Huge solar storm hits Earth: power grid and GPS could be disrupted, but auroras might be seen The Earth is being battered by a huge solar storm, which could disrupt the power grid and GPS as well as letting people see beautiful auroras.

A potent blast of magnetic plasma shot out of the sun on Sunday, travelling faster than usual, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It brought with it the biggest solar storm at least since March, and perhaps since September 2005.

The solar weather brought with it aurora — spectacular lights that could be seen over the US overnight. Their effects were spotted and shared by Scott Kelly, an American astronaut who is currently on the International Space Station.

Aurora are caused by the way that the storm interacts with the top levels of our atmosphere. The red colour tends to come only during the most intense solar activity, and happens at the highest part of the atmosphere.Solar storms can disrupt communications, navigations systems, the power grid and other systems that rely on radio communications, but there were no reports of damage, according to NOAA space weather physicist Doug Biesecker. It was likely that important systems like the electrical grid saw current fluctuations, but they have been built to be able to handle such disruption.The storm arrived on Monday afternoon and could last up to a day or even longer.

Solar storms and wind are caused when the sun shoots out a big burst of gas and magnetic fields, which then travel through the solar system and hit Earth. They can cause huge disruption when they hit the Earth, but their force and effects vary.

The Ceres Pyramid

Ceres is 590 miles (950 km) across and was discovered in 1801.

It is the closest dwarf planet to the sun and is located in the asteroid belt, making it the only dwarf planet in the inner solar system.

Ceres is the smallest of the bodies currently classified as a 'dwarf planet'.

It lies less than three times as far as Earth from the sun - close enough to feel the warmth of the star, allowing ice to melt and reform.

Nasa's Dawn spacecraft made its way to Ceres after leaving the asteroid Vesta in 2012.

There is high interest in the mission because Ceres is seen as being a record of the early solar system, and may also have shifting ice on its surface. 

The latest images of Ceres taken by the Dawn spacecraft have captured a fascinating pyramid-shaped mountain on the surface.

As the spacecraft gets closer, more and more features are beginning to reveal themselves.

This includes the mysterious bright spots, which appear now as an array of dots scattered across the floor of a crater - but their source remains unknown.

These images were taken by the Dawn spacecraft in its second mapping orbit, from a height of 2,700 miles (4,400km).

Just six months ago, Ceres appeared as nothing more than a few pixels of light to Dawn. Now it is nearing its closest orbit to the increasingly interesting dwarf planet.

By December of this year, the spacecraft will be just 225 miles (360km) above the surface - lower than the International Space Station is above Earth.

For now, scientists must make do with these tantalising glimpses of the features that are waiting on the surface.

In one new image, a pyramid-shaped peak is seen towering over a relatively flat surface.

The mountain is peculiar, as there are a few other features like it in the surrounding region - or even the rest of the dwarf planet.

The structure is thought to rise about three miles (five km), which is roughly the height of Mont Blanc in France and Italy, the highest mountain in the Alps.

Another image reveals the bright spots in greater detail. Several can be seen next to the largest bright area, estimated to be six miles (9km) wide.

Ice and salt are the leading theories for what is causing this odd reflectivity.

‘It is exciting seeing these features come into sharper focus,’ Dr Marc Rayman, Dawn’s mission director and chief engineer, told MailOnline.

‘A few months ago, when Dawn began observing its new home from afar, we called it a bright spot. As the explorer closed in and provided better views, we realised it was two bright spots.

‘Now we see it is many. It’s still not clear what is causing these strong reflections, and I think still more data are needed.

‘Everyone has her or his own personal favorite theory, but the ultimate arbiter is nature. That is, we can all speculate, and we can offer arguments, but the answer is going to be clear soon.

‘My money is on the remnants from ice that has sublimated. The salts left be what’s reflecting the light. Other images reveal the multitude of craters and lines strewn across the surface of this world, located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

There is also evidence for past activity on the surface, including flows, landslides and collapsed natural structures.

Ceres appears to have more remnants of activity than the protoplanet Vesta, which the Dawn spacecraft studied for 14 months in 2011 and 2012.

Dawn, which arrived at Ceres on 6 March 2015, is the first spacecraft to orbit two separate bodies in the solar system.

It will remain in its current orbit until 30 June, before moving to a lower altitude of 900 miles (1,450km) by early August.

Several theories are currently being touted for what the mysterious bright white spots are on Ceres.

The Hubble Space Telescope has found more than 10 on the surface, but Ceres has found that the two most prominent - ‘spot 5’ - are in a crater about 57 miles (92km) wide.

One theory is that they are salt flats that are reflecting sunlight, left on the surface by saltwater or by other chemical reactions.

Another theory is that they are regions of ice, again reflecting sunlight.

Ceres is thought to have plenty of ice beneath its surface, which could be exposed when a asteroid or comet strikes the surface. The fact these bright spots are in a crater - where such an impact occurred - supports this theory.

Another possibility is that they are cryovolcanoes - volcanoes that are shooting out water or ice.

However, the lack of a raised area around the spots consistent with a volcano suggests this might not be correct.

And they could even be water vapour ejecting from a liquid reservoir under the ground, although again current observations - namely a lack of additional material near the spots - suggests this is not the case. 

‘The surface of Ceres has revealed many interesting and unique features,’ said Dr Carol Raymond, deputy principal investigator for the Dawn mission, based at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

‘For example, icy moons in the outer solar system have craters with central pits, but on Ceres central pits in large craters are much more common.

‘These and other features will allow us to understand the inner structure of Ceres that we cannot sense directly.’ 

China’s Debt Bomb is Ticking Down

From January through March, the Chinese economy suffered its first quarter of negative output growth since 2009, despite official figures showing growth of 7 percent, according to Lombard Street Research.

Buried under “crippling local government and corporate debt”, the Red Dragon’s current debt restructuring plan amounts to “little more than creative financial-engineering.” Lombard believes that China still has the ability address the nation’s debt-bomb, but the fuse is now burning.

By Lombard’s estimates, China’s non-financial debt reached 240 percent of GDP in 2014, while real after-inflation GDP growth averaged about 4.5 percent. Calculating the size of the nation’s bad debt is impossible, because China banks simply roll over loans. In April, the China Central Bank actually cut the amount of cash that banks must hold as reserves twice in an effort to combat slowing growth.

Lombard Street assumes an extreme scenario that China will have to double its public debt to 105 percent of GDP to bail out its banks. That would create an economy with an amount of (un)sustainable leverage similar to the U.S. and Europe.

When China sought to reform its banks and take them public in 1998 as part of an effort to modernize the financial system, distressed assets were the equivalent of about 20 percent of the combined loan totals for China’s “Big Four” banks, or 18 percent of China’s entire gross domestic product, according to a report by the 2003 Bank for International Settlements.

In 1999, China suffered credit downgrades, and it looked like its Ponzi game of massive bank leveraging and selling products under cost would implode. But the economy was rescued in 2001 by the U.S. granting China “Permanent Normal Trade Relations” (i.e. most-favored-nation status). The wildly unbalanced trade deal caused a spectacular economic boom in China, with real growth rates averaging 14 percent per year through 2007. China’s expansion came at the loss of 6 million U.S. manufacturing jobs over the period.

Japan’s debt-fueled hyper-growth phase lasted for 32 years, from 1967 to 1997. China’s debt-fueled hyper-growth decade after 1998 managed to accomplish the debt build-up in 10 years that it took Japan 25 years to accumulate, according to Lombard.

When the sub-prime real estate boom ended in the U.S. and the American consumer stopped spending during the Great Financial Crisis, Chinese growth collapsed from 22 percent in 2007 to negative 4 percent in 2009. Facing a return of the 1999 crisis,

Communist China managed to engineer a gigantic monetary expansion that was twice as big and implemented twice as fast as the U.S. stimulus by ordering state-owned banks to lend without regard to risk or profits.

Growth spiked up to over 20 percent in 2010, but with growth going negative according to private calculations, Beijing has discovered that “just throwing money at its over-invested economy spawned real estate speculation, an explosion of debt and inflation rather than real growth,” Lombard concludes.

Japan’s debt bubble was built up as the nation was shifting up the value-added chain to produce high-end exportable manufactured products. China, as the most populous nation in the world, has done very little to build a consumer led domestic economy that can financially support a shift in manufacturing up the value-added chain.

Many analysts have suggested that China should follow the U.S. and Europe and engage in Quantitative Easing. But QE’s goal, to lower borrowing costs for most businesses, is an irrelevant concept in China. The central government tells companies what they will produce and at what prices, and has state-owned-banks lend money without regard to being able to collect on their loans.

China corporate debt since 2007 has risen by 50 percent, to about 140 percent of GDP, but corporate bank deposits have fallen from 90 percent, to 60 percent of GDP. Despite having access to huge amounts of cash, Chinese corporate working capital is evaporating at an alarming rate. That indicates to Lombard that banks are not making new cash loans, but rather are just rolling over defaulted debt and interest payments.

Lombard Street believes that China still has the financial capability to undertake a massive debt restructure to make its economy competitive again. But that would take the guts to handle the political turmoil from tens of millions of workers being fired as uncompetitive state-owned-enterprises are bankrupted and liquidated.

China built up debt much faster than Japan, which has been in a 20-year recession since its debt-fueled grow phase ended. Lombard Street Research believes that China could take action and defuse its massive debt-bomb, but time is running out.

TPP Takes Freedom to the Shed

WASHINGTON – The Republican-dominated Senate has given President Obama what he wants: so-called “fast-track” authority to negotiate massive trade deals with other countries, cut Congress out of the negotiations and limit lawmakers’ participation to a simple yes or no vote when such treaties are concluded.

A cloture vote to cut off debate needed 60 votes to pass. It received exactly 60 yes votes, with 37 opposed, meaning final passage of the Trade Promotion Authority, or TPA, is now just a formality.

The bill squeaked by in the House last week by vote of 218 to 208 and will soon go to the president’s desk to be signed into law.

Opponents of the deal, led by Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., were not quite able to round up the no votes needed, even though Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, changed his vote to a no, after voting yes four weeks ago.

In an op-ed published Tuesday, Cruz explained that, while he believes free trade is good for America, much had come to light since his first vote.

“TPA in this Congress has become enmeshed in corrupt Washington backroom deal-making, along with serious concerns that it would open up the potential for sweeping changes in our laws that trade agreements typically do not include.

“Despite the administration’s public assurances that it was not negotiating on immigration, several chapters of the TiSA (Trade in Services Agreement) draft posted online explicitly contained potential changes in federal immigration law. TPA would cover TiSA, and therefore these changes would presumably be subject to fast-track.

“Second, TPA’s progress through the House and Senate appears to have been made possible by secret deals between Republican leadership and the Democrats.”

One of those deals appeared to be a promise to bring up for a vote a re-authorization of the Export-Import Bank before its charter expires at the end of the month. It is an institution favored by many Democrats and establishment Republicans.

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“The Ex-Im Bank is a classic example of corporate welfare,” wrote Cruz. “It is cronyism at its worst, with U.S. taxpayers guaranteeing billions of dollars in loans for sketchy buyers in foreign nations. Ex-Im is scheduled to wind down on June 30. But powerful lobbyists in Washington want to keep the money flowing.”

Opposition to the deal made for strange bedfellows. Joining the conservatives Cruz, Sessions and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, were ultra-leftists Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., Al Franken, D-Minn., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

The House technically did pass the Trade Promotion Authority, or TPA, bill twice. But in order to ensure ultimate passage, a controversial provision was dropped the second

time, one that was originally included in the Senate version of the bill. It was called Trade Adjustment Assistance, or TAA, which would have provided money to workers who lose their jobs as a result of foreign trade.

Since the Senate and the House had not passed the same version of TPA, it could not go to the president for his signature without changes.

TPA then went back to Senate, where the TAA provision was dropped from its version, in order to match the House bill.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, have both vowed to revive votes on TAA this week.

Rank and file Democrats and Republicans both opposed TAA, but for opposite reasons: Democrats wanted the assistance extended to public-sector workers, while conservatives wanted the provision eliminated entirely as an unnecessary welfare measure in a bill supposedly designed to create jobs.

But numerous Democrats and Republican have opposed TPA for the same reason: it would cut Congress out of negotiations.

Many Democrats are also concerned massive trade deals would lower wages and cost American jobs, while a number of Republicans are concerned such agreements would bind the U.S. to the rulings of international bodies outside the control of American law.

Sessions, who has been leading the charge against TPA, is alarmed it would create an international legal body akin to the European Union, one that would have vast powers to change U.S. law, outside of the control of Congress.

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/03/sessions-300x149.png

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

He has said one effect would be the bypassing of U.S. immigration laws, greatly increasing the number of foreign workers allowed into the country, costing Americans jobs and depressing wages.

Sessions penned an open letter on Sunday that claimed reams of new information have been exposed since the Senate last voted on TPA more than four weeks ago, including “information that was either not known or understood when the vote was held.”

Much of that information regards the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, a monumental trade deal between the U.S. and Pacific Rim nations that would almost certainly be passed into law, as would all “fast-tracked” trade deals, should TPA become law.

Sessions listed the problems:

TPP includes the administration’s pledge to impose “environmental governance.”

TPP would lead to the formation of a new Pacific Union, “an enduring, self-governing political entity with vast regulatory power. Yet fast-track – which has led without fail to the adoption of every covered agreement since its inception – would rush it through with less legislative scrutiny than a Post Office reform bill.”

“The president has refused to answer the most simple but crucial questions about how he plans to use fast-track powers. He will not even answer whether he believes his plan will increase or reduce the trade deficit, increase or reduce manufacturing jobs, or increase or reduce wages.”

“In addition to the TPP are the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). Together they encompass three-fourths of the world economy, and up to ninety percent of the world economy when including countries whose membership is being courted.”

“The texts of TTIP and TiSA remain completely secret –unreviewable by lawmakers themselves – yet fast-track would authorize the executive to sign them before Congress votes.”

“The president would send Congress legislation to change U.S. law to comport with these new agreements, legislation which cannot be amended, which senators cannot filibuster, cannot receive a two-thirds treaty vote, and cannot be debated for more than 20 hours.”

“The Ways and Means Committee has also now conceded that, as an unprecedented ‘Living Agreement,’ the union could change its structure, rules, regulations and enforcement mechanisms after final ratification – a dangerous and unjustifiable power.”

“TiSA would seek foreign worker mobility among 50 nations, including between the United States, Turkey and Pakistan.”

Sessions issued this statement Tuesday after the Senate voted to advance fast-track executive authority:

Americans increasingly believe that their country isn’t serving its own citizens. They need look no further than a bipartisan vote of Congress that will transfer congressional power to the Executive Branch and, in turn, to a transnational Pacific Union and the global interests who will help write its rules.

The same routine plays out over and again. This enormously Fascist bill will be passed, and all the business lobbyists and leaders tell us how grand it will be, but that it must be rushed through before the voters spoil the plan. Yes, you heard it right. We the People will spoil the plan by demanding liberty and the right to pursue our happiness. As with Obamacare and the Washington DC Crime Syndicate, the politicians meet with their propagandists—not based on what the bill actually does, but what the people can be made to believe it does. And when ordinary Americans who never asked for the plan, who don’t want the plan, who don’t understand the plan, resist, they are scorned, mocked, fined, jailed, and forced into bankruptcy.

Washington broke arms and heads to get that 60th vote—not one to spare—to impose on the American people a plan which imperils their jobs, wages, and control over their own affairs. It is remarkable that so much energy has been expended on advancing the things Americans oppose, and preventing the things Americans want.

For instance: thousands of loyal Americans have been laid off and forced to train the foreign workers brought in to fill their jobs—at Disney, at Southern California Edison, across the country. Does Washington rush to their defense? No, the politicians and the lobbyists rush to move legislation that would double or triple the very program responsible for replacing them.

This ‘econometarian’ ideology holds that if a company can increase its bottom line —whether by insourcing foreign workers or outsourcing production—then it’s always a win, never a downside.

President Obama, and allies in Congress, have won this fast-track vote. But, in exchange, they may find that they are losing something far greater: the trust of the American people. Americans have a fundamental, decent, and just demand: that the people they elect defend their interests. And every issue to come before us in the coming months will have to pass this test: does this strengthen, or weaken, the position of the everyday, loyal American citizen?

Fast Track Trade Authority Dooms Non-global Business

Any country on Earth can now be bribed or punished by the president. TPA will fast-track the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), essentially ensuring congressional approval of that Pacific Rim trade deal—one that currently does not include China, but will likely one day soon include the currency manipulating behemoth nation.

“The President met today with China’s Special Representatives to the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue and Consultation on People-to-People Exchange, Vice Premier Liu Yandong, Vice Premier Wang Yang, State Councilor Yang Jiechi, and the Chinese delegation,” the White House announced in a press release on Wednesday.

The President acknowledged the importance of these annual ministerial-level mechanisms for expanding practical cooperation on regional and global challenges, while at the same time narrowing differences. The President and the Chinese Special Representatives agreed to further expand U.S.-China cooperation on climate and clean energy, and affirmed their unity of purpose in our approach to the Paris climate negotiations in December. Recognizing the importance of economic ties to the overall bilateral relationship, the President expressed support for China’s efforts to reform and rebalance its economy, and for our ongoing bilateral investment treaty negotiations, while urging China to address major economic challenges in the areas of its currency, technology and investment policies. The President raised ongoing U.S. concerns about China’s cyber and maritime behavior, and he urged China to take concrete steps to lower tensions.

The White House press release did not specifically state whether the TPP trade deal that will be fast-tracked through Congress came up during the talks, but Obama has previously confirmed the Chinese have expressed interest in joining the deal to him and his top administration officials.

“The President and the Chinese Special Representatives discussed the fundamental importance of demonstrating to North Korea that it will not succeed in its efforts to develop nuclear weapons and its economy simultaneously, and both sides reiterated their commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” the release continued. “The two sides agreed that Iran should seize the historic opportunity presented by the ongoing P5+1 negotiations to address the international community’s concerns regarding its nuclear program. The two sides strongly expressed support for deepening ties between the citizens of the United States and the People’s Republic of China.”

President Obama has, however, confirmed in public interviews that China is actively interested in becoming a part of the highly secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership deal.

“They’ve already started putting out feelers about possibilities of them participating at some point,” Obama said of China with regard to TPP in an interview earlier this month.

While the White House did not say whether TPP came up in the talks in its release, what is interesting is that the release did say these talks did focus on topics that the Washington Post reported top analysts say are necessary for China to address to become part of the deal.

“China, which is challenging the U.S. economy as the world’s largest in some measures, is not involved in the TPP negotiations,” the Washington Post’s David Nakamura wrote on Wednesday. “Obama administration officials have said the trade deal is being structured to allow additional countries to join after the initial deal is ratified. However, the officials said, China has a long way to go before it can meet the labor and environmental standards that will be included in the accord.”

Now that President Obama has been granted fast track authority by Congress which makes it pretty much certain that TPP will pass, the “living agreement” inside TPP as exposed by

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)80%

means that he can add China to the deal without the approval of Congress.

Sessions warned in early May:

The “living agreement” provision means that participating nations could both add countries to the TPP without Congress’ approval (like China), and could also change any of the terms of the agreement, including in controversial areas such as the entry of foreign workers and foreign employees. Again: these changes would not be subject to congressional approval.

All these developments undercut establishment Republican talking points that Congress handing Obama fast-track authority—more power than Congress has—would somehow help the United States stand up to the Chinese.

“The rules of the global economy are being rewritten right now,” House Ways and Means Committee chairman

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)58%

said in a mid-April interview with CNBC pushing Obamatrade. “I would strongly argue if we sit by and do nothing, then China will write the rules of the global economy, particularly in Asia, to China’s benefit. And that won’t be to the benefit of the American worker.”Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

80%

, who has just been caught in a serious Obamatrade conundrum on whether he actually read the text of the TPP before he voted to fast-track it, also in an April 29 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal touted his belief that the TPP—and pushing TPA to fast-track it—would somehow strengthen U.S. with Japan while weakening China.

“The first is ensuring that we maintain U.S. and allied defense capabilities that can resist the coercion or domination of Asia by an increasingly assertive and belligerent China,” Rubio wrote in the op-ed laying out his three Asia policy pillars—the op-ed in which he pushed for TPA and TPP. “The second is an Asian-Pacific economy governed by free-market principles. And the third is the settling of disputes based on the rule of law, not usurpation of land, military expansionism and conflict. The U.S.-Japan alliance is at the center of all three pillars.”

The White House also confirmed on Wednesday that President Obama told the Chinese officials that “he looks forward to welcoming [Chinese] President Xi Jinping to the White House for a State Visit in September.”

SCOTUS Ruling on Same-Sex Marriage Mandates Nationwide Concealed Carry Reciprocity

If you’re following any of the various media outlets this morning, you’re probably aware that the U.S. Supreme Court has just extended homosexual marriage to all 50 states.

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that same-sex couples have a right to marry nationwide, in a historic decision that invalidates gay marriage bans in more than a dozen states.

Gay and lesbian couples already can marry in 36 states and the District of Columbia.  The court’s ruling on Friday means the remaining 14 states, in the South and Midwest, will have to stop enforcing their bans on same-sex marriage.

The outcome is the culmination of two decades of Supreme Court litigation over marriage and gay rights generally.

The meat of the activist Court’s over-long decision hinges on a single paragraph.

(b) The Fourteenth Amendment requires the State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex.

(1) The fundamental liberties protected by the 14th amendment’s due process clause extend to certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy, including intimate choices defining personal identity and beliefs.

The Court used Section 1 of the Fourteen Amendment to justify their argument, which reads:

Amendment XIV, Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.  No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of

citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

By using the Constitution in such a manner, the Court argues that the Due Process Clause extends “certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy” accepted in a majority of states across the state lines of a handful of states that still banned the practice.

The vast majority of states are “shall issue” on the matter of issuing concealed carry permits, and enjoy reciprocity with a large number of other states.

My North Carolina concealed carry permit, for example, was recognized yesterday as being valid in 36 states, which just so happened to be the number of states in which gay marriage was legal yesterday.  But 14 states did not recognize my North Carolina concealed carry permit yesterday.  Today they must.

Using the same “due process clause” argument as the Supreme Court just applied to gay marriage, my concealed carry permit must now be recognized as valid in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. This is just the beginning. Thousands of licenses and registrations from one State must now be recognized by other States. This one decision breaks down the borders between States, and in fact destroys the sovereignty of any State. States have three choices. First, they can nullify the court’s decision, which is a useless and meaningless action. The second is to secede from the Union.

5th Amendment defeated for all 50 States

WASHINGTON -- The latest and possibly the last serious effort to cripple Obamacare through the courts has just failed.

On Thursday, for the second time in three years, the Supreme Court rejected a major lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act -- thereby preserving the largest expansion in health coverage since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid half a century ago.

The stakes of the case, King v. Burwell, were enormous. Had the plaintiffs prevailed, millions of people who depend upon the Affordable Care Act for insurance would have lost financial assistance from the federal government. Without that money, most of them would have had to give up coverage altogether. And the loss of so many customers would have forced insurers to raise premiums, seriously disrupting state insurance markets.

But two of the court’s conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined the court’s four liberals in rejecting the lawsuit in a 6-3 decision. Roberts delivered the opinion for the majority. And the decision was a concise, stinging rebuke of the plaintiffs, who contended that Congress intended to write a law that would leave so many people without coverage, and cause such disarray.

"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not destroy them," Roberts wrote.

U.S. Supreme Court members Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Elena Kagan, Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Associate Justice Stephen

Breyer. The six Justices pictured voted to preserve a key component of the Affordable Care Act. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The decision is a major defeat for conservatives, who have been trying to wipe Obamacare off the books ever since its enactment in 2010. The sweeping health care reform law, a key component of President Barack Obama’s legacy, now appears to be secure at least through the 2016 elections.

"Today, after more than 50 votes in Congress to repeal or weaken this law, after a presidential election based in part on preserving or repealing this law, after multiple challenges to this law in front of the Supreme Court, the Affordable Care Act is here to stay," Obama said.

Obama added that he hopes to continue improving the law, including expanding Medicaid in more Republican-run states. "What we are not going to do," he added, "is unravel what is now woven into the fabric of America."

The law's fate beyond the 2016 election will depend on who becomes president next year -- and whether Republicans in Congress are willing to keep fighting for repeal.

"Obamacare is fundamentally broken ... today's ruling doesn't change that fact," House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said. "Republicans will continue to listen to American families and work to protect them from the consequences of Obamacare."

The lawsuit, conceived by some of Obamacare’s most relentless conservative critics and promoted enthusiastically by leaders of the Republican Party, didn’t challenge the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality. Instead, this brief against the law focused on a single six-word phrase -- "an exchange established by the state" -- that was buried deep

within the text. What this phrase really meant, supporters of the lawsuit argued, was that tax credits for buying insurance should only be available in those states where officials had decided to operate their own health insurance exchange marketplaces, rather than leaving that administrative work to the federal government.

This phrasing was no mere accident, the lawsuit’s supporters insisted. It was the result, they said, of a concession that congressional Democratic leaders had made to their more conservative colleagues, in order to get the votes needed to pass the health care reform bill into law.

Had the high court agreed with this reading of the law, its decision would have invalidated subsidies for millions of people residing in the 34 states with federal exchanges -- a group that includes Florida, Texas and other states where Republican officials have been ambivalent or hostile toward Obamacare. Without those subsidies, worth thousands of dollars a year to some people, the ranks of the uninsured would have swelled by more than 8 million people, according to estimates by the Rand Corp., the Urban Institute and other independent analysts.

And the damage would not have stopped there. Faced with a dwindling pool of customers -- many of them, in all likelihood, older and sicker than the customers who’d been getting coverage through Obamacare previously -- insurers likely would have reacted by raising premiums or by withdrawing from certain states altogether.

Such a decision would not have affected coverage in states like California, Kentucky and Maryland, where officials are operating their own exchanges. Nor would it have altered coverage for people who get insurance through Medicare or Medicaid, or through their employers.

The reasoning behind the lawsuit was always shaky. All along, the Democratic leaders who'd shepherded the Affordable Care Act through Congress maintained that the plaintiffs’ theory was nonsense -- that the architects of the law had always intended for subsidies to be available everywhere, regardless of state action. In legal briefs and during oral arguments before the Supreme Court in March, the Obama administration backed up this argument by pointing to other sections of the law that implied assistance should flow in all states -- as well as to legal doctrines under which courts traditionally defer to executive branch agencies when a statute’s precise meaning is ambiguous.

In its ruling, the high court sided with the Obama administration. Roberts and the majority concluded the executive branch possesses the authority to interpret the statutory language in a way that permits the subsidies to be distributed in every state. "The court must look to the broader structure of the act," Roberts wrote. "Petitioners plain-meaning arguments are strong, but the act’s context and structure compel the conclusion that Section 36B allows tax credits for insurance purchased on any exchange created under the act."

Legal scholars closely involved with the case were struck by the lopsided majority -- and the language that Roberts used. "The Court's opinion is quite strong: it reads a lot like the government's brief," Nicholas Bagley, a University of Michigan law professor who was among Obamacare's most prominent defenders, told The Huffington Post.

This marks the second time Roberts has sided with Obamacare supporters, following his deciding vote in 2012 to uphold the constitutionality of the law’s individual mandate that most U.S. residents obtain health coverage or face a fine. Last time, however, Roberts was the lone conservative to join the court’s liberals. But as often is the case, Kennedy was considered a swing vote even before the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case in March, and his tough questioning of the plaintiffs’ attorney at the time was seen as an early indication that he might rule in favor of the defendants.

The Currency Collapse has Started

Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced Sunday that banks will be closed and capital controls imposed in order to stave off a run on the euro after negotiations with the country's international lenders broke down. He said the Athens stock market would also be closed.

However, Tsipras blamed the European Central Bank for the latest crisis after it decided not to increase the amount of emergency liquidity amid a run on the banks that saw people lined up at ATMs, many of which ran dry amid the onslaught.

"It is now more than clear that this decision has no other aim than to blackmail the will of the Greek people and prevent the smooth democratic process of the referendum," Tsipras said in a televised address to the Greek people, according to The Associated Press.

"[Rejection] of the Greek government's request for a short extension of the program was an unprecedented act by European standards, questioning the right of a sovereign people to decide," he said.

"This decision led the ECB today to limit the liquidity available to Greek banks and forced the Greek central bank to suggest a bank holiday and restrictions on bank withdrawals," Tsipras said, without elaborating on how long the bank holiday would continue.

On Saturday, Tsipras called for a national referendum on July 5 to decide the fate of a bailout package hammered out in negotiations led by Germany, the home of the ECB and the grouping's strongest economy. Finance ministers with the European Union have rejected the surprise vote.

The premier's remarks also come as the country's opposition leader, Antonis Samaras, called for Tsipras to scrap the referendum and form a government of national unity.

A default on a 1.6 billion euro ($1.9 billion) debt due the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday could presage an exit from the eurozone and a return to a heavily devalued version of Greece's former currency, the drachma.

As Joanna Kakissis reports from Athens for NPR: "Some European leaders say the Greek government closed the door on negotiations by calling a referendum. Others are pushing for a compromise to preserve the euro."

As The New York Times reports:

"The central bank's 25-member governing council, convened by conference call, was discussing how and whether to extend an emergency line of credit — currently worth more than 85 billion euros, or $95 billion — that in recent weeks has kept Greek banks from collapsing.

"Analysts say that without these funds, Greek banks would not have sufficient money to provide to panicky savers if they opened on Monday. Without a continued flow of money to consumers and businesses, Greece's struggling economy would probably lapse deeper into recession."

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew called IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde and the finance ministers of Germany and France, urging them to "find a solution that puts Greece on a path toward reform and recovery within the Eurozone," according to a statement.

The Only Way Out of This Mess Is To Repudiate the Greek Debt June 25 (EIRNS)-The European Union is just stalling, economist LyndonLaRouche said today. The Greeks have made it clear that the issues are limited, thatthey cannot and will not pay illegitimate debt by killing their citizens. Otherwise,the Greeks will simply leave Europe. Some parts of Europe are refusing to admit thefact that their governments, or their representatives, have committed a fraud againstthe Greek people. Those elements are demanding that the Greeks have to pay thedebt, which a fraud has created. We must tell them: The fraud will not be honored.You stole the money, for pure speculation, and you're now demanding to get itall over again. We're saying, "No. You've stolen more than enough from usalready." The fly in the ointment is, that an honest treatment of the debts which areattributed to the Greeks, would mean the bankrupting of major speculative interestsin Europe and the United States in particular. The problem that Europe has to worryabout, is the fact that the European debts, these gambling debts, are not fungible. Therefore, writing them off would mean, cancelling Wall Street, and going back toGlass-Steagall. The Troika is missing the point. What they are defending are worthless assets.They're trying to recommit a fraud, which they had already committed previously.

What they must do, along with the United States, is to restore the Glass-Steagallpolicy, as Franklin Roosevelt did-cancel the worthless debts. Europe must cancelits worthless debts in the same manner, especially the British. The Europeans must eat the fake debt. What they're demanding is the protectionof their thievery. The solution is the re-establishment of the Glass-Steagall policy forthe relevant regions of the planet, including the U.S.A. If you close down thosebanks in the U.S., under the law, which are speculative banks, you have nowchanged the character of the money system in the United States, to eliminate thisswindle system. Use Glass Steagall as a source of credit. You put that source ofcredit into the hands of the U.S. government, so it's now the U.S. government,which is the agency which actually represents the people of the United States. We recommend that a similar approach be applied to Germany, to France and so forth.In that way, the swindlers lose the money-but they are swindlers. Take theswindlers' money away from them, and give it back, respectively, to nationalbanks-that is, to governmental banking systems. This will create a new Glass-Steagall policy of international development in a significant part of the trans-Atlantic region. German Finance Minister Schäuble and his cohorts-pirates and burglars-aresquawking to protect the interests of the pirates and swindlers. Let's go back toFranklin Roosevelt's methods. France needs it. Clean out the monetarist system.That will not solve all problems, but it will give us a foundation from which to buildup solutions. Get some production going. Shut down this euro speculation system;these guys are all thieves, and the British most of all. We don't need to worry abouttheir benefits; they don't have any benefits coming to them. What we need is an economic system, a federal banking system, a nationalbanking system, go back to the U.S. concept of Franklin Roosevelt, of Glass-Steagall. It's the swindler class which is making these demands of Greece. Don'tlisten to the swindlers; go back to national economy, and we won't have suchswindlers.

ISIS: Are we Being Played by Obama’s Ministers?

Citing a "confluence of events," House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul said Americans should heed the government's warning for Americans to be vigilant against terrorist attacks during July 4 celebrations next weekend.

"It is concerning," McCaul told "Fox News Sunday. "There is a great deal of chatter, a high volume," he said of terrorist network communications.

He noted that a spokesman for the Islamic State (ISIS) has called for jihad during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan — currently under way – the one-year anniversary of the establishment of the ISIS caliphate and the American Independence Day holiday.

In addition to that confluence is the "Bloody Friday" attacks in France, Tunisia and Kuwait, all within hours of each other, in which ISIS claimed credit.

The warning to Americans was issued jointly by the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism Center.

"I think given these confluence of events we're being on the cautious side here to warn the public to remain vigilant," McCaul said, "to enjoy the Fourth of July parades, but remain vigilant during these celebrations."

Foiled terror plots have increased "exponentially" in the past year, McCaul said, because of Internet recruiting.

"I'm extremely concerned about the way the Syrian ISIS recruiters can use the Internet at lightning speed to recruit followers in the United States, with thousands of followers in the United States," he said, "And then activate them to do whatever they want to do, whether it's military installations, law enforcement or, possibly, a Fourth of July event parade."

Now, my thoughts are that if you have been discouraged from attending a game, a race, or a parade by the minister of homeland security, ISIS has won already. We must not be propagandized or played by these fear mongering leftists who want you to look to them as the sole source for your food and safety.

The Choice: If you had to make it.

Let’s just suppose you became sick of the whole political game. I’m not saying you are, but let’s say you were. If it came down to the candidates Hillary vs Donald, which would you pick? I have personally asked over 100 people from all areas of the community. I did not find a single vote for Hillary. What do you say? Please tweet me at #brooksagnew

Ever Talk to Plants? How about listening?

A groundbreaking new study published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Research titled, “Interspecies communication between plant and mouse gut host cells through edible plant derived exosome-like nanoparticles,” reveals a new way that food components ‘talk’ to animal cells by regulating gene expression and conferring significant therapeutic effects. With the recent discovery that non-coding microRNA’s in food are capable of directly altering gene expression within human physiology,[1] this new study further concretizes the notion that the age old aphorism ‘you are what you eat’ is now consistent with cutting edge molecular biology.

Exosomes: The ‘Missing Link’ In How Plants and Animal Cells Communicate and Collaborate

This is the first study of its kind to look at the role of exosomes, small vesicles secreted by plant and animal cells that participate in intercellular communication, in interspecies (plant-animal) communication.

The study explained the biological properties of exosomes as follows:

“Exosomes are produced by a variety of mammalian cells including immune, epithelial, and tumor cells [11–15]. Exosomes play a role in intercellular communication and can transport mRNA, miRNA, bioactive lipids, and proteins between cells [16–19]. Upon contact, exosomes transfer molecules that can render new properties and/or reprogram their recipient cells.”

While most of the research on exosomes has focused on their role in pathological states such as tumor promotion, they were recently found to play a key role in stimulating regeneration within damaged cardiac tissue,[2] and are known to be found in human breast milk, further underscoring how irreplaceable it is vis-à-vis synthesized infant formula.[3]

The New Study

The investigators isolated plant derived exosome-like nanoparticles (EPDENs) from ginger, carrot, grape and grapefruit, and observed their behavior in mammalian cells (mice).

They chose these commonly consumed edible fruits and vegetables because,

“It is well established that a plant-derived diet has great influence on regulation of mammalian host cell homeostasis, in particular, cells in the digestive system [1–3]. Deregulation of plant-derived diet regulated host cell homeostasis leads to increased susceptibility to infections, chronic inflammatory bowel diseases, and cancer [4–10].

They noted, “the cellular and molecular machinery regulating such interspecies mutualism between a plant-derived diet and the mammalian gut is not fully defined.” Their new study aimed to gain new insight into defining the mechanisms through which cross-kingdom crosstalk occurs.

Plant Exosomes Affect Mammalian Cells Intimately

After isolating and characterizing exosome-like nanoparticles from all four edible plants, the researchers discovered they possessed remarkable similarity in size and structure to mammalian-derived exosomes. Furthermore, the study showed “that these exosome-like nanoparticles are taken up by intestinal macrophages and stem cells, and have biological effects on the recipient cells.”

The biological effects were described as follows:

Ginger exosome-like nanoparticles strongly induced heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) and IL-10 expressed in macrophages, an indication of anti-inflammatory and antoxidant properties.

Fruit-derived exosome-like nanoparticles including grape and grapefruit induced Wnt/TCF4 activation, which is a key component of the anti-inflammatory response

All tested foods activated nuclear translocation of Nrf2, a key regulator of the HO1 gene, which has an important role in anti-inflammation and antioxidation; ginger was found to be most potent, followed by grapefruit, carrot and grape

Notably, EPDENs were found to be resistant to gastric and intestinal enzymatic digestion, further indicating they are capable of exerting significant biological effects by escaping digestive degradation, which has also been found with lectins and microRNA’s within edible foods.

The researchers discussed their results:

“Our findings show that exosome-like nanoparticles are present in edible fruits and vegetables and reveal a previously unrecognized strategy by which plants communicate with mammalian cells via exosome-like nanoparticles in the gut, and in particular intestinal macrophages and stem cells. We found that edible plants contain large amounts of nanoparticles. Like mammalian exosomes, further characterization of the plant nanoparticles led to identifying them as exosome- like nanoparticles based on the nanoparticles being com- posed of proteins, lipids, and miRNAs. EPDENs from different types of plants have different biological effects on the recipient mammalian cells. This finding opens up a new avenue to further study the molecular mechanisms underlying how the plant kingdom crosstalks with mammalian cells such as intestinal macrophages and stem cells via EPDENs. This information may provide the molecular basis of using multiple plant-derived agents for better therapeutic effect than any single plant-derived agent.”

They also offered that their results may explain why those who consume a greater variety of edible plants are healthier:

“It has been known for decades that people eating a variety of edible plants daily are the recipients of many beneficial health effects when compared to subjects that ingest fewer types of edible plants. Ingesting EPDENs from a variety of fruits and vegetables daily would be expected to provide greater beneficial effects for maintaining gut homeostasis than ingesting EPDENs from single edible plant.”

Discussion: Deeper Implications of the Study

As part of the fascinating new fields of epigenetics and nutrigenomics, this new study’s findings promise to expand the relevance of food in the practice of medicine and the

prevention of disease. We have crossed a critical threshold in the past few decades where food can no longer considered simply as a source of caloric content, minerals and vitamins, and building blocks for the body-machine. [Learn more by taking the author’s E-Course] Rather, food carries very specific forms of biologically meaningful information (literally ‘to put form into’), without which our genetic and epigenetic infrastructure cannot function according to its intelligent design.

The discovery of plant-dervied exosome-mediated modulation of fundamental mammalian cellular pathways, lends powerful support to the concept that ancestral nutritional practices handed down for countless generations are critical in maintaining our health. With the advent of the post-industrial diet, based largely on ‘food-like’ synthesized nutrition, and the novel introduction of grain-based nutrition in only the past 500 generations, our present diet suffers from a series of profoundly biological incompatible foods.

Millions of years of co-evolutionary processes have generated a wide range of interspecies, cross-kingdom co-dependencies. For instance, mammals and angiosperms (which comprise about 250,000 species and include most of the flowering plants that provide the modern world its diet) co-evolved for at least 200 million years together, and are today two of the most dominant forms of life on the planet. The very molecular and informational fabric of our bodies evolved to intimately depend on the presence of various key food components in the human diet, and the absence of others which may be detrimental to our health. Food components like exosomes may be as important to our health as vitamins and other classically defined ‘nutrients,’ and may even be more important in modulating a wide range of complex genetic- and epigenetic-mediated cellular processes within the body. This may also explain the mystery of how certain fruits, such as pomegranate, have been found to replace the function of the mammalian ovary in an ovariectomy induced models of premature aging.  While pomegranate is one of nature’s most concentrated source of bioidentical estrone, exosomes may be the ‘missing link’ as to how a plant food can support complex hormonal processes within the animal body, along with exerting such a wide range of additional therapeutic health effects. This is all the more evidence with plants like turmeric, which have over 600 health benefits and has been found to modulate the expression of thousands of genes simultaneously.[4]

We believe that taken together, the recent discoveries that 1) microRNA’s within foods like rice can enter into our blood and tissue and regulate gene expression 2) that double-stranded RNAs within a wide range of commonly consumed foods have molecular homology with thousands of human RNAs (and are therefore capable of silencing them) 3) that lectins also can directly activate nuclear machinery within certain cells, the addition of exosome-mediated gene modulation, lends further support to the concept that the quality and types of food we consume carry as much relevance in terms of ‘biological destiny’ as the DNA within our genome.

With exciting research now available, the famous quote attributed to Thomas Edison rings truer today than ever:

“The doctor of the future will give no medication, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.”

Cash is Contraband Part 3

NASDAQ is floating atop an enormous bubble. A tech bubble. There are dozens of companies that are posting stock prices hundreds of times their earnings. Earnings heck, some of them not only have not profits; they have no sales at all! How can a stock be posting a market cap of $200 million without a single sale? Hype. Bubble hype.

This is what happens when the market runs on press releases and speculation like a bunch of tourists at a horse race. They bet on horses based on what they heard another person saying in the bathroom, and then someone else tells someone else. Pretty soon, the horse is a verbal sure thing longshot and everyone is pouring money into that horse. At the last minutes before the race begins, the odds change to 3:2 and then it doesn’t matter if it wins or not. You’re not going to make the returns you hoped. The trouble is, you can’t sue anyone at that little tech stock, because they did not misrepresent anything. You just read or heard what you wanted to hear.

There are hundreds of companies that are at least 100 times earnings. There are thousands of them at least 20 times earnings. Even emerging technologies should be no more than 14 times earnings. When this bubble pops, the speed with which it destroys 401k accounts, annuities, and net worths on financial statements will make the crash of 2008 look like a speed bump.

The Greek bank failure is a trigger event that most people don’t even acknowledge. When a country misses a payment to the all-powerful IMF, that is when the world stops rotating. The dominoes stacked against one another around the entire world stand to fall right against the next one until the whole system comes down. The only way to survive is to be out of the banks, into a credit union, and you should be holding at least 25% of your wealth in physical greenbacks, 25% of your wealth in gold and silver. The banks will make emergency pleas to the global financial ministers to free up liquid capital, which means seize it from the owners of the credit unions, but even that will not be enough to save them.

The global derivatives, which now sit in the hands of 4 US banks, are the toxic hot potato. Every bank before them has extracted service release premiums and discounts from those derivatives. Once they come due, as when the loans documents become worthless, there will be no global bank open for business for at least a year.

Mysterious Expert named “DJ” reads from source docs about Jade Helm

There is a lady rancher out there in New Mexico who calls herself DJ. Right now she is the only source on Earth talking about an operation aimed at Managing the Human Domain. She claims we are all nodes in a monster cube computer, and if we are not supported by this computer, we will die.

First of all, zero of her information has been corroborated. Second, people have been surviving for millennia without being a node in a computer program. Third, there are about 28% of the people inside the US borders who are bankless. That means they work for cash, or other forms of value, and they buy in cash. Everything. They have prepaid cell phones. They have no car insurance, no valid registrations, belong to no clubs or societies, and they live just fine.

Ever hear the song, “A Country Boy Will Survive?” I am no part of anyone’s software, and frankly if a computer tried to figure out my mind and predict what I am going to do or think from moment to moment, it would require enough energy to brown out Atlanta. Get real people. The human domain is unmanageable. We are driven to liberty and freedom and independence. And we will never be managed by any cube computer or a pyramid shaped one either.

DJ is a fake and her official government document is phony as can be. So if you heard her absolutely horrid interview on Hagman and Hagman, go wash your brain out with clean water and get a grip on reality. You are source, and you make your own choices on your own life condition, and neither God, not a whole host of gods can change that. I know Obama likes to think of himself as a god, and maybe he is, but not on this world.

Petition to End the 22nd Amendment Gaining Ground

To The Honorable United States Government Leaders,

We the undersigned respectfully ask that the 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution be repealed and remove term limits for The President Of The United States Of America.

The 22nd Amendment has been a barrier to the freedom of this country especially at the moment with our economy in trouble. There have been too many times throughout our history that an elected President who is doing what is right for America has to leave office due to the term limits specified in the U. S. Constitution. Often the new President reverses everything that has been done which does nothing but bring further harm to America.

This has to stop. If an elected President is good at doing the correct job they were elected to do they deserve to stay in office and retain their position until they commit a harmful act against the United States and are removed from office by Congress, their voting records change and they are directly voted out, or they choose to leave their position in that office. This would have been the situation with President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Had he not been assassinated he would have had to leave office after two

terms even when he was one of if not the most highly valued President in American History. He and all other Presidents should hold that office until they are directly voted out by the American People.The American voters are the real term limits for any President. If the American people do not want a President to serve another term they will vote to have them replaced ending the term of office for that President.

Therefore we ask that you, The United States Government Leaders, amend the United States Constitution immediately to repeal the 22nd Amendment and remove term limits for The President Of The United States allowing the American people to decide by themselves through direct voting if that President should stay in office or not. Thank you for listening to our comments.

People think that this is possible. Most think it is not. I thought that too, until the actions of the Supreme Court this last week. People think that elections will be suspended and Marshall law will be established. Nonsense. What will happen is that Hillary will be officially accused of wrongdoing, and she will be disqualified from running for public office. Not too soon. It cannot happen too soon.

If it happens too soon, then a new Democratic candidate will rise up and challenge the GOP for the office. Obama’s ego is so large, and his power over the Supreme Court is so well established, that he will become the candidate to save the Party; to save his precious Obamacare, to save the nation.

And, if he runs, he will be elected by a landslide. He has even more people on food stamps now than in 2012. He has 6 million more receiving taxpayer subsidized health insurance. He has 8 million more illegal immigrants than in 2012. Do you think this was all for nothing?

Most people believed ObamaCare would not become law of the land.  The Press thought NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) would never become law.  Nobody thought that men could marry men, or that polygamy would return as the law of the land. In the past few years, changes in our lives have been quicker and more dramatic.

Also, the U.S. Constitution makes an exception in the 22 Amendment: ” This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven years from the date of its submission to the states by the Congress.”You can’t say that the President, Barack Obama can’t be President in 2016 and serve a third term? Obama in 2016 has to convince 75% of Congress. Shoot. That’s easy. Mitch McConnell and John Boehner will punish anyone who goes against them. 75% is easy to get. Just like any campaign, massive groups of lobbyists and PACs (Political Action Committee) will be hired to strategically work together. You don’t want to have those food stamps cut off, do you? You don’t want to lose that fat insurance, do you? You don’t want to be sent back to Mexico, do you? Are you starting to see the picture?

Obama bans wealthy from hoarding gold: “Wealthy Americans are bailing out on the economy by taking their money out of circulation and hoarding gold,” Obama said as he signed an executive order reminiscent of Depression-era President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ban on the possession of gold. “The wealthy are violating their trust and abusing their position by investing in gold,” Obama said. “My order will put an immediate end to this practice, which threatens to hijack the good efforts of Congress and my administration, which needs at least 3 trillion dollars of additional stimulus money to maintain an acceptable rate of growth of the federal government. My motto is ‘If you’re not getting bigger, you’re not getting better.'” Justin Thyme Skinnyreport.com.   Read More Obama supporters Sign Petition Banning Gold Coins & Confiscating Coins From Safe Boxes: Obama supporters in San Diego, California sign a petition to ban and confiscate gold coins from people’s homes and safe deposit boxes as part of the President’s economic recovery plan. Author and media analyst Mark Dice uses the key words “will you help Obama” and that’s all it takes for people to sign his crazy petition. Charleston Voice, Knology, 24hgold, 9/19/13. Read MoreJay Carney: Obama 2016 Not On President’s Mind, Obamacare Claim More Believable: Jay Carney was not suffering from foot in mouth disease once again as he claimed Obama wasn’t thinking about the 2016 Presidential election. Then again, this is the same Jay Carney who opined that “Benghazi happened a long time ago.” The Inquistr 1/1/13 Read More

Tom Hanks quips: ‘Four more years’ for Obama- Mr. Hanks, who’s starring in the soon-to-be-released “Captain Phillips” and was in Washington, D.C., this week for a premiere showing at the Newseum, declared his choice for president for 2016: Mr. Obama, The Hill reported. Cheryl K. Chumley 10/4/13 The Washington Times. Read More

Tom Hanks wants third term for Obama- Tom Hanks is already declaring his presidential pick for 2016, there’s just one, small problem: a little thing called term limits.  Judy Kurtz The Hill 10/3/13. Read More

Obama Will Seek Third Term- Earlier this week President Obama said in a speech to supporters that he wished to seek an unprecedented 3rd term as Commander in Chief. He cited his exemplary work at bringing the country back from the brink of economic catastrophe much like former socially minded, populist leader Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Flanked by a few of his most ardent Democrat supporters in Congress he announced the urgency to repeal a portion of the Constitution which forbids the president from seeking a 3rd term. Rand Paul Review 8/12/13. Read More

Rumor: Obama will seek a third presidential term-An investor named Porter Stansberry has a theory that President Obama will seek a third and possibly fourth presidential term. But there are good reasons to doubt Stansberry’s theory, and those reasons begin with the 22nd Amendment.  MSM 8/29/13. Read More

Yes, Obama can win a third term- There is a scenario — a nightmare scenario for RWNJs — under which President Obama can legally and constitutionally win a third term as President of the United States. Of course, we should know that Barack Obama is too honest and honorable a person to pursue this course of action. But do the RWNJs know that? Dailkos. Dem Bones 5/21/13. Read More

Obama to be Democratic nominee in 2016? A new poll of Democrats on their preferred candidates for the 2016 presidential race has produced the Obama name, which pollster Fritz Wenzel described as “bizarre.” WND.com Bob Unru, 4/30/13. Read More

Obama 2016: Is it time to repeal the 22nd Amendment? In the beginning there was no such thing as term limits for president or for members of Congress. On the other hand, members of the judiciary were given a lifetime appointment. Allvoices.com Harold Michael Harvey, J.D. 4/20/13. Read More

Obama: ‘Jedi Mind-Meld’ Not A Possible Solution For Sequester “I am not a dictator. I’m the president,” he said. He added that he can’t do a “Jedi mind-meld” or use any “special sauce” to get Republicans to negotiate.” Huffington Post, By Jim Kuhnhenn, The Associated Press 1/3/13 Read More

President Michele Obama in 2016? “The propaganda mill is already being set in motion for the 2016 election campaign, designed to keep Barack Obama in office. How? By laying the goundwork for Michele Obama”Right Side News, By Marchall Frank, 2/26/13 Read More

 Obama for Third Term? Congressman Pushes to End Term Limits for U.S. Presidency-   Democratic Congressman José Serrano has reintroduced legislation to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would end term limits for U.S. presidents and pave the way for President Barack Obama to stay in the White House for a third time.  Foxnews Latino 1/7/13. Read More

Six Reasons Why Barack Obama Could Be Another Three Term POTUS In the Making. For those who believe in celestial interventions in affairs on the earth, there were indications of the re election of President Barack Obama and even a third term in office. . . its conduct and the post election realities raise the question whether Barack Obama will be the next three term president of the U.S. By Shred PillaiTechnorati 11/13/12 Read MorePresident Obama could get 3 terms if H.J.Res 15 abolishes term limits. Americans around the nation were shocked Friday as they heard about H.J.Res. 15. H.J.Res 15 proposes an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the Twenty-second Amendment. This would remove the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President. Rep. José Serrano (D- NY15) introduced the controversial joint resolution on Friday, the second day of the 2013 legislative session.By Angel ClarkExaminer.com 1/5/13

Read MoreRepeal the 22nd amendment, removing Presidential term limitsH.J.Res. 15: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.PopVox.comRead More

Obama 2016!“The truth is, the next election has already been decided. Obama is going to win. It’s nearly impossible to beat an incumbent president,” advertiser Porter Stansberry wrote in the email to Gingrich supporters. “What’s actually at stake right now is whether or not he will have a third-term.”By Joseph CannonCannonfire, 11/3/2012 Obama2016Read More

Taxpayer Subsidized Musk Dream Machine Crashes back to Earth

An unmanned SpaceX cargo mission crashed back to Earth today (June 28), marking the third failure of a resupply flight to the International Space Station in the past eight months.

SpaceX's robotic Dragon capsule blasted off atop the company's two-stage Falcon 9 rocket as planned today at 10:21 a.m. EDT (1421 GMT) from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, headed for the orbiting lab. But something went wrong about two minutes into the flight, and the rocket broke apart, raining debris out of the sky.

"There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause," SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said via Twitter today, which is, incidentally, his 44th birthday. "That's all we can say with confidence right now. Will have more to say following a thorough fault tree analysis."

Bright Spots on Ceres: Salt, Ships, or Civilization?

Dwarf planet Ceres continues to puzzle scientists as NASA's Dawn spacecraft gets closer to being captured into orbit around the object. The latest images from Dawn, taken nearly 29,000 miles (46,000 kilometers) from Ceres, reveal that a bright spot that stands out in previous images lies close to yet another bright area.

"Ceres' bright spot can now be seen to have a companion of lesser brightness, but apparently in the same basin. This may be pointing to a volcano-like origin of the spots, but we will have to wait for better resolution before we can make such geologic

interpretations," said Chris Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission, based at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Using its ion propulsion system, Dawn will enter orbit around Ceres on March 6. As scientists receive better and better views of the dwarf planet over the next 16 months, they hope to gain a deeper understanding of its origin and evolution by studying its surface. The intriguing bright spots and other interesting features of this captivating world will come into sharper focus.

"The brightest spot continues to be too small to resolve with our camera, but despite its size it is brighter than anything else on Ceres. This is truly unexpected and still a mystery to us," said Andreas Nathues, lead investigator for the framing camera team at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen, Germany.

Dawn visited the giant asteroid Vesta from 2011 to 2012, delivering more than 30,000 images of the body along with many other measurements, and providing insights about its composition and geological history. Vesta has an average diameter of 326 miles (525 kilometers), while Ceres has an average diameter of 590 miles (950 kilometers). Vesta and Ceres are the two most massive bodies in the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter.

Dawn's mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team.

Dwarf planet Ceres continues to puzzle scientists as NASA's Dawn spacecraft gets closer to being captured into orbit around the object. The latest images from Dawn, taken nearly 29,000 miles (46,000 kilometers) from Ceres, reveal that a bright spot that stands out in previous images lies close to yet another bright area.

"Ceres' bright spot can now be seen to have a companion of lesser brightness, but apparently in the same basin. This may be pointing to a volcano-like origin of the spots, but we will have to wait for better resolution before we can make such geologic interpretations," said Chris Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission, based at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Using its ion propulsion system, Dawn will enter orbit around Ceres on March 6. As scientists receive better and better views of the dwarf planet over the next 16 months, they hope to gain a deeper understanding of its origin and evolution by studying its surface. The intriguing bright spots and other interesting features of this captivating world will come into sharper focus.

"The brightest spot continues to be too small to resolve with our camera, but despite its size it is brighter than anything else on Ceres. This is truly unexpected and still a mystery to us," said Andreas Nathues, lead investigator for the framing camera team at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen, Germany.

Dawn visited the giant asteroid Vesta from 2011 to 2012, delivering more than 30,000 images of the body along with many other measurements, and providing insights about its composition and geological history. Vesta has an average diameter of 326 miles (525 kilometers), while Ceres has an average diameter of 590 miles (950 kilometers). Vesta and Ceres are the two most massive bodies in the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter.

Dawn's mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team.

Dawn will map Ceres' surface in detail and attempt to determine what the dwarf planet is made of. The probe will also investigate some of the object's most intriguing mysteries, attemping to confirm the existence of water-vapor plumes and determine the nature of strange bright spots on Ceres' surface.

Dawn will perform this work from a series of ever-closer orbits, called RC3 (the current orbit, whose name is short for "rotation characterization 3"), Survey, HAMO (high-altitude mapping orbit) and LAMO (low-altitude mapping orbit). The altitudes of the latter three orbits are 2,700 miles (4,400 km), 900 miles (1,450 km) and 230 miles (375 km), respectively.

RC3 runs through May 9. Dawn will reside in the Survey orbit from June 6 through June 30, HAMO from Aug. 4 through Oct. 15 and LAMO from Dec. 8 through the end of the mission, which is currently pegged for June 30, 2016. (Dawn mission team members stress, however, that these orbit dates are tentative and could very well change.)