From ZeroHedge. The whole story on one chart. Obama:  "...the economy is far stronger now than it was four and a half years ago." ...as long as one ignores the reality of the following chart...

In with a gaelic twist today. In Moonbat Valley this week, the part time County Commissioners who I believe are all liberals of some sort, gave themselves a 33% pay hike. This they did over the objections of nearly every taxpayer who bothered to take notice. Giving yourself a 33% pay hike is not a horrific event if you are making a few thousand a yr. But if you are already making 61, 500 and then say, "Hey I got a great idea, let's give ourselves a 20,400 dollar a year raise!... well that is almost like slapping your constituents in the face- many of them making 40- or 50k a year at full time jobs. Oddly enough, the measure passed unanimously although I noted that one "departing" commissioner said earlier this year that he was "against" the monster raise. He was always that gutsy. It is also worth noting that the commissioners gave themselves a paltry 11% raise the year before. That is a cumulative 44% in two years. Here's the link to the piec

Years ago, as a Police Chief who dealt with local media, I have to tell you that I never disclosed all the details of any given case. In fact, I spoon fed reporters the softball answers to the softball questions that they asked. Rarely, if ever, did a reporter probe any deeper than the fluff I turned over. Could they have? Sure- so why didn't they? First off, reporters and journalists in general, make next to nothing. In communities all over this nation, they attend mundane meetings and try to cull out enough information to publish a decent account of what happened. It's really a pretty boring job. Reporters make their living from their sources. They don't want to piss those sources off by sending in a few hardball questions. Because the sources, like police agencies and local government, have clout. They will simply call the owners and editors of local newspaper and television outlets and tell them that any given reporter is off limits. Or they find "spokes peop

Welcome to the great lie. Healthy markets. Markets don't react to fundamental economics anymore. This morning, amidst McDonald's revenue miss, a slump and huge miss in home sales just prior to interest rates backing up, the DJIA is up 31 points as I write this to 15, 574. Why? The FED cannot stop QE. There is no exit plan. Just the hint of tapering QE down a couple of weeks ago sent stocks plummeting. Obama's administration would be in ruins- right at that moment in time when Obamacare is set to begin. Here's a clip I first viewed at the Daily Paul. Bernanke admits the economy would "tank" without QE. It now appears QE is here to stay at least until the 2016 elections where politics might dictate hamstringing the new administration. The great lie continues. For at least a couple more years.

*Gold is up nearly 20 bucks as of 5 PM MST.  http://www.barchart.com/commodityfutures/Metals In mid April of this year, unknown forces began driving the price of gold down in dramatic fashion. At the end of the slaughter, or nadir, gold rested at 1200 an ounce. A price it had not seen in 3 years. Most people do not care. The vast majority of folks do not understand commodity markets nor do they own gold. Historically speaking, gold has HUGE significance. It is real money. It is rare and it is coveted and it has remained that way for 6000 years. The bankers have never been able to counterfeit gold. So they do the next best thing. They use paper markets to manipulate the price. The bullion banks loan gold in amounts well beyond that which they actually possess. Because there has never been a run on gold in a worldwide sense, bankers have always gotten away with leasing gold they do not have. A world wide run has begun. In short, bullion banks are going to have to produce the physic