Open Secrets — Pentagon plans to share missile secrets with Russia opposed by Republicans

The Pentagon held internal talks on declassifying sensitive missile defense technology that it plans to share with Russia as part of the Obama administration’s efforts to assuage Moscow’s opposition to European defenses.

Republicans in both the House and Senate plan to block any technology declassification for missile defense technology in the current defense authorization bill and other legislation. Legislative mark up on the authorization bill begins this week.

Goldman to Clients: Brace for Another 8% Drop in S&P

The S&P 500 is set to fall another 8 percent by the end of the year, on top of the 7 percent decline seen since the year’s high reached in September, according to a new strategy note by Goldman Sachs.

“Uncertainty swirling around the “fiscal cliff” that must be resolved by year end, the pending jump in capital gains taxes at the start of 2013, and the debt ceiling that will be reached in late February, represent clear and present downside risks to the market in the near term,” wrote the analysts, headed by Chief U.S. Equity Strategist David Kostin.

Election 2012: How The Winner Will Destroy America

This couldn’t be any more correct as the left-right paradigm nowadays is a complete sham, as both candidates are the same. They will tell you whatever you want to hear and masqurade as whatever you want to see during the campaign while knowing 99% of the public doesn’t research the track record that concludes what will happen when elected. There is a systemic failure of the public and its ability to read between the lines or discern the core ideology of any candidate, their true beliefs and what drives them to accomplish their objectives, whatever that may be.

It’s truly a sad state of affairs when people choose who they believe will inflict the country with the least amount of damage. What’s more is that the public perpetuates the same mindset every four years expecting a different result — the definition of crazy according to some.

One element people can surely add to the author’s article here is that the “Silent Majority” everyone has talked about for decades is probably one of the most dangerous (non)-voting blocs in American history. Why? Because, as the first word in the adopted category name states, they’re silent do-nothings. Per usual, 2012 didn’t prove otherwise.

After all the hollow and uninspired elections that this country has suffered through over the past several decades, one might think that at some point long ago the American public would have finally struck a plateau of disenfranchisement; that we could sink no further into despondency, that there is a saturation limit to the corruption of our voting process.  Unfortunately, there has been no such luck.  I have to say that in all honesty I have never seen more people gut jumbled and disgusted with our electoral system than I have in 2012.  Sure, there is still a hyper-gullible segment of the populous that continues to play the game, but even those idiots are beginning to admit that the choices offered are dismal at best, catastrophic at worst.  The fog of the false Left/Right paradigm is starting to lift, and all that lay in its wake is a hoard of lost wide-eyed flabbergasted followers without a coattail or a talking point to cling to.  Sudanese refugees have a better chance of survival than these people do…

Election 2012 and the Market

Here is a simple prediction: If President Obama wins re-election the market will respond negatively (for a brief moment, at least). If Romney wins the election, the market will show signs of optimism. This is based on the perception that Romney is good for the market, and Obama is bad for the market. How does this assertion measure up to actual polling data, and how might it shape the outcome of the election?

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As for the actual outcome of the election, some observers might compare 2012 with the election of 1980. In both cases we have a Democrat with a bad economy running against a Republican promising deregulation and lower taxes. The Republican should win, right? The situation in 1980 is not a good comparison, because in 1980 President Jimmy Carter’s position was weakened by the Iran Hostage Crisis. Also, in 1980, a Gallup poll showed Reagan ahead at the end of the primaries with 58 percent of the vote. Recent polls do not show Romney with any lead whatsoever.

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As for seasoned opinion, Rupert Murdoch is “doubtful” that Romney will beat Obama. According to an analysis of candidate fundraising by John Aloysius Farrell, Obama has more donors than Romney which translates into more campaign volunteers and more passion. “By the standards of the past, Obama is in the preferable position,” writes Farrell. Of course, the election is more than three months away. According to John Galt, writing for America’s Chronicle, “Today’s polls are bad long term predictors because they do not take into account events close to the election.”

Suppose we can predict a worsening economy by November, Obama’s numbers are bound to suffer; unless we adopt the cynicism of Oswald Spengler. “What is truth?” Spengler asked in his Decline of the West. “For the multitude, [the truth is] that which it continually reads and hears.” This is what Spengler calls “the public truth of the moment, which alone matters….” Spengler believed that democratic politics led to “an appalling caricature of freedom of thought” in which the “dictates of party leaders supports itself upon that of the Press. The competitors strive by means of money to detach … peoples … en masse from hostile allegiance and to bring them under their own mind-training.” According to Spengler, feudal obligations have been replaced by a regime that “shapes men’s souls with articles, telegrams and pictures….”

There is truth in Spengler’s words, which leave us wondering which party is more effectively shaping men’s souls. This answer should be obvious to the well-informed, though it will not be obvious to those who have been “shaped.”

Full article: Election 2012 and the Market (JR Nyquist | Financial Sense Online)