25 Horrible Statistics About The U.S. Economy That Barack Obama Does Not Want You To Know

 

The human capacity for self-delusion truly is remarkable.  Most people out there end up believing exactly what they want to believe even when the truth is staring them right in the face.  Take the U.S. economy for example.  

Barack Obama wants to believe that his policies have worked and that the U.S. economy is improving.  So that is what he is telling the American people.  The mainstream media wants to believe that Barack Obama is a good president and that his policies make sense and so they are reporting that we are experiencing an economic recovery.  A very large segment of the U.S. population still fully supports Barack Obama and they want to believe that the economy is getting better so they are buying the propaganda that the mainstream media is feeding them.  But is the U.S. economy really improving?  The truth is that it is not.  The rate of employment among working age Americans is exactly where it was two years ago and household incomes have actually gone down while Obama has been president.  Home ownership levels and home prices continue to decline.  Meanwhile, food and gasoline continue to become even more expensive.  The percentage of Americans that are dependent on the government is at an all-time record high and the U.S. national debt has risen by more than 5 trillion dollars under Obama.  We simply have not seen the type of economic recovery that we have seen after every other economic recession since World War II.

The horrible statistics about the U.S. economy that you are about to read are not talked about much by the mainstream media.  They would rather be "positive" and "upbeat" about the direction that things are headed.

But lying to the American people is not going to help them.  If you are speeding in a car toward a 500 foot cliff, you don't need someone to cheer you on.  Instead, you need someone to slam on the brakes.

The cold, hard reality of the matter is that the U.S. economy is in far worse shape than it was four or five years ago.

We have never come close to recovering from the last recession and another one will be here soon.

The following are 25 horrible statistics about the U.S. economy that Barack Obama does not want you to know....

#1 The percentage of Americans that own homes is dropping rapidly.  According to Gallup, the current level of home ownership in the United States is the lowest that Gallup has ever measured.

#2 Home prices in the U.S. continue to fall like a rock as well.  They have declined for six months in a row and are now down a total of 35 percent from the peak of the housing bubble.  The last time that home prices in the United States were this low was back in 2002.

#3 Last year, an astounding 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.

#4 Back in 2007, about 10 percent of all unemployed Americans had been out of work for 52 weeks or longer.  Today, that number is above 30 percent.

#5 When Barack Obama first became president, the number of "long-term unemployed workers" in the United States was 2.6 million.  Today, it is 5.3 million.

#6 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is about three times as long as it was back in the year 2000.

#7 Despite what the mainstream media would have us to believe, the truth is that the percentage of working age Americans that are employed is not increasing.  Back in March 2010, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans were employed.  In March 2011, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans were employed. In March 2012, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans were employed.  So how can Barack Obama and the mainstream media claim that the employment situation in the United States is getting better?  The employment rate is still essentially exactly where it was when the last recession supposedly ended.

#8 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs.  Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#9 In 1962, 28 percent of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs.  In 2011, only 9 percent of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs.

#10 In some areas of Detroit, Michigan you can buy a three bedroom home for just $500.

#11 According to one recent survey, approximately one-third of all Americans are not paying their bills on time at this point.

#12 Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the price of gasoline has risen by more than 100 percent.

#13 The student loan debt bubble continues to expand at a very frightening pace.  Recently it was announced that total student loan debt in the United States has passed the one trillion dollar mark.

#14 Incredibly, one out of every four jobs in the United States pays $10 an hour or less at this point.

#15 Household incomes all over the United States continue to fall.  After adjusting for inflation, median household income in America has declined by 7.8 percent since December 2007.

#16 Over the past several decades, government dependence has risen to unprecedented heights in the United States.  The following is how I described the explosive growth of social welfare benefits in one recent article....

Back in 1960, social welfare benefits made up approximately 10 percent of all salaries and wages.  In the year 2000, social welfare benefits made up approximately 21 percent of all salaries and wages.  Today, social welfare benefits make up approximately 35 percent of all salaries and wages.

#17 In November 2008, 30.8 million Americans were on food stamps.  Today, more than 46 million Americans are on food stamps.

#18 Right now, more than 25 percent of all American children are on food stamps.

#19 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, today 49 percent of all Americans live in a home that receives some form of benefits from the federal government.

#20 Over the next 75 years, Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars.  That comes to $328,404 for each and every household in the United States.

#21 During the first quarter of 2012, U.S. public debt rose by 359.1 billion dollars.  U.S. GDP only rose by 142.4 billion dollars.

#22 At this point, the U.S. national debt is rising by more than 2 million dollars every single minute.

#23 The U.S. national debt has risen by more than 5 trillion dollars since the day that Barack Obama first took office.  In a little more than 3 years Obama has added more to the national debt than the first 41 presidents combined.

#24 The Federal Reserve bought up approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department during 2011.

#25 The Federal Reserve continues to systematically destroy the value of the U.S. dollar.  Since 1970, the U.S. dollar has lost more than 83 percent of its value.

But the horrible economic statistics only tell part of the story.

In communities all over America there is a feeling that something fundamental has changed.  Businesses that have been around for generations are shutting their doors and there is a lot of fear in the air.  The following is a brief excerpt from a recent interview with Richard Yamarone, the senior economist at Bloomberg Brief....

You have to listen to what the small businesses are telling you and right now they are telling you, ‘Hey, I’m the head of a 3rd or 4th generation, 75 or 100 year old business, and I’ve got to shut the doors’ or ‘I’ve got to let people go. And if I’m hiring anybody back, it’s only on a temporary basis.’
Sometimes they do this through a hiring firm so that they can sidestep paying unemployment benefit insurance. So that’s what’s really going on at the grassroots level of the economy. Very, very, grossly different from what you’re seeing in some of these numbers coming out in earnings releases.”

All over the country, millions of hard working Americans are desperately looking for work.  They have been told that "the recession is over", but they are still finding it incredibly difficult to find anyone that will hire them.  The following example is from a recent CNN article....

Joann Cotton, a 54-year-old Columbus, Mississippi, resident, was one of those faces of poverty we met on the tour. Unemployed for three years, Joann has gone from making "$60,000 a year to less than $15,000 overnight." Her husband is disabled and dependent on medicines the couple can no longer afford. They rely on food stamps, which, Joann says, "is depressing as hell."

Receiving government aid, however, has not been as depressing as her job search. Joann says she has applied for at least 300 jobs. Even though she can barely afford gas, she drives to the interviews only to learn that the employers want to hire younger candidates at low wages.

The experiences have taken a toll: "I've aged 10 years in the three years that I've been looking for a job," Joann told us. "I want to get a job so I can just relax and exhale ... but I can't. After a while you just give up."

Meanwhile, Barack Obama and his family continue to live the high life at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer.

Even many Democrats are starting to get very upset about this.  The following is from a recent article by Paul Bedard....

Blue collar Democratic voters, stuck taking depressing “staycations” because they can’t afford gas and hotels, are resentful of the first family’s 17 lavish vacations around the world and don’t want their tax dollars paying for the Obamas’ holidays, according to a new analysis of swing voters.

It simply is not appropriate for the Obamas to be spending millions upon millions upon millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars on luxury vacations when so many Americans are deeply suffering.

But Barack Obama does not want you to know about any of this stuff.

He just wants you to buy his empty propaganda one more time so that he can continue to occupy the White House for another four years.

Original article by End of The American Dream

 

Where's That Green Jobs Revolution Obama Promised?

When Obama first came into office in 2009, he did so on the back of a promise to usher in a green jobs revolution of sorts -- with an intent to employ 5 million people in sectors like clean energy and efficiency improvement retrofitting. And while he did manage to secure the largest sum of funding for clean energy research and green initiatives in the stimulus bill that year, needless to say, no such 'revolution' has happened. Strides have been made, but 10% of the nation is still unemployed, and clean energy -- though growing faster than most other industries -- remains relatively small-scale. So what happened?

Politico offers an unsatisfying take:
 

President Barack Obama heads to an energy plant in North Carolina today to talk once again about the job-creating power of a green economy. The catch? Nearly three years into Obama's presidency, the White House can't point to much solid evidence that significant numbers of Americans are scoring the green jobs the president has been touting.

 Monthly Labor Department employment reports say nothing about the new clean energy workforce, while an effort to document how many Americans actually make a living in the "green collar" field may not be done by November 2012. Obama's Council of Economic Advisers suggests 225,000 clean energy jobs were either created or preserved through the third quarter of 2010 thanks to more than $80 billion in the economic stimulus package. But those are estimates at best.

Politico's article is rather silly, because the 'lack of evidence' it refers to isn't due to a lack of actual green job creation, but lack of good statistics. By the CEA's count, the stimulus created or saved around one million jobs in its first year. And there's no doubt that tax relief for green projects is helping spur the boom in cleantech -- and making it one of the nation's fastest-growing industries.

But there is a reason that we haven't seen the kind of 'Green New Deal' that many were hoping for to help get the nation's unemployed back to work and nascent clean energy industry kicked into high gear -- a lack of adequate, sustained funding. Top economists (even some of Obama's advisers) routinely called for a larger stimulus package back in 2009, and Obama didn't heed them -- largely due to immense pushback from the GOP, which was overwhelmingly opposed to the idea. Like the rest of the stimulus, the green jobs initiatives included in it were simply too small to make any transition towards a cleaner economy seem palpable.

So despite consistent gains and progress in the sector, those gains never felt front and center to the American public. And they simply weren't big enough drastically alter the nation's employment picture. If we want green jobs to take root, we're going to have to either a) direct a major, sustained boost of stimulus investment in cleantech, building efficiency, and renewable energy sectors or b) price carbon. Stripping subsidies from fossil fuel companies would help. Barring that, we won't be seeing that green jobs revolution anytime soon. 

Article by Brian Merchant, TreeHugger

Was CIA behind Operation Fast and Furious?

Why did the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) let criminals buy firearms, smuggle them across the Mexican border and deliver them into the hands of vicious drug cartels? The ATF claims it launched its now-disgraced Operation Fast and Furious in 2009 to catch the “big fish.” Fast and Furious was designed to stem the “Iron River” flowing from American gun stores into the cartels’ arsenals. The bureau says it allowed gun smuggling so it could track the firearms and arrest the cartel members downstream. Not true.

During the course of Operation Fast and Furious, about 2,000 weapons moved from U.S. gun stores to Mexican drug cartels - exactly as intended.

In congressional testimony, William Newell, former ATF special agent in charge of the Phoenix Field Division, testified that the Internal Revenue Service, Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement were “full partners” in Operation Fast and Furious. Mr. Newell’s list left out the most important player: the CIA. According to a CIA insider, the agency had a strong hand in creating, orchestrating and exploiting Operation Fast and Furious.

The CIA’s motive is clear enough: The U.S. government is afraid the Los Zetas drug cartel will mount a successful coup d’etat against the government of Felipe Calderon.

Founded by ex-Mexican special forces, the Zetas already control huge swaths of Mexican territory. They have the organization, arms and money needed to take over the entire country.

Former CIA pilot Robert Plumlee and former CIA operative and DEA Director Phil Jordan recently said the brutally efficient Mexican drug cartel has stockpiled thousands of weapons to disrupt and influence Mexico’s national elections in 2012. There’s a very real chance the Zetas cartel could subvert the political process completely, as it has throughout the regions it controls.

In an effort to prevent a Los Zetas takeover, Uncle Sam has gotten into bed with the rival Sinaloa cartel, which has close ties to the Mexican military. Recent court filings by former Sinaloa cartel member Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, currently in U.S. custody, reveal that the United States allowed the Sinaloas to fly a 747 cargo plane packed with cocaine into American airspace - unmolested.

The CIA made sure the trade wasn’t one-way. It persuaded the ATF to create Operation Fast and Furious - a “no strings attached” variation of the agency’s previous firearms sting. By design, the ATF operation armed the Mexican government’s preferred cartel on the street level near the American border, where the Zetas are most active.

Operation Fast and Furious may not have been the only way the CIA helped put lethal weapons into the hands of the Sinaloa cartel and its allies, but it certainly was an effective strategy. If drug thugs hadn’t murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry with an ATF- provided weapon, who knows how many thousands more guns would have crossed the U.S. border?

To be sure, Operation Fast and Furious suited the ATF’s needs. It was all too willing to let guns walk to increase its power, prestige and budget in Washington. It actively recruited so-called straw purchasers and happily used American gun dealers as pawns. And it was only one agency in a mosaic of federal agencies helping the CIA actualize its covert plans.

The fact that Operation Fast and Furious was part of the CIA’s black-bag job in Mexico does not excuse the ATF for violating the very federal laws it was created to enforce; for contributing to the deaths of hundreds of innocent citizens, including a Border Patrol agent trying to live up to his oath; or for being unrepentant, uncooperative and unresponsive to the wishes of the American people for honesty, integrity and loyalty to the U.S. Constitution.

Nor should the FBI get a free pass for subverting the criminal-background-check system designed to prevent illegal firearms purchases. The Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department - all major players in the CIA’s grand schemes - should not escape scrutiny, either. In fact, we should not shrug off the activities of any of our federal agencies that broke the law on the Sinaloa’s - and thus the Mexican government’s - behalf.

The Obama administration clearly thinks the entire federal government should help keep the profoundly corrupt Calderon government in power - no matter what. If that means sending lawyers, guns and money to unconscionable criminals, so be it. In this, Obama officials are wrong.

By choosing sides in a brutal war between opposing criminal syndicates rather than sealing our southern border, the Obama administration is fueling brutality and carnage and killing any hope of Mexican democracy. All that aside, either we are a nation of laws or we are not. If we live by our principles, Congress must appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the people in the Obama administration who enabled this reckless gun scheme.

Article by Robert Farago and Ralph Dixon, Courtesy of The Washington Times

USDA Waited For People To Die Before Recalling Ground Turkey It Knew Was Contaminated

 The USDA (United States Department of Abberations) and the FDA (Fraud and Drug Administration) are NOT YOUR FRIENDS! Nor or your best interests in their agendas. They are in the back pocket of the big corporations and do their bidding. 

Wake Up America!

Adding yet more evidence to the proof that the U.S. government maliciously promotes dangerous food borne illness outbreaks rather than trying to prevent them, evidence has emerged today that the U.S. Department of Agriculture knew ground turkey produced by Cargill was widely contaminated with salmonella, yet it did nothing about it and waited for fatalities to occur. This breaking news has been published by the Wall Street Journal (See article)

At a time when the federal government is conducted SWAT-style armed raids on raw milk farmers, accusing them of selling "pathogenic" milk, another regulatory department of that same government brazenly stands by and allows deadly pathogen-contaminated meat to be openly sold without offering any warning whatsoever to the public.

Once the fatalities start to mount, of course, then the USDA springs into action and announces a recall. This, of course, has the effect of spreading fear about contaminated food -- something that both the USDA and FDA then use to call for stronger food safety legislation such as the recently-passed Food Safety Modernization Act. (Problem, reaction, solution, see?)

In this case, the USDA announced a Cargill recall on August 3, 2011, affecting 36 million pounds of ground turkey that may be contaminated with salmonella. But this was only after at least one person died and 77 others were sickened by the contaminated meat, says the WSJ.

The important fact in this story is that the USDA knew about the salmonella contamination in 2010 and did nothing about it. Its own tests showed Cargill's turkey to be contaminated with salmonella at four different retail stores selling the meat, and still the USDA did nothing.

How did all this happen?
 

Astonishingly, current USDA regulations allow a meat production facility to pass inspection even if 49.9% of the meat is contaminated with salmonella. So even when the USDA is inspecting facilities, they can be downright filthy from a pathogenic point of view, with nearly half of all the meat contaminated, and the USDA still gives it a stamp of approval! It is in this way that the USDA, which is of course a complete prostitute of the meat industry, openly allows grossly contaminated meat to be sold to an unsuspecting public which thinks that meat is "USDA inspected."

Sure it is! But the inspection only means that slightly less than HALF the meat you buy can be contaminated with pathogenic bacteria.

Meanwhile, when it comes to raw farmers, federal officials conduct armed raids on places like Rawesome Foods even when no one is harmed! Notice the outrageous double standard? When it comes to raw milk, the feds scream about how dangerous it is (even though no one has been harmed) and how deadly the raw milk bacteria are (even when they're friendly probiotics). But when it comes to raw meat, deadly pathogens are perfectly fine with the feds, and they even wait around for people to die from consuming it before bothering to issue a recall.

And they never conduct raids on Cargill factories, or Tyson chicken farms, or any of the other huge corporate food production factories that produce the bulk of the contaminated food supply in America. Two-thirds of all store-bought chickens are contaminated with salmonella too, didn't you know? 

So this whole idea of "food safety" and the hope that Big Government is somehow going to make our food supply safer is a complete joke. It's the government that stays silent even when it knows about dangerous food contamination and then waits around for people to die so that it can call for tighter food regulations and more funding for its own departments.

This is very nearly a "false flag food attack" on America. It's designed to actually cause fatalities and generate press headlines on the dangers of foods so that the public will react with a call for stronger food regulations. But the real source of the problem, of course, is that both the USDA and the FDA are complete sellouts who routinely attack and intimidate innocent American farmers while totally ignoring the real food crimes being committed by the large food conglomerates that operate with impunity.

Article by Mike Adams, Natural News

Banks Always Get Their Bailout

 

When are we going to say enough is enough? When are we going to tell our elected leaders that their job is to represent OUR interests and not those of their rich taskmasters? When??

Wake Up America!  This is YOUR land.. Take It Back!!

The fix is always in with the Big Banks.

The biggest fix was when they were declared "too big to fail," which guaranteed they'd get a taxpayer bailout, even though some of them deserved to fail, or at least deserved to be broken up. But since they had their hooks in with the politicians, they got the bailouts.

They always get the bailouts.

The latest bailout is Greece. Now, you hear a lot about a bailout for Greece, but it's not for Greece -- it's a bailout for the banks, the banks that gambled on Greek debt. Banks bought Greek debt because the Greek bonds offered really high interest rates. They offered high returns, because they were really risky bets, just like the sub-prime instruments of a few years back. And just like the sub-prime market, the Greek bond market turned out to be too good to be true. The returns were spectacular because the underlying product was lousy.

But instead of taking their losses, the banks are relying on their collection agencies -- the IMF and their friends in government -- to get their money back. The fix is in, again.

So taxpayers -- both here and in Greece -- are going to be paying off rich bankers who made lousy bets, again! It's the scam of all time, and no one seems to care. No one, except us, and, hopefully, you.

Article by David Asman, FoxBusiness

The Fate of America? (Video)

Wake Up Americans or You Will Find Yourself Kow-Towing To a New Master!

Bank Fraud: The Perfect No-Prosecution Crime

   

US: State Attorney Generals are investigating 'Foreclosuregate' but no prosecutions for wrongdoing are being considered. The focus, instead, is on how to keep homeowners in their homes and how to keep the banks in business.  

In the aftermath of the S&L fraud of the 1980s, there were over a thousand felony convictions. The recent mortgage fraud is 40 times greater but NO convictions, not even investigations. The above cartoon explains it all.

Did you know that in the aftermath of the Savings and Loan (Thrifts) scandal there were more than a thousand felony convictions of financial elites?  The cost of the wrongdoing associated with the rip-off and closure of nearly 800 Thrifts cost taxpayers more than $160 billion.  

The current sub-prime/mortgage-backed security scandal is 40 times bigger according to Economics professor William Black.  That means the size of the crime is $6.4 trillion by my calculation.  Can you guess how many indictments there have been on financial elites who created this enormous mortgage crisis mess?  Zero, none, nada, zip.  Yes, not one single prosecution or conviction has been started of achieved.

That is simply outrageous considering the width and breadth of the many crimes committed.  There was “rampant” mortgage fraud in the loan application process according to the FBI as far back as 2004.  (Click here to see one of many stories of the FBI warning of mortgage fraud) is being used to wrongfully remove homeowners from their property.  That is foreclosure fraud. 

There was real estate document fraud when the original Promissory Notes and loan documents were “lost.”  The Promissory Notes were required to create tens of thousands of mortgage-backed securities (MBS).  No “note,” no security.  That is security fraud.  No security means the special IRS tax treatments for the MBS’s were fraudulently obtained.  That is IRS tax fraud.  Because there were no documents, the rating agencies fraudulently made up triple “A” ratings for the securities.  When the whole mess blew up, big banks hired foreclosure mill law firms to create forged documents. That phony paperwork was and is being used to wrongfully remove homeowners from their property.  That is foreclosure fraud.

It appears the entire mortgage/securitization industry is one giant criminal enterprise.  And yet, last Wednesday, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said, “We have not found any evidence at this point of systemic issues in the underlying legal or other documents that have been reviewed.”  

What!  Well, look a little harder Mr. HUD Secretary.  (Click here for the complete Reuters story with Donovan’s quote.) Donovan did say the foreclosure fiasco is “shameful,” but that is not the same as a criminal prosecution now is it?  Where is U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in all of this?  

I guess he’s busy planning a lawsuit to stop California from making pot smoking a misdemeanor.  Holder is probably also very busy with continuing legal actions against Arizona’s immigration law.  I guess trillions of dollars in mortgage and securities fraud is just not enough of a legal priority for America!

All 50 State Attorneys General are looking into what is now being called “Foreclosuregate.”  Iowa AG, Tom Miller, is leading the investigation for the 50 states.  His focus, according to a recent Washington Post story, is “preventable foreclosures“–ones in which small changes might keep the homeowners in their home – benefits all parties involved. The borrower keeps the house. The servicer continues to collect fees, and the investors receive more income than a foreclosure would bring. The community has one less deserted home.” Miller’s office also says, “This is a public policy issue.”  (Click here to see the complete Wa Po story.)

When did State AG’s become public policy negotiators for the banks?  Where are the criminal prosecutions?  This is a sham and an outrage perpetrated by state governments.  Who are they protecting?  I say it’s really the banks’ and investors’ income stream.

It sure doesn’t look like the FBI is going to prosecute any of the “rampant” mortgage fraud any time soon, according to Professor Black.  At the end of September on the Dylan Ratigan Show, he said, “We know that the FBI has formed what it calls a partnership with the Mortgage Bankers Association.  Now, that’s a trade association of the perps, and guess what the trade association said: ‘Hey we’re the victims.  You know none of the bad stuff happened because the lenders wanted to engage in this fraud,’ and the FBI believed them if you can believe that!”

Black is not just some angry academic.  Besides being a Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri KC, he is also a former bank regulator and an expert in crimes committed by CEO’s.  He thinks Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Attorney General Eric Holder should be fired so real regulators can get to work on prosecutions of crime throughout the entire industry.  And get this, just last week, Black adamantly claimed that “major frauds continue,” at all the big banks.  

Again, Black said, “80% of the loans were fraudulent.” He also said in this segment (but wasn’t included in the clip) that, “securitized mortgage instruments are all fraudulent.” That means trillions of dollars in MBS’s are worthless!  Foreclosuregate is a gargantuan financial mess, and federal and state regulators have not found a single crime in all of this to prosecute?  Clearly, the U.S. government and both political parties are shielding the perpetrators.  

Oh wait!  The SEC did fine Angelo Mozilo, the former head of Countrywide Financial Corp., $67.5 million in penalties to settle civil fraud and insider-trading charges.  Mozilo ripped-off hundreds of millions of dollars, and he pays a fine that amounts to a parking ticket for a man of his wealth?   Is that the same as a criminal prosecution?  I don’t think so!!  (Click here for more on the Mozilo story from The WSJ.)

So, if you are or have been committing document, tax, security, rating or foreclosure fraud, you don’t have a thing to worry about.  Keep doing what you’ve been doing because you are committing “the perfect no prosecution crime.”  

According to the financial elites, these crimes are essential to keep the American economy running smoothly. 

Courtesy of USAWatchdog.com

NSA’s Newest Recruiters: Cartoon-Leopard Twins

National Security Administration uses cartoon propaganda to manipulate young children into spying on each other for the government.

Dudes and dudettes: You know what’s totally radical? Reading your neighbors’ e-mail! So don’t you wanna be a junior National Security Agency deputy?

If so, the surveillance and cryptology crew at NSA has the right online companions for you: Cy and Cyndi, a pair of anthropomorphic snow leopards now kickin’ it with the CryptoKids, the Puzzle Palace’s team of cartoon animal hackers. Known as the CyberTwins and unveiled by NSA yesterday, Cy and Cyndi wear gaming headgear, talk into their hands-free mobile devices, and teach youths about proper online hygiene, all on the NSA website’s kids page, which actually exists.

Arriving in time for (the second half of) National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the CyberTwins have a backstory to appeal to military kids: Their mom is a government engineer, their dad is an Army computer scientist, and they “love to talk with other kids who love computers and cyber space as much as they do.”

That fits them right in with the other CryptoKids — a goateed turtle named T-Top whose uncle works for a computer manufacturer, Sergeant Sam the eagle who joined the military out of high school — who guide real-live youth through online crypto-themed puzzles and brainteasers. (Only one thing’s missing from the CryptoTwins’ rollout: cybersecurity tips for the underage.)

All this is a reminder that the most informative element of any spy agency’s website is its Kiddie Korner, where spycraft meets the schoolyard for an awkward, barely appropriate encounter. The CIA offers a world-explorer videogame starring Carmen Sandiego–esque junior officer Ava Shoephone, a trenchcoated operative who throws out trivia questions from the agency’s World Factbook.

The National Counterterrorism Center introduces you to “your NCTC friends,” Becker the Eagle and Little Lady Liberty. And the FBI has games — represented by an icon of the old Nintendo cartridges — like Special Agent Undercover, in which grade-school kids disguise themselves with mustaches to fool people.

As Noah Shachtman wrote a couple of years ago, only the government knows how earnest or how absurd these sites are intended to be. They do, however, inculcate the message that a career in spycraft is totally extreme. “Cryptology is making and breaking codes. It’s so cool,” NSA’s kids page explains. “You might be part of the next generation of America’s codemakers and codebreakers.” 

Then again, is a kid precocious enough to spend time on a surveillance and crypto agency’s website really going to be impressed by a snow leopard with a BlueTooth in her ear?

Hot off the press! Updated image shows real names of CryptoKids

Article by Spencer Ackerman, Courtesy of Wired.com

Despite Clinton Pledge, State Dept. to Pay Out Billions More to Mercenary Soldiers

Get ready to meet America’s new mercenaries. They could be the same as the old ones.

A new multibillion-dollar private security contract to protect U.S. diplomats is “about to drop” as early as this week, say two State Department sources, who requested anonymity because the contract is not yet finalized and they are not authorized to speak with the press.

So much for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s one-time campaign pledge to ban “private mercenary firms.”

Neither source would say which private security firms have won the four-year contract or how much it will ultimately be worth. The last Worldwide Protective Services contract, awarded in 2005, went to Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp. Rough estimates place that contract’s value at $2.2 billion.

This one is likely to be even more lucrative. That’s because this time, the reduction and forthcoming withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq is causing the State Department to splurge on private security.

A senior department official told the congressional Wartime Contracting Commission in June that the department requires “between 6,000 and 7,000 security contractors” in Iraq, up from its current 2,700 armed guards. And that doesn’t even take into account those needed to guard the expanded U.S. civilian presence in Afghanistan.

Mo’ mercs, mo’ money. And mo’ danger: This year, for the first time, U.S. contractor deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeded troop deaths, ProPublica found.

But the mercs involved could be the same ones as last time. In a nod to open-government practices, State has pledged to pick six security companies to receive the Worldwide Protective Services contract, double the current three. But that doesn’t mean the firms who won the last time around can’t potentially re-up — including Blackwater.

The deadline to award the contract is Thursday, Sept. 30, but it’s unclear whether the department will meet its long-announced goal. State is finalizing the contract right now, so if it doesn’t drop Thursday — the last day of the fiscal year — it’ll be soon afterward.

A State Department official confirmed in April that “any company, including Xe Services [another name for Blackwater] and its subsidiary companies, [may] submit a proposal in response to an acquisition process established on the basis of full and open competition.”

Despite the slayings of civilians at Nisour Square in Iraq in 2007 — which got Blackwater de-certified by the Iraqi government — and on the road in Kabul in 2009, no federal acquisition official has ever recommended that Blackwater be barred from bidding on government contracts. That means it would violate federal law to prevent Blackwater from entering a bid.

A company spokeswoman told me last year that Blackwater intended to bid on the next round of Worldwide Protective Services, although it does not show up on the contract solicitation’s list of current vendors under any of its myriad business names.

And while the contract may almost be in place, its oversight won’t. Last week, the contracting commission’s co-chairman told a House panel that even if the State Department can afford its merc surge in Iraq, “it is not clear that it has the trained personnel to manage and oversee contract performance of a kind that has already shown the potential for creating tragic incidents and frayed relations with host countries.”

In other words, expect more wasted money — and the possibility of more Nisour Squares.

Article by Spencer Ackerman, Danger Room

Town Hall Questioner To Obama: 'I'm Exhausted Of Defending You' (Video)

WELL DEAR....AREN'T WE ALL??