News Items

As usual, the rabbit hole gets much deeper the more you look.

I rarely write about gold these days, but the following from Reuters caught my attention.

Before I get to the meat of this post, we need to revisit a little history. The cyber security firm hired to inspect the DNC hack and determine who was responsible is a firm called Crowdstrike. Its conclusion that Russia was responsible was released last year, but several people began to call its analysis into question upon further inspection.

The Daily Beast just published an article previewing what should be referred to from this day forth as Davos for Democrats; a big-money infused orgy of wealthy donors telling their political puppets what to do as they mingle at one of the most luxurious hotel chains in the world.

One thing we should have learned over the past year or so is you can take any narrative being pushed by the corporate media and Democrats, and assume that the exact opposite is true. The current Trump-Russia hysteria could very well turn out to be the latest and most embarrassing example of this phenomenon. In fact, well known Putin-critic, Masha Gessen, recently warned in an interview with Politico that her biggest fear is a Trump-Putin conflict, not some imagined alliance.

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be put at risk even in a hundred battles.

If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.

If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.
– Thomas Jefferson’s Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

On the positive front, America is really good at dropping bombs on foreigners.
MarketWatch reports:

The evidence is overwhelming and indisputable at this point. Donald Trump is a phony, who has given his administration over to Wall Street crooks even more enthusiastically than his predecessors, and his predecessors were very enthusiastic.
I’ve written about this many times, and I warned throughout the campaign that my biggest fear was Trump is far too cozy with the finance industry, fake populist statements aside. His latest hire for the number two position at the Treasury Department once again proves the point.

Crazy John McCain is at it again. Not to be outdone by his conspiracy obsessed neoliberal Democratic friends, the increasingly unhinged Senator from Arizona just accused his colleague Rand Paul of “working for Vladimir Putin.”
The Daily Beast reports: