NC Renegades

A simple truth that everyone has missed. Here is another truth that the Department of Injustice overlooks: selling human body parts is illegal.

David DeGerolamo

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders took a surprising line on immigration in a recent interview, denouncing higher immigration levels as a right-wing “Koch brothers proposal.”

Sanders was being interviewed by Ezra Klein of Vox, who pointed out that Sanders’ self-proclaimed socialist beliefs typically entailed taking a more international view of politics. The implications of that point of view, Klein suggested, include “things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders.”

Absolutely not, Sanders replied.

“Open borders? No, that’s a Koch brothers proposal,” he said. “That’s a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States… What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy.”

More…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Democrats want illegal votes. Republicans want cheaper labor. Immigration may as well be social security: it has been a political issue for my entire adult life and it only gets worse.

David DeGerolamo

Friend —

It’s President Obama’s 54th birthday this Tuesday, and one thing we know he loves is hearing from organizers around the country.

We’re putting together a card to celebrate — you should add your name.

It’s been a great year for the President, and for organizing. We saw huge wins on health care and marriage equality last month, the EPA’s Clean Power Plan to fight climate change is being finalized later this summer, and there’s plenty more on the horizon.

Organizers have been working for decades for the kind of progress we’re seeing. This is a great time to stop and celebrate how far we’ve come — by sending your well-wishes to the Organizer-in-Chief.

So take a moment today, and sign OFA’s birthday card for President Obama:

https://my.barackobama.com/Happy-Birthday-President-Obama

Thanks,

Sara

Sara El-Amine
Executive Director
Organizing for Action

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I will pass.

David DeGerolamo

By Publius Huldah

Our federal Constitution is one of enumerated powers only. If you spend 20 minutes to read through the entire Constitution and highlight all the powers delegated to Congress and the President, you will get a complete list of the objects on which Congress is authorized to spend money. THAT is how our Framers controlled federal spending. If it’s on the list of delegated powers, Congress may lawfully spend money on it.  But if it’s not on the list, Congress may not lawfully spend money on it.

Few people know of the existence of this list of delegated powers – no one in Congress seems to be aware of it.  Most of what Congress spends money on is not on the list.

The solution is to downsize the federal government back to its constitutional limits.

All versions of a balanced budget amendment (BBA) fundamentally change the constitutional design – they create a new standard for spending: They change the constitutional standard for spending FROM whether the object is on the list TO a limit on total spending – where Congress may lawfully spend money on whatever they want.

More…

Yesterday it was US and Italian energy giants Chevron and Saipem which announced a total of over 10,000 new job cuts in the aftermath of oil sliding back under $50 and resuming its downward trend. This is how we framed it: “in Q2, after the price of oil staged a substantial rebound of about 50% from the year to date lows in the $40’s, energy-related layoffs trickled to a halt as corporations hoped the worst is behind them, and as a result would merely bide their time before redeploying their workforce toward exploration and production. Alas, this was not meant to be, and as the events of the last month have shown, oil has resumed its downward slide. And, as expected, so have layoffs.”

Today, we got more confirmation of this when Royal Dutch Shell, still basking in the glow of its proposed $70 billion mega-acquisition of BG Group, announced it would axe 6,500 jobs this year and step up spending cuts, responding to an extended period of lower oil prices which contributed to a 37 percent drop in the oil and gas group’s second-quarter profits.

In addition, the Anglo-Dutch company is also increasing asset disposals to $50 billion between 2014 and 2018 as it pushes ahead with its proposed $70 billion acquisition of BG Group.

Reuters reports: “We have to be resilient in a world where oil prices remain low for some time, whilst keeping an eye on recovery,” Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden said.

Shell said it anticipated 6,500 staff and direct contractor reductions globally in 2015 from a total of nearly 100,000 employees, as it grapples with a halving in oil prices to around $55 per barrel in a year.

More…

China and Russia are developing maneuvering high-speed strike vehicles that pose new threats to the United States, U.S. Strategic Command leaders said Wednesday.

Adm. Cecil D. Haney, Strategic Command’s (Stratcom) senior leader, said during remarks at a nuclear deterrence conference that despite arms control efforts, hypersonic weapons are among several threatening strategic trends emerging in the world.

China has conducted four flight tests of a 7,000 mile-per-hour maneuvering strike vehicle, and Russia is developing high-speed weapons and reportedly tested a hypersonic weapon in February.

“Nation states continue to develop and modernize their nuclear weapon capabilities,” Haney said. “Nuclear and non-nuclear nations are prepared to employ cyber, counter-space, and asymmetric capabilities as options for achieving their objectives during crisis and conflict, and new technologies such as hypersonic glide vehicles are being developed, complicating our sensing and defensive approaches.”

More…

“U.S. downplays Iranian victory to ‘soothe’ fear over deal”

Senior Iranian officials are accusing the Obama administration of lying about the details of the recent nuclear accord in order to soothe fears among U.S. lawmakers and Americans about the implications of the deal, which will release billions of dollars to the Islamic Republic while temporarily freezing its nuclear program, according to reports from Iran’s state-controlled media.

As Secretary of State John Kerry and other senior Obama administration figures launch a full-court press to convince Congress to approve the  deal, Iranian leaders are dismissing the rhetoric as “aimed at domestic consumption.”

Kerry and other top administration officials have been defending the deal on Capitol Hill in recent days, claiming that it will rein in the Islamic Republic’s contested nuclear program and fix its nuclear “breakout” period, the time required for it to obtain the amount of highly enriched uranium necessary for a nuclear weapon, at one year.

Critics have noted that the deal provides Iran with billions of dollars in sanctions relief that could be spent on terrorism and lifts bans on Iran’s export of weapons and construction of ballistic missiles.

More…

As the US and Turkey got started on a new air campaign against the Islamic State in Syria, the jhadis pulled off their most devastating attack yet on the Syrian army’s biggest arsenal. They subjected the giant Al-Safira military complex north of Aleppo to a steady blitz of an estimated 50 Grad missiles from Monday night to Tuesday, July 28.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Facility No.790, a large depot of the Syrian army’s strategic weapons, including chemicals, was set on fire and flattened.

Al Safira was important and big enough to be guarded by 1,800 members of the Syrian Air Force’s elite intelligence unit (not part of the air force) which comes under the direct command of President Bashar Assad.

Wednesday morning, flames continued to burn over the facility and explosions still shook buildings far away.

Some sources attributed the attack to Turkish Air Force bombers. In fact, it was the Islamic State which kept the complex under steady Grad missile fire, that was precise enough to raise suspicions of an inside leak betraying the exact locations of key targets, including subterranean structures, workshops for manufacture and repairs and large stockpiles of weapons.

Our sources list the items and sections of the Al-Safira military complex which ISIS demolished:

More…

More…

What I am about to share with you is quite stunning.  A well-respected financial expert that correctly predicted the last two stock market crashes is now warning that we are right on the verge of the next one.  John Hussman is a former professor of economics and international finance at the University of Michigan, and the information in his latest weekly market comment is staggering.  Since 1970, there have only been a handful of times when a combination of market signals that Hussman uses have indicated that a major market peak has been reached.  In 1972, 2000 and 2007 each of those peaks was followed by a dramatic stock market crash.  Now, for the first time since the last financial crisis, all four of those signals appeared once again during the week of July 17th.  If Hussman’s analysis is correct, this could very well mean that the next great stock market crash in the United States is imminent.

It was an excellent article by Jim Quinn of the Burning Platform that first alerted me to Hussman’s latest warning.  If you don’t follow Quinn’s work already, you should, because it is excellent.

When someone is repeatedly correct about the financial markets, we should all start paying attention.  Back in late 2007, Hussman warned us about what was coming in 2008, but most people did not listen.

Now he is sounding the alarm again.  According to Hussman, when there is a confluence of four key market indicators, that tells us that the market has peaked and is in danger of crashing.  The following comes from Newsmax…

More…

U.S. to Lift Sanctions on Khamenei’s Financial Empire 

The Obama administration is gearing up to lift economic sanctions on a nearly $100 billion network of organizations belonging to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, according to the parameters of the recent Iranian nuclear deal.

On the day the nuclear deal is implemented, the United States will lift sanctions on Khamenei’s financial empire, which comprises a large network of foundations and companies that personally enrich the Islamic Republic’s leader.

The removal of these sanctions will likely “pump tens of billions of dollars into the supreme leader’s personal coffers, helping him secure his grip on the Iranian people, and bolstering Iran’s ability to promote its agenda abroad,” according to a recent analysis from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Iran is poised to receive billions of dollars in sanctions relief under the deal and will also see restrictions on its Revolutionary Guards Corps waived.

More…