Romney Blame Obama For Record High Gas Prices

Kurt Nimmo - Sick and tired of high gas prices? It’s all Obama’s fault, according to Mitt Romney, who pumped his own gas on Friday as the cameras rolled.

During a dinner sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, Romney said he wants to hang the “misery index” around Obama’s neck.
“You remember during the Ronald Reagan/Jimmy Carter debates? That Ronald Reagan came up with this great thing about the ‘misery index,’ and that he hung that around Jimmy Carter’s neck, and that had a lot to do with Jimmy Carter losing. Well, we’re going to have to hang the ‘Obama Misery Index’ around his neck. And, I’ll tell you, the fact that you’ve got people in this country, really squeezed, with gasoline getting so expensive, with commodities getting so expensive, families are having a hard time making ends meet. So, we’re going to have to talk about that, and housing foreclosures and bankruptcies and higher taxation,” he said.
Romney knows the president has little to do with gas lines and rising commodity prices. He’s just playing the establishment political game where the guy from the other party – that is to say the flip-side of the same party – takes the heat.
If we are unfortunate enough to end up with Romney in the White House, it will be his turn to take heat from Democrats. It’s a tag team game. Meanwhile, nothing changes and the nation continues its slide down the tubes.
Prices are sky high on gas, food, and commodities because the U.S. dollar is being sabotaged by the Federal Reserve and the bankers who own it. Romney’s misery index was created by the Fed.
Even CNBC, usually an obedient lickspittle, admits the Fed is to blame: “A combination of factors accounts for the weakness, with the Federal Reserve’s easy-money policies, huge national debts and deficits and the consequential possibility of a debt downgrade because of the financial mess in Washington leading the w

Obama blames the speculators for high gas prices. He promises to unleash Eric Holder and the Justice Department on them. “We are going to make sure that no one is taking advantage of the American people for their own short-term gain,” Obama read from his teleprompter screen as the gathered plebs politely applauded.
It’s not the speculators who are to blame. It is the Federal Reserve with the complicity of Congress and Obama, who are after all merely grocery clerks for the bankster elite.
Dollar devaluation is a direct result of the Federal Reserve printing funny money out of thin air in order to pay an engineered annual federal deficit. In fact, it no longer even prints the money – it just enters a few more digits in a computer.
“There are three primary culprits for today’s high gas prices, and none of them are speculators,” writes Craig Steiner. “The Federal Reserve is directly responsible for the rising prices of oil and other commodities. It is the Federal Reserve that has engaged in QE1 and QE2 and, as a result devalued our dollar which in turn raises prices of commodities such as oil that are priced in dollars.” Obama and Congress carry out the ruinous policies designed by the Federal Reserve.
“It is Obama and Congress that are causing the federal government to spend so much money that new dollars have to be printed to satisfy its borrowing needs. If the government weren’t borrowing so much money, the Federal Reserve wouldn’t be compelled to print money so we wouldn’t be facing the price inflation we are facing in oil and other commodities.”
In fact, the Fed is not compelled to do anything. It designed the Federal Reserve system specifically to lock the nation into a perpetual state of debt slavery.
Earlier this month, presidential hopeful Romney made it clear he has no intention of going after the Federal Reserve. “I’m not going to spend my time going after Ben Bernanke. I’m not going to spend my time focusing on the Federal Reserve,” he told Larry Kudlow. “I think Ben Bernanke is a student of monetary policy,” Romney added, “he’s doing as good a job as he thinks he can do.”
Romney and the Republicans will blame Obama and the Democrats while Obama and the Democrats blame Wall Street and the speculators who have packed Obama’s cabinet since day one. It’s a shell game, a parlor trick, a sleight of hand.
If the American people continue to allow this charade to continue, they deserve to be cut down by the financial Sword of Damocles now hanging by a thread over their heads.
It looks like Ron Paul will run. The American people better get behind him. It’s probably our last chance to save the nation and prevent the slide into grinding poverty and third world status.

Pres. Clinton Supreme Court Could Rule Against Obamacare

Daniel Strauss - There's a chance that the Supreme Court could rule the so-called "individual mandate" in the healthcare reform law unconstitutional, but on the whole the bill will stay in tact, former President Bill Clinton said.
"Well, I think - I guess, you know, there's some chance, given how political it is, the courts, that they would strike down the mandatory purchase, although I find it amazing that they would  I mean you can make people buy automobile liability insurance," Clinton said in an interview with CNN taped Friday. "And the combined impact of the burden of people not being insured on the rest of us economically is nowhere near that of health care."

"But I think on the whole, the bill will be kept," Clinton continued.The Supreme Court announced Monday that it would not fast-track its review of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's challenge against the healthcare law. 

The Court's decision, which did not contain any explanatory comment or dissent, was largely expected, and returns the case to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Clinton also criticized the healthcare aspect of House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) budget plan, which would replace Medicare with subsidies for insurance companies.
Lately, Democrats have been working to portray the healthcare aspect of the plan as one that would effectively eliminate Medicare and replace it with a voucher system for seniors.
"I think the most interesting thing is in the - the Republican budget, the line budget, they proposed to save money on the budget by giving everybody a Medicare voucher in 2022," Clinton said. "So what this bill will do will actually increase the cost of health care."
In the end though, Clinton said, Republicans won't be able to fully get rid of the healthcare law that President Obama signed into law.
"The Supreme Court won't do all their work for them. The Congress, the Senate will not vote to repeal it," Clinton said. "The president will not - will veto it if they do. And now that America has seen what's in this bill from Medicare, I think that they'll have a hard time doing it."
Republicans have criticized it for illegally making Americans purchase health insurance and only making the country's economic woes worse.
Over the last month or so, Democrats have begun trying to flip and repeat the heated exchanges at congressional town-hall events around the country. Through media blitzes and mailers Democrats are hoping to portray Ryan's budget as nationally unpopular and detrimental to the country's economic recovery.

Approval Rating Of Congress At 9%

Rassmussen Reports - As members of Congress and the president haggle over ways to reduce the federal budget deficit, ratings for the bicameral legislature have fallen to the lowest level since late 2008.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that nine percent (9%) now say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Fifty-six percent (56%) rate the Congressional performance as poor. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Positive grades for the legislators are down from 13% last month and are the lowest measured since December 2008. The number of voters who give Congress a poor grade is up seven points from last month and is the highest negative review since Republicans took control of the House in January.
From January 2007 through December 2010, with Democrats in control of both the House and Senate, the legislature earned good or excellent marks ranging from 9% to 26%.  The high water mark was reached in May 2007. Poor marks for the Democratic tenure ranged from a low of 35% to a high of 71%. That 71% negative rating was reached just before the health care bill became law.
In the four months since Republicans took control of the House, positive ratings for Congress have ranged from nine percent (9%) to 15%, while poor marks have run from 42% to 56%. Democrats continue to control the Senate.
Only 11% of Republican voters believe Congress is doing a good or excellent job, as do 11% of Democrats. Just six percent (6%) of voters not affiliated with either major party give Congress positive marks.
(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls).  Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on April 19-20, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
Just 17% believe Congress has passed legislation in the past year that will significantly improve life in America, down from 21% last month and the lowest finding since February 2010. Sixty-one percent (61%) say Congress has not passed such legislation, while 21% more are not sure.
But voters are a bit more divided on the goals of Congress. While 47% say the more important role for Congress is passing good legislation, 43% say top priority should be preventing bad legislation from becoming law. That’s the smallest gap since Rasmussen Reports first posed the question in August of last year.
Republicans continue hold a modest lead over Democrats on the Generic Congressional Ballot.
In the ongoing budget-cutting debate in Washington, some congressional Democrats have accused their Republican opponents of being held captive by the Tea Party movement, but voters like the Tea Party more than Congress.
Voters continue to view the Republican agenda in Congress as more mainstream than the agenda of the Democrats. But only one-in-four voters think the average member of either party shares the same ideology they do. 
Most voters feel the president and Republicans in Congress are unlikely to agree on major spending cuts before next year’s elections. They also aren't confident either side will come up with a serious plan to begin with. 

Collective Bargining Stopped in Massachusetts

W. James Antle  - Another state has voted to limit the collective bargaining rights of public sector union workers, but without the political civil war that took place in Wisconsin. Why? Because the state in question was Massachusetts, and the legislators who did so were overwhelmingly Democratic. And the unions are none too happy about it.

"It's pretty stunning,'' said Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. "These are the same Democrats that all these labor unions elected. The same Democrats who we contributed to in their campaigns. The same Democrats who tell us over and over again that they're with us, that they believe in collective bargaining, that they believe in unions. . . . It's a done deal for our relationship with the people inside that chamber.''

The bill faces an uncertain outcome in the state senate, but it cleared the house by 111 to 42 with the support of the Democratic speaker.

Pres. Obama Has Unleashed "Obamaflation" On America

Pundit & Pundette - President Obama will not be re-elected. Period.

Why?

Obamaflation has arrived, and this is what it looks like.

Milk. A gallon of skim. At the local Giant in Central Pennsylvania:

January 11, 2011: $3.20
February 28, 2011: $3.24
March 6, 2011: $3.34
April 23. 2011: $3.48

That would be a 28 cent rise in a mere 102 days, from January to April of this year. The third year of the Obama misadventure.

Then there's the celery. Same sized bag. Same store.

January 11, 2011: $1.99 a bag.
March 6, 2011: $2.49 a bag.

A rise of 50 cents in 54 days.

And the gas price during the administration filled with those who think "drill baby drill" is so yesterday? As one internet photo [here] had it, the numbers for regular, premium. and diesel were replaced with "LOL," "OMG," and "WTF!" Thus be it to governments who seem not to understand that energy is what makes the economic engine -- and your car -- hum.

What does this mean? It means Barack Obama is not going to be re-elected president of the United States. Period.

Ron Paul Or Paul Ryan For President?

Patterico's Pontifications - So Ron Paul is set to announce something today, and The National Journal makes the following prediction about it:

Sources close to Paul, who is in his 12th term in the House, said he will unveil an exploratory presidential committee, a key step in gearing up for a White House race. He will also unveil the campaign’s leadership team in Iowa, where the first votes of the presidential election will be cast in caucuses next year.

Well, certainly with government overreach in the last few years, libertarianism is likely to be a more appealing position this year than in years before. Still, it is Quixotic of him to keep trying, if only because of his tendency to blame America for September 11, which doesn’t fly in the Republican party.

Bluntly he is fine, even useful, as a Congressman, where he can be a reliable vote against big government and his more kooky beliefs are checked by their overwhelming lack of popularity. I find him tolerable in that role. But lord, he might be the only Republican who would be so bad that I would pull the lever for Obama. And you guys know that is saying something.

And that is on the issues. You will remember what I said about representatives running for President so I will only give you the Cliff’s Notes version: I like my candidates to have prior executive experience. Well, that applies to Ron Paul, too.

Of course the last time I talked about this sort of thing (in relation to Michele Bachmann) I wrote:

And you know, if we have to pick a Representative with little executive experience, couldn’t it be Paul Ryan?

And wouldn’t you know it, they just might give me that option. From a rumory post over at Ace of Spades HQ:

But I asked another journalist type (I won’t say who since I didn’t tell him I’d be quoting, it was a personal type question) and he said, “Well, he rules it out in his public statements but in his private statements…?” Not so much.

I asked, to be sure, if he was saying “Who knows what he says in private?” or if he was saying “I’ve heard what he says in private, and he’s not as firm on it as he is in public declarations.” He confirmed it was the latter.

I think the situation he’d be willing to consider it is if there’s no unifying, consensus figure in the primaries.

Which isn’t a very solid rumor, but it gave me an excuse to write that silly title. I still think that his resumé needs more executive experience, but I feel better with the idea of him being president than Paul and/or Bachmann. Which isn’t exactly high praise, but there you go. Personally, if we were going to pick a budget fixing guy, Governor Chris Christie would be my choice. I would love to see him raking Obama over the coals with the budget B.S. that has come out of Washington in the last few years and he is a lot closer to the minimal executive experience I prefer.

And of course you all know that Haley Barbour bowed out yesterday. His official statement is here. Which is too bad, because his credentials were better than most in the field (saying that with little knowledge of Barbour’s actual positions).

Gas Prices 25 Cents From A Record High: Media Don't Blame Obama

Julia A. Seymour - The average price for a gallon of unleaded gasoline hit $3.86 on April 25, more than $1-a-gallon higher than a year earlier and less than 25 cents away from the record high price of gasoline set in July 2008.

In fact, per gallon prices are more than $2 higher than when Obama took office Jan. 20, 2009. Yet the president has been nearly exempt from criticism on the issue of rising prices, despite a six-month drilling moratorium and more regulatory hurdles for industry.

The Business & Media Institute found that out of the 280 oil price stories the network evening shows have aired since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, only 1 percent (3 stories) mentioned Obama's drilling ban or other anti-oil actions in connection with gasoline prices.

Instead of asking whether Obama's anti-oil policies could be increasing the cost of gas, the networks blamed other factors such as Mideast turmoil or the "money game" played by speculators. Certainly, the turmoil in Libya, Egypt and surrounding nations has increased worries about oil production and can influence the price. But the networks also should have looked for explanations much closer to home, like Obama's many regulatory actions taken against the oil industry.

First there was the drilling ban, which was later overturned by federal courts as illegal. Seahawk Drilling, a Texas-based shallow-water drilling company cited that moratorium as the cause of its bankruptcy filing saying, they "have been adversely affected by the dramatic slowdown in the issuing of shallow-water permits in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico following the Macondo well blowout."

According to The Heritage Foundation, the Obama administration moved on to a de facto moratorium after the ban was overturned. Add to that the EPA's desire to regulate the industry's greenhouse gas emissions and new environmental regulatory hurdles for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport crude from Canada to the U.S. and create many American jobs.

Despite all of these actions on the part of the Obama administration, ABC, CBS and NBC evening news shows have barely mentioned them in stories about rising gas prices.

The Decline Of The U.S. Dollar

Jeff Cox - Weakness in the US dollar, which is causing everything to go up—including gas prices, food and stocks—is unlikely to go away soon as a selling frenzy hits the currency market.

The greenback is approaching pre-financial crisis lows and threatening to smash through its all-time low when measured against the world's predominant national currencies.

A combination of factors accounts for the weakness, with the Federal Reserve's easy-money policies, huge national debts and deficits and the consequential possibility of a debt downgrade because of the financial mess in Washington leading the way.

In short, as trader Dennis Gartman noted Thursday, "the rout of the US dollar" is in full effect.

"Panic dollar selling is setting in," Gartman, a hedge fund manager and author of "The Gartman Letter," wrote in his daily commentary. "This may carry farther than any of us dream of or, worse, have nightmares of."

How low can it go?

Rick Bensignor, chief market strategist at Dahlman Rose in New York, said the dollar index [.DXY 74.05 -0.06 (-0.08%) ], which measures the greenback against a basket of select other global currencies, has scant technical support "that has any meaning" between its present level and the historical low of 70.70.

That's a widely shared view, even as currency pros wonder how the dollar could be falling against the euro considering the near certainty of sovereign debt defaults in smaller European Union nation.

Gartman described the dollar as being in "serious jeopardy" because of its status against the euro, which was defended recently as European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet announced a rate hike in the zone.

No such defense is being offered in the US, where neither Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke nor most of the rest of the central bank's Open Market Committee seems much in the mood to raise rates despite the anemic dollar. Though the Fed is ostensibly apolitical, there is no pressure as well from the Obama administration to boost the dollar's value.

"If things were to somehow go into freefall or there were disorderly markets, or if it is associated with a rise in interest rates, there could be some concerns there," said Josh Feinman, chief global economist at Deutsche Bank Advisors. "But that's not happening at all. Rates in the US are still very, very low. At the margin, (a weak dollar) is a slight easing in financial condition.

That, of course, is not the case for consumers buying food and energy. Some economists believe that a weak dollar is contributing heavily to the surge in prices at the pump, with one speculating that gas could reach $6 a gallon or beyond by summertime, given certain conditions.

Food prices also are on a steady climb higher. In both cases, a weak dollar is at least somewhat to blame as it drives commodities, which are priced in dollars and therefore cheaper and more attractive to speculators in the global marketplace.

But the stock market has enjoyed the weak dollar.

The Standard & Poor's 500 [.SPX 1334.52 -2.86 (-0.21%) ] and the dollar have had almost a perfectly inverse relationship this year, with the stock index gaining just over 6 percent in 2011 and the dollar losing 6.5 percent.

"At the margins it helps US exporters, and the US importers probably also increase profits as they're repatriated," said David Resler, chief economist at Nomura Securities in New York. "I don't see the dollar as having a significant intermediate-run effect on the performance of the economy."

With Wall Street shaking off the dangers of a possible downgrade from S&P, the market is likely to prevail against any thought that it's time to start enacting policies that defend the currency.

The only thing on the horizon that appears to be dollar-friendly is the end of the second leg of the Fed's quantitative easing program—or QE2—in June.

Even then, the central bank is likely only to stop its $600 Treasury-buying operations. There are no indications that the Fed will be selling back into the marketplace any of the securities it has purchased, so a rise in rates is unlikely until inflation becomes more widespread and indicated through government economic metrics.

"That's probably just a warm-up for a QE 3 program later on. All these things are undermining the fundamentals for the dollar," said Sean Hyman, currency director for World Currency Watch. "It doesn't help anything that commodities keep going through the roof. There are a few dynamics working in a concerted effort all at once, and that's killing it."

The Left Wing Hidden Hitler Obsession

Jeffery Folks - My childhood has long passed, but I still have a clear memory of one particular occasion when I found myself squared off against a grammar school bully -- a young misfit who roamed the playground just looking for trouble.


How the altercation began I don't recall, but it soon escalated into rounds of all-out name-calling.


My young adversary probably led off with a profound observation like, "You're a stupid idiot."


"You're not just stupid," I countered. "You're a fool."


"You're worse than a fool," he offered. "You're yellow."


"That's not as bad as being a rat!" I replied.


"Well, you're a liar," he asserted, adding a bit of questionable historical proof, "just like Benedict Arnold."


I was about to point out that Arnold, as we had been informed just that morning, was a traitor, not a liar. But I thought of something better, something that would put the argument to rest and leave my adversary reeling.


"Well, you're Hitler!" I pronounced.


It worked. My opponent was indeed speechless. Nothing could top that accusation. This, after all, was just a few years after the flesh-and-blood Hitler had dispatched hordes of goose-stepping storm troopers all over Europe while rounding up and liquidating millions of Jews, gypsies, and Slavs. So my comparison of this playground ne'er-do-well with the worst figure in human history was pretty stunning. The young villain stood silent for a few seconds, then stumbled away at a total loss for words. I was victorious on the field of battle that day. But was I fair?


For one thing, the analogy was hardly credible. It was not quite accurate to accuse my adversary of sending millions off to the concentration camps and causing a world war. Clearly, the 70-pound villain standing opposite me was not Hitler. No matter how badly he developed, he would never grow up to commit the sorts of crimes of which I was accusing him. In truth, he probably would grow up to be a kind-hearted, generous, decent member of society.


My retort was inaccurate, but it was worse. Even at that age, I realized it was something that should not have been said, and I don't recall ever saying it again.


For the rest of my life, though, I would hear it repeated by others. In fact, it became so familiar that one could expect any hard-pressed leftist to insinuate the Hitler line into his argument. The variations were endless, but they all involved the same basic analogy: anyone who is the least bit cautious or conservative is a fascist -- only leftists and anarchists are not.


I've always found the analogy distasteful, not just because it is unfair but because it diminishes the real evil of the past. Taunting Richard Nixon with cries of "fascist," as his U.S. Senate opponent Helen Douglas did in 1950, trivialized the horrific evil of actual fascism. The suggestion of a liberal blogger that the "road to fascism began with Ronald Reagan" was just as distasteful.


As socialistworker.org admits, the left routinely applies the term "fascist" to any Republican political leader. In Britain The Guardian, BBC, and other liberal media pounced on purported links between the Bush family and corporations that had dealings with Nazi Germany. The fact that Prescott Bush, George W. Bush's grandfather, was a "director and shareholder" with companies that had indirect financial dealings with Germany in the 1930s would hardly seem damning, however. Much the same could be said for many other affluent individuals in America or Britain at the time. Every American today with mutual fund holdings is invested, at least indirectly, in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. Does that make them Marxist revolutionaries?


Talk of Hitler became a lot more common during the Bush years, when it was accepted wisdom on the left that George Bush was worse than Hitler. Then there was Nancy Pelosi, who spent weeks back in 2010 complaining of the Tea Party's so-called "swastika signs" -- signs that did not signal an alliance with fascism but opposition to it. Pelosi was hardly alone in accusing the Tea Party of fascism. Marc Rubin, writing for examiner.com, referred to Tea Party members as "text book fascists." He went on to pin the neo-fascist label on Tom Tancredo, presumably because of Tancredo's concerns over illegal immigration. If those concerns make Tancredo a fascist, they would make the majority of Americans who share those concerns fascists as well. But that's pretty much how the left sees America.


The immediate response of liberals such as Chris Matthews to the Ryan "Path to Prosperity" was to characterize it as a killer not just of babies and old people but of "half the people who watch this show." This attempt to portray the GOP plan as genocidal is just another example of the fascist rhetoric. It appears that Matthews is attempting to portray the Ryan plan as some sort of Final Solution.


It's not just loose cannons on MSNBC who resort to fascist innuendo. Obama's speechwriters are good at crafting sinister suggestions even without using the "F" word. Obama's budget speech of April 13 actually set the tone for the current debate. With Rep. Ryan sitting on the front row, Obama lectured his audience that the GOP plan would kick "someone's grandparents" out of nursing homes and cause children with autism and Down's syndrome to "fend for themselves." It is well known that Hitler sent legions of the disabled to concentration camps to be gassed, but the suggestion that a plan to actually save Medicare and Medicaid resembles the Holocaust, if that is what Obama intended, is repellent. It was one more proof, as if we needed any more, of a fatal weakness in the character of this President. He is a man whose entire existence is devoted to gutter politics. For such a man, statesmanship and dignified leadership are inconceivable.


The plan truth is that America can no longer afford this sort of reckless partisanship on the part of the chief executive. The fact that Obama disagrees with Rep. Ryan's budget plan does not justify accusations of killing sick children or tossing old folks out on the street. That kind of rhetoric may pass for wit in the sixth grade, but it is juvenile coming from the President.


When is the left going to grow up, stop tossing around irresponsible charges of fascism, and discuss issues in a mature way? Not, I suppose, until they can win the argument on the facts, and that will be a long, long time.

President Barack Obama, Cry Freakin Baby

Larry Johnson - If you’ve seen Drudge (and now Hot Air) you have probably seen Obama’s meltdown under the “grueling” questioning of a local Texas TV reporter. Steel yourselves boys and girls, this is brutal:

Man, did you notice the dozens of times that asshole of a reporter interrupted?

Nope. Me neither. The guy just asked some direct questions. Hell, Bret Baer of Fox News interrupted Obama far more when he did that interview.

This interview provides a brilliant video illustration of why Obama will not be re-elected. In 2008 he was the happy, easy going, nice Negro. He was a younger version of Bill Cosby. He was likable. Not shrill like that bitch Hillary (ball bustin’ Iron Maiden). And his voice? Like honey on fat honeycombs. Soothing, easy to follow, almost a musical cadence.

Now this. Petulant, angry, arrogant and smug. Not exactly the kind of guy you want to take home to meet Mom. Let’s face it. Barack Obama has morphed into a black Eddie Haskell. And for you Leave it to Beaver fans, you all know how “beloved” old Eddie was? Right?

Imagine how testy he will be when inflation tops 10%, along with unemployment and Americans are screaming about $5 a gallon gas. You’ll need body armor or a bomb suit to interview the dude if you want to survive the experience.

University Of Texas Endowment Fund Bought $1 Billion Worth of Gold Bullion

Publis - The University of Texas Investment Management Co., the second-largest U.S. academic endowment, took delivery of almost $1 billion in gold bullion and is storing the bars in a New York vault, according to the fund’s board.

The fund, whose $19.9 billion in assets ranked it behind Harvard University’s endowment as of August, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers, added about $500 million in gold investments to an existing stake last year, said Bruce Zimmerman, the endowment’s chief executive officer. The holdings are worth about $987 million, based on yesterday’s closing price of $1,486 an ounce for Comex futures.

The decision to turn the fund’s investment into gold bars was influenced by Kyle Bass, a Dallas hedge fund manager and member of the endowment’s board, Zimmerman said at its annual meeting on April 14. Bass made $500 million on the U.S. subprime-mortgage collapse.

“Central banks are printing more money than they ever have, so what’s the value of money in terms of purchases of goods and services,” Bass said yesterday in a telephone interview. “I look at gold as just another currency that they can’t print any more of.”

Read the whole thing here. So, how’s that Quantitative Easing thing working out?

Obama Morphing Into Bush For 20102 Re-Election Campaign

Steven Thomma (WASHINGTON) — He ran as the anti-Bush.

Silver-tongued, not tongue-tied. A team player on the world stage, not a lone cowboy. A man who'd put a stop to reckless Bush policies at home and abroad. In short, Barack Obama represented Change.

Well, that was then. Now, on one major policy after another, President Barack Obama seems to be morphing into George W. Bush.

On the nation's finances, the man who once ripped Bush as a failed leader for seeking to raise the nation's debt ceiling now wants to do it himself.

On terrorism, he criticized Bush for sending suspected terrorists to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and denying them access to U.S. civilian courts. Now he says he'll do the same.

On taxes, he called the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy wrong, and lately began calling again to end them. But in December he signed a deal with Republicans to extend them for two years, and recently he called the entire tax cut package good for the country.

And on war, as a candidate he said that the president didn't have authority to unilaterally attack a country that didn't pose an imminent threat to the U.S., and even then the president should always seek the informed consent of Congress. Last month, without a vote in Congress, he attacked Libya, which didn't threaten the U.S.

Big differences remain between Obama and Bush, to be sure. His two nominees to the Supreme Court differ vastly from Bush's picks. Obama does want to end the tax cuts for the wealthy. He also pushed through a massive overhaul of the nation's health insurance system.

Yet even on health insurance, his stand wasn't so much a reversal of Bush's approach as an escalation. Bush also pushed through a massive expansion of Medicare by adding a costly prescription drug benefit — at the time, the biggest expansion of a federal entitlement since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. Indeed, some of the differences between the two presidents are measured in gray, not black and white as once seemed the case.

Some of the changes in Obama can be attributed to the passion of campaign rhetoric giving way to the realities of governing, analysts say.

"He is looking less like a candidate and more like a president," said Dan Schnur, the director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. "He has discovered that it's much easier to make promises on the campaign trail than it is to keep them as president."

At the same time, some of the surprising continuity of Bush-era policies can be tied to the way Bush and events set the nation's course, particularly on foreign policy.

"Morphing into Bush was not a willful act," said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "It was acquiescence to the policies his predecessor shaped and the cruel realities that Obama inherited."

For example, Obama found he couldn't easily close the prison at Guantanamo Bay because he couldn't find a place, abroad or at home, willing to take all the terrorist suspects held there.

"Bush created, on the military and security side, new realities from which no successor, Democrat or Republican, could depart, "Miller said. "It's like turning around an aircraft carrier. It cannot happen quickly."

Among the ways Obama has reversed his earlier promises and adopted, extended or echoed Bush policies:

DEBT

In 2006, Bush had cut taxes, gone to war, and expanded Medicare, and increased the national debt from $5.6 trillion to $8.2 trillion. He needed approval from Congress to raise the ceiling for debt to $9 trillion.

The Senate approved the increase by a narrow vote of 52-48.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., voted no.

"Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally," Obama said in 2006. "Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership."

Now Obama's on the other side. He's increased the national debt to $14 trillion, and needs Congress to approve more debt. Moreover, Obama's aides now say that congressional meddling to use that needed vote to wrangle budget concessions from the White House would be inappropriate and risk financial Armageddon.

What about Obama's own vote against the president in a similar situation? A mistake, the White House said.

TAXES

As a senator and presidential candidate, Obama opposed extending the Bush tax cuts on incomes greater than $250,000 a year past their expiration on Dec., 31, 2009.

In 2007, he said he was for "rolling back the Bush tax cuts on the top 1 percent of people who don't need it." In a 2008 ad, he said, "Instead of extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest, I'll focus on you."

As president, Obama proposed letting those tax cuts expire as scheduled, while also proposing to make permanent the Bush tax cuts for incomes of less than $250,000.

But he didn't get Congress to approve that. When the issue came to a head last December, Republicans insisted on extending all of the tax cuts or none, and Obama went along lest the tax cuts on incomes below $250,000 expire even briefly. His final deal with the Congress also added a one-year cut in the payroll tax for Medicare and Social Security.

"What all of us care about is growing the American economy and creating jobs for the American people," Obama said. "Taken as a whole, that's what this package of tax relief is going to do. It's a good deal for the American people."

He said again last week that he wants to let the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire, this time on Dec. 31, 2012.

TERRORISTS

As a presidential candidate, Obama vowed a broad reversal of Bush's policies toward suspected terrorists.

Most pointedly, he said he'd close the prison in Cuba and try suspected terrorists in civilian courts, not in military tribunals.

"I have faith in America's courts," he said in a 2007 speech. "As president, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Our Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for dealing with the terrorists."

He ran into a torrent of opposition, however. Members of Congress balked at transferring suspected terrorists to U.S. prisons. New Yorkers balked when his administration said it would try accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in lower Manhattan.

Last month, he changed course, saying he'd keep Guantanamo Bay open, and would try Mohammed before a military court.

The reversal, said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, "is yet another vindication of President Bush's detention policies by the Obama administration."

Echoing Bush, Obama's also asserted that he has the power to hold suspected terrorists without charges or trial, and that he has the power to kill U.S. citizens abroad if his government considers them a terrorist threat.

WAR POWERS

During his campaign, Obama signaled that he'd be far more circumspect than Bush was in using military power. He did say he'd send more troops to Afghanistan, which he's done, and that he'd attack al Qaida terrorists in Pakistan, which he's also done.

But he opposed the Iraq war from the start, and said he didn't think the president should wage war for humanitarian purposes or act without congressional approval, absent an imminent threat to the U.S.

"The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation," he told The Boston Globe in 2007.

"In instances of self-defense, the president would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent. History has shown us time and again, however, that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the legislative branch. It is always preferable to have the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action."

On March 19, the U.S. attacked Libya on humanitarian grounds, absent any threat to the U.S. and without approval from Congress.

Conservatives Bloggers Accuse Glen Beck Of Stealing Material

Site And Blogs - Several conservative bloggers are accusing Glenn Beck of stealing their content without giving credit. Worse, there is evidence that Beck takes steps to hide the true source before using content on his show.

The Daily Caller has unleashed a string of examples of Beck pretending that someone else's ideas or content was his own. Even conservative publisher Andrew Breitbart, a regular guest on Beck's television and radio show, accuses Beck of content theft. Breitbart says that Beck occasionally properly credits a source, but “sometimes he also uses other peoples’ work without crediting them, making it appear as though it were his own. But especially since adopting ‘The Truth Has No Agenda’ slogan – and trying to deliberately re-position himself as the pious conscience and judge of many of those he took content from – he has exposed himself to his new motto’s unforgiving standard.”

For example, in March, Beck showed a video of liberal protesters calling for amnesty for illegal immigrants. No external credit was given for the video, leading the viewer to believe that Beck's own staff obtained and owned the video clip. This was not the case. The video was actually created by an anonymous blogger called Rebel Pundit.

Beck not only failed to give Rebel Pundit his deserved credit and valuable publicity, Beck went so far as to edit the video to hide a watermark for the RebelPundit.com website. Rebel Pundit expressed his disappointment to the Daily Caller:

“I put my website name on there for a reason – to bring people from the movement to my website so they can see the other stuff that I’ve done,” the man behind Rebel Pundit told TheDC. “You’ve got pretty much the biggest guy in the movement take your stuff and actually have his editors spend the time to scrub my name off of it.”

Even Beck's trademark chalkboard is not always his own work. A conservative blogger known as Liberty Chick presents compelling evidence that Beck stole the following chart outlining George Soros' media reach that she created and posted on her Bigjournalism.com website:

It appears that Beck actually printed out Liberty Chick's chart, cut out the logos and stuck them on his chalkboard. Unfortunately, he did not take the time to give Liberty Chick any credit for her work.

The article's many examples of copyright violations and plagiarism raise significant legal and ethical issues. When a smaller blogger does dilligent work that is worthy of being published to Beck's large audience, that blogger deserves the credit and bump in website traffic that comes with having his or her name mentioned by Beck. If Beck has actually gone out of his way to erase evidence of the proper source of the work, he deserves all of the ire from conservative bloggers that he is presently facing.

Beck's representatives disagree. They say that too much is being made of these examples:

Beck’s office responds to complaints like these by pointing out that Beck is a busy man who broadcasts in one form or another for nearly 1,000 hours a year. “Anyone could find examples of stories they think should have been sourced differently,” Beck’s representatives told TheDC. “In addition, many stories mentioned have multiple sources. Glenn’s shows have a high-standard and a long history of championing bloggers and attributing sources whenever possible including frequently providing extensive footnotes on GlennBeck.com. For example, The Blaze has already linked to The Daily Caller over 40 times, and the shows have cited a wide-range of bloggers, websites and reports over and over again.”

Obama To Recognize Palestinian State With 1967 Borders

European Times - A reported willingness by the White House to vote for the creation of a Palestinian state in the UN signals unprecedented trust issues with Netanyahu’s government and will likely exacerbate US-Israeli relations.

US President Barack Obama announced a decision to recognise the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, adding that the US will vote as such in the United Nations, reported the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot.

One of the newspaper’s head commentators, Nahum Barnea, stated that “senior” US officials attribute the president’s latest stance to “the revolutions storming the Arab world.” This coupled with resentment at Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu for failing to take genuine steps towards a settlement with the Palestinians reportedly inspired the president to adopt his latest position.

Barnea expects relations between Washington and Tel Aviv to head down a rather dangerous road, wherein “a US approval for the declaration of a Palestinian state would cause confusion and extreme embarrassment for Israel.”

Obama, according to Barnea’s sources, has “completely lost his trust in Netanyahu” and has not replied to the prime minister’s correspondence which stressed that approval of the latest peace proposal would lead to the collapse of Tel Aviv’s ruling coalition. It also noted that Israel cannot make any “geographical” compromises as this is its strongest playing card.

Obama proposed that Netanyahu provide him with a secret pledge showing the latter’s willingness to withdraw from the West Bank, but Netanyahu refused thereby exacerbating their crisis, Barnea explained.

Israeli security sources reportedly stated that “a UN decision to recognise a state of Palestine would turn the Jewish settlers in the West Bank into outlaws” with regard to international law. Nevertheless, the presence of the Israeli army in the West Bank has been and will continue to be considered a breach of UN resolutions.

Gas $4 Per Gallon In New York State

WASHINGTON — Add New York to the growing list of states where gas prices are topping $4 per gallon.

On Sunday, the Empire State became the sixth state to top $4 for the average price of a gallon of gas, joining Alaska, California, Connecticut, Hawaii and Illinois, according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge. The average price of gas also rose to more than $4 per gallon in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.

The next states to join the list could be Michigan, which has gas for $3.95 per gallon on average, and Indiana, where the average price is $3.94. Nevada, Washington and Wisconsin are close behind.
Hawaii has the highest price in the U.S. at $4.48 per gallon. Wyoming has the lowest, at $3.54.

The national average for gas has increased for 26 straight days, and is now at $3.83 per gallon. That's up 29 cents from a month ago. Retail surveys suggest motorists are reacting to higher prices now by buying less fuel. Still, the government expects pump prices to keep climbing this summer as vacationers take to the highways.
Story: Saudis cut oil output, claim market is oversupplied

For American drivers, the $4 mark harkens back to the summer of 2008, when oil rose to $147 per barrel and gas prices topped out at $4.11 per gallon before the economy went into a tailspin.

The rapid increase at the pump follows a parallel rise in oil. Since Labor Day, oil has risen 48 percent and U.S. gas prices have gone up 42 percent. The increases gained momentum in mid-February when a popular rebellion in Libya turned violent and shut down the country's exports. Crude has jumped 30 percent since

Harassment Case Filed Against Rev. Jesse Jackson

Detailed accusations of gay harassment by the Rev Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow PUSH Coalition came to light Thursday.

The claims, published in the Windy City Times, are by a former coalition employee who says he was mistreated, and eventually fired, because he is gay.

Tommy Bennett is a gay man who worked for Chicago`s Rainbow PUSH Coalition for roughly 2 years-and-a-half years.

During that time, he had a job in community affairs that he loved, according to the Windy City Times, and later a job he did not as the Rev. Jesse Jackson`s travel assistant.

In a formal complaint Bennett claims he had to escort women to Jackson`s room and clean up his room after sexual intercourse with women.

He claims he had to do it because of his sexual orientation.

In the detailed complaint, the former PUSH employee says there was more.

In 2008 Bennett says Jackson summoned him to his New York City hotel room where he was eventually instructed to apply cream to Jackson who had a rash between his legs. Bennett says he refused.

Another time at the Hilton O`Hare, Bennett was allegedly called to Jackson`s room at 1 a.m. The Reverend, according to the filing, was standing only in his briefs and a white t-shirt.

Bennett makes the claim that Jesse Jackson Sr. was excited, and took this to mean, that Jackson wanted Bennett to perform oral sex on him.

Bennett was let go from PUSH on December 23rd, 2009, due to lack of funding, even though others, Bennett maintained, were hired after his termination.

Bennett's lawyer says Bennett stands by the allegations and is seeking approximately $450,000 in damages.

Jackson`s civil rights organization did however release a statement saying the Rainbow PUSH Coalition unequivocally denies Tommy Bennett`s false claims of harassment, retaliation and discrimination.

Mark Levin Trashes Donald Trump

Patterico's Pontifications - Regular readers know I am no fan of Mark Levin — mainly because he engaged in an attack campaign against me that included several falsehoods and a generally juvenile tone. However, he can be an effective communicator when he sticks to the facts, and that’s what he does in this well-organized and effective rant about Donald Trump.

Highlights include Trump’s donations to cretins like Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton; his statements that Bush was evil and should have been impeached; his praise for Obama as someone with a chance to be thought of as one of the best presidents in history; and his support for universal health care.

It’s almost unbelievable that Levin would find this worth his time, but I guess when a poll (granted, one from PPP) puts Trump 9 points ahead of every other Republican candidate — and when he’s threatening to be a spoiler a la Ross Perot — you gotta take him out. Levin does so with facts — mainly by playing one clip of Trump after another.

No self-respecting Republican could possibly listen to this and continue to support Trump.

Father Pfleger, Cornel West And Left Wing Elites Turn On Obama

Father Pfleger and Cornel West Are Shocked To Learn Even A Black Man Can Be Corrupted By Power. Father Pflager, among other progressives, no longer fans of President Obama. Why?.

Republicans Deal Feuls Revival Of School Vochers In D.C.

Trip Gabriel - In the 11th-hour compromise to avoid a government shutdown last week, one concession that President Obama made to Republicans drew scant attention: he agreed to finance vouchers for Washington students to attend private schools.

The voucher program, whose main beneficiaries are church-affiliated schools, is close to the heart of the House speaker, John A. Boehner, a product of parochial schools, who had repeatedly choked up defending it on the House floor last month.

The White House at first opposed the Opportunity Scholarship Program, saying it did not raise student achievement. But in the end it was an easy place to compromise, administration aides said, in order to save bigger, more prominent education initiatives favored by Democrats from the $38 billion in cuts.

Mr. Boehner’s beloved program is the latest example of how conservative Republicans across the country are advancing school vouchers — including offering them for the first time to middle-class families — and reviving a cause that until recently seemed moribund.

“Life has been breathed into the voucher movement,” said Grover J. Whitehurst, director of education policy at the Brookings Institution. “I think they are part of what will be a more powerful and focused drive toward choice.”

Voucher advocates have long argued that if a student can use public money to attend any school, even a private one, schools will compete and improve. Some black leaders see vouchers as a way for poor students to escape failing urban schools.

“When I walk into a Safeway and talk to a mother who had a child who was already part of the voucher program and had another one she wanted to sign up, how could I deny her the opportunity?” said Kwame R. Brown, the Democratic chairman of the Council of the District of Columbia, who supports the city’s voucher program.

But vouchers were never widely adopted. Voters in four states defeated voucher referendums through 2007, and state courts narrowed or ended some programs.

Much of the enthusiasm for school choice has been absorbed by charter schools, which are secular and accountable under state standards like other public schools. Today, when 1.6 million students attend charter schools, the pro-voucher Foundation for Educational Choice says that only about 185,000 are in voucher or voucherlike programs.

The same gale-force winds battering teacher tenure and collective-bargaining rights, however, have led to a voucher revival.

“Where Republicans have taken over both the governor’s office and state legislatures, they’re pushing very hard on ideas that are grounded much more in ideology than on evidence they’ll have positive outcomes,” said Greg Anrig, vice president for policy at the liberal Century Foundation.

Gov. John Kasich of Ohio wants to quadruple a state voucher program capped at 14,000 students in failing schools. In Indiana, a bill that is likely to pass the legislature soon would offer vouchers to families with incomes up to $61,000. “I think it’s going to strengthen public schools through competition,” said Dennis Kruse, the Republican chairman of the State Senate education panel. “The schools will have to shape up if they want to keep the kids they have.”

Vi Simpson, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate in Indiana, said the vouchers would divert $92 million from public schools when they are already facing steep declines in state and federal aid. “Either this hasn’t been very well thought out,” she said, “or it’s been very well thought out and it is intended to help public schools fail.”

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who overcame a siege of the State Capitol to enact a law narrowing collective bargaining for public employees, mainly teachers, wants to expand Milwaukee’s voucher program, the nation’s oldest with 20,000 students. His plan would let any student, not just the poor, receive a voucher. Supporters say universal vouchers will make the city more attractive to the middle class.

But critics say that even after 21 years of vouchers, students receiving them perform no better than those in public schools on state tests of math and reading. Mr. Walker’s proposal “takes a program that’s supposed to be for low-income and working-class people and turns it into a subsidy for rich people,” said Howard L. Fuller, who was superintendent in the program’s early years.

“I will become an opponent of a program that I’ve fought 20 years of my life for,” he added. “I’ve been called every name under the sun for being a black person who would support, quote, the right-wing agenda.”

Dr. Fuller recalled debating an Illinois state senator opposed to vouchers in 1998, Barack Obama.

Democrats in Congress in 2009 closed Washington’s voucher program to new students, and as recently as last month the White House opposed reopening it on the ground that it did not lift student achievement. That was the finding of the United States Department of Education last year. But the report showed that Washington voucher students had a 12 percent higher graduation rate.

Mr. Boehner introduced legislation last month to reopen the program, providing $8,000 to $12,000 per year for low-income students, a total of $20 million annually for five years. After impassioned debate, the House bill passed March 29 on nearly a party-line vote. Its prospects in the Senate were considered poor.

Then came the budget negotiations between the White House and Congressional Republicans. For the administration, accepting Mr. Boehner’s voucher program was a small compromise compared with education priorities like maintaining financing for Head Start and Race to the Top.

One person excited by that decision was Lydell Mann, a single father with two children in the voucher program. He chose the Nannie Helen Burroughs School, owned by a Baptist denomination, for his children because the classes are smaller and the students more respectful, compared with what he observed when his daughter attended public school.

“Taking Ariona to school every day, noticing the language being used by the youth, noticing the trouble that would be started before and after school, I felt that environment wasn’t the greatest,” Mr. Mann said.

He was “ecstatic” that more families would have a chance to receive vouchers.

Arab Uprising Funded By U.S.

Tony Cartalucci - As American bombs rain down upon Libya on the premise that Qaddafi was brutalizing indigenous pro-democratic demonstrators, the accusing fingers of Libya, Iran, China, Syria, Belarus, and a growing number of other nations are pointing at Washington for funding and plotting regime change against their respective governments. Either in an act of absolute hubris or to spin emerging evidence that the US indeed has been funding and preparing the ground for the “Arab Spring” for years, New York Times has recently published “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings.”

Essentially throwing these activists under the bus, New York Times exposes that the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, and Entsar Qadhi of Yemen amongst others, received training and financing from the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, and the Neo-Conservative lined Freedom House.

NGOs: an extension of US foreign policy.

The New York Times goes on to explain that these organizations are in turn funded by the National Endowment for Democracy which receives 100 million USD from Congress while Freedom House receives most of its money from the US State Department. While the New York Times asserts “no one doubts that the Arab uprisings are home grown,” leaders of groups now admittedly funded and trained by the US are anything but “home grown.” The most prominent example is the April 6 Movement of Egypt led by Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Crisis Group. ElBaradei sitting along side George Soros, Kenneth Adelman, Wesley Clark, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, within a US foreign policy think-tank engenders a considerable amount of “doubt.”

Also conceding involvement is the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), chaired by various Council on Foreign Relations and Brookings Institute alumni. POMED claims that they helped protesters develop skills and to network. Such training has taken place annually under Movements.org starting in 2008 where Egypt’s April 6 movement among many others, learned techniques to subvert their government. Movements.org of course is sponsored by a conglomerate of corporate and government agencies including the US State Department, Google, MTV, the Edelman public relations firm, Facebook, CBS News, MSNBC, Pepsi, and others. Despite the claim that such meddling is “promoting democracy,” looking at the sponsors and war mongering interests involved in this operation, it appears to be more about promoting global military and economic hegemony.

The role of NGOs and the so called “civil society” used to support the unrest is also included in the New York Times piece, as well as the displeasure expressed by Arab leaders berating the US for meddling in their internal affairs. Such accusations have now reach a crescendo with China, Iran, Syria, and Belarus making similar claims.

The New York Times piece ends by describing cables indicating that many activists who became aware of US involvement in funding and directing the movements became disenfranchised. Such activists were “ousted.” Training was conducted outside of target countries, including in Jordan, Morocco, Serbia, and the United States. What the New York Times omits are the similar connections and involvements of corporate special interests steering human rights organizations in support of this operation as well. Such involvement organizations had amply laid the rhetorical groundwork to justify the ever expanding war in Libya.

Of course, one needs only remember the feigned ignorance exhibited by the US State Department, Hillary Clinton, and Barak Obama, along with the litany of lies purveyed by the mainstream media to see a disingenuous plot in motion. This is because everyone from the US State Department and the corporate owned media had been involved, for years, preparing to bring the “Arab Spring” to fruition. With open admissions now being made by a global corporate-financier mouthpiece like the New York Times, one must consider the serious implications of what may come next.

Behold the circus that is the mainstream media. MSNBC feigns ignorance and confusion over unrest they had been involved in engineering since at least 2008.

Surely this information is going to incite a counterrevolution. In Egypt, suspicion over Mohamed ElBaradei has already seen the interloping globocrat pelted with rocks and his agenda derailed. Many activists truly believed in their cause and risked their lives for the idea that they were fighting not only their own corrupt dictatorships, but the West as well who had been propping them up for years. Such a perception was exasperated during the early stages of the of the uprisings with the West lavishing support on embattled regimes in order to maximize the disenfranchisement of the people. With ongoing operations to seize Libya by force, and to see through similar US backed uprisings in Syria, Yemen, Iran, and even as far as Thailand and China, it will be interesting indeed to see how nation-states tailor their response to what is now clearly foreign funded subversion.

In what manner this realization will manifest itself in is not certain. However, it would be wise for activists, pundits, politicians, and concerned citizens genuinely interested in truth, to think very carefully before making their next move. As George Bush had once attempted to say, “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. ”

Ultimately, and upon examining the architects behind this global gambit of deceptive destabilization, we must look past the puppet politicians and the disingenuous liars that presume to give us “the news.” We must see the global corporate-financier empire as the source of the problem and its removal and replacement as the solution.

Philadelphia Health Dept. Giving 11 Year Olds Condomns

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA– Children as young as 11-years-old can now pick up or order free condoms from the Philadelphia Public Health Department through a program called Take Control Philly.

A recent survey of sixth-graders in West Philly showed that 25 percent of the 11-year-olds had already had sex. The Take Control Philly program strives to prevent STD’s and unplanned pregnancy.

The program offers information about STD’s, contraception, and even a graphic cartoon video on how to use a female or male condom.

“If you live in Philadelphia and you are between the ages of 11 and 19, all you have to do is fill out the form below and we’ll put together a package for you,” the site states.

While some parents are worried about the message this program may convey to children,the Health Commission says that many students in the schools are exposed to sex at a young age.

“Clearly, we don’t think it’s OK for 11-year-olds to be having sex,” says City Health Commissioner Donald Schwarz. “But we don’t have the infrastructure in place to fix [that] problem fast. We can, however, make condoms available fairly quickly to whoever needs them.”

Libya: All About Oil, Or All About The Banks?

Ellen Brown - Several writers have noted the odd fact that the Libyan rebels took time out from their rebellion in March to create their own central bank – this before they even had a government. Robert Wenzel wrote in the Economic Policy Journal:

I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising. This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences.

Alex Newman wrote in the New American:

In a statement released last week, the rebels reported on the results of a meeting held on March 19. Among other things, the supposed rag-tag revolutionaries announced the “[d]esignation of the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and appointment of a Governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.”

Newman quoted CNBC senior editor John Carney, who asked, “Is this the first time a revolutionary group has created a central bank while it is still in the midst of fighting the entrenched political power? It certainly seems to indicate how extraordinarily powerful central bankers have become in our era.”

Another anomaly involves the official justification for taking up arms against Libya. Supposedly it’s about human rights violations, but the evidence is contradictory. According to an article on the Fox News website on February 28:


As the United Nations works feverishly to condemn Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi for cracking down on protesters, the body’s Human Rights Council is poised to adopt a report chock-full of praise for Libya’s human rights record.

The review commends Libya for improving educational opportunities, for making human rights a “priority” and for bettering its “constitutional” framework. Several countries, including Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia but also Canada, give Libya positive marks for the legal protections afforded to its citizens — who are now revolting against the regime and facing bloody reprisal.

Whatever might be said of Gaddafi, the Libyan people seem to be thriving. A delegation of medical professionals from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus wrote in an appeal to Russian President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin that after becoming acquainted with Libyan life, it was their view that in few nations did people live in such comfort:


[Libyans] are entitled to free treatment, and their hospitals provide the best in the world of medical equipment. Education in Libya is free, capable young people have the opportunity to study abroad at government expense. When marrying, young couples receive 60,000 Libyan dinars (about 50,000 U.S. dollars) of financial assistance. Non-interest state loans, and as practice shows, undated. Due to government subsidies the price of cars is much lower than in Europe, and they are affordable for every family. Gasoline and bread cost a penny, no taxes for those who are engaged in agriculture. The Libyan people are quiet and peaceful, are not inclined to drink, and are very religious.

They maintained that the international community had been misinformed about the struggle against the regime. “Tell us,” they said, “who would not like such a regime?”

Even if that is just propaganda, there is no denying at least one very popular achievement of the Libyan government: it brought water to the desert by building the largest and most expensive irrigation project in history, the $33 billion GMMR (Great Man-Made River) project. Even more than oil, water is crucial to life in Libya. The GMMR provides 70 percent of the population with water for drinking and irrigation, pumping it from Libya’s vast underground Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System in the south to populated coastal areas 4,000 kilometers to the north. The Libyan government has done at least some things right.

Another explanation for the assault on Libya is that it is “all about oil,” but that theory too is problematic. As noted in the National Journal, the country produces only about 2 percent of the world’s oil. Saudi Arabia alone has enough spare capacity to make up for any lost production if Libyan oil were to disappear from the market. And if it’s all about oil, why the rush to set up a new central bank?

Another provocative bit of data circulating on the Net is a 2007 “Democracy Now” interview of U.S. General Wesley Clark (Ret.). In it he says that about 10 days after September 11, 2001, he was told by a general that the decision had been made to go to war with Iraq. Clark was surprised and asked why. “I don’t know!” was the response. “I guess they don’t know what else to do!” Later, the same general said they planned to take out seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.

What do these seven countries have in common? In the context of banking, one that sticks out is that none of them is listed among the 56 member banks of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That evidently puts them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers’ central bank in Switzerland.

The most renegade of the lot could be Libya and Iraq, the two that have actually been attacked. Kenneth Schortgen Jr., writing on Examiner.com, noted that “[s]ix months before the US moved into Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein, the oil nation had made the move to accept Euros instead of dollars for oil, and this became a threat to the global dominance of the dollar as the reserve currency, and its dominion as the petrodollar.”

According to a Russian article titled “Bombing of Lybia – Punishment for Ghaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar,” Gadaffi made a similarly bold move: he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar. Gadaffi suggested establishing a united African continent, with its 200 million people using this single currency. During the past year, the idea was approved by many Arab countries and most African countries. The only opponents were the Republic of South Africa and the head of the League of Arab States. The initiative was viewed negatively by the USA and the European Union, with French president Nicolas Sarkozy calling Libya a threat to the financial security of mankind; but Gaddafi was not swayed and continued his push for the creation of a united Africa.

And that brings us back to the puzzle of the Libyan central bank. In an article posted on the Market Oracle, Eric Encina observed:


One seldom mentioned fact by western politicians and media pundits: the Central Bank of Libya is 100% State Owned. . . . Currently, the Libyan government creates its own money, the Libyan Dinar, through the facilities of its own central bank. Few can argue that Libya is a sovereign nation with its own great resources, able to sustain its own economic destiny. One major problem for globalist banking cartels is that in order to do business with Libya, they must go through the Libyan Central Bank and its national currency, a place where they have absolutely zero dominion or power-broking ability. Hence, taking down the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) may not appear in the speeches of Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy but this is certainly at the top of the globalist agenda for absorbing Libya into its hive of compliant nations.

Libya not only has oil. According to the IMF, its central bank has nearly 144 tons of gold in its vaults. With that sort of asset base, who needs the BIS, the IMF and their rules?

All of which prompts a closer look at the BIS rules and their effect on local economies. An article on the BIS website states that central banks in the Central Bank Governance Network are supposed to have as their single or primary objective “to preserve price stability.” They are to be kept independent from government to make sure that political considerations don’t interfere with this mandate. “Price stability” means maintaining a stable money supply, even if that means burdening the people with heavy foreign debts. Central banks are discouraged from increasing the money supply by printing money and using it for the benefit of the state, either directly or as loans.

In a 2002 article in Asia Times titled “The BIS vs National Banks,” Henry Liu maintained:


BIS regulations serve only the single purpose of strengthening the international private banking system, even at the peril of national economies. The BIS does to national banking systems what the IMF has done to national monetary regimes. National economies under financial globalization no longer serve national interests.

. . . FDI [foreign direct investment] denominated in foreign currencies, mostly dollars, has condemned many national economies into unbalanced development toward export, merely to make dollar-denominated interest payments to FDI, with little net benefit to the domestic economies.

He added, “Applying the State Theory of Money, any government can fund with its own currency all its domestic developmental needs to maintain full employment without inflation.” The “state theory of money” refers to money created by governments rather than private banks.

The presumption of the rule against borrowing from the government’s own central bank is that this will be inflationary, while borrowing existing money from foreign banks or the IMF will not. But all banks actually create the money they lend on their books, whether publicly-owned or privately-owned. Most new money today comes from bank loans. Borrowing it from the government’s own central bank has the advantage that the loan is effectively interest-free. Eliminating interest has been shown to reduce the cost of public projects by an average of 50%.

Stock up with F

And that appears to be how the Libyan system works. According to Wikipedia, the functions of the

Central Bank of Libya include “issuing and regulating banknotes and coins in Libya” and “managing and issuing all state loans.” Libya’s wholly state-owned bank can and does issue the national currency and lend it for state purposes.

That would explain where Libya gets the money to provide free education and medical care, and to issue each young couple $50,000 in interest-free state loans. It would also explain where the country found the $33 billion to build the Great Man-Made River project. Libyans are worried that NATO-led air strikes are coming perilously close to this pipeline, threatening another humanitarian disaster.

So is this new war all about oil or all about banking? Maybe both – and water as well. With energy, water, and ample credit to develop the infrastructure to access them, a nation can be free of the grip of foreign creditors. And that may be the real threat of Libya: it could show the world what is possible. Most countries don’t have oil, but new technologies are being developed that could make non-oil-producing nations energy-independent, particularly if infrastructure costs are halved by borrowing from the nation’s own publicly-owned bank. Energy independence would free governments from the web of the international bankers, and of the need to shift production from domestic to foreign markets to service the loans.

If the Gaddafi government goes down, it will be interesting to watch whether the new central bank joins the BIS, whether the nationalized oil industry gets sold off to investors, and whether education and health care continue to be free.

Obama, Boehner Budget Deal Increases Federal Deficit

Kurt Nimmo - It should be obvious by now. The government has absolutely no intention of ever decreasing spending, reducing the deficit, and eliminating the national debt. It plans to borrow more money. It wants to turn your children and grand children into impoverished debt slaves.
Obama’s budget “deal” speech: 43 minutes of doublespeak, lies, and feel-good propaganda.

On the heels of an onslaught of propaganda claiming establishment Republicans and Democrats are working together to slash the budget and reducing spending comes an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office. It notes that a bill due for a vote in the House today will cut federal outlays by a paltry $352 million through September 30, or by less than one percent. About $8 billion in cuts to domestic programs and foreign aid will be offset by an increase in so-called defense spending.

In fact, as the Washington Post notes, when the cost of occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, attacking Pakistan on the side and bombing Libya and other war on (manufactured) terror ventures are factored in, the budget increases by $3.3 billion.

Boehner and Obama have presided over a budget increase, not a decrease as they claim.

Congress critters in the House, meanwhile, could not help but pat themselves on the back. “With this bill we not only are arresting that growth but we are reducing actual discretionary spending by a record amount, nearly $40 billion in actual cuts in spending that has not ever been accomplished by this body in its history, in the history of the country,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers, a Kentucky Republican. “The cuts in this bill exceed anything ever passed by the House.”

“The president said he would freeze spending. Our Speaker negotiated, outnumbered 3-1,” he added, referring to Boehner’s negotiations alone in the oval office with Obama, Biden and Senate Majority Leader Reid. “We have cut spending.”

No, they have once again increased spending. The government may cut Pell grants and school lunch programs, but they will never cut the Pentagon off from the public largess trough. Not so long as America is tapped to extend the globalist empire and attack recalcitrant Muslims who reject the predatory behavior of IMF loan sharks and the international bankster criminal class.

Obama, Boehner, and the Republican-Democrat party have pulled a fast one on the people. The Tea Party inspired change in the House is as phony as the change Obama said he would bring to government. Establishment Republicans sold out the Tea Party and are now engaged in doublespeak about a debt that will render our children homeless on the continent their forefathers conquered. Both Republicans and Democrats work for the bankers and elections are largely irrelevant, as the former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said the other day.


Ron Paul talks with CIA-CNN operative Anderson Cooper about the budget shell game.

For the international bankers, the U.S. national debt is a plan made in heaven. It was designed as a method for confiscating the wealth of Americans through interest payments paid by the hoodwinked masses on a fractional reserve bank debt which the government assumed as sovereign debt. It is expropriation, pure and simple, based on funny money cooked up by the Federal Reserve out of thin air.

The political whore class supported by the banksters will not fix the problem. A few days ago a top contender for the 2012 fixed race for teleprompter reader in chief, Mitt Romney, said he won’t waste his time going after the Federal Reserve. “I’m not going to spend my time going after Ben Bernanke. I’m not going to spend my time focusing on the Federal Reserve,” he told Larry Kudlow on CNBC. “I think Ben Bernanke is a student of monetary policy; he’s doing as good a job as he thinks he can do.”

Indeed, Bernanke and the Fed are doing the best job they can to enslave you and your children.

Mitt Romney, if elected, will continue the process of turning the once great United States into a bankrupt and indebted third world backwater.

So will a re-elected Obama or Sarah Palin or any other manufactured personality hyped by the elite and its political class.

The only viable candidate for real change is Ron Paul. If he decides to run, as now appears to be the case, let’s hope he stays healthy between now and 2012.

Cornell West Calls Obama a Black Mascot Of Wall Street Bankers

Cored Jefferson - As the 2012 presidential elections draws closer, the arguments for and against President Obama grow more heated. Last night, an outright shouting match between two of America’s most notable Black leaders—Cornel West and Al Sharpton—gave an indication as to just how important this election will be.

West, a Princeton professor and author, and Sharpton, a controversial civil rights icon, sat on a panel of experts on the Ed Schultz-led special program A Stronger America: The Black Agenda. The talk soon turned to what African-Americans can and should expect from Obama. Sharpton, whose recent National Action Network conference saw an Obama cameo, believes people are being too hard on the president. West vehemently disagreed.

In response to the sharp criticism Obama’s gotten from Blacks who say he’s not done enough for the minority community, Sharpton said, “Too many of us are putting it all on the president. If I see a [Paul] Ryan in Congress, where is the counterpoint to Ryan? That’s not President Obama’s job.… He shouldn’t lead the civil rights marches against himself. Everybody’s sitting around acting like we can’t do anything, Obama’s going to do it. That’s hogwash.”

Interrupting Sharpton, West leapt into the debate: “They [the Obama administration] have a Black constituency and there’s a context in the nation that a criticism of President Obama is an attempt to support the right-wing vicious attacks of Fox News and others,” he said.

West went on to say that the White House ignored the plight of the Black poor, and, in perhaps his most heated turn of phrase, called Obama “another Black mascot of these Wall Street oligarchs.”

Sharpton shot back that people like West like to sit in their “ivory towers” while people like Sharpton are “in the trenches at the labor rallies.” It eventually devolved into an all-out shouting match, with Sharpton being drowned out by West, who shouted, “Where’s the jobs bill?”

Ultimately, not much was accomplished on either side, but it made for exciting television, and it was just a taste of how hot the debates are going to be before voters head to the polls in 2012.

Conservatives Be Prepared, Boehner & Republicans Will Quickly Cave In On The Debt Ceiling

Riehl World View - Perhaps the most annoying statement in this Politico item about Wall Street pressuring Boehner on the debt limit is the last sentence from my excerpt: "Many executives on Wall Street believe Washington is playing an enormously dangerous game with what is typically a non-controversial vote."

Were it you, or me, or a private business, this would equate to any real estate holdings being under-water, having no money in the bank with any credit cards maxed out. Not only would a decision to take on more debt be difficult, or controversial, assuming you even could, one might just as easily conclude it's time to pay the piper and stop digging such a huge hole.

But, as with TARP, the Stimulus and everything else we've seen, they are going to roll out the "too big to fail" argument and ram this through. Obviously, the groundwork is being done for it, so be prepared. We may yet find out nothing is too big to fail when the whole mess comes tumbling down around a bunch of politicians who will manage to not feel much of a financial pinch themselves if it does. Yet, they are the same people who caused this through their irresponsible actions in the name of power and politics over the years.

Republicans are growing increasingly concerned about the impact a bruising fight over raising the nation’s $14.29 trillion debt ceiling could have on U.S. financial markets.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has had conversations with top Wall Street executives, asking how close Congress could push to the debt limit deadline without sending interests rates soaring and causing stock prices to go lower, people familiar with the matter said. Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said Tuesday night that he was not aware of any such conversations.

Treasury could then implement emergency measures to continuing making interest payments on existing debut until around July 8. After that, the U.S. risks going into default, an unthinkable idea to many economists and market participants who say such an event could drive scores of large banks into failure, send interest rates skyrocketing as foreign investors abandon U.S. securities and crush the already slow-going economic recovery.

Republicans and even some fiscally conservative Democrats want to use the debt limit fight as leverage to wring more significant spending cuts out of the White House. Politicians of all stripes are worried about how independents will react to a vote — or multiple stop-gap votes — to raise the debt ceiling. Many executives on Wall Street believe Washington is playing an enormously dangerous game with what is typically a non-controversial vote.

Obama: Pennsylvania Approval Rating 42%

Ed Morrissey - Losing Florida in 2012 would create a major obstacle to Barack Obama’s chances of a second term. Losing Pennsylvania would be disastrous. A new survey in the Keystone State shows Obama with an approval rating seriously underwater and in ties with three potential Republican opponents — and the pollster isn’t exactly hostile to Democrats, either:

Pennsylvania’s looking like it could be a very tough state for Barack Obama in 2012. His approval rating there is only 42% with 52% of voters disapproving of him, and he’s within the margin of error in the state against 3 potential Republican opponents, a far cry from his double digit victory there in 2008.

Obama has two major problems in the state: independents and white Democrats. A majority of independents disapprove of him- 54% give him bad marks to 39% who think he’s doing a good job. More concerning is that his approval rating with Democrats is only 68%, well below the 81% we find for him nationally. He’s doing fine with black Democrats- an 86% approval rating- but with white Democrats he’s at only a 64/27 spread.

Those numbers suggest that a lot of the voters who fueled Hillary Clinton’s primary victory in the state and then sucked it up and voted for Obama in the general election the last time around haven’t been real thrilled with what they’ve seen from him so far and could split their tickets next year- if the Republicans put up someone who’s seen as a reasonable alternative.

This comes from Public Policy Polling, a firm whose results tend to lean towards the Left. In this case, they may have overpolled Democrats slightly with a +13, but it’s not by much if at all, so the sample seems pretty reliable — except in one sense. According to one demo question asked, the sample split between Obama and John McCain 48/44, with 7% saying they voted for someone else or can’t remember who they picked in 2008. Obama actually won Pennsylvania by 11 points, 55/44.

It looks as though the people who voted McCain have no problem admitting to it, but at least some Pennsylvanians who cast a vote for the winner have so much buyer’s remorse that it’s causing amnesia.

That’s reflected in the head-to-head matchups as well. Obama only solidly beats Sarah Palin in the poll, 50/39, in which Palin at least beats the sample spread between Democrats and Republicans, and Newt Gingrich, 47/39. Obama barely edges Mike Huckabee 45/44, and he narrowly loses to Mitt Romney 43/42, both obviously within the MOE. But Obama also falls within the MOE against Rick Santorum 45/43, who lost his last statewide election in Pennsylvania and who hasn’t been seen as a top-tier contender in this cycle thus far.

Obama can afford to lose Florida and still find his way back to the Oval Office. There is no good path to the White House for a Democrat that loses Pennsylvania — which would indicate danger in more-Republican states like Ohio, Indiana, and even Michigan, all of which Obama won in 2008.

Hasn't Obama Already Told America What He Plans To Do About The Debt?

Rob Port - Weeks ago President Obama issued an executive budget for FY2012. Months ago, a commission convened by the President to address the nation’s national debt and deficit issues put forth a report which the Obama administration largely ignored.

But tomorrow the White House is telling us that the President will deliver a speech that will lay out his plans for the national debt. “Last week’s release of Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s [budget plan] and a looming vote to raise the debt limit has forced the White House to unveil its own plan in a speech planned for George Washington University Wednesday afternoon.” reports Politico.

What don’t we already know? Shouldn’t his budget, again released weeks ago, tell us what the President wants to do about national debt and deficits? Which is, essentially, nothing?

The Washington Post is reporting that Obama is now turning to his deficit commission’s report on the deficit for guidance. That blueprint addressed entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, and yet when the President addressed the nation in his most recent state of the union address the New York Times reported the President “did not lay out any specific plans for addressing the long-term costs of Social Security and Medicare, the biggest fiscal challenges ahead.”

“[H]e did not adopt any of the recommendations of the bipartisan fiscal commission he appointed to figure out ways to bring the deficit under control.”

So now, suddenly, the President wants to embrace spending cuts.

Hypocritical, to be sure, but that may be the real victory of the budget compromise Republicans agreed to last week. The cuts were tiny, and some conservatives are upset that Republicans didn’t shut down the government over bigger cuts, but what they did do was keep the national political momentum toward spending cuts.

Even the President is changing his tone.

Fukushima Level 7 Introduce Dangerous Strontium Into Enviornment

Kurt Nimmo - Japan has admitted the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster is on par with the one at Chernobyl. At the same time, Japan’s science and technology ministry reports strontium, a heavy radioactive metal that is a catalyst for leukemia, has been detected around the crippled reactors. In addition to leukemia, strontium causes cancers of the bone, nose, lung, and skin.

See 20 years after Chernobyl: The ongoing health effects.

Other deadly radioactive elements released included iodine, cesium and plutonium. The alpha emitter plutonium is especially deadly. Plutonium 239 has a high half-life of around 24,000 years. Plutonium transforms into americium and enters the water table. It can contaminate a water supply for centuries. The half life of americium is 433 years.

Cesium has a tendency for adhesion to particulates in soil and sediment, making it less mobile than strontium.

Like calcium, strontium enters the human body through plant and animal products and is mainly deposited in teeth and bones. New blood is formed in the bone marrow. Leukemia is a cancer of the blood.

Strontium is much more mobile and soluble in water than cesium. Following the Chernobyl nuclear accident, strontium was detected in the ground. Experts believe that 80 percent of the strontium released by the stricken Chernobyl reactor entered the food cycle.

The corporate media is basically ignoring the news that strontium is now being introduced into the environment. This is part of a larger pattern by the media to play down what will certainly be the worst nuclear disaster in history.

Gas Prices $5 Pre Gallon By Memorial Day

CHICAGO (CBS) – At one time, $5 per gallon gas seemed like a farfetched idea, but that is no longer the case.

As CBS 2’s Roseanne Tellez reports, as of Monday, the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline in the Chicago area is $4.11, compared with $3.71 a month ago, and about $3.10 a gallon at this time a year ago.

Some experts say $5 per gallon gas is possible by Memorial Day-or sometime in summer. Others caution that reaching that mark is unlikely over the next six weeks. In Chicago, the prices keep rising to near-record levels–with no relief in sight.

Right now, oil markets are so skittish that records set in 2008 could fall.

Drivers Monday morning were practically numb to the price spikes.

“What are you going to do?” said Shannon Thompson. “We’ve become so gas-dependent in this country. There are so many SUVs. I mean, I’ve had a hybrid. It worked great. Right now, I’m just going to deal with it.”

Prices at some gas stations outside the city were still below $4, a bargain compared to the $4.29-$4.40 range at some service stations downtown.

“It’s painful,” said Lamar Magee. “You’ve got to make a decision on where you drive and where you go nowadays.” He said he is “definitely” making changes to his routines.

Magee says it will cost him about $120 to fill up the 30-gallon tank on his van.

But even that pales in comparison to the big rigs. Truck driver Mark Kanarowski says his truck holds 200 gallons.

“It’s got to be a huge expense for the company,” Kanarowski said. “I went to St. Louis over the weekend to fill up my own car, and I was paying about $4.13 a gallon. It hurts.”

A limo driver shared his thoughts as he filled up his tank at the Des Plaines Oasis.

“Normal-sized tank, big price – when you get done at the pump, it’s killing business, and a lot of one-way trips now,” he said, “like I’m going to get somebody this morning, and I’m not bringing him home. His wife will probably bring him home, because everyone’s trying to save a little bit here, a little bit there.”

The Lundberg Survey says the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded as of Monday was $3.76. That is up 19 cents since March 18, and up 91 cents since this time last year.

The sharply rising prices hearken back memories of the summer of 2008.

That year, oil prices were driven well above $100 per barrel, and in June of that year and gas prices were well over $4 a gallon. The highest average record price was $4.34 per gallon, set July 2008.

No one is eager to break that record. But with no end in sight to the turmoil in the Middle East, analysts say we’re likely to do just that – and just as holiday travelers hit the highways for Memorial Day weekend.