SAR #12165

Not every psychopath uses a knife.

Nation, Building: A wave of coordinated bombings and shootings targeting Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims in Baghdad, and police across Iraq killed at least 84 people on Wednesday and injured over 300. Good thing we already won and went home.

Hyper Over Inflation: A harbinger of stagnation if not deflation, producer prices fell sharply in May, down 1% - mostly due to the decline in energy prices.

Divorce Proceeding: Hamid Karzai demands that NATO force stop bombing Afghan homes, even in self defense. “Even when they are under attack, they cannot use an airplane to bomb Afghan homes. Even when they’re under attack.” Calling the clashes with Taliban fighters "police actions", he asked. "Do you do this in the United States?’ There is police action every day in the United States in various localities. They don’t call an airplane to bomb the place.” If Mr. Karzai is not careful, he'll find himself in Guantanamo.

Judgment Day: Prosecutors have dropped all charges against John Edwards; being despicable isn't a crime, just a character trait.

Farm Teams: Congress is working on what is laughingly called The Farm Bill, which generally has something in it about paying farmers not to grow stuff, but is mostly about food stamps - which will get $768 billion of the bill's $969 billion cost over the next ten years. (Rand Paul’s attempt to drastically cut food stamp spending was defeated 65-33.)

None Of The Above: It doesn't matter who gets to play president - the president can do only what Congress lets him do. He can't raise taxes, can't spend money the Congress hasn't authorized, can't even start wars if Congress takes back the authority it has lent him. We all know that the 535 Congress Critters are the ones responsible, good or bad. but enjoy the entertainment - they're spending a lot of money on it.

Hidden In Plan Sight: Greece and Spain, under their austerity programs, have slashed government employment... just like the United States. Since the Great Recession began, states and local governments have cut their payrolls by 3%. Without these cuts, US unemployment would be about 7.0% instead of 8.3%.

Business Is Business: The Pentagon has told the State Department to go easy on Russia about those attack helicopters Assad is getting. DoD is buying helicopters from the same Russians for Afghan government forces.

The Law of Rules: The upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) - a NAFTA for the Pacific - will have the same secret tribunals that NAFTA and CAFTA and the WTO have that allow corporations to overrule the laws of the nations in which they do business. To hell with the UN, it is agreements made in secret, enforced in secret by unelected faceless technocrats that make up the New World Order.

Give And Take: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services project that the US will spend $4 trillion over the next decade for drugs that should cost less than $400 billion. That would cover the interest on $11 trillion of the national debt for that decade.

Revival! A new video of al-Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi has been posted on the internet. Al-Libi was killed, or possibly wasn't, in a drone attack a week ago, the military says. Pinpoint, drone...

Predation: "Over the last thirty years, the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population... If allowed to continue, this process will turn the United States into a declining, unfair society with an impoverished, angry, uneducated population under the control of a small, ultrawealthy elite. Such a society would be not only immoral but also eventually unstable, dangerously ripe for religious and political extremism." Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation quoted by and go read the rest at Jesse's.

The Parting Shot:

Butterfly Weed
Asclepias tuberosa