The United States Department of Human Health Services seems to be pushing for the sexualization of young children. According to the HHS website, children are in fact “sexual beings.” This revelation comes around the same time as a group of psychologists are pushing to decriminalize pedophilia. The combination could prove to be a recipe for trouble and for the loss of childhood innocence. In the “Questions and Answers About Sex” section of the HHS website’s “Quick Guide to Healthy Living,” children and infants are described as “sexual beings.” The site indicates: Children are human beings and therefore sexual beings. It's hard for parents to acknowledge this, just as it's hard for kids to think of their parents as sexually active. But even infants have curiosity about their own bodies, which is healthy and normal. According to the site, children engage in a variety of sexual behaviors:

When Henry Blodgett explained that the reason for the decline in the price of Bank of America’s stock was because Wall Street thinks that Bank of America is worth less — much less — than what the bank itself thinks, bank spokesman Larry DiRita responded, “Mr. Blodgett is making exaggerated and unwarranted claims … [and that] as of June 30th, our tangible book value per share was $12.65.” At the time, B of A stock was selling for $6.42 a share. The bank’s sharp retort caught Blodgett by surprise: I was eating a tuna sandwich when I saw the news clip across Bloomberg TV. I almost choked. But actually I’m not claiming anything. I’m just pointing out what seems to me to be self-evident, which is that the market doesn’t believe that Bank of America’s assets are worth what they say they are worth…. Lest some folks at Bank of America actually believe that the bank’s collapsing stock price has something to do with me, I should point out that the stock [has suffered a] 50+% collapse so far this year. And an 85+% collapse in the past 5 years.

Though most Americans desire peace and freedom in the world, the Founding Fathers consistently stated that wherever the principles of ordered liberty arose among other nations of the world, America would be a friend and a sympathizer, but that it should not attempt to impose these principles politically upon another country. We are now at the 70th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa — Germany's invasion of Russia —  in which two of the most evil regimes in human history fought each other with a savagery that those in this country can scarcely imagine. President Franklin D. Roosevelt manipulated opinion and demonized critics of his foreign policy to such an extent that Americans were taught to believe that supplying “Uncle Joe” Stalin with tens of thousands of P-39 Aircobra fighters, Sherman and Grant tanks, “deuce and a half” trucks and jeeps, as well as enormous supplies of almost everything else, would somehow promote peace and freedom in the world.

The most recent Gallup poll of registered voters show President Obama very nearly tied with each of the top tier GOP presidential contenders. When put up against either Texas U.S. Representative Ron Paul, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Texas Governor Rick Perry, or Minnesota U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann, Obama finds himself in what ABC News calls a “statistical dead heat.” ABC gives the numbers:  

Percolating through the legislatures of many states are bills that would provide that a state's electoral votes would go to whichever presidential candidate receives a majority of the national popular vote, regardless of how well the candidate did in the particular state that passed the bill into law. Called the "Popular Vote Project," such a plan is in direct contravention of both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. Not only does the Constitution make no mention of the term "popular vote," but such an idea is meaningless within the context of America's founding document. The designation "popular vote” evolved over time as a sort of shorthand to describe the votes cast for presidential electors who had publicly committed to vote in the Electoral College for a particular qualified presidential candidate. No presidential electors in any state were chosen by voters until 1824. The Constitution says nothing about how presidential electors are chosen by states except that each state legislature shall determine the method of choosing those electors.

Roger Jinkinson is a British writer, and he lives in a remote Greek village on the island of Karpathos. Although the village is not immune to the meltdown of the Greek economy caused by a huge problem with sovereign debt creditworthiness, simmering most furiously in the ancient capital of Athens, 400 kilometers away, the small village has found its own way to survive the crisis. The fundamentals of the Karpathos economy are straightforward: frugality and thrift that would perplex more cosmopolitan Europeans, hard work in labor that is practical and productive, and the replacement of a government fiat-money economy with a barter economy. Another factor has helped this rural economy work. Young Greeks, depressed by the collapsing system based upon an irresponsible government, are drifting back to places such as Karpathos, where life is not easy, but it is firmly grounded in the fundamentals of life. Some of the older Greeks in this village either remember the mass starvation in the Second World War and the following years of the Greek Civil War, or they have been reminded of these very hard times by older family members.

Former Federal Reserve boss Alan Greenspan made headlines this week when he said gold is indeed a currency and noted that the euro was falling apart, contradicting top officials on both sides of the Atlantic. “Gold, unlike all other commodities, is a currency,” he told attendees at a conference in Washington D.C. on August 23, saying he did not think the precious metal was in a bubble despite recently reaching a new record above $1900. And a flight to safety amid inflation fears is what’s causing soaring gold prices. “The major thrust in the demand for gold is not for jewelry,” Greenspan explained. “It’s not for anything other than an escape from what is perceived to be a fiat money system, paper money, that seems to be deteriorating.”  

Steve Jobs, the CEO for Apple Inc., announced on Wednesday that he could no longer maintain his position at the company. Jobs garnered a reputation for being the man behind the iPhone, iPad, and other devices that virtually put Apple on the map, making it one of the most well-known companies in the world. Unfortunately, his health issues have rendered him unable to continue as CEO. The Blaze explains, “The move appears to be the result of an unspecified medical condition for which he took an indefinite leave from his post in January… Jobs’ health has long been a concern for Apple investors who see him as an industry oracle who seems to know what consumers want long before they do.” Jobs has required a number of medical leaves throughout the last few years as a result of pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant.

While U.S. lawmakers wrestle with high unemployment and a mounting federal deficit, 80 percent of them have no academic background in business or economics, according to a new study by the Employment Policies Institute (EPI). The study found that only 8.4 percent of U.S. lawmakers majored in economics, while 13.7 percent studied subjects related to business or accounting. The majority of Congress — 55.7 percent — studied law, government, or humanities. "How many members of Congress have an academic background that provided them with a basic understanding how the economy works? The answer, it turns out, is not many," the study concluded. Politico reported: On the Senate budget committee, five out of 23 members — about 20 percent — have a business/accounting or econ background, EPI research fellow Michael Saltsman told POLITICO. And on the House side, eight out of 37 members, or just over 20 percent, hold academic degrees in business or economics fields.

With the raising of the debt ceiling, the “official” federal debt immediately surged past a new and unwelcome benchmark: The national debt now exceeds 100 percent of the gross domestic product for the first time since the Second World War era. With the debt now at $14.58 trillion and climbing vertiginously every day even as the economy continues to stagnate, it will not be very long before the national debt reaches 200 percent and higher. In fact, with over $45 trillion owed to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid recipients both present and future, the actual size of the national debt is already more than four times the GDP. As for the so-called “cuts” enacted by this Congress, the long and rancorous debate produced essentially nothing. In exchange for statutory authority to raise the debt ceiling by another $2.4 trillion, the bill provides for cuts of only $900 billion, and for a special congressional committee to come up with an additional $1.5 trillion in savings — over the next decade in projected future spending. In other words, the bill makes no meaningful cuts in the government while providing for another $1.5 trillion in debt over the next year or so — this in exchange for vague promises of a comparable amount in cuts spaced out over 10 years, while the debt ceiling is raised again and again. Such is the nature of “compromise” in official Washington.