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Did Las Vegas Shooter Stephen Paddock Believe That He Was Justified In Shooting Conservatives Because They ‘Deserve To Die’?

Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Welner is convinced that Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock believed that the people that he was shooting “deserve to die”.  As I detailed the other day, the massacre in Las Vegas was an operation that was planned well in advance.  Paddock (and anyone that was helping him) specifically chose a country music festival as the target, and it is probably safe to assume that there was a reason for that choice.  Just think about it.  If someone decided to go start shooting at a black church, it would probably be safe to assume that individual is likely a racist.  Or if someone decided to shoot up a Jewish synagogue, it would probably be safe to assume that person is anti-Semitic.  And so why would someone want to gun down hundreds of people at a country music festival?  Well, it could be motivated by a great hatred for country music, but more likely it is because large numbers of conservatives, Christians and Trump supporters would be there.

Yes, it is possible that Paddock decided to commit mass homicide simply to make a name for himself.  But as Dr. Welner pointed out during an interview with Fox and Friends, that is usually something that only young men do…

Appearing on Fox and Friends, Welner explained that the massacre was a “stranger mass homicide,” which means that it was motivated either by a political or personal cause, or because the shooter wanted to gain notoriety, such as with Aurora shooter James Holmes, a case that Welner worked on.

“Here’s the thing, shooting for notoriety’s sake and nothing more is a young man’s crime and this is a 64-year-old with no dramatic mental illness,” said Welner, equating Paddock with James Hodgkinson, who attempted to massacre Republican lawmakers, which would have mandated special elections to replace them.

Instead, it is almost certain that Paddock was motivated by some sort of ideology.  According to Dr. Welner, this ideology made Paddock feel as though gunning down all of those innocent people was the right thing to do…

“His mindset is that they deserve to die,” said Welner, referring to the shooter, “So a person who adopts a cause may be otherwise law abiding but he feels righteously justified that the end justifies the means – so we’re talking now about gun control because he committed an over the top gun crime,” he added, suggesting that Paddock was “instigating a means to end with people you’ve dehumanized.”

Asked, “What do country music fans and country music artists represent?” Welner responded, “It’s Americana – it could be guns….he’s smart enough to know what this would instigate”.

Of course Paddock is far from an isolated case.  Sadly, there seems to be lots of leftists out there that are wishing great ill upon Trump supporters.  For example, not too long ago a blogger for the Huffington Post boldly declared that “Trump supporters deserve to die”…

The Huffington Post recently deleted a blog post in which the author fantasized about the deaths of Donald Trump supporters.

“Trump Supporters Deserve to Die More Than I Do,” wrote Chris Cali, an artist and musician who has contributed to the Huffington Post since 2014. The post has since been taken down, but survives in archive form.

And radical leftist groups such as Antifa are openly embracing violence.  Those belonging to such groups truly believe that Donald Trump is another Hitler, and therefore they believe that violence is absolutely necessary in order to keep the United States from becoming the next Nazi Germany.

Of course such talk is absolutely nuts, but this is what these people actually believe.  They actually believe that they are justified in using violence against Trump supporters for the greater good of society.  They see themselves as freedom fighters, and they consider people like us to be the root of everything that is wrong with our society.

So is there evidence that Paddock had been radicalized prior to the shooting?

According to Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, that is something that authorities are looking into very closely…

During a live press conference, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo revealed that the Las Vegas gunman, Stephen Paddock, may have been “radicalized” and that authorities were attempting to uncover the source of his radicalization.

“Did this person get radicalized unbeknownst to us? And we want to identify that source,” said Lombardo.

And of course evidence continues to emerge that Paddock did not act alone.  For instance, an Australian man that was staying in the room right next to Paddock told an Australian news source that there were “multiple shooters”…

Australian Brian Hodge, who previously worked at Jupiters Casino on the Gold Coast, claimed he was staying in the room next to the shooter on level 32 at the Las Vegas resort.

He said he managed to escape the initial horrific scenes inside the hotel but found himself forced to hide in a bush for several hours after the event.

“I got outside safely and was hiding in bushes,” Mr Hodge said.

“There were multiple people dead and multiple shooters. I was just hiding waiting for police to come get us.”

Before too long the Las Vegas shooting will start to get a lot less attention, but the truth is that this is just the beginning of the chaos that is coming to U.S. cities.

On November 4th, Antifa is launching their biggest campaign yet.  They are pledging to engage in disruptive protests all over the country until their demands are met.  And actually, they only have a single demand.  They are promising to never end the chaos until the Trump presidency ends.  And as the mainstream news has documented, members of Antifa are “unapologetic about what they describe as the necessary use of violence to combat authoritarianism”.

That means that Trump, his family, his administration and everyone that supports him are potential targets for Antifa.  That also means that conservatives, Christians and liberty-loving patriots all over the nation are also potential targets.

The radical left wants a “civil war”, and that country music festival was chosen as a target for a reason.

Let us pray for peace, but if the left gets their way we are headed for chaos unlike anything that we have ever seen before in modern American history.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

16 Unanswered Questions About The Las Vegas Shooting That The Mainstream Media Doesn’t Want To Talk About

The public is not being told the truth about what really went down in Las Vegas.  As you will see below, the evidence is mounting that there were multiple shooters and that this was an operation that was planned well in advance.  But according to the mainstream media, a 64-year-old retired accountant with a flabby physique that had no military training whatsoever and that wasn’t very experienced with guns was able to pull the whole thing off all by himself.  We are being told that Paddock was a “lone wolf” that didn’t have any ties to terror groups, and since he is now dead nobody is ever going to be able to interrogate him.  But the American people definitely deserve some answers about what took place, and that means that all of us should keep digging.

The following are 16 unanswered questions about the Las Vegas shooting that the mainstream media does not want to talk about…

#1 Photos of Stephen Paddock’s hotel room have been leaked, and one of those photos appears to show a suicide note. Why hasn’t the public been told what is in that note?

#2 Were there additional shooters?  A taxi driver clearly captured video of an automatic weapon being fired out of a lower level window.  A video from another angle and brief footage captured by Dan Bilzerian also seem to confirm that automatic gunfire was coming from a floor much lower than the 32nd floor room that Stephen Paddock was located on.  And if you weren’t convinced by the first three videos, this fourth video should definitely do it.

#3 Why were law enforcement authorities discussing “another suspect on the fourth floor”, and why isn’t the mainstream media talking about this?

#4 As Jon Rappoport has pointed out, it would have been impossible for Stephen Paddock to kill and wound 573 people in less than five minutes of shooting with the kinds of weapons that he is alleged to have used.  So why won’t law enforcement authorities acknowledge this fact?

#5 How in the world did Paddock get 42 guns and “several thousand rounds of ammo” into his hotel room without anyone noticing?

#6 How did someone with “no military background” and that wasn’t a “gun guy at all” operate such advanced weapons?  Because what we are being told by the mainstream media just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.  I really like how Natural News made this point…

Far from what the firearms-illiterate media claims, these are not systems that any Joe off the street can just pick up and use to effortlessly mow down 500 people. Running these systems requires extensive training, experience and stamina. It is physically impossible for a guy like Stephen Paddock to operate such a system in the sustained, effective manner that we witnessed, especially when shooting from an elevated position which throws off all the ranging of the weapon system.

Far from being a Navy Seal, Stephen Paddock is a retired accountant senior citizen with a gambling problem and a flabby physique. The only way he could have carried out this shooting is if he were transformed into a human superweapon through a magic wand. I’m calling this “Mission IMPOSSIBLE” because of the physical impossibility of a retired, untrained senior citizen pulling this off.

#7 Why was one woman telling people in the crowd that they were all going to die 45 minutes before the attack?

#8 Why did it take law enforcement authorities 72 minutes to get into Stephen Paddock’s hotel room?

#9 Why did Paddock wire $100,000 to the Philippines last week?

#10 Why was Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, in the Philippines when the attack took place?  Did she know what was about to happen?

#11 Was Paddock on antidepressants like so many other mass killers in the past have been?

#12 Why was ISIS so eager to take responsibility for this attack, and why was the FBI so quick to dismiss that connection?

#13 Apparently Paddock had earned millions of dollars “through real estate deals”.  If he was so wealthy, why would he all of a sudden snap like that?

#14 Why did he move so frequently?  It is being reported that Paddock had 27 different residences during his adult life.

#15 Why were nearly all of the exits out of the concert venue completely blocked?…

In essence, the concert trapped the people, preventing them from escaping, and denying them the ability to seek cover. From there, sustained, full-auto gunfire is almost impossible to survive.

From Fox News, a caller named Russell Bleck, who survived the shooting, said live on air, “There were ten-foot walls blocking us in. We couldn’t escape. It was just a massacre. We had nowhere to go.”

#16 Why was a country music festival chosen as the target?  Was the goal to kill as many Trump supporters and other conservatives as possible?  And is there evidence that Stephen Paddock was connected to Antifa in any way?

At first I thought that this was a fairly straightforward story too, but the more I have dug into it the more complex things have become.

Personally, I have come to the conclusion that Stephen Paddock definitely did not act alone.  That means that the others involved in the shooting are still out there, and they must be brought to justice.  Let us never forget what these extremely wicked individuals did to innocent civilians such as 27-year-old Tina Frost…

A 27-year-old woman has lost her right eye after a bullet ripped through her face during the Las Vegas concert massacre.

Tina Frost remains in a coma in hospital after undergoing surgery to remove the bullet that became lodged in her eye when a gunman opened fire on the crowd of country music fans on Sunday night.

Frost, who is originally from Maryland but moved to California several years ago, is expected to remain in the coma for a week.

Whoever did this is going to pay greatly.  Yes, I do believe that Stephen Paddock was involved.  But he did not act alone, and the mainstream media is doing the public a great disservice by ignoring all of the evidence that this was not just a “lone wolf” operation.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Was Las Vegas Shooter Stephen Craig Paddock An Anti-Trump Activist With Ties To Antifa?

The mainstream media is trying to tell us that they have no idea why Stephen Craig Paddock fired “thousands of rounds of ammunition” into a crowd at a country music festival in Las Vegas on Sunday.  According to the latest reports, 58 people have died and more than 500 were injured in the attack, and somehow we are supposed to believe that this guy had no motive for doing this whatsoever.  I am not buying that, and I am sure you are not buying that either.  Could it be possible that the mainstream media is covering up the truth because it does not fit their narrative?

As you will see below, there appears to be evidence that Stephen Craig Paddock was at an anti-Trump rally in Reno, Nevada in August.  And it is also being reported that Antifa literature was discovered in his hotel room by authorities.  In part 2 of this report, I will be discussing the very disturbing things that Antifa has planned for the month of November.  Could it be possible that Stephen Craig Paddock has just given us a preview of coming attractions?

I don’t know if I have the words to appropriately describe what happened in Las Vegas on Sunday.  It was the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, and we need to be praying for all of those that were affected.  The following comes from the Daily Mail…

At least 58 people are dead and 515 injured after a 72-minute shooting by a lone-wolf gunman who unleashed thousands of rounds of ammunition onto a Las Vegas music festival from a hotel room 1,200 feet away – and more details are still coming out.

Police say 64-year-old Stephen Craig Paddock used automatic weapons to rain down gunfire on a crowd of 22,000 people attending the Route 91 Harvest Festival Sunday night, from his room across the street in the Mandalay Bay hotel.

The mainstream media appears to be completely dropping the ball on this story, and so once again it is up to the alternative media to do the detective work.

Shortly after the attack, someone mentioned remembering seeing Paddock at an anti-Trump protest in Reno, Nevada back in August.  So people began digging around, and they found this video of the rally, and a man wearing a pink shirt and a pink hat does appear to bear a resemblance to Paddock.  But because of the resolution of the video it is impossible to tell for sure.

Later, other videos also surfaced thanks to the sleuths on one popular forum.  You can view the man with the pink shirt and the pink hat in this KTVN video at 0:56, and you can also see him in this YouTube video at 3:09.

I don’t think that we can come to any definitive conclusions about these videos just yet, and hopefully more evidence will continue to emerge.

Meanwhile, Infowars is reporting that “a source linked to the team” that stormed Paddock’s hotel room says that Antifa literature was found in his possession…

The Las Vegas shooter didn’t commit suicide as the mainstream media is reporting, but was killed by a FBI hostage rescue team who also found Antifa literature in his hotel room, according to a source linked to the team.

The FBI team took the suspect out after he opened fired on them, according to the source, and afterwards the team found photos taken in the Middle East of a woman linked to the suspect, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock.

If true, this would change everything.

Could it be possible that Paddock specifically targeted a country music festival because he figured it would be a way for him to take out as many Trump supporters as possible?  That is what the inside source that spoke to Infowars seems to think…

But, this was clearly a pre-planned attack and the group [the target] was specifically chosen.

The target was a concert of the group that represents traditional America.

These were patriotic, God-fearing Americans. This group is pro-Second amendment, pro-Constitution and anti-NWO.

In addition to this clearly being “a pre-planned attack”, there is also evidence that Paddock was not acting alone.

In fact, it is being widely reported that 45 minutes prior to the shooting a woman was ominously warning people at the concert that they were about to die…

Perhaps the most worrisome issue with this incident happened before the shooting took place.  According to multiple reports, approximately 45 minutes before the shooting, a woman described as “Hispanic,” accompanied by a man, had been heard telling concert attendees, “They’re all around… You’re all going to f***ing die today.” Witness Breanna Hendricks, who was in Vegas celebrating her 21st birthday, said, “There was a lady who came running up behind us in the concert and she started to play with people’s hair acting crazy and she told us that we’re all going to f***ing die.”

If Paddock was indeed a “lone wolf”, then how do we explain that?

And as Jon Rappoport has pointed out, there are a whole lot of other questions that we need answers to as well…

At least ten weapons were found in the shooter’s hotel room. He had checked into the Mandalay Resort Hotel several days earlier. How did he bring in all the weapons? Disassembled? Did he have prior experience with weapons?

In an interview, Paddock’s brother said he was absolutely shocked, and his brother, Stephen, was “just a guy.” No motive, no reason to go on a rampage. True? False? What turned him into a killer? Had he ever been under psychiatric care? Had he been prescribed, for example, SSRI antidepressants, which are known to push people over the edge, into homicidal violence? If he was “just a guy,” did that include significant experience handling weapons? Was he capable of bringing all or some of the weapons into the hotel in pieces and then assembling them?

I don’t know if we will get the answers to all of these questions any time soon, but they are definitely worth asking.

And in particular, we need to try to get some definitive answers about Paddock’s involvement with radical leftist groups.  Are violent leftists now going to start specifically targeting events like country music festivals where large numbers of conservatives are gathered?

In part 2 of this report, I am going to discuss the “revolution” that Antifa plans to start next month on November 4th.  Antifa has repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to use violence, and we should all be deeply concerned about their intent to take things to the next level.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

It’s A National Bonfire: Fans All Over America Are Burning Jerseys To Show Their Anger With The NFL

Does the NFL actually think that it can go to war with the national anthem and the American flag and win?  Many are trying to frame this controversy as a “protest against Trump”, but the truth is that owners, coaches and players can speak out against President Trump any time that they want.  They have huge platforms and the mainstream media would soak up every word.  So there is absolutely no need to “take a knee” when our national anthem is being played and the American flag is being honored.  As I explained a couple days ago, the national anthem and the American flag are symbols that represent the entire country.  When someone disrespects those symbols, they are disrespecting our great land, everyone that lives here, and everyone that ever fought, bled and died for America.

Everyone involved with the NFL that participated in that absolutely shameful display on Sunday needs to apologize to all of the rest of us immediately.  In 2017, many Americans no longer understand the importance of the national anthem and the flag, but there are still millions of us that do.  And the outrage that has been unleashed as a result of this controversy is off the charts.  If you go on to YouTube, you will find dozens of videos of fans burning their NFL jerseys.  There is even a new hashtag (#NFLburnnotice) that has gone viral over the past couple of days because so many people are doing this, and many mainstream news outlets are publishing reports on this phenomenon…

Outraged fans around the country are taking a stand as protests during the national anthem spread across NFL games.

Hundreds of players have taken the knee, locked arms or just stayed in the locker room to call attention to racial inequality in the nation. That’s offended many football fans, who see the act as unpatriotic. Some threatened to burn their team merchandise if protests continued, and now some are making good on that promise.

Yes, owners, coaches and players may have a First Amendment right to do what they did, but we also have a right to let them know what we think about what they just did.

As the weeks and months roll along, millions of former fans are going to be turning the games off and finding other ways to spend their Sunday afternoons.  And once these fans are gone, do you think that they will come back?

One Pittsburgh fan was so outraged that he burned “more than $1,000 worth of Pittsburgh Steelers merchandise”…

Robert Smith posted a video of himself on Sunday burning more than $1,000 worth of Pittsburgh Steelers merchandise, the Daily Mail reported. Earlier that day, the Steelers had not participated in the anthem, with the exception of offensive tackle Alejandro Villanueva, who served three tours of duty as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan before beginning his NFL career.

“We have morals in this country. We stand for this country,” Smith says in the video, which has more than 50,000 views as of Monday afternoon. “My great-uncle’s bones are lying in the bottom of Pearl Harbor for this country, for this flag, for your freedom to play in the NFL.”

“Super Bowl, right? As if I care,” Smith continues, pouring lighter fluid on the gear. “I care about our country. I care about our freedom.”

And of course now it is inevitable that “taking a knee” will start spreading to other venues as well.

Sadly, a member of Congress has even decided to do this on the floor of the House of Representatives.  According to Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, she did this in order to “stand against racism”…

“There is no regulation that says that these young men cannot stand against the dishonoring of their mothers by you calling them ‘fire the son of a b.’ You tell me which of those children’s mothers is a son of a b. That is racism. You cannot deny it. You cannot run for it, and I kneel in honor of them,” Jackson Lee said.

“I kneel in front of the flag and on this floor,” she said as she took a knee behind the podium.

“I kneel in honor of the First Amendment. I kneel because the flag is a symbol for freedom. I kneel because I’m going to stand against racism. I kneel because I will stand with those young men, and I’ll stand with our soldiers. And I’ll stand with America, because I kneel.”

I have been fighting against racism for many years too, but this is not the way to do it.

It is never appropriate to disrespect our flag or our anthem, and this is a point that White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders made on Monday…

“This isn’t about the president being against anyone. This is about the president and millions of Americans standing for something,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Monday. “Honoring the flag, the national anthem, and the men and women who fought to defend it.”

She added: “It is always appropriate for the president of this country to promote our flag, to promote our national anthem and ask people to respect it.”

It will be very interesting to see what the public opinion polls say in the coming days, but up to this point it has been exceedingly clear that most Americans do not support these kinds of “protests”…

In 2016, a Quinnipac poll found that only 38 percent of those supported NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem. A Reuters poll found that 72 percent found the protest to be unpatriotic but also that 64 percent agreed there should be no punishment or fine.

When you disrespect the anthem or the flag, you are disrespecting all of us and everything that this country is supposed to stand for.

If you want to make a political point, find some other way to do it.  Treating our national symbols with contempt is never appropriate, and those that have done so should be utterly ashamed of themselves.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Disrespecting The National Anthem And The American Flag Are Not Legitimate Forms Of Political Protest

This is going to backfire on the left in a major way.  On Sunday, more than a hundred NFL players knelt during the playing of the national anthem.  It was obviously an attempt to make some sort of public statement about President Trump, but it was an exceedingly poor way to go about doing that.  Because our young people are not even taught about the importance of our national anthem and our national flag in school, most of these players didn’t even understand what they were doing.  Our anthem is sung and our flag is proudly displayed prior to major sporting events for a reason.  The truth is that our national anthem and our national flag are both symbols that directly represent our nation.  In other words, when you show disrespect to the anthem or to the flag you are literally showing disrespect to the United States of America.  So what these players did on Sunday was essentially to spit in the face of every single American citizen.

This is not just an American thing.  All over the world it is well understood that respect for the national flag and other national symbols is not optional.  What transpired at NFL games on Sunday will be broadcast all over the planet, and the rest of the world will be laughing at our national disgrace.

The very first NFL game scheduled on Sunday was held in London, and “dozens of players from both teams” knelt while the national anthem was being played…

The first game of the day between the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars saw dozens of players from both teams kneel while almost the entire Jaguars’ on-field and sideline players and employees locked arms during the U.S. national anthem, including owner Shahid Khan. Some players stood while others knelt.

And of course similar “sideline protests” happened at other NFL stadiums all over the nation.  Never before in American history have we ever seen anything quite like this…

Demonstrations spread throughout the league as many players broke out of their routine by joining the protests or engaging in team-wide displays of unity.

Several players from the Buffalo Bills, Denver Broncos, New York Giants, Detroit Lions, New England Patriots, New Orleans Saints and Atlanta Falcons were among those who chose not to stand for the anthem. The Miami Dolphins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Minnesota Vikings, Philadelphia Eagles, Chicago Bears, Indianapolis Colts, New York Jets, Los Angeles Chargers and Green Bay Packers stood with arms locked, though some players from those teams chose to kneel.

I honestly don’t think that the NFL will ever be the same after this.  It had already been transformed into the “no fun league”, and now the focus will squarely be on political protests rather than football for the foreseeable future.

Needless to say, millions upon millions of Americans were completely disgusted by the disrespect shown to our national symbols on Sunday, and President Trump was one of them…

“If a player wants the privilege of making millions of dollars in the NFL, or other leagues, he or she should not be allowed to disrespect …,” Trump said in tweets Saturday afternoon. “Our Great American Flag (or Country) and should stand for the National Anthem. If not, YOU’RE FIRED. Find something else to do!”

If professional football players want to speak out against President Trump, I have no problem with that whatsoever.

But for them to openly and brazenly disrespect our entire country is crossing a line that should never be crossed.

What in the world has happened to America?  All over America high school football coaches are being banned from saying prayers before games, and yet disrespecting our anthem and our flag is somehow acceptable?  The following comes from Zero Hedge…

Marc Short, the president’s legislative director, has also backed his boss, telling “Meet the Press” that a double standard for players who chose to voice their views on the field, and that the president was speaking for the majority of Americans on what sort of expression was appropriate. Short compared a crackdown on protests to the ban on high school football coaches leading players in prayer before games.

“There are high school coaches across America today who are punished for leading their players in prayer, and yet, when an N.F.L. player takes a knee, somehow that player is presumed to be a martyr for a social cause,” Mr. Short said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “The president is standing with the vast majority of Americans who believe that our flag should be respected.”

Many of these players are going to look back on what they have done with great shame.  They may have believed that they were disrespecting President Trump, but the truth is that they were disrespecting this great land and every single American that has ever lived.  They owe all of us an apology, and that should happen as soon as possible.

And the NFL may think that it is all powerful, but stunts like this are going to cost it millions upon millions of dollars.  Already, ratings were way down because of the few players that were kneeling whenever the anthem was played…

Player protests of the National Anthem – such as when quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee in protest – are the number one reason sports fans watched fewer National Football League (NFL) games, a new survey shows.

If just a few players kneeling had that much of an impact on the ratings, what do you think is going to happen now?

Unfortunately, I have a feeling that this is just the beginning.  In fact, one former Democratic member of Congress is calling on all NFL players to kneel while the anthem is played…

A former Democrat Congresswoman has called for every NFL player to kneel during the national anthem at Sunday’s games, while branding President Donald Trump a ‘white supremacist’.

Donna Edwards, who retired as a US representative for Maryland earlier this year, issued the bold statement on Saturday, responding to Trump’s criticism of NFL players who refuse to stand for the anthem.

‘On Sunday, I hope every @NFL player takes a knee in solidarity w [Colin Kaepernick] against the white supremacist who squats in our White House,’ Edwards said in reference to the former San Francisco quarterback, who is now a free agent.

No matter what your political perspective is, it is wrong to disrespect our national anthem and it is wrong to disrespect our flag.

And anyone that disrespects our anthem and our flag is spitting in the face of the entire country.

What happened on Sunday was a national disgrace, and those involved need to apologize to the American people immediately.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

The Equifax Hack Is The Most Disastrous Data Breach In History Because Now Hackers Have The Credit Information Of 143 Million Americans

Talk about a nightmare.  It is being reported that criminals were able to hack into Equifax and make off with the credit information of 143 million Americans.  We are talking about names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses and even driver’s license numbers.  If this data breach was an earthquake, we would be talking about a magnitude-10.0 on the identity theft scale.  We have never seen anything like this before, and to say that this will be “disastrous” for the credit industry would be a massive understatement.

What really disturbed me about this story is that this hack reportedly occurred between “mid-May and July of this year”…

Credit monitoring company Equifax has been hit by a high-tech heist that exposed the Social Security numbers and other sensitive information about 143 million Americans. Now the unwitting victims have to worry about the threat of having their identities stolen.

The Atlanta-based company, one of three major U.S. credit bureaus, said Thursday that “criminals” exploited a U.S. website application to access files between mid-May and July of this year.

So why didn’t we learn about this until September?

Somebody out there really needs to answer that question for us.

And even though the “143 million” number is being thrown around constantly, according to USA Today we may never know the true number of victims…

When asked if there’s a way to quantify how many people have been harmed, John Ulzheimer, a credit expert and former employee at Equifax and credit score firm FICO, said: “There’s no way to know, and there may never be a way to know.”

Personally, I don’t see how Equifax can possibly survive after this.  Their stock price is already crashing, and now it has come out that they had put a “music major” in charge of data security…

When Congress hauls in Equifax CEO Richard Smith to grill him, it can start by asking why he put someone with degrees in music in charge of the company’s data security.

And then they might also ask him if anyone at the company has been involved in efforts to cover up Susan Mauldin’s lack of educational qualifications since the data breach became public.

It would be fascinating to hear Smith try to explain both of those extraordinary items.

Also, we are now finding out that Equifax has not just had security problems here in the United States.

According to the New York Post, data breaches have been taking place all over the globe…

Hackers had access to the names, dates of birth and e-mail addresses of nearly 400,000 people in the United Kingdom, said Equifax’s British subsidiary in a statement last week.

In Canada, sensitive data belonging to 10,000 consumers may have been hacked in the breach, said a statement from the Canadian Automobile Association.

In Argentina, one of the company’s portals was so easily accessible that it allowed quick exposure to the personal information of more than 14,000 people.

As noted above, the public didn’t learn about any of this until September.

But once top Equifax officials learned what had happened, some of them started dumping their shares of Equifax very rapidly…

Three Equifax executives — not the ones who are departing — sold shares worth a combined $1.8 million just a few days after the company discovered the breach, according to documents filed with securities regulators.

Equifax shares have lost a third of their value since it announced the breach.

Needless to say, the SEC is going to be looking into this very closely.

As we move forward, there is a tremendous amount of concern as to how much this data breach will affect the U.S. economy.

Only time will tell, but without a doubt it will have an impact.  For example, according to Bloomberg this data breach could potentially have an absolutely disastrous impact on store-branded credit cards…

Equifax Inc.’s massive data breach could make an already tough market outlook even more daunting for the firms behind Gap Inc.’s and Ann Taylor’s store-branded credit cards.

Those retailers’ banking partners, including Synchrony Financial and Alliance Data Systems Corp., could see fewer account originations as more consumers freeze their credit to avoid hack-related fraud. Consumers have to take extra steps — including calling the credit bureau, going online or paying fees — to lift a block and get a new card.

“If people are defaulting to credit freezes, then if you’re a Macy’s retailer trying to sell credit cards, you can’t get that done at the point of sale,” said Vincent Caintic, an analyst at Stephens Inc. “It could become a regular thing, these freezes. It does slow down the origination process and it’s probably going to increase acquisition costs.”

If you believe that your data may have been compromised in this breach, there are some things that you can do right away to help protect against identity theft.  You can sign up for 24 hour a day credit monitoring, you can request fraud alerts, you can enable “two factor authentication” and beyond all of that you could go as far as to freeze your credit.

But if everybody in America suddenly started freezing their credit, that would slow down economic activity dramatically.  So needless to say authorities are hoping that does not happen.

In this case, Equifax needs to step up and do the right thing.  They need to inform all of the victims (even if that means reaching out to 143 million different people), and they should automatically provide free credit monitoring for all of those that were affected.

I seriously doubt that Equifax will take these measures, and I also seriously doubt that Equifax will be able to survive much longer.

When you bungle something as badly as Equifax has done, it is nearly impossible to restore faith in an organization.  The credit information of 143 million Americans is now in the hands of criminals, and the potential damage that could be done is absolutely off the charts.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Hillary Almost Proposed ‘A Universal Basic Income’ In 2016, And The Idea Is Catching Fire Among Grassroots Democrats

Should you get free money from the U.S. government every month simply for being alive?  That may sound like a crazy idea to many of us, but the truth is that this will likely be one of the biggest political issues in the 2020 presidential election.  At this point, 40 percent of all Americans already “prefer socialism to capitalism”, and the concept of a “universal basic income” is starting to catch fire among grassroots Democrats.  Many liberals are convinced that the time has come to fight for the right to “a minimum standard of living”, and one study by a “left-leaning” group found that giving every adult in the country $1,000 each month would increase the size of the U.S. economy by more than 2 trillion dollars…

Giving every adult in the United States a $1,000 cash handout per month would grow the economy by $2.5 trillion by 2025, according to a new study on universal basic income.

The report was released in August by the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute. Roosevelt research director Marshall Steinbaum, Michalis Nikiforos at Bard College’s Levy Institute, and Gennaro Zezza at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio in Italy co-authored the study.

What an incredible idea, eh?

All we have to do is give out free stuff and the economy grows like magic.  And the study also discovered that the larger the universal basic income is, the more the economy would grow.

So why not make it $10,000 a month for everyone?

Well, it turns out that there is a catch.  According to the study, the economy only grows if the universal basic income is funded by deficit spending.  If we have to raise taxes to pay for it, there is no positive benefit to the economy at all…

These estimates are based on a universal basic income paid for by increasing the federal deficit. As part of the study, the researchers also calculated the effect to the economy of paying for the cash handouts by increasing taxes. In that case, there would be no net benefit to the economy, the report finds.

Oh.

What a bummer.

Getting free stuff from the government always sounds like a great idea until you realize that we are going to end up paying for it one way or another.

Unfortunately, that little detail isn’t stopping potential Democratic presidential candidates such as Mark Zuckerberg from “exploring” the idea.  And actually, it is being reported that Hillary Clinton almost made a “universal basic income” part of her platform in 2016…

In her new book “What Happened,” and in a recent subsequent interview with Vox Editor-in-Chief Ezra Klein, Clinton explains how she seriously considered including a version of universal basic income — a radical solution to poverty, currently being tested in cities and countries around the world — as one of her platforms in the 2016 US presidential election.

The platform would have been called “Alaska for America,” in homage to the state’s Permanent Dividend Fund. Every year since 1982, Alaskans have received a yearly check — typically ranging from $1,000 to $2,000 — as a kickback from the pot of money that has been set aside in case oil reserves dry up.

If the left is ever able to get this implemented, do you think that we will ever be able to take it away?

Over time, government just keeps getting bigger and bigger and so does our national debt.  In fact, we just hit a major milestone in that regard.  According to CNS News, we just surpassed the 20 trillion dollar mark for the first time ever…

The federal debt officially surpassed $20 trillion for the first time on Friday, as the debt subject to the legal limit set by Congress jumped $317,645,000,000 in one day–following President Donald Trump’s signing of a spending-and-debt-limit deal that will fund the government through Dec. 8.

If the left wants a “universal basic income”, they are going to have to get the money from somewhere.  Our budget deficit is already larger “than the entire GDP of Argentina”, and hard working Americans are already being taxed to death.

The truth is that the money simply isn’t there.  As it is, we need to dramatically cut back our borrowing because the path that we are currently on leads to national suicide.  Just consider the following numbers…

Here’s the problem: the national debt is growing MUCH faster than the US economy. In Fiscal Year 2016, for example, the debt grew by 7.84%.

Yet even when including the ‘benefits’ of inflation, the US economy only grew by 2.4% over the same period.

This is not even close to the realm of being sustainable.  We are steamrolling toward an inevitable financial collapse, and yet most Americans don’t seem to care.

And thanks to our rapidly aging population, our entitlement spending is set to absolutely explode in coming years.  The following comes from David Stockman…

The Federal spending machine is almost entirely on autopilot and heading for disaster owing to ballooning populations and debt. Ten years from now the combined cost of mandatory programs and debt service will reach $5.12 trillion compared to just $2.87 trillion during FY 2018.

Entitlement spending will be nearly double — even if Congress took a 10-year recess!

As shown below, that means the Federal spending share of GDP is now inexorably climbing toward 30% owing to baby boom retirements, even as revenue under current law is stuck at about 18% of GDP. The CBO’s latest projection of the widening fiscal gap — soon more than 10% of GDP annually — leaves nothing to the imagination.

There is no such thing as “free money”.  In the end, we all have to pay for any “free stuff” that the government gives out.

But the “free stuff army” is going to continue to demand more free stuff from the government, and the Democrats are going to be more than happy to give it to them.

To many of you this may sound like complete and utter insanity, but the truth is that the path that we are already on is completely insane as well.  If we don’t find a way to right the ship, it is just a matter of time before it goes under, and anyone that tries to tell you otherwise is not being straight with you.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Apocalyptic September? Here Is A List Of 27 Major Disasters That Have Already Happened So Far This Month

Two major hurricanes, unprecedented earthquake swarms and wildfires roaring out of control all over the northwest United States – what else will go wrong next?  When I originally pointed to the month of September as a critical time, I had no idea that we would see so many catastrophic natural disasters during this time frame as well.  Hurricane Harvey just broke the all-time record for rainfall in the continental United States, Hurricane Irma is so immensely powerful that it has been called “a lawnmower from the sky”, vast stretches of our country out west are literally being consumed by fire, and the magnitude-8.2 earthquake that just hit Mexico was completely unexpected.  As I have stated so many times before, our planet is becoming increasingly unstable, but most people simply do not understand what is happening.

My good friend Zach Drew is getting married next month, and I would encourage everyone to go wish him well on Facebook.  On Friday, he posted the best summary of the major disasters that we have been experiencing so far this month that I have seen anywhere…

California is on fire.
Oregon is on fire.
Washington is on fire.
British Columbia is on fire.
Alberta is on fire
Montana is on fire.
Nova Scotia is on fire.
Greece is on fire.
Brazil is on fire.
Portugal is on fire.
Algeria is on fire.
Tunisia is on fire.
Greenland is on fire.
The Sakha Republic of Russia is on fire.
Siberia is on fire.

Texas is under water
India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, experience record monsoons and massive death toll.
Sierra Leone and Niger experience massive floods, mudslides, and deaths in the thousands.

Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia are crushed in the death grip of a triple digit heat wave, dubbed Lucifer.
Southern California continues to swelter under triple digit heat that shows no sign of letting up.
In usually chilly August, the city of San Francisco shatters all-time record at 106 degrees, while it reaches 115 degrees south of the city. Northern California continues to bake in the triple digits.

(()) Yellowstone volcano is hit with earthquake swarm of over 2,300 tremors since June, recording a 4.4 quake on June 15, 20017 and 3.3 shaker on August 21, 2017.
(()) 5.3 earthquake rumbles through Idaho
(()) Japan earthquake 6.1 possible tsunami..
(()) Mexico earthquake 8.2 imminent tsunami. Beach lines are receded atleast 50+ meters

Hurricanes Harvey, Irma (biggest ever recorded), Jose and Katia are barreling around the Atlantic with 8 more potentials forming

And last but not least an X10 C.M.E solar flare two nights ago. The highest recorded solar flare ever!

*****

For much more from Zach, you can follow his work regularly at TruNews.com.

Some are describing what is happening to us as a “perfect storm”, and they are wondering if even more major disasters are coming in the very near future.

Let us hope not, because there is a tremendous amount of concern that we may not be able to pay for the disasters that have happened already.  The following comes from Politico…

 

Harvey and Irma could be a breaking point. At $556 billion, the Houston metropolitan area’s economy is bigger than Sweden’s. New Jersey could easily fit inside the region’s sprawling footprint, where Harvey dumped 34 trillion gallons of water, as much as the three costliest floods in Texas history combined. The Harvey response alone eventually could double the $136 billion in government aid spent after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans.

And as of Friday, an estimated $1.73 trillion worth of real estate was in the path of Irma’s hurricane-force winds, according to the University of Wisconsin’s Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies.

We won’t know the true extent of the damage that has been caused down in Florida for many days, but we do know that much of the state is already without power…

More than 3.3 million homes and businesses and counting have lost power in Florida as Hurricane Irma moves up the peninsula. The widespread outages stretch from the Florida Keys all the way into central Florida. Florida Power & Light, the state’s largest electric utility, said there were nearly 1 million customers without power in Miami-Dade County alone. The power outages are expected to increase as the storm edges further north. There are roughly 7 million residential customers in the state.

In the end, the federal government will likely step in and spend a lot of money that it does not have to rebuild and restore the communities that Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma have destroyed.

But we are already 20 trillion dollars in debt, and it is being projected that we will continue to add another trillion dollars to that total every year for the foreseeable future.

At some point all of this debt will simply become completely unsustainable.

Of course the major disasters will just inevitably keep on coming.  As Politico has pointed out, major natural disasters seem to just keep on getting bigger, and they seem to be hitting us more frequently than in the past…

The disasters are arriving with greater frequency. Counting Harvey, the U.S. this year has experienced 10 weather-related events each costing $1 billion or more. The country averaged fewer than six big-dollar storms, flood, fires and freezes a year between 1980 and 2016, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Between 2012 and 2016, however, weather catastrophes occurred almost twice as often.

I know that I have been writing about these hurricanes a lot in recent weeks, and I promise to get back to focusing on the economy in the days to come.

But it is absolutely imperative that we all begin to understand that something has fundamentally changed.  Our world has become much less stable, and “apocalyptic events” are starting to hit us one after another.

So will things start to calm down in the months ahead?  Please feel free to tell us what you think by posting a comment below…

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

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