Is Iran Opening A "Secret Passage" To Asia For Russian Crude?

Russia is looking to expand its influence through oil trade. And a little-reported deal this week may give it access to an entirely new part of the planet when it comes to crude exports.

That’s the Persian Gulf. Where reports suggest Russia is close to negotiating a “secret passage” for its oil shipments.  Read more

Obama’s Cuba policy: Supporting US business or enriching Cuban gov't?

Martina Feria lives in a capital city in a country less than 100 miles from the United States. On a warm November day in 2015, she used the Internet for the first time.

“It is very difficult to connect because it seems like the whole world is trying to get on the Internet,” she said, surrounded by hundreds of others crowded into a public Wi-Fi hotspot in Havana, Cuba. “Sometimes you connect but it is slow.”  Read more

FEMA can't account for up to $4.56M Sandy fuel funds

Where's the beef?

The Federal Emergency Management Agency can’t adequately account for more than 70 percent of the money spent on fuel for New York in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy, a federal audit released on Friday found.

FEMA spent $6.37 million for 1.7 million gallons of fuel as a gasoline shortage crippled the New York City area after the October 2012 storm, according to the audit from the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Homeland Security.  Read more

Politico admits fabricating hit piece on Ben Carson

"Say it ain't so"  Richard Medlock

Politico‘s Kyle Cheney admitted that he fabricated a negative story about Ben Carson. At least, according to his own standards, he admitted the grievous journalistic sin.  Read the truth

Could Russian jet crash in Egypt prompt a change of direction for Putin and Russia?

If the Islamic State was responsible for the downing of the Russian passenger jet over Egypt last Saturday, this may alter the strategic equation for Moscow. Will it persist on an anti-Western path even as security threats and economic opportunity are becoming more globalized? Or will Russia cooperate with the West to protect against terrorism and improve the living standards of its people?  Read more

It Begins… Brazilian School Forces Jewish Students to Identify All Jews Among Them

Brazilian substitute headmaster José Fernando Schlosser has forced all Jewish students and teachers to sign a document to identify all Jews among them. The names will be given to the Solidarity with Palestine Committee.  Read more

How 'Bond Girls' Have Evolved Over the Last 50 Years

In the earlier years of Eon's 007 franchise, the women in James Bond's universe were as remarkable as his single-passenger crocodile submarine. But unfortunately, they were often just as disposable, having been discarded or forgotten once Bond was done with them.  Read

5 companies grab 70% of your online dollars

The Internet was supposed to democratize and open up information, commerce and communication. But so far, the spoils are going to a relative few.  Read more

School District Outlaws Depiction Of ‘ANY RELIGIOUS LEADER’ After Mom Protests Muhammad Drawing

A school district superintendent in semi-rural Southern California has completely outlawed all drawings of all religious leaders on campus because a history teacher assigned a vocabulary worksheet that asked students to draw images of Muhammad.  Read more

PUFF DADDY TO OBAMA: ‘WHERE ARE THE THINGS IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY THAT HAVE GOTTEN DRASTICALLY BETTER?’

“We got Obama into office, the give back, the deal, where are the things in our community that have gotten drastically better?” Combs said Wednesday in an interview on Hot 97. “Let’s stop overcomplicating it. The hugest group of people that get you into office, you have to change their lives for the better. Pick a side, because they got you into office. And if that side just happens to be black people, and you’re black, you still have to do what’s fair.”  Read more

The Democrat Contenders

PATRIARCH OF ANTIOCH: MUSLIMS WANT TO CONQUER EUROPE WITH ‘FAITH AND THE BIRTHRATE’

In a stunning interview, the Maronite patriarch of Antioch, Cardinal Bechara Boutros al-Rahi, has contended that Islam has a clear, two-pronged strategy to take over Europe: religion and procreation.

The cardinal said that Muslims look on Christians as weak and believe that since they have no children and barely practice their faith, Islam will easily conquer them. Sadly, he said, Muslims take their faith more seriously than most Christians, and they are gaining ground because of it.  Read more

HILLARY: Refugees fleeing Syria due to ‘climate change’

"This is so Precious."  Richard Medlock

We’re in a period of one of the worse refugee crises that we’ve ever faced,” Clinton said in Coralville. “It’s an international problem and I think we should have more of an international response.

“But then we have to ask ourselves why is this happening? And why is it happening? Because of terrible governance, because of corruption, because of conflict, because of climate change.”  Read more

Politically correct infant formula announced with extra transgender hormones to help parents change their children’s gender before puberty

Thanks to our national transgender hero Caitlyn Jenner, transgenderism is rapidly becoming mainstream. Gender-bending has become cooler than David Bowie, especially among the kids nowadays. For young people, being transgender is about as controversial as being left handed, to paraphrase the arch-conservative pundit George Will.

As with any new trend, a trendmonger can’t be far behind. And what, might you ask, is a trendmonger? Well, a trendmonger is a business that jumps on a trend and spreads it throughout the land, using all the skills that pseudoscientific marketing departments have made available.  Read more

Pennsylvania Reenacts Work-For-Welfare Policy

At least 30,000 in Pennsylvania could lose their food stamp benefits in the beginning of 2016 due to recent changes in the program's enforcement.

In 1996, legislators passed a law imposing a three month limit on SNAP food stamps for unemployed and underemployed adults between the ages of 18 and 50 who are not disabled or raising children, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. Due to high unemployment during the most recent recession, however, the law has not been enforced for several years.  Read more

Consumer Credit Has Biggest Jump In History, Led By Government-Funded Car And Student Loans

If there was any confusion where all those soaring new car sales are coming from, we now have the definitive answer: moments ago the latest consumer credit data for September was released, and surging by $28.9 billion - a 4.9% jump Y/Y - not only did this smash expectations of a "modest" $18 billion rise, this was the biggest monthly increase ever!  Read more

Marc Faber: Fed, Global Central Banks Have Rigged 'Colossal Asset Bubble'

The Federal Reserve has inflated an asset bubble and that will plague the stock market "disappointing returns," warns Marc Faber, publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report.

"Say you're a young person and you're just starting to work. So take me in the 1970s. In the U.S., with 20 hours of work, I could buy the S&P 500. Now you need more than 90 hours of work to buy the S&P 500 if you're young, with a medium income," Faber told CNBC.   Read more

This Is the Worst U.S. Earnings Season Since 2009

Biggest quarterly drop since the aftermath of the financial crisis.  

This U.S. earnings season is on track to be the worst since 2009 as profits from oil & gas and commodity-related companies plummet.  Read more

Workers discover 19th century burial vault under New York City park

Workers upgrading water mains under New York City’s Washington Square Park this week discovered a vault containing a large pile of skeletal remains dating back approximately 200 years.

Officials from the city’s Department of Design and Construction told Newsdaythat the vault measured 8 feet deep, 15 feet wide and 20 feet long. It contained the remains of at least a dozen people. Anthropologists and archaeologists would be asked to investigate the vault to determine its exact age.  Read more

The Most Surprising Thing About Today's Jobs Report

After several months of weak and deteriorating payrolls prints, perhaps the biggest tell today's job number would surprise massively to the upside came yesterday from Goldman, which as we noted earlier, just yesterday hiked its forecast from 175K to 190K. And while as Brown Brothers said after the reported that it is "difficult to find the cloud in the silver lining" one clear cloud emerges when looking just a little deeper below the surface.  Read more

Voters oust council members one day after they vote to remove veterans memorial

Council members in Knoxville, Iowa learned what happens when they don’t listen to their constituents.

Two council members who voted in favor of removing a veterans memorial at the local Young’s Park on Monday were out of power by Tuesday, the Des Moines Register reports.

Council members Carolyn Formanek and April Verwers voted in favor of moving the memorial – a wooden silhouette of a soldier kneeling by a cross – after Americans United for Separation of Church and State sent the city a letter in August threatening litigation if they city did not take action.  Read more

ATHEIST COMPLAINT CAUSES IOWA CITY POLITICIANS TO EXILE MILITARY MEMORIAL FROM PUBLIC PROPERTY  Related Article

CHRISTIAN DAYCARE WORKERS FIRED FOR REFUSING TO CALL A LITTLE GIRL A BOY

HOUSTON, Texas — Two daycare workers have been fired for refusing to go along with the center’s transgender agenda.Madeline Kirksey, one of the workers who is an author of a Christian book, says her religious liberty rights have been violated. The two were fired after refusing to call a little girl a boy.  Read more

Religious Objections on Obamacare Get U.S. Supreme Court Review

The U.S. Supreme Court scheduled a new showdown over Obamacare and religious rights, agreeing to hear contentions by faith-based groups that they shouldn’t have to facilitate what they consider to be immoral insurance coverage for contraceptives.  Read more

Jim Paulsen: Chances of 'Unexpected Recession' Rising

Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management, is warning clients that the chances of an economic shock are growing, CNBC reports.

“Policy officials, economists and investors have become conditioned by the post-war experience that recessions simply don't happen until economic policies turn restrictive. Not before interest rates rise, the yield curve inverts and not until the Federal Reserve drains the punch bowl and the money supply slows,” CNBC quoted Paulsen.  Read more

Russian Plane Terrorism Is Bullish for Oil as Drumbeat of War Grows Louder

Planes don’t normally break up in flight. When they do, it’s most likely either a catastrophic maintenance failure or an explosion caused by an “external factor.” As we have learned in the past few years, an external factor is either an antiaircraft missile or a bomb smuggled on board the aircraft.
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