Restaurant With ‘No Weapons, No Concealed Firearms’ Sign Robbed at Gunpoint

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Photo Credit: Reuters A Durham, North Carolina restaurant with a sign on its front door reading, “No Weapons, No Concealed Firearms,” was robbed at gunpoint on May 19.

Gunsnfreedom.com published a photograph of the sign on May 21, making “The Pit” restaurant a self-declared gun free zone–the same kind of zone Michael Bloomberg and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America pressure other restaurants into becoming.

According to Durham’s ABC 11, around 9 PM “three men wearing hoodies entered the restaurant through the back doors with pistols, and forced several staff members to lie on the floor.” The armed men “also assaulted two employees during the crime.”

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China And Putin May Have Just Screwed America’s Future, And Your Retirement With It

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Photo Credit: flickr / ohkylelAlthough receiving relatively little attention from the mainstream media, the Bank of China (BOC) just signed a non-dollar settlement deal with VTB, one of Russia’s largest commercial banks. The agreement will allow VTB and BOC to pay each in their domestic currency, removing the need for the US Dollar to settle the trade. This might not sound like much; but in terms of international trade and finance, it is huge. Since the Bretton-Woods agreement after WWII, nations have used the USD in international business dealings. But reserve currency status does not last forever. The Dollar is losing this position, and it will have serious ramifications for the United States and everyone invested in the dollar.

As an ex bond/FX trader, I understand the benefits the United States receives as a result of the USD enjoying reserve status. There is a natural bid, or demand, for entities to own Dollars. Countries want to store their wealth in an instrument that will retain its value. For almost eighty years, this has been the United States Dollar. But we have squandered this position through our financial irresponsibility. As our sovereign debt approaches twenty trillion Dollars, nations and corporations can be forgiven for wondering if we will ever have the will or the means to pay back this astounding sum of money. They believe we will have to devalue our currency, i.e. print money, to settle what we owe as a country. Therefore, they are starting to look for other vehicles to store their wealth and settle their transactions in.

Even before signing this bilateral deal, China in particular has been one nation that has started to move its assets elsewhere to protect its interests. Vince Miller, senior market strategist at Birch Gold Group, believes that the Chinese are putting a staggering sum of their wealth into gold: “When China last reported their gold holdings in 2008, they had 1,054 tons. Since then, they’ve gone absolutely silent on how much they have, but if you start to add up the numbers – the reported imports flowing into the country each month, the estimated NON-reported imports on top of that, plus what the Chinese can mine in gold from within their borders – we wouldn’t be surprised if some recent reports that put the nation’s current holdings in the 3,000 to 5,000 ton range were accurate.”

As more nations make moves similar to the Chinese, the demand for Dollars will start to slide as this process unfolds. As there is less reserve currency demand, the value of the Dollar will fall. This will have a negative impact on the American consumer, as import prices will rise. The United States will be much more susceptible to economic crises; and the value of our currency will swing much more freely, making it much harder for businesses and individuals to manage their finances. Our standard of living will shrink further than it already has. No country has ever devalued its way to prosperity. Only banana republics try to do this. Americans also will have to pay much more when they travel overseas.

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Ben Shapiro: The VA Scandal Proves That Democrats’ Approach To Healthcare Doesn’t Work

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Photo Credit: IJ Review The on-going V.A. scandal has outraged many people across the country, both Democrats and Republicans alike. President Obama himself is “madder than hell” about the cooked and secret waiting lists, some of which may have led to the deaths of dozens of veterans and delayed care to many more.

In a column Thursday at Truth Revolt, Ben Shapiro writes that many Democrats and left-wing pundits actually lauded the V.A. as their model of a single-payer, government run healthcare system that could replace America’s current healthcare system.

Among those who idolized the V.A., Nobel Prize Winning economist and commentator, Paul Krugman:

Multiple surveys have found the VHA providing better care than most Americans receive, even as the agency has held cost increases well below those facing Medicare and private insurers…the VHA is an integrated system, which provides health care as well as paying for it.

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IRS Backs Off Proposal Critics Warned Would ‘Silence’ Conservative Groups

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Photo Credit: Fox News The IRS has agreed to overhaul a controversial proposal that Republican lawmakers warned would revive the agency’s “harassment and intimidation” of conservative groups, after receiving a record number of comments on the proposed regulation.

The new rules have been in the works ever since the IRS came under fire for its targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups. In the wake of that scandal, the agency said it wanted to clarify for everybody how tax-exempt groups can engage in political activity — by reining in the political work those groups do.

But Republicans, as well as some on the left, worried the new rules would only exacerbate the kind of targeting that stonewalled Tea Party groups in the first place.

For months, they’ve urged the IRS to scrap the proposal entirely, saying it would stifle free speech.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, among those senators, called Thursday’s decision a “long overdue step in the right direction.”

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UT Regent Uncovered Waste, Fraud And Abuse…And Might Be Fired For It

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Photo Credit: Wikimedia CommonsDays after taking office as a regent of the University of Texas, Wallace Hall began making discoveries that pointed toward considerable administrative wrongdoing, questionable admissions decisions and misuse of public funds.

Three years later, UT-Austin President Bill Powers and his friends in the Texas legislature are doing everything they can to silence Hall–and may take the unprecedented step of forcibly removing him from office.

As a pretext, administrators have claimed that Hall’s insatiable demand for UT records (he has requested that over 800,000 pages of documents be made public) hampered university operations.

“It’s time that there’s some action that has to be taken,” said Democratic Rep. Carol Alvarado, chair of the House transparency committee, in a statement to the Houston Chronicle.

Her committee is considering a move to impeach Hall, and has asked him to step down.

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10 Reasons Why John Kerry Deserves a Magna Cum Laude in Climate Pseudo-Science

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Photo Credit: Boston College Chronicle Speaking at the graduation ceremony of his alma mater Boston College, he said:

“If the US does not act and if it turns out that the critics and naysayers and the members of the Flat Earth Society – if it turns out they’re wrong, then we are risking nothing less than the future of the entire planet.”
He claimed:

“Recent reports, one from the UN and one from retired US military leaders warn us, not just of the crippling consequences to come but that some of them are already here. 97 per cent of the world’s scientists tell us that this is urgent. Why? Because crops can’t grow there’ll be food insecurity; if there’s less water because of droughts, if there are stronger and more powerful storms, things will change in a hurry and change for the worse. Climate change is directly related to the potential of greater conflict and greater instability. I’m telling you that there are people in parts of the world today in Africa, they fight each other over water, they kill each other over it. This is not a matter of politics or a matter of partisanship. It’s a matter of science and stewardship. And it’s not a matter of capacity it’s a matter of willpower.”

Hmm. Let’s fisk those statements, shall we?

1. Flat Earth Society. Lazy, inaccurate ad hom directed at people whose only desire that climate science and climate science policy should be evidence-based, rather than derived from modelled forecasts which bear increasingly little resemblance to observed, real-world data.

2. If it turns out they’re wrong… (aka the Precautionary Principle) This presupposes that there are no costs to doing what Kerry wants and acting on climate change now. But, of course, the costs of trying to combat climate change have already run into the trillions of dollars – with no evidence that they have made any difference.

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Gallup: Republicans Can’t Avoid Abortion in 2014 Elections

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The Republican establishment may boast that it beat back some Tea Party challengers in this week’s primaries, but GOP candidates cannot hope to retake the Senate if they ignore the issue of abortion, a new Gallup poll indicates.

One-quarter of Republican voters say a candidate must protect life to earn their vote, the polling company found.

Nearly one-in-five people (19 percent) say they would “only vote for a candidate who shares your views on abortion,” and pro-life voters are one-third more likely to feel that way than pro-abortion voters.

Self-described “pro-choice” voters are much more likely to say they “don’t see abortion as a major issue.”

“The pro-life side has more intensity on the issue,” Gallup reports of its most recent survey. In all, 11 percent of all registered voters said they would only vote for pro-life candidates, and eight percent said they would only vote for candidates who call themselves “pro-choice.”

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Issa: White House Warned YouTube Over Anti-Islam Video During Benghazi Attack

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Photo Credit: APRepublican Rep. Darrell Issa claimed that an email he’s reviewed shows the White House decided to reach out to YouTube within hours of the Benghazi terror attack, to warn the website about the consequences of posting an anti-Islam video.

The email would suggest the White House was connecting the attack to the video almost from the outset — though their initial claim that the attack sprung out of protests over the film would later be proven false.

According to Issa, who discussed excerpts from the otherwise classified emails on Wednesday, the email was sent at 9:11 p.m. ET on Sept. 11 to the Diplomatic Security Command Center.

According to Issa, the email said: “White House is reaching out to UTube to advise ramifications of the posting of the Pastor Jon Video.”

Issa said this email is “troubling” because it “contradicts” White House claims that the faulty storyline on the video was drawn from the intelligence community’s talking points.

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Air Force Security Team Botched Drill Simulating Attack On Nuke Missile Silo, Report Reveals

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Photo Credit: APA blistering internal review has revealed that an Air Force security team botched a training exercise last summer that simulated an attack on a nuclear missile silo, prompting expanded training to prepare for the possibility of a real attack.

A senior U.S. defense official confirmed the details of the report to Fox News. The report was first obtained by the Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The review said the security forces were unable to speedily regain control of the captured silo during the exercise at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, calling the failure a “critical deficiency.”

Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told Fox News that this misstep was the reason the 341st Missile Wing failed a safety and security inspection, which was widely reported last year.

Stefanek said the Air Force did not share the exact reason for the failure because doing so could have compromised security. However, she said since then the unit has improved.

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Poll: Nearly Half Of Unemployed Have Stopped Looking For Work

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jonathan ErnstA poll released Wednesday shows that 47 percent of unemployed Americans have given up looking for work.

Conducted on behalf of Express Employment Professionals last month, Harris Poll asked 1,500 unemployed adults whether they agreed with the statement “I’ve completely given up looking for a job.”

Seven percent said they “agree completely” with the statement; another seven percent said they “agree a lot”; 15 percent “agree somewhat”; 18 percent “agree a little”.

Eighty-two percent of those polled agreed that they were “becoming more discouraged the longer I am unemployed”.

A large majority of those polled indicated that unemployment benefits were keeping them from searching harder for a job. Politicians have divided largely along party lines over whether to extend unemployment benefits, with Republicans arguing that the benefits provide an incentive to remain unemployed.

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