Peppermint Patty Leaves Reading

Goin’ down that Mexico way.

“After 23 years in Reading, the chocolate maker is closing the plant Friday and moving production to a new factory it has built in Monterey, Mexico.”

From:

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D96FDTH81.htm

Texas Straight Talk
Congressman Ron Paul (R) – TX 14

This week the Federal Reserve responded to the American people’s increased concerns over our monetary policy by presenting new initiatives aimed at enhancing the Fed’s transparency and accountability. As someone who has called for more openness from the Fed for over 30 years, I was pleased to see the Fed acknowledge the legitimacy of this need.

The Federal Reserve controls the flow of money and credit in our economy because Congress has abdicated its responsibility over the nation’s currency. This process therefore occurs centrally, and almost completely outside the system of checks and balances. Because of legal tender laws, people are left with no real choice, except to build their lives and futures around this monopoly currency, vulnerable to powerful central bankers. The Founding Fathers intended only gold and silver to be used as currency, however, inch by inch over the decades, this country has backed away from this important restraint. Our money today has no link whatsoever to gold or silver. For many reasons, this is extremely dangerous, and has a lot to do with the boom and bust cycles that have resulted in the crisis in which we find ourselves today.

The Fed is now pledging to reveal to the public more about its economic predictions, and calls this greater transparency. This is little more than window-dressing, at best, utterly useless at worst. Many analysts, especially those familiar with the Austrian school of economics, saw the current economic crisis coming years ago when the Federal Reserve was still telling the American people their policies were as good as gold. So while it might be nice to know what fantasy-infused outlook the Fed has on the economy, I am much more interested in what they are doing as a result of their faulty, haphazard interpretation of data. For instance, what arrangements do they have with other foreign central banks? What the Fed does on that front could very well affect or undermine foreign policy, or even contribute to starting a war.

We also need to know the source and destination of funds provided through the Fed’s emergency funding facilities. Information such as this will provide a more accurate and complete picture of the true cost of these endless bailouts and spending packages, and could very likely affect the decisions being made in Congress. But with so much of the Fed’s business cloaked in secrecy, these latest initiatives will not even scratch the surface of the Fed’s opaque operations. People are demanding answers and explanations for our economic malaise, and we should settle for nothing less than the whole truth on monetary policy.

The first step is to pass legislation I will soon introduce requiring an audit of the Federal Reserve so we can at least get an accurate picture of what is happening with our money. If this audit reveals what I suspect, and Congress has finally had enough, they can also pass my legislation to abolish the Federal Reserve and put control of the economy’s lifeblood, the currency, back where it Constitutionally belongs. If Congress refuses to do these two things, the very least they could do is repeal legal tender laws and allow people to choose a different currency in which to operate. If the Fed refuses to open its books to an audit, and Congress refuses to demand this, the people should not be subject to the whims of this secretive and incompetent organization.

There’s only one newspaper in this town. Wait, scratch that.

“The publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News said on Sunday it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, in an attempt to deal with falling advertising revenue.”

followed by a statement from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

The company’s operations are “sound and profitable,” it said in a statement.

Lil bitta cognitive dissonance ?

From:

http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSTRE51M1M720090223

Chalfont, PA – 2/22/09 – John and Patricia Gallagher, founders of the non-profit Team of Angels Program, will host “Speaking About Depression” presentations for the faith-filled community. John and Patricia and their family are the co-authors of “No More Secrets – A Family Speaks about Depression, Anxiety and Attempted Suicide.” John, who holds a MBA in Finance, is a sales manager at Joseph A. Bank and former employee of IBM and Bristol Myers Squibb. Patricia Gallagher is the creator of the “Team of Angels Project” and the author of seven books. She has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show, Financial News Network, the 700 Club, EWTN, CNN, CNBC, the CBS Early Show, Sally Jessy Raphael, Maury Povich, and other television programs.

Full Story

Health and Wellness Network

Overseas investors lack appetite for Fannie and Freddie debt, selling US$38billion of the GSE paper in December. “Looking at the risk, [GSE bonds are] not so attractive,” he told the news service. “We need a guarantee before we’ll buy.”

But they still are buying US Treasuries…

From

http://www.housingwire.com/2009/02/20/asian-investors-hold-out-for-explicit-guarantee-on-gses/

More and more are choosing to eat locally grown food. People like to know what they eat. People like to know the farmer that grows their food and raises their cattle. Wouldn’t you ?
From

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/26/dining/26meat.html?pagewanted=print

The large seed companies make genetically modified seed and lock farmers into a cycle of dependence and monoculture. And they refuse to let scientists do research on their products. Getting as bad as the tobacco companies. From

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/business/20crop.html

from NASA

Astronomers using NASA’s Swift satellite and Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope are seeing frequent blasts from a stellar remnant 30,000 light-years away. The high-energy fireworks arise from a rare type of neutron star known as a soft-gamma-ray repeater. Such objects unpredictably send out a series of X-ray and gamma-ray flares.

“At times, this remarkable object has erupted with more than a hundred flares in as little as 20 minutes,” said Loredana Vetere, who is coordinating the Swift observations at Pennsylvania State University. “The most intense flares emitted more total energy than the sun does in 20 years.”

The object, which has long been known as an X-ray source, lies in the southern constellation Norma. During the past two years, astronomers have identified pulsing radio and X-ray signals from it. The object began a series of modest eruptions on Oct. 3, 2008, then settled down. It roared back to life Jan. 22 with an intense episode.

Because of the recent outbursts, astronomers will classify the object as a soft-gamma-ray repeater — only the sixth known. In 2004, a giant flare from another soft-gamma-ray repeater was so intense it measurably affected Earth’s upper atmosphere from 50,000 light-years away.

Scientists think the source is a spinning neutron star, which is the superdense, city-sized remains of an exploded star. Although only about 12 miles across, a neutron star contains more mass than the sun. The object has been cataloged as SGR J1550-5418.

While neutron stars typically possess intense magnetic fields, a subgroup displays fields 1,000 times stronger. These so-called magnetars have the strongest magnetic fields of any known object in the universe. SGR J1550-5418, which rotates once every 2.07 seconds, holds the record for the fastest-spinning magnetar. Astronomers think magnetars power their flares by tapping into the tremendous energy of their magnetic fields.

“The ability of Fermi’s gamma-ray burst monitor to resolve the fine structure within these events will help us better understand how magnetars unleash their energy,” said Chryssa Kouveliotou, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The object has triggered the instrument more than 95 times since Jan. 22.

Using data from Swift’s X-ray telescope, a team led by Andrea Tiengo of INAF-IASF (Milan, Italy) captured a series of “light echoes” from the object. Images acquired when the latest flaring episode began show what appear to be expanding halos around the source. Multiple rings form as X-rays interact with dust clouds at different distances, with closer clouds producing larger rings. Both the rings and their apparent expansion are an illusion caused by the finite speed of light and the longer path the scattered light must travel.

“X-rays from the brightest bursts scatter off of dust clouds between us and the star,” said Jules Halpern at Columbia University. “As a result, we don’t really know the distance to this object as well as we would like. These images will help us make a more precise measurement and also determine the distance to the dust clouds.”

The Russian KONUS instrument on NASA’s Wind satellite, the joint NASA-Japan Suzaku mission, and the European Space Agency’s INTEGRAL satellite also have detected flares from SGR J1550-5418.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the Swift satellite. It is being operated in collaboration with partners in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany and Japan. NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics observatory developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy and with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S.

To see the related images, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/gammaray_fireworks.html

For more information about the Swift satellite, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/swift

For more information about the Fermi mission, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/fermi

[caption id="attachment_219" align="alignright" width="226" caption="Gamma-ray"][/caption]

1/3 the usual amounts. We really don’t want excess nitrogen flushing down waterways and creating algal toxic blooms in the deltas of the world, as is happening in the Gulf of Mexico. Here is news from China:
Scientists urge Chinese farmers to use fertilizer better

From:

http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=scientists-urge-chinese-farmers-to-2009-02-17

and the original paper is here:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/02/13/0813417106.abstract

By John Lowman
TheFacts.com

Published February 19, 2009
LAKE JACKSON — On his week off from Congress, Ron Paul is enjoying riding his bike, signing some books and letting the federal government know he believes the economic stimulus package is the wrong way to go.

The former Republican presidential candidate from Lake Jackson had a book-signing Wednesday attended by about 60 people at Hastings. Home from Washington until Monday for Congress’ annual President’s Day recess, a jacketless Paul appeared relaxed in a blue shirt and red tie.

Read More….

http://thefacts.com/story.lasso?ewcd=3af14ea2bde22887