NC Renegades

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Your tax dollars at work. No consequences. No accountability. No news coverage.

David DeGerolamo

Since China fired its first ‘official’ shot across the Petrodollar bow a year ago, there has been an increasing groundswell of de-dollarization across the world’s energy trade (despite Washington’s exclamations of ‘isolated’ non-dollar transactors). The rise of the PetroYuan has not been far from our headlines in the last year, with China increasingly leveraging its rise as an economic power and as the most important incremental market for hydrocarbon exporters, in the Persian Gulf and the former Soviet Union, to circumscribe dollar dominance in global energy – with potentially profound ramifications for America’s strategic position. And now, as AP reports, for the first time in history, China has docked a Navy Destroyer in the Southern Iranian port of Bandar-Abbas – right across the Straits of Hormuz from ‘US stronghold-for-now’ Bahrain and UAE.

The rise of the PetroYuan has not been far from our headlines in the last year:

China Fires Shot Across Petrodollar Bow: Shanghai Futures Exchange May Price Crude Oil Futures In Yuan 

Guest Post: From PetroDollar To PetroYuan – The Coming Proxy Wars 

The Rise Of The Petroyuan And The Slow Erosion Of Dollar Hegemony

And now, as AP reports, for the first time in history, China has docked a Navy Destroyer in a Southern Iranian port of Bandar-Abbas – right across the Straits of Hormuz from ‘US stronghold-for-now’ Bahrain and UAE.

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True Conservatives understand why our country is falling apart. It’s not that we lack the power and the ability to be the country we used to be; it’s that our citizenry has willfully and ignorantly abandoned a moral imperative to defend our American ideals by living those ideals. America is special because of the ideals that she was founded on and the ideals that most people around the world still thinks she stands for.  But what they don’t know is that those ideals have been turned on its head. The exercise of freedom that once defined her is now killing her.  How is this happening?  It’s because of the implied understanding that with great freedom comes great responsibility and the fact that too many people – including most of our citizens, most of our country’s social leaders, most of our elected representatives, and certainly most of our sitting judges – have shirked the responsibility they have. Conservatives – true conservatives – are trying to conserve those fundamental ideals. They thought it would be easy because after all, the nexus between our greatness and the bedrock principles defined in our Declaration and protected in our Constitution is uncontested.  Yet, sadly, we see that It has become popular to make fun of “conservatives,” and in some communities, the very word “conservative” is too offensive to even speak. This is our downfall.

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Last night’s headlines crowed in bright red flashing text that Russia and Ukraine had (once again) agreed a cease-fire and terms over the borders between the two nations. Perhaps not surprisingly, mere hours later, Ukraine is claiming that Russia has broken the truce… with the use of a tactical nuclear weapon at Luhansk airport. This comes on the heels of claims by the pro-Russia separatists that Kiev forces destroyed a massive military plant in Donetsk. Russia’s defense ministry flatly denies the ‘nuclear strikes’ adding that “no reasonable person will take them seriously.” This truce-breaking action has once again raised calls among Ukrainians for the nation to get its nuclear status back; something Russia is clearly strongly against.

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Doubtful.

David DeGerolamo

For the past few weeks, as Scotland debated the wisdom of independence, Reuters has been asking Americans how they would feel about declaring independence today, not from the United Kingdom, but from the mother country they left England to create. The exact wording of the question was, “Do you support or oppose the idea of your state peacefully withdrawing from the United States of America and the federal government?”

It was hard to imagine many people would support secession. Forget the fact that the cautionary lesson of the Civil War is top of mind for many people as we commemorate its 150^th anniversary; just in terms of dollars and cents, who in their right minds would give up all the money they’ve already paid into the Social Security and Medicare systems? Besides, most states get more back from the federal government than they put in.

Then the results came in. You can see them for yourself here, and you can filter them any way you want—by age, region, income, party affiliation, etc. Any way you slice it, the data are startlingly clear: Almost a quarter (23.9 percent) of those surveyed said they were strongly or provisionally inclined to leave the United States, and take their states with them. Given the polling sample — about 9,000 people so far—the online survey’s credibility interval (which is digital for “margin of error”) was only 1.2 percentage points, so there is no question that that is what they said.

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This actually means that almost half of the people working to support the looters have had enough. What happens when only a few more “percentage” points figure it out?

David DeGerolamo

French vegetable farmers protesting against falling living standards have set fire to tax and insurance offices in town of Morlaix, in Brittany.

The farmers used tractors and trailers to dump artichokes, cauliflowers and manure in the streets and also smashed windows, police said.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls condemned protesters for preventing firefighters from dealing with the blaze.

The farmers say they cannot cope with falling prices for their products.

A Russian embargo on some Western goods – imposed over the Ukraine crisis – has blocked off one of their main export markets.

About 100 farmers first launched an overnight attack on an insurance office outside Morlaix, which they set light to and completely destroyed, officials said.

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h/t Hans in the woods