Venezuela, in a squeeze for hard currency, devalued its currency for foreigners another 44%, following an initial devaluation of 32% by Chavez in February.  The move is seen as a necessity to keep Venezuela from defaulting on sovereign debt when reliance on excessively high levels of public spending has been the tool of Chavez and his successor, Maduro, to maintain their grip on power.  It is the 6th such major devaluation in a decade.
The move is essentially a bookkeeping sleight-of-hand – it allows the Venezuelan central bank to balance its books by “earning” more Bolivars for its oil export sales, at a time when overall sales volume has decreased dramatically.

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For followers of the Libyan fiasco, and we are not talking about Benghazi, the irony behind Dear Leader and Susan Rice’s recent statements on South Sudan is, well, beyond rich.

[…]  In a letter to Congress, Obama said that about 46 U.S. troops were deployed Saturday to help evacuate Americans. That’s in addition to another 45 troops deployed to reinforce the U.S. Embassy in Juba.

[…]  Earlier Sunday, Obama was briefed by advisers on events in South Sudan following a meeting that his national security adviser, Susan Rice, held with national security aides and U.S. personnel still in South Sudan.

[…]  “I may take further action to support the security of U.S. citizens, personnel, and property, including our Embassy, in South Sudan,” Obama wrote. (link)

I’m just going to cut this down to brass tacks.
The latest international storylines seem to be revolving around chaos reigning supreme in South Sudan.    Over the weekend four members of the U.S. military were shot by machine gun fire as they attempted to evacuate the R2P crowd of U.S. do-gooders.

Fair enough.    But why is the media avoiding the brutally obvious?    Oh yeah, wouldn’t want to actually connect dots and seem all conspiracy minded.
Then again, failure to talk about the 20,000+ missing Libyan missiles, and massive stockpiles of missing WMD (gas et al), does not protect you from the reality of it. (more…)

UPDATE: (via TIME) […] The aide added that Obama only signed himself up, and not the rest of the First Family. Obama also did not enroll through the troubled Healthcare.gov or the D.C. exchange’s website.  Aides signed him up in person over the weekend, due to the “complicated nature of the President’s case,” the White House aide said.  “Some of Obama’s personal information is not readily accessible on the government databases used by the website for identity verification”.

Kitty Werthman is a 85 year old survivor of the Anschluss and after WWII suffered for 3 years under Soviet Occupation.

She has been speaking out about Liberalism, Socialism and its incremental advancement for over a decade.  She is the President of the South Dakota Eagle Forum and has been an advocate for liberty and family issues for many years.

In 2003, she wrote an essay warning about National Identity cards (the REAL ID that the government has been trying to enforce), loss of free speech that was deemed politically outlawed and gun registration, among other topics.
More recently, she gave a speech in New Jersey to a Tea Party which a You Tube subscriber interspersed with quotes from Obama about socialism, universal healthcare, gun registration and gun control.
“How could a Christian nation, almost 100%, elect a monster like Hitler?  The truth is, at the beginning, Hitler did not look like or talk like a monster at all.  He talked like an American politician ….”
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This past Thursday, a town hall meeting hosted by Al Sharpton and the National Action Network in Chicago to address gun violence exploded into a revolt against: “Chicago Machine” politics, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and black alderman in City Hall, with panel and audience members calling to vote out their elected officials.
One 82-year-old preacher even called for “Tea Party” style meetings in some of Chicago’s south side communities such as Altgen Gardens and Trumbull Park.  (via Breitbart)
[The last statement in the video is, well, um… just watch it]

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Given the ideological propensity behind the A&E executives this explanation from inside the Robertson family makes a lot of sense of what took place. 
(Daily Mail )  Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson and his  family believe they have been ‘hung out to dry’ by TV network A&E after he  was suspended for homophobic comments made in a magazine interview, MailOnline  can reveal.

Sources within the close-knit Louisiana clan  say they are convinced A&E are manipulating the controversial situation to  bring them – and particularly Robertson – back into line after Television  executives grew tired of the family pushing their deeply-held, Christian  beliefs.
They also think the network could have done  something to stop the controversial GQ article being made public, because an  A&E representative was present during the interview with patriarch,  Roberston, 67. (more…)

A few days ago someone shared a link to an Orlando Sentinel article which outlined a Florida BAR investigation into Mark O’Mara. Then ABC News came out with a similar article.  Both media reports generally vague in their descriptives.

The Orlando Sentinel pulled one of their now infamous switcheroo’s and took down the content of their original article (Jeff Weiner – 12/16) replacing it with this one (Rene Stutzman – 12/17) and intentionally not noting the change, or informing readers. They have done this numerous times in the past:

[…] The bar confirmed Monday that O’Mara was the subject of an ethics complaint but provided no details, including who filed it and what allegations it included. (O.S. Link)

You can identify the O.S. manipulative switcheroo because the link was posted to The TreeHouse at 8:40pm December 16th –  and the date is visible in the actual full link:  https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/trayvon-martin/os-george-zimmerman-omara-complaint-20131216,0,3523757.story (where 20131216 is 2013, 12-16 year/date)
Yet if you follow the link you end up at an article dated 3:55pm  Dec 17th.  So what they did was delete the content of the article (written by Jeff Weiner) and replace it the next day with content written by Rene Stutzman.    Putting the 12/16 Weiner article content in the proverbial disappearing hole.  As if it never existed.   Ask yourself why? (more…)

Sunlight answers a question – Last week the New York Times and the New York Post ran articles based on a classified congressional hearing.
In essence Massachusetts Democrat Congressman Stephen Lynch, who was present for the hearing, was used to push a story centered around his proposal to Congress to pass a resolution asking President Obama to declassify an entire 2002 report, “Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.”
The context of Lynch’s request centers around this newly identified intelligence community report which, according to non-specific leaks, outlines Saudi Arabia’s involvement in supporting the 911 hijackers.
The question we had at the time was “why now”?    Obviously someone is seeking to gain some form of benefit from this discussion – it would be intellectually dishonest to think such a conversation would happen in a political vacuum.
The answer to the “why” question can be found in an article published a few days ago in the Wall Street Journal.   Within the Journal article you discover how much current anxiety and tension exists between the current Obama administration and the Saudi government against the backdrop of Obama’s failed Syria “Red Line”, and the Iranian Nuclear goals. (more…)