Random links of interest, concern or curiosity from the past week or so, that deserve at least a SHORT mention:

 
Weekend at Hugo’s: AP Misses That Chavez Decree Was Supposedly Signed in Caracas ~
How did Venezuelan Presidente Hugo Chavez sign a decree (naming a new foreign minister) in Caracus on January 15 when he supposedly had been in Cuba recuperating from cancer surgery (for the previous five weeks)??
 
Germany’s Bundesbank to pull gold from New York and Paris in watershed moment ~ Time to panic yet…?

Bundesbank’s move is a pivotal event in the gold market and the latest warning for investors that they should keep metal bars under their physcial control, rather than relying on paper contracts.
“This sends a message about storing gold near you and taking delivery no matter who is holding it. When France did this years ago it sent panic amongst the US financial leadership. History will look back on this salvo as being the beginning of the end of the US dollar as the reserve currency of choice,” Veteran gold trader Jim Sinclair

 
Obama’s Religious Freedom Proclamation ~ Oxymoronic headline eh?
Let’s see; HHS birth control mandate, non-defense of DOMA, State Dept. indifference to world-wide abuses…
Words that don’t match deeds from this President simply add insult to the many injuries his Administration has caused people of faith in the past four years.
 
Anti-American Asians don’t speak for me ~ from Michelle Malkin.
Happy to take millions from the corrupt capitalists Jackie Chan proudly admits that he is a propagandist for the Communist Chinese government.

Then there’s PSY, the Korean rapper whose “Gangnam Style” music video has racked up more than a billion views worldwide. He’ll take the “free speech” thing, but “kill those (expletive deleted) Yankees … kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers.” Charming.
 
Mr. President, Chicago’s Gun Victims Need You Now ~

It’s really not much of an exaggeration to say that parts of Chicago resemble a war zone. The numbers are grim. Unofficially, there were 513 homicides in Chicago in 2012, nearly 100 more than New York City, which recorded 414 killings but which has a population three times larger. Chicago’s body count is 200 more than the number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan last year. The carnage has continued unabated into the New Year.

Unfortunately for Chicago’s victims, the harsh reality is that Obama doesn’t care. When it comes to advancing his progressive agenda he can get a whole lot more political mileage from dead suburban school kids than dead inner-city youth.
 
West Point center cites dangers of ‘far right’ in U.S. UN-believable. Must be all those violent incidents at the Tea Party rallies. And those radical values; “civil activism, individual freedoms and self-government.”