Where Will 2015 Take Us?

Every year about this time, we are inundated with self-proclaimed prognosticators telling us (with great certainty) what the New Year will bring. The vast majority of the time they are wrong; but, somehow, that doesn’t keep people from listening to these pseudo-prophets or from buying their publications and videos. So, let me say upfront: I am not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet. I have no crystal ball; and the Almighty has not privileged me with special revelation regarding future events. However, I can predict with confidence that most of the predictions WON’T come to pass–especially the ones that deal with eschatology.

However, what I can report is the things that are ALREADY happening and the momentum that is driving them. It is an immutable law that, absent a significant force to the contrary, things in motion tend to stay in motion. Therefore, here are a few things that are already in motion as we go into 2015.

*Amnesty For Illegals And Obamacare

Let’s take Obamacare first: It is here to stay. Both major parties in Washington, D.C., overwhelmingly support national health insurance. Had Mitt Romney been elected in 2012, we would be calling it Romneycare instead of Obamacare. In fact, Mitt Romney’s state health insurance plan was the model for what we now call Obamacare. So, if any of you are still harboring any hope that somehow the new GOP Congress will pull a rabbit out of the hat and reverse Obamacare, it’s time to admit reality. Obamacare isn’t going anywhere. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who was selected by President G.W. Bush, forever sealed Obamacare into the legal and political bone marrow of America.

And, like Obamacare, both major parties in Washington, D.C., support amnesty for illegals. Oh, I know that the vast majority of grassroots Republicans oppose amnesty, but since when has that mattered to a tinker’s dam to the GOP ruling class? John Boehner and Company has already orchestrated the funding for amnesty with the $1.1 trillion “Cromnibus” bill that recently passed. Another vote that could potentially defund amnesty is expected in Congress by February. But already the GOP leadership is positioning the new Republican majority to provide amnesty with permanent status. The fact that it was mostly anti-amnesty anger that swept Republicans into the majority in both houses of Congress means nothing to the GOP leadership. NOTHING!

Here is the most concise summary I’ve seen to date on what GOP leaders are doing regarding solidifying Obama’s (unconstitutional) amnesty order:

“The plan by GOP leaders to sell out and back up Obama’s executive amnesty is already coming together.

“‘Here’s the architecture of the coming sellout: there will be a show vote on defunding exec amnesty–either as a stand alone or part of the DHS bill,’ a congressional GOP aide told Breitbart News:

“‘But once they’ve let members vote on it, it will fall away. Instead, they’ll attach the McCaul “border securit” bill–what we’ll call free rides for illegal aliens to a city near you. The McCaul bill will follow the Pete Sessions’ rule: no illegal aliens will be deported. No e-verify, no welfare stoppage, a free pass for the 12 million here to stay here. It will just be more money for King Obama to use to help illegals enter the country and get a free education. The White House will play along, pretend it’s a tough bill, and then eagerly sign it–locking in the amnesty and taking real enforcement off the table (they’ll say it’s all done now). Then will come the gifts for the corporate sponsors.’”

The report also quotes George Rasley, the executive editor of Richard Viguerie’s ConservativeHQ, as correctly saying, “Looking at what the Republican Party’s Capitol Hill leaders did in the CRomnibus it’s hard for conservatives to figure out who’s worse: Obama or the GOP leaders who apparently plan to overturn the results of the 2014 midterms by allowing the president’s unconstitutional amnesty to stand and, adding insult to injury, passing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wishlist of more spending and more visas to displace American workers.”

See the report at:

Folks, please understand that GOP leaders in Congress are not GOING to solidify Obama’s amnesty deal, they are ALREADY solidifying it. Therefore, this is not a prediction; it is simply an accurate reporting of what is already taking place. Republican leaders in Washington, D.C., are going to do what they always do: give grassroots conservative Republicans the royal shaft. But since conservatives seem to suffer from Stockholm Syndrome every election year, it is doubtful that much of anything will change in 2016 either.

*TPP

The newest NAFTA-style trade agreement, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), has been in the works for some time. However, with the Democrats in charge of the Senate, President Obama was not able to push the jobs-killing agreement through Congress. But with the GOP now in charge of both houses of Congress, passage of TPP will be a breeze.

As Rasley observed, Republican congressional leaders are mostly in the pocket of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the TPP trade agreement is perhaps priority number one for the Chamber–and they are already pushing hard for its passage.

The Washington Post noted that “President Obama is preparing a major push on a vast free-trade zone that seeks to enlist Republicans as partners.”

See the report here:

With the GOP controlling Congress, globalist-minded Barack Obama is now able to bypass his own party and partner with internationalist-business-friendly Republicans to pass TPP. Like amnesty, the TPP trade agreement is ALREADY being positioned for passage within the GOP Congress.

The Chamber of Commerce spent millions in this last election helping to elect pro-Big Business Republicans to office. They expect payback.

A Breitbart.com report begins, “Not only does the U.S. Chamber of Commerce think it is the only reason the GOP won in November, it is now threatening Republicans with opposition next go round if they don’t lay down and give the Chamber precisely what it wants, including on immigration, increased spending on transportation, and economic deals that sweeten the pot for big business.”

See the report here:

*The American Police State

The American Police State saw a banner year in 2014. The militarization of local and State police, along with the instances of police-bullying, grew to record heights last year–and there is absolutely no sign of a let-up.

Excerpts from Joel Skousen’s December 26, 2014 World Affairs Brief (WAB) are relevant:

“This year we saw government further arrogate to itself broad new power through executive action that went unchecked thanks to a Congress coopted by globalist republican leaders and a neutered Supreme Court, which refuses to declare any of the president’s unilateral actions unconstitutional.”

Skousen continues, “We now live in a surveillance state and its purpose has nothing to do with terrorism: Domestic dissidents are the target; terrorism is just the excuse. The NSA records every type of electronic communication. Despite the initial public outrage over Edward Snowden’s revelation, government hasn’t stopped anything. They’ve made deceptive legislative proposals that claim to limit government’s ability to see content, but those claims are as much a sham and a lie as the government insistence that they only collect metadata. The content comes right along with the metadata, so there’s no way to collect only the metadata.”

Pertaining specifically to domestic police abuse, Skousen notes, “Police aggressiveness and brutality . . . is a precursor to a Police state. It reached a head this year with the Ferguson riots, but sadly the issue was falsely framed as one of racial prejudice and profiling, rather than the danger to all of us from thuggish police behavior. There is a steady increase in the percentage of macho, pushy law enforcement personnel, many of which have a military background. They bring with them their foul-mouthed habits and thuggish behavior. Coupled with police training that talks incessantly about ‘getting killed if you don’t react fast enough’ police are developing a shoot-first-and-ask-question-later mentality.

“Just as bad is their attitude that ‘you need to do what I say, no questions asked.’ This is not right. Police are not allowed by law to demand the public follow their every order. It has to be a lawful order. Sadly, neither the police chiefs nor the courts are willing to sanction police with strong penalties when they abuse this power.”

To subscribe (paid only) to Skousen’s excellent WAB, go here:

Unfortunately, there are only a precious few who seem to understand this burgeoning Police State and who actively oppose it. A majority of Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, unbelievers and Christians, all seem to, not only tolerate the police-state mentality, but enthusiastically support it. And there is no momentum whatsoever to stopping it. It will only get worse in 2015.

*Christ And Caesar

True Christianity has never been associated with, supported by, or underneath Caesar’s (civil government’s) auspices or benevolence. For most of the 2,000+ years of Church history, true believers met in non-state-sanctioned or even underground churches and fellowships. In fact, the Early Church was birthed in a baptism of persecution from both the civil government (Rome) and established religion (Judaism) at the time. Not until the unholy union of the Church and State under Theodosius I (almost 400 years after Christ) did Christians accept official sanction from government. And for many centuries to follow, the official merger of Church and state led to the persecutions and deaths of untold thousands of believers deemed heretics and outlaws because their religious beliefs contradicted those of the official state-sanctioned church.

Even in early America, state-approved denominations and churches were guilty of horrific persecutions against independent-minded Christians who refused to submit to the doctrines and liturgies of state-sanctioned churches. These state-church persecutions ultimately led Roger Williams to found the colony of Rhode Island and John Leland to convince James Madison that religious liberty must be the first in our Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

After the acceptance of our Bill of Rights, America’s churches enjoyed complete independent status, being answerable only to their Creator and their own conscience. All of that changed in 1954 when then-Senator Lyndon Johnson (D-Texas) successfully introduced the Johnson Amendment to the code of the Internal Revenue Service: the now-infamous 501c3 nonprofit organization status for churches. This designation made churches a creature of the state–answerable to the direct dictates of government–even regarding speech and activity.

By accepting 501c3 status, America’s churches have effectively become state-licensed or state-sanctioned organizations. In much the same way that churches in Communist China risk vindictive state sanctions for not complying to state control, so, too, churches in the United States risk vindictive IRS sanctions for not complying to state control.

What is more than interesting is the comparison between the churches in China and the churches in America. In China, Christianity is growing exponentially. In fact, there are now more Christians in China than there are communists. Please carefully read this report:

“Though the Chinese Communist Party is the largest explicitly atheist organization in the world, with 85 million official members, it is now overshadowed by an estimated 100 million Christians in China. It is no wonder Beijing is nervous and authorities are cracking down on Christian groups.

“Christianity is growing so fast in China that some predict that it will be the most Christian nation in the world in only another 15 years. By far, the greatest growth is coming outside the official state-sanctioned churches, which are rightly considered subservient to the Communist Party. Numbers are increasing, rather, in unofficial Protestant ‘house churches’ and in the underground Catholic church.”

See the report here:

Did you get that? Let me repeat it: “By far, the greatest growth is coming OUTSIDE [emphasis added] the official state-sanctioned churches, which are rightly considered subservient to the Communist Party [state]. Numbers are increasing, rather, in UNOFFICIAL [emphasis added] Protestant ‘house churches’ and in the UNDERGROUND [emphasis added] Catholic church.”

But what do we see happening in the United States? Christianity is waning BIG TIME. On the whole, churches are in steep decline. For the most part, only the entertainment-oriented, circus variety churches are growing. The numbers of Americans professing Christianity in general and expressing loyalty to a specific church or denomination are at historic lows. And the trend for 2015 and beyond is more of the same.

So, what is the difference? Why is Christianity proliferating in China and declining in America? China has an openly atheistic government. For all intents and purposes, the government in Washington, D.C., is equally atheistic. The federal government in D.C. is responsible for virtually every single attack against the expression of the Christian faith at every level of society. It is the federal government that attacks Christian expression in our local public schools. It is the federal government that attacks Christian expression in local governing bodies. It is the federal government that has all but permanently dismantled the expression of Christianity throughout our country’s public institutions. But so does the government in Beijing. Yet, in China, the Church is mushrooming, while in America, the Church is dying. What’s the difference?

The difference is, in China, Christians understand that to be loyal to Christ, they MUST NOT SUBMIT to state-sanction or license. And they are willing to defy Beijing authorities in order to be faithful to that conviction. However, in America, pastors and churches insist that they MUST SUBMIT to state control–even using Romans 13 to justify this preposterous position. Bottom line: state-sanctioned churches in America are withering, while non-state-sanctioned churches in China are mushrooming. There is no doubt that the trend in both countries will continue into and beyond 2015.

Until America’s pastors and churches “see the light” and consciously withdraw themselves from Caesar’s grasp (at whatever cost), Christianity in this country will continue to evaporate.

Toward the end of 2014, I launched the Liberty Church Project, in which I am traveling the country helping pastors and churches withdraw from the tentacles of 501c3 government sanction and/or helping people start brand new non-501c3 churches and fellowships. So far, we are batting a perfect five-for-five. And I believe that the momentum of establishing “unofficial” or “underground” churches in this country has only begun.

I am absolutely convinced that very soon every pastor and Christian in America will have to make the conscious decision to either deny Christ and remain part of the apostate government-church or be faithful to Christ and become part of the “unofficial” or “underground” church–just as Christians have had to do in China. One will not be able to do both.

I also believe that what we are seeing happening via the Liberty Church Project is just the beginning raindrops of what will one day be a deluge. I am quite confident that I will be very busy in 2015 as we continue to help believers establish non-501c3 churches and fellowships. To learn more about the Liberty Church Project, go here:

Let me say it plainly: the ONLY way America’s Christians and churches are going to experience a true spiritual renewal is to withdraw themselves from state sanction. For all intents and purposes, the establishment Church in America is DEAD. It has forgotten the lessons of history. It would rather please Caesar; it relishes the endorsement of Caesar. By action, our church leaders are saying the same thing Jewish leaders said at the time of Christ: “We have no king but Caesar.”

So, while I am not a prognosticator or a prophet, I can easily see the trends listed above. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that these trends will continue into 2015 and beyond.

The Future “Former” USA: Just Another Former Soviet Union?

I just finished reading an by a guy who had accurately predicted the fall of the former USSR two whole years before it actually happened.  However, nobody back then even believed him.  “The USSR has over-extended itself and is going to collapse!” he kept telling people.  But everyone who heard him just laughed.

Well.  At this point in time, the USA has totally over-extended itself too.  Like some addicted shopaholic set loose with questionable plastic at a shopping mall, the USA has over-charged every single one of its credit cards by at least eleven trillion dollars in order to buy its very favorite consumer product — endless war.  And, in addition, the USA has also spent another ungodly number of trillions on making its uber-rich 1% even richer, and keeping its corrupt bankers happy as clams.

And so, like the former USSR back in 1991, now the USA also has nowhere to go but down either — due to its total over-extension.  And you don’t even have to be a genius to do the math here.  Anyone with a calculator app. on their iPhone can figure this one out.  A couple hundred trillion $$$$ subtracted from zero equals what?  Total collapse.  This is pretty much a given at the rate that our “fearless leaders” on Wall Street and War Street are currently spreading their phony credit-card moolah around.

But what I really want to talk about here is what will actually happen to America (and to you and me) when our country suddenly does become referred to as “The Former USA”.   To know that, all we have to do is look at a model already set before us — what had happened to the Former USSR after it had over-extended itself.

First, you gotta remember that ten percent of all citizens of the Soviet Union actually DIED after the USSR collapsed.  Ten percent!  One in ten.  The old people went first.  And the working poor.  And the kids.  That would be like having about 30 million Americans dead as a doornail because Wall Street and War Street didn’t behave themselves.

Second, a huge number of Soviet public buildings throughout Europe and Asia suddenly became “privatized” and were happily handed over to the lowest bidders — the oligarchs.  But then that is happening here in the USA already.  Let’s take my own downtown Berkeley post office for instance.  It’s being practically given away to oligarchs even as we speak.  And American schools, national parks, mineral-rich lands, public buildings and all kinds of other property that used to be held in the common interest is now not being held in the common interest any more.  And when the USA becomes “Former,” this process will be speeded up even faster.  Say goodbye to Yellowstone, the Statue of Liberty and your local city hall.

Third, after the former Soviet Union fell, people’s teeth began to rot for lack of dental care there.  Suddenly there were no affordable doctors and dentists in Russia, a trend that has also gotten a big head-start here in the soon-to-be Former USA already.  If you don’t take care of your citizens, this is what you get.  Sick people and rotten teeth.

Fourth?  Unemployment in Russia.  Of course we already have a head-start on that one as well.  But it will be getting worse.  Much worse.

Fifth, the USSR’s status as a world super-power suddenly collapsed as its wounded warriors painfully wound their way back home from places like Afghanistan.  The same will happen in the former USA too.

Sixth:  Before its collapse, the USSR used to be a “communist” state — in the sense that only a few people at the very top made all the decisions.  And now, thanks to Citizens United, the USA has already gotten that way too.  We are no longer a democracy either.  So in that respect too we have already started to become like the Soviets right before their big fall.  And it will get even worse here after the fall of the USA as well.  Our current “deep state” shadow governments will be coming out of the shadows and cesspools for sure.  Can you say “President-for-Life Cheney,” boys and girls?

But actually, back during the 1950s, it was America that had been the true communist state — after WW II had reshuffled the cards, dealt new hands to working folks, given our middle class a leg up and redistributed our wealth more equally by taking it from the uber-rich and giving it to the middle class.  But Reagan’s tricky re-stacking of the deck in favor of Wall Street, and Bush’s ace-up-his-sleeve gifts to War Street and sleight-of-hand tax redistribution act of 2003 soon changed all that — and our wealth was then redistributed upwards to the uber-rich once again, ending “communism” in America forever.  No, they don’t call it “capitalism” without reason.  The uber-rich now own all the “capital”.  We don’t.

In order to return to America’s former “communistic” economic glory of the 1950s, three things need to happen.  We need to go back to giving America’s middle and working classes their former leg-up tax breaks — instead of only giving a huge tax leg-up to our 1% “Soviet Commissars” only.  And we need to stop stacking the deck in favor of Wall Street’s insane profit margins.  And we need to shut down War Street completely.  Otherwise, after the USA falls too, we also are gonna have oligarchs coming out our ears — even more than they are now.

Seventh, the USSR ruble collapsed back then — just like the dollar is now collapsing already.  It’s gonna be rather tough around here when the US dollar also becomes worth diddly-squat.

Eighth, consider that wise Biblical saying, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”.  And then become very afraid.  From Hiroshima, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Africa and Latin America to the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, etc., the first thing that the USA and/or its surrogates do when they attack a country is to bomb its civilian population, take out the water supply, power plants and hospitals, and/or install a ruthless dictator.  Let us just hope that the former USA will not fall into a position to be vulnerable to retaliation, that our former victims will show mercy and that “Do unto others…” will not apply to us like it did to the USSR.

And, ninth, the huge Soviet Union began to break up into smaller states and groups as it fell.  That will definitely happen here too.  Can’t exactly say that I will miss any of the Red States when they leave — but they will sorely miss not being part of the new American Blue States, their current life-line to prosperity.  I can tell you that right now.

All the signs of the eminent collapse of the USA are already here right now, just like they were for the USSR back before 1991.  Go ahead and laugh if you will, but hard times really are coming here too.  The Former USA is practically upon us.  We have already over-extended ourselves too deeply to rationally expect any other result.  Sigh.

Let us just hope that America somehow manages to find another chess master like Putin to lead us After the Fall, and doesn’t get stuck with another drunk like Yeltsin!

Are You Mad Yet?

In the poem, “The Masque of Pandora,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow has Prometheus saying, “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.” Accordingly, the would-be gods in the GOP leadership in Washington, D.C., must have rank-and-file Republicans slated for destruction, because they are MAD–and for good reason.

In an open letter, long-time Republican activist, Mike Scruggs, wrote, “I have been a Republican County Chairman in both North Carolina and Alabama. I have served countless hard-working hours as a volunteer for Republican candidates.  I am therefore deeply grieved that the Republican Party leadership in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate has seen fit to betray the principles and values of a substantial majority of Republican voters, and the majority of the American people. This last week witnessed both the House and Senate passing budget bills that essentially gave Obama’s unlawful amnesty for five million illegal immigrant workers an effective pass.

“The majorities that passed this essentially special interest budget may not be bothered by conscience, but American workers and taxpayers will suffer, lawlessness will abound, and public safety and national security undermined.  Our liberty and freedoms are being traded for gold in the form of huge special interest political campaign donations.

“What kind of party leadership do we have, when they refuse to defend the Constitution, and thus allow President Obama to get away with an unlawful amnesty for at least five million illegal immigrant workers?  

What kind of party leadership do we have, when they ignore the pain of over 18 million Americans who want a full time job and cannot find one? Yet GOP leaders continue to favor big business special interests that profit by flooding the labor market with foreign cheap labor, both legal and illegal. The wages of American workers have been stagnant for nearly 15 years, held down by an excess supply of foreign labor. The GOP leadership message to American workers is that the Republican Party is not concerned with them. Their message to grassroots conservatives is the same. The users of cheap foreign labor profit $437 billion a year, mostly at the expense of American workers–$402 billion annually, nearly $2,800 per year each for 147 million workers.

“According to the Heritage Foundation, the average unlawful immigrant household receives $14,387 more in government services and benefits paid than taxes paid. This will almost double with amnesty, because of more benefits. This is essentially a taxpayer subsidy to businesses using illegal immigrant labor. How long will we put up with this outrage for the benefit of big political donors. What kind of GOP leadership wants more of these injustices to American workers and taxpayers?

“Speaker of the House John Boehner did not give a pass to Obama’s amnesty and plans to double legal immigrant workers because he feared being blamed for a government shutdown. He wants amnesty so that establishment Republicans can continue to receive huge donations from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other cheap labor lobbying associations.”

Hear! Hear, Mike!

In addition, the Tea Party Patriots released a summary of the “Cromnibus” Bill just passed. It states:

{{*The bill fully funds President Obama’s illegal executive amnesty;

*The bill contains $1.1 trillion dollars in spending;

*The bill gives every federal employee a raise. That means that even the IRS employees who colluded to target tea party conservatives will receive a raise;

*The bill contains numerous crony deals, built-in bailouts, and payoffs to Wall Street, and large corporations;

*The bill continues to fund Obamacare.

|Tea Party Patriots Press Release

}}

Just as I predicted in this column, the Republican Party in Washington, D.C., has not only done NOTHING to stop Obamacare and Amnesty, it has SOLIDIFIED both into law via legislative action.

In the House of Representatives, only seventeen Republican congressmen were needed to keep the bill from going to the floor for a vote. Guess how many voted “Nay”? SIXTEEN! Had only one more Republican voted “Nay”, the bill would have been dead.

Here is the list of your sixteen Republican heroes who voted “Nay,” in the U.S. House:

Reps. Justin Amash (Mich.), Michele Bachmann (Minn.), Dave Brat (Va.), Mo Brooks (Ala.), Paul Broun (Ga.), Louie Gohmert (Texas), Paul Gosar (Ariz.), Tim Huelskamp (Kan.), Walter Jones (N.C.), Jim Jordan (Ohio), Steve King (Iowa), Raúl Labrador (Idaho), Thomas Massie (Ky.), Bill Posey (Fla.), Matt Salmon (Ariz.) and Steve Stockman (Texas).

See The Hill report here:

No, my fellow Montanans, our illustrious “conservative” House member (and now U.S. Senator-elect), Steve Daines, is not on the list. He voted “Yea” to bring the bill to the floor for a vote and then voted “Nay” on final passage. Typical political flip-flopping to pass big-government spending bills while claiming to oppose them. GAG!

Had Steve Daines voted “Nay” on the first vote, the bill would have never made it to final passage. The excuse he (and the rest of the Republican congressmen who voted for the bill) will use is that they didn’t want to risk a government “shutdown.” Horse Manure! Everyone on the planet knew this bill would fund Obamacare and Amnesty. House leaders could have taken the funding for Obamacare, and especially Amnesty, out of the bill before bringing it to members for a vote had they wanted to. But the truth is, John Boehner and the rest of the GOP leadership want Amnesty as much as Barack Obama and Harry Reid do. And congressmen like Steve Daines want to stay in the good graces of establishment leaders AND their conservative constituents back home. Hence, he played the Potomac Shuffle and voted FOR the bill when his vote could have killed it, then voted AGAINST the bill when he knew his “Nay” vote meant nothing.

No matter what you hear, folks, the ONLY Republican House members who truly voted AGAINST the Obamacare/Amnesty funding bill are the sixteen champions listed above.

ARE YOU MAD YET?

When will the U.S. electorate awaken to the fact that we do not have two parties in Washington, D.C.? And when will conservative Republicans awaken to the fact that their party in D.C. does NOT represent them–and has no intentions of representing them?

At the leadership level, both Democrats and Republicans represent big-money, globalist agendas. Neither party cares a hoot in hades about their constituents–much less liberty and constitutional government.

The toll that amnesty is going to take upon this republic will be horrific. No, more than that, it will forever change the future of our country. And it won’t take long.

Yes, I’m talking about the financial burden that will be placed on the backs of taxpayers at every level of government. I’m talking about escalating crime rates. I’m talking about federally-mandated expulsion of America’s historic Christian culture. I’m talking about rising unemployment for American citizens–especially African Americans. I’m talking about an exponential growth in the numbers of people who are increasingly dependent upon the government for subsistence. In fact, all of the above is ALREADY taking place at a rapid rate.

That African Americans will be among the hardest hit by the invasion of illegals is the dirty little secret that Democrat Party leaders are NOT telling their constituents. As the percentage of Hispanics mushrooms–due to Washington, D.C.’s amnesty provisions–the percentage of African Americans will shrink just as fast. Most experts agree that by 2040, Hispanics will be the majority race in this country. Thanks to the legalization of illegal immigration facilitated by both Democrats and Republicans in D.C., this is now inevitable. It may happen sooner.

But there is one more toll that the acceptance of illegal immigration will exact on this country: the breakup of the Continental United States. This is the toll hardly anyone wants to think about, much less talk about. But, it, too, is inevitable.

Virtually everyone south of the border (and in most American university classrooms) believes that the southwestern United States rightfully belongs to Mexico. Accordingly, the animosity and hatred against America runs very, very deep. If anyone truly believes that the influx of untold millions of Hispanics will NOT eventually lead to attempted secession, they are living in a dream world.

Can one imagine what will happen in the border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, when the Hispanic population outnumbers all others by significant percentages? For that matter, all of the southern states, including states as far north as Tennessee, are going to be in the crosshairs of La Raza-type “Reconquista.” For example, the State of Tennessee already is one of the southern states that is a favorite landing place for illegals. Just imagine how amnesty will affect states such as Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida?

Count on it: “The-Southern-United-States-Belongs-To-Us” crowd will demand and implement some sort of secession as quickly as possible. I have been saying for years that some sort of secession within the United States is inevitable.  The far-left hate group, the SPLC, and other big-government control freaks, love to claim that it is “right-wing Christian extremists” who are the ones pushing for secession. But, in the end, it will doubtless be the third-world recipients of U.S. amnesty that will be the catalyst.

One does not have to think real far off to imagine what would happen to the rest of the Continental United States should an Hispanic secession movement take shape in earnest. According to recent surveys, nearly one-fourth of the U.S. citizenry already think favorably of secession.

See this report:

And this report summarizes secession sentiments by regions:

In any kind of breakup, big-government toadies in Washington, D.C., (from BOTH major parties) would doubtless attempt to suspend the Constitution and Bill of Rights (especially the Second Amendment) in much the same way Abraham Lincoln did during the War Between the States. And, for the life of me, I cannot imagine the Rocky Mountain States (for one region) submitting to such tyranny. Let your own imagination run wild from there.

Do Big-Government toadies such as John Boehner and Harry Reid envision a Hispanic secession movement as the result of amnesty? Probably not. I doubt seriously they have that much foresight. Reid and his fellow Democrats are thinking about votes, while Boehner and his fellow Chamber of Commerce Republicans are thinking about cheap labor. And, of course, all of them are thinking about pleasing their big-money masters. However, that blanket amnesty will eventually lead to a Hispanic secession movement is inevitable. Mark my words: it is inevitable. Whether those of us over fifty live to see it is irrelevant; it is inevitable.

Remember the words of Prometheus, “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.” ARE YOU MAD YET?

Instead of waiting for an ugly Hispanic-driven secession movement, liberty-lovers within the GOP should get mad enough NOW and secede from the Republican Party, and join the millions of independents who got mad and left years ago. Even GOP-apologist Mark Levin said recently he is “inches” away from leaving the GOP.

The two-party duopoly is strangling the life and liberty out of America. If this latest betrayal by Republicans is not enough to make freedom-loving Americans realize that the “gods” in D.C., are targeting them for destruction, I doubt anything will.

SO, ARE YOU MAD YET?

American Exceptionalism and American Torture

In 1964, the Brazilian military, in a US-designed coup, overthrew a liberal (not more to the left than that) government and proceeded to rule with an iron fist for the next 21 years. In 1979 the military regime passed an amnesty law blocking the prosecution of its members for torture and other crimes. The amnesty still holds.

That’s how they handle such matters in what used to be called The Third World. In the First World, however, they have no need for such legal niceties. In the United States, military torturers and their political godfathers are granted amnesty automatically, simply for being American, solely for belonging to the “Good Guys Club”.

So now, with the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, we have further depressing revelations about US foreign policy. But do Americans and the world need yet another reminder that the United States is a leading practitioner of torture? Yes. The message can not be broadcast too often because the indoctrination of the American people and Americophiles all around the world is so deeply embedded that it takes repeated shocks to the system to dislodge it. No one does brainwashing like the good ol’ Yankee inventors of advertising and public relations. And there is always a new generation just coming of age with stars (and stripes) in their eyes.

The public also has to be reminded yet again that – contrary to what most of the media and Mr. Obama would have us all believe – the president has never actually banned torture per se, despite saying recently that he had “unequivocally banned torture” after taking office.

Shortly after Obama’s first inauguration, both he and Leon Panetta, the new Director of the CIA, explicitly stated that “rendition” was not being ended. As the Los Angeles Times reported at the time: “Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.”

The English translation of “cooperate” is “torture”. Rendition is simply outsourcing torture. There was no other reason to take prisoners to Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, Somalia, Kosovo, or the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, amongst other torture centers employed by the United States. Kosovo and Diego Garcia – both of which house large and very secretive American military bases – if not some of the other locations, may well still be open for torture business, as is the Guantánamo Base in Cuba.

Moreover, the key Executive Order referred to, number 13491, issued January 22, 2009, “Ensuring Lawful Interrogations”, leaves a major loophole. It states repeatedly that humane treatment, including the absence of torture, is applicable only to prisoners detained in an “armed conflict”. Thus, torture by Americans outside an environment of “armed conflict” is not explicitly prohibited. But what about torture within an environment of “counter-terrorism”?

The Executive Order required the CIA to use only the interrogation methods outlined in a revised Army Field Manual. However, using the Army Field Manual as a guide to prisoner treatment and interrogation still allows solitary confinement, perceptual or sensory deprivation, sensory overload, sleep deprivation, the induction of fear and hopelessness, mind-altering drugs, environmental manipulation such as temperature and noise, and stress positions, amongst other charming examples of American Exceptionalism.

After Panetta was questioned by a Senate panel, the New York Times wrote that he had “left open the possibility that the agency could seek permission to use interrogation methods more aggressive than the limited menu that President Obama authorized under new rules … Mr. Panetta also said the agency would continue the Bush administration practice of ‘rendition’ … But he said the agency would refuse to deliver a suspect into the hands of a country known for torture or other actions ‘that violate our human values’.”

The last sentence is of course childishly absurd. The countries chosen to receive rendition prisoners were chosen precisely and solely because they were willing and able to torture them.

Four months after Obama and Panetta took office, the New York Times could report that renditions had reached new heights.

The present news reports indicate that Washington’s obsession with torture stems from 9/11, to prevent a repetition. The president speaks of “the fearful excesses of the post-9/11 era”. There’s something to that idea, but not a great deal. Torture in America is actually as old as the country. What government has been intimately involved with that horror more than the United States? Teaching it, supplying the manuals, supplying the equipment, creation of international torture centers, kidnaping people to these places, solitary confinement, forced feeding, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Chicago … Lord forgive us!

In 2011, Brazil instituted a National Truth Commission to officially investigate the crimes of the military government, which came to an end in 1985. But Mr. Obama has in fact rejected calls for a truth commission concerning CIA torture. On June 17 of this year, however, when Vice President Joseph Biden was in Brazil, he gave the Truth Commission 43 State Department cables and reports concerning the Brazilian military regime, including one entitled “Widespread Arrests and Psychophysical Interrogation of Suspected Subversives.”

Thus it is that once again the United States of America will not be subjected to any accountability for having broken US laws, international laws, and the fundamental laws of human decency. Obama can expect the same kindness from his successor as he has extended to George W.

“One of the strengths that makes America exceptional is our willingness to openly confront our past, face our imperfections, make changes and do better.” – Barack Obama, written statement issued moments after the Senate report was made public.

And if that pile of hypocrisy is not big enough or smelly enough, try adding to it Bidens’ remark re his visit to Brazil: “I hope that in taking steps to come to grips with our past we can find a way to focus on the immense promise of the future.”

If the torturers of the Bush and Obama administrations are not held accountable in the United States they must be pursued internationally under the principles of universal jurisdiction.

In 1984, an historic step was taken by the United Nations with the drafting of the “Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” (came into force in 1987, ratified by the United States in 1994). Article 2, section 2 of the Convention states: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

Such marvelously clear, unequivocal, and principled language, to set a single standard for a world that makes it increasingly difficult for one to feel proud of humanity. We cannot slide back. If today it’s deemed acceptable to torture the person who supposedly has the vital “ticking-bomb” information needed to save lives, tomorrow it will be acceptable to torture him to learn the identities of his alleged co-conspirators. Would we allow slavery to resume for just a short while to serve some “national emergency” or some other “higher purpose”?

If you open the window of torture, even just a crack, the cold air of the Dark Ages will fill the whole room.

Cuba … at long, long last … maybe …

Hopefully, it’s what it appears to be. Cuba will now be treated by the United States as a country worthy of at least as much respect as Washington offers to its highly oppressive, murdering, torturing allies in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Honduras, Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

It’s a tough decision to normalize relations with a country whose police force murders its own innocent civilians on almost a daily basis, and even more abroad, but Cuba needs to do it. Maybe the Cubans can civilize the Americans a bit.

Let’s hope that America’s terrible economic embargo against the island will go the way of the dinosaurs, and Cuba will be able to demonstrate more than ever what a rational, democratic, socialist society can create. But they must not open the economy for the Yankee blood-suckers to play with as they have all over the world.

And I’ll be able to go to Cuba not as a thief in the night covering my tracks and risking a huge fine.

But with the Republicans taking over Congress next month, all of this may be just a pipe dream.

Barack Obama could have done this six years ago when he took office; or five years ago when American Alan Gross was first arrested and imprisoned in Cuba. It would have been even easier back then, with Obama’s popularity at its height and Congress not as captured by the Know-Nothings as now.

So, Cuba outlasted all the punishment, all the lies, all the insults, all the deprivations, all the murderous sabotage, all the assassination attempts against Fidel, all the policies to isolate the country. But for many years now, it’s the United States that has been isolated in the Western Hemisphere.

Reason Number 13,336 why capitalism will be the death of us.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria – the “superbugs” – if left unchecked, could result in 10 million deaths a year by 2050. New drugs to fight the superbugs are desperately needed. But a panel advising President Obama warned in September that “there isn’t a sufficiently robust pipeline of new drugs to replace the ones rendered ineffective by antibiotic resistance.”

The problem, it appears, is that “Antibiotics generally provide low returns on investment, so they are not a highly attractive area for research and development.”

Aha! “Low returns on investment”! What could be simpler to understand? Is it not a concept worth killing and dying for? Just as millions of Americans died in the 20th century so corporations could optimize profits by not protecting the public from tobacco, lead, and asbestos.

Corporations are programmed to optimize profits without regard for the society in which they operate, in much the same way that cancer cells are programmed to proliferate without regard for the health of their host.

Happy New Year. Here’s what you have to look forward to in 2015.

• January 25: 467 people reported missing from a university in Mexico. US State Department blames Russia.
• February 1: Military junta overthrows President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Washington decries the loss of democracy.
• February 2: US recognizes the new Venezuelan military junta, offers it 50 jet fighters and tanks.
• February 3: Revolution breaks out in Venezuela endangering the military junta; 40,000 American marines land in Caracas to quell the uprising.
• February 16: White police officer in Chicago fatally shoots a 6-year old black boy holding a toy gun.
• March 6: Congress passes a new law which states that to become president of the United States a person must have the surname Bush or Clinton.
• April 30: The Department of Homeland Security announces plan to record the DNA at birth of every child born in the United States.
• May 19: The Supreme Court rules that police may search anyone if they have reasonable grounds for believing that the person has pockets.
• May 27: The Transportation Security Administration declares that all airline passengers must strip completely nude at check-in and remain thus until arriving at their destination.
• June 6: White police officer in Oklahoma City tasers a 7-month-old black child, claiming the child was holding a gun; the gun turns out to be a rattle.
• July 19: Two subway trains collide in Manhattan. The United States demands that Moscow explain why there was a Russian citizen in each of the trains.
• September 5: The Democratic Party changes its name to the Republican Lite Party, and announces the opening of a joint bank account with the Republican Party so that corporate lobbyists need make out only one check.
• September 12: White police officer in Alabama shoots black newborn, confusing the umbilical cord for a noose.
• November 16: President Obama announces that Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, North Korea, Sudan, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba all possess weapons of mass destruction; have close ties to the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and the Taliban; are aiding pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine; were involved in 9-11; played a role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the attack on Pearl Harbor; are an imminent threat to the United States and all that is decent and holy; and are all “really bad guys”, who even (choke, gasp) use torture!
• November 21: The United States invades Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, North Korea, Sudan, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba.
• December 10: Barack Obama is awarded his second Nobel Peace Prize
• December 11: To celebrate his new peace prize, Obama sends out drones to assassinate wrong-thinking individuals in Somalia, Afghanistan and Yemen.
• December 13: Members of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi parties, which hold several high positions in the US-supported government, goose-step through the center of Kiev in full German Storm Trooper uniforms, carrying giant swastika flags, shouting “Heil Hitler”, and singing the Horst Wessel song. Not a word of this appears in any American mainstream media.
• December 15: US Secretary of State warns Russia to stop meddling in Ukraine, accusing Moscow of wanting to re-create the Soviet Union.
• December 16: White police officer shoots a black 98-year-old man sitting in a wheel chair, claiming the man pointed a rifle at him. The rifle turns out to be a cane.
• December 28: The Washington Redskins football team finish their season in last place. The White House blames Vladimir Putin.

Notes

1. Associated Press, December 11, 2014
2. New York Times, December 11, 2014
3. Los Angeles Times, February 1, 2009
4. New York Times, February 6, 2009
5. New York Times, May 24, 2009
6. Washington Post, December 11, 2014
7. National Security Archive’s Brazil Documentation Project
8. Washington Post, December 10, 2014
9. See note 7
10. Washington Post, December 13, 2014

Will Falling Oil Prices Crash The Markets?

Shale Leads The Way…

Crude oil prices dipped lower on Wednesday pushing down yields on US Treasuries and sending stocks down sharply. The 30-year UST slipped to a Depression era 2.83 percent while all three major US indices plunged into the red. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) led the retreat losing a hefty 268 points before the session ended. The proximate cause of Wednesday’s bloodbath was news that OPEC had reduced its estimate of how much oil it would need to produce in 2015 to meet weakening global demand. According to USA Today:

“OPEC lowered its projection for 2015 production to 28.9 million barrels a day, or about 300,000 fewer than previously forecast, and a 12-year low…. That’s about 1.15 million barrels a day less than the cartel pumped last month, when OPEC left unchanged its 30 million barrel daily production quota…

The steep decline in crude price raises fears that small exploration and production companies could go out of business if the prices fall too low. And that, in turn, could cause turmoil among those who are lending to them: Junk-bond purchasers and smaller banks.” (USA Today)

Lower oil prices do not necessarily boost consumption or strengthen growth. Quite the contrary. Weaker demand is a sign that deflationary pressures are building and stagnation is becoming more entrenched. Also, the 42 percent price-drop in benchmark U.S. crude since its peak in June, is pushing highly-leveraged energy companies closer to the brink. If these companies cannot roll over their debts, (due to the lower prices) then many will default which will negatively impact the broader market. Here’s a brief summary from analyst Wolf Richter:

“The price of oil has plunged …and junk bonds in the US energy sector are getting hammered, after a phenomenal boom that peaked this year. Energy companies sold $50 billion in junk bonds through October, 14% of all junk bonds issued! But junk-rated energy companies trying to raise new money to service old debt or to fund costly fracking or off-shore drilling operations are suddenly hitting resistance.

And the erstwhile booming leveraged loans, the ugly sisters of junk bonds, are causing the Fed to have conniptions. Even Fed Chair Yellen singled them out because they involve banks and represent risks to the financial system. Regulators are investigating them and are trying to curtail them through “macroprudential” means, such as cracking down on banks, rather than through monetary means, such as raising rates. And what the Fed has been worrying about is already happening in the energy sector: leveraged loans are getting mauled. And it’s just the beginning…

“If oil can stabilize, the scope for contagion is limited,” Edward Marrinan, macro credit strategist at RBS Securities, told Bloomberg. “But if we see a further fall in prices, there will have to be a reaction in the broader market as problems will spill out and more segments of the high-yield space will feel the pain.”…Unless a miracle happens that will goose the price of oil pronto, there will be defaults, and they will reverberate beyond the oil patch.” (Oil and Gas Bloodbath Spreads to Junk Bonds, Leveraged Loans. Defaults Next, Wolf Ricter, Wolf Street)

The Fed’s low rates and QE pushed down yields on corporate debt as investors gorged on junk thinking the Fed “had their back”. That made it easier for fly-by-night energy companies to borrow tons of money at historic low rates even though their business model might have been pretty shaky. Now that oil is cratering, investors are getting skittish which has pushed up rates making it harder for companies to refinance their debtload. That means a number of these companies going to go bust, which will create losses for the investors and pension funds that bought their debt in the form of financially-engineered products. The question is, is there enough of this financially-engineered gunk piled up on bank balance sheets to start the dominoes tumbling through the system like they did in 2008?

That question was partially answered on Wednesday following OPEC’s dismal forecast which roiled stocks and send yields on risk-free US Treasuries into a nosedive. Investors ditched their stocks in a mad dash for the exits thinking that the worst is yet to come. USTs provide a haven for nervous investors looking for a safe place to hunker down while the storm passes.

Economist Jack Rasmus has an excellent piece at Counterpunch which explains why investors are so jittery. Here’s a clip from his article titled “The Economic Consequences of Global Oil Deflation”:

“Oil deflation may lead to widespread bankruptcies and defaults for various non-financial companies, which will in turn precipitate financial instability events in banks tied to those companies. The collapse of financial assets associated with oil could also have a further ‘chain effect’ on other forms of financial assets, thus spreading the financial instability to other credit markets.” (The Economic Consequences of Global Oil Deflation, Jack Rasmus, CounterPunch)

Falling oil prices typically drag other commodities prices down with them. This, in turn, hurts emerging markets that depend heavily on the sale of raw materials. Already these fragile economies are showing signs of stress from rising inflation and capital flight. In a country like Japan, however, one might think the effect would be positive since the lower yen has made imported oil more expensive. But that’s not the case. Falling oil prices increase deflationary pressures forcing the Bank of Japan to implement more extreme measures to reverse the trend and try to stimulate growth. What new and destabilizing policy will Japan’s Central Bank employ in its effort to dig its way out of recession? And the same question can be asked of Europe too, which has already endured three bouts of recession in the last five years. Here’s Rasmus again on oil deflation and global financial instability:

“Oil is not only a physical commodity bought, sold and traded on global markets; it has also become an important financial asset since the USA and the world began liberalized trading of oil commodity futures…

Just as declines in oil spills over to declines of other physical commodities…price deflation can also ‘spill over’ to other financial assets, causing their decline as well, in a ‘chain like’ effect.

That chain like effect is not dissimilar to what happened with the housing crash in 2006-08. At that time the deep contraction in the global housing sector ( a physical asset) not only ‘spilled over’ to other sectors of the real economy, but to mortgage bonds…and derivatives based upon those bonds, also crashed. The effect was to ‘spill over’ to other forms of financial assets that set off a chain reaction of financial asset deflation.

The same ‘financial asset chain effect’ could arise if oil prices continued to decline below USD$60 a barrel. That would represent a nearly 50 percent deflation in oil prices that could potentially set in motion a more generalized global financial instability event, possibly associated with a collapse of the corporate junk bond market in the USA that has fueled much of USA shale production.” (CounterPunch)

This is precisely the scenario we think will unfold in the months ahead. What Rasmus is talking about is “contagion”, the lethal spill-over from one asset class to another due to deteriorating conditions in the financial markets and too much leverage. When debts can no longer be serviced, defaults follow sucking liquidity from the system which leads to a sudden (and excruciating) repricing event. Rasmus believes that a sharp cutback in Shale gas and oil production could ignite a crash in junk bonds that will pave the way for more bank closures. Here’s what he says:

“The shake out in Shale that is coming will not occur smoothly. It will mean widespread business defaults in the sector. And since much of the drilling has been financed with risky high yield corporate ‘junk’ bonds, the shale shake out could translate into a financial crash of the US corporate junk bond market, which is now very over-extended, leading to regional bank busts in turn.” (CP)

The financial markets are a big bubble just waiting to burst. If Shale doesn’t do the trick, then something else will. It’s just a matter of time.

Rasmus also believes that the current oil-glut is politically motivated. Washington’s powerbrokers persuaded the Saudis to flood the market with petroleum to push down prices and crush oil-dependent Moscow. The US wants a weak and divided Russia that will comply with US plans to increase its military bases in Central Asia and allow NATO to be deployed to its western borders. Here’s Rasmus again:

“Saudi Arabia and its neocon friends in the USA are targeting both Iran and Russia with their new policy of driving down the price of oil. The impact of oil deflation is already severely affecting the Russian and Iranian economies. In other words, this policy of promoting global oil price deflation finds favor with significant political interests in the USA, who want to generate a deeper disruption of Russian and Iranian economies for reasons of global political objectives. It will not be the first time that oil is used as a global political weapon, nor the last.” (CP)

Washington’s strategy is seriously risky. There’s a good chance the plan could backfire and send stocks into freefall wiping out trillions in a flash. Then all the Fed’s work would amount to nothing.

Karma’s a bitch.

It’s Not Over

That America is spiraling on a collision course with calamity seems certain. We seem to be ignoring virtually all of the lessons of history, and, well, you know what one fellow said about the folly of doing that. I join the consensus of patriots and freedom-lovers throughout the country who believe America’s future is filled with all sorts of stormy weather. As a matter of fact, the storms are all around us already.

For one thing, most of the people who should be helping us in the freedom fight cannot see past the end of their ballot. They think, as long as they elect “conservatives” to public office, all is well with the world. And since the GOP now controls both houses of Congress in Washington, D.C., the vast majority of our good brothers and sisters are already all tucked in for extended hibernation. They will reemerge from under their blankets about three months before the general election in 2016 and start screaming their support for whomever the neocon candidate happens to be. Why, they are already ignoring the fact that the precious Republicans they just elected to the House and Senate a few weeks ago are already signaling that they will to do NOTHING to thwart Barack Obama’s executive amnesty, which was the single most defining issue that helped give the Congress to the GOP. Republicans on Capitol Hill are famous for doing NOTHING to fulfill the promises they made on the campaign trail to their constituents. And Republican voters are famous for reelecting them anyway. Good grief! Republicans in South Carolina can’t even get rid of Lindsey Graham; and Republicans in Arizona can’t even get rid of John McCain.

Even the great Republican “conservative,” Mitt Romney, is now on record saying that the GOP should “swallow hard” and pass a PERMANENT amnesty bill. And even though he says he is not running for President in two years, he continues to be the frontrunner in most of the GOP preference polls. What does that tell you?

See the report here:

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann had the guts to tell the truth about what the GOP plans to do regarding Obama’s blatantly illegal executive amnesty decision. Bachmann told Breitbart.com that House Speaker John Boehner and the GOP leadership have “no intention” of resisting Obama’s executive amnesty. And she is right.

See the report here:

Staunch anti-amnesty senator, Jeff Sessions, said this past Tuesday that the GOP House was about to break their 2014 campaign promises to stop Obama’s executive amnesty. Also on Tuesday, Breitbart.com reported that House Speaker Boehner appears ready to deal with Democrats in order to cut a deal to SAVE amnesty. See the report here:

Oh, we can expect Boehner and Company to blow a lot of smoke and pass some frivolous and toothless legislation or resolutions that will be designed to placate a gullible and naïve Republican constituency, but that will do absolutely NOTHING to stop Obama’s amnesty. The only thing John Boehner and his ilk in Congress don’t like is Obama beat them to the punch by issuing executive amnesty to illegals. GOP leaders were hoping to pass legislative amnesty. So, now that Obama has beaten them to the punch, Boehner and his fellow establishment Republicans will quickly fall in line.

But what the U.S. House of Representatives ought to do (if they had any guts, which they don’t) is impeach this President for his executive amnesty.

Barack Obama’s executive amnesty is the worst kind of abuse of power and illegal conduct. The President of the United States is charged with “executing” the laws of our country. He has no lawful authority to set those laws aside with an Executive Order, which is exactly what he did. Compared to the crimes of Barack Obama, the impeachment charges against Bill Clinton look pale. Then again, compared to the Congress of 1994, this Congress looks pale.

The effect of our government’s refusal to respect our nation’s borders and laws over the next several years will be devastating consequences to the very fiber and fabric of this once great republic. The toll on State and local budgets, education quality, crime rates, employment opportunities, and quality of life will be incalculable. And this is just one menace that the miscreants in Washington, D.C., are inflicting upon us.

For much of the Twentieth Century (and now into the Twenty-First Century), Americans repeatedly choose to elect irresponsible, power-hungry, egotistical, self-centered sycophants (from both major parties) to public office. In addition, most of our churches are little more than glorified social clubs, entertainment centers, playgrounds, and government corporations. Our major media, in both the national and most local markets, are largely government propaganda outlets–as are most of our educational institutions. Furthermore, Christians and unbelievers, pastors of all stripes, Republicans and Democrats, and conservatives and liberals alike, are sitting back passively and indifferently as our country is being turned into a humongous Police State. Absent a significant shift in the hearts and minds of the American people, our liberties cannot long endure.

However, with all of the above said, I still refuse to join the ranks of Chicken Little.

For some reason, known only to God, we still have a semblance of freedom in this land. Granted, it’s only a semblance, but the curtain has not yet fully fallen on liberty. God knows we don’t deserve even the semblance of freedom that we still enjoy. Over the last sixty-plus years, we have been doing our best to throw America into the garbage heap of history. But, for some reason, the curtain has not yet fallen completely.

I would like to proffer five suggestions as to why the curtain has not yet fallen on liberty.

1. I believe God is still honoring the faith, courage, commitment, and sacrifice of America’s Founding Fathers. If God would bless Old Testament Israel for the sake of Abraham, Moses, and David, I believe He would bless the United States for the sake of George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Samuel Adams.

From the days of the Pilgrims through the days of the Patriots, several generations of men and women were willing to pay, many times, a horrific price for liberty. There is no doubt in my mind that these modern generations of Americans are still clipping the coupons from the extraordinary faith and courage of our forebears.

2. More than one hundred million American citizens possess over three hundred million firearms. And a good percentage of these people not only possess a gun; they possess the mental, emotional, and spiritual resolve to use those weapons against any government that would seek to take them. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the deeply-rooted heritage of the American people to keep and bear arms has been largely responsible for the preservation of whatever liberties we have left. Without a heavily-armed populace within this country, there is absolutely no doubt that America (and the rest of the “free world”) would have been totally enslaved decades ago.

3. The Internet. For all of the baloney, malarkey, and rubbish that can be found on the Internet, there is absolutely no question that the Internet has very successfully circumvented and shattered the monopoly of the government shills of the mainstream media. For all intents and purposes, the Internet is to America today what the “Committees of Correspondence” were to Colonial America.

Many are even predicting that the major television news networks will be out of business within the next couple or three decades–as will many of America’s newspapers. CNN was once a cable dynasty; now it is barely broadcasting. MSNBC’s ratings are so poor that its days are also numbered. And while FOX NEWS is currently enjoying the zenith of its existence, more people are getting their news and newsworthy information from the Internet than from all of the above combined. For all of its negatives, the Internet is a huge net positive for freedom.

4. There is still a host, and I mean a huge host, of liberty-loving people in this country who have not (and will never) accept the shackles of tyranny around their hearts. Big-Government toadies can impugn them all they want, but people such as Ron Paul, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Senator Mike Lee, Congressman Justin Amash, and millions like them, are keeping the torch of liberty burning.

The media would have us believe that old-fashioned, red-blooded freedomists have gone the way of the Brontosaurus. Or, that if any do yet exist, their numbers are so small as to be placed on the list of endangered species. Don’t you believe it!

In every occupation and vocation–including in our U.S. military and federal police agencies–in virtually every village and hamlet dotted across the fruited plain, and in every age bracket, reside innumerable freedom-loving Americans in whose hearts the love of liberty reigns. Before the chains of tyranny can be placed around a person’s neck, they must first be placed around their hearts. And the people I’m talking about will NEVER allow those chains to be placed around their hearts.

5. I believe the curtain has not completely dropped on liberty in this country because of the grace and sovereignty of our Creator-God. Thomas Jefferson (himself an unbeliever in the traditional sense) was exactly right when he said that liberty is the gift of God. That we still enjoy a semblance of freedom in this land indicates that His divine protection still rests upon us.

Those of us who have a Christian perspective realize that Holy Writ tells us: “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:13) This means that the deeply-seeded love of liberty in our hearts was planted there by our Creator. Our WILL for liberty is God-breathed. That fact, by itself, demonstrates that it’s not over.

There is a line from the 2012 version of the movie “Red Dawn” that I really love. A U.S. Marine fighting with the “Wolverines,” said, “I’m still breathing, so, it’s not over.” Indeed. You and are still breathing, folks, so, IT’S NOT OVER.

Russia’s Sergey Lavrov “Clash of Civilizations”

Since the Western Press has directed their wrath at Vladimir Putin as their latest villain, while his approval rate soars to 88% in Russia, most Americans are not familiar with Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov, much less know his public statements. Lavrov is a thoughtful contrast to the rigid and contemptuous foreign policy spokesmen’s from the Soviet era. It is well worth the time to investigate the actual sentiments that Lavrov has expressed throughout his diplomatic career. An insight of the mindset that underpins his thinking is revealed over two years ago, in the Voltaire Network, which published Sergey Lavrov’s account, On the Right Side of History and provided the following assessment.

“Western propaganda continues to distort Russia’s position in respect of the Syrian crisis. It accuses Moscow of supporting Damascus for profit motives, or even criminal solidarity. In this piece, Sergey Lavrov does not expound on his country’s strategic choices, but rather on the principles that underpin his diplomacy. He responds imperturbably to the inanities spouted by Western media, underscoring Moscow’s commitment to international law and its pledge to support people. Lavrov counterpoints the massive popular support enjoyed by President al-Assad and the illegitimacy of the sectarian armed opposition, sponsored from abroad.”

Quoting from the Lavrov test:

“Back in the 1990s in his book The Clash of Civilisations, Samuel Huntington outlined the trend of the increasing importance of identity based on civilisation and religion in the age of globalization; he also convincingly demonstrated the relative reduction in the abilities of the historic West to spread its influence. It would definitely be an overstatement if we tried to build a model of the modern international relations solely on the basis of such assumptions. However, today it is impossible to ignore such a trend. It is caused by an array of different factors, including more transparent national borders, the information revolution which has highlighted blatant socio-economic inequality, and the growing desire of people to preserve their identity in such circumstances and to avoid falling into the endangered species list of history.”

From the official site of THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION, read the entire remarks by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the latest Council on Foreign and Defense Policy meeting. The information contained in these annotations requires a serious evaluation.

Watch the video, that supplements the text account. Interrupting the significance of this presentation, the blog – The Vineyard of the Saker writes an account of the Remarks by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the XXII Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Moscow, 22 November 2014.

I have bolded out what I consider to be the most important statements made by Lavrov that day.  I would just like to add the following:

1)  Lavrov is considered very much a “moderate” and his language has always been strictly diplomatic.  So when you read Lavrov, just imagine what folks in other Russian ministries are thinking.

2) Lavrov makes no secret of his view of the USA and of his plans for the future of our planet.  When you read his words, try to imagine what a US Neocon feels and thinks and you will immediately see why the US elites both hate and fear Russia.

3) Finally, Lavrov openly admits that Russia and China have forged a long-term strategic alliance (proving all the nay-sayers who predicted that China would backtstab Russian wrong).  This is, I would argue, the single most important strategic development in the past decade.

4)  Finally, notice the clear contempt which Lavrov has for a pseudo-Christian “West” which dares not speak in defense of persecuted Christians, denies its own roots, and does not even respect its own traditions.

Complimenting this viewpoint is the YouTube, . If Lavrov is correct that the NeoCon American foreign policy after the collapse of the Soviet empire has positioned itself to become the single dominating armed force on the planet, what other results but an unending warfare environment can one expect? Longing for an enemy to keep the military machine in high gear certainly is perceived by the rest of the world as threatening.

Blogger Nick Freiling presents an assessment in, What the others are saying, of the following Lavrov quotation.

“In attempting to establish their pre-eminence at a time when new economic, financial and political power centres are emerging, the Americans provoke counteraction in keeping with Newton’s third law and contribute to the emergence of structures, mechanisms, and movements that seek alternatives to the American recipes for solving the pressing problems. I am not referring to anti-Americanism, still less about forming coalitions spearheaded against the United States, but only about the natural wish of a growing number of countries to secure their vital interests and do it the way they think right, and not what they are told “from across the pond.”

Mr. Freiling writes his own comments.

“It’s worth noting that perspectives like these aren’t totally absent from mainstream punditry in the U.S. Libertarians, for one, have long warned about the dangers of stretching American resources too thin in pursuit of foreign policy initiatives that don’t have immediate national security implications. Politicians like Rand Paul have even brought hints of such sentiments into the mainstream.

But this is still a far cry from what most Americans consider an “orthodox” perspective on U.S. foreign policy, even if most people agree we’re overextended in many world arenas.”

The fourth point that the Vineyard of the Saker makes, is expanded upon in the Radical Reactionary essay, Western Secularism vs. Russian Christian Revival where the background and recent direction in Russia is traced.

If you expand your analysis beyond mere political and economic context, the Lavrov foreign policy initiative has a component of emphasizing a traditional and historic cultural motivation. While a religious factor may not have anything to do with forging a new Russia and China alliance, dismissing a spiritual and inward revival in Russia would be a profound error.

Radio Free Europe in the article, Orthodox Churches Fight Back As Eastern Europe Pushes To Modernize, Secularize, makes the case and linkage in Tradition of Religious Nationalism parallels Lavrov’s cultural autonomy.

“Geraldine Fagan, a Moscow-based correspondent for the religion-focused news agency Forum 18 and author of the new book “Believing in Russia: Religious Policy After Communism,” says that religious nationalism, although condemned as heresy in the 19th century, is a profound tradition in Orthodox cultures.

“In many cases, Orthodox churches were ministering to a single ethnic group, and this gave rise to nation-states,” Fagan told RFE/RL in an e-mail. “And there is a lingering sense in places across the Orthodox world that national security depends in a profound — even mystical – way on the nation remaining Orthodox.”

The difference of a nation state from an empire is crucial for comprehending the nature of a legitimate government. The fall of the Soviet empire was inevitable. The notion that an American empire will avoid the same fate is absurd.

This “Clash of Civilizations” is understandable not because either empire rode the high moral road, but because both abandoned the fundamental principles that create a viable society and nation.

Civilization is fragile and requires a deep commitment to institutions that practice and administer legal justice, traditional social values and high moral standards. Maintaining governments that earn the rightful consent of its citizens is difficult and usually breaks down over time.

International affairs are even more delicate than internal equilibrium. Countries do not have permanent allies, they only have interests. Russia has a litany of problems and is no more a friend than any other regime that is exerting its own national self-interest.

The intrepid Brother Nathanael Kapner points the finger at THE ZIONIST HATE CAMPAIGN AGAINST RUSSIA, for an explanation why the pressitute media wants to suppress Russian nationalism. The orthodox cleric is echoing Sergey Lavrov when he cites “For it is NATO that Moscow is opposing owing to its creeping encroachment upon Russia’s borders.”

Americans need to oppose foreign policy adventures and certainly one that risks a global holocaust. Ready for World War III with China?, essay is just as valid when Russia is substituted. What effect would a Russian and Chinese strategic alliance have as the NWO juggernaut continues on it current path to destruction?

Transnational Opposition to Russian Sanctions illustrates why Western countries are playing a dangerous game.  Lavrov’s latest address provides a road map for what Russia is embarking on and what the international community should do to lower the tensions and restore constructive economic and political stability.

It is not too far fetch to imagine a current day, Western version for pounding of shoes, with the message “” reverberating from the halls of the UN. If this seems ridiculous, ask why pushing a Clash of Civilizations is any different?

Defending Dollar Imperialism

Ukraine War Driven by Gas-Dollar Link…

“The Fed’s ‘need’ to take on an even more active role as foreigners further slow the purchases of our paper is to put the pedal to the metal on the currency debasement race now being run in the developed world — a race which is speeding us all toward the end of the present currency regime.” Stephanie Pomboy, MacroMavens

“No matter what our Western counterparts tell us, we can see what’s going on. NATO is blatantly building up its forces in Eastern Europe, including the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea areas. Its operational and combat training activities are gaining in scale.” Russian President Vladimir Putin

If there was a way the United States could achieve its long-term strategic objectives and, at the same time, avoid a war with Russia, it would do so. Unfortunately, that is not an option, which is why there’s going to be a clash between the two nuclear-armed adversaries sometime in the near future.

Let me explain: The Obama administration is trying to rebalance US policy in a way that shifts the focus of attention from the Middle East to Asia, which is expected to be the fastest growing region in the coming century. This policy-change is called the “pivot” to Asia. In order to benefit from Asia’s surge of growth, the US plans to beef up its presence on the continent, expand its military bases, strengthen bilateral alliances and trade agreements, and assume the role of regional security kingpin. The not-so-secret purpose of the policy is China “containment”, that is, Washington wants to preserve its position as the world’s only superpower by controlling China’s explosive growth. (The US wants a weak, divided China that will do what it’s told.)

In order to achieve its goals in Asia, the US needs to push NATO further eastward, tighten its encirclement of Russia, and control the flow of oil and gas from east to west. These are the necessary preconditions for establishing US hegemonic rule over the continent. And this is why the Obama administration is so invested in Kiev’s blundering junta-government; it’s because Washington needs Poroshenko’s neo Nazi shock troops to draw Russia into a conflagration in Ukraine that will drain its resources, discredit Putin in the eyes of his EU trading partners, and create the pretext for deploying NATO to Russia’s western border.

The idea that Obama’s proxy army in Ukraine is defending the country’s sovereignty is pure bunkum. What’s going on below the surface is the US is trying to stave off irreversible economic decline and an ever-shrinking share of global GDP through military force. What we’re seeing in Ukraine today, is a 21st century version of the Great Game implemented by political fantasists and Koolaid drinkers who think they can turn the clock back to the post WW2 heyday of the US Empire when the world was America’s oyster. Thankfully, that period is over.

Keep in mind, the glorious US military has spent the last 13 years fighting sheep herders in flip-flops in Afghanistan in a conflict that, at best, could be characterized as a stalemate. And now the White House wants to take on Russia?

Can you appreciate the insanity of the policy?

This is why Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel was sacked last week, because he wasn’t sufficiently eager to pursue this madcap policy of escalating the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine. Everyone knows it’s true, the administration hasn’t even tried to deny it. They’d rather stick with foam-at-the-mouth buffoons, like Susan Rice and Samantha Powers, then a decorated veteran who has more credibility and intelligence in his little finger than Obama’s whole National Security team put together.

So now Obama is completely surrounded by rabid warmongering imbeciles, all of whom ascribe to the same fairytale that the US is going to dust-off Russia, remove Assad, redraw the map of the Middle East, control the flow of gas and oil from the ME to markets in the EU, and establish myriad beachheads across Asia where they can keep a tight grip on China’s growth.

Tell me, dear reader, doesn’t that strike you as a bit improbable?

But, of course, the Obama claque think it’s all within their grasp, because, well, because that’s what they’ve been told to think, and because that’s what the US has to do if it wants to maintain its exalted position as the world’s lone superpower when its economic significance in the world is steadily declining. You see, here’s the thing: The exceptional nation is becoming more unexceptional all the time, and that’s what has the political class worried, because they see the handwriting on the wall, and the writing says, “Enjoy it while it lasts, buddy, cuz you ain’t gonna be numero uno much longer.”

And the US has allies in this wacky crusade too, notably Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have been particularly helpful lately by flooding the market with oil to push down prices and crush the Russian economy. (On Friday, Benchmark crude oil prices plummeted to a four-year low, with Brent crude sinking to $69.11 a barrel.) The Obama administration is using the classic one-two punch of economic sanctions and plunging oil revenues to bully Moscow into withdrawing from Crimea so Washington can move its nuclear arsenal to within spitting distance of Moscow. Here’s a bit of background from the Guardian:

“Think about how the Obama administration sees the state of the world. It wants Tehran to come to heel over its nuclear programme. It wants Vladimir Putin to back off in eastern Ukraine. But after recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House has no desire to put American boots on the ground. Instead, with the help of its Saudi ally, Washington is trying to drive down the oil price by flooding an already weak market with crude. As the Russians and the Iranians are heavily dependent on oil exports, the assumption is that they will become easier to deal with.

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, allegedly struck a deal with King Abdullah in September under which the Saudis would sell crude at below the prevailing market price. That would help explain why the price has been falling at a time when, given the turmoil in Iraq and Syria caused by Islamic State, it would normally have been rising.” (Stakes are high as US plays the oil card against Iran and Russia, Larry Eliot, Guardian)

And here’s more from Salon’s Patrick L. Smith at Salon:

“Less than a week after the Minsk Protocol was signed, Kerry made a little-noted trip to Jeddah to see King Abdullah at his summer residence. When it was reported at all, this was put across as part of Kerry’s campaign to secure Arab support in the fight against the Islamic State.

Stop right there. That is not all there was to the visit, my trustworthy sources tell me. The other half of the visit had to do with Washington’s unabated desire to ruin the Russian economy. To do this, Kerry told the Saudis 1) to raise production and 2) to cut its crude price. Keep in mind these pertinent numbers: The Saudis produce a barrel of oil for less than $30 as break-even in the national budget; the Russians need $105.

Shortly after Kerry’s visit, the Saudis began increasing production, sure enough — by more than 100,000 barrels daily during the rest of September, more apparently to come…

Think about this. Winter is coming, there are serious production outages now in Iraq, Nigeria, Venezuela and Libya, other OPEC members are screaming for relief, and the Saudis make back-to-back moves certain to push falling prices still lower? You do the math, with Kerry’s unreported itinerary in mind, and to help you along I offer this from an extremely well-positioned source in the commodities markets: “There are very big hands pushing oil into global supply now,” this source wrote in an e-mail note the other day.” (What Really Happened in Beijing: Putin, Obama, Xi And The Back Story The Media Won’t Tell You, Patrick L. Smith, Salon)

The Obama team managed to persuade our good buddies the Saudis to flood the market with oil, drive down prices, and put the Russian economy into a nosedive. At the same time, the US has intensified its economic sanctions, done everything in its power to sabotage Gazprom’s South Stream pipeline (that would bypass Ukraine and deliver natural gas to Europe via a southern route), and cajole the Ukrainian parliament into auctioning off 49 percent of the leasing rights and underground storage facilities to privately-owned foreign corporations.

How do you like that? So the US has launched a full-blown economic war against Russia that’s been completely omitted in the western media. Are you surprised?

Washington is determined to block further Russo-EU economic integration in order to collapse the Russian economy and put foreign capital in control of regional energy distribution. It’s all about the pivot. The big money guys figure the US has to pivot to Asia to be a player in the next century. All of these unprovoked attacks on Moscow are based on that one lunatic strategy.

But aren’t people in the EU going to be angry when they can’t get the energy they need (at the prices they want) to run their businesses and heat their homes?

Washington doesn’t think so. Washington thinks its allies in the Middle East can meet the EU’s energy needs without any difficulty. Check out this clip from an article by analyst F. William Engdahl:

“…details are emerging of a new secret and quite stupid Saudi-US deal on Syria and the so-called IS. It involves oil and gas control of the entire region and the weakening of Russia and Iran by Saudi Arabian flooding the world market with cheap oil. ….

On September 11, US Secretary of State Kerry met Saudi King Abdullah at his palace on the Red Sea. The King invited former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Bandar to attend. There a deal was hammered out which saw Saudi support for the Syrian airstrikes against ISIS on condition Washington backed the Saudis in toppling Assad, a firm ally of Russia and de facto of Iran and an obstacle to Saudi and UAE plans to control the emerging EU natural gas market and destroy Russia’s lucrative EU trade. A report in the Wall Street Journal noted there had been “months of behind-the-scenes work by the US and Arab leaders, who agreed on the need to cooperate against Islamic State, but not how or when.

The process gave the Saudis leverage to extract a fresh US commitment to beef up training for rebels fighting Mr. Assad, whose demise the Saudis still see as a top priority.”
(The Secret Stupid Saudi-US Deal on Syria, F. William Engdahl, BFP)

So the wars in Ukraine and Syria are not really separate conflicts at all. They’re both part of the same global resource war the US has been prosecuting for the last decade and a half. The US plans to cut off the flow of Russian gas and replace it with gas from Qatar which will flow through Syria and onto the EU market after Assad is toppled.

Here’s what’s going on: Syria’s troubles began shortly after it announced that it was going to be part of an “Islamic pipeline” that would transfer natural gas from the South Pars gas field off the coast of Iran across Iraq and Syria, eventually connecting to Greece and the lucrative EU market. According to author Dmitri Minin:

“A gas pipeline from Iran would be highly profitable for Syria. Europe would gain from it as well, but clearly someone in the West didn’t like it. The West’s gas-supplying allies in the Persian Gulf weren’t happy with it either, nor was would-be no. 1 gas transporter Turkey, as it would then be out of the game.” (The Geopolitics of Gas and the Syrian Crisis: Syrian “Opposition” Armed to Thwart Construction of Iran-Iraq-Syria Gas Pipeline, Dmitri Minin, Global Research)

Two months after Assad signed the deal with Iraq and Iran, the rebellion broke out in Syria. That’s quite a coincidence, don’t you think? Funny how frequently those kinds of things happen when foreign leaders don’t march to Washington’s tune.

Here’s more from Minin:

“Qatar is doing all it can to thwart the construction of the pipeline, including arming the opposition fighters in Syria, many of whom come from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Libya…

The Arabic newspaper Al-Akhbar cites information according to which there is a plan approved by the U.S. government to create a new pipeline for transporting gas from Qatar to Europe involving Turkey and Israel…

This new pipeline is to begin in Qatar, cross Saudi territory and then the territory of Jordan, thus bypassing Shiite Iraq, and reach Syria. Near Homs the pipeline is to branch in three directions: to Latakia, Tripoli in northern Lebanon, and Turkey. Homs, where there are also hydrocarbon reserves, is the project’s main crossroads, and it is not surprising… that the fiercest fighting is taking place. Here the fate of Syria is being decided. The parts of Syrian territory where detachments of rebels are operating with the support of the U.S., Qatar and Turkey, that is, the north, Homs and the environs of Damascus, coincide with the route that the pipeline is to follow to Turkey and Tripoli, Lebanon. A comparison of a map of armed hostilities and a map of the Qatar pipeline route indicates a link between armed activities and the desire to control these Syrian territories. Qatar’s allies are trying to accomplish three goals: to break Russia’s gas monopoly in Europe; to free Turkey from its dependence on Iranian gas; and to give Israel the chance to export its gas to Europe by land at less cost.”

How do you like that; another coincidence: “The fiercest fighting (in Syria) is taking place” where there’s massive “hydrocarbon reserves” and along the planned pipeline route.

So the conflict in Syria isn’t really about terrorism at all. It’s about natural gas, competing pipelines and access to markets in the EU. It’s about money and power. The whole ISIS-thing is a big hoax to conceal what’s really going on, which is a global war for resources, more blood for oil.

But how does the US benefit from all of this, after all, won’t the gas revenues go to Qatar and the transit countries rather than the US?

Yep, they sure will. But the gas will also be denominated in dollars which will shore up demand for USDs thus perpetuating the petrodollar recycling system which creates a vast market for US debt and which helps to keep US stocks and bonds in the nosebleed section. And that’s what this is all about, preserving dollar supremacy by forcing nations to hold excessive amounts of USDs to use in their energy transactions and to service their dollar-denominated debts.

As long as Washington can control the world’s energy supplies and force the world to trade in dollars, it can spend well in excess of what it produces and not be held to account. It’s like having a credit card you never have to pay off.

That’s a racket Uncle Sam is prepared to defend with everything he’s got, even nukes.

The New Slavery

You Are The Slave…

Recently I received a book about the history of Islam.  It is written in inviting prose and covers in detail the saga that unfolded through history from the time of the birth of Ishmael and Isaac.  On the cover is the bust of a soldier armed with a rifle on a background tinted in blood red.  The Tile of the book is “The Blood of the Moon” written by Dr. George Grant and published in 1991.  It is a great read.  I recommend it.

Grant contends that Islam is a religion that cannot be stamped out by the sole use of military force.  Nevertheless he seems to support both Israel and the United States military.  The book provides a clarion call for resistance to an Islamic plan to use brutalities to bring the world under their control.

I have just finished reading through several of R. J. Rushdoony’s books for the second time. .  His writing platform has King Jesus enthroned and active in the affairs of the world. Rushdoony provides superb explanations of the implications of a thorough, literal interpretation of Scripture.  He maintains that righteous government requires righteous citizens.

Good books written by capable thinkers invariably avoid the obvious existence of conspiracies.  We have progressed from the empires of Rome and France where large portions of the world fell under tyranny to quests for new world orders that hope to extend hegemony over the entire earth.  Like the airplanes that spray chemicals in our skies the public and most good commentators ignore reality, preferring instead to live in the comfortable but dangerous world of fantasy.

Chalcedon Foundation has published another collection of Dr. Rushdoony’s musings entitled “Our Threatened Freedom”.  It is a collection of radio spots recorded in the early 1980s.  As with all of Reverend Rushdoony’s commentaries they are incisive and pertinent. They cement the necessity of freedom in creating a prosperous society and pinpoint the insanity of allowing humanism to gain control.  Over and over again Rushdoony documents the irrational chaos created by overzealous humanistic government. The book produces extensive evidence that the checks and balances incorporated into our Constitution are not working.

Unfortunately, Rushdoony does not entertain the premise that irrational chaos is being purposely created throughout the world because chaotic societies are easier to dominate. There is no mention of the yearly Bilderberg meetings (See Here) where the wealthy and powerful meet to discuss and implement their collective agenda.  There is no mention of Zionism, which is a conspiracy, or the International bankers who control currencies, a power which is tantamount to control of the food supply.  David Rockefeller’s long time promotion of world government now confirmed in his book “Memoirs” is not cited.

There is an element of irony in the fact that theologically sound Christian teaching maintains that the Triune God created the world and even in these rebellious and barbaric times is in firm control of current events.  This fact allays the fears and striving of those that oppose the power seekers.  God controls the world and will always do so in spite of the evil efforts of those He created.

Coincidentally, Presidential candidates are often invited to the Bilderberg meetings prior to running for office.

Princeton’s Martin Gilens and Northwestern’s Benjamin I. Page have published a study that concludes “–ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States. And economic elites and interest groups, especially those representing business, have a substantial degree of influence. Government policy-making over the last few decades reflects the preferences of those groups — of economic elites and of organized interests.”  Read here and here.

Conspiracies are ignored because “conspiracy theorists” are widely considered a bit whacky. The word “conspiracy” has been demonized to prevent the expression of truth.

The plotters have made great progress in the past several decades World government wonks have become leaders in most Western nations and as the United States military does the bidding of the Zionists, hegemonic progress is occurring in the Muslim world.

Influential neocon Max Boot lobbies for perpetual war seeking the destruction of all enemies of Israel using the United States military.  It has been going on for a long time.  Boot is supported by scores of wealthy, influential neocons in powerful positions throughout the nation; he also has the media and a horde of wild eyed Evangelical Christians that make his current position almost impregnable. We are a giant puppet being controlled by a midget puppeteer creating an anomaly that is regularly ignored by prominent American authors.  Read here and here

Jacob Hornberger (Future of Freedom Foundation) describes the current condition of our nation:  “Is the situation here at home bad? We both know it is. Invasions, occupations, torture, indefinite detention, embargoes, sanctions, foreign aid, empire, militarized police, drug raids, asset forfeiture, infringements on civil liberties, IRS, income taxation, Federal Reserve, fiat money, welfare, minimum-wage laws, and economic regulations. The welfare-warfare state is destroying our freedom, morality, prosperity, and independence. We need to smash this immoral and destructive apparatus out of existence!”

Hornberger is on target with his description and the need to “smash this immoral and destructive apparatus out of existence”.  However, he fails to identify exactly how it is to be smashed!

There are some cracks beginning to appear in one conspiracy that could bode for future confrontation.  Publisher, Editor and writer, Tal Brooke, has used his SPC (Spiritual Counterfeits Project) Journal to bring some light to our current dilemma.  In the latest issue 38.1 and 38.2 he has authored an incisive piece entitled “The Messiah of a Divided People”.  In a paragraph describing the ancient Elders of the Sanhedrin he describes their dissatisfaction with a Messiah “who went like a lamb to the slaughter” preferring one that would defeat the Romans, install Zion as the world ruler and appoint them as rulers of the world

He writes, “This was, and remains, their aim and expectation. They would be the world’s five star generals and judges, Jerusalem would be the center of the World Court.  And they could tell Caesar to roll over like a dog.  They could walk into the city of Rome and take anything they wanted.  They could occupy the palace, they could execute judgment on the multitudes of the treacherous.  The world would finally be theirs as they believed Isaiah had promised them. And these Elders would rule the entire earth from Zion.  This remains the goal.”   (Emphasis mine.)  .  (For copies of the SPC Journal call )

The same issue of the SPC Journal contains articles by Jewish Christian writers Steven Wohlberg and Steven Sizer.  Confrontation is not about hatred but about justice, peace, truth and righteousness for all people.

Talmudic Zionists realize at least two goal by supporting perpetual war:  They destroy the United States of America, a supposedly Christian nation (a religion they overtly hate), and at the same time contribute to the safety and power of neo-Israel.  Christianity seeks to bring the Creation under the dominion of the Triune God by peaceful means; Talmudic Zionists by stealth; and Islam by siege.

What will happen when these various power structures conflict?  Will the bankers dominate; the Zionists, the international Bilderbergers, Islam, or the business tycoons?  Will the Christian Triune God allow His world to be controlled by evil forces as punishment to rebellious Christians?  Or will Christians repent and allow the sword of the Spirit to Challenge the enemies of Christ?  Time will tell.

Wake up America.  It is not our elected officials who are setting policy for our nation.  Instead, it is the money barons, the Zionists, the Bilderbergers, and the international business tycoons.  That is at least a partial reason why elected officials do not keep their pre-electoral promises.  Obedience to the enabling masters is mandatory and retribution for disobedience is severe – note the fate of Presidents Reagan and Kennedy.

President Nixon set the stage for China to decimate the U. S. economy; President Carter gave away the Panama Canal; the Patriot Act was written long before 9/11, and Obamacare was constructed before his election.  The agenda is set in place before the presidents are elected and the people are expected to blame the puppet president rather than the invisible power centers that are actually setting policy.  The system is working.

It is time for American voters to understand that the candidates for President of the United States are pre-selected and only those obedient candidates are allowed to gain the office.  Voting is a sham to placate the populace.

Overt slavery has been eradicated in most of the Western World but the often denied sinfulness of men has put the entire world under a threat of becoming a massive slave plantation.

G 20 And BRICS Great Schism

Global trade relationships and agreements are moving in very different directions. The public relations press releases hide the undercurrents that are driving the formations of alternative economic alliances. While the G 20, markets its all inclusive umbrella policy forums, the mere formation of a BRICS counterweight forecasts deep and fundamental differences. So what is really behind the creation of a different approach to the post WWII dominate U.S. lead model? A clue can be found in an attempt to modify the operations and direction of IMF functions.

Announced in the Russian press, BRICS to propose IMF reform at G20 summit, is a pressure attempt to move the center of power away from current synergism.

“At the G20 summit in the Australian city of Brisbane on November 15-16, Russia and other BRICS countries (Brazil, India, China and South Africa) will propose alternative solutions concerning the reform of the International Monetary Fund, involving, in particular, gradual implementation of reforms, Russian G20 Sherpa Svetlana Lukash told reporters.

“The most important thing for us is the still unresolved G20 problem of the IMF reform,” Lukash said. She recalled the U.S. Congress has yet to ratify the 2010 resolution. “Not only does it thwart the process of renewing the IMF in accordance with the current reality where we see a big rise in the role of emerging economies. It also prevents the decisions to double the IMF capital from coming into force,” she said.”

The appearance of maintaining a working relationship among opposing interests may present an assuring PR message, but who really believes that the path to a new cold war is paved with mutual cooperation? Impetus for a parallel financial system is certainly based more on political objective than commerce or economic benefits.

The Washington Post describes What the new bank of BRICS is all about in this manner.

“Heads of state from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (the so-called BRICS countries) agreed to establish a New Development Bank (NDB) at their summit meeting. They will have a president (an Indian for the first six years), a Board of Governors Chair (a Russian), a Board of Directors Chair (a Brazilian), and a headquarters (in Shanghai). What is the purpose of this BRICS bank? Why have these countries created it now? And, what implications does it have for the global development-finance landscape?

The “what” is relatively straightforward. The NDB has been given $50 billion in initial capital. As with similar initiatives in other regions (see below), the BRICS bank appears to work on an equal-share voting basis, with each of the five signatories contributing $10 billion. The capital base is to be used to finance infrastructure and “sustainable development” projects in the BRICS countries initially, but other low and middle-income countries will be able buy in and apply for funding. BRICS countries have also created a $100 billion Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA), meant to provide additional liquidity protection to member countries during balance of payments problems. The CRA—unlike the pool of contributed capital to the BRICS bank, which is equally shared—is being funded 41 percent by China, 18 percent from Brazil, India, and Russia, and 5 percent from South Africa.”

China’s motivation to participate in BRICS banking is most interesting and revealing. Since it is not absolutely essential for China to be a member of BRICS, Gudrun Wacker, from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs presents this finding in a report, China’s role in G20 / BRICS and Implications, may shed an insight on their reasoning.

“The future of BRICS depends on the future performance of the G7/8 and G20: If the G20 develops into a real coordination mechanism, there might be less Chinese interest in BRICS. The future prospects of BRICS were presented as less promising than those of the G20, since BRICS will not be able to solve global problems. It is not yet clear whether the main deliverable of BRICS will be directed at cooperation among its members or at third countries. While the idea of BRIC as a group was originally picked up by Russia (the invitation to the first summit, as a move toward “extension” of the strategic triangle Russia, China. India?), its members are now all active in certain fields. For China, it is also an important effort to emerge from its isolation (Copenhagen climate summit). Another factor shaping the future of BRICS might be the development of US-China relations: While all interview partners agreed that BRICS does not aim at creating a new, anti-Western world order, it can be seen as a response to the US-led world order.”

The methodology of Mr. Wacker’s research relied upon comments from interviews. Relying on sentiments that BRICS goal is not bent on developing a counterbalance to Western banking hegemony is poppycock. Geopolitical dimensions in international affairs have Russia as the latest bogyman. Any economic analysis that ignores power brokers desperate attempt to shift the causes of a failing world economy onto the backs of enemy nations is flawed.

Also, the notion that major economic transnational corporatists operate with altruism for third world countries is sheer lunacy. All these trade organizations are attempts to position vying interests to settle for a subservient role to a subordinate structure under a global debt creation banking system.

Attempts to scare the populist into believing that Global Warming inaction are absurd. “At the G20 summit, other nations overrode host Australia’s attempts to keep climate change off the agenda and agreed to call for strong action with the aim of adopting a binding protocol at the Paris conference.” Such initiatives are pure political “PC” orthodoxy and actually diminish prosperity.

The great schism in trade among nations is that some countries are not willing to lie down with diseased parasites. This should not be construed to favor the emergence of the BRICS union as a shining future. However, what it does purport is that the road to the NWO modeling for globalism by entrenched financial elites has produced opposition.

Conflict is the normal human condition, and especially when money is used as a medium of world control and domination is the goal. The G 20 is useless. Breaking the banking monopoly that fosters endless terror and war is the universal objective for the inhabitants of this planet. Another unsavory photo op for world leaders just produces more nausea.

Globalism Free Trade Immigration Connection

How is your life going under the Global Empire? If you answer honestly, for non billionaires, the response must reflect disappointment if not immense distress. Middle America stands on the precipice of oblivion. While the recent past decades have shown steep declines in financial security and net wealth, the future looks much more ominous. The link between the shift to an internationalist de-industrialization economy and open border immigration has hit the United States hard. This harsh reality is routinely denied in the financial press, but the social chaos that engulfs society is largely caused by this betrayal mindset. Corporatists are waging war against the American public.

Summing up the battle lines is the quintessential voice of an America First philosophy. Pat Buchanan on Free Trade is a collection of quotations and references that should be a must read for every displaced citizen. And that group includes virtually everyone.

“Good for global business” isn’t necessarily good for US

“Global capitalists have become acolytes of global governance. They wish to see national sovereignty diminished and sanctions abolished. Where yesterday American businesses suffered damage to their good name for selling scrap iron to Japan before Pearl Harbor, today [war materiel is routinely exported] to potentially hostile nations. Once it was true that what was good the Fortune 500 was good for America. That is no longer true, and what is good for America must take precedence.”

Source: “A Republic, Not an Empire,” p.349 , Oct 9, 1999

The most puzzling malady that penetrates the “PC” culture is a fear of confronting the direct consequences of encouraging an invasion of illegal’s into the country. The disconnect that sweeps across national borders is not isolated just to the United States. Western Europe is not only in decay but is on the verge of social and economic collapse.

Demetrios Papademetriou, PhD, Director of the Migration Policy Institute, wrote in his Sep. 2005 Migration Policy Institute essay “The Global Struggle with Illegal Migration: No End in Sight”: How Are Illegal Immigration and Globalization Related?

“For nearly two decades now, capital and the market for goods, services, and workers of many types have weaved an ever more intricate web of global economic and social interdependence… No aspect of this interdependence seems to be more visible to the public of advanced industrial societies than the movement of people. And no part of that movement is proving pricklier to manage effectively, or more difficult for publics to come to terms with, than irregular (also known as unauthorized, undocumented, or illegal) migration…”

Dr. Papademetriou’s assumption that interdependency is the new normal may be supported with the procession of the Trilateral Commission’s “New International Economic Order”. Nonetheless, the destruction of national sovereignty is a price that no country can afford to adopt, much less pay and remain a nation. Interdependency is the death knell of traditional values, autonomous commerce and individual civil liberties. With the ringing of the bell at the NY Stock exchange, the sound of prosperity goes deaf for the populist, while globalist elites extract the last pound of flesh from an intentionally designed consolidation of a Corporatocracy economy.

The fate of the world is at stake if the forces of globalization are left to complete their total domination of monetary and financial control. It is just as important to prevent the next bipartisan arrangement to grant effective amnesty to millions of illegal foreigners, who have shown little interest to assimilate or adopt the heritage and values of our founding principles.

Warren Mass wrote over a year ago in Permanent Amnesty, Temporary Border.

“An important part of regulating legal immigration, in addition to evaluating each prospective immigrant’s ability to become a productive, law-abiding citizen, is to determine how many immigrants the United States is capable of absorbing each year, taking into consideration the impact on our nation’s economy and culture.”

If this standard needs to apply to those who apply for citizenship, by what absurd twist of logic or sanity pertains to President Obama’s intentions of issuing executive orders that are clearly unconstitutional? How insulting it is to hard press citizens, relegated to enduring impoverishment from off shoring livable wage jobs, while awarding effective amnesty to illegals.

Columnist Glenn R. Jackson review of author Kenneth Buchdahl’s book, hits the mark.

“First and foremost it is good to see the recognition by Buchdahl of American culture as   critical to the building of the American Dream.  As Buchdahl writes the development of a culture is grounded in a unique American personality and intricate system of values and beliefs that is responsible for America’s enviable situation.  And it is that enviable situation that has contributed to creating the forces that are working rapidly, knowingly or not, to dismantle the American Dream.

Dismantling the American Dream chronicles the unintended impact of America’s pop culture belief in globalization as a force for good in our economy and the failure of leadership to recognize that belief gone awry.  America’s political leaders continued belief in free trade and give-away trade deals, in the face of the near deathblow of NAFTA to American manufacturing is but one of the delusions of globalization that Buchdahl lays bare.”

The interjection of cultural aspects may well be the missing link that escapes most chronicles on current events. Documenting the actual results from Free Trade Treaties, should in and of itself win the intellectual argument that economic destruction of Middle America has already happened. Add in the deliberate call for mass migration and social incentives to cross the border has created the latest flood in undocumented aliens.

When Democracy Now asks, Obama & McConnell Pledge Cooperation; Will Fast-Tracking Secretive TPP Trade Deal Top Their Agenda?, and presents Ralph Nader on TPP and the “Unstoppable” Left-Right Anti-Corporate Movement, one has hope that the Buchanan Brigades message is being heard.

With the celebrity coronation that the Democrats are showering on their new favorite daughter, the “Pocahontas Princess”, Elizabeth Warren’s Crusade Against Disastrous “Free Trade” Agreements, is welcomed.

An inquiry was made to NY Senator Charles E. Schumer on the TPA, Trade Priorities Act of 2014 (S.1900). His reply can be read on this link.

An alliance among anti-free trade factions from all ideological camps is necessary to stop the globalist juggernaut. Even if such a coalition could be grown, the likelihood that linkage to the need to stop illegal immigration and opposition to amnesty, would be frosty.

This brings up the opportunity to interject the appeal, , by Frosty Wooldridge. ““Why would any member of Congress who opposes executive amnesty provide President Obama the funds to carry it out? A Republican majority must force congressional Democrats to answer this question through their votes”.

Likewise, why would as covered in the New American essay, Republicans to Obama: We Will Give You Trade Promotion Authority, patriots want to grant “fast track” authority to a President, who is defiant to congressional constitutional separation of powers?

“Fast track authority eventually expired on April 16, 1994, and was not reauthorized by Congress until the passage of the Bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority Act (BPTAA) of 2002. BPTAA reinstated fast track authority renamed as “trade promotion authority” (TPA), which expired in 2007. In 2012, President Obama requested renewal of TPA/fast track authority to complete negotiations for the TPP and TTIP.”

The answer should be apparent that any support of “fast track” or for TPP is a vote bought with globalist control. If it is so obvious that such influence is at play in trade deals, why are so many confused activists not able to see through the “Open Border” fraud and act upon the best interests for American workers and families?

That taboo culture factor, covered in the Buchdahl book explains the blind spot from the Loony Left. A review of a pro immigration site, Open Borders will demonstrate a systemic disconnect from reality. Often Libertarian purists, also fall under the spell of a transcendental fantasy. To their credit, Open Borders presents the concept of CITIZENISM and provides the following its key features.

Citizenism places substantially greater weight on the rights and interests of citizens than non-citizens, though it operates within moral side-constraints.

Citizenism is about current citizens, not about the people who may become citizens as a result of immigration or deportation policy.

Citizenism, as conceived by its original proponent Sailer, is both about the individual ethics of voters and about the responsibilities of elected representatives.

Citizenism is about loyalty, not admiration, toward one’s fellow citizens.

If you understand the destructive nature of corporatist trade agreements that only benefit transnational conglomerates, while poisoning economic commerce for Middle Americans, why would you not oppose the lunacy of unrestrictive mass migration? The imperative moral directive is to protect and defend your own nation, its traditional culture and responsible citizens.

Saving the world is a concept that resides in the sick minds of the Save the Planet Kill Yourself mindset. If they are so devoted to a globalist utopia, the influx of trespassers must be leaving their own homeland in better shape. Just how well is life south of the border doing?

Matt Taibbi On JPMorgan Chase’s Worst Nightmare

The attention that Taibbi is receiving for the Rolling Stone essay, , may push forward a serious debate on the systemic corruption that is common knowledge among informed observers of the financial structure. Zero Hedge can always be depended upon to incisively sum up the issue.

“In reality, there is nothing surprising in Matt Taibbi’s latest piece since returning to Rolling Stone from the Intercept, as it tells a story everyone is by now is all too familiar with: a former bank employee (in this case Alayne Fleischmann) who was a worker in a bank’s (in this case JPM) mortgage operations group, where she observed and engaged in what she describes as “massive criminal securities fraud” and who was fired after trying to bring the attention of those above her to said “criminal” activity.

The story doesn’t end there, and as Carmen Segarra already showed, when she revealed that Goldman runs the NY Fed, once Alayne was let go and tried to “whistleblow” on the house of Jimon from the outside, she found the that US Department of Justice headed by Eric Holder is just as, if not more, corrupt, and in his desperate attempt to prevent discovery and bring JPM et al to justice, he would stretch the statue of limitations on frauds committed during the crisis long enough to where nobody had any legal recourse any more, up to and including the US taxpayer.”

Well, that is a sober and tragic assessment. Even more heartbreaking is the statement made by Ms. Fleischmann as reported in Straight Line Logic.

“And now, with Holder about to leave office and his Justice Department reportedly wrapping up its final settlements, the state is effectively putting the finishing touches on what will amount to a sweeping, industrywide effort to bury the facts of a whole generation of Wall Street corruption. “I could be sued into bankruptcy,” she says. “I could lose my license to practice law. I could lose everything. But if we don’t start speaking up, then this really is all we’re going to get: the biggest financial cover-up in history.”

The only coherent response that regular citizens can exert, when dealing with the mega financial houses, is to avoid entanglements whenever possible. What good is it to establish accounts, whether as loans, savings or investments, when the rules of survival are stacked against main street customers?

Firms like JP Morgan or Goldman are not terrified by fines because they are protected by the “To Big To Fail” culture. Bailouts are a way of life and infusion of easy money into the liquidity flow of balance sheets employ the most creative accounting techniques to cover up accurate net worth.

The threat of principals actually doing jail time is so remote that the probability is far greater that the next Secretary of the Treasury will come from their ranks.

This plight produces a true dilemma of confidence. In this environment only brave souls dare become a whistleblower. Public support for such individuals like Fleischmann and Segarra is faint because neither are public persons, readily recognized by most people. This lack of notoriety as individuals is far less important than the criminal activity both are documenting.

However, in a media driven and social networking society, the personality of celebrity far out paces the substance of the offenses. Matt Taibbi’s star persona, deserved or manufactured, illustrates that getting attention through the clutter and noise of the sound bites is possible. For an unknown person, getting your 15 minutes of fame requires even more creative strategies, to expose the basic purpose in the news revelations.

The dying main stream presstitutes will not confront the intrinsic nature of the abuses because their own financial futures depend upon Wall Street support. Yet, struggling Middle America foolishly rely upon their reporting and advice in most financial matters.

JPMorgan Chase’s Worst Nightmare fundamentally is the unwinding of the derivative debt black hole of their making. The essential risk of a collapse and implosion of the financial manipulated markets only grows because no effort or willingness exists to purge the system of crooked companies, practices or individuals. The culture of corruption survives because the pattern of exposing and demanding justice is so brutally punished.

How can meaningful accountability come from internal reform, when the price of disclosure is the end of your professional endeavors and even your livelihood?

Arguments, data and evidence of generational embedded fraud have been made by some of the most intuitive minds on finance and economics. Nonetheless, the degeneracy accelerates. The wolves of Wall Street target their prey when they lobby regulators to allow for more exotic financial products that are designed to fleece the public and place the entire monitory system in greater jeopardy.

Activists rally during elections cycles to pressure the establishment. The Occupy Wall Street movement, misguided on potential solutions, did muster awareness with media exposure. However, most taxpayers do not exert sufficient outrage about the selling out of their financial security.

Stopping “massive criminal securities fraud” is a true national security requirement. Internet revelations can only expose the latest schemes. As stated in the essay, Repeal of Glass-Steagall and the Too Big To Fail Culture, is a major reason for the current unsustainable breakdown in trust and lack of liability consequences for financial institutions.

Take the opportunity of the Alayne Fleischmann disclosures to demand that your newly elected representatives exert the courage to advance a national debate on a major overhaul of the ground rules for Wall Street.

While the prospects are slim that any constructive and critical legislation will come out of the new Congress, public indignation needs to grow and intensify. The battle for economic viability and perseverance of capital is being lost for ordinary citizens. An angry constituency is necessary to confront the outrageous abuses that pass as normal conduct. The sacrifices of Alayne Fleischmann and Carmen Segarra need not be in vain. Mobilize for action; boycott the big banks and security fraudsters.

“Other Masters”

Just as I predicted in this column last week, the GOP has captured the U.S. Senate, which means they now control both houses of Congress in Washington, D.C. But, if you recall, I also said that even if Republicans become the majority party in the Senate, it will not change impending amnesty for illegal aliens (or most anything else).

See my column here:

“There You Go Again”

Too many Republicans are as desirous of some sort of amnesty deal as are Democrats. Republicans like to call it “pathway to citizenship,” but the result is the same: millions of illegals will get an amnesty deal. Get used to the idea, folks; it is inevitable. The fact that the vast majority of the American people are AGAINST amnesty will not stop it from happening. (Anyone remember the giveaway of the Panama Canal?) Our “lords” and “masters” in Washington, D.C., (from both major parties) have determined that giving millions of illegals legal status is good for America. And, after all, our “masters” believe themselves to have God-like wisdom and power, so what you and I think about it doesn’t matter to a tinker’s dam. Besides, our politicians in Washington, D.C., don’t answer to We the People; they answer to a higher power–and, no, I’m not talking about the Almighty or the U.S. Constitution.

Breitbart.com covers the story:

“Hours after Mitt Romney declared that Republicans should pass amnesty legislation if the GOP takes back Congress, Pat Caddell blasted the incompetent Republican establishment for being beholden to their ‘other masters’ and not nationalizing the illegal immigration issue.

“On Breitbart News Sunday, Caddell, the Fox News analyst and former Jimmy Carter adviser who long ago figured out that Americans were disenchanted with politics because they hated the permanent political class, said ‘Republicans have failed to put a race away’ this cycle even though Obama’s numbers are so low and ‘there is such anxiety about the future of the country.’

“‘They are just like watching French and British generals in World War I,’ Caddell said of the GOP establishment to host and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon. ‘They learn nothing and forget everything. It’s amazing.’

“Caddell said Republicans have failed to offer the country a ‘positive message’ and nationalize the election against Obama’s agenda. He said Americans dislike ‘intensely both political parties’ because ‘they feel they are getting screwed–and they are.’ Caddell said that since Obama said his policies are on the ballot, Republicans should have had a simple message: ‘If you’re against those policies, send President Barack Obama a message. Vote Republican.’

“But Caddell said Republican establishment advisers ‘have other masters,’ and that is why GOP candidates are not running against illegal immigration. Caddell acknowledged that the ‘immigration issue is the single biggest switch I have seen on an issue.’ Americans, Caddell said, have been ‘changed on immigration’ and are against President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty after ‘what’s happened the last three months ever since the children showed up and Breitbart [News]’ published leaked photos of illegal immigrant children being warehoused.”

The report goes on to say, “Regarding amnesty and illegal immigration, Caddell noted that establishment Republicans even in the South are generally ‘not allowed to speak of it’ because they have ‘higher orders’ to obey from their ‘other masters.’

“‘The political class of the Republican party is interested in two things: preserving positions and getting money,’ Caddell said, mentioning that ‘even moderates and Democrats are upset about executive amnesty.’

“Obama, realizing that immigration is his worst issue, delayed his executive amnesty to give Senate Democrats a better chance at retaining control. He said Americans hate both parties in a country in which people believe the American Dream is fading, and the bipartisan support in D.C. for amnesty legislation ‘is a big part of it.’

“But he said the media establishment conceals the true reason–like the bipartisan support of amnesty–that Americans hate Washington because they favor policy outcomes like comprehensive amnesty legislation.

“Caddell thunderously said that ‘the political media class keep telling the American people to eat what they won’t eat.’”

See the report here:

Finally, someone on the national stage has the guts to tell the truth about Washington, D.C. Caddell said Republican establishment advisors “have other masters.” He also said that establishment Republicans are generally “not allowed to speak of it” [amnesty] because they have “higher orders” to obey from their “other masters.” He is exactly right.

Caddell went on to say that, “The political class of the Republican party is interested in two things: preserving positions and getting money.” Right again!

If President Obama goes ahead with his plans to sign an executive amnesty order, watch the GOP on Capitol Hill holler and scream; but the most they will likely do is try to make it a campaign issue in 2016. Or, if they do anything at all besides holler, it will be to try to replace “executive” amnesty with “legislative” amnesty. The real issue is the Republicans want to take the credit for providing amnesty to millions of illegals away from the Democrats.

But, you say, “The vast majority of the American people (especially Republicans) OPPOSE amnesty.” And you are right. But, you are forgetting the fact that establishment Republicans have “higher orders” and “other masters.”

The two major issues that precipitated the anger and angst of the American electorate against Barack Obama and the Democrats, resulting in the Elephants taking the Senate away from the Donkeys, were: 1) Obamacare, and 2) Amnesty. But absolutely NO ONE inside the GOP leadership is even talking about doing anything to undo Obamacare; and NO ONE inside the GOP leadership is even talking about doing anything to stop amnesty. Therefore, the Senate changing hands will, in effect, accomplish NOTHING. And that’s the way it’s been for years. And this is the reason that more people don’t vote than do.

We have been trading Democrats for Republicans–and vice versa–for decades, and what has it mattered? Not diddly-squat. The beat goes on: bigger and bigger government; more and more regulations; more and more taxes; more and more government spending; more and more foreign wars; more and more government surveillance on the American citizenry; more and more centralized power in Washington,  D.C.; more and more illegal immigration (soon to all be legalized); ad infinitum; ad nauseam.

The truth is, who we send to Washington, D.C., with very few exceptions, hasn’t made a dime’s worth of difference in decades. The establishment insiders within both major parties make sure that the good guys are defeated in the primaries, so by the time the general election rolls around, we are usually left with the choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. No matter which one wins, establishment insiders get the prize, and the American people get the shaft.

To a large degree, this is not the case in local and State elections. We often have the opportunity to elect true freedomists at those levels–even after the establishment winnowing process takes place during the primaries. That’s why the goal of the insiders in Babylon, I mean Washington, D.C., is to federalize everything and, thereby, negate the power of State and local governments to offer any significant resistance. (Just try to think of something meaningful that hasn’t been federalized. See what I mean?)

Remember, the establishment elite within the GOP (and the Dems, for that matter) have “other masters.” And until the American people at large begin to awaken to this reality, this charade that is played out every two years between Democrats and Republicans will continue to frustrate the electorate and empower the establishment elite.

The awakening to the existence of “other masters” is extremely difficult when we have a tightly controlled national media. The isolated warnings of people such as Pat Caddell are drowned out in a national cacophony of controlled establishment shills. Even when anti-establishment crusaders such as Barry Goldwater, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, etc., come along, the  political and media elite see to it that such men are characterized as “extremists” or “unviable” candidates, which leads a gullible electorate prone to dismiss them as non-factors.

As I see it, the ONLY people who are in a position to have the independent power to change the debate, awaken the conscience of the people, and turn the ship of State around are America’s pastors. Unfortunately, today’s pastors and churches are as controlled by “other masters” as are our politicians and newscasters.

We desperately need another Great Awakening; and I mean SOON!

If you are waiting for the newly-elected Republicans in the U.S. Senate to change things, you are going to be waiting for a very long time. We have played this song before back in 1994 and again in 2002. The GOP did nothing to change things back then; and they will do nothing to change things now. Remember, the party establishment answers to “other masters.”

If you truly want to see a change in our country, quit concentrating so much about who the congressman or senator is that you are going to vote for, and try voting with your feet and start “electing” pastors who are willing to sound the clarion call of liberty and who are willing to awaken the American conscience to the fundamental principles of liberty upon which our country was founded. Until brave and courageous champions of liberty occupy our church’s pulpits, it isn’t going to matter to a tinker’s dam who occupies the House and Senate on Capitol Hill.

Bethel Church’s “Apostle” Bill Johnson: A Comedy of Errors, Part 2

Before I report on Apostle Bill’s endeavor to involve his followers in his “grave sucking,” undertaking, I must tell you a brief story that involves an angel, a gift, and slaying a dragon.

May 2005

Wednesday night at half past 11, I was in bed reading when a white lightning bolt struck the floor and out stepped a dazzling creature with wings the length of a 747.  “Do not fear!” he said when he saw the alarmed expression on my face. “I am the angel Archibald!”  My husband was sacked out next to me with a pillow over his head so he announced in a quiet voice, “I have come with a message from the Lord of hosts.”

A flood of feathers floated around the room so I covered my nose and mouth with both hands.  But it was too late.  “Ah-choo!”

“God bless you!” said the angel.

Now I was certain that he was the Lord’s messenger.  I tapped my husband on the back and whispered, “Wake up.”  Dead to the world.  A poke in the ribs and, “Honey…you gotta see this.”

A muffled voice groaned, “Whuuut?”

“We have a visitor.”

The pillow came off his head and he sat bolt upright in bed.  Seconds later he spotted Archibald hovering in the corner.  “Holy cow!” he exclaimed.

“Cow?” said the angel, seeming a bit cross.  “Hardly!”  His eyes shifted from my stunned husband and settled on me.  In a strong clear voice he stated matter-of-factly: “The Spirit of God has bestowed upon you a new gift.  Forthwith you will become a blogger.”

He eyed me quizzically, waiting for my response.  When none was forthcoming, he said firmly, “You are to use your new gift to expose ravenous wolves that have slipped into the sheep pen under the cover of darkness.  These wolves are teaching doctrines of demons…”

I didn’t have to ask what he meant by doctrines of demons.  He had to be alluding to Word of Faith…New Apostolic Reformation…Purpose Driven…Emergent…Social Justice…New Age…New Thought and other false teaching that had made its way into churches and seminaries while our shepherds snoozed.  “I’ve tried telling people about false teaching, I said to myself, “but what I say goes in one ear and out the other.”

I heard the angel say: “There are counterfeits who call themselves new apostles and prophets.  These men and women are giving Him (he glanced up at the ceiling) a bad name. Expose them as false teachers!”  His wings ceased fluttering and he became as still as a stone.  “Are you ready to serve the King?

“Are you kidding me?”  I exclaimed in disbelief.  “First of all, I’m not gifted to write – or at least I wasn’t, until now.”  I searched for excuses.  “And…and I got a B in English by the skin of my teeth—“

The angel cut me off sharply.  “Certainly you do not think this is news to Him (he glanced up at the ceiling).”

True.  God knows all things, including my grades in college.  Perhaps He wanted to get me out of my comfort zone.  Writing a blog would definitely accomplish that.   One last try: “But…um… I’m nobody!  No one will listen to a word I say.”

“Some will listen,” Archibald assured me.  “And others will fall for lies. It is always that way with humans.”

I turned to my husband and said, “Tell him no one will take me seriously.”

My husband came out of his stupor and said in a serious tone, “God uses nobodies all the time.  But there’s a catch.  You’ve got to be willing.”  He looked me straight in the eye. “Are you?”

Am I willing, I wondered?   I needed but a moment to ponder his question.  Yes, I guess I am, I said to myself.  I’m more than willing.  Suddenly I felt as if I could go out and slay a dragon.  “OK, I’ll do it!” I glanced over at my husband.  “The two of us can do it together.”

We high-fived and he said with a grin, “We make a good team.”

I gave Archibald a thumbs up.  “We’re in.”

Poof!  The angel disappeared, feathers and all.

—–

The next morning I found a large silver feather on the floor where Archibald had appeared to us.  He had left his calling card.

Bentley’s Angels

In I covered ’s rock-star evangelist Todd Bentley and the shame he brought on the Name of our Lord and how “Super Apostles” Bill Johnson and Rick Joyner restored him to ministry despite his obvious character flaws. There were exaggerated healings and dangerous “healing” practices that included assaulting the sick with leg drops, high kicks and head punches which he claimed the Lord told him to do to people who came to him for help.  Moreover, Bentley drank excessively, committed adultery and soon thereafter left his wife and children and married the . There’s a whole lot more to report on the fraud evangelist, but space does not allow.  So – why bring him up again?  Because he says him.  It’s not uncommon for people who are into “signs and wonders” strange manifestations, and other esoteric experiences to boast of angel visitations.  Two angels who supposedly come to Bentley are and the Winds of Change.  Winds is supposedly “a high-ranking angel over all the ones assigned to healing, breakthrough and revival unto harvest.”

To the best of my knowledge Todd Bentley has never met the Angel Archibald.  But I have.  Or have I?

Do you see the problem? I made up a story and so can you.  Anyone with a vivid imagination can make up a story about angel visitations, trips to heaven, and whatnot.   But there’s no way to validate all the wild claims people make.  Sadly, NAR leaders pitch their stories to gullible sheeple who want desperately to believe that their heroes would never lie to them. This might explain why “Super Apostle” Rick Joyner’s followers hang on his every word as he looks straight into a video camera and testifies that he’s been to heaven.  During one of his many visits he claims the Lord handed him the key to eternal joy.  Watch the he made and you’ll see that I’m not making this up.  In it Apostle Rick crows that he’s had a number of encounters with , and he knows many others who’ve had Elijah encounters too!  He’s quick to point out that it’s not necromancy (communicating with the dead) because Elijah was taken up to heaven without dying.  At 9:20 minutes you’ll learn how he met Enoch.

But this is not about Rick Joyner’s spiritual gift of pulling the wool over the sheep’s eyes.  So I’ll move on.

Grave Sucking

It’s hard to imagine anything more ludicrous than “grave sucking” yet Apostle Bill endorses this macabre practice.  Grave sucking aka “mantle grabbing” occurs when the Holy Spirit draws powers from the bones of a deceased person who, while alive, was allegedly Spirit empowered.  Since God’s mission for the dead is thwarted when he dies, the Spirit passes on his powers to individuals who visit their graves.

According to Victory Ministries, Apostle Bill led a group to John Lake’s grave where the following ensued:

He was looking for Lake’s anointing to heal the sick by a supernatural power. The people seeking this new paranormal anointing prostrated themselves upon Lake’s grave weeping, worshipping and expecting that Lake’s ministry power would strike them and his spirit would infuse them with a sign and wonders ministry like he had when he was alive.  Thus, a new preternatural cult was formed that day that is now referred to as “grave sucking.”

 Mr. Johnson testified about this bazaar act of desecration and necromancy (the practice of attempting to communicate with the spirits of the dead in order to predict or influence the future) that he and his group committed on Sid Roth’s radio show, “It’s Supernatural”

Johnson spun a weird mystical/Occult experience tale to Sid Roth about meeting the Late John Lake’s angel in the building where Lake had previously ministered in his healing rooms. He testified that two ladies went to a back room and they met a giant angel there that healed one of the women. They called Johnson and when he came into the room, he claimed there was an angel about 10 feet tall. Sid asked him, did you see the angel? Johnson replied “No, but I knew he was there and the angel said to me, ‘What took you so long, I’ve been here for 80 years!’” ()

It should surprise no one that Bill Johnson claims that he had a tête-à-tête with an angel.

What does the Bible say about playing around in the spirit realm?:

Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.  ()

Bethel School Of Sorcery

Apostle Bill runs the  in Redding CA.  According to its website:

(BSSM) is committed to the truth that God loves people, gave Himself for them and has given His Church supernatural power to bring individuals and nations into wholeness. The mission of BSSM is to equip and deploy revivalists who passionately pursue world-wide transformation in their God-given spheres of influence. Students are trained to continue in the ministry style of Jesus: to enjoy the presence of God, say what He is saying, and do what He is doing. (emphasis added)

Basically, BSSM trains people to heal the sick and raise the dead.  This raises the question: why do these folks not bring dead people back to life in America, Canada and western European countries?  Why only in the developing countries?  If the dearly departed are coming out of their graves in the developed countries, the media would surely report on it.

Insanity

The describes one man’s experience at Bethel Church (BC):

After a strange experience with an erratic Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry student who baby-sat his children, Bart McCurdy of Cottonwood decided to find out for himself what was going on at Bethel.

McCurdy said he attended a Friday night service at the church, during which he saw people painting on stage, dancing and flailing around on the ground. He found their worship music unconventional when one line of the same song was played for at least 11 minutes, he said.

McCurdy said the repetitive music, dancing, painting and excessive stimuli serve to get people worked up into an emotional frenzy where they’re expecting to see miraculous things.

“They come looking for that feel-good feeling, that high, for supposed miracles, supposed signs and wonders, speaking in tongues, gold dust, diamonds, feathers[floating down from the ceiling]. … It seems like they’re just ready for it,” he said.

Once, as she ran through her house frantically searching for her journals, the baby sitter told McCurdy the anti-Christ was in her house and Jesus was in hell saving people, he said. Shortly after that, she went into a trancelike state and said she felt 20 feet tall before losing consciousness…. The behavior made him believe she was demon-possessed, he said.

McCurdy said he regularly downloads podcasts of Bethel messages and hasn’t heard the Christian gospel message taught at Bethel. …

Then what gospel does Apostle Bill preach if not the taught in the Bible?  He teaches the (WoF) that saves no one.  What is the true gospel message?

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ()

See also

Despite the fact that Apostle Bill teaches a false gospel he’s hugely popular with many professing Christians.  His book sales are in the millions.  He’s become so popular that a large number of churches around the globe are affiliated with BC.  This speaks volumes as to the current state of evangelicalism.  Sadly, a growing number of believers have zero discernment, thus they accept every “wind of doctrine.”  Translation: Every sort of false teaching that blows their way.

A Challenge

Christians have been warned that , as some call it, represents a danger to millions of people around the globe, especially to (low information evangelicals) and the unsaved.  Because of self-professed apostles and prophets such as C. Peter Wagner, Rick Joyner (mentioned in part ), Bill Johnson and a , we’ve seen an unbridled abuse of the Holy Spirit.  After reading this series, I challenge you to do your own research (links below).  Before starting, pray that God will reveal truth to you.  What you’ll discover is that teaching isn’t remotely close to historic orthodox Christianity — and it certainly isn’t the Christianity for which the martyrs shed their blood!  Flee from it!

Part 1

Resources:

—Phil Johnson interviews John MacArthur

–By John Lanagan

1. –Around 54:00 minutes into the session, Wagner responds during the Q&A. He tells the audience that when the Holy Spirit stopped revealing things through the written Word, He kept on revealing new things to us through the “Rhema Word.” He claims that the Holy Spirit still speaks to us today by giving us information that you cannot find in the 66 books of the Bible; info that the Bible doesn’t address, but it’s not contradictory.

—Tony Miano, host of Cross Encounters radio, discusses, among other things, the music of BC’s music team Jesus Culture (more below). Listen to Tony tell of his Twitter chat with Beni Johnson, Bill’s pastorette wife.

…scroll down—Apologetics Index

—On Solid Rock resources

–On Solid Rock Resources

Bethel Church’s Music & Entertainment:

—Ken Silva

—Amy Spreeman

Watch And Weep:

—My Word Like Fire

Helpful Scripture:

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,

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Subprime Loans And Auto Sales: Debt On Wheels

“It’s not the underlying economics that’s driving things, it’s central bank liquidity.”

— Matt King, Citigroup

Soaring auto sales are not so much a sign of a strong economy as they are an indication of financial hanky-panky. We saw this same type of fakery play out in housing between 2004 – 2006, when prices went through the roof due to a mortgage-lending scam (“subprime”) that crashed the stock market and sent the economy reeling. Now the bigtime money guys are at it again, writing up auto loans for anyone who can sit upright in a chair and scribble an “X” on the dotted line. As a result, car sales have surged to over 16 million for the last 6 months. (A full 7 million more than the low point in January, 2009.)   And it’s not hard to see why either. The finance gurus are packaging these sketchy subprimes into bonds, offloading them on eager investors, and recycling the profits into more crappy loans. It’s a perfect circle and it won’t end until the loans start blowing up, jittery investors head for the exits,  and Uncle Sugar rides to the rescue with more bailouts.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.  First take a look at these charts by House of Debt which shows the disparity between auto spending and other types of spending since the end of the slump in 2009.

House of Debt:  “New auto purchases have driven the consumer spending recovery to a large degree. The chart below shows the spending recovery for new auto sales and for all other retail spending…

From 2009 to 2013, spending on new autos increased by 40% in nominal terms. All other spending increased by only 20%. Further, excluding autos, 2013 saw lower growth in nominal retail spending than 2012…

The concern is that a lot of auto purchases are being fueled with debt, given a strong recovery in the auto loan market. Below is the net flow of auto loans from 2002 to 2013. It is a net flow because it includes pay downs in addition to new originations. As it shows, auto lending in 2012 and 2013 tops any other year during the previous expansion from 2002 to 2007 (although it is still below the amount of new auto loans in 2000 and 2001).

(“Another Debt-Fueled Spending Spree?” House of Debt) 

How about that? So there’s a bigger debt bubble in auto loans today than there was before the bust. But why? Is it because demand is strong,  jobs are plentiful, wages are rising, the economy is growing, and people are optimistic about the future?

Heck, no. It’s because rates are low, credit is easy, and dealers are ready to put anyone with a license and a heartbeat into a brand-spanking new car no questions asked.  Here are the details from an article in the New York Times titled “In a Subprime Bubble for Used Cars, Borrowers Pay Sky-High Rates” by Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Michael Corkery:

”Auto loans to people with tarnished credit have risen more than 130 percent in the five years since the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, with roughly one in four new auto loans last year going to borrowers considered subprime — people with credit scores at or below 640.

The explosive growth is being driven by some of the same dynamics that were at work in subprime mortgages. A wave of money is pouring into subprime autos, as the high rates and steady profits of the loans attract investors. Just as Wall Street stoked the boom in mortgages, some of the nation’s biggest banks and private equity firms are feeding the growth in subprime auto loans by investing in lenders and making money available for loans.

And, like subprime mortgages before the financial crisis, many subprime auto loans are bundled into complex bonds and sold as securities by banks to insurance companies, mutual funds and public pension funds — a process that creates ever-greater demand for loans.

The New York Times examined more than 100 bankruptcy court cases, dozens of civil lawsuits against lenders and hundreds of loan documents and found that subprime auto loans can come with interest rates that can exceed 23 percent. The loans were typically at least twice the size of the value of the used cars purchased, including dozens of battered vehicles with mechanical defects hidden from borrowers. Such loans can thrust already vulnerable borrowers further into debt, even propelling some into bankruptcy, according to the court records, as well as interviews with borrowers and lawyers in 19 states.

In another echo of the mortgage boom, The Times investigation also found dozens of loans that included incorrect information about borrowers’ income and employment, leading people who had lost their jobs, were in bankruptcy or were living on Social Security to qualify for loans that they could never afford.” (“In a Subprime Bubble for Used Cars, Borrowers Pay Sky-High Rates”, New York Times)

Can you believe that this kind of chicanery is going on in broad daylight without the regulators stepping in? Think about it for a minute: If the NYT’s journalists can find “dozens of loans that included incorrect information about borrowers’ income and employment”, then why can’t the government regulators? It’s ridiculous. What we’re talking about here is a new version of “liar’s loans” where dealers are helping people who don’t have the means to repay the debt, to fudge the details on their loan application so they can drive off in a shiny new Impala.

Haven’t we seen this movie before?

Here’s more from USA Today: “In the first quarter of 2014, 24.9% of all new-car loans were 73 to 84 months long. Four years ago, less than 10% of loans were that long. In fact, such lengthy terms have pulled the average new-car loan to 66 months. That’s an all-time record.”

7 years to pay off a car?  You got to be kidding me? It’s like a second mortgage. And there’s more, too. The average monthly payment and average amount financed hit record highs in the first quarter too. This is from Auto News:

“The average monthly new-vehicle payment was $474 in the first quarter, up 3.3 percent from a year ago. The average monthly used-vehicle payment was $352, up 1.1 percent, Experian Automotive said.

Also in the first quarter, the average amount financed on a new-vehicle loan was $27,612, an increase of $964, or 3.6 percent. For used vehicles, the average amount financed was $17,927, up $395 or 2.3 percent.”

(“Auto loan terms, monthly payments hit high in Q1, Experian says“, Auto News)

So Americans are not just loading on more debt, they’re also assuming that they’re financial situation is going to be stable enough to make these large payments well into the future.  Good luck with that.

It’s also worth noting that, in many transactions, dealers are actually lending more than the value of the vehicle. According to Reuters David Henry,

“The average loan-to-value on new cars rose to 110.6 percent… On used cars it rose to 133.2 percent…

Auto lenders often provide loans that exceed the value of cars they are financing because borrowers want cash to pay sales taxes and fees.”

(“U.S. car buyers borrow more as rates fall and standards loosen“, David Henry, Reuters)

Let me see if I got this straight: You walk onto a car lot without a dime in your pocket, and drive off in a brand new car with everything paid for upfront? Such a deal! Can you see why we think that the sales numbers are a big fake?  This isn’t the sign of a strong economy. It’s the sign of another gigantic credit bubble rip-off. But what do the dealers get out of this thing? Is it really worth their while to botch the underwriting when they know that eventually they’ll have to repossess the vehicle? Sure, it is, because there’s big money in stuffing people into loans they can’t afford.

Here’s how the Times explains it: ”Auto loans to borrowers considered subprime, those with credit scores at or below 640, have spiked in the last five years. The jump has been driven in large part by the demand among investors for securities backed by the loans, which offer high returns at a time of low interest rates. Roughly 25 percent of all new auto loans made last year were subprime, and the volume of subprime auto loans reached more than $145 billion in the first three months of this year.”

Bingo. So not only do they make dough on the high interest rates they charge their subprime borrowers, (Sometimes 23 percent or more.) they also make it by selling the loan to investors who are eager to buy any manner of crappy bond provided it offers a better return than US Treasuries. This is the mess Bernanke created by fixing interest rates at zero for nearly 6 years.  Zirp (zero interest rate policy) unavoidably leads to excessive risk taking by yield-crazed speculators.    The voracious appetite for subprime securities (ABS–Asset-Backed Securities) has even surprised the bond issuers who are constantly beating the bushes looking for sketchier products.  This is from the same article by the NY Times:

“Investors, seeking a higher return when interest rates are low, recently flocked to buy a bond issue from Prestige Financial Services of Utah. Orders to invest in the $390 million debt deal were four times greater than the amount of available securities.

What is backing many of these securities? Auto loans made to people who have been in bankruptcy.

An affiliate of the Larry H. Miller Group of Companies, Prestige specializes in making the loans to people in bankruptcy, packaging them into securities and then selling them to investors.

“It’s been a hot space,” Richard L. Hyde, the firm’s chief operating officer, said during an interview in March. Investors are betting on risky borrowers. The average interest rate on loans bundled into Prestige’s latest offering, for example, is 18.6 percent, up slightly from a similar offering rolled out a year earlier…. To meet that rising demand, Wall Street snatches up more and more loans to package into the complex investments.” (NYT)

HA! Now there’s a good way to feather the old retirement fund; load up on bonds made up of loans to people who’ve gone bust.

This is the impact that zero rates have on investor behavior. The abundance of cheap and plentiful liquidity invariably leads to trouble. And there are victims in this Central Bank-authored gold rush too, namely the unsophisticated borrowers who pay prohibitively high rates on beater vehicles that are typically worth less-than-half the value of the loan. (Check the NYT article for examples.)

The Times also notes that the ratings agencies have been playing along with the finance companies just as they did during the subprime mortgage fiasco. Here’s more from the Times:

“Rating agencies, which assess the quality of the bonds, are helping fuel the boom. They are giving many of these securities top ratings, which clears the way for major investors, from pension funds to employee retirement accounts, to buy the bonds. In March, for example, Standard & Poor’s blessed most of Prestige’s bond with a triple-A rating. Slices of a similar bond that Prestige sold last year also fetched the highest rating from S.&P. A large slice of that bond is held in mutual funds managed by BlackRock, one of the world’s largest money managers.” (NYT)

Ask yourself this, dear reader: How are the ratings agencies able to give “many of these securities top ratings”, when the investigators from the Times found “dozens of loans that included incorrect information about borrowers’ income and employment, leading people who had lost their jobs, were in bankruptcy or were living on Social Security to qualify for loans that they could never afford”?

Let’s face it: The regulatory changes in Dodd-Frank haven’t done a damn thing to protect the victims of these dodgy subprime schemes. Borrowers and investors are both getting gouged by a system that only protects the interests of the perpetrators. The sad fact is that nothing has changed. The system is just as corrupt as it was when Lehman went down.

So, how long can this go on before the market implodes?

According to the Times:

“financial firms are beginning to see signs of strain. In the first three months of this year, banks had to write off as entirely uncollectable an average of $8,541 of each delinquent auto loan, up about 15 percent from a year earlier, according to Experian…

In another sign of trouble ahead, repossessions, while still relatively low, increased nearly 78 percent to an estimated 388,000 cars in the first three months of the year from the same period a year earlier, according to the latest data provided by Experian. The number of borrowers who are more than 60 days late on their car payments also jumped in 22 states during that period….” (NYT)

(According to Amber Nelson at loan.com: “In the second quarter, the value of all auto loans late by 60 days or more was more than $4 billion, up 27 percent from the prior year, according to Experian.”)

So, yeah, the trouble is mounting, but that doesn’t mean that this madness won’t continue for some time to come. It probably will. It’ll probably drag-on until the economy turns south and more borrowers start falling behind on their payments. That will lead to more defaults, heavier losses on auto bonds, and a hasty race to the exits by investors. Isn’t that how the subprime mortgage scam played out?

Indeed. But at least there are signs of hope on the regulatory front. Check out this clip from an article at CNBC:

“In August, both Santander Consumer and General Motors Financial Co. acknowledged receiving Justice Department subpoenas in connection with a probe over possible violations of civil-fraud laws. And the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Securities and Exchange Commission have both stepped up their scrutiny of the auto-loan market.” (“New debt crisis fear: Subprime auto loans“, CNBC)

So the SEC, the DOJ, and the CFPB are actually investigating the underwriting practices of these behemoth finance companies to see if they violated “civil fraud laws”?

Will wonders never cease?

Just don’t hold your breath waiting for convictions.

The American Dream, Gone

15 Reasons Why Americans Think We’re Still in a Recession…

1: Wage Stagnation:  Why America’s Workers Need Faster Wage Growth—And What We Can Do About It, Elise Gould, EPI

Economic Policy Institute:

“The hourly compensation of a typical worker grew in tandem with productivity from 1948-1973. …. After 1973, productivity grew strongly, especially after 1995, while the typical worker’s compensation was relatively stagnant. This divergence of pay and productivity has meant that many workers were not benefitting from productivity growth—the economy could afford higher pay but it was not providing it.

Between 1979 and 2013, productivity grew 64.9 percent, while hourly compensation of production and nonsupervisory workers, who comprise over 80 percent of the private-sector workforce, grew just 8.0 percent. Productivity thus grew eight times faster than typical worker compensation…” (EPI)

(Note: Flatlining wages are the Number 1 reason that the majority of Americans still think we’re in a recession.)

2: Most people still haven’t recouped what they lost in the crash: Typical Household Wealth Has Plunged 36% Since 2003, Zero Hedge

Zero Hedge:

“According to a new study by the Russell Sage Foundation, the inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only $56,335, or a 36% decline… Welcome to America’s Lost Decade.

Simply put, the NY Times notes, it’s not merely an issue of the rich getting richer. The typical American household has been getting poorer, too.

The reasons for these declines are complex and controversial, but one point seems clear: When only a few people are winning and more than half the population is losing, surely something is amiss. (chart)”

3: Most working people are still living hand-to-mouth:  76% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, CNN Money

CNN:

“Roughly three-quarters of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, with little to no emergency savings, according to a survey released by Bankrate.com Monday.

Fewer than one in four Americans have enough money in their savings account to cover at least six months of expenses, enough to help cushion the blow of a job loss, medical emergency or some other unexpected event, according to the survey of 1,000 adults. Meanwhile, 50% of those surveyed have less than a three-month cushion and 27% had no savings at all…

Last week, online lender CashNetUSA said 22% of the 1,000 people it recently surveyed had less than $100 in savings to cover an emergency, while 46% had less than $800. After paying debts and taking care of housing, car and child care-related expenses, the respondents said there just isn’t enough money left over for saving more.”

4: Millennials are Drowning in Red Ink:  Biggest economic threat? Student loan debt, USA Today

USA Today:

“Total student loan debt has grown more than 150% since 2005… We have more than $1.2 trillion of student loan debt…
And while 6.7 million borrowers in repayment mode are delinquent, the sad fact is that many lenders aren’t exactly incentivized to work with borrowers. Unlike all other forms of debt, student loans can’t be discharged in bankruptcy. Moreover, lenders can garnish wages and even Social Security benefits to get repaid…

In 2005 student loans accounted for less than 13% of the total debt load for adults age 20-29. Today, student loans account for nearly 37% of that group’s outstanding debt. Student loan debt’s slice of the total debt pie for the age group nearly tripled! The average loan balance for that age group is now more than $25,500, up from $15,900 in 2005.”

5: Downward mobility is the new reality: Middle-Class Death Watch: As Poverty Spreads, 28 Percent of Americans Fall Out of Middle Class, Truthout

Truthout:

“The promise of the American dream has given many hope that they themselves could one day rise up the economic ladder. But according to a study released those already in financially-stable circumstances should fear falling down a few rungs too. The study…  found that nearly a third of Americans who were part of the middle class as teenagers in the 1970s have fallen out of it as adults…  its findings suggest the relative ease with which people in the U.S. can end up in low-income, low-opportunity lifestyles — even if they started out with a number of advantages. Though the American middle class has been repeatedly invoked as a key factor in any economic turnaround, numerous reports have suggested that the middle class enjoys less existential security than it did a generation ago, thanks to stagnating incomes and the decline of the industrial sector.”

6: People are more vulnerable than ever:  “More Than Half Of All Americans Can’t Come Up With $400 In Emergency Cash… Unless They Borrow“, Personal Liberty

“According to a Federal Reserve report on American households’ “economic well-being” in 2013,  fewer than half of all Americans said they’d be able to come up with four Benjamins on short notice to deal with an unexpected expense…
Under a section titled “Savings,” the report notes that “[s]avings are depleted for many households after the recession,” and lists the following findings:

*Among those who had savings prior to 2008, 57 percent reported using up some or all of their savings in the Great Recession and its aftermath.

*39 percent of respondents reported having a rainy day fund adequate to cover three months of expenses.

*Only 48 percent of respondents said that they would completely cover a hypothetical emergency expense costing $400 without selling something or borrowing money.

7: Working people are getting poorer: The Typical Household, Now Worth a Third, New York Times

NYT:

“The inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only $56,335, or a 36 percent decline, according to a study financed by the Russell Sage Foundation.

Those are the figures for a household at the median point in the wealth distribution — the level at which there are an equal number of households whose worth is higher and lower. But during the same period, the net worth of wealthy households increased substantially….“The housing bubble basically hid a trend of declining financial wealth at the median that began in 2001,” said Fabian T. Pfeffer, the University of Michigan professor who is lead author of the Russell Sage Foundation study.

The reasons for these declines are complex and controversial, but one point seems clear: When only a few people are winning and more than half the population is losing, surely something is amiss.”

8: Most people can’t even afford to get their teeth fixed:  7 things the middle class can’t afford anymore, USA Today

USA Today:

“A vacation is an extra expense that many middle-earners cannot afford without sacrificing something else. A Statista survey found that this year 54% of people gave up purchasing big ticket items like TVs or electronics so they can go on a vacation. Others made sacrifices like reducing or eliminating their trips to the movies (47%), reducing or eliminating trips out to restaurants (43%), or avoiding purchasing small ticket items like new clothing (43%).

2–New vehicles…
3–To pay off debt…
4–Emergency savings…
5–Retirement savings…
6–Medical care…
7–Dental work…

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “the U.S. spends about $64 billion each year on oral health care — just 4% is paid by Government programs.” About 108 million people in the U.S. have no dental coverage and even those who are covered may have trouble getting the care they need, the department reports.”

9: The good, high-paying jobs have vanished:  Recovery Has Created Far More Low-Wage Jobs Than Better-Paid Ones, New York Times

NYT:

“The deep recession wiped out primarily high-wage and middle-wage jobs. Yet the strongest employment growth during the sluggish recovery has been in low-wage work, at places like strip malls and fast-food restaurants.

In essence, the poor economy has replaced good jobs with bad ones. That is the conclusion of anew report from the National Employment Law Project, a research and advocacy group, analyzing employment trends four years into the recovery.

“Fast food is driving the bulk of the job growth at the low end — the job gains there are absolutely phenomenal,” said Michael Evangelist, the report’s author. “If this is the reality — if these jobs are here to stay and are going to be making up a considerable part of the economy — the question is, how do we make them better?”

10: More workers are throwing in the towel:  Labor Participation Rate Drops To 36 Year Low; Record 92.6 Million Americans Not In Labor Force, Zero Hedge

Zero Hedge:

“For those curious why the US unemployment rate just slid once more to a meager 5.9%, the lowest print since the summer of 2008, the answer is the same one we have shown every month since 2010: the collapse in the labor force participation rate, which in September slid from an already three decade low 62.8% to 62.7% – the lowest in over 36 years, matching the February 1978 lows. And while according to the Household Survey, 232,000 people found jobs, what is more disturbing is that the people not in the labor force, rose to a new record high, increasing by 315,000 to 92.6 million!

Bottom line: Unemployment has gone down because more people aren’t working and have fallen off the radar.”

11: Nearly twice as many people still rely on Food Stamps than before the recession: Food-stamp use is falling from its peak, Marketwatch

Marketwatch:

“Food-stamp use is finally moving away from the peak. At 46.1 million people, total food-stamp usage is down about 4% from its high in December 2012 of 47.8 million. Only eight states in March (the latest data available) were up from the same month of 2013.

It’s still not great news, however, considering there were 26.3 million people receiving food stamps in 2007…”

12: The ocean of  red ink continues to grow: American Household Credit Card Debt Statistics: 2014, Nerd Wallet Finance

Nerd Wallet Finance:

U.S. household consumer debt profile:

*Average credit card debt: $15,607

*Average mortgage debt: $153,500

*Average student loan debt: $32,656

In total, American consumers owe:

*$11.63 trillion in debt

*An increase of 3.8% from last year

*$880.5 billion in credit card debt

*$8.07 trillion in mortgages

*$1,120.3 billion in student loans

*An increase of 11.5% from last year

13: No Recovery for working people: The collapse of household income in the US, World Socialist Web Site

WSWS:

“The US Federal Reserve’s latest Survey of Consumer Finances, released last Thursday, documents a devastating decline in economic conditions for a large majority of the population during the so-called economic recovery.

The report reveals that between 2007 and 2013, the income of a typical US household fell 12 percent. The median American household now earns $6,400 less per year than it did in 2007.

Source: Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances

Much of the decline occurred during the “recovery” presided over by the Obama administration. In the three years between 2010 and 2013, the annual income of a typical household fell by an additional 5 percent.

The report also shows that wealth has become even more concentrated in the topmost economic layers. The wealth share of the top 3 percent climbed from 44.8 percent in 1989 to 54.4 percent in 2013. The share of wealth held by the bottom 90 percent fell from 33.2 percent in 1989 to 24.7 percent in 2013.”

14: Most people will work until they die:  The Greatest Retirement Crisis In American History, Forbes

Forbes:

“We are on the precipice of the greatest retirement crisis in the history of the world. In the decades to come, we will witness millions of elderly Americans, the Baby Boomers and others, slipping into poverty.

Too frail to work, too poor to retire will become the “new normal” for many elderly Americans.

That dire prediction… is already coming true. Our national demographics, coupled with indisputable glaringly insufficient retirement savings and human physiology, suggest that a catastrophic outcome for at least a significant percentage of our elderly population is inevitable. With the average 401(k) balance for 65 year olds estimated at $25,000 by independent experts …the decades many elders will spend in forced or elected “retirement” will be grim…

The signs of the coming retirement crisis are all around you. Who’s bagging your groceries: a young high school kid or an older “retiree” who had to go back to work to supplement his income or qualify for health insurance?”

15: Americans are more pessimistic about the future, Polling Report

According to a CNN/ORC Poll May 29-June 1, 2014:

“Do you agree or disagree? The American dream has become impossible for most people to achieve.”

Agree: 59%

Disagree: 40%

Unsure: 1%

According to a NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll conducted by the polling organizations of Peter Hart (D) and Bill McInturff (R). April 23-27, 2014:

“Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Because of the widening gap between the incomes of the wealthy and everyone else, America is no longer a country where everyone, regardless of their background, has an opportunity to get ahead and move up to a better standard of living.”Agree: 54%

Disagree: 43%

Mixed: 2%

Unsure: 1%

Also, according to a CBS News Poll. Jan. 17-21, 2014. N=1,018 adults nationwide.

“Looking to the future, do you think most children in this country will grow up to be better off or worse off than their parents?”Better off: 34%

Worse off: 63%

Same: 2%

Unsure: 1%

The majority of people in the United States, no longer believe in the American dream, or that America is the land of opportunity, or that their children will have a better standard of living than their own.  They’ve grown more pessimistic because  they haven’t seen the changes they were hoping for, and because their lives are just as hard as they were right after the crash.  In fact, according to a 2014 Public Religion Research Institute poll– 72 percent of those surveyed said they think “the economy is still in recession.”

Judging by the info in the 15 links above,  they’re probably right.

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