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WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The U.S. trade deficit widened more than expected in December and grew 6.5% during all of 2006 to a record $763.6 billion, a Commerce Department report showed Tuesday. Despite setting a record, the growth in the trade deficit slowed in 2006 from the blistering 17.3% pace in 2005. The politically sensitive trade gap with China expanded 15.4% to a record $232.5 billion in 2006, despite record U.S. exports to that country of $55.2 billion. Imports from China surged 18.2% to a record $287.8 billion, ensuring that concerns about China's exchange rate and other government policies, which U.S. lawmakers and manufacturers believe unfairly aid Chinese companies, will remain a hot political topic in 2007. The United States also ran record trade deficits with Japan and Mexico in 2006.
The annual trade deficit has set a record for five consecutive years, a development the Bush administration attributes to the fact that the U.S. economy has been growing more rapidly than the rest of the world. The administration argues that American consumers have benefited from the flood of cheaper imports, a development which has helped to hold down inflation. But critics contend the deficits are a reflection of a flawed trade policy that has failed to protect American workers from unfair foreign competition.
- JJ Commentary: Someday all these deficits (including the federal budget and consumer debt) will come home to roost. These trade policies have not only failed to protect U.S. workers, but have purposely encouraged globalism, as promulgated by the New World (Dis)Order folks.
WASHINGTON — Three or four FBI laptop computers are lost or stolen each month and the agency is unable to say in many instances whether information on the machines is sensitive or classified, the Justice Department's inspector general said Monday. Despite new tracking systems designed to help the FBI account for thousands of weapons and personal computers, the bureau reported that 160 firearms and an equal number of laptops were lost or stolen during a recent 44-month period, according to a new Justice Department audit. Of the computers that were lost from February 2002 to September 2005, at least 10 contained sensitive or classified information, according to the review by the Justice Department's inspector general. One of those computers, the review said, included telephone numbers and addresses of bureau employees, as well as software used to make bureau ID badges.
- JJ Commentary: So, this is the organization that is supposed to protect us?
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has found some strong support for his fears of a looming fiscal crisis from an unlikely source: Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Bernanke is a Republican and Bush administration appointee. Rubin said that the U.S. faces "excruciating decisions" regarding what he sees as an increasingly unsound economy.In his wide-ranging Jan. 22 interview with PBS’s Rose, Rubin asserted that this country is on the "wrong track on almost every front." "I think we’ve got to re-establish sound fiscal conditions . . . so we have an environment conducive to growth, and also to avoid the dangers that, as [Federal Reserve Chairman] Ben Bernanke said very recently in his congressional testimony, [underlie] unsound fiscal conditions. I think that’s a tremendous threat to the global economy. To our economy and the global economy,” Rubin added.
"I don’t really think there’s too many question about this — a strong dollar grounded in strong policy is very much in our country’s interest, because [of] the exchange rate. Remember — the exchange rate between the dollar and other currencies is basically a way of expressing the rate at which we take our goods and services and exchange them for the goods and services of other people of other countries. And the more . . . goods and services we can get for the ones that we give, the better off our standard of living will be. Therefore, a strong dollar is very much in our interest…. If the current account deficit doesn’t change, then at some point something is going to have to give. It seems to me that it’s very likely there’s going to have to be an adjustment of the dollar.” Rubin stated.
- JJ Commentary: The dollar is being purposely undermined by many of the nations who are opposed to American, including Russian, China, India and the Arab nations. Osama Bin Laden has stated his real goal is to bankrupt the U.S. When (not if) these nations decide to cash in their wealth of dollars, the value of the dollar (already extremely low) will crash and so will our economy. The somewhat vague statements of these leading economists are intended to serve as a warning without panicking world markets.
A revolt against a national driver's license, begun in Maine last month, has been quickly spreading to other states. The Maine Legislature overwhelmingly passed a resolution objecting to the Real ID Act, and within a week, lawmakers in Georgia, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, Vermont and Washington state also balked at Real ID. It is expected that these states will soon pass laws or adopt resolutions declining to participate in the federal identification network. Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming all have active legislation against Real ID. Missouri state Rep. James Guest has formed a coalition of lawmakers from 34 states to file bills that oppose or protest Real ID.
- JJ Commentary: Many consider this to be a move toward a “national ID” which is a precursor to the “mark of the beast.”
A former Border Patrol agent who was convicted of shooting a drug smuggling suspect and then lying about it has been beaten by fellow inmates in prison. Prison officials on Tuesday confirmed assertions by a congressman and relatives of Ignacio Ramos. He was attacked Saturday night after his case was described on the TV show "America's Most Wanted," the officials said. The convictions of Ramos and fellow former agent Jose Alonso Compean sparked outcry from critics who argued that the men were merely doing their job defending the border against criminals. U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., a vocal supporter of the agents and opponent of illegal immigration, criticized the Bush administration Tuesday for failing to protect Ramos and demanded a full presidential pardon for the two men. "Not only did the administration choose the side of a foreign dope runner over the agents who stopped him from smuggling a load of drugs into the county — now they've failed to protect that agent while his case is on appeal," he said in a statement.
A Department of Homeland Security official admitted today the agency misled Congress when it contended it possessed investigative reports proving Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean confessed guilt and declared they "wanted to shoot some Mexicans" prior to the incident that led to their imprisonment. The admission came during the testimony of DHS Inspector General Richard L. Skinner before the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, according to Michael Green, press secretary for Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas. Rep. John Culberson of Texas is calling for the resignation of Department of Homeland Security officials who he says lied about the case of two Border Patrol agents imprisoned for their actions in the shooting of a drug smuggler. Culberson said he believes false information was given to congressmen to "throw us off the scent and cover up what appears to be an unjust criminal prosecution of two U.S. law enforcement officers whose job was protecting our country's borders from criminals and terrorists."
Three Border Patrol agents, who were given immunity to testify against fellow agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean in the Feb. 17, 2005, shooting of a drug-smuggling suspect as he fled across the U.S.-Mexico border, are no longer with the agency because they changed their accounts of the incident several times. These agents were at the location of the shooting incident, assisted in destroying evidence of the shooting.
- JJ Commentary: The New World (Dis)Order wants to keep the borders open as the move ahead to form the North American Union.
Just about a year and a half ago, Sen. John McCain went to court to try to curtail the influence of a group to which A. Jerrold Perenchio gave $9 million, saying it was trying to "evade and violate" new campaign laws with voter ads ahead of the midterm elections. As McCain launches his own presidential campaign, however, he is counting on Perenchio, the founder of the Univision Spanish-language media empire, to raise millions of dollars as co-chairman of the Arizona Republican's national finance committee.In his early efforts to secure the support of the Republican establishment he has frequently bucked, McCain has embraced some of the same political-money figures, forces and tactics he pilloried during a 15-year crusade to reduce the influence of big donors, fundraisers and lobbyists in elections. That includes enlisting the support of Washington lobbyists as well as key players in the fundraising machine that helped President Bush defeat McCain in the 2000 Republican primaries.
- JJ Commentary: Yet another two-faced, forked-tongue politician who says one thing and does another.
Using maps created in 1866 by a British explorer and passages from the Jewish Mishnah, an Israeli archaeologist and professor at Hebrew University says he has pinpointed the location of the sacred Jewish Temple, twice built and twice destroyed in ancient times. While popular consensus places the Temple, built by King Solomon in the 10th century B.C. and rebuilt by Jews who returned from Babylon in the 5th century B.C., on the site of the present Muslim Dome of the Rock, Prof. Joseph Patrich says archaeological remains show its exact location – and the consensus is wrong.
According to Patrich, the Temple, its corresponding courtyards, chambers and gates were oriented in a more southeasterly direction, sitting diagonally on what is the modern Temple Mount. The difference in orientation and the placement further eastward varies from the east-facing orientation of other scholars who believe the Temple was closer to today's Western Wall. However, that difference is why, Patrich says, the Temple did not sit over the rock believed by Jews to be the site where Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac and where Muslims believe Muhammad ascended into heaven.
Patrich's siting has the Temple further east and south of locations proposed by other scholars and diagonal, rather than perpendicular to the Temple Mount's eastern and western walls. It also leaves the rock in the Dome of the Rock outside of the confines of the Temple itself. Patrich said his research on the Temple's location is strictly academic, and political connotations should not be attributed to it.
- JJ Commentary: Since the temple is to be re-built during the latter days, but not the outer courts (Rev. 11:2), it makes sense that it would not be on the Dome of the Rock, because the “covenant with many” (Daniel 9:27) would presumably leave the holy Muslim site intact.
