SAR #14350

The United States tortures people. Full stop, end of discussion.

Me Too... Or Seventh: China has offered to fly air strikes against ISIS for Iraq in return for access to their oil. 
 
Warm-Up: Two weeks of negotiations in Lima on global climate change have resulted in a non-binding agreement for all the countries of the world to prepare a non-binding plan to reign in their CO2 emissions in the future, without providing any information about how they might go about doing so. It is now decades after the nations of the world began putting off doing anything about global warming following Koyoto, so nothing has been accomplished. The world is producing CO2 at a rate above the IPCC's business-as-usual scenario. It doesn't much matter that little or nothing gets accomplished at these global conferences, because the US Congress will never, ever, ratify any binding treaty that requires a single US company to lose a penny in profit over killing civilization as we know it CO2 emissions.. 
 
Next Up: The Senate report on torture was just the beginning, wait until Obama is forced to release the thousands of photographs of our abuse and torture that are hidden in a shoebox in the bottom of a closet off the Oval office.

On The Other Hand: The Federal Reserve in Washington announced that US industrial production had increased by 1.3% in November. The New York Federal Reserve Bank reported that its December index of manufacturing activity declined 14 points to a -3.6 reading, the first negative reading in over two years. Maybe the difference is the target customer; in Washington it's politicians, in NY it's Wall Street.

Yawn: There is extensive evidence that the U.S. government intentionally lied us into the Iraq war. The White House ordered the CIA to forge and backdate a document falsely linking Iraq with Muslim terrorists and 9/11 … and that the CIA complied with those instructions and in fact created the forgery, which was then used to justify war against Iraq. The entire torture program was geared towards obtaining false confessions linking Iraq and 9/11. Everyone in the Administration knew that Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. Put it in that box in the attic with our other keepsakes.

Enough. Workers in Belgium finally got fed up with the government's ongoing austerity measures and called a nationwide strike that shut down all flights to and from the country as well as stopping the trains, buses and trams. The unions say it was the only effective way they had to protest tough new austerity measures. Couldn't happen here, - we've no real unions and few of us have any guts - and Congress knows it.

Plotline: Stocks fell in June because oil prices rose. They said. Stocks fell this month because oil prices fell. So they analysts say. They're making it up, they always do.

Dealing: A glitch in Amazon's UK service had thousands of items selling for as little a 1 pence. Businesses are complaining that this error could drive them out of business. One hopes Amazon will have to make good their losses.

Foreshadowing? The US Supreme court declined to hear Arizona's appeal of a lower court's ruling which prevents “dangerous and misguided” abortion restrictions from going into effect.

Porn O'Graph: If it costs more to produce, it costs more. Duh.