For Everyone Shocked By What Just Happened... And Why This Is Just The Beginning

Europe Does It Again: Cyprus Depositor Haircut "Bailout" Turns Into Saver "Panic", Frozen Assets, Bank Runs, Broken ATMs

Today, lots of people woke up in shock and horror to what happened in Cyprus: a forced capital reallocation mandated by political elites under the guise of an "equity investment" in insolvent banks, which is really code for a "coercive, mandatory wealth tax." If less concerned about political correctness, one could say that what just happened was daylight robbery from savers to banks and the status quo. These same people may be even more shocked to learn that today's Cypriot "resolution" is merely the first of many such coercive interventions into personal wealth, first in Europe, and then everywhere else.

For the benefit of those people, we wish to point them to our article from September 2011, "The "Muddle Through" Has Failed: BCG Says "There May Be Only Painful Ways Out Of The Crisis", which predicted and explained all of this and much more. What else did the September BCG study conclude? Simply that such mandatory, coercive wealth tax is merely the beginning for a world in which there was some $21 trillion in excess debt as of 2009, a number which has since ballooned to over $30 trillion. And with inflation woefully late in appearing and "inflating away" said debt overhang, Europe first is finally moving to Plan B, and is using Cyrprus as its Guniea Pig.
For those who missed it the first time, here it is again. Somehow we think many more people will listen this time around:

Restructuring the debt overhang in the euro zone would require financing and would be a daunting task. In order to finance controlled restructuring, politicians could well conclude that it was necessary to tax the existing wealth of the private sector. Many politicians would see taxing financial assets as the fairest way of resolving the problem. Taxing existing financial assets would acknowledge one fact: these investments are not as valuable as their owners think, as the debtors (governments, households, and corporations) will be unable to meet their commitments. Exhibit 3 shows the one-time tax on financial assets required to provide the necessary funds for an orderly restructuring.

 

More @ Zero Hedge

Publix Skools: Common Core as Trojan Horse

 

Last week, I reported on the federal government’s massive new student-tracking database, which was created as part of the nationalized Common Core standards scheme.

The bad news: GOP “leadership” continues to ignore or, worse, enable this Nanny State racket. (Hello, Jeb Bush.)

The good news: A grassroots revolt outside the Beltway bubble is swelling. Families are taking their children’s academic and privacy matters out of the snoopercrats’ grip and into their own hands. You can now download a Common Core opt-out form to submit to your school district, courtesy of the group Truth in American Education.

 Parents caught off guard by the stealthy tracking racket are now mobilizing across the country. According to the New York Daily News, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, echoing parents across New York City, blasted the tracking database in a letter to government officials: “I don’t want my kids’ privacy bought and sold like this.” This Wednesday, prompted by parental objections, Oklahoma state representatives unanimously passed House Bill 1989 — the Student Data Accessibility, Transparency and Accountability Act — to prohibit the release of confidential student data without the written consent of the student’s parent or guardian.

As I noted in last week’s column, the national Common Core student database was funded with Obama stimulus money. Grants also came from the liberal Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (which largely underwrote and promoted the top-down Common Core curricular scheme). A division of the conservative Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. built the database infrastructure. A nonprofit startup, “inBloom, Inc.,” evolved out of this strange-bedfellows partnership to operate the invasive database, which is compiling everything from health-care histories, income information, and religious affiliations to voting status, blood types, and homework completion.

And it gets worse. Research fellow Joy Pullmann at the Heartland Institute points to a February Department of Education report on its data-mining plans that contemplates the use of creepy student-monitoring techniques such as “functional magnetic resonance imaging” and “using cameras to judge facial expressions, an electronic seat that judges posture, a pressure-sensitive computer mouse and a biometric wrap on kids’ wrists.”

The DOE report exposes the big lie that Common Core is about raising academic standards. The report instead reveals Common Core’s progressive designs to measure and track children’s “competencies” in “recognizing bias in sources,” “flexibility,” “cultural awareness and competence,” “appreciation for diversity,” “empathy,” “perspective taking, trust, [and] service orientation.”

More @ NRO

G&A Ranks the Best States for Gun Owners in 2013

Via Angry Mike

 

These days, it’s becoming more difficult for gun owners across the country to find safe haven, as the powers that be on both federal and state levels begin introducing a quagmire of anti-gun legislation hindering the rights of law-abiding citizens. States like Illinois are notorious for their anti-gun agendas, while states like Texas are viewed as a sort of shooters’ paradise.

But just how true are those reputations? To provide you, dear reader, with a primer of gun-friendly regions of the United States, we’ve analyzed all 50 states—and Washington, D.C.—and ranked them to find out which are the most pro-gun.

States can score a maximum 10 points per category, with a perfect score of 50. Full disclosure, though: No state attained that perfect score, though two states came awfully close. As was expected, Washington, D.C., kicked off our list with a whopping zero points, and other anti-gun Meccas such as New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and California weren’t far behind. Topping our list of pro-gun states were Arizona, Vermont, Alaska, Utah and Kentucky. Click through the gallery below to see where your state ranked.

States were measured on gun rights/friendliness to gun owners by the following criteria:

• CCW/Open Carry: Only states that don’t require a permit for concealed or open carry scored a perfect 10 in this category. Everybody else was judged accordingly.
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• MSRs: States with no restrictions on the kind, type or number of modern sporting rifles (ARs, AKs, etc.) that can be owned or purchased scored a 10 in this category.
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• Class 3/NFA: The majority of states allow their citizens to own Class 3/NFA-type firearms (machine guns, suppressors, short-barreled rifles, etc.), provided they follow the federal licensing standard, but not every state is yea or nay.
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• Castle Doctrine/Stand Your Ground: States’ scores were determined based on how strong your the law is regarding self-defense in and out of the home, and whether in the right you’re immune from civil prosecution.
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• Miscellaneous: How pro-gun the state culture is has a lot to do with scoring in this category. Scores are based on the percentage of gun owners in the state, if there are any restrictions on gun or ammunition purchases or magazine capacity, pending pro- or anti-gun legislation, CCW reciprocity, and any restrictions on guns that not covered in the other categories.

More @ Guns & Ammo

If.........

Via Blue

Europe Does It Again: Cyprus Depositor Haircut "Bailout" Turns Into Saver "Panic", Frozen Assets, Bank Runs, Broken ATMs

Via My Adventures In Self Reliance

Late last night, after markets closed for the weekend, following an extended discussion the European finance ministers announced their "bailout" solution for Russian oligarch depositor-haven Cyprus: a €13 billion bailout (Europe's fifth) with a huge twist: the implementation of what has been the biggest taboo in European bailouts to date - the  impairment of depositors, and a fresh, full blown escalation in the status quo's war against savers everywhere.

Specifically, Cyprus will impose a levy of 6.75% on deposits of less than €100,000 - the ceiling for European Union account insurance, which is now effectively gone following this case study - and 9.9% above that. The measures will raise €5.8 billion, Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who leads the group of euro-area ministers, said.

But it doesn't stop there: a partial "bail-in" of junior bondholders is also possible, as for the first time ever the entire liability structure of a European bank - even if it is a Cypriot bank - is open season for impairments. The logical question: why here, and why now? And what happens when the Cypriot bank run that has taken the country by storm this morning spreads everywhere else, now that the scab over Europe's biggest festering wound is torn throughout the periphery as all the other PIIGS realize they too are expendable on the altar of mollifying voters and investors in the other countries that make up Europe's disunion.

Bloomberg's take on the sacrifice of Cyprus' savers:

More @ Zero Hedge

Southern nationalists shock ‘Frederick Douglass Republicans’ at CPAC

 

Elspeth Reeve writes in a recent article for the Left-wing journal The Atlantic about how shocked she was after hearing and meeting some actual Southern nationalists at CPAC, the annual gathering near Washington, DC of Republican officials and conservative activists. Matthew Heimbach, the founder of the Towson University White Student Union (TUWSU) and a frequent guest on the SNN podcast, and some fellow TUWSU members were on hand for a panel led by two Black men (brothers, in fact) from Birmingham, Alabama. These two, who self-identify as ‘Frederick Douglass Republicans’ and praised Douglass’ strong support for Abraham Lincoln, spoke about what they see as the need for the GOP to adopt more anti-White policies and recruit more non-Whites.

They also repeatedly attacked Southern Democrats of the past (which, of course, include the likes of Thomas Jefferson, John C Calhoun, Robert Barnwell Rhett, Jefferson Davis, Wade Hampton, etc). They also used the tired and defeatist line that ‘liberals are the true racists’ – which accepts and even re-enforces the notion of ‘racism.’ Heimbach and his friends raised the point that what the brothers were advocating was essentially reaching out to others at the expense of Southern Whites (who presently make up the base of the Republican Party).

Reeve’s account of the event is well worth reading, if only to understand her mentality. For example, she refers to Heimbach in the article as a ‘troll.’ She also labels the TUWSU members as ‘actual segregationists’ and at one point Reeve notes, ‘The white people applauded, making me somewhat uncomfortable.’

More @ Southern Nationalist Network

Dr. Ben Carson to CPAC: Obama 'Trying to Destroy the Country'

 

When Dr. Benjamin Carson lit up Barack Obama over his landmark health-care legislation at last month’s National Prayer Breakfast, it appears he was … holding back.

Not so in his speech today at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“I’m want to talk a little bit about what’s logical and what’s common sense today, because we don’t hear a lot of that,” began Carson director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

“Liberals and everybody else should understand and enjoy common sense also. For some strange reason, sometimes they don’t.”

Among his “common sense” barbs: Members of Congress ought to remember they work for the people, not all black people think alike, nor should they be expected to, and the current policies and tactics of Obama and his allies are working to “destroy this country.”

“Let’s say somebody were [in the White House] and they wanted to destroy this nation,” Carson posited. “I would create division among the people, encourage a culture of ridicule for basic morality and the principles that made and sustained the country, undermine the financial stability of the nation, and weaken and destroy the military.

“It appears, coincidentally, that those are the very things that are happening right now,” Carson concluded.

More @ WND

Black Molon Labe 3x10 Sticker

 

Two little words. With these two words, two concepts were verbalized that have lived for nearly two and a half Millennia. 

They signify and characterize both the heart of the Warrior, and the indomitable spirit of mankind. From the ancient Greek, they are the reply of the Spartan General-King Leonidas to Xerxes, the Persian Emperor who came with 600,000 of the fiercest fighting troops in the world to conquer and invade little Greece, then the center and birthplace of civilization as we know it.

  Molon Labe! They mean, "Come and get them!" 

They live on today as the most notable quote in military history. And so began the classic example of courage and valor in its dismissal of overwhelming superiority of numbers, wherein the heart and spirit of brave men overcame insuperable odds. Today, there lies a plaque dedicated to these heroes all at the site. It reads:

We have adopted this defiant utterance as a battle cry in our war against oppression because it says so clearly and simply towards those who would take our arms.

It signifies our determination to not strike the first blow, but also to not stand mute and allow our loved ones, and all that we believe in and stand for, to be trampled by men who would deprive us of our God-given or "natural" if you will, rights to suit their own ends. 

$1.99

Rand Paul wins CPAC straw poll

 

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) won the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) straw poll on Saturday, an outcome largely expected by those in attendance, but one that will give him added legitimacy as he seeks to expand his appeal to compete on the national stage in 2016.

In one of CPAC 2013's best-received speeches, Paul on Thursday told conservative activists that the Republican Party had grown "stale and moss covered" and said the GOP needs a more libertarian approach that makes freedom the movement's defining principle.

According to conference organizers, 25 percent of voters picked Paul as their choice for the next Republican presidential nominee. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) came in a close second with 23 percent support.

More @ The Hill

Iron County Utah Tells Feds – Don’t Try to Enforce Gun Laws Here

 

Iron County, Utah is making a preemptive strike against the Federal government’s attempts to infringe upon the Second Amendment rights of its citizens. According to a press release, “Laws that violate 2^nd Amendment are null and void and have no effect in Iron County, Utah."

Today in Southwest Utah, the Iron County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously in passing an Iron County Second Amendment Protection Resolution. This is the second Resolution passed in the county, the first being the Cedar City Second Amendment Resolution passed by the City Council.

More @ Freedom Outpost

14 Southern Pictures 1861 - 1956

 

More @ NamSouth

14 Southern Pictures 1861 - 1956

Leader in 'bail out Detroit' movement emerges

Via Billy

 

 Councilwoman famously called for 'quid pro quo' after blacks voted for Obama

A new leader has emerged in Detroit’s effort to prevent a state takeover of the city. The Detroit News reports that city Councilwoman JoAnn Watson “has become the public voice of Detroiters determined to hang on to self-rule.”

Some may recognize Watson as the councilwoman who called upon Barack Obama to bail out Detroit, saying, “Our people in an overwhelming way supported the re-election of this president and there ought to be a quid pro quo and you ought to exercise leadership on that.”

Watson wants to stop the state takeover, and her efforts come at a time of occasionally ominous rhetoric from some activists in Detroit.

“This is white-on-black crime,” Minister Malik Shabazz said during a public hearing. “This is white supremacy. Before you can take over our city, we will burn it.”

More @ WND

Veterans Often Wait Over A Year For Benefits, Some Wait Up To 642 Days As VA Struggles To Handle Claims

Via Billy

 

The Department of Veterans Affairs is failing to keep up with a torrent of benefits claims, and the backlog leaves many service members high and dry for well over a year after first filing their forms, a new report from the Center for Investigative Reporting finds.
From the CIR report:

The agency tracks and widely reports the average wait time: 273 days. But the internal data indicates that veterans filing their first claim, including those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, wait nearly two months longer, between 316 and 327 days. Those filing for the first time in America’s major population centers wait up to twice as long -- 642 days in New York, 619 days in Los Angeles and 542 days in Chicago. 

The ranks of veterans waiting more than a year for their benefits grew from 11,000 in 2009, the first year of Obama’s presidency, to 245,000 in December -- an increase of more than 2,000 percent.

And the VA is predicting that the situation will get worse, as the number of veterans waiting on the department to process their claims is expected to surge past the current 900,000 and toward a million by the end of March.

More @ Huff Post

The End of the Same-Sex Marriage Debate

Here's the graphic that says it all:

 

This pic comes from Chris Cillizza's Washington Post 'The FIx' column from yesterday, dealing with Rob Portman's changed stance on gay marriage.  Portman--a fiscal conservative with a long history of being "only loosely concerned with social issues like marriage and abortion"--is about as Establishment Republican as you can get.  With a resume that includes service in the House, not one but two Cabinet posts in the Bush administration and now a Senate seat from Ohio, is it any wonder that his name was always near the top of the lists when Romney's VP choices were bandied about? 

 Coming hard on the heels of the Supreme Court brief urging the recognition of the Constitutional right to marry by more than 100 big shot Republicans, it seems as though may--I repeat, MAY--be starting to get a clue that this is an issue that's not a winner for them.

More @ Hype and Fail

Congressional Black Caucus Urges Barack Obama to Discriminate Against Whites

Via Cousin John

 

Congressional Black Caucus to President Barack Obama – “The people you have chosen to appoint in this new term have hardly been reflective of this country’s diversity.”

So said Marcia L. Fudge, oblivious to the irony that such a statement would be coming from her; she’s the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, a group the diversity of whose members ranges from light-skinned black to dark-skinned black. That is the extent of the level of diversity within the CBC.

Even the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has more diversity. Visit the CHC’s Wikipedia page and click on each of the pages for the 21 current members (all of whom are Democrats, by the way, as only a Democrat would be so segregationist). You will find that at least half of them look white. The only thing Hispanic about them is that their names sound like Taco Bell meals. (I can say that because I’m part Cuban.)

And if you look at the Congressional White Caucus, you’ll find–oh, wait, never mind  I forgot that a Congressional White Caucus doesn’t exist. For one, white people don’t have such privilege, and two, white people–or at least the Republican ones–don’t wish to segregate themselves off from other races.

More @ Political Outcast

SWAT officer attracts ridicule after he’s pictured with his rifle sight on backwards

Via avordvet

 

A SWAT team in upstate New York is being mocked as an example of the difference between military and police training after an officer was captured peering through a backwards sight on his combat rifle. 

As users on the military Reddit were quick to point out when the image was posted, the reverse sight makes it effectively useless. 

Users mocked the SWAT officers training and some went so far as to question the motives of some of the men serving in local law enforcement.

The officer is using a 'military style' assault weapon with a close quarters combat sight that costs roughly $500.

'It's disturbing to think that 1) none of his buddies corrected it, and 2) he's in a real-life situation with his optic on backwards, which means he's never fired that rifle with the optic on it, which means it isn't zeroed and he thought it was OK to show up to a gunfight with an unzeroed weapon,' wrote one Reddit user.

More @ Daily Mail

LA Times: Illegal Immigration Can Reduce Global Warming

 

The Los Angeles Times ran a Thursday editorial by Middlebury College Professor Bill McKibben arguing that allowing millions of illegal immigrants into America will reduce global warming.

“I feel it's urgent that we get real immigration reform, allowing millions to step out of the shadows and on to a broad path toward citizenship,” wrote McKibben. “It will help, not hurt, our environmental efforts, and potentially in deep and powerful ways.”


McKibben says that while the average American has a larger carbon footprint than a person living in the developing world, bringing more immigrants to America would likely reduce their tendency to have higher birthrates, thereby creating less carbon-producing people.


“It's true that the typical person from a developing nation would produce more carbon once she adopted an American lifestyle,” says McKibben, “but she also probably would have fewer children.”

More @ Breitbart

Kerry Voices U.S. Support for NRA-opposed U.N. Arms Treaty

 

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry voiced his support on Friday for an international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global arms trade, but restated Washington's "red line" that it will not accept limits on U.S. domestic gun ownership.

The U.N. General Assembly voted in December to hold a final round of negotiations from March 18 to 28 on what could become the first international treaty to regulate international weapons transfers after a drafting conference in July 2012 collapsed because the United States and others wanted more time.

Arms control campaigners say one person every minute dies worldwide as a result of armed violence and a convention is needed to prevent the unregulated and illicit flow of weapons into conflict zones and fueling wars and atrocities.

"The United States is steadfast in its commitment to achieve a strong and effective Arms Trade Treaty that helps address the adverse effects of the international arms trade on global peace and stability," Kerry said in a statement.

More @ Newsmax

First female general to lead Parris Island Marine base says women can handle combat

 

The first female Marine Corps general in charge of Parris Island's basic training says she's confident women in the Corps will be able to handle combat.

Brig. Gen. Loretta Reynolds says the Pentagon's lifting of the combat exclusion against women means commanders will be able to use the talents of both men and women, wherever they may need them.

More @ Fox

The New Elites

 

Beware of the new elites who are rewriting the rule book, so that special privilege takes the place of hard work, Scott Rasmussen warns in his latest weekly newspaper column. 

“The United States is supposed to be a land of opportunity where everyone can pursue their dreams,” he writes. “But those on top today are busy rewriting the rules to limit entry into their club.”

Law and Disorder: Hapless Obama Announces Arrest of Dangerous Illegal Aliens He Let Go Last Week

Via Angry Mike

 

So Bammy, how’s that sequester temper tantrum working out for you? You’re a national punchline after closing the White House tours and frankly should be facing impeachment for unleashing dangerous criminal illegals out onto the streets in a cheap, cynical political ploy.

The Obama administration said Thursday it had rearrested and brought back four of the most dangerous immigrants it released from detention last month in the run-up to the budget sequestration.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton testified to Congress that his agency released 10 “level one” offenders, and has gone out and apprehended four of them. He said the other six are nonviolent.

How he claims knowledge they’re nonviolent escapes us. How would he know?

 

More @ JWF

Colt shuts down production, buses workers to CT legislature to protest threat to 400 jobs

Via Angry Mike

 

ver since Sandy Hook, there has been a coordinated effort in the polimedia (liberal politicians and media are the same these days, bouncing back and forth with jobs between the two fields) to gin up hysteria about firearms and use language to keep people emotional.

The purposeful intent it to keep the citizenry from coming down from their emotional roller coaster to think about the constitutionality of gun control, the warnings against it from the Founders, and the crime statistics that overwhelming prove that the “solutions” the polimedia are trying to push through are about protecting the polimedia from the people, and nothing else.

When pressed, each and every time polimedia have admitted that the laws they are pushing would not stop the next Columbine, Aurora, or Sandy Hook. They aren’t designed to. The unconstitutional laws being pushed by the political left were created to prevent the next Lexington and Concord. They don’t want their intolerable acts challenged. Thus tyrants have always operated.

The President of Colt Manufacturing shut down his plant yesterday to protest the witch hunt in Connecticut:

The president of one of the nation’s oldest gun manufacturers closed down his Connecticut factory Thursday morning and bused 400 of his workers to the state Capitol so they could personally urge lawmakers not to pass gun control legislation that they say could risk their livelihoods.

More @ Bob Owens

DRESCHEL: Rebel flag not black and white issue

Via Cousin John

 

Over the years, the Confederate battle flag has become commercialized as a branding device and popularized as an iconoclastic emblem.

From rock bands to bumper stickers, the flag is used to salute a certain defiant attitude to life.
Presumably, that’s why Cameron Bailey, owner of Hillbilly Heaven BBQ, has hoisted it over his new eatery downtown. It not only plays up his southern food theme, it’s a provocative marketing tool.

It has worked in the sense he has provoked a ton of mainstream and social media reaction.

To date, opinion seems pretty much divided as to whether flaunting the flag is an exercise in free speech or political and social insensitivity.

Appropriately enough, given the flag’s history, maybe it’s both.

Truth be told, the controversy looked to be fading until Ticat owner Bob Young gave it new legs this week by asking Bailey to ditch ol’ Dixie.

That was quickly followed by the Community Coalition Against Racism threatening to go to police to seek hate crime-related charges.

It’s easy to see where they’re coming from. It takes a huge effort to judge the flag outside of a racial context. But Young is only partially right when he says it’s a symbol of slavery and intolerance.

If you’ll excuse the pun, it’s really not a black and white issue. It’s as grey as the uniforms worn by soldiers of the Confederate States of America. More than 300,000 southerners died under the flag during the American Civil War, fighting for what they believed to be a just if ultimately lost cause.

More @  The Spec