An assassination plot against President Obama has been foiled in Turkey. US officials are allegedly taking the threat “very seriously.” However, the president did not need to change his schedule. The man who had been planning the attack was arrested last week in Turkey. Read more…
On 6 June, 1963, a 16-year-old Arkansas boy named Bill Clinton met then-president John F. Kennedy. Read more…
This is from Drudge Report and Matt Drudge is hosting it on his own site, so I am not sure about the accuracy, but regardless it’s an interesting read:
A leading Russian political analyst has said the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the country is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts.
Professor Igor Panarin said in an interview with the respected daily IZVESTIA published on Monday: “The dollar is not secured by anything. The country’s foreign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. Now it is more than 11 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only collapse.”
The paper said Panarin’s dire predictions for the U.S. economy, initially made at an international conference in Australia 10 years ago at a time when the economy appeared strong, have been given more credence by this year’s events.
When asked when the U.S. economy would collapse, Panarin said: “It is already collapsing. Due to the financial crisis, three of the largest and oldest five banks on Wall Street have already ceased to exist, and two are barely surviving. Their losses are the biggest in history. Now what we will see is a change in the regulatory system on a global financial scale: America will no longer be the world’s financial regulator.”
When asked who would replace the U.S. in regulating world markets, he said: “Two countries could assume this role: China, with its vast reserves, and Russia, which could play the role of a regulator in Eurasia.”
Asked why he expected the U.S. to break up into separate parts, he said: “A whole range of reasons. Firstly, the financial problems in the U.S. will get worse. Millions of citizens there have lost their savings. Prices and unemployment are on the rise. General Motors and Ford are on the verge of collapse, and this means that whole cities will be left without work. Governors are already insistently demanding money from the federal center. Dissatisfaction is growing, and at the moment it is only being held back by the elections and the hope that Obama can work miracles. But by spring, it will be clear that there are no miracles.”
He also cited the “vulnerable political setup”, “lack of unified national laws”, and “divisions among the elite, which have become clear in these crisis conditions.”
He predicted that the U.S. will break up into six parts - the Pacific coast, with its growing Chinese population; the South, with its Hispanics; Texas, where independence movements are on the rise; the Atlantic coast, with its distinct and separate mentality; five of the poorer central states with their large Native American populations; and the northern states, where the influence from Canada is strong.
He even suggested that “we could claim Alaska - it was only granted on lease, after all.” Panarin, 60, is a professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has authored several books on information warfare.
Read more.
Esquire has some fun with people in the news:
The 75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century
We set out to find them across every field of endeavor, the people who are bending history right now. It was an impossible task, but the result is a determined, defiant, earnest, brilliant, philanthropic, space-going, smoking-hot group, and together they are writing the first chapter of the rest of our lives.
Read more.
President-elect Barack Obama appeared on 60 Minutes last week to weigh in on all the big issues, after taking an apparent media break since his election:
A team of experts assembled by the Discovery Channel has recreated the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Using modern blood spatter analysis, new artificial human body surrogates, and 3-D computer simulations, the team determined that the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository was the most likely origin of the shot that killed the 35th president of the United States.
“The question we were trying to answer is, given the spatter evidence in a vehicle, and knowing an individual was sitting at a particular location, is there something we could use to determine where the shot originated?” said Steve Schliebe, a blood spatter and trace evidence specialist with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, who was part of the special investigation.
As JFK was the first television president, Barack Obama is going to be the first internet president. In fact, he will be delivering an address weekly via YouTube. Read more…
NEW Yorkers were left a little confused overnight as more than a million copies of a fake newspaper were handed out by a team of pranksters rallied through the web.
“Iraq War Ends” read the headline of a fake “special edition” of The New York Times, dated July 4, 2009, which was handed out to commuters as they rushed for work.
Since last week’s historic election of Barack Obama’s as the next U.S. president, a number of high-profile Europeans have been sticking their feet in their mouths while commenting on the situation (Well, some were being outright racist). For example, a leading Austrian television journalist said - on camera - that he “wouldn’t want the Western world to be directed by a black man.” The Italian Prime Minister tried to joke about it, by describing Obama as “young, handsome and even suntanned.” The National Democratic Party of Germany ran the headline, “Africa Conquers the White House,” on their website. And these aren’t even the extremists. Read more…
A little transparency from president-elect Barack Obama: a set of “behind the scenes” photos from election night. Relive the evening here…
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