bakken man-camp bubble bout to burst (need to use a boil-lancing video for this)

oilprice |  Low crude oil prices since the second half of 2014 have created a boon for consumers as the cost to fill up at the pump has plunged. The extra cash in the pockets of millions of motorists is often likened to an unexpected tax cut, which could help stimulate the economy.

Leaving aside the true extent of such a stimulus, which is debatable, there is a flip side to that coin. The collapse in crude oil prices is a huge blow to areas where oil extraction and associated industries are the bread and butter of the economy.

As petro-economies suffer from the bust in crude prices, the effects are showing up in the housing market.

Take North Dakota, for example, which was on the front lines of the oil boom between 2011 and 2014. In fact, North Dakota is probably the most vulnerable to a downturn in housing because of low oil prices. The economy is smaller and thus more dependent on the oil boom than other places, such as Texas. The state saw an influx of new workers over the past few years, looking for work in in the prolific Bakken Shale. A housing shortage quickly emerged, pushing up prices. With the inability to house all of the new people, rent spiked, as did hotel rates. The overflow led to a proliferation of “man camps.”

Now the boom has reversed. The state’s rig count is down to 53 as of January 13, about one-third of the level from one year ago. Drilling is quickly drying up andproduction is falling. "The jobs are leaving, and if an area gets depopulated, they can't take the houses with them and that's dangerous for the housing market," Ralph DeFranco, senior director of risk analytics and pricing at Arch Mortgage Insurance Company, told CNN Money.

New home sales were down by 6.3 percent in North Dakota between January and October of 2015 compared to a year earlier. Housing prices have not crashed yet, but there tends to be a bit of a lag with housing prices. JP Ackerman of HouseCanary says that it typically takes 15 to 24 months before house prices start to show the negative effects of an oil downturn.

According to Arch Mortgage, homes in North Dakota are probably 20 percent overvalued at this point. They also estimate that the state has a 46 percent chance that house prices will decline over the next two years. But that is probably understating the risk since oil prices are not expected to rebound through most of 2016. Moreover, with some permanent damage to the balance sheets of U.S. shale companies, drilling won’t spring back to life immediately upon a rebound in oil prices.

fantasy stocks spiralling down, down, down....,

no need to equivocate or misdirect - The Federal Reserve Did This Isht!

zerohedge | Easy money by The Fed expanding their balance sheet ENABLED tight oil to be produced 'economically'...

But the signals this sent to the market became self-fulfilling (thanks to an endless Fed put) further creating record US crude production (as the oil 'gold rush' ensued), forcing a real 'deflating' world to be 'glutted' with ever-increasing output of mal-investment-driven 'expensive' oil...

of course until that facade of 'boom', busted and crushed the price of the over-produced by 75% (back to 'reality')

Can you spot the moment The Fed jumped the shark?

So the question is - If The Fed enables mal-investment booms by mandate (or ignorance), will they ever learn from the inevitable busts?

 

poor canucks aboot to get the sharp short end of the stick...,

zerohedge |  It was just yesterday when we documented the continuing slide in the loonie, which is suffering mightily in the face of oil’s inexorable decline.

As regular readers are no doubt acutely aware, Canada is struggling through a dramatic economic adjustment, especially in Alberta, the heart of the country’s oil patch. Amid the ongoing crude carnage the province has seen soaring property crime, rising food bank usage and, sadly, elevated suicide rates, as Albertans struggle to comprehend how things up north could have gone south (so to speak) so quickly.

The plunging loonie “can only serve to worsen the death of the 'Canadian Dream'" we said on Tuesday.

As it turns out, we were right.

The currency's decline is having a pronounced effect on Canadians' grocery bills.

 As Bloomberg reminds us, Canada imports around 80% of its fresh fruits and vegetables. When the loonie slides, prices for those goods soar. "With lower-income households tending to spend a larger portion of income on food, this side effect of a soft currency brings them the most acute stress" Bloomberg continues.

oil and u.s. share prices tumble, even yeezus have to slash prices...,

guardian |  US stocks fell heavily on Wednesday, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 falling 2.5% to take the index below 1,900 points for the first time since September, due to growing concerns about the falling oil price, which dipped below $30 a barrel for the first time in nearly 12 years.

The S&P 500, which closed at 1,890 points, suffered its worst day since September and has fallen by 10% since its November peak taking it into “correction” territory, something that has not happened since August 2014.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped by 364 points, or 2.2%, to 16,151, and the Nasdaq composite dropped 159 points, or 3.4%, to 4,526. This deepened the New York stock exchange’s already worst start to a year on record.

Wednesday’s stock market declines were triggered by new figures showing US gasoline stockpiles had increased to record high, which caused Brent crude prices to fall as low as $29.96, their lowest level since April 2004, before settling at $30.31, a 1.8% fall. The oil price has fallen by 73% since a peak of $115 reached in the summer of 2014.

Industry data showed that US gasoline inventories soared by 8.4m barrels and stocks of diesel and heating oil increased by more than 6m barrels – confirming the forecasts of many analysts that a huge oversupply of oil could keep prices low during most of 2016.

Analysts said that growing fears of a weakening outlook for the global economy, made worse by falling oil prices, was behind the steep falls. Some oil analysts this week predicted that the price could fall as low as $10.

In recent days several analysts have warned that the global economy could suffer a repeat of the 2008 crash if the knock-on effects of a contraction in Chinese output pushes down commodity prices further and sparks panic selling on stock and bond markets.

Joyeux 150e anniversaire M. Gurdjieff!

gurdjieff |  We all know that Mr Gurdjieff considered his system of movements an essential part of his teaching. It is now over 60 years since these movements were first taught to groups. This was when Mr Gurdjieff was in Tiflis. He gave Mme de Salzmann’s pupils a number of exercises for attention and co-ordination. These later became obligatory for anyone who wished to study with him. When, during the Revolution, he was able to escape with some of his pupils from Russia, Mr Gurdjieff also taught this group adaptations of dervish movements and sacred rituals which he had seen in Central Asia. In order to attract interest in his work, these movements were shown to the public in Constantinople. Two years later, when he came to France and worked at the Prieuré with his Russian and some English pupils, Mr Gurdjieff prepared a much more extensive programme of “Sacred Dances” which was performed at the Théatre des Champs Elysées in Paris. In 1924 he came to America and presented demonstrations in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston. Since then, these movements have been preserved.

In the summer of 1924 and later, when Mr Gurdjieff was writing Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, the movements were practised regularly, first here in New York (from 1925 on) by the Orage groups, then in England (from 1936 to 1938) by the Ouspensky groups and in Paris by Mme de Salzmann’s groups. Just before the second world war began, Mr Gurdjieff resumed teaching and carried on the work in Paris in spite of the German occupation.

This was an extraordinary period: he created scores of exercises, combinations and sequences, mathematically calculated, designed to help sustain attention and to understand what we now call sensation, to provide shocks and new impressions, and to induce initially certain feelings and more collected states. A great number of these exercises, the “Thirty Nine” and others, he left with us here in New York in the spring of 1949, a few months before he died—and these movements have been studied here ever since.

Some of you worked with Mr Gurdjieff at that time and some have worked since. Everyone, I think, must have found that through the practise of the movements one has direct experiences that lead through the body and feelings to an understanding of many of the work ideas which might, lacking this means, remain simply as theory.

We realise in the movements that we are rarely awake to our own life—inner and outer. We see that we always react in a habitual and conditioned way; we become aware that our three main centres, head, body, feeling, rarely work together or in harmony. We begin to try to move always intentionally—not mechanically—and we discover in ourselves many hitherto unexpected possibilities. We find that one can collect one’s attention; that one can be awake at times and have an overall sensation of oneself; that a quietness of mind, an awareness of body and an interest of feeling can be brought together and that this results in a more complete state of attentiveness in which the life force is felt and one is sensitive to higher influences. Thus, one has a taste of how life can be lived differently.

Because that is so, the movements are sacred for us. With the help of Mme de Salzmann and the teachers she sends us from Paris, we try to keep the movements as pure as when they were first given and to protect them from distortion and superstition.

Tonight our classes are going to share with you the work they are doing in movements at the present time. We wish to share with you memories of Mr Gurdjieff—how, when he would dictate a series of attitudes and rhythms which it seemed impossible to execute, he would respect our individual efforts and help us remember our true aim by often repeating, “Remember inner work! Remember inner work!”

For those who are watching, maybe they could try to decipher in the exercises—especially in the group movements—the language Mr Gurdjieff was using to express in the form of movements—truths—human truths—cosmic truths, the laws he had discovered during a life of search and sacrifice. There again, we remember that sometimes, when we had managed to get through a difficult multiplication series, or other movement based on the enneagram, Mr Gurdjieff, seeing an approximation of the design, the diagram he had intended, would, to our surprise, call out: “Bravo! Bravo!

artificially limiting the content of consciousness...,

DOTE |  “If truth is what you seek, then the will only take you on a long ride to the limits of solitude and leave you by the side of the road with your truth and nothing else.”

Exactly right! I found that out too late. Don't read DOTE. Save yourself!

Just kidding. If you're reading here, it's already too late for you.

Still, I am not a Ligotti fan based on what I've seen so far.

It appears that Ligotti is not psychological. 

“Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness.”

Sorry, no cigar here, Thomas. Most people don't "learn" anything. The brain (unconscious mind) limits the contents of consciousness, thus making human life possible, as I said in my Meaning of Life post. There is a similar mistake here.

“This is the tragedy: Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are—hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones.”

Consciousness is post-hoc (after the fact). More precisely, the contents of consciousness are post-hoc. The "normal" human being doesn't "strive to be unself-conscious." People simply are that way. That's human nature. For the vast majority of human beings, it comes for free. As I said in my Meaning of Life post, you can thank evolution for that.

Does Naomi Kline believe her own bullshit? Does Ben Bernanke believe his own bullshit? Of course they do! That bullshit gives their lives meaning and purpose. Naomi and Ben are "normal" people, i.e., normally functioning human beings. Indeed, they are high-functioning human beings because of their obvious social success on this planet. Such satisfying success depends entirely on limiting the contents of consciousness in each case.

I am talking about unconscious filtering, which is automatic and reinforcing with more and more success. What I call "incongruent inputs" in the unpublished 4th Flatland essay—stuff that might upset the apple cart—are filtered to maintain delusions which promote social success, a positive self-image, etc. Thus Ben Bernanke's monetary policy did not exacerbate inequality in the United States, or, as Ben sometimes maintains, it doesn't matter if it did. This is motivated reasoning (bullshit). Bullshit is always some form of  post-hoc rationalization.

is the hon.bro.min on the cusp of a Trump endorsement?

infowars |  Donald Trump’s controversial proposal to limit Muslims entering the United States has attracted support from an unlikely ally – Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

The Republican frontrunner’s plan, which called for a temporary halt on Muslim immigration until refugees could be properly vetted, led to over half a million UK citizens signing a petition to ban Trump from entering the country.

However, in an exclusive interview with Alex Jones, Farrakhan said that Trump was “wise” to call for such measures.

Farrakhan drew attention to the Obama administration’s disastrous policy of arming jihadists in Libya and Syria, noting that the blowback had, “created a refugee crisis that is destabilizing the countries in Europe.”

“So when Mr. Trump said we can’t allow these Muslim refugees into America, a lot of people were upset with him, but I know the hatred for America in the Muslim world is building,” said Farrakhan, adding that U.S. foreign policy had united Islamists against the west.

“So in this way I think Mr. Trump is wise to vet anyone coming from that area into America because the hatred for America is in the streets now,” asserted Farrakhan, adding that if the U.S. wasn’t careful about the vetting process, it might be inviting its own “destruction”.

Farrakhan put Trump’s success in the polls down to a heightened environment of political correctness that has caused frustration amongst white people who can’t say what they really feel.

“Mr Trump says ‘to heck with that’ – I’ll tell you what’s really on my mind and that is freeing a lot of people that like what he’s doing,” said Farrakhan.

The Nation of Islam leader went on to compare establishment politicians to prostitutes.

“They parade themselves before rich and powerful people to get money apparently for their ideas that the rich agree with, but the moment that they become what they’re looking to become they find that the rich have an agenda for them, that the rich have something to ask of them like the john asks of the prostitute,” said Farrakhan, adding that he admired Trump because, “he told them all – I don’t want your money.”

can mr. miracle temporarily forestall political collapse in the u.s.?

thearchdruidreport |  The new year now upon us has brought out the usual quota of predictions about what 2016 has in store, and I propose as usual to make my own contribution to that theme.  I’ve noted more than once in the past that people who make predictions about the future really ought to glance back at those predictions from time to time and check how well they’re doing. With that in mind, before we go on to 2016, I’d like to take a moment to look back over the predictions I made last year.  My post on the subject covered a lot of territory in the course of offering those predictions, and I’ve trimmed down the discussion a bit here for the sake of readability; those who want to read the whole thing as originally published will find it here. In summarized form, though, this is what I predicted:

“The first and most obvious [thing to expect] is the headlong collapse of the fracking bubble [...] Wall Street has been using the fracking industry in all the same ways it used the real estate industry in the runup to the 2008 crash, churning out what we still laughably call “securities” on the back of a rapidly inflating speculative bubble. As the slumping price of oil kicks the props out from under the fracking boom, the vast majority of that paper—the junk bonds issued by fracking-industry firms, the securitized loans those same firms used to make up for the fact that they lost money every single quarter, the chopped and packaged shale leases, the volumetric production agreements, and all the rest of it—will revert to its actual value, which in most cases approximates pretty closely to zero.

“Thus one of the entertainments 2015 has in store for us is a thumping economic crisis here in the US, and in every other country that depends on our economy for its bread and butter. The scale of the crash depends on how many people bet how much of their financial future on the fantasy of an endless frack-propelled boom, but my guess is it’ll be somewhere around the scale of the 2008 real estate bust.

“Something else that’s baked into the baby new year’s birthday cake at this point is a rising spiral of political unrest here in the United States. [...] Will an American insurgency funded by one or more hostile foreign powers get under way in 2015? I don’t think so, though I’m prepared to be wrong. More likely, I think, is another year of rising tensions, political gridlock, scattered gunfire, and rhetoric heated to the point of incandescence, while the various players in the game get into position for actual conflict:  the sort of thing the United States last saw in the second half of the 1850s, as sectional tensions built toward the bloody opening rounds of the Civil War.  [...]

“Meanwhile, back behind these foreground events, the broader trends this blog has been tracking since its outset are moving relentlessly on their own trajectories. The world’s finite supplies of petroleum, along with most other resources on which industrial civilization depends for survival, are depleting further with each day that passes; the ecological consequences of treating the atmosphere as an aerial sewer for the output of our tailpipes and smokestacks, along with all the other frankly brainless ways our civilization maltreats the biosphere that sustains us all, builds apace; caught between these two jaws of a tightening vise, industrial civilization has entered the rising spiral of crisis about which so many environmental scientists tried to warn the world back in the 1970s, and only a very small minority of people out on the fringes of our collective discourse has shown the least willingness to recognize the mess we’re in and start changing their own lives in response: the foundation, it bears repeating, of any constructive response to the crisis of our era.”

What I missed, and should have anticipated, is the extent to which the failure of the fracking fantasy has been hushed up by the mainstream US media. I should have anticipated that, too, because the same thing happened with the last energy boom that was going to save us all, the corn ethanol bubble that inflated so dramatically a decade ago and crumpled not long thereafter. Plenty of firms in the fracking industry have gone bankrupt, the junk bonds that propped up the industry are selling for pennies on the dollar to anyone willing to gamble on them, and all those grand claims that fracking was going to bring a new era of US energy independence have been quietly roundfiled next to the identical claims made for ethanol not that many years before; still, this hasn’t yielded the sudden shock I expected.

half-a-trillion in fracking junk about to pop and make 2008 look like a cakewalk....,

robertscribbler |  I admit it. I felt sorry for those poor, duped oil, gas and coal company investors back during the early part of 2015. Many of these guys, fed a constant stream of bad information from the financial news sources, at the time were still enraptured by the notion that fossil fuel stocks were then cheap and that the situation was nothing more than some kind of golden buying opportunity.

Now, six months later, 41 US oil and gas companies have gone bankrupt, powerful major oil companies like Exxon and BP are in the range of 20-40 percent losses in stock price year-on-year, most gas companies have seen even more severe losses, and most coal companies have been reduced to junk stock status (see Arch Coal declares bankruptcy). TransCanada, the parent company of the canceled Keystone XL Pipeline, is challenging United States sovereignty with its 15 billion dollar lawsuit. But it’s questionable if the company will even exist long enough to see the results of its NAFTA-based legal challenge.

Granny Goodness in Trub-bow....,

BI |  The FBI is widening its investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email account while she was U.S. secretary of state to determine whether any public corruption laws were violated, Fox News reported on Monday.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been looking into whether classified material was mishandled during Clinton's tenure at the State Department from 2009-2013.

It will expand its probe by examining possible overlap of the Clinton Foundation charity with State Department business, Fox reported, citing three unidentified intelligence officials.

"The [FBI] agents are investigating the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations, the dispensation of State Department contracts and whether regular processes were followed," Fox quoted one of its unidentified sources as saying.

another fabricated jobs report

PCR |  Now, we will pay attention, unlike the financial presstitute media, to the age groups who benefited, according to the BLS, from the 292,000 December new jobs. About half of the alleged new jobs—142,000—went to the 55 years old and over age group. This age group consists primarily of retirees who have found it necessary to supplement their retirement income and of those near retirement who are working in order to compensate for the lack of interest on their savings due to the Federal Reserve’s zero interest rate policy. These are part-time, lowly paid jobs without benefits.

Americans of prime working age, 25 years old to 54 year old, only received 16,000 or 5% of the new jobs.

Those aged 46 to 54 lost 165,000 jobs. In other words, middle aged people are losing their jobs before they can provide for their retirement.

There are 527,000 more Americans working multiple jobs in December 2015 than in December 2014.

Now, as we have done so often for many years, let’s look at the make believe jobs that the BLS claims. Almost all of them are in lowly paid domestic services, such as waitresses, bartenders, couriers and messengers, employment services, social services and health care (primarily ambulatory health care services).

The conclusion is that if we believe the payroll jobs report, the United States is now an economy that only creates Third World jobs in lowly paid domestic services.

And yet this non-economy on the verge of collapse is said by the idiots in Washington to be a super-power.

What a total joke!

PCR |   Probably what we are observing is that the economic house of cards that the Federal Reserve has constructed together with financial deregulation depends heavily on reported jobs gains for its stability, and this stability is provided by the use of the birth-death model and seasonal adjustments to produce reassuring payroll jobs numbers.

As I have pointed out in numerous columns, if the reported jobs claims were real, the labor force participation rate would not be declining. If the reported jobs claims were real, people would be entering the work force attracted by employment opportunities. They would not be leaving the work force from discouragement and frustration in finding employment.

The Obama regime’s claim that the declining US labor force participation rate is the result of rising retirements is contradicted by the fact that the reported payroll jobs gains are primarily accounted for by the oldest age group, 55 and higher.

I am left with the conclusion that the 281,000 jobs produced by seasonal adjustments are the product of the misuse of seasonal adjustments in order to keep alive the appearance of economic recovery.

Keep in mind, also, that payroll jobs are the number of jobs, not the number of employed people. Many payroll jobs are part time with two or more being held by one person.

the baltic dry index is down 96.4% from its 2008 peak

hellenicshippingnews |  Baltic Dry Index is compiled by the London-based Baltic Exchange and covers prices for transported cargo such as coal, grain and iron ore. The index is based on a daily survey of agents all over the world. Baltic Dry hit a temporary peak on May 20, 2008, when the index hit 11,793. The lowest level ever reached was on Friday, January 08 2016, when the index dropped to 429 points.

exposed in all its whorey glory - two parties one psychopathocracy...,

NYTimes |  IN a typical presidential campaign, the most successful candidates lay claim to leadership with their high-mindedness. They reach for poetry. They focus on lifting people up, not tearing them down. They beseech voters to be their biggest, best selves.

Not the two front-runners in this freaky Republican primary. They’re unreservedly smug. They’re unabashedly mean.

If you’re not with them, you’re a loser (Donald Trump’s declaration) or you’re godless (Ted Cruz’s decree, more or less). They market name-calling as truth-telling, pettiness as boldness, vanity as conviction. And their tandem success suggests a dynamic peculiar to the 2016 election, a special rule for this road:

Obnoxiousness is the new charisma.

NYTimes |  Wealth can be bad for your soul. That’s not just a hoary piece of folk wisdom; it’s a conclusion from serious social science, confirmed by statistical analysis and experiment. The affluent are, on average, less likely to exhibit empathy, less likely to respect norms and even laws, more likely to cheat, than those occupying lower rungs on the economic ladder.

And it’s obvious, even if we don’t have statistical confirmation, that extreme wealth can do extreme spiritual damage. Take someone whose personality might have been merely disagreeable under normal circumstances, and give him the kind of wealth that lets him surround himself with sycophants and usually get whatever he wants. It’s not hard to see how he could become almost pathologically self-regarding and unconcerned with others.

So what happens to a nation that gives ever-growing political power to the superrich?

vox explains the rape allegation against bill?

nationalreview |  I must admit, when I clicked this morning on Vox’s ”explainer” of Juanita Broaddrick’s rape allegation against Bill Clinton, I expected a whitewash. I was wrong. Not only did Dylan Matthews do an excellent job laying out the story, he reminded me of a number of details I’d forgotten.

Her story is infuriating, painting a picture of casual, callous brutality. Broaddrick, then a Clinton gubernatorial campaign volunteer, claims that Clinton asked to switch a planned meeting from a hotel lobby to her hotel room. After a few minutes of small talk, Broaddrick says that Clinton began kissing her. She resisted Clinton’s advances, but he “pulled her back onto the bed and forcibly had sex with her.” During the alleged attack, he bit her lip. When he saw that it was bruised and swollen, she claims he said, “You better get some ice on that.” Then he “put on his sunglasses and walked out the door.”

I’d forgotten, however, how many people Broaddrick told after the incident:

Several friends of Broaddrick’s backed up the story. Norma Rogers, who was the director of nursing at Broaddrick’s nursing home at the time, told reporters that she entered the hotel room shortly after the assault allegedly took place and “found Mrs. Broaddrick crying and in ‘a state of shock.’ Her upper lip was puffed out and blue, and appeared to have been hit.” Kelsey elaborated to the New York Times, “She told me he forced himself on her, forced her to have intercourse.”
In the Dateline show, Broaddrick’s friends Louise Ma, Susan Lewis, and Jean Darden (Norma Rogers’s sister) all told NBC News that Broaddrick told them Bill Clinton raped her at the time. David Broaddrick — with whom Broaddrick was having an affair at the time; they both eventually left their spouses to marry each other — also told NBC that Broaddrick’s top lip was black after the alleged incident, and that she told him “that she had been raped by Bill Clinton.”

Then there are Broaddrick’s allegations that Hillary not-so-subtly thanked her for her silence:

About six months after her initial interviews in 1999, Broaddrick told the Drudge Report that mere weeks after the alleged assault, Hillary Clinton had tried to thank her for her silence on the matter at a political rally:“[Hillary] came directly to me as soon as she hit the door. I had been there only a few minutes, I only wanted to make an appearance and leave. She caught me and took my hand and said ‘I am so happy to meet you. I want you to know that we appreciate everything you do for Bill.’ I started to turn away and she held onto my hand and reiterated her phrase — looking less friendly and repeated her statement — ‘Everything you do for Bill’. I said nothing. She wasn’t letting me get away until she made her point. She talked low, the smile faded on the second thank you. I just released her hand from mine and left the gathering.”

This wasn’t included in the initial reports on Broaddrick’s story by the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, and NBC News. But after this article’s initial publication, Lisa Myers, who conducted NBC News’ initial report on Broaddrick, wrote Vox to clarify that Broaddrick did tell NBC that Hillary Clinton confronted her after the alleged assault, though this did not make the final cut of the Dateline segment. So this was not an new addition to or change in Broaddrick’s story, even though it became public months later.

Matthews doesn’t just analyze Broaddrick’s allegations, he also evaluates Clinton’s defenses, and finds the denials less-than-compelling.

did slick willie's predations go beyond interns, subordinates, and arkansas trailer parks?

independent |  A list of people who have associated with Jeffrey Epstein over the years would take in the world of celebrity, science, politics - and royalty.

Over the years, the casually-dressed, globe-trotting financier, who was said to log more than 600 flying hours a year, has been linked with Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker and Manhattan-London society figure Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the late media titan Robert Maxwell.

Epstein reportedly flew Tucker and Spacey to Africa on his private jet as part of a charitable endeavour. Clinton, meanwhile, flew on multiple occasions in the same plane to Epstein’s private Caribbean island, Little St James, between 2002 and 2005 as he developed his philanthropic post-presidential career. It would later be alleged in court that Epstein organised orgies on that same private island in the US Virgin Islands.

Reports in the US media say many of the A-list names broke off any links with the former maths teacher after his arrest and conviction in 2008 of having sex with an underage girl whom he had solicited. His arrest followed an 11-month undercover investigation at a mansion in Florida’s Palm Beach that Epstein owned.

Granny Goodness knocked her own deluded and silly self out on Mr. Miracle's casually extended fist...,

WaPo |  On Thursday morning, Donald Trump upped the ante in his ongoing back and forth with Hillary and Bill Clinton by releasing this Instagram videodetailing some of the lowest moments for the former first family and their friends.

Monica Lewinsky. Anthony Weiner. Bill Cosby! All overlaid on Hillary Clinton's famous assertion in China in 1995 that "human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights."

The video, which as of this writing already had almost 7,000 "likes" on Instagram, will undoubtedly get extended airtime this afternoon and tonight on cable television. And it will force the Clinton campaign to respond in some shape or form - which she did, sort of, via Twitter Thursday afternoon.

Unlike many of Trump's other fights — over John McCain's POW status, Megyn Kelly, Fox News — attacking the Clintons is a conventional — and smart — strategy in a Republican primary.

Hillary Clinton is deeply unpopular among self-identified Republicans. Just 15 percent of Republicans had a favorable opinion of Clinton in Washington Post-ABC News polling done in the fall. Given those numbers, it's hard for any Republican to go wrong attacking the Clintons.

And it's hard to "go too far" in those attacks — at least in the eyes of GOP voters. Lots and lots of Republicans believe that the Clintons have never truly been called out for how they acted in public office and never been properly shamed for their behavior.

ain't nobody pay $300K to hear Granny Goodness run her filthy pie hole!!!

globalresearch |  In the first phase of the 2016 Presidential election cycle, according to the New York Times, 158 wealthy donors provided half of all campaign contributions, 138 of them backing Republicans, 20 backing Democrats. No candidate can easily compete without huge amounts of money. And if you get it from small donors, as Bernie Sanders has done the most of, you’ll be largely shut out of free media coverage, and belittled in the bit of coverage you’re granted. The media coverage, the debate questions, and the topics discussed are determined by the interests of the wealthy in this national oligarchy.

Then there’s the corrupt foundation money and speaking fees flowing into the Clinton family from wealthy sources in the U.S. and abroad. While most Americans are unable to sit through a full presidential debate, Wall Street, Big Pharma, and corporate technology interests have shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars supposedly just to hear Hillary or Bill Clinton speak.

According to a new report by Consortium News, Hillary Clinton took in $11.8 million in 51 speaking fees between January 2014 to May 2015. Bill Clinton delivered 53 paid speeches to bring in $13.3 million during that same period. That’s over $25 million total, largely if not entirely from wealthy parties with a strong interest in influencing U.S. government policy.

This system of rewarding former politicians is one of the great corrupting forces in Washington, DC, but the revolving door that brings such politicians back into power makes it many times worse.

According to the Washington Post, since 1974 the Clintons have raised at least $3 billion, including at least $69 million just from the employees and PACs of banks, insurance companies, and securities and investment firms.

According to the International Business Times, the Clintons’ foundation took in money from foreign nations while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, nations such as Saudi Arabia for which she then waived restrictions on U.S. weapons sales. (Also on that list: Algeria, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Qatar.) I brought this up on a recent television program, and one of the other guests protested that I was not, at that moment, criticizing Donald Trump. But, even if we assume Trump is the worst person on earth, what has he done that is worse than taking a bribe to supply Saudi Arabia with the weapons that have since been used to slaughter children in Yemen? And what does Trump have to do with bribery? He’s self-corrupted. He’s in the race because of the financial barrier keeping decent people out. But he hasn’t been bribed to act like a fascist.

The Wall Street Journal reports that during the same period, Bill Clinton was bringing in big speaking fees from companies, groups, and a foreign government with interests in influencing the U.S. State Department. Eight-digit donors to the Clintons’ foundations include Saudi Arabia and Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. Seven digit donors include: Kuwait, Exxon Mobil, Friends of Saudi Arabia, James Murdoch (son of Rupert), Qatar, Boeing, Dow, Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart and the United Arab Emirates. Those chipping in at least half a million include Bank of America, Chevron, Monsanto, Citigroup, and the Soros Foundation. And they don’t even get a speech!