Late Night Joke Dump: June 4, 2010
• Mondo FrazierThis week's Friday Late Night Joke Dump: slim pickins. The best political jokes and political/social commentary is almost always late at night. Here’s some of the best from the past week.
Current News Headlines
These pages list the most recent news stories reported by the readers and editors of Freedom's Phoenix:
Where are the deficit hawks who want to trim defense spending?
• Cynthia Tucker, AJCNearly 50 years after Eisenhower famously warned Americans about the military-industrial complex, it still manages to hold its few critics at bay, to thwart the designs of budget-cutters and to exert a peculiar pull on the American popular imaginatio
Libertarians Vote to Stay True to the Past
• St. Louis Beacon via LP.orgAs Missouri delegate Julie Stone of St. Louis put it: "The big bone of contention is whether the party should remain as pure or become more inclusive."
Army Plans $100 Million Special Ops HQ in Afghanistan
• Noah Shachtman, WiredThe Army is looking to spend as much as $100 million to expand its Special Operations headquarters in northern Afghanistan. From Kandahar Airfield to the Bagram jail, the U.S. military is on a building spree, spending hundreds of millions of dollars
Got Chickens: Making Ends Meet in the Great Depression
• NYtimes.com/In the winter the chickens would come up under the house and sit in the basement, so if we wanted a chicken we’d raise a plank up and reach down and get the chicken. (It was warm in the wintertime. The base of that chimney would be nice and warm...
50 Statistics About The U.S. Economy That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe
• Businessinsider.com/Our greed and our debt are literally eating our economy alive. Total government, corporate and personal debt has now reached 360 percent of GDP, which is far higher than it ever reached during the Great Depression era.
Bilderberg 2010: Plutocracy with palm trees
• The GuardianIt would be nicer if the interface between Bilderberg and the world could be softer – if it could turn an open face towards us, rather than the barrel of a machine gun. What I'm hoping is that this year, in the all-new spirit of openness and politica
Secretive Bilderberg Club ready for protests
• London TimesNormally, every minute of their working lives is accounted for but, each year, a couple of hundred of the world’s financial elite and the more business-friendly members of the political class disappear from view; supposedly to save the planet from th
Your Arms Torn By Inflation While Your Legs Are Crushed By Deflation
• Businessinsider.com/We could be headed for a world torn in opposite directions, as if quartered, by very different monetary phenomena. As the developed world keeps interest rates low, in a bid to deep deflationary forces at bay, they will in turn be keeping interest...
MV Rachel Corrie due to reach Gaza within hours
• War in ContextThe MV Rachel Corrie, a cargo ship in the Freedom Flotilla whose passage from Ireland was delayed by mechanical difficulties, is now hours away from its destination. "I commend this courageous action of brave international civilians who are carryi
Birth Death Model Added 215,000 Fictitious Jobs For Obama
• ZeroHedge.comSo much for that 700,000 expectation. At 431k, less 411k census, and 31k from temporary help services, it sure doesn't look good even without the 215k birth-death adjustment which only conspiracy theorists look at according to Mr. Liesman...
Buffett Expects ‘Terrible Problem’ for Municipal Debt
• Bloomberg.comLocal governments rely on the $2.8 trillion municipal bond market to raise money for construction projects and fund other budget items. The financial crisis and recession battered governments across the U.S. by cutting into tax collections...
Huge Miss: May Private Sector Hiring Is Non-Existent, Stocks Tanking
• Businessinsider.com/The market is tanking, as the new job creation came in at just 430K, with only 40k or so jobs created in the private sector.
Demographic Reality Bites: Fonzie Is Frontman For Reverse Mortgage Co.
• thetruthaboutmortgage.com/“Once I learned of the work One Reverse Mortgage was doing to help seniors, I was immediately interested,” Winkler said in a press release. “I have always been committed to helping others, and I see my work here as the next step in that effort.”
Payrolls in U.S. Increase in May Less Than Forecast
• Bloomberg.comPayrolls rose by 431,000 last month, including a 411,000 jump in government hiring of temporary workers for the 2010 census, Labor Department figures in Washington showed today. Economists projected a 536,000 gain...
Long Horned Dinosaur
• arcleinA tubby dinosaur sporting horns each the length of a baseball bat roamed what is now Mexico some 72 million years ago. Remains of the plant-eating dinosaur, now called Coahuilaceratops magnacuerna, were unearthed from the Cerro del Pueblo Formatio
Trail of Oldest Man Made Structure Part III
• arcleinHe immediately retracted his statement when I suggested that this would put at least 1 million people living and working here some 200 - 400 years ago. By the middle of 2009 I realised that we are looking at probably around 200,000 stone ruins. The m
To Double Spud Production
• arcleinThe researchers found that when the spit of the tuber moth caterpillar gets into a tuber, all the other tubers of the plant grow bigger, said co-author Andre Kessler, Cornell assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
Palin to Jindal - Hit the Beach
• arcleinFormer Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is pushing Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal to ignore federal rules and build berms to protect his state's coastline. According to The Hill, Palin tweeted Monday evening: “Gov.Jindal:to avoid ravished coast, build the
Euro Falls Hard: Everyone Freaks Out About Hungary And SocGen
• Businessinsider.com/We may break $1.20 on the euro today, which would be huge. The big twin fears: Hungary and SocGen. Futures are off about 1%. France is getting hammered.
Retail Sales in May Underscores Uneven Path of Recovery
• CNBC.comResults were particularly weak in the West, which may not bode well for the sector, according to Wall Street Strategies analyst Brian Sozzi.
Oil and Florida Tourism
• CalculatedRiskBlog.com"It is already ugly," said John Fareed, a partner at Fareed Zapala Koepke. "When it hits, it will be real and will position itself in the psyche of consumers who are getting ready to make vacation plans. It is going to have a huge impact...
Fresh Signs That Housing Is Already Double Dipping
• Businessinsider.com/“Mortgage applications to purchase a home began to sink. Now, four weeks later, mortgage purchase applications are down nearly 40 percent from a month ago to their lowest level since April of 1997.
Israelis kill American – Joe Biden says: "What's the big deal?"
• AntiWar.comThis was no "accident." The Israeli government knew precisely what it was doing, it knew there were Americans on those ships, and chose to go in guns blazing: it was the equivalent of spitting in Uncle Sam’s face.
'Banks' allow members to pay with time, not cash
• APThat's what Maria Villacreses did when the economy put a hitch in her wedding plans: She used "time dollars" on everything from a wedding-day makeover to an elaborate seven-layer cake. In a modern twist on the ancient practice of barter, people like
"Reason and Emotion" Lecture
• Phoenix ObjectivistsFor their first June meeting on the 10th, Phoenix Objectivists will listen to the first of a new six-part pre-recorded lecture series titled: "Reason and Emotion".
Obama using Oil Spill to Push Cap and Trade - NOT AN ACCIDENT
• godlikeproductions.comObama is making a new push for cap and trade legislation, report Steven Mufson and Michael Shear: "In a speech at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University, Obama made one of his strongest pitches for comprehensive climate legislation, arguing that
More Than 40 Million Now Use Food Stamps: What Recovery Obama!
• Boston.com/newsRecipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases totaled 40.2 million, up 21 percent from a year earlier and 1.2 percent more than in February, the Department of Agriculture said yesterday...
How not to save news
• NY PostThe Federal Trade Commission says it wants to save journalism. I'm not sure who asked it to. In a "potential policy recommendations to support the reinvention of journalism," the agency circles its wagons around old newspapers and their fading busine
US citizen killed on flotilla was reportedly shot four times in head
• Rawstory"One of the nine people killed in the Israeli raid on an aid flotilla Monday was a 19-year-old man with dual U.S.-Turkish citizenship, a U.S. State Department official said," CBS News reports.
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