It’s time for humor

U.S. oil demand in December was revised down by 4.0 percent from an early estimate to a final number of 19.199 million barrels per day, bringing consumption for the year to its lowest level since 1998, the Energy Information Administration said Friday.
U.S. oil demand in December was 794,000 bpd lower than the previous estimate of 19.993 million bpd and down 1.520 million bpd, or 7.3 percent, from oil demand of 20.719 million bpd a year earlier, the agency said.
(more…)

Within your circle of friends and acquaintances, you probably know some doctors, some lawyers, some artists, and maybe even an actor or a professional athlete. But chances are you don’t know any international arms dealers. What the arms dealer does is pretty straightforward: He sells arms. But there are obviously plenty of aspects of this profession that remain hidden to most. Here are five of them.

1- Dealing arms isn’t illegal
Believe it or not, dealing in private arms is a perfectly legal profession in most countries. In fact, few countries have any laws at all that forbid brokering an illegal arms deal. Remember; the broker is usually nothing more than a middleman with a phone, a computer and a bank account. When arms dealers do find themselves in trouble, it is often when they run afoul of international law by engaging in high-profit, illegal transactions. In these instances, it is not specific arms-dealing laws that are being broken, but rather import and export laws, or U.N. sanctions that are being circumvented.
(more…)

Just because some ammunition is made for practice doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous. For decades, soldiers in training have fired explosives like the M918 40 mm shell, which is less powerful than battlefield munitions, but still explodes to simulate the “bang” of a real round. However, a few of those old-style munitions—about 3 to 8 percent of current shells according to the Department of Defense—are duds that get stuck in the ground without exploding, creating a cleanup nightmare for the military. The Wall Street Journal reports that the bill to clean up all 10 million acres on 1,400 different sites containing unexploded shells could cost about $20 billion. To skirt such pricey clean-ups, the military is turning to a new idea: Green training ammunition.
(more…)

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The recession tightened its grip on U.S. businesses and consumers in February, according to economists, who are predicting the largest one-month job loss in almost 60 years.
“Pink slips continue to fly,” said Meny Grauman, an economist for CIBC World Markets.
With output still falling at a dizzying rate, most companies are shedding unneeded workers and cutting back the hours of those remaining. Strapped by debt and seeing their paper wealth evaporating, many consumers are spending as little as they can.
“The economic patient is still in critical condition, with little medication to relieve the pain,” wrote economists Brian Bethune and Nigel Gault of IHS Global Insight. “We will have to bite the bullet.”
The first week of the new month brings two of the most important economic indicators: the ISM index and the nonfarm payrolls report. Both are expected to be very grim news.
Little joy in manufacturing data
First, on Monday, the Institute for Supply Management reports back from purchasing managers at manufacturing firms across the nation.
Although few people outside of the financial markets or the economics profession know what it is, the ISM is probably the best single leading indicator marking the end of a recession. The ISM is a diffusion index that measures the breadth of economic distress or success across firms. It asks key executives to judge whether business is getting better or worse.
Once the ISM — and especially the new-orders component — turns up decisively, the expansion is typically one to four months away, although in some cases it has turned up as much as a year before the end of a recession.
(more…)

“The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.”
- Winston Churchill, Nov. 21, 1943

Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of “an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.”

Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.

According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of “all removable aliens” and “potential terrorists.”
(more…)