New DVDs By Michael Snyder
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 There is much more to the collapse of America than just our economic problems. The truth is that the United States is like a beautiful house that may still look great on the outside but that has rotted and decayed very badly on the inside. In fact, the foundations of our country have rotted away so badly that our entire society is starting to collapse. Just look at James Holmes. It would be great if we could honestly say that James Holmes is an aberration, but we all know better than that. James Holmes is not alone. The cold, hard reality of the matter is that our degenerate society regularly produces sickos and monsters like James Holmes. As I wrote about the other day, we lead the world in a whole host of bad categories. We lead the world in child abuse, we lead the world in divorce, we lead the world in teen pregnancy and we lead the world in drug addiction. The basic building blocks of society that tie us together and help keep us grounded (such as the family) are breaking down, but we still seem surprised that we have hordes of “lone wolf individuals” running around doing crazy things. We are a sick, twisted society that is producing sick, twisted individuals. If we do not admit how deep our problems really are, then we are never going to find any real solutions and we are going to keep being shocked when another James Holmes pops on to the scene.
Why didn’t this type of thing happen back in the 1950s?
Why are our young people so violent and so mentally unstable?
What has changed?
Those are some very important questions. But most Americans will forget this incident very quickly and they will move on with their self-absorbed lives.
But there is so much about this shooting that calls for further examination.
What would make a highly educated 24 year old man do something so incredibly evil?
Why are so many young people suddenly “snapping” these days?
As our society continues to decay, how much worse are things going to get?
It is almost to the point where people are going to start becoming afraid of gathering in public places.
Most Americans never would have imagined that it would be dangerous to go to the movie theater.
But now people are going to look at going to the movies much differently.
And could it have been possible that James Holmes had some help?
There are some important questions that the media is not really focusing on in this case….
-How did an impoverished college student put together an arsenal of weapons, ammunition and body armor worth tens of thousands of dollars?
-Why do some eyewitnesses claim that he had at least one other person assisting him?
-Why did he surrender to police without offering any resistance whatsoever?
It would be great if we could get some answers to those questions.
In any event, this is yet another sign of how far our society has fallen. We are becoming more sick and more twisted with each passing day, and it is time to admit this fact.
The following are 20 more examples of the sickos that are overrunning America….
#1 A Sicko In Oregon That Breaks Into Homes In Order To Watch Computer Porn
According to CBS, one young man in Oregon has been breaking into homes with the intent of watching pornography on the Internet….
Police say a 21-year-old Oregon man broke into homes to look at pornography on the Internet, sometimes while the homeowners were inside.
Eugene police said Thursday they arrested Antone Forrest Deedward Owens on charges of burglary, menacing and coercion. Authorities say he broke into at least three homes since last September, sometimes entering the same home on multiple occasions.
#2 Delaware Pediatrician That Sexually Abused 103 Children
Who is the bigger monster – James Holmes or the Delaware doctor that sexually abused 103 children? The following is from a recent Natural News article….
According to reports in 2010, Dr. Earl Bradley, who has since been dubbed “America’s Worst Pedophile,” stood accused of molesting 103 young patients in his office in the tiny town of Lewes, Del., since 1994.
Detailed in 160 pages of what ABC News described as “disturbing court documents,” Bradley apparently videotaped his sex acts. The documents said Bradley repeatedly molested his child patients as their parents sat nearby and unsuspecting outside the waiting room of his BayBee’s Pediatrics clinic.
#3 Jerry Sandusky
Jerry Sandusky was supposed to be a role model. He was an assistant football coach at Penn State and he was heavily involved in charity work.
But it turns out that it was all a lie. In fact, a whole bunch of people involved in the Penn State football program knew what was going on and did not report it.
In the end, Jerry Sandusky was found guilty of 45 counts of sexually abusing young boys. He has become a national symbol of the depravity which is rotting away the very heart of this nation.
#4 Man That Kept His Wife Chained Up For 10 Years
What would you do to a man that kept his wife chained up for ten years?
According to one West Virginia news source, that is exactly what one man down in West Virginia did….
Earlier this month, Lizon was arrested after police say he kept his wife, Stephanie, chained up for nearly a decade in their home along Miller Hollow Road in Leroy, W.Va.
Lizon is accused of smashing Stephanie’s feet with farm equipment and hitting her with a hot frying pan.
Police say she also had a miscarriage because of the abuse and was forced to have another baby while still chained.
#5 Serial Foot-Licker In New York
Did serial foot-lickers even exist back in the 1950s?
Why are there so many of them running around today?
The following is from the New York Daily News….
Police have a possible serial foot-licker in custody after a 49-year-old man was arrested for inappropriately touching two young girls at an upstate New York library.
Anthony Parri allegedly took off a child’s shoe and rubbed the girl’s foot against his nose and mouth in one of two incidents Tuesday at Penfield Library, according to reports.
One of the alleged attacks happened in an open area in the children’s section, library director Bernadette Brickman told WHAM, ABC’s affiliate in Rochester. The child’s mom and a library employee witnessed the abuse and called the cops, according to the station.
#6 Houston Police Officer Accused Of Raping A Woman While On Duty
Who is supposed to keep all of these sickos under control?
The police?
Sadly, the police often are the sickos.
The following is from the Houston Chronicle….
DNA evidence has linked a Houston police officer to a rape he allegedly committed while on duty last month, according to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
Officer Adan Jimenez Carranza, 32, was being held Friday at the Harris County Jail under a $30,000 bond, charged with aggravated sexual assault of a woman June 18 after a minor traffic accident, court records show.
#7 Philadelphia Police Officer Makes 14 Year Old Girl Watch Him Have Sex With A Prostitute After Sexually Assaulting Her
If we can’t trust the police, then who can we trust?
Recently there have been a bunch of reports of sexual misconduct by police in the national news.
The following is how Fox News described one particularly disturbing incident from the Philadelphia area….
A Philadelphia cop was arrested over allegations that he abducted a 14-year-old girl, sexually assaulted her and made her watch him have sex with a prostitute.
Police found Anthony Dattilo, 36, at a motel in the Bensalem area of the city Wednesday while responding to a possible abduction, according to the Bucks County Courier Times.
Dattilo, a 12-year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Department, is reportedly in custody at the Bucks County prison on $500,000 bail.
#8 TSA Agent Spills Grandpa’s Ashes And Laughs About It
Almost every single day there is another TSA horror story in the news.
But what you are about to read is one of the worst of them all.
The following is from an ABC News article….
John Gross was leaving Florida with the remains of his grandfather in a tightly sealed jar marked “Human Remains, ” ABC Indianapolis affiliate RTV6 reported.
“They opened up my bag, and I told them, ‘Please, be careful. These are my grandpa’s ashes,’” Gross told the station. “She picked up the jar. She opened it up.”
Gross said the TSA agent used her finger to sift through the ashes and accidentally spilled it. He said one-third to one-half of the ashes spilled and that the agent laughed as he tried to gather what he could from the floor.
“She didn’t apologize. She started laughing. I was on my hands and knees picking up bone fragments. I couldn’t pick up all, everything that was lost. I mean, there was a long line behind me.”
#9 Connecticut Man Threatens To Cut The Tongue Out Of The Mouth Of A 3 Year Old Child
What kind of a man would hold up a knife and threaten to cut the tongue out of the mouth of a 3 year old kid?
Sadly, that is exactly what happened up in Connecticut recently.
The following is from a WFSB report about this incident….
Police in Vernon are investigating reports that a man held a knife to a child’s face and threatened to cut out his tongue.
On Friday, a woman named Heather Bonneville called police to inform them that a family acquaintance, who has been identified as Roman Fein, held the knife within inches of her 3-year-old son’s face before making the threat to cut his tongue out of his mouth.
#10 Naked “Cannibal” Threatens To Eat Police Officers Down In Georgia
Why are so many criminals getting naked lately?
Why are so many criminals trying to eat people?
The following is from a recent Daily Mail article….
Karl Laventure, 21, was believed to be high on bath salts when he tried to attack the officers in Lilburn, Georgia.
And after they had managed to subdue him he began threatening to eat them.
Laventure appeared out of some woods and was seen running naked around a golf range near Atlanta, swinging a club around his head and screaming.
Police said that it took several officers to subdue the man who had ‘super-human strength’.
#11 Public School Administrator In New York Fired For Not Participating In A Gay Orgy
Almost every day there is another story in the news about a new school sex scandal somewhere in America.
The following is from Courthouse News Service….
A public school administrator claims in court that his male boss sexually assaulted him in a hotel room after giving him pornography and trying to get him to join a foursome, then fired him for rebuffing the advances.
#12 Naked Florida Man Bites Chunk From Another Man’s Stomach
This year criminals in America seem to have become obsessed with chewing on human flesh.
The following example is from a recent Daily Mail article….
A naked man allegedly flew into a violent rampage, biting a chunk out of another man’s stomach after leaping from his roof onto a truck and urinating inside his home.
Officers responding to the scene needed backup to restrain Jeremiah Aaron Haughee with leg shackles, a spit hood and handcuffs after he continued fighting despite being Tasered five times.
Authorities did not carry out tests on Haughee to see if he was under the influence of any drugs.
Police first arrived at the home in Flagler Beach, Florida at 4.30 a.m. to find two men restraining the naked 22-year-old in a puddle of urine and glass.
#13 Father Who Killed His 3 Daughters Inside The Home Of His Ex-Wife
You know that society is really starting to break down when parents start killing their own children.
What one man up in Wisconsin is being charged with is absolutely horrific.
The following is from a recent CNN article….
A 34-year-old father was being held by authorities Wednesday in connection with the deaths of his three daughters, who were found inside his ex-wife’s Wisconsin home with the gas fireplace turned on, officials said.
#14 Pregnant Woman Set On Fire In Detroit
These days not even pregnant women are immune to violence.
What one pregnant woman up in Detroit went through recently is hard to stomach….
A 22-year-old pregnant woman survived after being bound, driven to Detroit, set on fire and shot early Saturday morning.
The woman, who was nine-months pregnant, had returned from a movie with her boyfriend and dropped him off at his house in Warren when she was approached from behind, Warren police Sgt. Dave Geffert said.
The woman’s hands, feet and eyes were bound with duct tape. She was then forced into her car and driven to an unknown place in Detroit where she was doused with lighter fluid, set on fire and shot once in the upper back, he said.
#15 New Jersey Man Throws His Own Intestines At Police
If the police were breaking into your home, would you cut out your own entrails and throw them at the police?
According to the Huffington Post, that is exactly what one man up in New Jersey did….
A New Jersey man allegedly cut out his entrails in front of police and then threw bits of his flesh and intestines at them.
The gruesome scene played out at a home in Hackensack, N.J., where 43-year-old Wayne Carter allegedly barricaded himself in on Sunday, NBC New York reported.
Officers got a call that morning when a witness said Carter was threatening to harm himself with a knife. Two cops responded, kicked in the door and found Carter in the corner, the station reported.
Carter allegedly ignored officers’ orders to put down the knife, and instead began stabbing himself in the abdomen, neck and legs.
#16 Naked Man Brutally Murders A Hotel Maid
Why would anyone want to kill a 62 year old cleaning woman?
Many of the crimes that are being committed today are absolutely senseless.
The following is how the CBS affiliate in Sacramento reported this story….
A naked man who may have been on drugs was arrested Saturday for killing a Tracy motel employee.
Andrew Carreiro, 25, is behind bars accused of killing the 62-year-old woman who cleans rooms at the Hacienda Inn on the 600 block of West 11th Street.
Witnesses say they found Carreiro covered in blood and standing near the partially naked body of the woman, say witnesses.
“[It’s] most definitely the craziest thing I’ve seen in my life, most definitely,” said Jermaine Haynes, a motel resident who made the gruesome discovery.
#17 Crack-Fueled Sickos Abduct A Female Jogger
These days you are not safe anywhere in the country.
Just check out what happened to one math teacher from Montana. The following is how a Daily Mail article described what two very sick drug addicts did to her….
After smoking crack cocaine over the entire trip, Waters allegedly told Spell the drug ‘brought the devil out in him’ and began talking about kidnapping and killing a female, AP reports.
After they spotted Arnold, Spell claims that Waters told him to ‘grab the lady’ and pull her into their Ford Explorer as she jogged by.
‘Spell said Waters got into the back seat with the female and “choked her out”,’ the affidavit states.
After dropping Arnold’s body in a rural area of North Dakota later that night, Waters bought a shovel at a nearby Walmart. They buried the body in a two- to three-feet-deep hole on an old farmstead.
#18 Female Teacher Has Sex With Four Male Students
Why are so many public school teachers having sex with their students?
Don’t they realize that they will inevitably get caught?
Aren’t the dozens of other school sex scandals in the news sufficient warnings?
The following is from the NBC affiliate in Tucson, Arizona….
A new police report reveals racy, disturbing details of the alleged relationships between an Ironwood Ridge High School teacher and four of her students.
Oro Valley Police picked up Melissa Dalton April 30th booking her on four counts of sexual conduct with a minor.
She posted bail and got out the next day.
Subsequently more Ironwood Ridge students came forward with more allegations. That prompted the Oro Valley Police Department to add eight more counts including six of sex with a minor.
Melissa Dalton was in her first year teaching at Ironwood Ridge High School. The 33 year old is a wife and mother.
#19 Texas House Of Horrors
The nightmares that were happening in one quiet house in Texas are so horrifying that it is hard to find the words to describe them.
The following is from a New York Daily News article….
Texas authorities said Tuesday they removed 11 children from a crowded home where a registered sex offender lives after they found eight confined in a small, dark bedroom with restraints tying some to their beds.
Along with the children, 10 adults were living in the one-story, 1,700-square-foot home in Dayton, about 30 miles northeast of Houston, Child Protective Services spokeswoman Gwen Carter said. One month after a raid on the house, authorities are still trying to determine how the children are related and why they were there, she said.
#20 Florida Man Bites The Lips Off Of A Kitten
What kind of a monster would bite the lips off of a kitten?
It is hard to imagine anyone actually doing such a thing, but according to WKMG this apparently happened….
A Palm Coast man was arrested on suspicion of biting the lips off a kitten and strangling another cat.
Angel Vega Roman, 28, was arrested Saturday and charged with cruelty to animals.
According to the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, Roman told an acquaintance that he accidentally choked his roommates’ kitten a couple of weeks ago and bit the lips off another black and white kitten named Oreo. Roman also tortured Oreo by burning its ear and whiskers with a lighter, a sheriff’s report stated.
I know that I used a lot of disturbing examples in this article, but I wanted to make my point very strongly.
James Holmes is not an isolated case. America is literally being overrun by sickos and monsters.
In the old days, our societal institutions were strong and they helped to tie us together.
But today there is very, very little that ties us together and keeps us grounded. Faith in almost every major institution in society is very low and our families are falling apart.
The percentage of adult Americans that are married right now is at an all-time low. The percentage of Americans with no religious affiliation at all is at an all-time high.
Our society is rotting from the inside out and many of our formerly great cities are degenerating into absolute hellholes.
Fixing America is not just a matter of fixing our economic system or our political system.
Fixing America is going to take a whole lot more than that.
So what do all of you think about this?
Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….
 Are you ready for the next major global food crisis? The price of corn hit an all-time record high on Thursday. So did the price of soybeans. The price of corn is up about 50 percent since the middle of last month, and the price of wheat has risen by about 50 percent over the past five weeks. On Thursday, corn for September delivery reached $8.166 per bushel, and many analysts believe that it could hit $10 a bushel before this crisis is over. The worst drought in the United States in more than 50 years is projected to continue well into August, and more than 1,300 counties in the United States have been declared to be official natural disaster areas. So how is this crisis going to affect the average person on the street? Well, most Americans and most Europeans are going to notice their grocery bills go up significantly over the coming months. That will not be pleasant. But in other areas of the world this crisis could mean the difference between life and death for some people. You see, half of all global corn exports come from the United States. So what happens if the U.S. does not have any corn to export? About a billion people around the world live on the edge of starvation, and today the Financial Times ran a front page story with the following headline: “World braced for new food crisis“. Millions upon millions of families in poor countries are barely able to feed themselves right now. So what happens if the price of the food that they buy goes up dramatically?
You may not think that you eat much corn, but the truth is that it is in most of the things that we buy at the grocery store. In fact, corn is found in about 74 percent of the products we buy in the supermarket and it is used in more than 3,500 ways.
Americans consume approximately one-third of all the corn grown in the world each year, and we export massive amounts of corn to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, thanks to the drought of 2012 farmers are watching their corn die right in front of their eyes all over the United States.
The following is from a Washington Post article that was posted on Thursday….
Nearly 40 percent of the corn crop was in poor-to-very-poor condition as of Sunday, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. That compared with just 11 percent a year ago.
“The crop, if you look going south from Illinois and Indiana, is damaged and a lot of it is damaged hopelessly and beyond repair now,” said Sterling Smith, a Citibank Institutional Client Group vice president who specializes in commodities.
About 30 percent of the soybean crop was in poor-to-very-poor condition, which compared with 10 percent a year ago.
Conditions for both crops are expected to worsen in Monday’s agriculture agency report.
More than half of the country is experiencing drought conditions right now, and this is devastating both ranchers and farmers. Right now, ranchers all over the western United States are slaughtering their herds early as feed prices rise. It is being projected that the price of meat will rise substantially later this year.
The following is from a recent MSNBC article….
For example, you may want to make room in your freezer for meat because prices for beef and pork are expected to drop in the next few months as farmers slaughter herds to deal with the high cost of grains that are used as livestock feed, said Shawn Hackett of the agricultural commodities firm Hackett Financial Advisors in Boynton Beach, Fla. But, he added, everything from milk to salad dressing is going to cost more in the near term, and eventually the meat deals will evaporate as demand outstrips supply.
So there may be some deals on meat in the short-term as all of these animals are slaughtered, but in the long-term we can expect prices to go up quite a bit.
But it isn’t as if food is not already expensive enough. The price of food rose much faster than the overall rate of inflation last year.
As I wrote about yesterday, American families found their grocery budgets stretched very thin during 2011. Just check out these food inflation rates from last year….
- Beef: +10.2%
- Pork: +8.5%
- Fish: +7.1%
- Eggs: +9.2%
- Dairy: +6.8%
- Oils and Fats: +9.3%
If prices rose that fast last year, what will those statistics look like at the end of this year if this drought continues?
Sadly, America is not alone. According to Bloomberg, the U.S. is not the only place that is having problems with crops right now….
Dry weather in the U.S., as well as the Black Sea region; a poor start to the Indian monsoon and the possibility of emerging El Nino conditions suggest agricultural products may rally, Barclays said in a report e-mailed yesterday.
And all of this is very bad news for a world that is really struggling to feed itself.
In many countries around the globe, the poor spend up to 75 percent of their incomes on food. Just a 10 percent increase in the price of basic food staples can be absolutely devastating for impoverished families that are living right on the edge.
You may not have ever known what it is like to wonder where your next meal is going to come from, but in many areas around the world that is a daily reality for many families.
Just check out what is happening in Yemen….
Crying and staring at his distended belly, 6-year-old Warood cannot walk on his spindly legs.
“We become so familiar with sickness,” said his mother, who according to social norms here does not give her name to outsiders.
She says she has watched two of her children die. “I have to decide: Do I buy rice or medicine?”
The United Nations estimates that 267,000 Yemeni children are facing life-threatening levels of malnutrition. In the Middle East’s poorest country hunger has doubled since 2009. More than 10 million people — 44% of the population — do not have enough food to eat, according to the United Nation’s World Food Program.
In the United States, we aren’t going to see starvation even if nearly the entire corn crop fails. Our grocery bills might be more painful, but there is still going to be plenty of food for everyone.
In other areas of the world, a bad year for global crops can mean the difference between life and death.
Sadly, it is being projected that the current drought in the United States will last well into August at least.
But even when this current drought ends, our problems will not be over. The truth is that we are facing a very severe long-term water crisis in the western United States.
Just check out the following facts from foodandwaterwatch.org….
-California has a 20-year supply of freshwater left
-New Mexico has only a ten-year supply of freshwater left
-The U.S. interior west is probably the driest it has been in 500 years, according to the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Geological Survey
-Lake Mead, the vast reservoir of the Colorado River, has a 50 percent chance of running dry by 2021
The 1,450 mile long Colorado River is probably the most important body of water in the southwestern United States.
Unfortunately, the Colorado River is rapidly dying.
The following is from a recent article by Jonathan Waterman about how the once might Colorado River is running dry…
Fifty miles from the sea, 1.5 miles south of the Mexican border, I saw a river evaporate into a scum of phosphates and discarded water bottles. This dirty water sent me home with feet so badly infected that I couldn’t walk for a week. And a delta once renowned for its wildlife and wetlands is now all but part of the surrounding and parched Sonoran Desert. According to Mexican scientists whom I met with, the river has not flowed to the sea since 1998. If the Endangered Species Act had any teeth in Mexico, we might have a chance to save the giant sea bass (totoaba), clams, the Sea of Cortez shrimp fishery that depends upon freshwater returns, and dozens of bird species.
So let this stand as an open invitation to the former Secretary of the Interior and all water buffalos who insist upon telling us that there is no scarcity of water here or in the Mexican Delta. Leave the sprinklered green lawns outside the Aspen conferences, come with me, and I’ll show you a Colorado River running dry from its headwaters to the sea. It is polluted and compromised by industry and agriculture. It is overallocated, drought stricken, and soon to suffer greatly from population growth. If other leaders in our administration continue the whitewash, the scarcity of knowledge and lack of conservation measures will cripple a western civilization built upon water. “You can either do it in crisis mode,” Pat Mulroy said at this conference, “or you can start educating now.”
People need to wake up because we have some very serious water issues in this country.
In the heartland of America, farmers pump water from a massive underground lake known as the Ogallala Aquifer to irrigate their fields.
The problem is that the Ogallala Aquifer is rapidly being pumped dry.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, “a volume equivalent to two-thirds of the water in Lake Erie” has been permanently drained from the Ogallala Aquifer since 1940.
Once upon a time, the Ogallala Aquifer had an average depth of about 240 feet.
Today, the average depth of the Ogallala Aquifer is just 80 feet, and in some parts of Texas the water is totally gone.
Right now, the Ogallala Aquifer is being drained at a rate of approximately 800 gallons per minute.
Once that water is gone it will not be replaced.
So what will the “breadbasket of America” do then?
Most Americans do not realize this, but we are facing some major, major water problems.
Let us pray that this current drought ends and let us pray that everyone around the world will have enough to eat.
But even if we get through this year okay by some miracle, that doesn’t mean that our problems are over.
 All over America the corn is dying. If drought conditions persist in the middle part of the country, wheat and soybeans will be next. Weeks of intense heat combined with extraordinarily dry conditions have brought many U.S. corn farmers to the brink of total disaster. If there is not significant rainfall soon, many farmers will be financially ruined. This period of time is particularly important for corn because this is when pollination is supposed to happen. But the unprecedented heat and the extremely dry conditions are playing havoc with that process. With each passing day things get even worse. We have seen the price of a bushel of corn soar 41 percent since June 14th. That is an astounding rise. You may not eat much corn directly, but it is important to realize that corn or corn syrup is just about in everything these days. Just look at your food labels. In the United States today, approximately 75 percent of all processed foods contain corn. So a huge rise in the price of corn is going to be felt all over the supermarket. Corn is also widely used to feed livestock, and if this crisis continues we are going to see a significant rise in meat and dairy prices as well. Food prices in America have already been rising at a steady pace, and so this is definitely not welcome news.
The weather conditions in the middle part of the country during the last couple of months have been highly unusual. The following is from a recent article in the Los Angeles Times….
It’s not that the Midwest hasn’t been extremely hot before, and it’s not that it hasn’t been incredibly dry.
But it’s unusual for a vast swath of the Midwest to be so very hot and so very dry for so very long — particularly this early in the summer.
The current heat wave — which is spurring comparisons to the catastrophic heat of 1936 — is “out of whack,” meteorologist Jim Keeney said Friday in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
Corn crops typically pollinate and mature in June and early July. That is why this time of the year is so vitally important for corn. We have reached a make it or break it moment.
The following is how an Accuweather.com report described what is happening right now….
Either heat or drought can stress the stalks, but both can basically shut down the pollination process. When this happens few, small or no ears of corn form.
According to AccuWeather.com Agricultural Meteorologists, you can’t raise a corn crop with less than an inch of rain over six weeks, combined with 100-degree and higher temperatures. However, these conditions have taken place in much of the southern corn belt through the week of July 4, 2012.
If pollination does not happen, corn farmers might as well give up.
Just check out what agricultural economist Chris Hurt said the other day….
“Pollination problems just can’t be overcome, even if the weather turns. There’s no turning back. There’s just failure.”
At this point, half of all corn in the state of Indiana is already in poor shape.
With each passing day, the condition of the corn gets even worse.
As a recent article in the Chicago Tribune detailed, many farmers feel completely helpless at the moment….
Dave Kestel, who farms about 1,300 acres in Manhattan about 40 miles southwest of Chicago, said he feels helpless.
“Every day you get out there and it’s the same heat and cloudless sky,” he said. “You see your corn just withering out there, knowing you can’t do anything about it.”
The United States is suffering from a severe lack of rain. Just look at the chart posted below. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, most of the country is experiencing drought conditions right now….
These drought conditions have also played a major role in the huge number of wildfires that we have seen lately.
There are a few northern states that are not feeling the drought right now, but otherwise the rest of the country is extremely dry.
So what does all of this mean for you and I?
A recent article by Holly Deyo summarized why we should all be praying for rain….
Since 75% of grocery store products use corn as a key ingredient, expect food prices to skyrocket. Corn is also a staple in many fast foods. Corn is in ethanol and the main food source or chickens. In addition to this, maize is in many things that aren’t obvious like adhesives, aluminum, aspirin, clothing starch, cosmetics, cough syrup, dry cell batteries, envelopes, fiberglass insulation, gelatin capsules, ink, insecticides, paint, penicillin, powders, rugs and carpets, stamps, talcum, toothpaste, wallpaper, and vitamins. That’s just for starters…
This is a huge heads up for you to purchase corn-using products NOW before these conditions reflect in grocery goods. It will be a narrow window of opportunity.
These thoughts are being echoed by many agricultural economists as well. According to Businessweek, the outlook for U.S. food prices is bleak….
“When people look at rising prices for hamburger, butter, eggs and other protein sources from higher corn costs, that’s when more money ends up in the food basket,” said Minneapolis- based Michael Swanson, a senior agricultural economist at Wells Fargo & Co., the biggest U.S. farm lender. “We were hoping for a break, and we aren’t going to get it.”
Unfortunately, the fact that the corn is dying all over America is not just a problem for the United States.
As Businessweek also recently noted, the fate of U.S. corn affects the entire globe….
When rain doesn’t fall in Iowa, it’s not just Des Moines that starts fretting. Food buyers from Addis Ababa to Beijing all are touched by the fate of the corn crop in the U.S., the world’s breadbasket in an era when crop shortages mean riots.
This year they have reason to be concerned. Stockpiles of corn in the U.S. tumbled 48 percent between March and June, the biggest drop since 1996, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said last week. And that was before drought hit the Midwest.
The United States is the world’s biggest exporter of corn by far, and if there is a massive corn crop failure in America it is going to be felt to the four corners of the earth.
Just check out what Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist with the U.N. Food & Agriculture Organization, said the other day….
“Everyone watches the U.S. because they can rely on it. Without it, the world would starve.”
Back in February, I wrote an article that suggested that we could see dust bowl conditions return to the middle part of this country in the years ahead.
A lot of people were skeptical of that article.
Not quite as many people are skeptical today.
The following is from a recent article posted on MSNBC entitled “Fears of new Dust Bowl as heat, drought shrivel corn in Midwest“….
Crop insurance agents and agricultural economists are watching closely, a few comparing the situation with the devastating drought of 1988, when corn yields shriveled significantly, while some farmers have begun alluding, unhappily, to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Far more is at stake in the coming pivotal days: with the brief, delicate phase of pollination imminent in many states, miles and miles of corn will rise or fall on whether rain soon appears and temperatures moderate.
As I wrote about last week, if the weather does not turn around soon the implications are going to be staggering.
Even if we got some significant rainfall at this point a tremendous amount of damage has already been done according to the Washington Post….
Jay Armstrong, owner and operator of Armstong Farms in Kansas, flew his small plane over a portion of the affected area and landed with the impression that the potential damage is far worse than is commonly understood.
“At this time of year, when you look down in a place like Indiana or Illinois, you should see just lush green fields,” Armstrong said. “I saw bare soil. I just thought to myself, the market has no idea what’s coming.”
So is there significant rain in the forecast?
Unfortunately, the answer is no.
The National Weather Service says that the corn belt will experience “above-normal temperatures” and “below-normal rainfall” over the next week.
At this point it does not look like there will be any significant rainfall for the foreseeable future….
“We got a break in the temperatures over the weekend but no rain of significance is in sight for next seven days,” said Jim Keeney, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service the US central region based in Kansas City, Missouri.
Needless to say, that is really bad news.
Right now we just have more heat and more dryness to look forward to. The skies are like iron and the earth is like brass. We like to think that we have conquered nature, but at moments such as these we see that is not true at all.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article about all of the reasons why we should be concerned about the second half of 2012. In that article I did not even mention drought and crop failures. Sometimes major problems have a way of piling on top of themselves.
The U.S. economy is already in bad enough shape without adding major crop failures to the mix. This is something that we just don’t need right now.
But it looks like we are going to have to deal with it. Unless there is a major change in the weather, food prices are going to go up even more and large numbers of farmers and ranchers are going to be absolutely devastated.
Let us all pray for rain. We desperately need it.
 If you went out and took a poll of the American people on July 4th (Independence Day) and asked them if they are free, what would the results look like? Of course the results would be overwhelmingly lopsided. Most Americans believe that they live in “the land of the free” and that they are not enslaved to anyone. But is that really the case? Slavery does not always have to involve whips and shackles. There are many other forms of slavery. One dictionary definition of a slave is “one that is completely subservient to a dominating influence”. I really like that definition. Today, millions of Americans are slaves of the system and they don’t even realize it. Debt is a form of slavery, and millions of Americans having become deeply enslaved to our debt-based financial system. When someone enslaves someone else, the goal of the master is to reap a benefit out of the slave. You don’t want the slave to just sit there and collect dust. Today, most Americans have willingly shackled themselves to a system that systematically drains their wealth and transfers it to the very wealthy. Most of them don’t even realize that they have been enslaved even as the system sucks them dry.
Just think about it. Where is the “big money” in the United States today?
When asked that question, most Americans think of Wall Street.
Well, who controls Wall Street?
The bankers do.
The borrower is the servant of the lender, and they generate massive amounts of wealth by lending us money.
Perhaps an example will be helpful.
Have you ever run up $5000 of credit card debt? Many people have run up much, much more than that, but let us use $5000 for our example.
According to the Federal Reserve, if you only make the minimum payment every month, at a 20% interest rate it will take you 49 years to pay that credit card off and you will pay back a total of $26,169.
So you would have gotten the original benefit of spending the $5000 and you would have had to work extremely hard to pay back an additional $21,169 to the bankers.
In essence, you would be working as a servant of the bankers until you had paid back that entire debt plus interest.
Unfortunately, our entire system is now designed to get you to go into debt.
It starts before we even get into the “real world”. We are constantly told that we cannot get a “good job” without a college degree, but a college education is so ridiculously expensive these days that most of us cannot afford one without going into lots of debt.
Many of you out there know exactly what I am talking about.
Do you have a pile of student loan debt?
I do.
In fact, the total pile of student loan debt in the United States is now over a trillion dollars.
Unfortunately, when a lot of us graduated we found out that the “good jobs” that we were promised simply were not there. Last year, 53 percent of all Americans with a bachelor’s degree under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.
So many young adults are starting out life already enslaved to a gigantic pile of debt but without a good job that will enable them to comfortably service that debt.
The really “lucky” graduates from the top schools flock to Wall Street so that they can make lots of money running the debt-based financial system that is enslaving all the rest of us.
Once young people leave school, there are lots of other “debt traps” to fall into.
Once you get out into the “real world”, just about every major purchase is going to involve another pile of debt.
Do you want a house?
That is going to mean more debt. As I have written about previously, mortgage debt as a percentage of U.S. GDP has more than tripled since 1955.
Do you want a car?
About 70 percent of all vehicle purchases in the U.S. now involve at least some borrowed money.
Consumer debt is particularly insidious. Our stores are filled with very beautiful things, and it is really easy to buy a bunch of stuff and “put it on plastic”.
Since 1971, the total amount of consumer debt in the United States has increased by 1700%, and approximately 46% of all Americans now carry a credit card balance from month to month.
We just keep plunging ourselves deeper and deeper into debt slavery. Most Americans never seem to learn. Over the past 30 years those of us in the “bottom 95 percent” have seen our financial shackles just get heavier and heavier. The following is from a recent CNN article….
In 1983, the bottom 95% had 62 cents of debt for every dollar they earned, according to research by two International Monetary Fund economists. But by 2007, the ratio had soared to $1.48 of debt for every $1 in earnings.
When you pile up lots of debt, you aren’t just working for yourself anymore. You are also working for those that you owe the debts to. Your hard work and sweat end up making them a lot wealthier.
Our state and local governments have enslaved themselves to debt as well. Total state and local government debt is now about 8 times higher than it was 30 years ago.
At this point, many U.S. cities are in very serious trouble with debt. In fact, another California municipality has just declared bankruptcy. On Monday, the town of Mammoth Lakes announced that it has formally filed for bankruptcy.
But this is just the beginning.
The truth is that we are a nation that is absolutely drowning in debt and we need a lot more money in order to keep up with all of this debt.
But there is a problem.
In our debt-based financial system, the creation of more money actually creates more debt.
So how are we ever going to get out of the hole that we are in?
Today, the U.S. national debt is more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was first created back in 1913. This is why it is so important for the American people to realize that the Federal Reserve is a perpetual debt machine.
The Federal Reserve system itself does not make much money. The vast majority of the profits that the Federal Reserve makes are transferred back to the U.S. government.
But that is not what the Federal Reserve was created to do.
What the Federal Reserve was created to do was to set up a system where the U.S. government would borrow money and pay interest on it instead of just creating the money itself.
Last year the U.S. government spent more than 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt. That is a form of national slavery. 454 billion dollars that we worked very hard to make was taken from us and transferred into the pockets of some very wealthy people.
The truth is that the U.S. government does not actually need to ever borrow a single penny from anyone. As a sovereign government it could directly issue money into circulation.
But lending money to governments is very, very profitable and it is the kind of thing that wars are fought over.
For example, the First Bank of the United States (the very first central bank in our country) was established in 1791 and the charter for that bank expired in 1811 and was not renewed.
So what happened the very next year?
The War of 1812. During that war Washington D.C. was actually captured and burned. The final major battle of that war was the battle of New Orleans which took place on January 8, 1815.
So what happened the very next year?
President James Madison signed the charter for the Second Bank of the United States on April 10, 1816.
The goal has always been to enslave the American people. Debt is used to enslave us individually, it is used to enslave our businesses, it is used to enslave our state and local governments and it is used to enslave our federal government.
So are you a slave of the system?
If you are in debt, then you are a slave at least to some degree.
Unfortunately, the global financial system has become so saturated with debt that it is now on the verge of collapse. It appears that things could be getting significantly worse during the second half of this year, and the years ahead do not look very promising at all.
Sadly, most Americans do not see any of this coming. In fact, a new CNN/ORC International poll has found that about 60 percent of all Americans think that the U.S. economy will be in good shape next year.
Can you believe that?
The mainstream media has done a fantastic job of brainwashing the general public.
The “blue team” is convinced that if Barack Obama wins the election and the Democrats take control of both houses of Congress that prosperous times are on the way.
The “red team” is convinced that if Mitt Romney wins the election and the Republicans take control of both houses of Congress that the U.S. economy will be put back on the right track.
Well, the truth is that there is not going to be a solution to our economic problems on the national level. We have accumulated the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and it is going to collapse and crush us no matter which brand of corrupt politicians we sent to Washington.
On July 4th, millions upon millions of Americans will celebrate “Independence Day” with cookouts, parades and fireworks without ever realizing the true nature of what is really going on.
Hopefully we can get more of them educated while there is still time.
 Sometimes we all get a little reminder of just how completely and totally dependent we are on the power grid. Massive thunderstorms that ripped through Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, Washington D.C. and Virginia left millions without power over the weekend. At this point it is being projected that some people may not get power back until the end of the week. The “super derecho” storm that pounded the Washington D.C. area on Friday night with hurricane-force winds is being called unprecedented. But the truth is that there are other events that could happen that would be far more damaging to our power grid. For example, a substantial EMP burst over a major U.S. city would fry virtually all of the electronics in the city and take the power grid in the area down indefinitely. A gigantic EMP burst over the entire country (caused by a massive solar storm or a very large nuclear explosion high in the atmosphere) could theoretically take down the entire national power grid. Just try to imagine a world where nobody has any electricity, nobody can pump gas, nobody can use their credit cards or get any more money, where most vehicles won’t start, where nobody has the Internet, where all cell phones are dead and where nobody can heat or cool their homes. That is how serious an EMP burst could potentially be. We are talking about an event that could be millions of times worse than 9/11.
Hopefully this latest storm has reminded Americans about how vulnerable our power grid really is and about how close we really are to being knocked back to the late 1800s.
Let’s review some of the damage that this “super derecho” storm caused to the D.C. area….
-Thousands of businesses have been forced to close temporarily because they cannot operate without electricity
-Many federal agencies were closed on Monday because there was no power
-Many 911 call centers throughout Northern Virginia were down over the weekend and could not respond to emergencies
-Without electricity, many families have not been able to cook warm meals
-Without warm water, many families have not been able to take hot showers
-A “boil water advisory” was put into effect for several areas of northern Virginia
-Many families that still do not have power are in danger of losing much of the food in their refrigerators and freezers
-Many gas stations were not able to operate because of a lack of electricity and so this has made filling up the gas tank a major hassle for many families
-Hundreds of traffic lights are still out and this is making commuting a major problem in some areas
-Without air conditioning many families are absolutely sweltering as high temperatures remain well above 90 degrees
-During the power outage some people have been without cell phone service because many cell phone towers were inoperable
-Without electricity, thousands upon thousands of people have not been able to use their computers for several days and this is causing a lot of frustration
-Several major websites were totally knocked offline by the storms as Robert McMillan of Wired Magazine explained….
Hurricane-like storms knocked an Amazon data center in Ashburn, Virginia, offline last night, and a chunk of the internet felt it. The six-hour incident temporarily cut off a number of popular internet services, including Netflix, Pinterest, Heroku, and Instagram.
But to be honest this was not a major disaster.
After a few days the damage will be fixed and people will start to forget what just happened.
Well, what if the damage was permanent and the entire nation had to go without electricity for the foreseeable future? The following is from a USA Today article by Dan Vergano….
The sky erupts. Cities darken, food spoils and homes fall silent. Civilization collapses.
End-of-the-world novel? A video game? Or could such a scenario loom in America’s future?
There is talk of catastrophe ahead, depending on whom you believe, because of the threat of an electromagnetic pulse triggered by either a supersized solar storm or terrorist A-bomb, both capable of disabling the electric grid that powers modern life.
As I have written about previously, an EMP attack could fundamentally change life in America in a single instant.
What would you do if such a scenario happened?
Would you try to go somewhere? Even if the electronics in your car were not totally fried, you would not be able to pump more gas anywhere.
Would you try to call someone? Most phones would be totally dead and all normal communications networks would be down. So who would you call?
Would you bunker down and try to survive on what you have at home? Most of the food in your refrigerator and freezer would rapidly go bad and most Americans only have enough food to last a few days or a few weeks. In addition, most Americans would no longer be able to heat or cool their homes, so extreme cold and extreme heat would become huge problems very quickly.
How in the world would any of us survive in a world without electricity?
In past centuries our forefathers knew how to survive in such a world, but most of us do not have the same skills or resources that they had.
The following is how an article in the Wall Street Journal once described what a massive EMP burst would do to this nation….
No American would necessarily die in the initial attack, but what comes next is potentially catastrophic. The pulse would wipe out most electronics and telecommunications, including the power grid. Millions could die for want of modern medical care or even of starvation since farmers wouldn’t be able to harvest crops and distributors wouldn’t be able to get food to supermarkets. Commissioner Lowell Wood calls EMP attack a “giant continental time machine” that would move us back more than a century in technology to the late 1800s.
What would you do if you were suddenly cut off from all electricity, all money, all modern forms of communication, all modern forms of transportation and all modern forms of shopping?
Don’t think that it can’t happen.
Scientists tell us that massive EMP bursts generated by gigantic solar storms have hit our planet in the past and that it is inevitable that it will happen again.
In addition, nations all over the planet are aware of what an EMP burst can do and have been developing “Super-EMP” weapons that can take power grids down in a single strike.
The following is a short excerpt from a statement by Dr. Peter Vincent Pry to the United States Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security on March 8th, 2005….
Russian and Chinese military scientists in open source writings describe the basic principles of nuclear weapons designed specifically to generate an enhanced-EMP effect, that they term “Super-EMP” weapons. “Super-EMP” weapons, according to these foreign open source writings, can destroy even the best protected U.S. military and civilian electronic systems.
That doesn’t sound good.
But perhaps even more troubling is that North Korea has been reportedly developing this type of weapon. In fact, it has been reported that North Korea may have tested a “Super-EMP” weapon all the way back in 2009….
North Korea’s last round of tests, conducted in May 2009, appear to have included a “super-EMP” weapon, capable of emitting enough gamma rays to disable the electric power grid across most of the lower 48 states
In time, these kinds of weapons will get into more and more hands.
Will someone try to use this kind of weapon at some point?
Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy, believes that a single EMP burst could potentially end up killing the vast majority of the population of the United States….
“Within a year of that attack, nine out of 10 Americans would be dead, because we can’t support a population of the present size in urban centers and the like without electricity”
Once you understand these kinds of threats, it makes it a lot easier to understand why preppers are so busy preparing for the future.
Our world is becoming incredibly unstable. Another major economic crisis could hit us at any time, war in the Middle East could erupt without warning, earthquakes and other natural disasters are becoming more frequent and society seems to get a little crazier with each passing day.
The era of tremendous peace and prosperity that we have all been enjoying is rapidly coming to an end. In a world filled with instability and chaos, it only seems prudent to take some precautions.
You might want to get prepared while you still have time.
 What is the second half of 2012 going to bring? Are things going to get even worse than they are right now? Unfortunately, that appears more likely with each passing day. I will admit that I am extremely concerned about the second half of 2012. Historically, a financial crisis is much more likely to begin in the fall than during any other season of the year. Just think about it. The stock market crash of 1929 happened in the fall. “Black Monday” happened on October 19th, 1987. The financial crisis of 2008 started in the fall. There just seems to be something about the fall that brings out the worst in the financial markets. But of course there is not a stock market crash every year. So are there specific reasons why we should be extremely concerned about what is coming this year? Yes, there are. The ingredients for a “perfect storm” are slowly coming together, and in the months ahead we could very well see the next wave of the economic collapse strike. Sadly, we have never even come close to recovering from the last recession, and this next crisis might end up being even more painful than the last one.
The following are 17 reasons to be extremely concerned about the second half of 2012….
#1 Historical Trends
A recent IMF research paper by Luc Laeven and Fabián Valencia showed that a banking crisis is far more likely to start in September than in any other month. The following chart is from their report….
So what will this September bring?
#2 JP Morgan
Do you remember back in May when JP Morgan announced that it would be taking a 2 billion dollar trading loss on some derivatives trades gone bad? Well, the New York Times is now reporting that the real figure could reach 9 billion dollars, but nobody really knows for sure. At some point is JP Morgan going to need a bailout? If so, what is that going to do to the U.S. financial system?
#3 Derivatives
Last week, Moody’s downgraded the credit ratings of 15 major global banks. As a result, a number of them have been required to post billions of dollars in additional collateral against derivatives exposures….
Citigroup’s two-notch long-term rating downgrade from A3 to Baa2 could have led to US$500m in additional liquidity and funding demands due to derivative triggers and exchange margin requirements, according to the bank’s 10Q regulatory filing at the end of the first quarter.
Morgan Stanley – which Moody’s downgraded from A2 to Baa1 – said a two-notch downgrade from both Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s could spur an additional US$6.8bn of collateral requirements in its latest 10Q. The bank did not break down its potential collateral calls under a scenario where only Moody’s downgraded the bank below the Single A threshold.
Royal Bank of Scotland estimated it may have to post £9bn of collateral as a result of the one-notch Moody’s downgrade to Baa1 in a statement on June 21, but did not detail how much of this additional requirement was driven by margin for swaps exposures.
The worldwide derivatives market is starting to show some cracks, and at some point this is going to become a major disaster.
Remember, the 9 largest U.S. banks have a total of more than 200 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives. When this bubble completely bursts it is going to be impossible to fix.
#4 LEAP/E2020 Warning
LEAP/E2020 has issued a red alert for the global financial system for this fall. They are warning that the “second half of 2012″ will represent a “major inflection point” for the global economic system….
The shock of the autumn 2008 will seem like a small summer storm compared to what will affect planet in several months.
In fact LEAP/E2020 has never seen the chronological convergence of such a series of explosive and so fundamental factors (economy, finances, geopolitical…) since 2006, the start of its work on the global systemic crisis. Logically, in our modest attempt to regularly publish a “crisis weather forecast”, we must therefore give our readers a “Red Alert” because the upcoming events which are readying themselves to shake the world system next September/ October belong to this category.
#5 Increasing Pessimism
One recent survey of corporate executives found that only 20 percent of them expect the global economy to improve over the next 12 months and 48 percent of them expect the global economy to get worse over the next 12 months.
#6 Spain
The Spanish financial system is basically a total nightmare at this point. Moody’s recently downgraded Spanish debt to one level above junk status, and earlier this week Moody’s downgraded the credit ratings of 28 major Spanish banks.
According to CNBC, Spain’s short-term borrowing costs are now about three times higher than they were just one month ago….
Spain’s short-term borrowing costs nearly tripled at auction on Tuesday, underlining the country’s precarious finances as it struggles against recession and juggles with a debt crisis among its newly downgraded banks.
The yield paid on a 3-month bill was 2.362 percent, up from just 0.846 percent a month ago. For six-month paper, it leapt to 3.237 percent from 1.737 percent in May.
Needless to say, this is very, very bad news.
#7 Italy
The situation in Italy continues to deteriorate and many analysts believe that it could be one of the next dominoes to fall. The following is from a recent Businessweek article….
The euro zone’s third-biggest economy is seen as the next domino at risk of toppling after the European Union’s June 9 deal to lend Spain $125 billion in bank bailout funds. Yields on Italy’s 10-year government bonds reached 6.2 percent on June 13, up from just 4.8 percent in March. By pushing up Italy’s borrowing costs out of fear of default, investors are making a default more likely.
A recent Fortune article detailed some of the economic fundamentals that have so many economists deeply concerned about the Italian economy right now….
The main glaring risk threats that could propel Italy down the path to become Europe’s next domino is the size of country’s outstanding debt (at €1.9 trillion or 120% of GDP); the mountain of debt it has to roll over in the next 12 months (nearly €400 billion); and the market’s cracking credibility around Prime Minister Mario Monti’s ability to reduce the country’s fiscal footprint and spur growth.
Further, fear around Italy’s creditworthiness, which has recently been expressed by near cycle highs in sovereign CDS spreads and government yields on the 10-year bond, follow some rather glaring negative fundamentals over recent quarters and years: declining GDP over the last three consecutive quarters; a rising unemployment rate (especially among its youth); deterioration in labor market competitiveness; and increased competition for export goods to its key trading partners.
#8 Greece
I have written extensively about the financial nightmare that is unfolding in Greece. Unemployment has soared past the 20 percent mark, youth unemployment is above 50 percent, the Greek economy has contracted by close to 25 percent over the past four years and now Greek politicians are saying that a third bailout package may be necessary.
#9 Cyprus
The tiny island nation of Cyprus has become the fifth member of the eurozone to formally request a bailout. This is yet another sign that the eurozone is rapidly falling apart.
#10 Germany
German Chancellor Angela Merkel continues to promote an austerity path for Europe and she continues to maintain her very firm position against any kind of eurozone debt sharing….
Merkel, speaking to a conference in Berlin today as Spain announced it would formally seek aid for its banks, dismissed “euro bonds, euro bills and European deposit insurance with joint liability and much more” as “economically wrong and counterproductive,” saying that they ran against the German constitution.
“It’s not a bold prediction to say that in Brussels most eyes — all eyes — will be on Germany yet again,” Merkel said. “I say quite openly: when I think of the summit on Thursday I’m concerned that once again the discussion will be far too much about all kinds of ideas for joint liability and far too little about improved oversight and structural measures.”
In fact, Merkel says that there will be no eurobonds “as long as I live“. This means that there will be no “quick fix” for the problems that are unfolding in Europe.
#11 Bank Runs
Every single day, hundreds of millions of dollars is being pulled out of banks in southern Europe. Much of that money is being transferred to banks in northern Europe.
In a previous article I included an extremely alarming quote from a CNBC article about the unfolding banking crisis in Europe….
Financial advisers and private bankers whose clients have accounts too large to be covered by a Europe-wide guarantee on deposits up to 100,000 euros ($125,000), are reporting a “bank run by wire transfer” that has picked up during May.
Much of this money has headed north to banks in London, Frankfurt and Geneva, financial advisers say.
“It’s been an ongoing process but it certainly picked up pace a couple of weeks ago We believe there is a continuous 2-3 year bank run by wire transfer,” said Lorne Baring, managing director at B Capital, a Geneva-based pan European wealth management firm.
How long can these bank runs continue before banking systems start to collapse?
#12 Preparations For The Collapse Of The Eurozone
As I have written about previously, the smart money has already written off southern Europe. All over the continent major financial institutions are preparing for the worst. For example, just check out what Visa Europe is doing….
Visa Europe is holding weekly meetings to discuss scenarios in the event the euro zone collapses, joining other companies that are preparing for a potential breakup of the currency bloc.
Chief Commercial Officer Steve Perry said Tuesday that management at the U.K.-based credit-card company meets weekly to explore various possible outcomes, including a total collapse of the euro zone.
#13 Global Lending Is Slowing Down
All over the globe the flow of credit is beginning to freeze up. In fact, the Bank for International Settlements says that worldwide lending is contracting at the fastest pace since the financial crisis of 2008.
#14 Sophisticated Cyber Attacks On Banks
It is being reported that “very sophisticated” hackers have successfully raided dozens of banks in Europe. So far, it is being estimated that they have stolen 60 million euros….
Sixty million euro has been stolen from bank accounts in a massive cyber bank raid after fraudsters raided dozens of financial institutions around the world.
According to a joint report by software security firm McAfee and Guardian Analytics, more than 60 firms have suffered from what it has called an “insider level of understanding”.
What happens someday if we wake up and all the money in the banks is gone?
#15 U.S. Municipal Bankruptcies
All over the United States there are cities and towns on the verge of financial disaster. This week Stockton, California became the largest U.S. city to ever declare bankruptcy, but the reality is that this is only just the beginning of the municipal debt crisis….
Stockton, California, said it will file for bankruptcy after talks with bondholders and labor unions failed, making the agricultural center the biggest U.S. city to seek court protection from creditors.
“The city is fiscally insolvent and must seek Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection,” Stockton said in a statement released yesterday after its council voted 6-1 to adopt a spending plan for operating under bankruptcy protection.
#16 The Obamacare Decision
The U.S. economy is already a complete and total mess, and now the Obamacare decision is going to throw a huge wet blanket on it. All over America, small business owners are saying that they are going to have to let some workers go because they cannot afford to keep them all under Obamacare. It would be hard to imagine a more job killing law than Obamacare, and now that the Supreme Court decision has finally been announced we are going to see many businesses making some really hard decisions.
#17 The U.S. Election
It is being reported that Barack Obama is putting together an army of “thousands of lawyers” to deal with any disputes that arise over voting procedures or results. It certainly looks like this upcoming election is going to be extremely close, and there is the potential that we could end up facing another Bush v. Gore scenario where the fate of the presidency is determined in court. This campaign season is likely to be exceptionally nasty, and I fear what may happen if there is not a decisive winner on election day. The possibility of significant civil unrest is certainly there.
We definitely live in “interesting” times.
Personally, I am deeply concerned about the September, October, November time frame.
The other day, Joe Biden delivered a speech in which he made the following statement….
“It’s A Depression For Millions And Millions Of Americans”
And what Biden said was right for once. Millions of Americans are out of work right now and millions of Americans have fallen out of the middle class in recent years. If you have lost everything, it does feel like you are living through a depression.
When people lose everything, they tend to get desperate. And desperate people do desperate things – especially when they are angry.
A whole host of recent opinion polls have shown that anger and frustration in the United States are rising to unprecedented levels. The ingredients are certainly there for an explosion. Someone just needs to come along and light the fuse. We truly do live in frightening times.
Let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.
 As America watches large sections of Colorado literally burn to the ground, many are wondering why all of this is happening. There have always been wildfires, but what we are experiencing now seems very unusual. So is the number of wildfires in the United States increasing? As you will see later in this article, the answer is yes. 2011 was a record setting year for wildfires and this wildfire season is off to a very frightening start. Right now the eyes of the nation are focused on the Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado. It doubled in size overnight and it has consumed more than 300 homes so far. It is threatening the city of Colorado Springs, and at this point more than 35,000 people have been forced to evacuate – including the U.S. Air Force Academy. On Twitter and Facebook residents are describing what they are seeing as “the apocalypse” and as “the end of the world”. But this is just the beginning of the wildfire season. We haven’t even gotten to July and August yet.
The Waldo Canyon fire is rapidly becoming one of the most expensive and destructive wildfires in Colorado history. The historic Flying W Ranch has already been burned totally to the ground by this fire. Local authorities are struggling to find the words to describe how nightmarish this fire is. The following are a couple of quotes from a CNN article….
Richard Brown, the Colorado Springs fire chief, described it as a “firestorm of epic proportions.”
Gov. John Hickenlooper surveyed the Waldo Canyon Fire, telling reporters it was a difficult sight to see.
“There were people’s homes burned to the ground. It was surreal,” he said late Tuesday night. “There’s no question, it’s serious. It’s as serious as it gets.”
But this is not the only wildfire that is raging in Colorado. Right now there are 10 wildfires burning in the state. Overall, there are 33 large wildfires currently burning in twelve U.S. states.
If you will remember, New Mexico just experienced one of the worst wildfires that it has ever seen. Conditions throughout most of the western United States are ideal for wildfires right now. As USA Today reports, much of the western half of the country is under a “red flag warning” right now….
Throughout the interior West, firefighters have toiled for days in searing, record-setting heat against fires fueled by prolonged drought. Most, if not all, of Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana were under red flag warnings, meaning extreme fire danger.
But wait, didn’t this kind of thing happen last year too?
Yes it did.
In fact, 2011 was one of the worst years ever for wildfires in America. The following is a short excerpt from an EarthSky article….
Thousands of wildfires raged across the United States last year, 2011, burning a record amount of land, especially in the southern U.S. In fact, 2011 the third-most-active fire season since 1960 (when this record-keeping began) with respect to acres burned, according to preliminary data released from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) in late December 2011. The NIFC will be releasing an official summary report detailing the 2011 wildfire season later in 2012, but for now you can read some of the details in the State of the Climate Wildfires 2011 report from NOAA.
During 2011, a total of 73,484 wildfires burned an estimated 8,706,852 acres (35,235 square kilometers) of land across the United States. Wildfire activity during 2011 was exceptionally high and was only exceeded in the historical record by wildfire activity during the years 2006 and 2007.
We have seen highly unusual wildfire activity throughout America in recent years. In the article quoted above you can find a chart which shows that wildfire activity in the United States has been far above normal during the past decade.
Wildfire records have only been kept since 1960. The 6 worst years on record for wildfires in the U.S. have all happened since the year 2000. The following is from an Earth Island Journal article that I found….
In the United States, where some of the most accurate wildfire statistics are kept, the six worst fire seasons in the past 50 years have occurred since 2000. In Texas, nearly 4 million acres were burned in 2011, double the previous record. This included the Bastrop Fire last September that destroyed 1,600 homes and became the most destructive fire in Texas history. In Arizona more than one million acres were burned in 2011, a new record. The Wallow Fire, which destroyed nearly a half million acres, was the largest fire in Arizona history. The Pagami Creek Fire in northern Minnesota became the third largest fire in state history when it burned 100,000 acres in September 2011, most of this in an unprecedented 16-mile run on a single day.
So what does all of this mean?
It means that the number of wildfires in the United States is increasing and wildfires are becoming more powerful and doing more damage.
So what is causing all of this?
The truth is that this is happening because we are seeing exceptionally dry conditions throughout the western half of the United States. In fact, according to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. interior west is now the driest that it has been in 500 years.
The eastern half of the country also gets very hot during the summer, but they don’t have as many wildfires because they get a lot more rain.
Many areas in the western half of the country have been experiencing drought conditions for quite a few years, and there seems to be no end in sight for the drought.
If you go check out the U.S. drought monitor, you will see that almost the entire southwest United States is experiencing some level of drought right now.
So what will July and August bring?
It is kind of frightening to think about that.
Earlier this year I wrote an article that postulated that we could actually see dust bowl conditions return to the middle of the United States. Many readers were skeptical of that article.
But as much of the western United States continues to experience bone dry conditions and continues to be ravaged by wildfires, perhaps more people will understand how bad things are really getting in the interior west.
Just because we have made great technological advances as a society does not mean that we know how to tame nature. We can attempt to contain the massive wildfires that are popping up all over the place and we can attempt to deal with the drought, but in the end we cannot stop what is happening.
So do you live in any of the areas that are being affected by these wildfires?
Do you have an opinion about why so much of America is on fire?
Please feel free to post a comment with your opinion below….
 When most people think of “Big Brother”, they think of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the Department of Homeland Security and other shadowy government agencies. Yes, they are definitely watching you, but so are many big corporations. In fact, there are some companies that are making tens of millions of dollars by gathering every shred of information about all of us that they can and selling it for profit to anyone willing to pay the price. It is called “data mining”, and these data miners want to keep track of literally everything that you do. Most people know that basically everything that we do on the Internet is tracked, but data mining goes far beyond that. When you use a customer rewards card at the supermarket, the data miners know about it. When you pay for a purchase with a credit card or a debit card, the data miners know about it. Every time you buy a prescription drug, that information is sold to someone. Every time you apply for a loan, a whole host of organizations is notified. Information has become an extremely valuable commodity, and thanks to computers and the Internet it is easier to gather information than ever before. But that also means that our personal information is no longer “private”, and this trend is only going to get worse in the years ahead.
You have probably never even heard of many of these companies that are making millions of dollars selling your personal information. Acxiom and Epsilon are two of the biggest names in the industry, and most of the time they are selling your information to companies that want to sell you stuff.
Almost every single day, very personal information about you is being bought and sold without your permission and it is all perfectly legal.
A recent article in The Week says the following about Acxiom….
An Arkansas company you’ve probably never heard of knows more about you than some of your friends, Google, and even the FBI — and it’s selling your data
The scale of the information gathering that Acxiom does is absolutely mind blowing. If you can believe it, Acxiom actually keeps track of more than 190 million people inside the United States….
The company fits into a category called database marketing. It started in 1969 as an outfit called Demographics Inc., using phone books and other notably low-tech tools, as well as one computer, to amass information on voters and consumers for direct marketing. Almost 40 years later, Acxiom has detailed entries for more than 190 million people and 126 million households in the U.S., and about 500 million active consumers worldwide. More than 23,000 servers in Conway, just north of Little Rock, collect and analyze more than 50 trillion data ‘transactions’ a year.
So what does Acxiom want to know about you?
Everything.
The following is from a recent New York Times article about Acxiom….
IT knows who you are. It knows where you live. It knows what you do.
It peers deeper into American life than the F.B.I. or the I.R.S., or those prying digital eyes at Facebook and Google. If you are an American adult, the odds are that it knows things like your age, race, sex, weight, height, marital status, education level, politics, buying habits, household health worries, vacation dreams — and on and on.
Companies such as Acxiom literally want every shred of information about you that they can possibly get.
Once they gather all that data, Acxiom analyzes it, packages it and sells it to large corporations such as Wells Fargo, HSBC, Toyota, Ford and Macy’s.
And being in the “Big Brother business” is very, very profitable.
Acxiom made more than 77 million dollars in profits during their latest fiscal year.
Some members of Congress are very alarmed by all of this. According to U.S. Senator John Kerry, this industry is virtually unregulated….
“There’s no code of conduct. There’s no standard. There’s nothing that safeguards privacy and establishes rules of the road.”
So what do big corporations do with all of this data after they purchase it from companies like Acxiom?
Well, for one thing, they use it to try to predict how you will behave. A Daily Beast article gave some examples of how this works….
Predicting people’s behavior is becoming big business—and increasingly feasible in an era defined by accessible information. Data crunching by Canadian Tire, for instance, recently enabled the retailer’s credit card business to create psychological profiles of its cardholders that were built upon alarmingly precise correlations. Their findings: Cardholders who purchased carbon-monoxide detectors, premium birdseed, and felt pads for the bottoms of their chair legs rarely missed a payment. On the other hand, those who bought cheap motor oil and visited a Montreal pool bar called “Sharx” were a higher risk. “If you show us what you buy, we can tell you who you are, maybe even better than you know yourself,” a former Canadian Tire exec said.
I don’t know about you, but I find that a bit creepy.
Later on in that same article, how some U.S. companies are using this kind of information was explained….
Other industries have bolstered their bottom lines by predicting how consumers will behave, according to Super Crunchers. UPS predicts when customers are at risk of fleeing to one of its competitors, and then tries to prevent the loss with a telephone call from a salesperson. And with its “Total Rewards” card, Harrah’s casinos track everything that players win and lose, in real time, and then analyze their demographic information to calculate their “pain point”—the maximum amount of money they’re likely to be willing to lose and still come back to the casino in the future. Players who get too close to their pain point are likely to be offered a free dinner that gets them off the casino floor.
So is all of this data gathering harmless?
Does it simply make our economy more efficient?
Or is there a greater danger here?
At some point could all of our personal information be used for more insidious purposes?
One thing is for sure – this is a trend that is not going away any time soon.
As our society becomes even more integrated through the Internet, data gathering is going to become even more comprehensive.
Eventually these complicated computer algorithms will be able to make very detailed predictions about your future behavior with a very, very high degree of accuracy.
When you add government snooping into the equation, it becomes easy to see why privacy advocates are going crazy these days.
Our society is literally being transformed into a technological monitoring grid. Virtually everything we do is monitored, tracked and recorded in some way.
If we are not very careful, eventually we could end up living in a society that is much more oppressive than anything George Orwell ever dreamed of.
So what do you think of all of this snooping, spying and data mining?
Do you believe that it is harmless or do you believe that it represents a significant threat?
Feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….
 Many people hype “the coming economic collapse” as if it is some kind of big summer Hollywood blockbuster. Many people out there write about it as if it is something that will happen in a single day or over a few weeks and that it will suddenly change how the entire world functions. But that is not how the financial world works. The financial world is like a game of chess – very slow and methodical. Yes, there are times when things happen very quickly (like back in 2008), but even that crisis played out over a number of months. Sadly, most Americans are not used to thinking in terms of months or years. These days, most Americans have the attention span of a goldfish and most Americans have been trained to expect instant gratification. They are simply not accustomed to being patient and to wait for things. Well, despite what you may have read, the economic collapse is not going to be a single event. It is going to play out over quite a few years. In some ways we are experiencing an economic collapse right now. When the next major financial crisis occurs, many will be calling that “an economic collapse”. But if you really want to grasp what is happening to us, you need to think long-term. We are heading for a complete and total nightmare, but it is going to take some time to get to the end of the story.
Yes, there will certainly be times of great chaos. The financial crisis of 2008 was one of those moments.
But the financial crisis of 2008 did not completely destroy us.
Neither will the next crisis.
I think it is helpful to think of what is happening to us as a series of waves.
When you build a beautiful sand castle on the beach, the first wave that comes in does not totally destroy it.
Rather, the first wave weakens the castle and it is destroyed by subsequent waves.
Well, that is what is happening to us.
The financial crisis of 2008 was a wave.
The epicenter of the next great financial crisis will be in Europe and that will be another wave.
For many, the next financial crisis will feel like “the end of the world” but it won’t be.
There will be waves after that one that will be even worse.
Yes, the waves are going to start coming more rapidly and will start becoming more intense.
In that way, they will kind of be like birth pains.
But these problems did not build up overnight and they are not going to disappear overnight either.
A lot of people that write about the coming economic collapse seem to suggest that we should just let it happen so that the “recovery” can begin.
Unfortunately, it is not going to be so simple.
It took decades to build up a national debt of almost 16 trillion dollars.
It took decades for American consumers to build up the greatest consumer debt bubble in the history of the world.
It took decades to gut the economic infrastructure of the United States and ship millions of our jobs overseas.
These problems are going to plague us for a very long time.
Sadly, a lot of people out there seem to wish for an economic apocalypse. They seem to think that if the global financial system crashes that the government is going to disappear and we are going to start fighting with each other using sharp pointed sticks.
Well, it simply is not going to happen.
The U.S. government is not going to help you survive when things hit the fan, but it is not going to disappear either.
In fact, the federal government will probably try to grab more power than ever in an attempt to “restore order”.
The governments of Europe are not going to disappear either. In fact, in the long run Europe is probably going to end up more “federalized” than ever even if the euro breaks up in the short run.
A lot of people out there seem to think that when the old system collapses that it will give them an opportunity to help put in a new system.
Sorry, but that is not going to happen either.
The powers that be are going to have their own ideas about what needs to happen.
They never like to let a good crisis go to waste, and they will certainly try to use every crisis to shape the world even more in their own image.
The coming economic collapse is going to play out over a number of years and it is going to be absolutely horrible.
Billions of people will deeply suffer because of it.
It will be unlike anything any of us have ever seen.
Personally, I believe that it will eventually be much worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The United States is going to get hit particularly hard. The United States is going to lose its position as the leading economic power on the globe and the U.S. dollar is going to lose its position as the default reserve currency of the world.
If you thought that the unemployment crisis during the last recession was bad, just wait until you see what is coming.
We are heading for a complete and total unemployment nightmare in the United States. Unemployment is eventually going to soar well up into the double digits.
The U.S. government will try a wide variety of measures to try to “fix” things, and some will likely have some limited success.
But the debt-fueled prosperity that we are all enjoying now is going to come to an end.
Many communities all over America will degenerate into rotting cesspools.
There are going to be riots in our major cities, crime and looting will be absolutely rampant and it will seem like society is coming apart at the seams.
The U.S. government will likely respond by becoming more authoritarian than ever, and that will truly be frightening.
But all of this is going to play out over time.
Right now, things are not as good as they were five years ago.
A couple of years from now, things will be even worse. Many of us will look back and wish that we could return to the “good old days” of 2011 and 2012.
We are on a decline that is not going to stop. There will be little false bubbles of hope like we are in now, but they won’t last long.
But just because the economy is falling apart does not mean that your life is over. Many that are busy preparing right now will be greatly blessed even in the middle of all the chaos.
And it is when things are the darkest that the greatest lights are needed.
Make the decision right now to be a light during the times ahead.
You can choose to let the times that are coming destroy you, or you can choose to make them the greatest adventure of your life.
The choice is up to you.
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James Holmes Is Not Alone – 20 More Examples Of The Sickos That Are Overrunning America
Why didn’t this type of thing happen back in the 1950s?
Why are our young people so violent and so mentally unstable?
What has changed?
Those are some very important questions. But most Americans will forget this incident very quickly and they will move on with their self-absorbed lives.
But there is so much about this shooting that calls for further examination.
What would make a highly educated 24 year old man do something so incredibly evil?
Why are so many young people suddenly “snapping” these days?
As our society continues to decay, how much worse are things going to get?
It is almost to the point where people are going to start becoming afraid of gathering in public places.
Most Americans never would have imagined that it would be dangerous to go to the movie theater.
But now people are going to look at going to the movies much differently.
And could it have been possible that James Holmes had some help?
There are some important questions that the media is not really focusing on in this case….
-How did an impoverished college student put together an arsenal of weapons, ammunition and body armor worth tens of thousands of dollars?
-Why do some eyewitnesses claim that he had at least one other person assisting him?
-Why did he surrender to police without offering any resistance whatsoever?
It would be great if we could get some answers to those questions.
In any event, this is yet another sign of how far our society has fallen. We are becoming more sick and more twisted with each passing day, and it is time to admit this fact.
The following are 20 more examples of the sickos that are overrunning America….
#1 A Sicko In Oregon That Breaks Into Homes In Order To Watch Computer Porn
According to CBS, one young man in Oregon has been breaking into homes with the intent of watching pornography on the Internet….
#2 Delaware Pediatrician That Sexually Abused 103 Children
Who is the bigger monster – James Holmes or the Delaware doctor that sexually abused 103 children? The following is from a recent Natural News article….
#3 Jerry Sandusky
Jerry Sandusky was supposed to be a role model. He was an assistant football coach at Penn State and he was heavily involved in charity work.
But it turns out that it was all a lie. In fact, a whole bunch of people involved in the Penn State football program knew what was going on and did not report it.
In the end, Jerry Sandusky was found guilty of 45 counts of sexually abusing young boys. He has become a national symbol of the depravity which is rotting away the very heart of this nation.
#4 Man That Kept His Wife Chained Up For 10 Years
What would you do to a man that kept his wife chained up for ten years?
According to one West Virginia news source, that is exactly what one man down in West Virginia did….
#5 Serial Foot-Licker In New York
Did serial foot-lickers even exist back in the 1950s?
Why are there so many of them running around today?
The following is from the New York Daily News….
#6 Houston Police Officer Accused Of Raping A Woman While On Duty
Who is supposed to keep all of these sickos under control?
The police?
Sadly, the police often are the sickos.
The following is from the Houston Chronicle….
#7 Philadelphia Police Officer Makes 14 Year Old Girl Watch Him Have Sex With A Prostitute After Sexually Assaulting Her
If we can’t trust the police, then who can we trust?
Recently there have been a bunch of reports of sexual misconduct by police in the national news.
The following is how Fox News described one particularly disturbing incident from the Philadelphia area….
#8 TSA Agent Spills Grandpa’s Ashes And Laughs About It
Almost every single day there is another TSA horror story in the news.
But what you are about to read is one of the worst of them all.
The following is from an ABC News article….
#9 Connecticut Man Threatens To Cut The Tongue Out Of The Mouth Of A 3 Year Old Child
What kind of a man would hold up a knife and threaten to cut the tongue out of the mouth of a 3 year old kid?
Sadly, that is exactly what happened up in Connecticut recently.
The following is from a WFSB report about this incident….
#10 Naked “Cannibal” Threatens To Eat Police Officers Down In Georgia
Why are so many criminals getting naked lately?
Why are so many criminals trying to eat people?
The following is from a recent Daily Mail article….
#11 Public School Administrator In New York Fired For Not Participating In A Gay Orgy
Almost every day there is another story in the news about a new school sex scandal somewhere in America.
The following is from Courthouse News Service….
#12 Naked Florida Man Bites Chunk From Another Man’s Stomach
This year criminals in America seem to have become obsessed with chewing on human flesh.
The following example is from a recent Daily Mail article….
#13 Father Who Killed His 3 Daughters Inside The Home Of His Ex-Wife
You know that society is really starting to break down when parents start killing their own children.
What one man up in Wisconsin is being charged with is absolutely horrific.
The following is from a recent CNN article….
#14 Pregnant Woman Set On Fire In Detroit
These days not even pregnant women are immune to violence.
What one pregnant woman up in Detroit went through recently is hard to stomach….
#15 New Jersey Man Throws His Own Intestines At Police
If the police were breaking into your home, would you cut out your own entrails and throw them at the police?
According to the Huffington Post, that is exactly what one man up in New Jersey did….
#16 Naked Man Brutally Murders A Hotel Maid
Why would anyone want to kill a 62 year old cleaning woman?
Many of the crimes that are being committed today are absolutely senseless.
The following is how the CBS affiliate in Sacramento reported this story….
#17 Crack-Fueled Sickos Abduct A Female Jogger
These days you are not safe anywhere in the country.
Just check out what happened to one math teacher from Montana. The following is how a Daily Mail article described what two very sick drug addicts did to her….
#18 Female Teacher Has Sex With Four Male Students
Why are so many public school teachers having sex with their students?
Don’t they realize that they will inevitably get caught?
Aren’t the dozens of other school sex scandals in the news sufficient warnings?
The following is from the NBC affiliate in Tucson, Arizona….
#19 Texas House Of Horrors
The nightmares that were happening in one quiet house in Texas are so horrifying that it is hard to find the words to describe them.
The following is from a New York Daily News article….
#20 Florida Man Bites The Lips Off Of A Kitten
What kind of a monster would bite the lips off of a kitten?
It is hard to imagine anyone actually doing such a thing, but according to WKMG this apparently happened….
I know that I used a lot of disturbing examples in this article, but I wanted to make my point very strongly.
James Holmes is not an isolated case. America is literally being overrun by sickos and monsters.
In the old days, our societal institutions were strong and they helped to tie us together.
But today there is very, very little that ties us together and keeps us grounded. Faith in almost every major institution in society is very low and our families are falling apart.
The percentage of adult Americans that are married right now is at an all-time low. The percentage of Americans with no religious affiliation at all is at an all-time high.
Our society is rotting from the inside out and many of our formerly great cities are degenerating into absolute hellholes.
Fixing America is not just a matter of fixing our economic system or our political system.
Fixing America is going to take a whole lot more than that.
So what do all of you think about this?
Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….