2012 bodes to be banner year for US Equities.

The U.S. received its highest rating from international investors in more than two years, with 41 percent saying in a Bloomberg poll conducted Dec. 5-6 that the country would be among top performers in 2012.

16 Countries have High Speed Rail.....

The USA DOESN'T........the path to our future....already laid!!!

Iraqi Leadership = definition of stupidity!!!

The dust had barely settled from the last column of departing U.S. armoured vehicles when Iraq's rival Sunni and Shi'ite factions resumed the kind of political infighting that threatens a lurch back into turmoil.

Within hours of the last U.S. troops rolling out of Iraq on Sunday, Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had asked parliament to sack his Sunni deputy, and security sources said an arrest warrant was issued for the Sunni vice president.


Add to this a parliamentary boycott announced Saturday by the secular Iraqiya bloc, backed by many Sunnis, and the risk is growing of an intensified power struggle between Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish politicians that could leave Iraq vulnerable to meddling by Sunni Arab nations and Shi'ite Iran.


"This political dispute between the different blocs especially Iraqiya and (Maliki), needs to be resolved... to fill the security vacuum left in the country by the Americans," said political analyst Kadhim al-Meqdadi.

So take a breath....you have 1/3 of the worlds population within a 6 hour flight; you have the first or second largest oil reserves in the world, you could be the next Dubai...but you can't get it together.  How totally stupid are you?

Iraq needs leadership, it doesn't need further exploitation.  Pull it together or simply be boring and completely average!!!

Keystone XL = Dirty & Dangerous!!!

Please call your Congressman/Senator and urge them to stand strong against the dirty, dangerous Keystone XL pipeline:


•Oil pipelines have proven to be dangerous -- from the June 2nd spill of more than 42,000 gallons of oil into Montana's Yellowstone river, to last summer's 840,000 gallon tar sands pipeline spill into Michigan's Kalamazoo River, to the 12 spills along TransCanada's Keystone pipeline in its first 12 months of operation. Our current regulatory system has proven inadequate to protect communities from spills like these and must be updated before any more major pipelines are approved.

•Keystone XL will not increase energy security. It will allow Canadian oil companies to limit the supply of their crude to Midwest refineries and divert it to Gulf Coast deepwater port refineries where it can be exported overseas to markets like China.

•Keystone XL will raise gas prices. TransCanada's Canadian permit application for Keystone XL clearly stated that the pipeline could be used to add up to $4 billion to America's fuel bill. Prominent oil market economist Dr. Philip Verleger concluded that this would increase gas prices by 10-20 cents per gallon, especially in the Midwest, having the greatest impact on U.S. farmers.

•The pipeline would threaten the environment. Tar sands crude oil produces 82% more global warming pollution on a life cycle basis than conventional crude oil. This vote follows a weekend where record high temperatures threatened communities across the country.

Let your Congressmen/Senators know that you oppose this attempt to force the construction of a dangerous and unnecessary pipeline through America's land and waters.

Mitt Romney's picture says a 1,000 words; or millions of dollars from outsourced jobs

Mitt Romney, appearing in the photo -- called the “Gordon Gekko”, a reference to the Michael Douglas character in the movie “Wall Street” -- shows Romney and other executives at Bain Capital LLC posing with cash in their hands, pockets and mouths.

If the 99% only lived under the Roman Empire or in Russia they would benefit from a better distribution of wealth than in the USA!!!

Over the last 30 years, wealth in the United States has been steadily concentrating in the upper economic echelons. Whereas the top 1 percent used to control a little over 30 percent of the wealth, they now control 40 percent. It’s a trend that was for decades brushed under the rug but is now on the tops of minds and at the tips of tongues.



Since too much inequality can foment revolt and instability, the CIA regularly updates statistics on income distribution for countries around the world, including the U.S. Between 1997 and 2007, inequality in the U.S. grew by almost 10 percent, making it more unequal than Russia, infamous for its powerful oligarchs. The U.S. is not faring well historically, either. Even the Roman Empire, a society built on conquest and slave labor, had a more equitable income distribution.

Pipelines are only safe when well regulated: ASK the 21 dead, 105 hurt by the 230 gas pipeline accidents last year!!!

WAYNESBURG, Pa. - Through the hilly fields here in southwestern Pennsylvania, crews worked for months this year, cutting a trench through woods and past farms for a new natural gas pipeline.


Like many other lines crisscrossing the state's Marcellus Shale regions, this pipe was big - a high-pressure steel line, 20 inches in diameter, large enough to help move a buried ocean of natural gas out of this corner of the state. It was also plenty big enough to set off a sizable explosion if something went wrong.

There was trouble on the job. Far too many of the welds that tied the pipe sections together were failing inspection and had to be done over.

A veteran welder, now an organizer for a national pipeline union, happened upon the line and tried to blow the whistle on what he considered substandard work.

But there was no one to call.

Pennsylvania's regulators don't handle those pipelines, and acknowledge they don't even know where they are. And when he reported what he saw to a federal oversight agency, an inspector told him there was nothing he could do, either.

Because the line was in a rural area, no safety rules applied.

"It's crazy," said Terry Langley, the union official, worried that any problems would literally be buried. "It seems to me that everyone is turning a blind eye."

In Pennsylvania's shale fields, where the giant Marcellus strike has unleashed a furious surge of development, many natural gas pipelines today get less safety regulation than in any other state in America, an Inquirer review shows.

Hundreds of miles of high-pressure pipelines already have been installed in the shale fields with no government safety checks - no construction standards, no inspections, and no monitoring.

"No one - and absolutely no one - is looking," said Deborah Goldberg, a lawyer with Earthjustice, a nonprofit law firm focusing on the environment.

Belatedly, the state's elected officials and regulators are trying to catch up. The legislature is poised to give the state Public Utility Commission authority to enforce federal safety rules in the shale regions, as in other gas-producing states.

Still, because of a long-standing gap in the federal rules - the same issue that affected the line near Waynesburg - the new law would leave many gas pipelines unregulated over vast swaths of rural Pennsylvania, especially in the very shale regions that are ground zero for pipeline construction.

These new Marcellus Shale "gathering" pipelines that connect to the wells are going unregulated, even though they are large-diameter, high-pressure pipes - as powerful and potentially dangerous as the transmission lines that cut across the continent.

Last year, 21 people died and 105 were hurt in 230 gas-line accidents in the United States, according to federal data, the highest death total in a decade.

This year, 16 people have died in gas explosions, including five people in Allentown and one in Philadelphia. The accidents in this region were all due to failures in old cast-iron pipelines, not the type of lines being installed in the shale regions.