U.S. Secretary of State visited Bulgaria on February 5 to discuss that nation's contribution to NATO's war effort in Afghanistan, the intensification of joint military training and exercises, pressuring the host country into dropping Russian-made arms in favor of Western ones and the further sabotaging of energy deals - natural gas and nuclear - between Bulgaria and Russia.

China's Xinhua News Agency wrote ahead of Clinton's visit that, "Analysts believe there is no doubt that Bulgaria will respond positively to Clinton's foreign policy, even if they are related to the issues in Iran or Syria."

Santorum drew connections between the administration's opposition to the Keystone pipeline project, which would bring oil from Canada to U.S. refineries, and American dependency on foreign oil and U.S.-Israel relations.

"We're throwing Israel under the bus because we know we're going to be dependent upon OPEC," Santorum said during a speech in Oklahoma City. "We're going to say, 'Oh, Iran, we don't want you to get a nuclear weapon — wink, wink, nod, nod — go ahead, just give us your oil.' Folks, the president of the United States is selling the economic security of the United States down the river right now."

As quite a few Israeli and American military experts have warned, a military strike on Iranian facilities would not achieve the declared Israeli goal of ending Iran's alleged nuclear military program and the expected costs in terms of Israeli casualties could be very high.

Moreover, if Iran gives the green light to its Shiite Hezbollah allies in Lebanon to attack Israel and mobilize the Shiites in Iraq and the Persian Gulf to retaliate against American and Saudi targets, Tehran would be in a position to strengthen its regional power. The ayatollahs would also be able to exploit an Israeli attack to ignite Iranian nationalism and win support even from those Iranians who actually oppose the ruling clerics and would like to see them removed from power.

It is a story told with alarming regularity in Libya. Two rival militias, both nominally allies of the National Transitional Council (NTC) engage in an intense gunbattle. When the guns finally fall silent and one of the factions has taken a base belong to the other, they proceed to take everything that isn’t nailed down.

Even those that weren’t directly involved in the battle rush in and start grabbing loot. Cars are stolen, and more battles break out when rival factions argue over who gets to take what.

Speaking today at the CSIS, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu insisted that a deal could be relatively quickly struck between the P5+1 and Iran, if the two sides were willing to negotiate in good faith.

Davutoglu, who said there was “mutual distrust” keeping the talks stalled, said he figured the whole matter “could be resolved in a few days” and that he has seen clear indications Iran was ready to cut a deal.

Nearly half of Americans would bomb Iran’s nuclear installations and 20 percent of people living in the Middle East would support such action to stop the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

The findings emerged in a report carried out by respected U.K. pollster YouGov-Cambridge and come amid increased fears that Israel is moving closer to launching a unilateral military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The report also revealed that more than a third of Americans are in favor of the assassination of Iran’s senior political figures.

Money, Banking, and the Federal Reserve from Mises Media on Vimeo.

Personal computers infected with a Trojan that tries to redirect their browsers to malicious sites may be cut off from the Internet on March 8, an information technology site said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will unplug on March 8 the Domain Name System servers it set up to replace rogue DNS servers that sent victims to malicious sites.

For the Israel advocacy community, BDS represents a threat to Israel’s sovereignty as a Jewish state. The movement was founded by Palestinian civil society organizations in 2005 after the International Court of Justice, the judicial body of the United Nations, deemed Israel’s separation barrier to be illegal.

As part of its effort to encourage business owners to spy on their customers, the FBI has labeled the bulk purchase of food as a potential indication of terrorist activity, despite the fact that FEMA itself last year purchased $1 billion dollars worth of storable food.

A flyer aimed at Military Surplus stores produced under the auspices of the FBI’s Communities Against Terrorism project, encourages owners to report people who “make bulk purchases of items to include… meals ready to eat”.

Al Cardenas, head of the American Conservative Union, has said that Republican turmoil might lead to a brokered convention in which Jeb Bush, former Florida governor, would emerge as a “possible alternative” party nominee.

Mr Cardenas, who is running this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a gathering in Washington of some 10,000 conservatives, told MailOnline that it was not certain that one of the four current Republican candidates would emerge victorious.

One thing about patriarchal religions of the ancient Middle East — like, say, “Sharia Law” or “American Catholicism” — is that the menfolk don’t like the womenfolk having any control of their own bodies or lives. That’s why there was a predictable outrage over the Obama Administration’s long-planned addition of basic family planning medicine to health insurance coverage. It might seem like reproductive health would naturally be part of what we consider “health insurance coverage,” but that would be a dangerous assumption in a nation where one major political party, the Republicans, is completely based on the ring kissing and worship of an old Nazi child molester in Rome.

In December, six children testified at a congressional hearing on H.R. 32, a bill aimed at expanding HUD's homeless definition and introduced by Republican Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) The children talked about the hardships of sleeping four or five to a room in cheap motels and bouncing from one relative's living room to the next. They said that the resulting stress had caused them to struggle in school. Yet because they fail to meet HUD's criteria for homelessness, they and thousands of others like them aren't eligible for housing help.

A brief but very important post today. The S&P 500 appears as if it’s ripe for a significant pull back right now. However, anyone that’s been following us for years now knows that we don’t believe technical charting patterns alone are good predictors of future stock market or asset behavior due to its "completely-rigged-by-the-PPT" nature.

All of a sudden, abortion, contraception and gay marriage are at the center of American political discourse, with the struggling – though improving – economy pushed to the background.

Social issues don't typically dominate the discussion in shaky economies. But they do raise emotions important to factors like voter turnout. And they can be key tools for political candidates clamoring for attention, campaign cash or just a change of subject in an election year.

Greece’s cabinet Saturday approved tough austerity measures demanded by EU and IMF creditors after the prime minister warned that a failed debt deal and default would spark “uncontrolled chaos”.

The coalition government, hit by defections on Friday, approved the belt-tightening measures on a day that saw renewed street clashes between protesters and police and the start of a two-day general strike.

Prime Minister Lucas Papademos had issued a stern warning after six members of his coalition government had resigned in protest at the new cuts.

When your finances are dominated by debt, it makes it really hard to ever get ahead. Incredibly, 43 percent of all American families spend more than they earn each year. Even while median household income continues to decline (now less than $50,000 a year), median household debt continues to go up. According to the Federal Reserve, median household debt in America has risen to $75,600. Many Americans spend decades caught in the trap of debt slavery. Large numbers of them never even escape at all and die in debt. It can be a lot of fun to spend lots of money and go into lots of debt, but it can be absolutely soul crushing to toil and labor for years paying off those debts while making others wealthy in the process.

The Washington County caucus was originally scheduled to take place Saturday at Washington Academy in East Machias. But organizers have pushed back the caucus to next Saturday with the National Weather Service issuing a winter storm warning calling for 6 to 10 inches of snow and hazardous driving conditions.

Party officials planned to declare a winner Saturday evening, even with more caucuses scheduled for the coming week.

US funds, shelters, arms, and trains MEK terrorists for years, now attempting to pawn full responsibility off on complicit Israeli government.

The most powerful Zionist lobbying group in the US, AIPAC, is increasing pressure on the administration of Barack Obama to launch a military strike against Iran, a political writer says.

To get an idea of how much money it would take to bail out the financially troubled nations of Europe, just check out this infographic that was recently posted on ZeroHedge.

A day of reckoning is coming for the United States as well. As CNBC recently noted, the U.S. debt problem is far worse than the European debt problem is.

That is why I have written over and over about the U.S. national debt and about how the U.S. government is spending too much money.

Right now, the U.S. government is still able to borrow gigantic mountains of very cheap money and is spending money as if tomorrow will never come.

Well, just like we saw in Greece, when debt gets out of control a day of great pain eventually arrives.

What we are watching unfold in Greece right now is coming to America.

Mitt Romney is the storybook presidential candidate. He's successful, good-looking and a family man, to boot. Yet one of this political season's enduring puzzles has been the former governor's consistent inability to bond with voters. It's been suggested that Romney's robotic persona may be to blame -- and perhaps the analogy isn't far off. Much as people are repulsed and disturbed by automatons that mimic humans closely but imperfectly, Romney inexplicably turns voters off despite looking like the textbook image of an American president. Roboticists call this unsettling effect "the uncanny valley" -- and Romney is stuck deep at the bottom of it.

Earlier this week, the New York Times’ Scott Shane published a bombshell piece about Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis, a 17-year Army veteran recently returned from a second tour in Afghanistan. According to the Times, the 48-year-old Davis had written an 84-page unclassified report, as well as a classified report, offering his assessment of the decade-long war. That assessment is essentially that the war has been a disaster and the military's top brass has not leveled with the American public about just how badly it’s been going. "How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding?" Davis boldly asks in an article summarizing his views in The Armed Forces Journal.

There was a “dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard and laid poor Jessie in his grave”. I was wondering if this is a descendant of his, presently operating out of Syria. Oh right, he's not even in the country anymore. And... we have new born babies dying in their cribs in hospitals, just like Kuwait. How about that? And we've got the usual unnamed spokes-bots and we've got the usual rebels that no one knows who they are, who are using Israeli weapons and being operated by British special forces, who are setting up all of the helpful car and building bombings, just like they were doing in Basra. This article reeks of Zio-Gov disinfo. Please be sure to drop by the One World Government Facebook page and tell them what you think. They be pushing for whirled war, folks.

On Tuesday twelve members of the Buffalo's firefighter squad were rewarded $2.7 million for emotional distress after a judge ruled that the city of Buffalo racially discriminated white men.

According to the lawsuit filed back in 2007, the city overlooked the twelve individuals and promoted black firefighters instead.

The giant movie and music corporations – and their water-bearing politicians – pushing draconian copyright laws are hypocrites.

According to TorrentFreak, members of the RIAA, Department of Homeland Security, Sony, Universal and Fox may have illegally downloaded files from BitTorrent.

Lamar Smith – the Congressman sponsoring SOPA – used a pirated photograph on his official campaign website.

A top official with the National Rifle Association said Friday that President Obama will move to "destroy" gun rights and "erase" the Second Amendment if he is re-elected in November.

While delivering one of the liveliest and best-received speeches at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said the president's low-key approach to gun rights during his first term was "a "conspiracy to ensure re-election by lulling gun owners to sleep."

"All that first term, lip service to gun owners is just part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment during his second term," he said.

Rating agency Standard & Poor's downgraded 34 Italian banks on Friday, including heavyweights UniCredit (CRDI.MI) and Intesa Sanpaolo (ISP.MI), citing a reduced ability to roll over their wholesale debt and expected weak profitability.

He is the only one of the four contenders for the Republican presidential nomination not to have won a state primary or caucus.

But on Saturday, Ron Paul could get his best shot at a victory in Maine, the cold, far northeastern state that has given a warm reception to his libertarian views.

It feels an awful lot like what happened here is the nation's criminal justice honchos collectively realized that a thorough investigation of the problem would require resources they simply do not have, or are reluctant to deploy, and decided to accept a superficially face-saving peace offer rather than fight it out.

So they settled the case in a way that reads in headlines like it's a bite out of the banks, but in fact is barely even that. There will be little in the way of real compensation for stuggling homeowners, and there are serious issues in the area of the deal's enforceability. In fact, about the only part of the deal we can be absolutely sure will be honored in full is the liability waiver for the robosigning offenses.

After no big snowfall for 26 years, Rome is being hit by its second snowstorm in a week.

Snow blanketed Rome's suburbs over the weekend, and has settled in the capital's centre.

Ironically, some of the countries which have provided rescue loans to prevent Athens from being unable to pay back its debts -- and who have been pushing for Greece to implement harsh austerity measures -- also want the country to buy their expensive warplanes and ships.

Scientists say NASA is about to propose major cuts in its exploration of other planets, especially Mars. And NASA’s former science chief is calling it irrational.

With limited money for science and an over-budget new space telescope, the space agency essentially had to make a choice in where it wanted to explore: the neighboring planet or the far-off cosmos.

Mars lost.

"The privileged have regularly invited their own destruction with their greed."

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty

While billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson may have rescued Newt Gingrich’s campaign in its early days, today, he may have just buried it.