Security measures are often exercises in futility. Resembling placebos, they are the reassurance authorities make as acts of intrusive inconvenience. Queues are increased at airports in the vain hope that an elusive gel carrier will be nabbed before the next…
The S&P 500 Index and CBOE Volatility Index have historically moved in opposite directions about 80 percent of the time, but that’s changed recently… As Bloomberg reports, both gauges are heading for declines this month, after the two rose in…
Doris Portillo keeps the door to her father’s old room closed to avoid remembering the last few months of his life. It’s a small room, barely large enough for a bed, a small bureau, and a television, all of which…
The Trump kleptocrats are political arsonists. They are carting cans of gasoline into government agencies and Congress to burn down any structure or program that promotes the common good and impedes corporate profit. They ineptly have set themselves on fire…
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described it this way weeks after US-led terror-bombing and Iraqi ground operations began last October – long before the worst horrors ongoing now. US-orchestrated operations are being conducted under “conditions of absolute information blockade,” Zakharova explained.…
Nobody yet can tell whether Donald Trump is an agent of change with a specific policy in mind, or merely a catalyst heralding an as yet undetermined turning point. His first month in the White House saw him melting into…
Submitted by: ButtCracker — A synthetic marijuana product could be available for commercialization after the DEA gave a newly approved drug a schedule II classification. On Thursday, Insys Therapeutics announced that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) issued an interim final…
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists. ― Hannah Arendt People living in the United States…
Submitted by: ButtCracker — President Donald Trump is poised to eviscerate his predecessor’s legacy on climate change with executive actions as early as this week, even though the world is throwing up increasingly alarming signs of dangerous warning and key…
The Border Isn’t a Constitution-Free Zone Richmond, Virginia—Border agents must obtain a warrant to search travelers’ phones, tablets, and laptops, which contain a vast trove of sensitive, highly personal information that is protected by the Fourth Amendment, the Electronic Frontier…
Two events conspired this past week to force us to reassess if America can ever find its way home; (home being a nation that honors its citizens’ Bill of Rights — the amendments to the U.S. constitution that preserve the…
First published in 2012. Birds and bees are something most of us take for granted as part of nature. The expression “teaching about the birds and the bees” to explain the process of human reproduction to young people is not…
By Justin Gardner The second state in less than a month has made a direct challenge to the Federal Reserve monopoly on money, by forwarding a bill that would “eliminate capital gains taxes on gold and silver specie.” The Idaho…
One. Big. Squeeze… It was quite a week for ‘uncertainty’ as Europe’s VIX crashed to record lows, and FX and Rate vols plunged after the Fed move and Dutch elections.. benefits. Discover the strength of Legg Mason…
Submitted by: ButtCracker — John Kiriakou knows a lot about leaking classified information. He went to prison for it. A former CIA agent who said too much about the Bush-era torture program, he’s also the first CIA leaker to go…
Exclusive: The hysteria over “Russia-gate” continues to grow – as President Trump’s enemies circle – but at its core there may be no there there while it risks pushing the world toward nuclear annihilation, writes Robert Parry. There may be…
