NC Renegades

House Speaker John Boehner, who will step down at the end of October, said on “Face the Nation” Sunday, “We have got groups here in town, members of the House and Senate here in town, who whip people into a frenzy believing they can accomplish things that they know, they know are never going to happen.”

The Speaker was referring to the latest threat by conservative Republicans to hold up spending authorization for the government if it includes $500 million in taxpayer funds going to Planned Parenthood.

According to the Speaker’s “wisdom,” and that from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and other Republican establishment figures, a spending bill defunding Planned Parenthood will certainly be vetoed by the president, without sufficient votes in the Senate to override that veto. Republicans will then allegedly bear the brunt of public resentment for a government shutdown.

But Speaker Boehner’s characterization of the situation captures why conservatives are frustrated with him and the rest of the Republican establishment.

Leadership isn’t defined by polls or head counts. It is defined by principles and courage. If polls that reflect what happened yesterday are left to determine what happens tomorrow, why do we need leaders? If politics is the art of the possible, it is leadership that takes what seems impossible and brings it into the realm of the possible.

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The bottom line is that the supposed “leadership” in Washington, D.C. is either incompetent or complicit.

David DeGerolamo

The 8th NC PATCON will go on as planned. The large tent will be covered on all four sides. Thunderstorms and 15 mph winds are forecast for Saturday.

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Our ancestors would be ashamed of us if we didn’t!

Russia has conducted its first strikes near Homs after effectively warning the US to stay out of the sky.

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You go to war with the commander-in-chief that you have. Hope and change is not an effective battle strategy.

David DeGerolamo

wo months ago, when China stunned the world in announcing it had officially “bought” 604 tons of gold for the first time since 2009 (this was untrue: China merely admitted to the world what we had reported for years, namely that it had been patiently accumulating gold via untraceable accounts and only now decided to reveal a fraction of its total holdings), we said that, contrary to the wrong “one-and-done” pundit assessment, China would continue “adding” to its gold holdings. To wit:

… now that the seal has been finally broken after so many years, and since today’s update indicates that Chinese gold numbers are clearly goal-seeked with a specific policy purpose – to boost confidence – we await for the PBOC to start leaking incremental gold holding data every month (and especially in months when the market crashes) which will bring us ever closer to what China’s true gold holdings are.

One month ago, we were proven correct when China indeed announced it had “added” another 19.3 tons of gold in July – even as it was dumping record amounts of Treasurys at the time as we previously reported.

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A lot of people out there expected something to happen in September that did not ultimately happen.  There were all kinds of wild theories floating around, and many of them had no basis in reality whatsoever.  But without a doubt, some very important things did happen in September.  As I warned about ahead of time, we are witnessing the most significant global financial meltdown since the end of 2008.  All of the largest stock markets in the world are crashing simultaneously, and so far the amount of wealth that has been wiped out worldwide is in excess of 5 trillion dollars.  In addition to stocks, junk bonds are also crashing, and Bank of America says that it is a “slow moving trainwreck that seems to be accelerating“.  Thanks to the commodity price crash, many of the largest commodity traders on the planet are now imploding.  I wrote about the death spiral that has gripped Glencore yesterday.  On Tuesday, the stock price of the largest commodity trader in Asia, the Noble Group, plummeted like a rock and commodity trading giant Trafigura appears to be in worse shape than either Glencore or the Noble Group.  The total collapse of any of them could easily be a bigger event than the implosion of Lehman Brothers in 2008.  So I honestly do not understand the “nothing is happening” crowd.  It takes ignorance on an almost unbelievable level to try to claim that “nothing is happening” in the financial world right now.

Within the last 60 days, we have seen some things happen that we have never seen before.

For example, did you know that we witnessed the greatest intraday stock market crash in U.S. history on August 24th?

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While I personally thought that we would have a major economic event in September, the above information should not be interpreted as an apologetic response. September was an important month and major economic events did occur. Whether World War III has started in Syria as some people are stating, we will know in a short period of time.

There are two certainties:

1. There is nothing that any one person can do to change the inevitable consequences of apathy and political ambitions running unchecked.
2. September was not a good month for the world’s economies or stability.

David DeGerolamo

Over the weekend when we reported that one of China’s largest coal miners had laid off 100,000, or 40% of its workforce, we noted that China’s hard-landing is starting to hit where it really hurts: employment, or rather the lack thereof, and the one logical consequence: “now, many migrant workers struggle to find their footing in a downshifting economy. As factories run out of money and construction projects turn idle across China, there has been a rise in the last thing Beijing wants to see: unrest.”

Moments ago we may have witnessed the first direct, and deadly, manifestation of this unrest when as Xinhua reported, a series of “massive” explosions rocked the southern Chinese city of Liuzhou earlier today, killing at least three six people and injuring more than a dozen, state media reported.

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Russia has demanded that American warplanes exit Syrian airspace immediately, a US official told Fox News on Wednesday.

The official said that Russian diplomats sent an official message to the US ordering American planes out of Syria, adding that Russian fighter jets were now flying over Syrian territory, according to the report.

US military sources told the news outlet that US planes would not comply with the Russian demand.

“There is nothing to indicate that we are changing operations over Syria,” a senior defense official told Fox.

The Russian parliament on Wednesday unanimously granted President Vladimir Putin the right to deploy the country’s military in Syria, a move a top Kremlin aide said related only to the air force.

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We all know that this will not end well. The Obama transformation of the United States into a third world dictatorship is nearing fruition. Along with its consequences. There will be an accounting and all branches of government will have to answer for their actions. Hopefully in a court of law if we can regain our nation’s morality.

David DeGerolamo