Headlines

All from Internet news sites. Guess which ones from Politico?

U.N. Security Council passes sanctions on North Korea after missile tests

As Obamacare twists in political winds, insurers profits surge nearly 30 percent

Venezuela crushes military rebellion

Sweden: 550% rise in grenade attacks ... police panic

Trump praises Sessions for 'taking action' against leaks

Media Matters is coming after Sean Hannity advertisers, and his job

Another fire erupts in Dubai residential highrise ...

Kissinger: End of Islamic State could lead to 'radical Iranian empire'

Fox News' Bolling suspended after lewd texting allegations

VW executive faces 5 years in prison after pleading guilty in emissions scandal

France rethinks romance with Macron as his popularity sinks ...

Planned Parenthood to preschoolers: Genitals don't make you a boy or a girl

Headlines

Rigged: Podesta's buddy leading DOJ's Clinton investigation ...

WSJ: Israel fears lame duck Obama ambush at U.N.

Turkey considering reinstating death penalty

Dems sue Trump over poll watchers

NYT: Black voter turnout crashes in battleground states, hurting Hillary

Barber business booms outside of Mosul as Islamic State men remove beards

Hillary says she was in New York City on 9/11 (she wasn't)

If Dems rigged debate ... what else?

Survey: 75% say media biased for Hillary ...

New e-mails reveal 10 [Clinton e-mail] server attacks -- in 2 days!

FBI releases Clinton Foundation investigation records

Mystery: FBI surprises with files on Clinton '01 pardon of Marc Rich ... MORE COMING?

NASA

It seems that NASA can no longer be deemed a reliable reporter of climate data ... for it has started in 2012 to alter its repository of climate station data to make it appear that the Earth is warming. Shame, shame, shame! Thanks to an astute reader for this info, it seems that NASA now stands for No Anthropogenic Statistics Accurate ... see: No Tricks Zone Revelations. This article reveals, as a result of a German geologist's inspection of variances between NASA's 2010 and 2012 data bases, massive alterations of this primary data were made by NASA to suggest global warming where none exists.

If we can't trust NASA, whom can we trust? Al Gore? Our POTUS? The U.N.? The main-stream media? Apparently none of these. Perhaps we are required to fall back on something called our common sense ... and realize that we are being taken on a falsified and fanciful rocket ship ride into the kingdom of mendacious meanies who want to frighten us with doomsday predictions in order to control our lives and empty our pockets.

Managing the News

I was saddened ... and Joe Scarborough was ranting on yesterday’s Morning Joe show … saying that the killing of 15 women and children by Israeli artillery was asinine … see: Huffington Post Story. Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General of the U.N., said that attacking sleeping children was shameful … see: The Guardian Video. Even an Israeli military general was attempting to draw a moral equivalence … saying that the U.S. also killed many women and children when it shelled Fallujah during the Iraq war ... and Britain killed many more women and children when it fire-bombed Dresden during World War II.

However, independent of the horror of this tragic war, there are aspects of the news that we here in America are receiving that should be obvious … but we keep conveniently ignoring … and that is much of what we are hearing is a contrived fiction. The news is being shaded and even subverted by both sides of this conflict. But it does seem that Hamas is more aggressive at this game than Israel. I found the following post of the Powerline blog that showed me more of this subterfuge than one sees in most of our media: Powerline Blog Entry.  Here is a key excerpt:

Consider the case of Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati. On Tuesday, he tweeted that the deaths of Palestinian children on a playground caused by rocket fire were the result of a misfired Hamas rocket. “Misfired rocket killed children in Shati. Witness: militants rushed and cleared debris,” Barbati wrote: 

Significantly, Barbati tweeted this only after he had left Gaza. In the same tweet he wrote, “Out of Gaza far from Hamas retaliation.”

Please read this whole referenced blog entry above to see how closely Hamas manages the news coming out of Gaza. I think we must show a great deal of skepticism when we, including Joe Scarborough and Ban Ki-moon, jump to conclusions about what is actually happening in this current horrific conflict.

Gaffe-a-rama

Gaffs

It seems that not only is our fearless leader not well versed in U.S. foreign policy, but his close advisers (the ones who fill his Teleprompter with lots of “let me be clear”s and “you folks”s) are also clueless.  President Obama’s bull-in-a-china shop approach to delicate diplomacy once again displays his naive misunderstanding of recent European history. On his current G7 sojourn, besides his two bone-head boners that I have already pointed out (see: Unfiltered), he has made two other major public gaffes that will force our State Department into explaining away the inexplicable.

Firstly he said that Georgia was not on a path toward NATO membership when it indeed has been petitioning for such protection since 2008. And secondly, our child-President indicated that Kosovo had held a public referendum to break away from Serbia under the aegis of the U.N. … not even close to being true.  For the details of these two additional gaffes see: Breitbart Story.

And these are just his public miscues, God knows how many more he has made in private? I wonder if yesterday he sotto voce told the Pope that he would like to meet his wife?

A Snipe Hunt

Recently I blogged a piece about the International Monetary Fund and, in it, referenced its incredible lack of transparency (see:  I.M.F...ing).  Since then I have spent time on the IMF site (see: IMF Site) trying to find out exactly how much money the United States contributes and has contributed to this fund ... and into all the various slush-fund pockets it seems to have?  Ditto for China. Ditto for Russia. Ditto for Germany and France.  Etc.  And I would also like to find out who is lent (given?) this money on a year by year basis from these various slush funds?  And how much of this money has been paid back historically?  And how much has never been paid back?  What interest rates are charged? 

How much does the IMF spend annually for operating expenses?  (The former IMF head, Dominique Strauss-Kahn spent $3,000 per night for the hotel room where he was caught in his peccadilloes.) Specific salaries (I found on the NY Times how much Strauss Kahn was paid.  He made $442,000 per annum with a $79,120 expense account ... see: NY Times Article)?  What does the IMF income statement look like?  How about its balance sheet?  A cash flow statement?  Who has contributed gold to the IMF reserves?  Has much of this gold has been sold or otherwise disposed of?

If any reader out there has a week or so to devote to this snipe hunt on the above referenced web site, I welcome your travails and answers.  Like the U.N. (see: The U.N.) and the World Bank (see: The World Bank), I suspect  that the real meaningful numbers are locked up in New York or Geneva or Washington somewhere where prying eyes such as mine will never find them.  (I just hope that the Congress has access to this data.)  The only thing that these international (unelected) agencies allow us schnooks to see is the mountains of  gibberish and spin provided on their web sites.  They are self-perpetuating bureaucratic mazes whose major function seems to be politically correct arm waving and spending someone else's moolah.  If any U.S. corporation were as opaque as these international organizations, its entire management team would be peeking out from behind bars.