Obama reminded us that he is the exquisite showman minus the show. There was nothing new in his “I can’t create jobs” campaign speech. If you were unfortunate enough to have to watch it as I was, you were treated to his change from the mantra of, “I inherited this mess,” to “Who can I now blame for this mess?”

A skipping record, stuck in the groove, Obama has surrounded himself with incompetents that explain, “If at first you don’t succeed, ask for advice from those around you who can’t succeed either.”

The Ponzi scheme disguised as a “jobs plan caused Obama to cut his vacation half a day short in order to get right on ‘that jobs thing.’ You could drive a tanker through his arguments without coming anywhere close to anything sane.

TAX THE RICH! “Raise capital gains,” not that anybody is actually experiencing any gains. Obama’s policies attack everybody.

The housing market has lost over $6T, the stock market is a travesty, almost appearing to toy with Obama, falling precipitously after every Obama public speaking appearance.

Read More at the Black Sphere  By Kevin Jackson, The Black Sphere

Betcha didn’t see this one coming.

On MSNBC’s Thursday broadcast of “Hardball,” host Chris Matthews committed the mortal sin — he nearly parroted the theory that mortified so many of the network’s hosts and guests throughout the day. Matthews called Social Security “a Ponzi scheme” the day after Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry doubled down on his previous statements echoing that sentiment in the Republican debate (h/t Matt Lewis)

Matthews first put forth what he thought Social Security was originally intended to be: “You pay for it while you work. When you retired and have no other form of income, this will help you out. In fact, a lot were impoverished in the old days without Social Security. It’s a great anti-poverty program. But then people started to live past 65. Even the great Franklin Roosevelt didn’t make it to 65. In those days, if you made it to 65, you were lucky. You got a few bucks on Social Security.” (RELATED: Has Chris Matthews lost his mind?)

Then he put forth what it has become: “Today, lots of people fortunately make it past 65,” he said. “They live into their 80s and 90s. They’re still getting checks. The system doesn’t work that way anymore. It’s not as healthy as it once was. So, how does a Republican deal with the fact it is a Ponzi scheme in the sense that the money that’s paid out every day is coming from people who have paid in that day. It’s not being made somewhere.”

Todd Harris, Matthews’ guest and a Republican strategist agreed. “That’s absolutely right,” Harris said. “And you will never get back the amount of money that you paid into it under its current structures.”

Read More at The Daily Caller By Jeff Poor, The Daily Caller

Recent polling indicates that seventy-six percent (76%) of voters say the country is heading down the wrong track. Clearly, something needs to be done to turn the train around and head in a different direction.

First we need to know where we’ve been headed and then make a conscious decision to do a 180.

Three recent news stories—all under-reported—offer a snapshot of the wrong direction.

Exxon is in a legal battle with the US government. The company has a new oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico in what is called the Julia Field. Exxon reports an estimated one billion barrels of recoverable oil—worth potential royalties to the government of $10.95 billion. The discovery is believed to be the largest in the Gulf of Mexico. (Note: we are not out of oil; we keep finding more.)

In its exploration, Exxon is known for moving slowly and studying all the options before committing billions of dollars—using the best technology and science to utilize the shareholders’ risk capital. This is good. Deep-water exploration is difficult and complex. It needs to be done right.

Read More at globalwarming.org By Marita Noon, globalwarming.org

With an avalanche of ever-tantalizing news stories and upcoming nail-biting scheduled officialdom events in both Europe and the U.S. all hitting the gold market at once in September, discerning the story that could propel some distance from Jim Sinclair’s exosphere target of $1,764 in the gold price weighs heavily in favor of the WikiLeaks story and its potential explosive impact on the price of gold from today $1,900 print to Sinclair’s ultimate target of $12,000+.

Though the European financial crisis soap opera moves from Greece and Portugal to, now, Italy and Germany, shifting temporarily away from France, with Belgium’s dirty laundry on deck in case there’s a lull in the action, the WikiLeaks release of a U.S. State Department internal cables on the subject of Beijing’s plan for undermining the U.S. dollar through the gold market even trumps the Israel/Turkey potential gray-swan military conflict brewing in the Mediterranean (could ex-CIA operative Robert Baer be right about an Israeli attack in the region by the fall?).

The leaked State Department U.S. embassy cable – 09BEIJING1134, published by WikiLeaks exposes both the clandestine operations at the Fed/Treasury as well as reveals who’s been sleeping with the enemy.

According to China’s National Foreign Exchanges Administration, China’s gold reserves have recently increased. Currently, the majority of its gold reserves have been located in the United States and European countries. The U.S. and Europe have always suppressed the rising price of gold. They intend to weaken gold’s function as an international reserve currency. They don’t want to see other countries turning to gold reserves instead of the U.S. dollar or euro. Therefore, suppressing the price of gold is very beneficial for the U.S. in maintaining the U.S. dollar’s role as the international reserve currency. China’s increased gold reserves will thus act as a model and lead other countries toward reserving more gold. Large gold reserves are also beneficial in promoting the internationalization of the renminbi.

And now we all know that Beijing knows of the gold suppression scheme, and that Washington knows that Beijing knows of the scheme. So what does that mean for the gold price?

Read More at Beacon Equity  Posted By Dominique de Kevelioc de Bailleul, Beacon Equity

As President Obama prepares to deliver yet another speech about stimulating the economy — this one to a joint-session of Congress (with or without the NFL game on the monitors) — it’s worth reviewing the results of his efforts to date.

It has now been a little over two years — and eight full economic quarters — since the end of the recession Obama inherited. It’s time to ask: How does his record of economic growth in the wake of a recession stack up against the records of other presidents?

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) defines a recession as “a period between a peak and a trough” during which “a significant decline in economic activity spreads across the economy and can last from a few months to more than a year.”

By consensus, the most recent recession ended in June 2009, less than six months after Obama took office.

According to the NBER, in the 60 years prior to Obama’s tenure, we had 10 recessions. In the two years following those respective recessions, average real (inflation-adjusted) quarterly GDP growth was 5%, according to federal government figures. In the two years of Obama’s “recovery,” average real quarterly GDP growth has been just 2.4%, less than half of the historical norm coming out of a recession.

Read More at Investors.com By Jeffrey H. Anderson, Investors.com