as we predicted here weeks ago as it appeared that Cruz may possibly be Israel’s ‘rising star’, his ascension was only a preparatory step in bringing Rubio forward, and that at the right moment when Rubio had acquired enough momentum, Cruz would suddenly find him self cut off at the knees, more than likely over his ‘natural born’ status.

The Utah Senate on Wednesday called on Congress to repeal the 17th Amendment — so that state senators could again select U.S. senators.

It voted 20-6 to pass SJR2, and sent it to the House. It calls for Congress to repeal the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified in 1913 to allow people to directly elect U.S. senators.

Its sponsor, Sen. Al Jackson, R-Highland, says electing senators by the state Senate is needed because no branch of the federal government now represents the needs of state governments. A change would force senators to do that.

Moscow is not discussing alternative plans for a political settlement in Syria, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov has said. The Russian-American peace initiative is going to be formalized through a UN Security Council resolution.

“We’re perplexed by our Western partners, the US included, mentioning the existence of some kind of ‘Plan B,’ Nothing is known on that one, we are considering no alternative plans,” Bognanov told the ‘Middle East: From violence to security’ conference in Moscow.

On February 22, Russian and American presidents simultaneously announced that an agreement on peaceful plan for Syria had been reached, coming into force on February 27, at midnight Damascus time.

Iraqi militia fighters have captured two locations with vast deposits of highly toxic agents used by Islamic State terrorists to arm mortar shells and rockets, potentially for use against civilian targets.

Russian energy giant Gazprom has reduced natural gas supplies to private sector companies in Turkey by 10 percent due to a price dispute, officials at Turkey's energy ministry told Reuters on Thursday.

The cut came after Turkish companies refused to pay a fresh bill sent by Gazprom with higher prices after an initial deal between Ankara and Moscow envisaging a 10.25 percent reduction in prices was cancelled.

Russia's Interfax news agency said the cut came into effect on Feb. 10. Six private Turkish companies buy a total of 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia annually.

Gazprom declined to comment.

Marco Rubio is getting clobbered by Donald Trump in home state of Florida, where a Quinnipiac University poll shows the frontrunner is polling at an all-time high in the Republican race for president.

Trump's 44-28 percent lead over Rubio reflects the momentum of the New York billionaire’s string of first-place finishes in the last three early state races, and it blunts the Florida senator's argument that he's the only candidate who can defeat the frontrunner in a one-on-one race.

Lying Press? Germans Lose Faith in the Fourth Estate “Mendacious swine journals” reads this sign held by a German protester at a recent PEGIDA demonstration in Dresden, listing various German media outlets … Germans are losing faith in their media. Nowhere is this more apparent than in mistrust of refugee crisis media coverage. Where did journalists go wrong? And how much of this skepticism reflects a preference for rumors over facts? – Der Spiegel

Wisconsin-based Kohl's Corp. will close 18 stores this year as the company seeks to cut costs and find the proper balance between its extensive brick-and-mortar presence and its increasingly important online business.

A political science professor who claims his statistical model has correctly predicted the results of every election in the last 104 years has forecast that the odds of Donald Trump becoming America’s next president currently range from 97 percent to 99 percent.

If you join a poker game and can’t identify the “mark,” then chances are, you’re it! The “mark” is the person at the game who is less experienced, or perhaps is given to reckless betting. By including this player in the game, everyone else has an opportunity to walk away a winner.

But don’t lose sight of the bigger picture. Not everyone is a winner, and typically someone ends up the big loser!

The same principle works when countries get together for free or open trade. Everyone talks about how great it will be, how much their economies will grow, about efficiencies and new opportunities. But they almost never talk about the people who will lose.

Believe me, there are always losers.

Since the market highs back in 2007, Banks in the states have little to brag about! The table below compares the Bank Index (BKX) with the S&P 500 since March of 2007.

The nation's highest federal court in recent days threw out a request by chocolate giant Nestle SA, the world's largest food maker, and a pair of other companies to reject a lawsuit that seeks to hold all three companies liable for using child slaves to harvest cacao in the African nation of Ivory Coast.

A large number of non-citizens cast ballots in U.S. elections and it’s possible that the illegal votes were responsible for President Obama’s 2008 victory, according to an in-depth academic study that confirms Judicial Watch’s assessment that foreign nationals have helped Democrats steal elections.

Hillary Clinton may have won the Nevada caucus, but recent polls show Bernie Sanders ahead in several key areas.

First, a new nation poll from Reuters shows Sanders ahead of Clinton by 6 points. Senator Sanders currently hods 41.7 precent of Democratic voters, with Clinton holding 35.5 percent. 22.9 percent of the voters polled said that they wouldn’t vote.

When viewed in the current context, the war on Iraq, the 2006 war on Lebanon, the 2011 war on Libya, the ongoing war on Syria and Iraq, the war in Yemen, the process of regime change in Egypt, must be understood in relation to the Zionist Plan for the Middle East. The latter consists in weakening and eventually fracturing neighboring Arab states as part of an Israeli expansionist project.

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat caused outrage after he joked about how an assassination attempt could end Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

“Good news guys I’ve figured out how the Trump campaign ends,” Douthat tweeted last night.

“First thing is knock out some of the executive orders done by our president,” Trump told George Stephanopoulos Wednesday on ABC’s Good Morning America.

If this is the case …..

British PM slams Israel: ‘Situation in East Jerusalem is genuinely shocking‘

David Cameron criticizes Israeli construction beyond the Green Line and the ‘effective encirclement of East Jerusalem, occupied East Jerusalem.’

British Prime Minister David Cameron slammed Israeli construction in East Jerusalem on Wednesday evening, saying the situation in the capital was “genuinely shocking.”

More HERE

Then WHY DID THEY GO FOR THIS?

Israel “quietly” pushed for anti-BDS legislation in US, UK

U.S. spy agencies have told Congress that Hillary Clinton's home computer server contained some emails that should have been treated as "top secret" because their wording matched sections of some of the government's most highly classified documents, four sources familiar with the agency reports said.

The two reports are the first formal declarations by U.S. spy agencies detailing how they believe Clinton violated government rules when highly classified information in at least 22 email messages passed through her unsecured home server.

To resolve the Syrian conflict, Washington should persuade Ankara and Riyadh to call of their "dogs" and halt their support to Islamic extremists in the region, US author Stephen Lendman stresses, commenting on the US-Russia 'cessation of hostility' agreement.

"Moscow and Washington will work with pro-Western UN envoy to Syria Steffan de Mistura, a US-appointed stooge, aiming to assure all parties abide by ceasefire terms. So far, no meaningful mechanism was established to mediate reported violations, no enforcement procedure, nothing to hold violators accountable," Lendman writes in his article for Global Research.

The columnist expresses his deep concerns over Ankara and Riyadh's support to Islamic extremists in the region, referring to the fact that the US, Britain and France have not raised a finger to bring the controversial and destructive collaboration to an end.

Several former and current officials of the Government of Liberia have been indicted to face prosecution on multiple criminal charges. At least one of the several defendants is spending the night at the Monrovia Central Prison in Monrovia while the court pursues the others. Former Deputy Managing Director for Operations at the Liberia Petroleum Refining Company (LPRC) was committed to the prison following a writ of arrest issued by Criminal Court C based on a complaint from the anti-graft Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission of Liberia.

The Court in its writ of arrest spotted by FrontPageAfrica at Criminal court C named some of the defendants as former Commerce Minister Miatta Beyslow, Director at Commerce, Steve Flahn-Paye and Aaron Whiegar, amongst others.

So many things today come under that infamous Mandy Rice-Davies riposte to the Profumo scandal prosecutor. Earlier today down under, the Australian Energy Minister said he had “every confidence in the Chinese economic future”. Three hours later, the Shanghai Composite closed 6.4% down on the day – a dire outcome even by its own standards.

But 120% of Australia’s profitable trade involves selling unrefined mineral ores to, um, China so he would say that.

After taking a few seconds to gulp, the market explained it away with ‘on anticipation of G20 meeting’ because it would say that.

The US European Command (EUCOM) and NATO are prepared to "fight and win" against Russia "if necessary," US Supreme Allied Commander Europe General Philip Breedlove said on Thursday.

Russia has repeatedly warned that NATO’s attempts to expand on its borders, as well as more recently amass troops and equipment, constitute provocative acts that are contrary to previous agreements and can undermine regional and global stability.
"To counter Russia, EUCOM, working with allies and partners, is deterring Russia now and preparing to fight and win if necessary," Breedlove said.
Training of cadets in the Arctic division DVVKU
© SPUTNIK/ IGOR AGEYENKO
US European Command to Counter Russia in High North - Breedlove
Since 2014, the United States and NATO have been focused on rebuilding military capacity and force readiness in Europe under the European Reassurance Initiative (ERI).

Russia wants to sell some bonds and President Obama isn’t happy about it.

Moscow is looking to issue “at least” $3 billion of foreign bonds in what amounts to the country’s first international issuance since the West imposed sanctions on The Kremlin in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea and Russia’s alleged role in “destabilizing” Ukraine (because it was very “stable” before).

Israel's defence minister has accused Iran of building an international terror network that includes "sleeper cells" that are stockpiling arms, intelligence and operatives in order to strike on command in places including Europe and the US.

“The Iranian regime through the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is building a complex terror infrastructure including sleeping cells that are stockpiling arms, intelligence and operatives and are ready to act on order including in Europe and America,” Moshe Yaalon said on Wednesday following talks with his Cypriot counterpart in Nicosia.

Two Black Lives Matter activists interrupted a private Hillary Clinton fundraising event Wednesday night in Charleston, South Carolina.

Youth activist Ashley Williams protested Clinton, demanding that the Democratic presidential candidate account for inconsistencies on her record on race, specifically around her comments made about crime in 1996.

Williams and her colleague, whom she did not identify, contributed $500 to attend the Clinton event, which was held at a private residence with around 100 people, she estimated.

Williams said she and her colleague strategically placed themselves at the front of the crowd and waited until Clinton appeared. Speakers introducing Clinton around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday night spoke of Walter Scott, the Charleston A.M.E. shootings and how Clinton had a strong record of racial justice.

Italy has summoned the US ambassador to Rome following reports that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had tapped the telephones of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his aides in 2011

The United States can no longer count on its Pacific air bases to be safe from missile attack during a war with China. On the contrary, a 2015 paper from the influential RAND Corporation noted that in the worst case scenario, “larger and accurate attacks sustained over time against a less hardened posture could be devastating, causing large losses of aircraft and prolonged airfield closures.”

Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, due to its relative proximity, would be hardest hit. To up the stakes, China in September 2015 publicly revealed its DF-26 ballistic missile, which can strike Andersen Air Force Base in Guam — nearly 3,000 miles away — from the Chinese mainland. Andersen and Kadena are among the U.S. military’s largest and most important overseas bases.

Not that we really have a say in the matter either way, but nothing about the question conjures up warm, gushy feelings. The government, via its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is spending $60 million on a direct brain-computer interface via neural implant that would allow computers to decode the human brain.

So what is Washington’s gameplan in Syria? Is the administration serious about defeating ISIS and ending the hostilities or does Obama have something else up his sleeve?

First of all, Washington is not the least bit concerned about ISIS. The group is merely a straw-man that allows the US to conduct military operations in a region that is vital to its national interests. If the ISIS boogieman disappeared tomorrow, the White House would conjure up some other phantom–like the drug war or something equally ridiculous–so it could continue its depredations uninterrupted. What matters to Washington is breaking up the strong, secular Arab governments that pose a long-term threat to US-Israeli ambitions. That’s what really matters. The other obvious goal is to control critical resources and pipeline corridors to the EU and make sure those resources continue to be denominated in US dollars.

The European Parliament called on the European Union to impose an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia on Thursday, saying Britain, France and other EU governments should no longer sell weapons to a country accused of targeting civilians in Yemen.

Yesterday, during his speech at CERAWeek in Houston, Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi made it explicitly clear that Saudi Arabia would not cut production, instead saying that it is high-cost producers that would need to either "lower costs, borrow cash or liquidate” adding that there is "no need for cuts as marginal barrel will get out of the market." He was right.

Anti-gold propaganda is heavily promoted because gold is honest money that generates little profit for the financial community and because it competes against the paper stuff issued by central banks.

Harry Dent believes that gold prices will fall to $700 and possibly as low as $250 in the next five to ten years, so he discourages buying gold. If you prefer debt based fiat currencies that can be created by the trillions with a keystroke, confiscated easily, and devalued overnight, then by all means, trust in those dollars, euros, and yen instead of gold. The financial and political elite might thank you.

A prominent civil-rights organization is protesting a Virginia state bill that would create a “secret police” force allowing officers to be “effectively immunized from wrongdoing and able to act with impunity.”

The Rutherford Institute dispatched a letter Wednesday to James LeMunyon, chairman of the House of Delegates’ General Laws subcommittee.

The proposal, Senate Bill 552, would classify the names of all police officers as “personnel records,” making them exempt from disclosure.

“American citizens have a right to know when government agencies and government officials have engaged in wrongdoing,” said constitutional attorney John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute and author of “Battlefield America: The War on the American People.”

Trust the government? Maybe you shouldn’t. Read the details in “Lies the Government Told You,” by Judge Andrew Napolitano.

A study conducted by researchers led by Kathleen H. Corriveau of Boston University examined how religious exposure affects a child’s ability to distinguish between fact and fiction. They found that religious exposure at an early age has a surprising effect: it makes children less able to differentiate between reality and fantasy.

The nuclear non-proliferation treaty – agreed to by both the US and Russia – calls on all signatories to further the goal of nuclear disarmament.

The Obama administration, however, has found a loophole in the agreement, and plans to funnel nearly $1 trillion into upgrading America’s nuclear arsenal. While these improvements include modifying nuclear-equipped ballistic missiles to make them more accurate, and installing adjustable yields to make nuclear bombs more practical, the US maintains the moves are aimed at sustaining current stockpiles, and are not, technically, upgrades.

Police took Aroule to hospital, but he only had self-inflicted scratches on his body and was quickly released.

Following questioning, he confessed to making the story up to try and spread mistrust and suspicion of Muslims.

The conclusion is inevitable. Rather than a rise in anti semitism in Europe what we see here is a growing manifestation of kosher psychosis.

When 2016 began with North Korea declaring it had detonated a hydrogen bomb, its fourth nuclear test, the U.S. military had already tested a land-based Aegis Ashore missile defense system in Hawaii — Lockheed Martin’s version of the short-to-intermediate-range ballistic missile defense (BMD) system used on Aegis Navy destroyers.

Now, as tension mounts after Pyongyang’s satellite launch on Feb. 7, media reports suggest the Pentagon is mulling making the Aegis Ashore test facility operational at the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) at the Barking Sands naval base on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

A Navy spokesman said, “There are no plans for an operational site of Aegis Ashore at PMRF. It was constructed as a test and training site only.” But Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the commander of U.S. Pacific Command, has publicly stated that he believes the Aegis Ashore test facility should be considered as an operational site.

With global central bank policy in disarray following the Fed's now admitted "policy error" of tightening just as the US and global economy are heading for recession, while the rest of the world desperate to cut to ever more negative rates, not to mention Japan's abysmal foray into NIRP, there was hope that this weekend in Shanghai the G-20 would "bail us out" and unveil some miraculous rescue for risk takers at least one more time.

However, as Jack Lew explained earlier today, this won't happen, leaving traders in a state of limbo and cognitive shock - after all if not even the central banks have your back, then who does?

Still something has to happen, or otherwise the world will careen into a deflationary, NIRP collapse and the Fed's 25bps "recession buffer" will have absolutely no impact before the US itself plunged into economic contraction.

Well, we've seen some ridiculous moves in markets before but today's cross asset-class malarkey takes the proverbial biscuit...

When last we looked at the effect America’s multiple state and local government fiscal crises are having on the country’s school systems, we noted that budget drama across both Illinois and Pennsylvania threatened to force layoffs and class cancellations.

In Chicago, for instance, the Board of Education has variously been described as “a gambler at the end of his run,” a reference to officials’ bad habits when it comes to skipping pension payments and borrowing heavily to stay afloat. “Let’s be clear Chicago Public Schools are in dramatic trouble,” Governor Bruce Rauner said in December. “They’re looking at a disaster somewhere in the next nine months.”

Just this month, the Board sold another $725 million in bonds at punishing interest rates of up to 8.5%.

Two weeks ago, on one of the slides in a Morgan Stanley presentation, we found something which we thought was quite disturbing. According to the bank's head of EMEA research Huw van Steenis, while in Davos, he sat "next to someone in policy circles who argued that we should move quickly to a cashless economy so that we could introduce negative rates well below 1% – as they were concerned that Larry Summers' secular stagnation was indeed playing out and we would be stuck with negative rates for a decade in Europe. They felt below (1.5)% depositors would start to hoard notes, leading to yet further complexities for monetary policy."

Two days before Christmas, as American policymakers were settling into the holidays, Russia quietly signed a sweeping air defense agreement with Armenia, accelerating a growing Russian military buildup that has unfolded largely under the radar. It was the most tangible sign yet that Putin is creating a new satellite state on NATO’s border and threatening an indispensable U.S. ally.

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Bernie Sanders ahead of Hillary Clinton by six points nationwide, his biggest lead in the presidential race so far.

As a Senator, Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq War, and in 2008, defended her vote, saying, “I believe in coercive diplomacy.” She also voted against the Levin Amendment in 2002, an amendment that would have given the UN veto power over United States military action. In 2004, she voted in favor of allocating $86 billion of the U.S. budget to military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. She voted against withdrawing troops from Iraq in 2007.

As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton’s record is horrific. Clinton aggressively pursued regime changes in Libya and Syria, leading to the creation of ISIS, war in Mali, and the strengthening of terrorist group Boko Haram. Regime change has historically been terrible for national security, leading to blowback and the creation of newer, bigger, more oppressive threats to both citizens of the United States and citizens of the Middle East.

Our next winter storm arrives tonight bringing heavy rain, wet snow, and gusty winds to the St. Louis region through Wednesday. Rain will spread into our southern counties late Tuesday evening. That rain with then spread northward towards midnight, when it will start to mix with snow over the eastern Ozarks. The transition to all snow really starts to get going by 4am as temperatures fall to at or just above the freezing point, a sloppy, wet snow. It will be snowing just about everywhere by the morning commute and there will be some slick, slush covered roads. Most of the accumulations will be on grass. Snow will exit to the east through the afternoon.

A snowstorm expected to dump up to 10 inches on much of the Michigan was bringing heavy snowfall to Saginaw and the surrounding region Wednesday, Feb. 24.

Why was Justice Antonin Scalia the most important Judge on the Bench, in terms of our Constitutional Rights as Americans ?

Why was Justice Antonin Scalia so despised by this administration, that for the first time in US history, this "president" snubbed this Supreme Court Justice's funeral?

What is it about Justice Scalia's importance that fewer than 1 in a 100 Americas even understands the gravity of his passing?

Roland Miller is on a mission to document the deserted sites of America’s space race. He has photographed launch pads, bunkhouses and research facilities across the country, some of which no longer exist or are closed to the public on secure military bases.

Army Chief Gen. Mark Milley is pushing his recommendation that the 4-25 Airborne Brigade of the US Army remain stationed in Anchorage, Alaska for “at least an additional year,” amid calls to cut costs by eliminating the brigade.

The excuse, as usual, is Russia. Gen. Milley insists “Russian aggression” is present not just in Europe, where the Pentagon has been getting money to throw ever more money at the Russian frontier, but also in the Arctic, and that the US needs to keep troops in Alaska to counter Russia.

The deployments into Eastern Europe were sold on the claim that a Russian invasion of the region is “imminent,” though talk of an impending invasion has lost a lot of credibility over the last year and a half.

"There does not appear to be any way to stop him now. Unless something completely untoward happens, He, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president."

Just five days after the US State Department denied that the US had supplied any weapons to any Syrian Kurdish forces, in response to complaints from the Turkish government about all their shipments, Secretary of State John Kerry is bragging about the scheme.

Though Kerry didn’t offer any split on how the arms were distributed among various Kurdish factions, he insisted 41,000 grenades and 60,000 anti-tank rounds, along with 1,000 unguided missiles, had been sent to the Kurdish forces, along with more than 150 US vehicles.

Though that would include Kurdish groups in Iraq as well as Syria, 41,000 grenades is definitely more than “no weapons,” and Kerry’s talk of a plan to send another 5 million rounds of ammunition for heavy machine guns shipped just adds to the effort.

In my post on Pew’s polling on whether Apple should have to write a custom version of its operating system so FBI can brute force the third phone, I gave Pew credit for several aspects of its question, but suggested the result might be different if Pew had reminded the people the FBI has already solved the San Bernardino attack.

Hamas members warned on Wednesday that a change in the situation in Gaza is inevitable in the shape of either an explosion of violence or the opening of a new exit route, while Israel's head of Military Intelligence warned that deteriorating conditions in Gaza endanger Israel's security.

At a closed meeting with the members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Military Intelligence Chief Herzl Halevi said that "the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is deteriorating, and if it explodes, it will explode on Israel."

Hamas, for its part, said a seaport is a legitimate Palestinian right, said Hamas. Building a seaport in Gaza is also a Turkish condition in ongoing negotiations to rehabilitate its relationship with Israel, which collapsed following the Marmara raid in 2010. The Turks have made it clear that reconciliation would have to involve free access to the Gaza Strip in order to provide aid to the Palestinians.

Rhetoric got heated at a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton featuring the Democratic frontrunner’s husband, Bill Clinton. In fact, a sitting U.S. congressman promised the crowd of Hillary Clinton loyalists that their candidate would "kill" the Republican frontrunner.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Thursday, February 25 that Turkey would not be bound by the Syrian ceasefire plan if its security was threatened, and would take "necessary measures" against the Syrian Kurdish YPG and Islamic State if needed, Reuters reports.

A 97-year-old San Francisco Bay Area great-grandmother facing eviction after 66 years in her rented home has received thousands of dollars in donations from people who see her plight as an example of growing economic inequity in the region, a friend said on Wednesday.

Israel’s domestic security agency systematically abuses Palestinians kept at its Shikma detention facility, two NGOs say, adding that “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment is inherent to the interrogation policy and dictated from above.

Israeli rights groups B’Tselem and HaMoked released a 70-page report on Wednesday detailing abuses taking place between August 2013 and March 2014 at the Shikma interrogation facility, which is run by the Israel Security Agency (ISA, Shin Bet in Hebrew) in Ashkelon, southern Israel. The report was based on the accounts of at least 116 suspects that had been interrogated at the facility.

Over 50 companies from 20 countries, including Turkey, US and the Netherlands, have produced, sold or received hundreds of components, such as detonators, cables and wires, used by Islamic State terrorists to build improvised explosive devices (IEDs), a major study has found.

The deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), an advanced U.S. missile defense system, in the Republic of Korea (ROK) will "directly" impair China's security interests, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday.

"We understand the ROK's legitimate security concerns, but no country should impair others' security interests when pursuing its own," Hua Chunying said at a daily news briefing.

"We believe that the deployment of the THAAD system will directly compromise China's national security interests," said the spokesperson.

The United States and the ROK started talks on THAAD after the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) allegedly launched an Earth-observation satellite to test ballistic missile technology earlier this month.