“President Obama claimed that there is no domestic spying program on an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. However, Representative Justin Amash rejects this claim and called the president’s remarks ‘highly misleading.'”
“Highly radioactive water from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is pouring out at a rate of 300 tons a day, officials said on Wednesday, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered the government to step in and help in the clean-up. Tepco only recently admitted water had leaked at all. The leak from the plant 220 km (130 miles) northeast of Tokyo is enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool in a week. The water is spilling into the Pacific Ocean, but it was not immediately clear how much of a threat it poses. As early as January this year, Tepco found fish contaminated with high levels of radiation inside a port at the plant.”
“Two senior U.S. government sources who have been briefed on the terror threat that prompted the U.S. to close embassies across the Mideast and North Africa this week, told the network that clothes dipped in the liquid become explosive devices when dry. One of the U.S. officials described the new generation explosive as ‘ingenious,’ while another said it would be undetectable under current security processes. The liquid explosive is believed to be the brainchild of the Yemen-based affiliate Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the officials told ABC News.”
http://libertycrier.com/report-al-qaida-developed-liquid-that-turns-clothes-into-explosives/
“President Barack Obama on Tuesday night condemned Russia and some African countries for persecuting gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals. ‘I’ve been very clear that when it comes to universal rights, when it comes to people’s basic freedoms, that whether you are discriminating on the basis of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, you are violating the basic morality that I think should transcend every country,’ he said on NBC’s The Tonight Show with host Jay Leno. ‘And I have no patience for countries that try to treat gays or lesbians or transgender persons in ways that intimidate them or are harmful to them.'”
“The best way to (ahem) get the attention of the political class is to taper now, trigger a stock market decline and speak directly to the elected leadership’s need to put the fiscal house in order. This is the only way the Fed can escape taking the bullet during the next financial crisis. ‘We told you so’ is much better than ‘we did everything we could and it still fell apart.’ Better to engineer a mini-crisis while you’re still in control than let a crisis you can’t control run away from you, and better to pass the ticking time-bomb to the elected leadership while you still can.”
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-case-for-fed-tapering-sooner-rather.html
“The Justice Department is reviewing a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit that passes tips culled from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a large telephone database to field agents, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday. ‘It’s my understanding… that the Department of Justice is looking at some of the issues raised in the story,’ Carney said during his daily briefing at the White House on Monday. Carney referred reporters to a Justice Department spokesman, who confirmed that a review was under way, but declined further comment.”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/05/justice-department-to-review-deas-mass-surveillance-program/
“Especially in the spirit of Mr. Bernanke’s commitment to transparency and accountability, his concluding remarks surely encourage the prospects for passage of the pending legislation introduced by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, to constitute a Centennial Monetary Commission, HR 1176. The legislation’s purpose: ‘To establish a commission to examine the United States monetary policy, evaluate alternative monetary regimes and recommend a course for monetary policy going forward.’ The duties set forth for the commission fully coincide with Mr. Bernanke’s public call.”
http://dailyreckoning.com/a-helping-hand-for-bernanke-and-co/
“The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday heard dramatic testimony from NSA deputy director John C. Inglis. According to the Guardian, the NSA has previously claimed that 54 terrorist plots had been disrupted ‘over the lifetime’ of the bulk phone records collection and the separate program collecting the internet habits and communications of people believed to be non-Americans. On Wednesday, Inglis said that at most one plot might have been disrupted by the bulk phone records collection alone. We do not have to accept being lied to – or spied on — by our government.”
“Long-term interest rates are on the climb again in the United States. Below is a chart showing the interest rate of the 10-year Treasury note since June, 2011. The rate hit a 2-year high today. This despite Fed bond purchases. In the EPJ Daily Alert, I have forecast that this is the start of a multi-year climb in rates. Despite absurd comments by members of the Fed that price inflation is below target, the MIT billion prices index shows price inflation is above target at around 2.5%. Buckle your seat belt.”
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/08/long-term-us-interest-rates-hit-two.html
“‘There is an awful lot of chatter out there,’ Senator Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’ He said ‘chatter’ – electronically monitored communications among terrorism suspects about the planning of a possible attack – was ‘very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11.’ Chambliss said one of the surveillance programs revealed by former spy agency contractor Edward Snowden had helped. Those programs ‘allow us to have the ability to gather this chatter,’ he said. ‘If we did not have these programs then we simply wouldn’t be able to listen in on the bad guys.'”