As the European Coal and Steel Community of Jean Monnet evolved into the EU, we were told a “United States of Europe” was at hand, modeled on the USA. And other countries and continents will inevitably follow Europe’s example.

There will be a North American Union of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and a Latin America Union of the Mercosur trade partnership.

In an essay, “The E.U. Experiment Has Failed,” Bruce Thornton of Hoover Institution makes the case that the verdict is in, the dream is dead, the EU is unraveling, One Europe is finished.

Consider, first, economics. In 2013, Europe grew by 1 percent compared to the U.S.’s 2.2 percent. In December, unemployment in Europe was 11.4 percent. In the U.S., 5.6 percent. Americans are alarmed by the lowest labor force participation rate since Reagan, 62.7 percent. In Europe, in 2013, it was 57.5 percent.

Europeans may wail over German-imposed “austerity,” but the government share of Europe’s GDP has gone from 45 percent in 2008 to 49 percent today. In Greece, it is 59 percent.

Most critical is the demographic crisis. For a nation to survive, its women must produce on average 2.1 children. Europe has not seen that high a fertility rate in 40 years. Today, it is down to 1.6 children.

Europeans are an aging, shrinking, disappearing, dying race.

And the places of Europe’s unborn are being filled by growing “concentrations of unassimilated and disaffected Muslim immigrants, segregated in neighborhoods like the banlieues of Paris or the satellite ‘dish cities’ of Amsterdam.

“Shut out from labor markets, plied with generous social welfare payments and allowed to cultivate beliefs and cultural practices inimical to democracy, many of these immigrants despise their new homes, and find the religious commitment and certainty of radical Islam an attractive alternative.”

More...https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/03/patrick-j-buchanan/good-riddance-to-bad-rubbish/

Damn, 5 cents for close to 4 mins worth of activity is certainly not worth it but does offer a minute incentive to workout. I suspect that if all this app requires is for some link to a heart rate monitor then you could probably have this thing going constantly while one is working, working out (even with weights), bicycling or any physical activity. Pretty good chunk of extra change come payday.

A Young Manager for Clinton Juggles Data and Old Baggage

Over more than two decades in national politics, the Clintons have amassed an army of well-meaning defenders who will bring to 2016 old battle wounds and axes to grind that date back to the White House and Arkansas — perhaps not the ideal message in a presumptive campaign that seeks to reintroduce the 67-year-old Mrs. Clinton as a fresh, forward-looking candidate.

It falls largely on Mr. Mook, and the band of young operatives he has assembled (called the Mook Mafia), to move the grievance-laden Clinton machine into the modern political age. The success of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign will rest in part on whether this younger generation of earnest, data- and social-media-savvy operatives can prevail.

“They are going to be the first ones to hit the beach on D-Day,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic operative and former aide to Mr. Clinton. “To get the campaign off the beach while under fire, the front-line troops will need to be in charge and empowered to run a modern-day, forward looking, smart campaign.”

More...http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/us/politics/a-young-manager-for-clinton-juggles-data-and-old-baggage.html?_r=0

I sure hope HL has no links to this scamming outfit as that slap to their reputation would be damaging to all those that pay them to host their ventures, currently.

Boston University economist: "Our Country is Broke"
...
"Were we to go back in time and re-label all past Social Security taxes as borrowing, official federal debt held by the public would not be $13 trillion, but $38 trillion, which is 211 percent of U.S. GDP."

In reality we're facing a fiscal gap of $210 trillion, Kotlikoff proclaimed. That's 16 times larger than official U.S. debt, "which indicates precisely how useless official debt is for understanding our nation’s true fiscal position," he noted, and almost 12 times the current GDP of $18 trillion.

Looking at the global horizon, from 2007 through the second quarter of 2014, debt grew by $57 trillion, raising the global debt-to-GDP ratio by 17 percentage points to 286 percent, according to the McKinsey Global Institute.

The endgame of this global cesspool won't be pretty, says Jeremy Warner, assistant editor of The Daily Telegraph. "The world is sinking under a sea of debt, private as well as public, and it is increasingly hard to see how this might end, except in some form of mass default," he wrote.

And it won't just be sovereign nations, but the corporate sector as well, Warner says.

"You might have thought that a financial crisis as serious as that of the past seven years would have ended the world economy's addiction to debt once and for all. It has not. If anything, the position has grown even worse since the collapse of Lehman Brothers [in 2008]."

http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/StreetTalk/Kotlikoff-GDP-debt-deficit/2015/03/10/id/629314/

Gentleman, start your engines!


More...http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150315/eu-russia-crimea-2859701388.html

The only thing that comes to mind for me when I hear a politician is deleting emails or anything else is corruption and/or covering their asses. I mean, if these or Hillary's are supposed to be government property then this should be grand larceny. Similarly, if these deletions are a coverup of sorts then clearly this is tampering with/destruction of evidence.

The same thought crossed my mind as I internalized the content in the OP, this guy could be an agent on behalf of western intelligence and/or a propagandist doing the bidding of westerners. I'm say could not is.

AUSTIN – In a not-too-far-future, robotic mind-clones will accompany us to the ballot box or grocery store, sit in on business meetings we can't make, argue with us occasionally and keep our essence alive long after we're gone.

That's the vision pharma tycoon and futurist Martine Rothblatt shared Sunday with several thousand attendees during one of the more popular events of Day 3 of SXSW Interactive.

"There will be continued advances in software that we see throughout our entire life," Rothblatt told a packed audience in the cavernous Exhibit Hall 5 during her keynote speech. "Eventually, these advances in software will rise to the level of consciousness."

Rothblatt is the founder of Sirius Satellite Radio, current chief executive of United Therapeutics and was recently named by Forbes as the highest-paid female CEO in America. She is a transgender activist and a trans-humanist philosopher who believes technology will one day grant humans eternal life.

More...http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/03/15/sxsw-rothblatt-cyber-clones-keynote/24816839/

Good grief, not sure if I'm gonna be able to make it through this one -  I'm terrible when it comes to medical stuff, blood and watching surgeries w/ internal body parts showing. You'd think that with something this allegedly promising that the govt could put some money into this considering every other damn thing they spend on.

I'll definitely watch this segment later on tonight as any VICE documentary or show is very entertaining and great journalism which isn't something the MSM provides any longer. I wonder if any US hospitals will start utilizing these treatments going forward as I would imagine this stuff is a financial danger to the pharmaceuticals' lock on the cancer treatment.

The Senate Intelligence Committee voted overwhelmingly to advance a cybersecurity bill meant to expand information-sharing between the private sector and the government, though privacy advocates contend it only strengthens domestic surveillance programs.

Dubbed the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), the bill cleared the Senate Intelligence Committee by a 14-1 vote, with outspoken civil liberties advocate Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) casting the lone vote against the proposal. It’s not clear when the bill will come up for a full vote in the Senate, but it could happen as soon as April.

If passed into law, CISA would implement further protections for companies to gather threat-related data from their customers and allow them to share that information directly with federal intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency.

Ever since hackers breached Sony’s internal networks last year, encouraging information-sharing between corporations and the government has become a top priority. Supporters say the bill would allow the two sides to better coordinate, detect and potentially stop cyber threats before they cause serious damage.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) acknowledged that the bill “will not prevent [all cyber attacks] from happening,” according to the National Journal, but added that it’s an important step that would improve security.

However, privacy and civil liberties advocates have railed against the bill since its inception, arguing that without reforming and scaling back the NSA’s current domestic surveillance program, CISA would only expand the breadth and power of its spying activities.

...

More...http://rt.com/usa/240269-senate-cisa-cybersecurity-bill-advances/

I almost forgot that suicide bombers exist as I don't think we've heard of one of these happening in quite a while. In the past, we'd hear of these happening many times per week across the middle east. Too bad that these people had to die in such a way. I wish all these terrorists would just grow out of this destructive mentalities.

Rand Paul Amasses Influence At South By Southwest In Austin

AUSTIN, Texas — While two of his top likely 2016 GOP presidential rivals square off up north in the Granite State, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is amassing influence—and courting millennials, while winning over top leaders in the tech community—here at the South By Southwest conference this weekend.

Paul on Saturday evening schmoozed with top technology leaders—including executives from the wildly successful internet radio company Pandora and social media powerhouse Snapchat—at a major-players-only private party in Austin hosted by Pandora.

The event at the chic downtown Austin bar the Gatsby, hosted other high profile attendees including Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Will Hurd (R-TX). Paul, who had spent the day Saturday raising campaign cash at various fundraisers with high-dollar Texas donors, posed for photos with the tech luminaries and other major players present as Grammy-award winning DeeJay Mark Ronson performed on a stage out back.
...
On Sunday and Monday, Paul will attend a series of events associated with South By Southwest. He’ll do a town hall with Twitter, a question-and-answer session with the Texas Tribune’s CEO, and an event with Young Americans for Liberty—a libertarian-leaning grassroots organization.

Before flying to Texas, on Friday Paul spoke to a predominantly liberal audience at the historically black university Bowie State University in Maryland. He enjoyed several rounds of applause and a standing ovation after delivering a message of conservatism to the students there.

Paul, having made visits this year to Iowa, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada and other early presidential states, is is trying to take a different path than former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker are on the campaign trail.

Walker and Bush have been in New Hampshire shooting at each other after Bush’s soft-launch of a likely presidential bid a few months ago, and Walker’s meteoric rise after his explosive speech to the Iowa Freedom Summit in Des Moines in January.
...
But what Paul has going for him is these projections of power at events such as South By Southwest, speeches at historically black colleges, and the building of coalition—an army, if you will—that he may surprise the entire political world by storming into the GOP nomination with just a year from now. Just like any other Tea Partier, Paul is frustrated with how Washington works—and is articulate on the trail in detailing his distaste with the permanent political class.

But the difference between Paul and some of the other potential contenders is he seems to have a very detailed and concerted plan—a vision, and a method to the madness—that he’s been executing for over a year on how to build an arsenal to overcome his opponents. As Paul ramps up as things get closer to 2016, he may just catch everyone in the entire political establishment off guard. After all, unlike the others, every move he makes seems to be part of a grander well-thought-out plan–and all his moves, from the political battles he picks to staff he hires to audiences he chooses to speak to and even the content of his messaging, are clearly disciplined. It’s almost as if he’s acting like the GOP nominee already.

His move to speak in Austin at South By Southwest is no different: No other potential 2016 GOP candidates are here, and it’s an opportunity for Paul to garner backing from major tech leaders, youth voters and opinion leaders throughout the country, all while fundraising and laying out for the American people yet again the vision he has for the country should he get elected to the White House.

Because of the fact he’s been building support for a potential candidacy–and for his ideas–for as long as he has, Paul consistently places among the top two or three candidates in most 2016 GOP presidential polls. All this maneuvering and building of a sustainable operation means that if and when Paul hits his so-called “escape velocity” getting his breakout moment like Walker’s in Des Moines, he’ll be able to maintain it and steer and control the ship he built all the way until election day. Paul could be the guy who breaks the endless cycle in which outsider candidates like himself seem to have been stuck in recent GOP presidential primary elections: having simply just one moment in the sun that fades away after the honeymoon from their first big break is over.
...

More...http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/03/15/rand-paul-amasses-influence-at-south-by-southwest-in-austin/

Firstly, typical posting protocol is leaving a few paragraphs of what the content is about via the article and then people can decide whether to reward the article with actual traffic if people are interested in reading further. That said, it's nice to see BTC moving along in Vegas and before long, all casinos will be taking BTC. Even better to hear that the ATMs there are getting increased usage. However, I'd stay away from any casinos owned by Sheldon Adelson who's a war hawk neocon and a big funder of all things Bush and establishment types which is a continuing threat to mankind and libertarians.

In Bitcoin, weekends are like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're gonna get. - Bubba Gump's theorem

Could be boring like now or P&Ds.

There has been some good things in this pool to make decent that which is not so good. Let'sfry some chicken and order some pizzas and eat like there is no tomorrow. Win!

We're up a dollar since today's average so perhaps it's time to celebrate a little. On the flip side, we could be going down some and I have some fresh fiat lined up for litecoin currently. Who's with me? Buy the next best thing when the best is moving.

An Open Letter to hdr22@clintonemail.com

WASHINGTON — SINCE open letters to secretive and duplicitous regimes are in fashion, we would like to post an Open Letter to the Leaders of the Clinton Republic of Chappaqua:

It has come to our attention while observing your machinations during your attempted restoration that you may not fully understand our constitutional system. Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our democracy: The importance of preserving historical records and the ill-advised gluttony of an American feminist icon wallowing in regressive Middle Eastern states’ payola.

You should seriously consider these characteristics of our nation as the Campaign-That-Must-Not-Be-Named progresses.

If you, Hillary Rodham Clinton, are willing to cite your mother’s funeral to get sympathy for ill-advisedly deleting 30,000 emails, it just makes us want to sigh: O.K., just take it. If you want it that bad, go ahead and be president and leave us in peace. (Or war, if you have your hawkish way.) You’re still idling on the runway, but we’re already jet-lagged. It’s all so drearily familiar that I know we’re only moments away from James Carville writing a column in David Brock’s Media Matters, headlined, “In Private, Hillary’s Really a Hoot.”

More...http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/opinion/sunday/maureen-dowd-an-open-letter-to-hdr22clintonemailcom.html?_r=1

This is rich, I've never seen a liberal feminist go to town on Hillary like this before. Quite impressive even if I don't normally hold Ms. Dowd in high regard.

Yeah, it's like the most interesting and largest VC development in recent times in this ecosystem. If their mission pans out, it should create something that helps the masses wanting in on the new technology which may be a way of getting average people using Bitcoin w/o knowing all the details. So, the upcoming months could see a nice facelift that we all can be proud of.