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American Warships Heading to Egypt
Connecticut’s newspaper The Day noted on January 24th:
Connecticut National Guard Detachment 2, Company I, 185th Aviation Regiment of Groton has mobilized and will deploy to the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, to support the Multinational Force and Observers.
The unit left Connecticut Jan. 15 for Fort Benning, Ga., for further training and validation. The unit operates C-23C Sherpa aircraft and has deployed three times in the last seven years in support of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The unit will provide an on-demand aviation asset to the Multinational Force and Observers commander to support its mission of supervising the security provisions of the Egypt/ Israel Peace Treaty.
Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported:
The Pentagon is moving U.S. warships and other military assets to make sure it is prepared in case evacuation of U.S. citizens from Egypt becomes necessary, officials said Friday.
The Kearsarge, an amphibious assault ship carrying 700 to 800 troops from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, and the Ponce have arrived in the Red Sea, putting them off Egypt’s shores in case the situation worsens.
Pentagon officials emphasized that military intervention in Egypt was not being contemplated and that the warships were being moved only for contingency purposes in case evacuations became necessary.
In addition to the Marines, the Kearsarge normally carries around four dozen helicopters and harrier jets that would permit evacuations and other humanitarian operations, the officials said. More than 1,000 Marines from the Kearsarge were sent to Afghanistan last month on a temporary deployment, leaving roughly one-third still aboard, officials said.
The Kearsarge is an attack vessel.
As Wikipedia notes:
In carrying out her mission, Kearsarge not only transports and lands ashore troops, but also Read more…
All American Ambassadors Called Back to Washington!
In an unprecedented move, apparently one that has never happened before, nearly all U.S. Ambassadors to all nations have been called back to Washington for a summit conference. This event, mostly unreported, concluded on 4-Feb-2011.
politico.com reports, “Ambassadors from almost all 260 U.S. embassies, consulates and other posts in more than 180 countries are expected to convene at the State Department for what’s being billed as the first meeting of its kind.”
huffingtonpost.com, “Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is convening an unprecedented mass meeting of U.S. ambassadors.”
The first logical thought that comes to mind…
Looking back at all previous world crisis, what might now be so important, evidently more-so than anything ever in the past, to call all Ambassadors back to Washington? And why has the press not reported on such an unusual event involving every U.S. diplomatic ambassador in the world? Read more…
The Youth Unemployment Bomb
From Cairo to London to Brooklyn, too many young people are jobless and disaffected. Inside the global effort to put the next generation to work
Cairo, Egypt: A cloud of tear gas drives back antigovernment protesters on Jan. 28 Jorge Dirkx/Reporters/Redux
By Peter Coy
In Tunisia, the young people who helped bring down a dictator are called hittistes—French-Arabic slang for those who lean against the wall. Their counterparts in Egypt, who on Feb. 1 forced President Hosni Mubarak to say he won’t seek reelection, are the shabab atileen, unemployed youths. The hittistes and shabab have brothers and sisters across the globe. In Britain, they are NEETs—”not in education, employment, or training.” In Japan, they are freeters: an amalgam of the English word freelance and the German word Arbeiter, or worker. Spaniards call them mileuristas, meaning they earn no more than 1,000 euros a month. In the U.S., they’re “boomerang” kids who move back home after college because they can’t find work. Even fast-growing China, where labor shortages are more common than surpluses, has its “ant tribe”—recent college graduates who crowd together in cheap flats on the fringes of big cities because they can’t find well-paying work.
In each of these nations, an economy that can’t generate enough jobs to absorb its young people has created a Read more…
Social Security financial headwinds, another 395,000 Americans added to food stamp assistance in latest month of data, and manipulating the unemployment rate.
The dichotomous American economy is cracking like old paint into two distinct factions. For a few solid decades after World War II we had a burgeoning middle class, a smaller financial elite, and those who still struggled financially. The main objective however was to get as many people into the secure middle class. Today the middle class, the pinnacle of the American Dream, is significantly shrinking and when this occurs, we pull from the current middle class and put new families into the financially struggling category. The pie is getting smaller for most except for the small elite at the summit. The financial gaming that is occurring is stunning. While the unemployment rate fell largely due to people not being counted in the labor report, the latest month of data showed another 395,000 Americans being added to the nationwide food stamp program. Last year we also crossed a distressing fiscal threshold. In one month we paid out more in Social Security benefits than was collected. Social Security is entering the financial tough days and as we look at the statistics, most retired Americans are using Social Security for their entire monthly budget.
Social Security by the numbers
We should start by looking at the total number of Americans receiving Social Security:
WikiLeaks: US agrees to tell Russia Britain’s nuclear secrets
The US secretly agreed to give the Russians sensitive information on Britain’s nuclear deterrent to persuade them to sign a key treaty, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
Information about every Trident missile the US supplies to Britain will be given to Russia as part of an arms control deal signed by President Barack Obama next week.
Defence analysts claim the agreement risks undermining Britain’s policy of refusing to confirm the exact size of its nuclear arsenal.
The fact that the Americans used British nuclear secrets as a bargaining chip also sheds new light on the so-called “special relationship”, which is shown often to be a one-sided affair by US diplomatic communications obtained by the WikiLeaks website.
Details of the behind-the-scenes talks are contained in more than 1,400 US embassy cables published to date by the Telegraph, including almost 800 sent from the London Embassy, which are published online today. The documents also show that: Read more…
Employment Report: IT SUCKS
Wow…. if you remember on the ADP and Claims numbers, I said I was expecting +100k.
That was way off – we really got +36k.
The unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 9.0 percent in January, while nonfarm payroll employment changed little (+36,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment rose in manufacturing and in retail trade but was down in construction and in transportation and warehousing. Employment in most other major industries changed little over the month.
Youch.
There’s no love in here. Worse, the benchmark revisions are out, and they show about 300,000 supposedly-reported jobs that didn’t really happen. No, really? How come that number seems to always be in this direction? That is, why is it that the BLS always seems to over-report reality in the establishment survey?
That inconvenient truth, incidentally, is why I always use the household numbers. They’re at least a real survey without BS “adjustments” applied and while they’re subject to Read more…
How Space Weather affects the US Power Grid
The US power grid is a complex electrical apparatus that has well-known sensitivities to space weather disturbances. Recent changes in its design and utilization have significantly reduced its operating margins to supply us with on-demand electricity. This means there is less flexibility available with which to deal with power shortages and blackouts.
Space weather events can damage equipment over wide geographic regions so that recovery delays become substantially longer and more costly.
The 23rd Cycle – Chapter 4 – Describes in detail the state of the US power grid, and the forces which are driving it to be far more vulnerable to solar storms than at any time in the past.
“As North America has evolved into a unified power-sharing network of regions, each buying and selling a diminishing asset, US domestic power has become more vulnerable to Read more…
Even Donald Trump Is Warning That An Economic Collapse Is Coming
In a shocking new interview, Donald Trump has gone farther than he ever has before in discussing a potential economic collapse in America. Using phrases such as “you’re going to pay $25 for a loaf of bread pretty soon” and “we could end up being another Egypt”, Trump explained to Newsmax that he is incredibly concerned about the direction our economy is headed. Whatever you may think of Donald Trump on a personal level, it is undeniable that he has been extremely successful in business. As one of the most prominent businessmen in America, he is absolutely horrified about what is happening to this nation. In fact, he is so disturbed about the direction that this country is heading that he is seriously considering running for president in 2012. But whether he decides to run in 2012 or not, what Trump is now saying about the U.S. economy should be a huge wake up call for all of us.
Trump says that the U.S. government is broke, that all of our jobs are being shipped overseas, that other nations are heavily taking advantage of us and that the value of the U.S. dollar is being destroyed. The following interview with Trump was originally posted on Newsmax and it is really worth watching….
Now, you may or may not think much of Donald Trump as a politician, but when a businessman of his caliber starts using apocalyptic language to describe where the U.S. economy is headed perhaps we should all pay attention.
The following are 12 key quotes that were pulled out of Trump’s new interview along with some facts and statistics that show that what Trump is saying is really happening. Read more…
Egypt’s economy draws parallels to US economy
Three of Next Five Winters Could be as Cold or Colder
This winter is on track to become the coldest for the nation as a whole since the 1980s or possibly even the late 1970s. According to AccuWeather.com Chief Long Range Forecaster Joe Bastardi, three or four out of the next five winters could be just as cold, if not colder.
He is worried that next winter, for example, will be colder than this one.
Bastardi adds that with the U.S. in the middle of one of its worst recessions in its history and the price of oil in question, he is extremely concerned about the prospect for more persistent cold weather in the coming years putting increased financial hardship on Americans.
“Cold is a lot worse than warm,” Bastardi said, “and that’s why your energy bill goes up during the winter time: because of the fact that it takes a lot to heat a house.” Read more…
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