Money: Getting to know you, Getting to know all about you.*

fiat money
---noun
money declared by a government to be legal tender though it is not convertible into standard specie

See also...

How to get free money...more proof that the IRS and the Congress are inept

*from the song, Getting to know you

John Kerry The Shrewd Investor (ya think?)

"Teva stock was trading at about $50 a share when Kerry started buying, but jumped to $62 a share after the healthcare bill was passed, an increase of nearly 25 percent. After Obama signed the bill into law, Kerry sold his Teva shares, realizing tens of thousands in capital gains."

It never ceases to amaze me how the people from Massachusetts continue to elect the same old corrupt politicians simply because the politician has that big 'D' after their name. Lately, it has been said, that people who do the same thing over and over again and expect different results are insane but in this case I believe that the big 'D' stands for 'Dumb'...insane people are generally put into asylums but dumb people are allowed to vote. And John Kerry knows that better than anyone alive today (you see, Ted Kennedy also knew!). 

We all know that Kerry did not get as good as grades as George W. Bush during their college years but that didn't put him in the dunce category...it just made him try harder.  And try harder he did!  He got himself elected and then he became the smartest guy in the room! (see story below). ~ Norman E. Hooben

The following from The Washington Free Beacon

 Smartest Guy in the Room

Five-terms in the Senate have made failed presidential candidate, Obama surrogate, and potential secretary of State John Kerry an amazingly prescient investor

By: Andrew Stiles
Failed Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry’s (D., Mass.) long history of ethically dubious investments could invite controversy as he takes on a new role as a “top surrogate” for President Obama’s reelection campaign.
Kerry’s net worth as listed on his 2011 financial disclosure form is at least $193 million and likely much higher, making him the wealthiest member of the Senate. He is also a prolific investor, maintaining an array of stocks and other holdings through a mix of family trusts, marital trusts, and commingled fund accounts with his wife, Big Ketchup baroness Teresa Heinz.
The five-term Senator has a well-documented history of investing in companies that would benefit from policies he supports, as well as making conveniently timed and highly profitable trades coinciding with the passage of major legislation and, in some cases, the dissemination of privileged information.
For years, Kerry has invested millions in a number of green energy companies that have benefitted from the president’s efforts to aggressively subsidize the industry with taxpayer dollars.
These companies include Exelon, which received a $646 million taxpayer-guaranteed loan in 2011 to build a solar facility in California and created only 20 permanent jobs, as well as Fisker Automotive, the fledgling electric car company that offshored its manufacturing operation to Finland after receiving a $529 million federal loan guarantee in 2010.
The loan guarantees, approved by the Department of Energy, were made possible by funding allocated in the 2009 stimulus bill, which Kerry supported. According to Kerry’s own office, the Senator “played a key role” in crafting the portions of the legislation designed to offer federal support for green energy projects.
Additionally, Kerry co-authored the controversial cap-and-trade legislation that would have effectively imposed a tax on carbon-dioxide emissions. Though the bill ultimately failed, the New York Times noted that Exelon and companies like it “would emerge as financial winners” if the legislation was enacted.
Kerry has hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), a venture capital firm run by John Doerr, a prominent Obama donor who served on the president’s Economy Recovery Advisory Board.
The firm, where former vice president Al Gore is a partner, invests heavily in alternative energy companies such as Fisker Automotive and Amonix Inc., a Nevada-based solar panel manufacturer that laid off two-thirds of its workforce earlier this year despite receiving nearly $6 million in federal tax credits.
Amonix was one of 16 companies (out of 27 overall) listed in Doerr’s “green-tech” portfolio to receive some form of federal support under Obama.
Kerry purchased—through family trusts—between $30,000 and $100,000 worth of shares in a number of KPCB investment funds, including its “Green Growth Fund,” and continued to purchase shares throughout 2010, according to the Senator’s financial disclosure forms.
Kerry is one of several lawmakers prominently featured in Throw Them All Out, Peter Schweizer’s landmark book on how elected politicians exploit their privileged positions to enhance their personal wealth.
The Massachusetts Senator’s most dubious trading activity coincided with two major political events—the financial crisis of late 2008 and the passage of President Obama’s controversial healthcare overhaul in March 2010.
Kerry was one of at least 10 Senators to trade financial stocks just days after a Sept. 16, 2008 meeting between Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, and leading members of Congress to discuss the increasingly dire state of the financial markets.
In mid-October 2008, as the Treasury was discussing which banks would be bailed out in the Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP), Kerry bought up to $550,000 worth of Citigroup stock and up to $350,000 worth of Bank of America shares. Days later, the American public learned that Citigroup would receive $50 billion from the TARP fund and up to $277 billion in additional loan guarantees. Bank of America also received $50 billion from TARP.
During the contentious healthcare debate in 2009, Schweizer noted, Kerry loaded up on pharmaceutical stocks, purchasing close to $750,000 worth of shares in one company—Teva Pharmaceuticals—in the month of November alone.
Drug companies were viewed to be among the major beneficiaries of the Democratic healthcare legislation. Pharmaceuticals “kicked in $80 billion to help make the bill work, but stand to make 10 times that amount in revenues from added government and government-subsidized business,” liberal columnist Howard Fineman wrote in Newsweek.
Teva stock was trading at about $50 a share when Kerry started buying, but jumped to $62 a share after the healthcare bill was passed, an increase of nearly 25 percent. After Obama signed the bill into law, Kerry sold his Teva shares, realizing tens of thousands in capital gains.
Kerry also bought shares of ResMed, a company that makes medical devices, which surged more than 70 percent after the healthcare bill’s passage. Throughout the healthcare negotiations, Kerry consistently opposed efforts to increase taxes on companies like ResMed.
He also purchased stock in Thermo Fisher Scientific, a firm providing products and services to hospitals, at $35 a share. After passage, they were trading at $50 a share, an increase of more than 40 percent.
As Kerry was buying shares of companies certain to benefit from healthcare reform, he was selling stock in healthcare insurance providers, which were deemed big losers under the new law.
That is hardly the extent of Kerry’s questionable dealings, however. He has millions of dollars invested in funds operated by some of his largest campaign donors, including Bain Capital*, Beacon Capital Partners, and the Blackstone Group, investment firms that have collectively given more than $170,000 to Kerry’s campaigns since 2007.
The Washington Free Beacon reported in February that Kerry helped secure a $3.5 billion windfall for hospitals in Massachusetts that would net tens of millions in new federal support for Partners HealthCare, another prominent campaign donor.
Kerry’s controversial financial activity could complicate his recently announced role as a top surrogate for Obama’s reelection campaign. The president has repeatedly sought to blame wealthy investors such as Kerry for precipitating the financial crisis of 2008 and has expressed sympathy for the controversial “Occupy Wall Street” movement, which has become notorious for advocating and in many cases carrying out vandalism against large banks and investment firms.
Employing Kerry as a prominent campaign spokesman could also unwittingly highlight a popular criticism of the president—that his major policy initiatives have had little impact on the struggling economy but have succeeded in enriching a small number of wealthy supporters.

*Note Regarding Bain Capital: See how the main stream media lies here

While the truth of the matter reads like this:

"But Romney had left Bain Capital a year before any layoffs and a public stock offering that ultimately netted Bain and Romney a big payday. The company's subsequent bankruptcy filing came two years after Bain had largely divested from the company, and was the result of the dot-com bust. Moreover, the company emerged from bankruptcy, and its current CEO credits those early Bain investments for setting the foundation for the company's current success." ~ Source USA Today

God Bless America Again

Syria: Obama & Company Lying To American Public

 "US Secretary Of Defense Leon Panetta admits that Al Qaeda Sunni-extremists are indeed operating in Syria, his feigning ignorance of the extent to which they are operating there should be considered in the context that he and his colleagues are the very ones that organized, armed, and sent them." emphasis mine Storm'n Norm'n

In an earlier post (Re-thinking Assad) I stated the following:

Perhaps you should rethink who's side we should be supporting. Assad is fighting off the friends of Obama and company...they are mostly Sunni Muslims (Muslim Brotherhood etc.) The main stream media and the United Nations are quite proud of their world-wide indoctrination of the 'people'... they have convinced most people that Assad is killing his own people and this is simply not true. It's a religious war of sorts, Muslims against Muslims (Alawis or Alawites against the Sunnis et al Muslims)

The civilized world needs to wake up. ~ Norman E. Hooben

Now we have confirmation of my hitherto so-called assumption:

US “officials” admit Al Qaeda running loose in Syria, fail to mention 2007 US plan to put them there. ~ From Infowars Ireland
by Tony Cartalucci LandDestroyer Report
May 12, 2012 – Regarding the recent, devastating bombings in Damascus, Syria, an Associated Press report, “Syria opposition: Assad trying to destroy UN peace,” featured the “chief of Syria’s major opposition political group Syrian National Council,” Burhan Ghalioun, baselessly claiming “the relationship between the Syrian regime and al Qaeda is very strong.” Also included was the comments of a “Free Syrian Army” commander who claimed, “the Syrian regime wanted through these terrorist explosions to support its silly story of the presence of armed and terrorist gangs.”

Image: The debate is over – the Sunni-extremist “Free Syrian Army” is the result of a years-long premeditated plan by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia to leverage violent militants against the Syrian and Iranian governments – according to a meticulously detailed report from renowned journalist Seymour Hersh in his 2007 New Yorker article, “The Redirection.”

However, not even a day passed before another AP report has now confirmed that the terrorist Al-Nusra Front has claimed responsibility for the deadly blasts that ripped through Damascus this week, killing scores and injuring hundreds, and shattering opposition claims that the Syrian government was behind them. The Al-Nusra Front has been at the center of several acts of violence across Syria, as part of a wider Sunni-extremist led, NATO and Gulf State-backed, militant campaign to destabilize and overthrow the Syrian government.
AP’s “Militant video claims responsibility for deadly Syria blasts,” also states that, “Western officials say there is little doubt that Islamist extremists, some associated with al-Qaida, have made inroads in Syria as instability has spread since the start of the uprising against President Bashar Assad 14 months ago.” What AP fails to mention is that the West, in coordination with Israel and Saudi Arabia, have been building up an extremist, militant Sunni front since at least 2007, according to a 2007 New Yorker report by renowned journalist Seymour Hersh titled, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?.”
In Hersh’s voluminous report, it specifically states that, “a by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda,” and that “the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria.”
The report also states in regards to the means of US and Israeli support, that “the clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the [Bush] Administration said.” Because US and Israeli support is covertly funneled through Saudi sponsors, Sunni extremists forming the rank and file of the West’s terrorist proxy war against Syria, and ultimately Iran, have little idea that they are in fact being used as tools by the self-serving machinations of the West to divide and destroy not only Shi’ia Muslims, but the Arab World in general.
As the violence in Syria escalates through US, Israeli, and Saudi funding, weapons, and support, the Western media is clearly obfuscating the truth – a truth articulated in immense detail by the New Yorker in 2007, and instead portraying the violence as a spontaneous, natural progression of a conflict that has been demonstratively premeditated by the West years in advance. And while US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta admits that Al Qaeda Sunni-extremists are indeed operating in Syria, his feigning ignorance of the extent to which they are operating there should be considered in the context that he and his colleagues are the very ones that organized, armed, and sent them.

See also:

1.  http://patdollard.com/2012/05/al-qaeda-a-ranking-member-of-syria-opposition/

2.  The Redirection by Seymour M. Hersh March 5, 2007 (from The New Yorker)
      Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?

 

____________________________________________________

Update: The best comment recieved via email! (LOL)

From: link removed

Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2012 7:53 PM

To: link removed

Subject: Re: Remember this?

I think they should be afraid of people singing "On the Sunni side of the street"

C----

Going down with the ship...sorry, there's no more life preservers!

Watch All Three Videos

Video from Vimeo

The following from YouTube

United States Budget Dilemma

The following courtesy of Barracuda Brigade

Who's fault is it?