Apparently, the President had ingested some kind of weird drug, because when he stepped to the podium he didn't look at the teleprompter. He just started talking:

"...like every other recent President, when I take to this platform I'm expected to tell a certain number of lies dressed up as the truth. And believe me, folks, I had a few whoppers ready to go.

"But now I feel like doing something else. I'm not going to delve into the many scandals of my administration, because examining them and taking them apart and exposing the lies would keep us here all night and into tomorrow.

"Instead, I just want to explain my overarching agenda. It's the same agenda every modern President has fronted for. I'm not really doing anything new. That's a myth.

"You see, in order to become President in the first place, I had to sign on to the scheme to debase, throttle, and weaken this country. I have my methods. Every President has his own.

"Weakening America is part and parcel of Globalism. Ultimately, America will not the lead the way into what has been called the New World Order. International heavy hitters, bankers, and corporations will carry that ball. America will go along, with its population of sleeping masses.

The Obama administration will soon announce regulations to make it easier for banks to do business with legal marijuana sellers, Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday.

"You don't want just huge amounts of cash in these places. They want to be able to use the banking system," Holder said during an appearance at the University of Virginia's Miller Center. "There's a public safety component to this. Huge amounts of cash - substantial amounts of cash just kind of lying around with no place for it to be appropriately deposited is something that would worry me, just from a law enforcement perspective."

While Holder spoke twice of new "regulations" that were being prepared, a Justice Department spokesman said later that the attorney general was referring to legal "guidance" for prosecutors and federal law enforcement. Such a legal memo wouldn't be enforceable in court and would amount to less than the kind of clear safe harbor many banks say they would want before accepting money from pot businesses.

The federal banking accommodation, being worked out jointly by the Justice and the Treasury departments, comes in the wake of decisions by voters in Colorado and Washington state to legalize the sale and possession of pot. The moves have created legal tensions, since marijuana remains illegal under federal law. One particular problem has been the refusal of banks to deal with pot-related businesses out of fears they will be accused of violating money laundering laws.

The Tom Perkins "billionaires-as-victims" charade couldn't be more surreal. It goes without saying that his comparing the 1% to victims of Hitler's genocide is tasteless. That it is oblivious is obvious. And that Perkins himself suffers from paranoid delusions must be suspected.

But there are deeper reasons for plumbing the pathology of Perkins' rant. As background, let's recall some basic facts.

Over the past 30-odd years, since Reagan, a vast share of the nation's income and wealth has been transferred from the poor, working, and middle classes to the very wealthy. Twenty five years ago, the top 1% of income earners pulled in 12% of the nation's income, today they get twice that, 25%. And the rate of transfer is accelerating.

In the ten years between 1996 and 2006 67% of all the growth in the entire U.S. economy went to the top 1% of income earners. Between 2009 and 2012, 95% of all the new income produced in the economy went to the top 1%. What about everybody else?

The blowout at a natural gas well in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday is the second time in a year Rowan Companies Plc (RDC) has lost control while drilling at the same location with the same rig.

Workers on Rowan's "Louisiana" rig -- one of the oldest in its fleet -- are still trying to gain control of a well in Vermilion Block 356, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) off the coast of Louisiana, where another blowout occurred last April, according to records kept by the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which oversees offshore drilling.

While federal regulators and oil companies emphasize their heightened vigilance in offshore safety, there were more loss-of-control incidents at wells in the Gulf of Mexico last year than at any time since at least 2006, the first year such data was published by the safety bureau. There were nine loss-of-well-control incidents last year, compared with four in 2012, eight in 2008 and two in 2006.

A new book claims intelligence agents worked undercover on films, and one top actor asked to be paid in cocaine [no one better to provide cocaine than the CIA!]

More than 1,000 people were killed Iraq in January, figures showed Friday, as the country grapples with a surge in attacks and battles militants holding territory on Baghdad's doorstep.

The violence, the country's worst since 2008, comes with elections looming in less than three months amid fears Iraq may be slipping back into the all-out conflict that left tens of thousands dead years earlier.

World powers have urged the Shiite-led government to reach out to disaffected minority Sunnis but Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki has taken a hard line and trumpeted wide-ranging security operations that he and other officials insist are having an impact.

The new figures, compiled by the ministries of health, interior and defense, showed that 1,013 people were killed in January, including 795 civilians, 122 soldiers and 96 policemen.

That was the highest toll since April 2008, when 1,073 people were killed, at a time when Iraq was slowly emerging from a brutal Sunni-Shiite sectarian war that left tens of thousands dead and scores of others displaced.

It's official. If you're an American traitor and you're arrested, tried and convicted for treason, but you also happen to be a Jew, then it's not treason, it's anti-Semitism.

That's according to Abraham Foxman, the infamous national director of the so-called "Anti-Defamation League", a New York-based group that seeks to engender Jewish paranoia and thereby encourage Jewish emigration to Israel.

The New York Times today cites Foxman as saying that the reason why the American traitor Jonathan Pollard is serving a life sentence is because he is a Jew.

Pollard was a civilian intelligence analyst for the US Navy when he gave thousands of classified documents to Israel. He was arrested in 1985 and sentenced to life in prison.

There's been a lot of chatter in the precious metals blogger community lately about how the big banks like JP Morgan have swung from a short position in COMEX gold futures to a long position in COMEX gold futures. One commentator, Turd Ferguson, has proved to himself that JP Morgan is *net* long gold and will actually lose money if the price of gold falls.

Strangely, though, Turd Ferguson, who prides himself on leading an "Army" of precious metals warriors against the corruption and manipulation enacted by an Evil Cartel, concludes that this means that JP Morgan will not let the price of gold fall further, so, surprise surprise, now (like every other time!) is a great time to buy gold. Turd's math suggests that if gold were to fall to the predicted-by-some level of $1050/oz, then JP Morgan would lose $1.5 Billion, and well, we all know that JP Morgan doesn't want to lose $1.5 Billion, so that cannot and will not happen.

To that, dear Precious Metals Minions, I say: BOLLOCKS. Back in the day, not so long ago, Gold and Silver Warriors were willing to fight for what they believed in. When we learned that JP Morgan had a huge short position in COMEX futures, we did what any logical group of like-minded stalwarts would do: we banded together to BUY SILVER - CRASH JP MORGAN. This brilliant campaign, originated by General Max Keiser, was a steadfast show of solidarity amongst the Silver Warriors, and a sign to the Morgue and the rest of the Evil Empire that we would not stand by and watch their outright manipulation of our markets. As General Keiser noted:

"This campaign has 100% chance of working; it falls into the category of a self-fulfilling prophecy. As more individuals buy silver and gold, all attempts to replenish the system with more paper money will only cause the purchasing power of the silver and gold to increase - thus prompting more people to buy more"

Well, dear readers and Precious Metals Patriots, it's time for you to do a service for your Army again. There is only one logical solution about what we must do in reaction to this "news" that JP Morgan has massive long exposure to the price of gold:

Another volatile day ended with the Dow is down around 5% in January - the worst start to a year since 2009 (and 2nd worst since 1990) and the worst month since May 2012 (a 3-sigma miss of the average +1.5% per month gain since 2009's lows). Japan, Brazil, and Russia suffered greatly on the month as gold miners, Egypt?, and US Biotech did well. There is a huge 380bps spread between the performance of the Industrials and the Transports YTD. Gold had its best month in the last 5; Treasuries rallied with 10Y yields dropping their most since May 2012; USD rallied the most in 8 months with JPY's biggest rally (and Nikkei's biggest loss) since April 2012.

Trader's Almanac - every down January on the S&P 500 since 1938, without exception, has preceded a new or extended bear market, a 10% correction, or a flat year. As we also noted here, The JAJO Effect

The violence on the streets of Ukraine is far more than an expression of popular anger against a government. Instead, it is merely the latest example of the rise of the most insidious form of fascism that Europe has seen since the fall of the Third Reich.

Recent months have seen regular protests by the Ukrainian political opposition and its supporters - protests ostensibly in response to Ukrainian President Yanukovich's refusal to sign a trade agreement with the European Union that was seen by many political observers as the first step towards European integration. The protests remained largely peaceful until January 17th when protesters armed with clubs, helmets, and improvised bombs unleashed brutal violence on the police, storming government buildings, beating anyone suspected of pro-government sympathies, and generally wreaking havoc on the streets of Kiev. But who are these violent extremists and what is their ideology?