NC Renegades

Scholastic is announcing today that we are stopping the distribution of the book entitled A Birthday Cake for George Washington, by Ramin Ganeshram and illustrated by Vanessa Brantley-Newton, and will accept all returns. While we have great respect for the integrity and scholarship of the author, illustrator, and editor, we believe that, without more historical background on the evils of slavery than this book for younger children can provide, the book may give a false impression of the reality of the lives of slaves and therefore should be withdrawn.

Scholastic has a long history of explaining complex and controversial issues to children at all ages and grade levels. We do not believe this title meets the standards of appropriate presentation of information to younger children, despite the positive intentions and beliefs of the author, editor, and illustrator.

Scholastic provides a wide variety of fiction and informational books and magazines which teachers, parents and children rely on, including many devoted to African American experience, history and culture.  We are also committed to providing books, magazines, and educational materials that portray the experience of all children, including those from diverse communities and backgrounds, and we will continue to expand that commitment through our global publishing channels.

Source

h/t Lisa A

It looks like it is going to be another chaotic week for global financial markets.  On Sunday, news that Iran plans to dramatically ramp up oil production sent stocks plunging all across the Middle East.  Stocks in Kuwait were down 3.1 percent, stocks in Saudi Arabia plummeted 5.4 percent, and stocks in Qatar experienced a mammoth 7 percent decline.  And of course all of this comes in the context of a much larger long-term decline for Middle Eastern stocks.  At this point, Saudi Arabian stocks are down more than 50 percent from their 2014 highs.  Needless to say, a lot of very wealthy people in Saudi Arabia are getting very nervous.  Could you imagine waking up someday and realizing that more than half of your fortune had been wiped out?  Things aren’t that bad in the U.S. quite yet, but it looks like another rough week could be ahead.  The Dow, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq are all down at least 12 percent from their 52-week highs, and the Russell 2000 is already in bear market territory.  Hopefully this week will not be as bad as last week, but events are starting to move very rapidly now.

Much of the chaos around the globe is being driven by the price of oil.  At the end of last week the price of oil dipped below 30 dollars a barrel, and now Iran has announced plans “to add 1 million barrels to its daily crude production”…

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Earlier we reported that Wells Fargo may have an energy problem because as CFO John Shrewsbury revealed, of the $17 billion in energy exposure, “most of it” was junk rated.

But, while one can speculate what the terminal cumulative losses, cumulative defaults and loss severities on this loan book will be, at least Wells was honest enough to reveal its energy-related loan loss estimate: it was $1.2 billion, or 7% of total – as Mike Mayo pointed out, one of the highest on the street. Whether it is high, or low, is anyone’s guess, but at least Wells disclosed it.

Citi did not.

Yes, the bank did disclose its holdings to the oil and gas sector at $21 billion funded and $58 billion which included unfunded (watch that unfunded exposure collapsing and shrinking the available pool of shale company liquidity in the coming weeks), and it did announce that it “built roughly $300 million of energy-related loan loss reserves this quarter”, but paradoxically one thing it did not disclose was its total reserves to energy.

Note the following perplexing exchange between analyst Mike Mayo and Citi CFO John Gerspach:

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1. Neither Obama, Marco Rubio, or Ted Cruz are natural born citizens. At the times they were born, their Fathers were not citizens. Location of birth is irrelevant. Those who insist that a person must be born within the US point to Section 212 of Vattel.  But one must read all that Vattel wrote on the subject and which is contained in Sections 213-217.

We should also strive to become more Christ like. You will never be perfect and without sin but that is the goal given to us. Does this apply to a nation as well as an individual? What happens when rulers keep people in ignorance in order to achieve their goals and expand their tyranny?

David DeGerolamo

by Robert Gore

Corruption is a scourge infecting almost everyone who comes in contact with it. The media is not immune. There was never a golden age when an incorruptible press exposed political and government skullduggery without fear or favor. The press’s shrine to itself—Watergate—was, to use a well-worn phrase, a partisan witch hunt; unthinkable if President Nixon had been a Democrat and had not been loathed by the media elite. As Nixon knew, his two Democratic predecessors had committed more heinous acts that the press had never turned into causes célèbre. As the two main political parties have merged to become the party of government (the only remaining differences are who gets to dispense the spoils and to whom) the press has become its public relations arm, regardless of which party holds nominal power.

Washington’s endemic insularity and corruption have bred the political counter-revolution propelling Donald Trump’s, Bernie Sanders’, and to a lesser extent, Ted Cruz’s campaigns. Nobody should mistake the diffusion of the anger and its occasional incoherence for transience or impotency. Trump and Sanders have already made fools of the pundits who said their campaigns would fizzle by New Year’s. Some mainstream media figures have acknowledged that this phenomena is as much a vote against politics as usual as it is an endorsement of those candidates. However, there have been few media acknowledgements that it is also a vote against the media itself, the mouthpiece of the established order. There has been no shortage of snotty articles, editorials, and hit pieces on Trump, Sanders, their issues, and their voters.

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I’m giving some thought to entering the Presidential race. Yes it’s late but someone needs to better represent the interests and concerns of the Just Leave Me The Fuck Alone (JLMTFA) community. Cruz comes closest, but he’s still a guy who will, if elected, do stuff.

I offer this example of social engineering by the “progressive lites” …

The leadership inside the professional Republican party apparatus will never accept Donald Trump as the nominee. Period.

The North Carolina GOP Primary Ballot is yet another indication.   Never before in party political history has the North Carolina Republican Party given voters the option of “NO PREFERENCE“.  (see below):

Where do the “no preference” votes/delegates go?  To the party leadership of course.  What will they do with them?  Give to the party candidate.

… a consolidation of power within the RNC apparatus intentionally constructed to stop the candidate of the GRASSROOTS from achieving victory.

From TheConservativeTreehouse.com

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