Wall Street protesters: over-educated, under-employed and angry

Via Survival

Forget about paying one red cent for higher education. You can obtain the same through diligence either with books or on your computer. (One of many that we use.) At any rate, a trade may well be a better choice than a worthless piece of paper.
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In the heart of New York's financial district, the marble and concrete floor of lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park was strewn with untidy clumps of people, gathered in small groups amid a jumble of sleeping bags, mattresses and home-made banners, protesting against the banks and institutions that towered over them.

Some sat in circles, talking earnestly, others hugged, while at one side of the park, a small gaggle of "facilitators" took it in turns to address the crowd in chants. Mostly under 30, they are the self-proclaimed "over-educated and under-employed", protesters left over from the 5,000-strong demonstration to "Occupy Wall Street" that took place on Saturday. On the third day of the protest, a hard core, including students, artists, performers and writers who have since slept out in the park, said they planned to occupy the square for the forseeable future.

One student, who gave name as Romeo C, said he was typical of the #occupywallst protesters. Romeo, 26, said: "We have a president who tells us to do the right thing, to go to school, to get a better life, but I'm not getting a better life. I am a new college graduate and I have $50,000 of college debt built up while studying business management at Berkeley. I can't find a job to pay it off."

(Awww, get off your butt and drive a cab or whatever. You can make money, but amazingly enough, it requires that you actually work and hustle for a living, something I'm sure you weren't taught at your University of Lenin.)

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Tightening the Noose: France Bans Cash Sales of Gold/Silver over $600

Via Survival

Coming?
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A couple of weeks ago our report that some Austrian banks had begun restricting the sale of gold and silver to 15,000 Euro (~$20,000 USD) reportedly because of money laundering issues was met with disbelief by many readers of financial news and information web sites. As we mentioned in that commentary, it is our view that governments, namely in Western nations, are making it more difficult for individuals to make gold purchases, as well as to do so anonymously.

It looks like this trend of restricting the peoples’ ability to acquire assets of real monetary value is expanding. If a recent report from France is accurate, and based on the French governments official web site it looks like it is, then as of September 1, 2011, anyone attempting to sell or purchase ferrous or non-ferrous metals, which includes gold and silver, will be required to pay for their purchase via a credit card or bank wire transfer if it exceeds 450€ (~ $600 USD):

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State Gets $5 Mil Bonus For Food Stamp Sign Up

Via III Percent Patriots

This administration needs to go.

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In its quest to promote taxpayer-funded entitlement programs, the Obama Administration has actually rewarded one state with a $5 million bonus for its efficiency in adding food-stamp recipients to already bulging rolls.

It’s part of the administration’s campaign to eradicate “food insecure households” by improving access and increasing participation in the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Incidentally, the program was recently changed to SNAP to eliminate the stigma that comes with a name like food stamps. Just a few months ago the federal agency that administers the program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), launched a multi-million-dollar initiative to recruit more food-stamp participants even though the number of recipients has skyrocketed in the last few years.

This week Oregon officials bragged that the USDA has given the state $5 million in “performance bonuses” for ensuring that people eligible for food benefits receive them and for its “swift processing of applications.” The money comes on the heels of a separate $1.5 million award from the feds for making “accurate payments of food stamp benefits to clients.” So welfare recipients are clients?

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Cain: Most Blacks 'Brainwashed' By Liberal Views

GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain said that while African Americans have been brainwashed to oppose conservative views, many are rethinking their position and may not necessarily vote for President Barack Obama’s reelection.

Cain, the former head of Godfather’s Pizza, made his comments on CNN’s “The Situation Room” in response to a questioned posed by host Wolf Blitzer, He asked, “Why is the Republican Party basically poison for so many African Americans?”

“Because many African-Americans have been brainwashed into not being open minded, not even considering a conservative point of view,” Cain said. "I have received some of that same vitriol simply because I am running for the Republican nomination as a conservative. So it's just brainwashing and people not being open minded, pure and simple."

Blitzer responded, “That’s a strong word to talk about your fellow African Americans, brainwashed?”

“For two-thirds of them, Wolf, that is the case,” Cain said.

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Obama’s Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett: The Point of Government Is to Give People a Livelihood so They Can Provide for Their Families

Via Billy

Sons of Confederate Veterans Warner Robins chapter salutes veterans at annual cookout in Dublin

Via T

Veterans take the veterans part of their name very seriously.

Last Saturday marked the 8th annual SCV Salutes American Veterans event held at the Carl Vinson VA Medical Center in Dublin.

SCV members from around Georgia join together at the VA hospital on the third Saturday of September every year to host the day-long event that was the original idea of Russ Huffman, a member of the Lt. James T. Woodward Camp, the SCV chapter located in Warner Robins.

“Part of the charge of the SCV is to honor veterans. I just thought that this would be a good way to uphold that charge,“ explained Huffman.

SCV members and other volunteers provided live music, goodie bags, door prizes and a chicken dinner meal that is cooked on site for about 250 patients and family members at the hospital.

This year included a motorcycle show contest by the Moose Riders from the Moose Club in Warner Robins; residents judged the motorcycles. The tables then turn as the residents participate in a wheelchair race in both powered and hand-operated wheelchairs.

While the weather this past weekend was noticeably cooler, many years the third weekend of September has had 95-plus degree heat. But that has never dampened the volunteers’ effort or the residents’ participation.

“They just love the music,” Huffman said. “I have seen it in the upper 90s and they will just sit out there and listen to the music all day.”

Along with the food and the music, another highlight of the day is the goodie bags that are given to each resident that include raffle tickets inside.

“We draw for all kinds of things,” Huffman said. “There is a pond down there so they especially like fishing equipment. The wheelchair patients like throws. Bird houses, bird feeders that kind of thing. We also bring games, books, magazines as well.”

“The residents always come up and thank us,” Huffman said. “They really look forward to the day and they make a big deal about us coming, which for me is a pretty sad after all they have done for us.”

“It was just an amazing day,” said Cecelia Jones, Carl Vinson VA Hospital supervisor of recreation therapy. “Many of our veterans came out early in the morning and stayed all day.”

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"The Business Of Journalists Is To Destroy Truth"

John Swinton (1829-1901)

The managing editor of the New York Times during the War Between the States, Swinton later became a crusading journalist in the movement for social and labor reform. Scottish-born, he learned typesetting in Canada before moving to the United States. During the trouble in Kansas he was active in the Free Soil movement and headed the Lawrence Republican. Moving back to New York, he wrote an occasional article for the Times and was hired on a regular basis in 1860 as head of the editorial staff. Afterward holding this position throughout the Civil War, he left the paper in 1870 and became active in the labor struggles of the day. He later served eight years in the same position on the New York Sun and published a weekly labor sheet, John Swinton's Paper.

"One night, probably in 1880, John Swinton, then the preeminent New York journalist, was the guest of honour at a banquet given him by the leaders of his craft. Someone who knew neither the press nor Swinton offered a toast to the independent press. Swinton outraged his colleagues by replying:

"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.

If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.

"The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?

"We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

(Labor's Untold Story, Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, published by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, NY, 1955/1979.)

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"The Business Of Journalists Is To Destroy Truth"

$737 Million Green Jobs Loan Given to Nancy Pelosi's Brother-In-Law

Via III Percent Patriots

Despite the growing Solyndra scandal, yesterday the Department of Energy approved $1 billion in new loans to green energy companies -- including a $737 million loan guarantee to a company known as SolarReserve:

SolarReserve LLC, a closely held renewable energy developer, received a $737 million U.S. Energy Department loan guarantee to build a solar-thermal project in Nevada.

The 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes project, near Tonopah, Nevada, will use the sun’s heat to create steam that drives a turbine, the agency said today in a e-mailed statement. SolarReserve is based in Santa Monica, California.

On SolarReserve's website is a list of "investment partners," including the "PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund (East) LLC." As blogger American Glob quickly discovered, PCG's number two is none other than "Ronald Pelosi, a San Francisco political insider and financial industry polymath who happens to be the brother-in-law of Nancy Pelosi, the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives."

But wait... there's more! One of SolarReserve's other investment partners is Argonaut Private Equity:

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GOA Mitt Romney Alert

In the recent Presidential debate, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann said America’s voters did not need to “settle” for the moderate candidate. Amen to that.

And gun owners do NOT want candidates who talk out of both sides of their mouths.

As the Gun Owners of America’s Board of Directors looks at the Republican candidates running to unseat radical anti-gun President Obama, we see several who have strong pro-gun backgrounds. Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Michelle Bachman all have solid pro-gun records and deserve a hard look from pro-gunners.

At least one frontrunner candidate stands in contrast with a decidedly mixed record on the gun issue. While Mitt Romney likes to “talk the pro-gun talk,” he has not always walked the walk.

“The Second Amendment protects the individual right of lawful citizens to keep and bear arms. I strongly support this essential freedom,” Romney assures gun owners these days.

But this is the same Mitt Romney who, as governor, promised not to do anything to “chip away” at Massachusetts’ extremely restrictive gun laws.

“We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts; I support them,” he said during a gubernatorial debate. “I won’t chip away at them; I believe they protect us and provide for our safety.”

Even worse, Romney signed a law to permanently ban many semi-automatic firearms. “These guns are not made for recreation or self-defense,” Romney said in 2004. “They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people.”

Romney also spoke in favor of the Brady law’s five day waiting period on handguns. The Boston Globe quotes Romney saying, “I don’t think (the waiting period) will have a massive effect on crime but I think it will have a positive effect.”

Mitt Romney doesn’t seem to understand the meaning of “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.”

And that makes it all the more troubling that Romney refuses to answer GOA’s simple candidate questionnaire. In our more than 36 years of experience, a candidate is usually hiding anti-gun views if he or she refuses to come clean in writing with specific commitments to the Second Amendment.

Today, Romney may be a favorite “Republican Establishment” candidate of the national press corps. But that is exactly what gun owners DON’T need in a new President. We need someone who will stand by true constitutional principles and protect the Second Amendment.

South toward home

Via Front Porch Republic

Yesterday I rented a house in the historic district of St. Francisville, my hometown. I was on the phone with Mr. Walter, the owner, settling the terms. He was incredibly gracious, and I was tickled to learn that he and his wife will be living just down the street half the year. “Your daddy and my wife Puddin’ were classmates all through school,” he said. “He raised her 4-H Club hog for her when they were children, and she won first place.” I interviewed Miss Puddin’ years ago about the time she spent as a child in an old plantation house in town that is said to be one of America’s most haunted houses. She’s the daughter of the late Mr. Davis Folkes, a Louisiana state senator and dear friend of my late grandfather Murphy Sr., whom he called “Mercy” because he couldn’t quite say the name right. They spent their last years every day sitting with their friends on a bench in town on the front porch of the real estate office, watching the world go by.

I love the South.

So we are moving to St. Francisville at the end of the year. If you had said to me two weeks ago that I would be writing that sentence, I would have thought you drunk or crazy. But then two weeks and one day ago, my sister Ruthie died. And then life changed for all of us.

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National Police Misconduct NewsFeed Daily Recap 09-28-11

VERBATIM POST
Injustice Everywhere
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New York NY police have decided to put away the shovel and stop digging the “they must have edited all those videos” hole now that yet another video has surfaced showing deputy inspector Tony Bologna needlessly pepperspraying a second group of people on the same day that he peppersprayed at least 4 women without cause at the #occupywallstreet protests on Saturday. Instead the department, which had insistently claimed that officer Bologna, who has a history of excessive force allegations involving protesters, was justified in his use of pepperspray, has now promised to do an investigation before jumping right into denial mode yet again. I know, I generally try to reserve judgment about the reports I track, but what the NYPD did with this case by excusing the officer’s behavior with an outrageously impossible excuse without an investigation first was just plain “rub-it-in-your-face” bullshit. [5] http://t.co/YIE6Y6Xy

• Along the same lines, Clayton County GA police are being accused of intentionally failing to control a cop that is a accused of terrorizing that county’s citizens. The officer hasn’t faced a day of disciplinary actions despite an internal affairs record 500 pages long that includes a record-breaking 58 use-of-force cases and 12 excessive force complaints that include allegations that he pummeled a man with his fists and a baton while that man was passed out inside his own car due to a diabetic attack even though the man had stickers on his car to warn people about his condition. [3] http://t.co/sps6qIyg

• Furthermore, Denver CO has offered to settle a brutality suit that threatened to force the department to release thousands of secret excessive force records, all in an apparent effort to keep that from happening. However, a second excessive force lawsuit against the same officer is threatening to do the same after the lawyers in that suit have requested the exact same records that a court was forcing the department to release in that other case. I foresee another quick settlement in Denver’s future. [3] http://t.co/rUPmY04G

• And still in the same vein, Seattle WA police have been ordered to pay $20,000 in penalties for refusing to release internal investigation files relating to an excessive force lawsuit filed by a 72-year-old man who claims officers, cleared by that secret investigation, had abused him when they came to his business in response to a call from his health insurer who said he was suicidal because he sarcastically said “I might as well die now” while disputing his insurer’s refusal to pay for medication. [4] http://t.co/2Us61Wfc

• And yet again, Morehouse Parish LA sheriff and 2 of his deputies are being sued on allegations that they conspired to intentionally falsely arrest and prosecute an innocent man in an attempt to cover for a hate crime committed by a deputy’s two sons. [4] http://t.co/DgSt6WEO

• Montreal QC cop was cited by an ethics commission for using excessive force when he repeatedly tasered a suspect which then resulted in the man’s death. A second officer was also cited for failing to stop that officer from repeatedly tasering that man. [0] http://t.co/sPawDkYi

• Farmington NM cop was suspended while he’s being investigated after a woman filed fore an emergency restraining order accusing that officer of raping her at her home. [1] http://t.co/7QbSKfAH

• A Memphis TN cop who shot himself in an attempt to endear himself on a teen girl he fancied has now been arrested by state investigators on false reporting charges and for solicitation to commit murder in an alleged plot to have someone kill that girl’s boyfriend as well. [0] http://t.co/8pWOWoN0

• Whitley Co KY sheriff was sentenced to 15.5 years for conspiracy to commit extortion, launder money & distribute drugs. [0] http://t.co/5FJu2jxc

• Indianapolis IN cop was found guilty of arson for setting fire to an apartment complex. He is still facing trial for four other acts of alleged arson as well. [0] http://t.co/bwYtqWNM

• Montgomery AL cop sentenced to 48 months in prison on federal wire fraud & ID theft charges. He apparently used police databases to steal other people’s identities. [0] http://t.co/hXfg7pUt

• West Palm Beach FL deputy has been charged with three counts of grand theft for allegedly selling a trailer home that wasn’t his. [0] http://t.co/dSjdAa4D

• Lumberton NC cop arrested for embezzlement in office & several drug charges after a state investigation [1] http://t.co/1grN4S9u

• Hull MA cop sues alleging sexually harassed by the police chief two other senior officers but was told that she would be fired when she tried to report it to the city. [3] http://t.co/gtdl8Exi

• RCMP gang cop in BC is under investigation after he was accused of hitting on a man’s girlfriend during a pretty questionable traffic stop. [0] http://t.co/o8nt3RKv

• Anchorage AK police chief gets an official reprimand but no ticket for rear ending a motorist while he was distracted by his iPhone [0] http://t.co/K9LZxhYM

• Primera TX police chief is being accused of sending a county constable unsolicited transgender porn images on his cellphone in an alleged rivalry over their battle to become constable. [0] http://t.co/1b51AjuE

Ford Enjoys Best Public Perception Among Big Three Auto Companies

Ever since General Motors and Chrysler accepted government bailouts, Ford has been the nation’s most popular auto manufacturer.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 73% of American adults have a favorable opinion of the Ford Motor Company. Just 51% say the same about General Motors, often derided by critics as Government Motors. Chrysler now earns positive reviews from 48%. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Those figures include 32% with a Very Favorable opinion of Ford, 10% with a Very Favorable opinion of GM, and 7% who think that highly of Chrysler.

Before the bailouts, General Motors received better reviews than Ford. The latest numbers show little change since June for Ford and GM. However, Chrysler’s numbers have improved nine points since then.

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Living history/reenactment event on 8 October near Jacksonville, NC

MAP

Brock:

There is a living history/reenactment event on 8 Oct in Verona (near Jacksonville) that would probable be of interest to your readers. Many SCV members and civilians will be attending. Setup will start Friday afternoon of the 7th and last thru the 8th. This is the 8th year they have had it and it is free! There will be free bar-b-que and many events for the kids and grown ups. We need to get as many SCV members (in uniform if possible) to attend. Many will be camping out Friday night.

I will probably be vending as a sutler wearing my uniform.

The location is:
Jack's Country Store

226 Sewell Rd
Jacksonville, NC 28540

more info: (910) 347-4985

It would be a great service if you could post it on your website.

for the cause,

Rob
Jacksonville, NC 28540

more info: (910) 347-4985

Sign this man up!

Roundabout via Cousin Colby

Terrorist UAV Bomber?

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Global Guerrillas

A self-activated Jihadi from the Boston area was arrested. His plot: to blow up a section of the Pentagon with several UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) ladden with C-4. He bought the plane. He also bought C-4, AK-47s, and grenades from FBI agents posing as suppliers. Not much of a threat.

However, despite the fake plot and the terrible target selection, the technique is sound. Off the shelf or DIY UAVs, provide an amazingly effective way to do incredible amounts of damage. Within the context of an open source guerrilla war in a formerly developed country, this tech would get very deadly/effective, very quickly.

Re-post: Flower Pot Fridge

I had forgotten about this until it surfaced on Survival tonight.
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