MY HARLEY IS UNDER THAT MOUND

My Harley has a Deluxe Cover over it, plus a good quality silver tarp, so I'm not too worried about the snow getting to it.

MY TRUCK

That's at least three feet of snow on top of the truck

IT JUST WON'T QUIT SNOWING

After three hours of snowthrower work, it's still snowing and just won't stop. This is a record snowfall for the Spokane area. The old record for this day was 13 inches. So far we're up to 19.6 inches where they measure in Spokane, our nearest major city. Here in North Idaho, in my little town, we have had at least four feet of snow since yesterday mid morning.

HERE'S A GOOD ONE FROM HPLOVECRAFT OUT ON THE MW THREADS TODAY

The IRS decides to audit Grandpa, and summons him to the IRS office. The IRS auditor was not surprised when Grandpa showed up with his attorney. The auditor said, 'Well, sir, you have an extravagant lifestyle and no full-time employment, Which you explain by saying that you win money gambling. I'm not sure the IRS finds that believable.' I'm a great gambler, and I can prove it,' says Grandpa. 'How about a demonstration?' The auditor thinks for a moment and said, 'Okay. Go ahead.' Grandpa says, 'I'll bet you a thousand dollars that I can bite my own eye.' The auditor thinks a moment and says, 'It's a bet.' Grandpa removes his glass eye and bites it. The auditor's jaw drops. Grandpa says, 'Now, I'll bet you two thousand dollars that I can bite my other eye.' Now the auditor can tell Grandpa isn't blind, so he takes the bet. Grandpa removes his dentures and bites his good eye. The stunned auditor now realizes he has wagered and lost three grand, with Grandpa's attorney as a witness. He starts to get nervous. 'Want to go double or nothing?' Grandpa asks 'I'll bet you six thousand dollars that I can stand on one side of your desk, and pee into that wastebasket on the other side, and never get a drop anywhere in between.' The auditor, twice burned, is cautious now, but he looks carefully and decides there's no way this old guy could possibly manage that stunt, so he agrees again. Grandpa stands beside the desk and unzips his pants, but although he strains mightily, he can't make the stream reach the wastebasket on the other side, so he pretty much urinates all over the auditor's desk. The auditor leaps with joy, realizing that he has just turned a major loss into a huge win. But Grandpa's own attorney moans and puts his head in his hands. 'Are you okay?' the auditor asks. 'Not really,' says the attorney. 'This morning, when Grandpa told me he'd been summoned for an audit, he bet me twenty-five thousand dollars that he could come in here and pee all over your desk and that you'd be happy about it!'

THE LAST THREE BOB CHAPMAN ARTICLES

I've gotten behind on posting Bob Chapman's articles from his International Forecaster, probably the most straight-forward, honest site available to WARN YOU ALL, about what is coming...THE END OF YOUR LIFESTYLE AS YOU HAVE KNOWN IT! Read all the articles you haven't read so far. Failure to do this, is AT YOUR OWN PERIL! http://theinternationalforecaster.com/

STATISTICS VS LIES

FROM THE SOVEREIGN SOCIETY A-LETTER EXERPT: There are Lies, Damned Lies, and then there are Statistics Today's comment is a special lies report from A-Letter Editor Matt Collins, as a complement to Chairman John Pugsley's full lies report Are you ready for the best thing you'll hear all day? You can ignore the numbers. That's right, you heard me. The charts, the graphs the statistics, just forget about them. If they don't make sense to you, and even if they do, you should be skeptical about what they're saying and whether they're telling the truth. But that old saying is popping into your head, "numbers don't lie." Well that statement's an even bigger lie than the numbers, and today you'll find out why. Besides there's another saying. And being that this one comes from Mark Twain, I'm more inclined to believe it. On the topic of lying, Mark Twain paraphrased Benjamin Disraeli. He said "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." No statement on the topic could ever be truer. Busting the Myth of Statistics Let's start with a simple example. We'll say that I'm doing a study, and in this study I've made a basic assumption that there's a relation between blue jeans and car crashes. Sounds strange but stick with me. So I do a study across a wide range of people and places. I complement this study with a graph that shows two lines - for blue jeans and car crashes - and as the sales figures for blue jeans increases, so does the occurrence of car crashes. But what if the two have nothing to do with each other? At what point does my graph answer that question? Well, it doesn't. It could be that one person is buying an enormous amount of blue jeans (more and more each day) and that the occurrence of car crashes is going up for other reasons entirely. Now I know this is a strange example, but it proves at least one thing. It proves that our two variables - blue jeans and car crashes - may be totally unrelated. Something that the graph (the numbers) wouldn't even lead you to consider. Instead, the numbers, the graph, they make my weak argument - that blue jeans cause car crashes - seem more legitimate. After all, the numbers can't lie, right? Wrong. A Frighteningly Real Example Now we're going to move onto something a little bit scarier. And that's how our government calculates inflation. What's scary here is that the inflation statistics that are circulated by the government, are acknowledged to be some of the most legitimate statistics out there, and they're used by major businesses to make market-shaping decisions. But what we'll find here is a situation that makes the previous example look like child's play. Indeed, these numbers are subject to some of the most sophisticated tinkering in the financial world. A process called ‘hedonic pricing' is used in determining statistics like inflation and the Consumer Price Index. Hedonic pricing is a way to adjust values for the progression of time. Sound confusing? Well it is, and hedonic pricing is something that can be directly manipulated to produce the desired statistics. For example, I bought a TV five years ago. And it was cheap. And good. It was a wonderful TV and I still use it today. But this past year I decided to treat myself, and I bought a fancy new HDTV. This new TV cost me US$400 more than my old TV. But - thanks to hedonic pricing - it'll actually be treated as though it was cheaper than my old TV. Why? Well, since the new TV has a better picture and better sound, I get greater enjoyment out of it (at least as far as hedonic pricing is concerned) and therefore it's of greater value. At least that's what hedonic pricing says. They can use hedonics and attach an arbitrary value to that added enjoyment - let's say they go with US$450. Since I get US$450 more value from my new TV, it's actually written into the Consumer price index as being cheaper than the old TV. That's how they can use hedonics to make consumer products seem cheaper and inflation lower. So they can use hedonic pricing to a very real extent in order to shape the results they get. Still think numbers can't lie? What You See Depends on where you Stand We'll go from that example to a much bigger problem with Statistics. And that's the fact that they're made by people. Don't get me wrong, I think people are great. But I also realize the fact that everyone sees the world in his or her own personal way. And how they see the world depends largely on where they stand. For example, Martin Hennecke, Senior Manager of private clients at Tyche, doubts that inflation is as low as the government reports. He cites the fact that if you used the 1983 formula to calculate inflation, then the result is currently between 10-11% (twice as much as the official numbers.) But Mike Shedlock, a Global Economic Analyst from Sitka Pacific Capital, disagrees completely. He cites the fact that the government uses a formula known as Owners' Equivalent Rent (OER) as the housing component in the CPI and their calculations of inflation. We won't get into OER here, but let's just say that it's as easy to manipulate as hedonics. Shedlock tries instead to calculate inflation using the Case Shiller Index, a statistic he sees as more honest than the OER. By his calculation, we've currently got a negative rate of inflation...that is, deflation. So What do You Do? First, you should relax. Knowing that most statistics are meaningless should free you from worry, not introduce more. What you know now will make you less likely to be swayed by a weak argument sporting a handful of pretty pictures. You'll be more likely to ask questions about statistics, and not just accept them. You should decide whether they make sense to you or not, and then just worry about why. Remember that every graph, chart and statistic is not an objective presentation of the facts. Rather, someone is always trying to prove a point or support an argument. Don't ever be lured in by weak arguments that use complex math to prove a point that fundamentally doesn't make sense to you.

PETER SCHIFF VIDEO TEN MINUTES

CREDIT TO CSPANJUNKIE FOR THE LINK http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PIEGK0IbA4 RON PAUL IS COMPLETELY VINDICATED BY THE RECORD OF HIS WARNINGS TO US ALL. But our Federal Idiots still won't admit they caused this mess and DON'T KNOW HOW to fix it. but ONLY MAKE IT WORSE AND WORSE, just by waking up and getting out of bed each morning. Could their wives or girl friends (or male lovers) PLEASE.... Suffocate them all while they are sleeping?

BUSH GETS THE BOOT...HOORAY!

December 15, 2008 Finally, A Journalist We Can Look Up To! A Hero of Our Time: Muntadar al-Zaidi By DAVE LINDORFF http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff12152008.html When Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi heaved his two shoes at the head of President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad, he did something that the White House press corps should have done years ago. Al-Zaidi listened to Bush blather that the half-decade of war he had initiated with the illegal invasion of Iraq had been “necessary for US security, Iraqi stability (sic) and world peace” and something just snapped. The television correspondent, who had been kidnapped and held for a while last year by Shiite militants, pulled off a shoe and threw it at Bush—a serious insult in Iraqi culture—and shouted “This is a farewell kiss, you dog!” When the first shoe missed its target, he grabbed a second shoe and heaved it too, causing the president to duck a second time as al-Zaidi shouted, “This is from the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq!” I’ll admit, listening to Bush lie his way through eight years of press conferences, while pre-selected reporters played along and pretended to get his attention so they could ask questions which had been submitted and vetted in advance, I have felt like throwing my shoes at the television set. Al-Zaidi, who paid for his courageous act of protest by being brutally beaten by security guards, is a hero of the profession. He stopped taking the president’s BS and called him what he is: a murderer and a criminal, with the blood of perhaps upwards of a million Iraqis on his hands. Al-Zaidi used what was supposed to be a staged photo-op for the president as an opportunity to speak up for those whose lives have been ruined by this president—the ones our suck-up journalists routinely ignore. I’m not suggesting that journalists should routinely leave presidential press conferences in their stocking feet. We have different ways of expressing our sentiments to people we feel have insulted our intelligence than throwing shoes at them, but it would be nice to see a journalist or two flip the president the bird when he lies so blatantly to them. Or they could all get up and just walk out, leaving him standing alone at the presidential lectern. It’s time for the press corps to stop treating presidents like royalty. If he accomplished anything at all in eight years in office, President Bush has demonstrated that, to the contrary, the president is a very ordinary—and in his case a rather less than ordinary—man. The office of president deserves no more respect than that of the mayor of Detroit, or of Wasilla. My suggestion is that the press corps use the remaining five weeks of the Bush administration to develop a new relationship with the presidency—one in which they drop all the phony propriety and tradition and start acting like boisterous newshounds of old, barking questions, laughing cruelly at inane answers, demanding follow-ups when they are given the run-around, and, where necessary, walking out, or perhaps tossing the occasional shoe. The journalism profession was a full-blown disaster and an utter disgrace during the Bush administration, and with all the crises facing the country and the world, in part because of that failure on their part, we cannot afford to have them continue that failure into the Obama administration. With the Bush administration reduced to a running joke at this point, it gives the journalism profession a chance to redeem itself by using these few remaining weeks to establish a new tradition for presidential press conferences and photo-ops—one that can continue on into the new presidency. Meanwhile, I’m suggesting that my alma mater, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, hire al=Zaidi to teach a class in press conference journalism techniques. They should make it a multi-year appointment, because if he left after just one year, his would be difficult shoes to fill. NOTE: Speaking of shoes and the White House, Skip Mendler of Honesdale, PA has a great idea. He suggests that everyone who is disgusted with the outgoing Bush/Cheney administration send a shoe to the White House. Just imagine a pile up of a million smelly old running shoes in the White House mailroom! I think he's got something. Spread the word! DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

ANOTHER ONE FROM SORCHA FAAL

[Ed. Note: This report should be read from its website location at http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1177.htm as this email copy does not contain the links embedded in the original report.] December 15, 2008 American People Warned To Prepare For Financial Armageddon By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers Deputy Economics Minister Andrei Klepach in issuing his stark warning to President Medvedev that the Russian economy is now in recession has stated in even more catastrophic terms that the United States is facing nothing less than a total 'Financial Armageddon'. Klepach's warnings also echo those of the American researcher Michael J. Panzner who in his book titled 'Financial Armageddon' had tried to warn his Nations peoples about their coming collapse, none of whom listened to his warnings though while their was still time to protect themselves. More directly, however, Klepach's warnings were based upon the collapse of the buyout for Canada's phone giant this past week which he states is the 'beginning of the end' of American financial hegemony over the World, and as we can read: "The collapse of what would have been the the largest leveraged buyout in history has some private equity executives fearing a financial "Armageddon," The Financial Times reported. On Wednesday night, the $50 billion takeover of BCE, parent of the phone giant Bell Canada, by a consortium of private equity firms collapsed, bringing the recent era of blockbuster corporate buyouts to an end." The 'domino effect' of this buyout collapse is reverberating through all of the World's finance ministries and markets today with one of the United States largest hedge funds now informing its depositors that they can no longer access their money, and as we can read: "Citadel Investment Group, the hedge fund firm run by Kenneth C. Griffin, halted year-end withdrawals from its two biggest funds after investors sought to take out $1.2 billion, according to a letter sent to clients. The Kensington and Wellington funds, which together manage about $10 billion, have lost 49.5 percent of their value this year through Dec. 5. Withdrawals may resume as early as March 31, said the letter, signed by Mr. Griffin and sent to investors on Friday, Bloomberg News reported." Adding to the woes associated with this Global economic collapse is the just released World Bank report warning that we are now entering a time not seen since the Great Depression, and as we can read: "The world could go through its worst recession since the Great Depression as a massive financial crisis has slashed global investment and sharp drops in commodity prices severely hurt poor-country exports, the World Bank warned. The global development bank slashed its previous estimates for global growth to 2.5 percent in 2008 and 0.9 percent in 2009, well below the three percent rate typically considered the dividing line between global growth and contraction. "The financial crisis is now likely to result in the most serious recession since the 1930s," said the World Bank's chief economist Justin Lin, as the group released its annual report on the global economy." To the catastrophic fate awaiting the American people however, is the collapse of their currency, and as we can read is already occurring: "The biggest foreign-exchange strategists and investors say the best may be over for the dollar after a four-month, 24 percent rally. The currency weakened 5.9 percent measured by the trade- weighted Dollar Index after strengthening between July and November as investors bought the greenback to flee riskier assets and repay dollar-denominated loans from lenders reining in credit. Ever since peaking on Nov. 21, the dollar fell against all 16 of the most-widely traded currencies, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. U.S. policy makers are flooding the world with an extra $8.5 trillion through 23 different plans designed to bail out the financial system and pump up the economy. The decline shows that the increased supply of money may be overwhelming investors just as the government steps up debt sales, the trade and budget deficits grow and de-leveraging by investors slows. "The dollar will go to new lows as the U.S. attacks its currency," said John Taylor, chairman of New York-based FX Concepts Inc., which manages about $14.5 billion of currencies." In an even greater affront to the American people about the trillions of dollars being 'unleashed' upon the World by their government is that they are not allowed to even know who is receiving these staggering amounts of money, and as we can read: "The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral. Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression." Even worse for these American people is their not even realizing that the current financial chaos enveloping them is just beginning and is nowhere near seeing its ending point as another giant wave of home foreclosures is about to erupt and which is being termed as a 'Foreclosure Storm' getting ready to hit them as the new year begins and Jim Rogers, one of the World's most prominent International investors, is warning that most of the largest US banks are "totally bankrupt". In an even more bitter indictment of the American people, who many Russian economists have already labeled as 'insane', Klepach points out in his reports that these deluded people are actually still paying great portions of their monthly wages on home mortgages, auto loans and credit card bills which have already been taken off the books of their already failed banks as 'uncollectible' debts as all of these people will fall into bankruptcy by the end of 2010. One can only wonder as to why these people are paying anything at all to anyone other than their own family's survival. It is as if they actually believe they will 'somehow' return to the spendthrift days of their past where they cared not one wit for the future as they, even now, continue plunging into the abyss. We can only guess as to whether these people deserve our scorn or sympathy as they themselves appear to be living their lives in continued denial of the monstrous future being planned for them. © December 15, 2008 EU and US all rights reserved. http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1177.htm -- Sorcha Faal sorchafaal@fastmail.fm

HOMELESSNESS/HUNGER INCREASING

DO YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS ON THE NEWS...OF COURSE NOT! US homelessness, hunger rising: A survey cited by AFP says homelessness and hunger increased in an overwhelming majority of 25 US cities in the past year, driven by the foreclosure crisis.. http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=78276§ionid=3510203

MONDAY MORNING REPORTS

Empire State index Industrial production Homebuilders' index

OPEN YOUR MIND AND JUST READ AND GET PREPARED

December 12, 2008 Council On Foreign Relations Warns Of United States Collapse By Summer, 2009 By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers Russian Foreign Ministry sources are reporting today that the United States Council on Foreign Relations organization has presented to its Western allies attending this weeks contentious European Climate Summit a secret report that summarizes that the American Nation, indeed all of North America, will 'totally collapse' by the Summer of 2009. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) describes itself as "an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries." Russian Intelligence sources, on the other hand, describe the Council on Foreign Relations as the defacto 'shadow government' of not just the United States, but the entire Western World since its founding in 1921, and which the World War I American President, Woodrow Wilson, spoke of by stating: "Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the U.S., in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." To the CFR's latest warnings, these reports state, is the dire confirmation of the US Pentagon's 2004 classified report to President Bush on the catastrophic Global changes due to climate change currently occurring and which only Britain's Guardian Newspaper reported on, and as we can read from their article titled "Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us": "Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.. A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world. The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents. 'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life." To the most chilling parts of this CFR report it outlines the West's 'survival plan of action', and which includes in part: Global manipulation of the prices of oil, natural gas, zinc, iron ore, nickel, copper, platinum, gold, corn, wheat and rice to 'stratospheric heights' to be immediately followed by their, likewise, engineered collapse. Manipulation of the Global economy through the flooding into financial systems of 'unlimited' credit to be immediately followed by an engineered contraction of the money supply thereby collapsing the entire World's banking system to leave the West's powerful Central Banks as the sole survivors, and defacto owners of the West's industrial output. Dissolution of the North American and European Nation States which are then to be 'reformed' into 'Global Trading Blocs' centrally governed by unelected emissaries to a new 'One World' governing body. The 'forced destruction' of all other Nation States on Earth, to include, Russia, China, the Middle East, South and Central America and Africa, whereupon they too will be able to become a part of the 'new' One World ruling structure. The forced relocation of the Earth's entire population into urban 'environments', with the United States, Canada and Mexico to be the first Nations to implement this policy among its citizens, by 'force' if necessary. [Note: It is interesting to note that in this section of the CFR's report that no plans are made for the taking of weapons from these people, rather the price of ammunition for citizen owned weapons is first to be raised so to make it virtually unaffordable, to then be followed by mass engineered shortages and, finally, to be banned from being sold altogether.] To the effectiveness in the CFR's implementation of their plans for our World's economy there is no doubt; and as we can read as reported by the International Herald News Service: "The world economy is on the brink of a rare global recession, the World Bank said in a forecast released Tuesday, with world trade projected to fall next year for the first time since 1982 and capital flows to developing countries forecast to plunge 50 percent. The projections are among the most dire in a litany of recent gloomy prognostications for the world economy, and officials at the World Bank warned that if they proved accurate, the downturn could throw many developing countries into crisis and keep tens of millions of people in poverty. Even more troubling, several economists said, there is no obvious locomotive to propel a recovery." But, to the very real, and catastrophic, dangers facing the United States to which the CFR is preparing for, and as warned of by the Pentagon in their secret report, we can read as reported by the CNN News Service: "Drought has returned to the United States, and some warn that more tough days are ahead. The value of water is starting to become apparent in America. Over the past three years a drought has affected large swaths of the country, and conflicts over water usage may become commonplace in the future, climatologists say. "Our focus is oil, but the critical need for water is going to make water the most significant natural resource that we're going to have to worry about in the future," says Larry Fillmer, executive director of the Natural Resources Management & Development Institute at Auburn University in Alabama. At least 36 states expect to face water shortages within the next five years, according to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office." Even more important to note is that the very subject of the once too taboo to mention 'One World' government is now being broached by one of the West's most prestigious and influential newspapers, London's Financial Times, and as we can read: "I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US. I have never seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible. A "world government" would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force. So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might. First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a "global war on terror". Second, it could be done. The transport and communications revolutions have shrunk the world so that, as Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, has written: "For the first time in human history, world government of some sort is now possible." Mr Blainey foresees an attempt to form a world government at some point in the next two centuries, which is an unusually long time horizon for the average newspaper column. But - the third point - a change in the political atmosphere suggests that "global governance" could come much sooner than that. The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty." To the worst aspects of this report however, is that the plans being implemented by the CFR and their allies conclude that the American people are to be the first to be annihilated as they currently are the most 'psychically medicated and media controlled' of all the Earth's peoples and unlike their counterparts in, for example, Greece and Thailand are not feared to protest against their rulers as their way of life, indeed their very Nation, is completely destroyed. Though one could find it hard to intellectually argue against the CFR's goal of uniting our entire Earth against the dire catastrophes we face as a human species, one could, indeed, find great exception to the methods they are using to achieve their goals. If the end result, no matter how noble, does justify the means to achieve them then no argument against the CFR can be made. If, however, the treatment of human beings to achieve these end results relegates us to being nothing more than chattel to our new masters than one can only determine to stand against those who seek to rule over us, to even destroy us, to keep us from destroying ourselves. And for the Americans? According to the CFR 'master plan' their destruction has already begun and the summer of 2009 will be more horrible than any of them can realize. © December 12, 2008 EU and US all rights reserved.