundit: The Federal Reserve Is The Vampire Squid Of Vampire Squids (video) Jim Grant, the author of the Grant’s Interest Rate Observer who often times talks about the federal reserve and has jumped on the Ron Paul bandwagon lately desiring a return to a gold standard did an interview with Bloomberg Magazine.
FT: Small US banks unlikely to repay bailouts - Most of the small banks bailed out by US taxpayers during the financial crisis likely will not be able to repay the Treasury department, the Obama administration has conceded. The admission came Thursday in the form of a blog post by Timothy Massad, assistant Treasury secretary for financial stability, who wrote that the agency does not expect the majority of the nearly 350 lenders still partially owned by American taxpayers to repurchase in the next 12-18 months the preferred stock Treasury received in exchange for bailing them out. Instead, as part of its divestment strategy Treasury will pursue restructurings and sales of its holdings, including combining ownership stakes in various banks into pools to be sold as securities. The department does not expect to receive the face value of its investments. Already, Treasury has valued many of its holdings below par.The recognition by the department comes after numerous government reports warned that the Treasury lacked an adequate plan to divest its remaining stake in smaller lenders, defined as those with less than $10bn in assets. The Treasury invested some $15bn in small banks, but has received only about $8.5bn in return.
UPI: California Pension Fund Sues Wal-Mart, Alleging Bribery
CalculatedRisk: Fixed Mortgage Rates Average New All-Time Record LowsDailyKos: Lower pay for new graduates follows them for life
Minyanville: Everything You Think You Know About The Flash Crash Is Wrong
MarketTicker: The Big Suck in
Zerohedge: The Two Scariest Charts From Today's NFP Report, Or The Real "New Part-Time Normal"
CharlesHughSmith; Debt Serfdom in One Chart - The essence of debt serfdom is debt rises to compensate for stagnant wages. I often speak of debt serfdom; here it is, captured in a single chart.
MyBudget360: Contagion and the viral spreading of debt based systems - CEO pay at regional banks surge on average to $10.5 million thanks to bailouts while austerity is forced onto the middle class.
Zerohedge: People Not In Labor Force Soar By 522,000, Labor Force Participation Rate Lowest Since 1981 - it is just getting sad now. In April the number of people not in the labor force rose by a whopping 522,000 from 87,897,000 to 88,419,000. This is the highest on record. The flip side, and the reason why the unemployment dropped to 8.1% is that the labor force participation rate just dipped to a new 30 year low of 64.3%.
CharlesHughSmith: We Are Not Powerless: Resisting Financial Feudalism
Global Financial News
MIsh: Spotlight Australia: Collapse in Service Sector; Unrelenting Discount Wars; Catastrophic Decline in Profits; Stranded Merchandise in Warehouses - Australia in in grim shape.
CreditWritedowns: Hitler and Mussolini rose to prominence as a result of pro-cyclical government economic policy
Bloomberg: Bolivia Seizes Unit of Spanish Power Company Red Electrica
MacroBusiness: Is Europe in a Depression? -Another night of Eurozone PMI data, this time manufacturing, and, much the same as last time, the news was not good at all.
ETFDailyNews: Europe: Why The Eurozone Debt Crisis Never Really Went Away
Spiegel: Backlash against Consumerism: Handicraft Sites Turn Hobbies into Big Business
Internet companies like Etsy and Germany's DaWanda are helping to promote a renaissance in handicrafts in Europe and around the world. The firms provide platforms that enable individual artisans to sell their wares on the web in a growing market niche. And business is booming, as both companies expand internationally and venture capitalists make new investments.WashingtonPost: French presidential campaign ends with Sarkozy trailing
Reuters: European shares fall sharply as US outlook worsens
Zerohedge: Norway Sovereign Wealth Fund Purges All Insolvent Eurozone Debt Holdings, US Hedge Funds Buying?
EconomyWatch: Grand plan to save Europe is unraveling
MSNBC: Conrad Black leaves prison, nabbed by immigration
WSJ: Amid Diplomatic Furor, China, US Reach Economy Deals
Commodities/Metals
Mineweb: Opinion: Gold and silver - Crazy to give up now?
CommodityOnline: Rising resource nationalism is bullish for Gold: HSBC
Environmental
USGS
M 2.7, Dominican Republic region
ExtinctionProtocol: Seismographs pick up explosion as big as 4.5 earthquake in area of Wyoming coal mine
ClimateCrocks: T. Boone Pickens: Koch Brothers Block Energy Policy
Grist: The coolest church you’ve ever seen is inside an 800-year-old tree
ThinkProgress: False Balance On Climate Change at PBS NewsHour
False balance is alive and well even at the so-called liberal media, the PBS NewsHour. The story in question, which aired Monday, is “Teachers Endure Balancing Act Over Climate Change Curriculum.”
BOULDER, Colo. — A bear tranquilized at the University of Colorado last week and widely viewed in a photo showing it falling from a tree is dead after being hit by two cars.ClimateCrocks: Heartland Institute Poster Fail
The 280-pound black bear was struck on a highway around dawn Thursday. It happened a little more than 2 miles from the university.
What the hell. It’s Friday. I’ll play.DesdemonaDespair: Heartland Institute billboards compare belief in global warming to mass murder
Heartland Institute, the purveyors of climate disinformation and fine tobacco promotions, has begun a billboard campaign using the images of mass murderers and psychopaths to represent science literate citizens who understand climate change.
WSJ: Reviving Slaughter of Horses - Rules Changed as More Animals Are Cut Loose by Their Owners in Tough Times
MNN: Whistleblower exposes tree poisoning in billboard industry
Former employee says he was fired for refusing to poison trees that blocked the view of company billboards.
BigThink: 563 - Pop by Lat and Pop by Long
Did you know that almost 90% of the world’s population lives in the northern hemisphere? And that half of all Earthlings [1] reside north of 27°N? Or that the average human lives at 24 degrees from the equator - either to its north or south? Bill Rankin did. Or at least he found out, while producing this fascinating diptych of world maps, plotting population distribution on axes of longitude and latitude.LimericksOfDoom: Near-term extinction is locked in
PermacultureMag: Living for free: a community thriving by recycling other people's wasteWashingtonPost: Greenland glaciers shrinking quickly, but not worst case; ‘Glacial pace not slow anymore’
MNN: 'Supermoon' alert: Biggest full moon of 2012 occurs this week
May 2012's full moon is due to be about 16 percent brighter than average, but it isn't cause for alarm about tides or earthquakes.
CBSNews: Flooding forces Mich. residents from homes
Grist: You shall not pass: Activists to block Warren Buffett’s coal trains
NYT: Wastewater Disposal Is an Issue in Hydrofracking
America in Decline
Counterpunch: Drones and the Dream of Remote Control in the Borderlands
(Check out the laws just passed here in the great state of Tennessee. It's not hard to see where things are headed.)
TimesNews: Here's some of the bills Tenn. lawmakers OK'd in 2012 session
NYT: For Craftsmen, Fragile Lifeline From Craigslist - With few places to turn, construction workers have colonized Craigslist as the cyberspace equivalent of the street corner or the Home Depot parking lot. Some are getting more than they bargained for as they search for ad hoc jobs. One Palm Beach man who previously worked on crews renovating Walmart stores agreed to clean out an apartment after a tenant committed suicide. But he drew the line at hanging up a sex swing.
CBSChicago: Summit Could Mean Airport-Style Security On Metra Electric, South Shore Trains - CHICAGO (CBS) – Some stations on the Metra Electric Line and South Shore Line could be shut down during the upcoming NATO summit, and passengers at other stations could face airport-style security screenings, due to the Secret Service security plan that could be released as soon as Friday afternoon.
Cryptogon: Restricted U.S. Army Internment and Resettlement Operations Manual
LifeInc: Summer of discontent for teen job seekers
Food and Water
Bloomberg: Senate Definition of Reform? Give Rich Farmers More Aid
UPI: Woman hopping over grasshopper in beans - WINNIPEG, Manitoba, May 2 (UPI) -- A Canadian woman who opened a can of green beans to find a blanched grasshopper staring at her says she's swearing off generic, no-name products.
MNN: Health benefits of kale, plus a recipe - Kale has taken the health community by storm over the past year or so, and rightfully so. Like other members of the Brassica family — including broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage and collards — kale is a nutritional powerhouse that boasts an abundance of antioxidants and other disease-fighting agents. And with just 35 calories per cup, it also has an extremely high nutrient density.
Internet and Online Privacy News
CNNMoney: Millions of Americans ignore Facebook's privacy controls
Science and Technology
Technolog: Infected users warned about 'Internet Doomsday'
If you see this message pop up on your computer screen in the days, weeks and months ahead, don't panic: It's legitimate and it's meant to warn you about malware that could hurt your computer.CNNMoney: Science has a girl problem
We recently told you about the "Internet doomsday" that could happen July 9 for PC and Mac users who haven't taken steps to make sure their systems aren't infected with DNSChanger malware.
Telegraph: Ancient map gives clue to fate of 'Lost Colony'
A new look at a 425-year-old map has yielded a tantalizing clue about the fate of the Lost Colony, the settlers who disappeared from Britain's Roanoke Island in the late 16th century.
PopSci: Kids These Days Are 3-D Printing "Brass" Knuckles
One of the most important meteor strikes in a generation has brought treasure-hunters flocking to a small town in northern California for the second time in 150 years.BBC: On the hunt with California's 'meteor zombies
The great gold rush began in the Coloma Valley in 1848, and now a meteor rush is underway as stardust fragments sell for 20 times the price of gold.
'MSNBC: Scientists fly on airship to seek meteorites
CNet: Hindenburg disaster 75 years ago abruptly ended zeppelin era
In the predawn darkness of Aug. 26, 1929, in the back bedroom of a small house in Torrance, Calif., a twelve-year-old boy [Zamperini] sat up in bed, listening. There was a sound coming from outside, growing ever louder. It was a huge, heavy rush, suggesting immensity, a great parting of air. It was coming from directly above the house. The boy swung his legs off his bed, raced down the stairs, slapped open the back door, and loped onto the grass. The yard was otherworldly, smothered in unnatural darkness, shivering with sound. The boy stood on the lawn beside his older brother, head thrown back, spellbound. The sky had disappeared. An object that he could see only in silhouette, reaching across a massive arc of space, was suspended low in the air over the house. It was longer than two-and-a-half football fields and as tall as a city. It was putting out the stars. What he saw was the German dirigible Graf Zeppelin. At nearly 800 feet long and 110 feet high, it was the largest flying machine ever crafted. More luxurious than the finest airplane, gliding effortlessly over huge distances, built on a scale that left spectators gasping, it was, in the summer of '29, the wonder of the world.TheTeemingBrain: Awesome new NASA video: “The Pursuit of Light”
MSNBC: The bigger the eyes the faster the beast
PopSci: Curious Things That Fall From The Sky
Medical and Health
TransHumanTech: Hold the painkillers, says 'Darwinian' paediatrician
MercuryNews: Deadly infection claims San Francisco VA lab worker
FDL: US Health Care Still Radically More Expensive Yet Not More Effective - Health care costs in the United States continue to radically exceed those in any other industrialized nation, yet we don’t get better health care outcomes as a result; this, a basic finding of a new report from the Commonwealth Fund. The report found that in 2009 the United States spent nearly $8,000 per capita. That is a third more than the second most expensive countries, Switzerland and Norway, and roughly twice the amount your average industrialized nation spends.
MNN: Side effects of becoming vegetarian - Eating a vegetarian diet offers numerous health benefits, but some medical studies cite a few potential problems.
Telegraph: Eye implant restores vision to blind patients
RedditScience: Scientists invent dental fillings that kill bacteria and remineralize the tooth
CBS: Study: Jogging boosts lifespan up to six years
ExtinctionProtocol: Washington facing worst whopping-cough epidemic in 70 years
Doomsteading, Gardening, Urban Farming
PreppingToSurvive: Survival Myth: A Compass Always Points North
Grist: Oh rot: It’s harvest time on the worm farm
ModernSurvivalBlog: The Post Disaster Security Timeline
ModernSurvivalOnline: The Panhandle Rancher visits once again…..SHTF life on a prairie ranch
WaldenEffect: What to do after installing your package of bees
NoTechMagazine: Ceramic Food Steamer With Central Chimney
Cryptogon: More Americans Stashing Cash in Home Safes
Other News
UPI: Shoplifter pulls sword on security guard
PolicyMic: Marijuana Legalization Being Crushed By Special Interest Groups
IBTimes: Ancient Artifact Found At Goodwill? Pottery Reclaimed By Caddo Indian Nation Of Oklahoma
NYT: Stumbling Across a Rarity, Even for the Rare Book Room
ExtinctionProtocol: The rise of the new Holy Roman Empire? EU technocrats plot to create powerful EU president
Politics
CBSNews: Gingrich on Romney: He "said things that weren't true"
CNN: Aide recalls bizarre conversation with Edwards mistress
TeemingBrain: It’s the Republicans’ fault. Seriously.
CNN: GOP rivals snuggle up to Mitt Romney - As the saying goes about political parties and their candidates: Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line.
NPR: Are Obama And Romney The Same Guy?
Forums
TinfoilPalace: Homeland Security Preparing for "Massive Civil War"
TinfoilPalace; Obama's White House Correspondent Dinner
TheOilAge: Popo (Mexico) - rumbling
TheOilAge: The Codex Gigas
HubbertsArms: The Next 19 Hours Will Be Critical For The Global Economy
HubbertsArms: The secrets of the system
SilentCountry: Guy McPherson at Nature Bats Last: Arts and minds
SilentCountry: The Invisible Unemployed
DestinyCalls: History A Vast Early Warning System, Ever Heard Of A Guy Named Noah?
DestinyCalls: Electromagnetic Effects On The Human Brain, Prepare For Cosmic Intervention
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