Today, in 1943, FDR, Churchill and Stalin met at a conference in Tehran to plan strategy at the height of WWII.

The importance of strategic metals to the U.S. economy came into sharp focus last November when China cut off Japan’s rare earth metals supply over a territorial dispute and Japan immediately backed down. Since then, Americans have learned that the majority of rare earth deposits are in China, accounting for 97% of world production.

China’s action against Japan also exposed a more threatening strategy in the works‐‐ to create a two-tiered price structure with China’s manufacturers receiving rare earths at significantly lower costs than the rest of the world. Prices outside China are now 20 times what they were 2 years ago and 40% higher than inside China.

Is America confronting a situation similar to the 1970s OPEC oil embargo? No, the current situation is actually far worse. Deng Xiaoping famously noted 30 years ago that “the Mideast has oil, China has rare earths”. What he didn’t say was unlike the Mideast, China also has the means to manufacture and distribute globally every product that requires rare earths, which today includes automobiles, computers, cell phones, fluorescent lights, much of our military equipment and nearly every green technology‐electric cars, wind turbines, fuel cells, solar panels, etc. This is precisely what makes the current situation so dangerous to the long term prospects for the U.S. economy and American jobs. A two‐tiered price structure could make it impossible for American manufacturers to compete with China in the 21st Century.

A constant refrain from economists and politicians is that American innovation is our way out of the current financial dilemma. Breakthrough U.S. discoveries in the past have created whole industries such as automobiles, commercial flight and computers, generating millions of jobs and national prosperity. But what if we are unable to participate in the next great American discovery simply because we can’t get the necessary raw materials at competitive prices? The millions of jobs would blossom where the materials are available. Today, that is China.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) – Hundreds of Occupy Los Angeles protesters showed no sign they planned to move Sunday ahead of a city-imposed midnight deadline to abandon their encampment, saying they would instead hold an “eviction block party.”

Although city officials have told demonstrators they must leave the weeks-old protest site and take their nearly 500 tents with them by 12:01 a.m. Monday, just a handful were seen packing up Sunday.

Instead, some passed out fliers containing the city seal and the words: “By order of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, this notice terminates your tenancy and requires you to attend the Occupy L.A. Eviction Block Party,” which the fliers’ said was scheduled for 12:01 a.m.

“The best way to keep a non-violent movement non-violent is to throw a party, and keep it festive and atmospheric,” said Brian Masterson as he helped a friend break down her tent. “And I’m going to be doing as much as I can to stop violence.”

He said he had turned his own tent into a “non-violent booby trap” by filling it with sandbags to make it tough to tear down.

“We can’t beat the LAPD, but we can make it difficult for them to do their job, and have fun while we’re doing it,” Masterson said. (more…)

A preliminary hearing for Mohamed H. Dawod is scheduled to take place Monday at 10 a.m. Central in Springfield, Mo. The 25-year-old Glendale, Ariz., man is charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the Sept. 8 shooting death of an Ohio man at a Greyhound bus station in the southwest Missouri community.

Mohamed H. Dawod

Dawod is accused of shooting Justin Hall, 32, of Mt. Vernon, Ohio, during a late-night rest stop for travelers on a St. Louis-bound bus full of passengers from as far away as Amarillo, Texas, point of origin for the bus.

On Sept. 9, I was the first to raise the possibility that the shooting might be a case of terrorism at my website and at BigGovernment.com after officials in the Southwest Missouri community, according to a report in the Springfield News-Leader, were quick to say the shooting appeared random.

A day later, a KSPR-TV report cited Springfield police officials as saying that, because of a language barrier, they only learned Dawod’s name and had asked the FBI to help them with the investigation. That local television report included this telling paragraph:

Ten separate witnesses say they did not notice the men fighting or arguing before the shooting. One passenger said she watched the suspect wander around the terminal until the call to line up to re-board the bus. “She then observed the suspect remove a silver and black handgun from a back pack he was carrying,” the officer wrote. “The suspect then pointed the handgun upward while saying something. The witness could not understand what the suspect said and didn’t know if he was speaking English.” No matter what was said the witness said Hall didn’t react or turn around. Shortly after the witness says Dawod shot him from a few feet away.

I went on to draw information from two other television news reports that seemed to reveal more than the “official” story lets on about the deadly incident that involved a man with a Muslim name allegedly shooting someone he did not know less than 48 hours ahead of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States:

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From BusinessInsider:

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Senate Democrats will put forward a plan to extend the payroll tax cut into 2012 this week paid for by a surtax on those with incomes greater than $1 million.

The tax cut provides the average American family with an extra $1000 in their pocket each year — and President Barack Obama has said failing to extend the tax cut and unemployment benefits would cost the economy 1 million jobs and 0.5% off GDP.

Schumer described the revenue increase on Meet the Press as a “small surtax on incomes over $1 million,” a measure certain to draw opposition from deficit-hawk Republicans opposed to any tax increases.

Schumer added that Democrats would keep introducing the payroll tax cut if it fails this week — but indicated his party is willing to negotiate other “pay-fors” with Republicans if necessary.

Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist said on the same program that he is not opposed to extending the tax cut, but he indicated he would be opposed to a new tax on millionaires to pay for it.

Read more here.

From the Manchester Union-Leader:

America is at a crucial crossroads. It is not going to be enough to merely replace Barack Obama next year. We are in critical need of the innovative, forward-looking strategy and positive leadership that Gingrich has shown he is capable of providing.

He did so with the Contract with America. He did it in bringing in the first Republican House in 40 years and by forging balanced budgets and even a surplus despite the political challenge of dealing with a Democratic President. A lot of candidates say they’re going to improve Washington. Newt Gingrich has actually done that, and in this race he offers the best shot of doing it again.

We sympathize with the many people we have heard from, both here and across the country, who remain unsure of their choice this close to the primary. It is understandable. Our nation is in peril, yet much of the attention has been focused on fluff, silliness and each candidate’s minor miscues.

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Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) doesn’t have a voting record ranked as far left as Socialist Bernie Sanders by accident; Sherrod thinks a bigger central government is the answer to every problem. In this video, Senator Brown applies his trademark class warfare to the issue of Medicare, instructing a gathering of teachers’ union members to indoctrinate their family, friends, and students against cruel conservatism:

Like the first half of Sherrod’s answer to a question about whether privatization of government programs is a Wall Street conspiracy, there is so much stupid in this clip that it’s tough to begin. To his credit, Sherrod Brown is consistent! Sherrod consistently glosses over exploding federal deficits, consistently attributes the worst motives to anyone who tries to limit government’s power, and consistently brags about the wonders of failed Progressive governance.

Even with crippling tax hikes, the government programs whose praises Sherrod sings will bankrupt the nation by mid-century. Even if Medicare did amazing things for every American it served, only a fool or liar would fight reforms to a collapsing system.

This is why I ask, earnestly, my question from the end of the video: Is Sherrod Brown an idiot, or a dishonest idealogue? The brutal effects of Washington spending on America’s economy are plain to see, and unfunded entitlement liabilities total in the tens of trillions. Yet, as our fiscal canoe sloshes toward the falls, Sherrod Brown attacks with a straight face anyone who dares paddle backwards.

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In response to Peter Schweizer’s shocking revelations in Throw Them all Out, I organized a call for the resignation of our local Congressman, Spencer Bachus. I was in good company, flanked by conservative giants Andrew Breitbart and Stephen K. Bannon, as well as Business Insider and other Tea Party folks who recognize the urgent need to clean our proverbial house before attempting to sell it in 2012. Despite Bachus’s alleged improprieties, I knew my protest would engender some pushback; I was surprised, however, to see the direction from which it came.

Some Republicans whispered foul, suggesting that I should instead “pick on a liberal like Nancy Pelosi, or even Obama.” When asked, they elaborated that even if the Congressman leveraged his position to gamble against the American economy or bought based upon sensitive, inside information, “at least he’s a reliable conservative vote.”

A reliable conservative vote is necessary. But it is far from sufficient.

Voting in accordance to the wishes of one’s district is a rote activity that any halfwit could perform. Of course, politicians have to vote representative of their districts or risk being voted out; the American electorate understands that fact. However, there is a stark contrast between Congressman Bachus and Senator Jim DeMint, Governor Walker, and Congressman Paul Ryan, three exemplars of voting based on principled leadership, rather than political expediency. The difference can be more insidious than it might seem at first glance. This holds true on both the federal and local levels.

It is easy to “vote right” for your district. Nancy Pelosi wins her district, as do most representatives, not because they are right on the issues, but because they vote in accordance with their districts enough that any “rogue” votes are understated or in small proportion to the ones that please their constituents. Politicians don’t always vote their district out of conviction, but often only because political expedience. Of course, there are ways to “vote right” and kill things behind the scenes. Worse, there are ways for a politician to look perfect on paper, yet behind the scenes sabotage the very votes they publicly support. Our most corrupt elected officials commit the most egregious and invisible act: publicly claiming to fight for something, while secretly cutting deals with other voting members behind the scenes to kill it, or worse, giving it mere lip service but expending zero political capital to pass the bill.

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Just when everyone had made peace with the NBA lock-out, the owners and players have announced a tentative deal to begin the season on Christmas Day.

I warned last week that a recession and higher unemployment were about to hit the U.S. economy. On Tuesday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis cut their estimate of growth in the third quarter ending September from 2.5% to 2%. Then on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve rocked financial markets by forcing America’s 31 largest U.S. banks to “stress test” balance sheets to determine their capability to withstand an 8% drop in the economy; which would cause home prices to plunge by 21%, and unemployment rate to jump to 13%.

I illuminated in my report that U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has been under-counting unemployment by at least 2%. For a nation reporting 154.4 million workers; this means the 13.9 million reportedly unemployed should actually be 17 million. Given only 12.8 million were unemployed at the 1933 peak of the Great Depression, when the undercounting and the Fed’s stress test are added the total is 23.2 million unemployed; almost double the Great Depression.

Formerly bullish top bank analyst Dick Bove in an Bloomberg interview commented on the Fed:

“By taking these draconian views of what could happen in the market, if they in fact force the banks to defense themselves against the outlook that they’ve put up, they’ll cause a recession,”

Consistent with my prediction that the booming production of capital goods would fall hard next year after the expiration of the 100% “bonus depreciation” tax credit; the bad news parade picked up steam this week with reports that U.S. durable goods orders fell 0.7 percent last month and initial jobless claims came in higher than Wall Street analyst’s predictions.

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What wonderful people.
The Occupy Black Friday goons called Walmart customers “whores” while they were out shopping.

The Occupy protesters were handing out “Don’t be a CUMsumer whore” fliers to the shoppers.

From the video:

(Warning: This is nuts)

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From The Hill:

Politically vulnerable lawmakers are lining up as co-sponsors of legislation that would ban congressional insider trading.

A “60 minutes” report earlier this month indicated that members of Congress have been trading stocks based on knowledge gained from their positions, a practice that does not violate the law.

Before the report, a House bill that would outlaw the practice only had nine co-sponsors. In the week following the “60 Minutes” segment, that number jumped to 92. Of the 83 additions, 19 are facing competitive reelection races as defined by the Cook Political Report.

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A friend of mine was recently opining on Facebook, in the midst of the Occupy Albany movement announcing plans for a Black Friday flash mob scene at the local mall – What are the Occupiers trying to get done? It is a question many people have been asking since the movement began.

Democrats, particularly Nancy Pelosi, would have people believe that this is simply a wonderful grassroots citizen movement, people exercising their freedom of speech, holding banks and corporations accountable, and spreading peaceful socialist messages of a perceived attainable utopian economic society. It is not.

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement amounts to nothing more than making excuses. Excuses that legitimize a platform of laziness and entitlements, excuses to act in a lawless manner, and excuses for snubbing basic principles of civil discourse.

After pouring through reports coming out of the Occupy movements in D.C., Portland, Boston, Oakland, and on, and on, what the protesters most closely resemble becomes quite clear. Seven basic attributes define the movement in its entirety.

Wrath

The wrath of the protesters seems to be aimed mostly at big banks and corporations, though some have certainly expressed anger for other reasons. The rage though, has simply grown out of control. Witness…

• Police officers being slashed with sharp objects, and having chemical irritants thrown in their eyes.
• A clean-up of Zuccotti Park which yielded “knives and other potential instruments of violence in flower beds throughout the public space.”
• A 78-year-old woman suffering a bloody nose, cuts and large bruises after she was knocked down some stairs at a protest in D.C.
• A protestor throwing a fit of rage because employees at a McDonalds refused to serve him free food.
• Flags burned, ATMs overturned, and occupiers hit by cars in the street at a gathering in Oakland.

Worse, there has certainly been a tangible element of anti-Semitism at the protests.

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As is well known, the American economy has been in a recession or slogging through with anemic growth over the past three years.  Some say this is the new normal or at least a long-term condition.  Meanwhile, American firms are holding record amounts of cash, for a brief period this year Apple had more cash on hand than the federal government.  The political class and business commentators have been speculating why businesses are holding so much cash.  Some on the conservative side have made the regime uncertainty argument that we do not know what is coming from the government and that has created enough extra uncertainty to make businesses wary of investing right now.  However, Paul Krugman, (yes, it pains me to agree with him but credit where it is due) points out that business activity and attitudes did not change when Congress moved significantly to the right after the 2010 elections and the reality is little legislation of any significance has moved since then.  It stands to conclude that the election added a level of certainty to the political expectations, the business class could breathe a collective sigh of relief, and move forward with these pent up plans it had.

There is probably some truth to the notion that business is worried, after all the administration can promulgate regulations through the implementation of laws without Congressional approval and that still creates uncertainty.  But, I think Peter Schweizer in his book has uncovered another reason for the hesitancy of the business class to act.

What Schweizer has uncovered is far more insidious than a few political hacks earning some cash on what they know.  Congress’ insider trading has been getting most of the press and, as bad as that is, it is not even half the story. There is another aspect to Schweizer’s book that I think may have a far greater impact on macroeconomic performance and that is under this administration large segments of the economy have become rigged games.  Some of this has been nakedly brazen, the manipulation of the GM loan guarantees to place union interests ahead of bondholders is one example of the open version of what Schweizer has discussed.  Unions support this administration, give it ground troops and money and so this leads to favors courtesy of the administration’s use of taxpayer money to reward political allies.  The stimulus package and its targeted beneficiaries is part of the same mind-set.  The NLRB and Boeing mess is another and then there is Solyndra, which is just the tip of a large iceberg.

The larger effect of this behavior is to undermine confidence in the market.  While there has always been government favors granted to the politically connected and politically advantageous projects, there seems to be a significant increase in this behavior under this administration.  This may not be true but perception is reality.  We may not know if there has truly been a significant increase in political manipulation of the market for years if at all, but Schweizer has chronicled how this administration is subverting market processes and allowing favored businessmen like Soros and Buffet to heavily influence legislation and spending to their own benefit.  This behavior does not need to be wide spread it just needs to be frequent enough to be widely suspected, there are two variables at play in this calculation; how frequently it happens and how well known its occurrences are.  If either of these are high, then that creates another level of perceived risk and uncertainty in the investors’ and businesses’ minds and makes them that less likely to put their money at risk.

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Today, in 1842, the University of Notre Dame was founded. Our thoughts turn to Grandpa JJ who played for Knute Rockne. Cheers!

The good news: the hippies and freaks in Zuccotti Park were finally swept away by law enforcement a few weeks ago. The bad news: they simply took their protests to other places—homeless shelters, other public parks, bridges, and now retailers. That’s right, the clean upstanding citizens who are proudly associated with the #OccupyWallStreet movement are now occupying Abercrombie and Fitch, AT&T, Verizon, Wal-Mart, The Home Depot, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and a handful of other businesses.

Why are they doing this? By their own admission their goal is to occupy publicly owned companies and “hit the corporations that corrupt and control American politics where it hurts, their profits.”

What these little Marxists don’t understand is that a “publicly owned” company is a publicly traded one. Which means stocks of said company are owned by average, run of the mill moms and pops across the U.S. (either as individual stocks or in a mutual fund or in a 401K, etc.). So what these Obama-ites are really doing is not hurting Wal-Mart or AT&T as much as hurting the very hardworking Americans #OccupyWallStreet claims to represent.

But there’s a bigger problem.

Throughout this filthy, lice-ridden parade of human waste known as #OccupyWallStreet, the protesters have taken for granted First Amendment protections to act the fool and get away with it. However, the First Amendment in no way protects the kinds of things the occupiers are doing.

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For very good and valid reasons, Americans understand the extraordinary importance of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the right peacefully to assemble for redress of grievances.  That, of course, is the rationale for the Occupy Wall Street (“OWS”) movement by which thousands of protestors are encamping in various public places around the country.

Our courts recognize few exceptions for the placing of limits on this exercise of free speech and in fact have themselves studied the issue in cases unrelated to OWS.  Courts recently have been debating whether limits on speech enacted by legislative bodies are constitutional.  As an example, a law prohibiting candidates for public office from lying about their opponents’ voting records during campaigns is drawing judicial scrutiny as an unconstitutional prohibition on protected free speech.  This matter is a serious one and whether we agree or not with OWS protestors (or tea party assemblies) we need to treat the subject based on constitutional principles rather than our own political predilections.  So why have the authorities suddenly stirred themselves to action to clean out OWS sites?

For one thing authorities have suddenly recognized some very important public principles:

First, public facilities are being taken over for the benefit of a few people as part of their attempt to advance solely their cause.  Parkland in central cities is very scarce and has been misused by groups who pitch tents from end to end in these parks and prevent (and in some instances intimidate) ordinary citizens from using public land.  Often these tent cities are abandoned during the day while the occupiers leave and go about their regular lives (going to work, going home, attending entertainment venues, etc.)

Recently, there has been a major spike in violence including shootings.  In Oakland protestors succeeded in shutting down the ports, which are a major, job producer in that city.  According to the San Francisco Chronicle “OWS protestors gathered up for their general assembly meeting and withdrew a resolution calling for future demonstrations to remain peaceful.  A faction of the protest group has advocated violence as a ‘diversity in tactics’ approach to demonstrating.”  Deaths have occurred in other cities as well, including Burlington, Vermont.   Secondly, there is an important public health issue that has arisen.  Protestors have been overwhelming the sanitary facilities at nearby businesses, cleaning and relieving themselves at bathrooms not built for such volume.  Finally, city authorities who have appeared to be looking the other way see that they have to take action.

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For many years, beer and wine wholesalers have ardently defended states’ right to regulate alcoholic beverages. Their wholesalers’ associations—the National Beer Wholesalers Association and the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America—have written countless letters to the editor, op-eds, press releases, and appeared in the media pushing for the passage of a bill they helped to write, the Community Alcohol Regulatory Effectiveness (CARE) Act (H.R. 1161).

The wholesalers claim the law would prevent the federal government from usurping the right of states to regulate alcohol under powers granted to them by the 21^st Amendment, which repealed Prohibition and set up the three-tier system of producers, wholesalers, and retailers that persists to this day. The law would exempt alcoholic beverages from the Interstate Commerce Clause’s protection against states enacting laws that discriminate against out-of-state businesses.

In effect, the beer and wine wholesalers associations want the feds to leave alcohol regulation to the states. So, it’s puzzling that when federal agencies heavy-handedly try to regulate alcoholic energy drinks like Four Loko, there’s hasn’t been so much as a peep from the wholesalers.

If you haven’t been following CEI’s writing on the issue, Four Loko was a flavored malt beverage that contained 12 percent alcohol by volume as well as stimulants like caffeine, taurine, and guarana, and was sold in brightly colored 23.5-ounce cans. After a few college kids drank themselves into the hospital and blamed the alcoholic energy drink, Four Loko’s manufacturer, Phusion Projects, found itself at the heart of a media firestorm. (more…)

SAFE. End of story.

Please read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 [Editor: Please link to each]

Contrary to recent media reports, the Brazilian Blowout hair treatment is safe for use.  Here is a review of all the studies done on Brazilian Blowout.

Oregon OSHA:  Pass

Federal OSHA:  Pass

Health Sciences Associates:  Pass

Dr. James Haw – USC: Pass

FDA:  Conducted no studies

ChemRisk: Too much product used = faulty study

Brazilian Blowout passed every single properly performed study for both state and federal short-term and long-term exposure limits, known as the Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL – an 8-hour time-weighted average) and Short-Term Exposure Limit (STEL – a 15 minute exposure measurement).

So why the witch hunt on Brazilian Blowout?  The answers are simple:

1) Government Bias

As described in Part 1 [Editor: Please link], Oregon OSHA is guilty of :

• Equating methylene glycol with formaldehyde in contradiction of all accepted scientific nomenclature methods.  Doing so allowed them to…
• Claim extremely high levels of formaldehyde in the product.
• Ideological bias, as at least one scientist who authored the study aligns himself with a hardcore Liberal Senator known as an environmental activist.
• Editorializing what should be a neutral scientific report, thus demonstrating its own bias.
• Deliberately taking samples longer than 15 minutes and applying those results to 15 minute periods.
• Issuing a false and misleading press release that did not report the product actually passed the PEL and STEL tests.

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