Money

Global Authorities Brace For A Worldwide Protein Shortage As “One-Quarter Of Earth’s Pigs Have Been Wiped Out”

African Swine Fever is killing millions upon millions of pigs all over the world, and this threatens to create a crippling global shortage of protein as we head into 2020.  This epidemic began in China last year, and it is now also running wild in North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and the Philippines.  But this crisis is certainly not limited to Asia.  According to the Washington Post, so far in 2019 there have also been outbreaks “in Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.”  Overall, cases of African Swine Fever have been documented “in nearly 50 nations”, and U.S. pork producers are extremely concerned that it could start spreading here too.

African Swine Fever is extremely contagious, there is no vaccine, and there is no cure.  Once it starts spreading in a certain area, there isn’t much that can be done “other than culling herds and loading carcasses into hazardous waste sites”.  Literally, we are talking about an unstoppable global plague that is an existential threat to our food supply.  Of course many of us don’t eat pork, but there will also be an immense strain on supplies of beef and chicken as those that eat pork are forced to turn to other alternatives.  This is an exceedingly serious situation, and with each month it is just getting worse.

China is the epicenter for this crisis, and CNN is reporting that the Chinese herd has “shrunk by around 130 million” since this epidemic first began last year…

The damage that African swine fever has wrecked on China’s pig population is hard to overstate. The country is home to half of all the pigs on the planet, and its herd has shrunk by around 130 million since the outbreak began about 13 months ago, according to a CNN Business analysis of data from the Chinese agricultural ministry. Many farmers are reluctant to restock pigs after they are slaughtered, fearing they’ll catch the disease.

To put that in perspective, there are only about 70 million pigs in the United States.

Yes, that number is for the entire country.

So the damage that has already been done in China is beyond cataclysmic, and this crisis is very far from over.

And according to the Washington Post, the losses in China are even higher than what CNN is reporting.  If you can believe it, the Post says that “as many as half of China’s pigs” have already died…

As many as half of China’s pigs, an estimated 300 million, have died of the virus or been exterminated since the disease took hold 13 months ago.

Of course the virus continues to sweep through China like wildfire, and at this point Rabobank is projecting that up to 70 percent of China’s pigs could eventually end up dead.

And considering the fact that about half of all the pigs in the entire world are in China, that is a very sobering thing to hear.

Needless to say, this crisis has been dramatically driving up the price of pork.  According to CNN, the price of pork in China is now nearly 70 percent higher than it was at this time last year…

African swine fever has ravaged China’s pig population, and the country’s consumers are feeling the pain. Some are even switching to other meats as the dietary staple becomes unaffordable.

Pork in China now costs nearly 70% more than it did a year ago, according to data released Tuesday by China’s National Bureau of Statistics.

For the average Chinese citizen, this is a really big deal, because pork accounts for about 70 percent of their total meat consumption.

So to keep their population fed, China has started to import massive quantities of pork and beef from the rest of the world…

China has also been buying more pig meat from the rest of the world to keep its consumers happy. The country imported more than 1.3 million tons of pork in the first nine months of 2019, a 44% spike compared to a year ago, according to customs data published Monday. Imports of beef were up more than 50%, as people substitute that meat for pork in their diets.

As this virus continues to rapidly spread all over the planet, the supply crunch is only going to get worse.

Global prices are going to continue to escalate, and those on the bottom of the global economic food chain are going to have an increasingly difficult time being able to afford to buy any pork, beef or chicken at all.

And nobody should expect things to turn around in a year or two.  In fact, one expert is projecting that “it will be another 4 to 6 years before China will be able to rebuild its herd”…

“We’re past a year now and it’s still spreading and getting worse,” he says. “We believe it will be another 4 to 6 years before China will be able to rebuild its herd, but that’s making assumptions about when and if they will be able to get an effective vaccine.”

Of course that projection assumes that there will be a vaccine, but right now there is no vaccine and we don’t know if there will ever be one.

Meanwhile, this virus just continues to sweep across the globe like wildfire.  In fact, we just learned that it has gotten into “two more provinces in the Philippines”…

The highly contagious and deadly African swine fever virus has spread to two more provinces in the Philippines, the world’s 10th-largest pork consumer, officials said on Friday.

Cases of infections were detected in some areas in Cavite, south of the nation’s capital Manila, and in Nueva Ecija on Luzon island.

This is a global plague unlike anything we have ever seen before.

According to the New York Daily News, “more than one-quarter of Earth’s pigs have been wiped out by the virulent disease.”

I put that last sentence in bold to make sure that you caught that.

More than a fourth of our pigs are already gone, and this virus is still raging out of control.

I will continue to keep my readers updated on this crisis.  What we are facing is literally a global nightmare, and we are still in the early chapters.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep.  My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters.  (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing those books you help to support my work.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I can only allow this to happen if this “About the Author” section is included with each article.  In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished.  This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

What You Think Is Controlled By What You Watch, And What You Watch Is Controlled By The Elite

Why do you believe what you believe?  Some people have a really solid answer to that question, but much of the population never thinks much about deeper questions such as this.  In fact, for most Americans it is simply easier to let others do their thinking for them.  Today, most of us spend multiple hours each day absorbing information through a screen, and most of the content that is fed to us through our televisions, phones, tablets and computers is controlled by the elite.  And if you allow anyone to feed information into your mind for several hours every day, it is going to have a dramatic impact on how you view the world.

When I was younger, one of my favorite movies was “The Matrix”, and I think that it is a really good metaphor for what is going on in our society today.  In the film, nearly the entire human population was plugged into a system which continuously fed a computer-generated reality into their minds that wasn’t real at all.  Later on, I eventually came to realize that we are willingly doing the same thing to ourselves.  Our personal interactions with one another are extremely limited, but we willingly “plug in” to the enormous matrix of news, information and entertainment that the elite have constructed for many hours each day.

According to numbers that were released earlier this year, the average American spends more than three hours watching television and more than three hours on mobile devices every single day…

It’s official: This year marks the first time that Americans will spend more time staring down at their phones and tablets than they will watching television.

The average U.S. adult will spend three hours and 43 minutes on mobile devices this year, according to EMarketer Inc., which is eight minutes longer than the three hours and 35 minutes that will be spent in front of the TV.

If Americans from previous generations could visit our society right now, they would probably be horrified that we are all constantly staring at our screens like some sort of zombies.

And perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if we were feeding our minds healthy things, but instead most of what we are absorbing is garbage that has been produced by the elite.

Today, nearly all of the news, information and entertainment that Americans consume is produced by a small cluster of giant corporations.  The following summary of the current state of affairs comes from Wikipedia…

In the United States, movie production has been dominated by major studios since the early 20th century; before that, there was a period in which Edison’s Trust monopolized the industry. The music and television industries recently witnessed cases of media consolidation, with Sony Music Entertainment‘s parent company merging their music division with Bertelsmann AG’s BMG to form Sony BMG and Tribune’s The WB and CBS Corp.’s UPN merging to form The CW. In the case of Sony BMG, there existed a “Big Five” (now “Big Four“) of major record companies, while The CW’s creation was an attempt to consolidate ratings and stand up to the “Big Four” of American network (terrestrial) television (this despite the fact that the CW was, in fact, partially owned by one of the Big Four in CBS). In television, the vast majority of broadcast and basic cable networks, over a hundred in all, are controlled by eight corporations: Fox Corporation, The Walt Disney Company (which includes the ABC, ESPN, FX and Disney brands), National Amusements (which includes CBS Corporation and Viacom), Comcast (which owns NBCUniversal), AT&T (which owns WarnerMedia), Discovery, Inc., E. W. Scripps Company, Cablevision (now known as Altice USA), or some combination thereof.[92]

When you have an almost totally monopoly on news, information and entertainment, it is not too difficult to manipulate a society.  At this point, most of the population is made up of extremely pliable “NPCs” that are more than happy to go along with whatever “societal norms” are set by the elite.  The term “sheeple” has been used to describe those that allow the elite to do their thinking for them, and we need to do what we can to help those individuals wake up and to get them to start thinking for themselves.

Let me give you an example of the immense power of the media.  One recent survey found that those that watch Fox News tend to think that the U.S. economy is in great shape, while those that watch MSNBC tend to be quite pessimistic about the economy…

American voters face the same set of economic facts, from low unemployment to the risks from a trade war, but the survey’s index of overall sentiment – at 108 just above the 100 line that separates positive from negative impressions of the economic outlook – masked the huge divide between those who approve of Trump, whose views measured a far rosier 136, and those who disapprove of the president, with a reading of 88.

The results, weighted by factors like age, race and sex, to be nationally representative, were similarly skewed based on media consumption. Viewers of conservative-leaning Fox News registered 139 for current sentiment about the economy; viewers of MSNBC, an outlet often critical of Trump, registered 89. Readers of the New York Times sat in the middle at 107, near those who get their news from Facebook (110) and Twitter (112).

But the truth is somewhere in between.  We haven’t officially had a recession in recent years, but the U.S. economy has definitely not been “booming” either.  In fact, we haven’t had a full year of 3 percent GDP growth since the middle of the Bush administration.  That is the longest stretch of slow growth in American history by a very wide margin, and now it appears that the next recession is rapidly approaching.

And without a doubt, tens of millions of American families are deeply struggling right now.  As I noted yesterday, 50 percent of all American workers make less than 33,000 dollars a year, and a survey that was just released found that 70 percent of Americans “have cried about money”…

Pass along the tissues, because Americans aren’t afraid of letting the tears roll when it comes to finances.

Seven in 10 Americans said they have cried about money in their lifetimes, according to a recent online survey of 1,004 Americans by Compare Cards.com. Many cited worries over their job or making ends meet.

And household debt, which peaked at $13.86 trillion in the second quarter, weighed the heaviest on Americans. Almost a third admitted to crying over this looming concern, according to the survey.

One of the reasons why my articles upset so many people is because I just don’t follow the herd.

In this day and age, it is absolutely imperative that we all learn to think for ourselves.  Because if you don’t actively take control, the elite will be more than happy to do your thinking for you.

Question everything.  Everyone that is feeding you news, information and entertainment has an agenda, and in most cases it is not a positive agenda.

We are in a battle for hearts and minds, and the elite have an overwhelming edge because of the colossal system that they have created.

But we have the truth on our side, and in the end the truth shall prevail.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep.  My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters.  (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing those books you help to support my work.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I can only allow this to happen if this “About the Author” section is included with each article.  In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished.  This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

Most Americans Do Not Believe That This Chapter Of American History Is Going To End Well

This is a very difficult article for me to write.  America is more divided today than it has ever been in my entire lifetime, and the very deep divisions that now exist are getting deeper with each passing day.  In particular, the animosity between the political left and the political right has risen to an extremely frightening level.  Instead of learning to love those that we disagree with, we are constantly being trained to absolutely loathe them, and the pot is constantly being stirred by the mainstream media and many of our national leaders.  And as both sides go at it like cats and dogs, irreparable damage is being done to our political system.  At this point, we are not too far away from a point where this country will not be governable by anyone.  Our federal government has degenerated into a bad soap opera featuring an endless parade of insults, threats, petty stunts, scandals and investigations.  All of this drama may be entertaining at times, but it is not any way to run a country.

And now all of the political strife and discord in this country has been given a focal point.  I have repeatedly warned that Democrats should have never gone down the road of impeachment, because either way this process turns out it is going to be very bad for America.

If Trump is impeached by the House but protected by the Republicans in the Senate, the left is going to go absolutely ballistic.

But if Trump is impeached by the House and then removed from office by the Senate, the right is going to go absolutely ballistic.

Either way, this story is going to have a very negative end.

And even if Trump wasn’t in the White House, the seething hatred between the left and the right would still be there.  In fact, things have gotten so bad that a new survey found that 67 percent of all Americans believe that we are “on the edge of civil war”…

Partisan political division and the resulting incivility has reached a low in America, with 67% believing that the nation is nearing civil war, according to a new national survey.

“The majority of Americans believe that we are two-thirds of the way to being on the edge of civil war. That to me is a very pessimistic place,” said Mo Elleithee, the executive director of Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service.

I was stunned to see such a high number.

Obviously most Americans don’t actually want a “civil war”, but this is what most of them see coming.

Earlier today, I came across an article about a Major League Baseball umpire named Rob Drake that is now in hot water for posting about “civil war” on Twitter…

Major League Baseball is looking into a now-deleted tweet from umpire Rob Drake warning of a civil war if president Donald Trump is impeached.

According to a copy of the tweet obtained by ESPN, Drake tweeted that he planned to buy an assault rifle “because if you impeach MY PRESIDENT this way, YOU WILL HAVE ANOTHER CIVAL WAR!!! #MAGA2020″.”

Is that really how this chapter in American history is going to end?

Are we destined to see utter chaos in the streets?

I am not saying that we should all try to find a way to agree on everything.  When it comes to our most fundamental values, there are certain things that I will never, ever, ever agree on with my political opponents.

And the fact that our nation no longer has a cohesive set of values is definitely a big part of the problem.  With various national leaders constantly touting their own value systems and trying to pull us in a whole bunch of different directions simultaneously, it is certainly not surprising that we have ended up at this point.

But nobody should want a fractured nation where we are literally fighting with one another in the streets.

Of course when you ask people about who should be blamed for this mess, Democrats point at Republicans and Republicans point at Democrats.  If you doubt this, just check out these numbers…

Among Democratic voters, 63 percent say GOP leaders are “very responsible” for the decline in civility and 86 percent say Trump is “very responsible.” Only 10 percent of Democratic voters place a large degree of blame at the feet of their party leaders.

Among Republicans, those numbers are flipped – 67 percent of GOP voters say Democratic leaders are “very responsible” for the decline in today’s politics, easily the largest culprit among those voters.

Frustration and anger have been building in this country for a very long time, and now this impeachment process threatens to be a flashpoint.  No matter what happens, tens of millions of Americans are going to be deeply, deeply upset by the result, and you don’t want to be there when their anger is unleashed.

A number of years ago I wrote a novel which envisioned absolutely massive protests in Washington D.C., but at that time I had no idea that Donald Trump would become president or that the Democrats would one day try to impeach him.  And now it looks like the Democrats want to have articles of impeachment ready by the end of this year, and that means that a Senate trial is coming soon.

And once a Senate trial starts, the eyes of the entire world will be on Washington.

Many on the right are assuming that a Senate trial will be a slam dunk for Trump, but it is not necessarily safe to make that assumption.  On Wednesday, the number two Republican in the Senate said the following about this process…

“The picture coming out of it, based on the reporting that we’ve seen, I would say is not a good one,” Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican, told CNN. “But I would say also that until we have a process that allows for everybody to see this in full transparency, it’s pretty hard to draw any hard and fast conclusions.”

That certainly doesn’t sound like someone that already has his mind made up about how he will vote.

There are going to be a lot of twists and turns to this drama in the weeks ahead, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the end result will not be a good one for America.

And as I just detailed above, a large percentage of the population shares my pessimism regarding how this chapter in American history will end.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep.  I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters.  (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing those books you help to support my work.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I can only allow this to happen if this “About the Author” section is included with each article.  In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished.  This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

 

If Donald Trump Is Impeached, That Will Be A Sign That All Hell Is About To Break Loose In America

Most Americans don’t realize it yet, but in just a few weeks we will witness one of the most critical moments in American history.  Right now the Democrats in the House of Representatives are drafting articles of impeachment, and it is expected that there will be a vote by the end of this year.  If President Trump is impeached by the House, that will set off a chain of events that nobody is going to be able to control, and if the U.S. Senate ultimately decides to remove Trump from office, all hell will break loose in America.  There are tens of millions of very loyal Trump supporters in this country, and many of them are extremely passionate.  Simply impeaching Trump would represent a “breaking point” for many of them, and if Trump is actually removed from office by a Republican-controlled Senate it is inevitable that we would see a very frightening explosion of righteous anger, and at that point there wouldn’t be much of anything that could be done to calm them down.  A large percentage of the population would instantly lose all the faith they ever had in our political system, and unfortunately there would be widespread civil unrest in the streets.

In addition, the impeachment of a U.S. president would unleash havoc on Wall Street.  Trump has warned that the stock market would crash, and it is likely that he is quite correct about that.  Of course the U.S. economy is already steamrolling toward a recession, and so instability on Wall Street would only escalate our economic problems.  It is not hard to imagine the U.S. economy plunging into a deep recession or possibly even a full-blown depression pretty rapidly after Trump is removed from office.  And with utter political chaos reigning in Washington, it would be difficult to convince anyone that things would turn around any time soon.

If the Democrats could have just been patient enough to get to November 2020, they would have had the opportunity to vote Trump out legally.

But they didn’t want to do that, and now we are headed down a road that is going to tear this country apart.

What do you think the left is going to do if Trump is not removed from office and then he goes on to win again in 2020?

Needless to say, it would be a temper tantrum unlike anything we have ever seen before in American history.

On the other hand, how do you think Trump supporters will react if Trump is illegally impeached and removed from office before we even get to the election?

We truly are in unprecedented territory, and it is very difficult to see how this story is going to end well.

This is a can of worms that never should have been opened, but there is no going back now.  According to NBC News, the impeachment inquiry is rapidly moving forward, and Democrats plan to focus their impeachment case on Trump’s “abuse of power”…

House Democrats are zeroing in on a framework for their impeachment case against President Donald Trump that will center on a simple “abuse of power” narrative involving the president’s actions regarding Ukraine, according to multiple people familiar with the deliberations.

As Democrats continue closed-door depositions with critical witnesses and prepare to move to the next phase of public hearings, they are wrestling over which elements and evidence to bring in, which to leave out. The goal is to explain to the public the reasoning and relevance of any eventual impeachment charges.

But can a president actually be impeached for an “abuse of power” that does not involve the breaking of any specific laws?

As a former lawyer that has studied constitutional law, I would definitely consider that to be unconstitutional.  And removing a president using this sort of a pretense would set an extremely dangerous precedent.

Unfortunately, right now the momentum is on the side of the pro-impeachment forces.  On Friday, yet another prominent Republican came out in favor of impeachment…

Former Ohio Governor and 2016 Republican presidential candidate John Kasich said Friday he now supports impeaching President Donald Trump.

Kasich said it was White House acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney admitting there was a quid pro quo between the United States and Ukraine that “pushed me really across the Rubicon.”

Of course many could argue that John Kasich isn’t a real Republican at all, and they would be right.

And ultimately Kasich doesn’t really matter.  What really matters is what the Republicans in the U.S. Senate think, because after the House votes to impeach they are going to decide Trump’s fate.

The Democrats only have 47 seats in the Senate, and it is going to take 67 votes to convict Trump, and so the math would seem to favor the president.

But there are only a few Republicans in the Senate that are truly loyal to Trump, and things could still go either way.

In the end, it is not comforting to realize that one of the key votes in the Senate is held by “Pierre Delecto”…

Mitt Romney has a secret Twitter account that he used to promote his failed 2012 campaign and now uses to engage with reporters and condemn political moves with which he disagrees.

It was revealed Sunday evening by Slate that the 72-year-old Utah senator goes by the name Pierre Delecto, with the handle @qaws9876, on his undercover Twitter account that he admittedly uses to act as a ‘lurker’ on the social media site.

As Delecto, Romney often used the “like” button to promote anti-Trump tweets…

If that’s not bad enough, Romney is using the “like” button on his Pierre Delecto account to file away those tweets that make Mitt Romney’s heart sing: tweets accusing Trump of swindling kids with cancer, about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office, and attacking Newt Gingrich for impeaching Bill Clinton while cheating on his own wife.

Of course the Democrats are going to need more than just Mitt Romney to remove Trump from office, and without a doubt there are other Republicans in the Senate who do not like Trump at all.

In fact, GOP strategist Mike Murphy has argued that there are 30 Senate Republicans that would vote to convict Trump if the vote was held in secret.

But how many of them are willing to do it publicly?

We shall see.

In Washington, the elite like to have men and women in Congress that have been compromised in some manner, because it is so much easier to “persuade” them to vote a certain way when push comes to shove.

In the end, I don’t know if pro-impeachment forces will be able to get to 67 votes, but if I was President Trump I would definitely be sweating right now.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep.  I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters.  (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing those books you help to support my work.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I can only allow this to happen if this “About the Author” section is included with each article.  In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished.  This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of this website.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

3 Polls Show A Majority Of Americans Now Support Impeachment As A Major Constitutional Crisis Looms

The mainstream media is relentlessly trying to convince the American people that President Trump did something wrong, and to a certain degree it appears to be working.  As you will see below, 3 major polls have found that a majority of Americans now support impeachment.  But according to the U.S. Constitution, President Trump cannot be impeached unless he is convicted of a crime.  Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution sets a very high standard for impeachment: “The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”  Top Democrats love to give interviews about impeachment, but you will notice that none of them ever point to a specific federal law that President Trump violated, and none of them ever bother to explain how President Trump’s specific behavior fits the elements of any particular federal statute.  As a former lawyer, this disturbs me greatly, because the law is supposed to be applied impartially.  Either President Trump is guilty of breaking a specific law or he isn’t.  You can’t just impeach someone because you don’t like that particular individual, but that appears to be what the Democrats are doing, and in the process they are absolutely trampling on the Constitution.

Unfortunately, a slim majority of the U.S. population now appears to be on the side of the pro-impeachment forces.  A little over a week ago, a Fox News survey was the first poll to show this…

A new high of 51 percent wants Trump impeached and removed from office, another 4 percent want him impeached but not removed, and 40 percent oppose impeachment altogether. In July, 42 percent favored impeachment and removal, while 5 percent said impeach but don’t remove him, and 45 percent opposed impeachment.

President Trump blasted that poll on Twitter, but then earlier this week Gallup released a survey with even worse results…

Currently, 52% say Trump should be impeached and removed from office, while 46% say he should not be. This is roughly the opposite of what Gallup found in June when asked in the context of special counselor Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Subsequently, the highly respected Pew Research Center released their own startling poll…

The new survey by Pew Research Center, conducted Oct. 1-13 among 3,487 adults, finds that 54% currently approve of the House’s decision to conduct an impeachment inquiry, while 44% disapprove.

Neither party engenders a great deal of confidence that they will be “fair and reasonable” during the impeachment inquiry, the survey finds. About four-in-ten (43%) expect that the Republicans in Congress will be fair in handling the inquiry, while slightly more (47%) say the same about the Democrats in Congress.

Once can be a coincidence, twice is a trend, and three times means that we have a major problem on our hands.

In fact, an average of all the latest national polls about impeachment shows that “a majority of Americans” now support this process…

For the first time, a majority of Americans said this week that they supported the impeachment of President Trump. Not just in one, outlying poll — in an average of all current national polls compiled by the data journalists at FiveThirtyEight.

From a historical perspective, this is really stunning, because during Richard Nixon’s impeachment process a majority of Americans never supported his impeachment until the very end.

And in Bill Clinton’s case, public support for his impeachment never even reached the 40 percent mark.

So to see that more than 50 percent of Americans are in favor of impeaching Trump is rather stunning, and it shows that the mainstream media still possesses an immense amount of influence in our society.

But even if everything that the Democrats are alleging that President Trump did is 100 percent true, there is still no impeachable offense here.

Whether you are a fan of Trump or not, you should want to see justice done in this case.  Ultimately, our representatives in Washington are supposed to be our “public servants”, and they should be treated just like everyone else.

If it can be shown that President Trump’s behavior specifically fits the elements of a specific federal crime, and if that specific federal crime rises to the level of a “high crime or misdemeanor”, then President Trump should accept his fate.

I have gone over all of the “crimes” that the Democrats are accusing Trump of committing, and they must not be reading the federal statutes regarding these crimes very carefully, because Trump’s actions don’t fit any of those statutes.

Look, if Trump was really guilty of a “high crime or misdemeanor”, there would be plenty of Republicans in Congress turning on him by now.  And I am not talking about turncoats like Mitt Romney that have their own political agendas.

If President Trump was really guilty, a large number of Republicans would turn on him just like we witnessed during the Nixon saga.  When it become clear that Nixon was guilty, members of his own party rapidly abandoned him, and Nixon was forced to resign.

But that hasn’t happened in this case, and it is not going to happen because Trump is not guilty.

Unfortunately, the Democrats are going to draft articles of impeachment anyway, and at this point it looks like the vote in the House is going to go against Trump.

So then the drama will move to the Senate, and Mitch McConnell is telling everyone to be ready for a trial “as soon as Thanksgiving”…

Majority leader Mitch McConnell told Republican senators Wednesday to be ready for an impeachment trial of President Trump as soon as Thanksgiving, as the Senate began to brace for a political maelstrom that would engulf the nation.

An air of inevitability has taken hold in Congress, with the expectation that Trump will become the third president in history to be impeached — and that Republicans need to prepare to defend the president. While McConnell briefed senators on what would happen during a Senate trial, House GOP leaders convened what they expect will be regular impeachment strategy sessions.

The good news is that McConnell has pledged to protect Trump, and that almost certainly means that the effort to remove Trump from office will fail.

But the uproar that the Democrats and the mainstream media are creating over all of this is going to divide this nation even more deeply, and it is setting the stage for the kind of civil unrest that I have long warned about (#ad).

When this process is finally over, about half the country is going to end up believing that Trump committed some sort of major crime but that justice was kept from being done by Trump’s Republican friends in the Senate.

There is going to be so much anger on the left, and what makes this situation even more volatile is the fact that we are heading into an election year.

We have never seen anything like this before in American history, and things are about to get very, very ugly.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep.  I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters.  (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing those books you help to support my work.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles in written form on their own websites as long as this “About the Author” section is included.  In order to comply with government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished.  This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate.  You can follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of this website.

 

Due To The Weather, Midwest Farmers Fear Widespread Crop Failures And A “Record-Low” Harvest In 2019

Snow usually blankets the Upper Midwest around the first week of November, and so that means that many farmers in the Midwest only have about two weeks to salvage what they can before everything is lost.  The unprecedented October blizzard that we just witnessed dumped massive amounts of snow on millions upon millions of acres of crops from Colorado to Minnesota.  Even if the weather is absolutely perfect between now and November 1st, farmers are still “expecting massive crop losses”. In fact, one South Dakota lawmaker told the press that the crop losses will be “as devastating as we’ve ever seen”.  And as you will see below, even parts of the Midwest that didn’t get hammered by the recent blizzard are potentially facing “record-low” harvests this year.  We have never seen a year this bad for Midwest farmers in modern American history, but if the weather does not cooperate things could rapidly get much, much worse over the next two weeks.

Because of all the rain and flooding earlier in the year, many Midwest farmers faced serious delays in getting their crops planted, and so they were counting on good weather at the end of the season so that their crops could fully mature.  Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, and the recent Midwest blizzard was definitely a nightmare scenario…

Wall Street Journal writers Jacob Bunge and Kirk Maltais reported on Monday that, “Farmers who delayed planting in waterlogged fields this spring face a new threat as they race to harvest their crops: snow.

“Heavy snowfall and high winds over the past several days buffeted northern Farm Belt states where many farmers faced historic planting delays last spring. The early blizzard bookended a trying year for U.S. farmers. Crop prices generally remain under pressure because of high supplies and slackened demand as a result of the U.S.-China trade war. And many crops now threatened by a freeze are immature because they were planted so late.”

When the snow began blanketing the Dakotas, most of the corn was not even mature yet.  The following numbers originally come from the Wall Street Journal…

The Journal writers explained that, “The cold weather is a big threat to vulnerable crops. Only 22% of corn in North Dakota was mature as of Oct. 7, and 36% in South Dakota. In the 18 biggest corn-producing states, 58% of this year’s crop was mature, versus an average of 85% by that date over the previous five years, according to the USDA.

Right now, there are millions upon millions of acres of crops that farmers cannot even get to because of all the snow.

If we do not get some warm weather over the next two weeks, they may not be able to salvage much at all, because winter weather season is rapidly approaching…

In normal years, winter weather hits much of the Upper Midwest portion of the Great Plains around the beginning of November, Isane said. After that, it is too late to bring in most crops.

That means, farmers have about two weeks to carry out their harvest — or lose it.

Essentially, we are potentially facing a crisis unlike anything we have ever seen before.

The next two weeks will determine whether many Midwest farmers make a paycheck for the year or not, and so at this point “the stress level is off the charts for these guys”…

“Nobody really knows what will happen because we don’t know what the weather will be,” said Luther Markwart, the executive vice president of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association. Most of the sugarbeets in the country are grown in the Great Plains area that was hit by last week’s blizzard.

“So, the stress level is off the charts for these guys,” Markwart said. “Just think if your entire year’s paycheck was made in the next two weeks — or not.”

The Wall Street Journal and a few other mainstream news outlets are reporting on this, but most mainstream news sources are so obsessed with reporting on President Trump 24 hours a day that they are completely missing this story so far.

And even without the recent blizzard we were still facing very serious crop failures across the Midwest.  Most parts of Michigan didn’t really get hammered by the recent blizzard, but it is being reported that farmers in Michigan “could see record-lows in their crops in 2019″…

Michigan farmers could see record-lows in their crops in 2019, according to the latest U.S. Department of Agriculture October Crop Production Report.

According to the USDA’s National Ag Statistics Service (NASS), Michigan farmers will be bracing for a rough harvest due to extremely variable crop conditions, wide-ranging stages of crop maturity and muddy fields.

A lot of people don’t seem to understand that if farmers don’t grow our food, we don’t get to eat.

So is anyone out there willing to dramatically reduce the amount of food that they will eat in 2020 so that everyone else will have enough?

Because what we are facing is not pretty.  According to the report that I just quoted, soybean production in Michigan this year will be down 31 percent…

The soybean production in Michigan was projected at 75.7 million bushels, a 31% decrease from last year and the lowest since 2008.

And actually the numbers in the Dakotas will be far, far worse than that if farmers are not able to get out into their fields over the next two weeks.

Meanwhile, the African Swine Fever crisis over in China continues to escalate.  The following very alarming information comes to us from Zero Hedge…

In a report on Monday, we detailed how pork spot prices have soared across China as the African Swine Fever has killed 50% of the country’s hog population. The price increase (as ‘pig ebola’ spreads) has already pushed up consumer inflation to a six-year high. Now analysts are telling Reuters on Tuesday that pork prices are expected to move significantly higher through year-end.

New data published Monday from the Ministry of Agriculture of the People’s Republic of China showed the pig-apocalypse continues to get worse.

Retail pork prices in the country have jumped 84% from last year to $2.78 a pound.

Needless to say, this crisis is pushing up pork prices all over the globe, and what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning.

We are entering a season of time that will be unlike anything we have ever seen before (#ad).  Here in the United States, it has always been safe to assume that our supermarkets will always be teeming with plenty of inexpensive food, but now a major shift is happening.

Everyone acknowledges that food prices are going to go up.  The real debate is about how high they will ultimately go.

The next two weeks are absolutely critical.  It is “make or break time” for many Midwest farmers, and they are itching to get out into their fields.

So let us hope that the weather cooperates, because we essentially need a miracle at this point.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep.  I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters.  (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing those books you help to support my work.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles in written form on their own websites as long as this “About the Author” section is included.  In order to comply with government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished.  This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate.  You can follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of this website.

 

National Geographic Admits Billions Of People Will “Face Shortages Of Food And Clean Water” Over The Next 30 Years

A lot of people out there don’t like when I write these kinds of articles, because they directly contradict the false narrative that humanity has an extremely bright future ahead.  Sadly, the truth is that our planet and everything that lives on it is rapidly deteriorating.  And I am not talking about the false environmentalism being pushed by the mainstream media, Greta Thunberg and countless well-funded NGOs.  What I am talking about is the stuff that is happening right in our face.  We are systematically poisoning our planet, thousands upon thousands of species are going extinct, and we are literally running out of all of our most important natural resources.  There isn’t going to be enough of anything in the not too distant future.  In fact, even National Geographic is admitting that up to five billion people could soon be facing “shortages of food and clean water”…

As many as five billion people, particularly in Africa and South Asia, are likely to face shortages of food and clean water in the coming decades as nature declines. Hundreds of millions more could be vulnerable to increased risks of severe coastal storms, according to the first-ever model examining how nature and humans can survive together.

“I hope no one is shocked that billions of people could be impacted by 2050,” says Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer a landscape ecologist at Stanford University. “We know we are dependent on nature for many things,” says Chaplin-Kramer, lead author of the paper “Global Modeling Of Nature’s Contributions To People” published in Science.

The clock is literally ticking for humanity, but meanwhile we spend immense amounts of energy on relatively meaningless political squabbles.

Look, the reality of the matter is that this is going to happen no matter which political party is in control of the White House.  We are in very big trouble, and nobody really has any idea how we can possibly turn things around.

At this point, we are running out of topsoil at a staggering rate.  In fact, we have already lost “nearly half of the most productive soil” within the last 150 years…

The world grows 95% of its food in the uppermost layer of soil, making topsoil one of the most important components of our food system. But thanks to conventional farming practices, nearly half of the most productive soil has disappeared in the world in the last 150 years, threatening crop yields and contributing to nutrient pollution, dead zones and erosion. In the US alone, soil on cropland is eroding 10 times faster than it can be replenished.

If we continue to degrade the soil at the rate we are now, the world could run out of topsoil in about 60 years, according to Maria-Helena Semedo of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

So do any of you have a viable plan for how we can stop losing our topsoil?

Because if nobody has a plan, mass starvation is an absolute certainty.  Even if we found a way to save our topsoil, we aren’t going to have anyone to pollinate our crops because all of the insects are dying.  I covered this phenomenon in a previous article entitled “Insect Species Are Rapidly Going Extinct Across The Globe – All Insects Could Be Gone ‘In 100 Years'”.

And without enough insects to eat, the bird population is rapidly declining as well.  This is something that I wrote about in a previous article entitled “North America’s Bird Population Is Collapsing – Nearly 3 Billion Birds Have Been Wiped Out Since 1970”.

Despite all of our advanced technology, we can’t seem to do much of anything to stop the death and decay that we see all over the globe.

Even the human race is steadily deteriorating.  Scientists tell us that humans are now smaller, shorter, weaker and dumber than our ancestors were thousands of years ago.  Today, our genes contain tens of thousands of mistakes (mutations), and those mistakes are passed on to the next generation.  And each new generation adds additional mistakes (mutations) to the gene pool, and so over time the number of mutations being passed on continues to grow.  In virtually every case those mutations are harmful, and we have absolutely no way to stop this systematic decay of the human genome.

Literally, our planet and everything in it is falling apart.

Here in the western world, things may seem okay for the moment because our debt-fueled lifestyles and our advanced technology allow us to live fairly comfortable lives.

But things are already starting to change, and global events are accelerating at a pace that is very alarming.  As the fabric of our society unravels (#ad), it is going to be imperative to have others that you can lean on for support.

Unfortunately, making friends is not something that most of us are very good at doing.  In fact, one recent study discovered that the average American adult “hasn’t made a new friend in the last five years”…

Spending time in the company of good friends regularly has been shown to have a positive impact on health. But for many Americans, socializing in adulthood gets harder with age. A recent survey reveals that 45% of adults admit they find it hard to make new friends. In fact, the average adult hasn’t made a new friend in the last five years, according to the survey.

In this day and age, our screens have become our friends.  We spend countless hours with our televisions, our phones and our computers.  Meanwhile, many of us don’t have any idea how the people living right next door are doing.

One of the reasons why I write so many articles is because that is how I can reach the most people.

If the most effective way of waking people up was traveling the country and holding meetings, I would do it.

But these days it is exceedingly difficult to get people to leave their homes and go to a meeting.  But once I publish this article on the Internet, it will be seen by enough people to easily fill a sports stadium.

The Internet is where the battle for hearts and minds is being won or lost, and we need to do all that we can to wake more people up.

Because the clock is ticking for humanity, and the destiny of billions hangs in the balance.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep.  I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters.  (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing those books you help to support my work.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles in written form on their own websites as long as this “About the Author” section is included.  In order to comply with government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished.  This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate.  You can follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of this website.

 

An “All-Out Blizzard” That Is “Unheard Of For October” Is About To Hit Farms In The Midwest With Up To 2 Feet Of Snow

Farmers in the middle of the country are about to get hit by what could potentially be the worst October blizzard in U.S. history.  According to USA Today, “the massive size and intensity of this snowstorm is unheard of for October”.  In other words, we have never seen anything like this in the month of October ever before.  Such a storm would have been disastrous enough in a normal year, but this has definitely not been a normal year for Midwest farmers.  As I detailed extensively in previous articles, endless rain and horrific flooding made planting season a complete and utter nightmare for many Midwest farmers this year.  Millions of acres did not get planted at all, and planting was seriously delayed on tens of millions of other acres.  As a result, corn, soybeans and other crops are simply not ready to be harvested in many parts of the Midwest, and now an unprecedented winter storm is barreling directly toward our heartland.

This is a very, very serious situation.  Normally, most corn in the Dakotas and Minnesota is considered to be “mature” by now, but this year we are facing a completely different scenario.

According to the latest USDA Crop Progress Report, only 22 percent of the corn in North Dakota is considered to be “mature” at this point…

Many farmers continue to wait on the sidelines to get into the fields. With freezing temperatures, heavy snowfall, and high winds set to hit the northern Plains this week, the corn in North Dakota is only 22% mature vs. a 75% five-year average, according to Monday’s USDA Crop Progress Report.

Also, South Dakota corn is rated 36% mature vs. an 80% five-year average. Minnesota farmers have a corn crop that is just 39% mature vs. an 83% five-year average.

And now here comes an “all-out blizzard”.

In case you are wondering, I am not the one that put such an extreme label on this storm.  In fact, Accuweather is specifically using that term to describe this historic storm…

An unusually far-reaching snowstorm for early October will stall, strengthen and evolve into an “all-out blizzard” over the Dakotas and then will send a blast of cold air across much of the Plains and Midwest.

Heavy snow has already fallen on the northern Rockies and was progressing southeastward along with a charge of cold air. Snow and slippery travel were also being reported in parts of Washington state, including around Spokane where new daily snowfall record for Oct. 8 was set. Spokane International Airport recorded 3.3 inches of snow Tuesday, shattering the previous record for the day, which was a trace set in 1981.

It is crazy that Spokane is already getting snow.

According to Yahoo News, that snowfall already makes this the “third-snowiest October” that the city has ever experienced…

Spokane, Washington, was one town that was hit particularly hard by the snow on Tuesday. A record-breaking 3.3 inches of snow fell, the first measurable snow in the month of October since 2001. It also made this month the third-snowiest October on record, following 3.9 inches in October of 1975 and 6.1 inches in October of 1957.

Ultimately, a few inches of snow is not that big of a deal.

But once this storm reaches the middle of the country, it is going to dump up to 2 feet of snow on some of our most important agricultural areas…

A general 6-12 inches is forecast over much of the Dakotas. However, a large swath of 12-24 inches is likely with an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ of 30 inches likely from north-central North Dakota to central and northeastern North Dakota.

Cities that could end up with 2 feet of snow include Bismarck, Jamestown and Devils Lake, North Dakota, as well as Mobridge, South Dakota, and Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Needless to say, that much snow at this time of the year is going to be absolutely devastating for many farmers.

And we are being told that this coming storm actually has “two parts”.  After the first part strikes, the second part is going to come rolling through on Friday and Saturday…

The storm will have two parts, the first of which is targeting the northern and central Rockies and High Plains on Wednesday into Thursday. The second part will bring snow to the eastern and central portions of the Dakotas and western Minnesota by week’s end.

“Near-blizzard to full-fledged blizzard conditions are possible across portions of central North Dakota Friday afternoon into Saturday morning,” the weather service in Bismarck said. “Expect high impacts and dangerous to impossible travel conditions.”

I can’t even imagine how corn and soybean farmers are going to feel once their unharvested fields are buried under two feet of snow.

As I keep warning, weather patterns just continue to become more extreme, and many believe that what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning of our problems (#ad).

There is one more thing that I would like to mention before I wrap up this article.

Do you remember the “Perfect Storm” that we witnessed in the Atlantic Ocean back in 1991?  Hollywood made a big movie about it, and that film ended up making more than 300 million dollars worldwide.

Well, according to Accuweather a very similar storm is now developing in roughly the same location…

Interestingly, around the same time in 1991, the “Perfect Storm” was in the making over the western Atlantic Ocean. There are some similarities to the pattern this week with a smaller storm taking shape and stalling just off the mid-Atlantic and New England coasts.

I found this to be particularly interesting, because I wrote an article about “the perfect storm” that is about to hit America just a few days ago.  If you missed it, you can find my article entitled “The Book Is About To Close On The Late Great United States Of America” right here.

We live in truly unprecedented times, and things are about to start getting really crazy out there.

So get prepared for “the perfect storm” while you still can, because time is quickly running out.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep.  I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters.  (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing those books you help to support my work.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles in written form on their own websites as long as this “About the Author” section is included.  In order to comply with government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished.  This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate.  You can follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of this website.

 

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