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The Trains Could Stop Running In The United States Literally One Week From Now

July 11, 2022July 11, 2022 by Michael

Did you know that an absolutely crippling national railroad strike could potentially start on July 18th? If this actually happens, the historic supply chain crisis that we are experiencing right now will rapidly become far worse. Each year, trains in the United States transport approximately “1.7 billion tons of raw materials and finished goods” to their ultimate destinations. If that suddenly stops happening, our economy goes into the toilet. I realize that may sound a bit crude, but that is the reality of what we are potentially facing. So we better hope that national rail carriers and the unions representing the workers can come to an agreement before next Monday…

Railroad freight traffic across the United States could come to a screeching halt July 18 if progress isn’t made on a labor contract between national rail carriers and their unions.

Union officials stressed they do not want to go on strike, but argued they are being forced to consider the option in a bid to get better benefits, wages and staffing.

We aren’t just talking about a partial paralysis of rail traffic.

This would be a nationwide strike, and the entire system would suddenly be frozen.

At the moment the two sides are in a “cooling off period”, but that “cooling off period” will be over at 12:01 AM on July 18th…

The two sides were forced into a 30-day “cooling off period” after failing to reach an agreement working through the National Mediation Board. The cooling off period prevents unions from striking or railroads from locking out their workers while they continue to negotiate.

That cooling off period ends at midnight on July 18, and a coalition of unions could choose to go on strike at that point, said Sheet Metal Air Rail Transportation union president Jeremy Ferguson.

At this point, it appears that there will be a strike unless Joe Biden uses his powers to intervene.

And that is precisely what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is asking him to do…

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is calling on President Joe Biden to help resolve a dispute between the country’s Class 1 railroads and 12 rail unions to avert a possible rail strike beginning July 18.

In a letter sent to the White House on Wednesday, U.S. Chamber President Suzanne Clark warned that the decision last month by the National Mediation Board (NMB) to release the railroads and unions from mediation and begin a 30-day cooling off period “presents a new challenge to the U.S. business community, which is already navigating a difficult environment.”

Unless the administration acts, either party is free to exercise “self-help” options — including a strike beginning at 12:01 a.m. on July 18, when the 30-day cooling-off period ends.

One way or another, this labor dispute will eventually be resolved.

Let us hope that it is sooner rather than later.

But the truth is that our planet is ultimately facing long-term economic problems that are far more severe than any sort of temporary supply chain disruptions.

It has been said that “energy is the economy”, and it takes a tremendous amount of energy to power the standard of living that we are enjoying today.

And with each passing year, the size of the global population continues to go up. In fact, the UN just announced that the population of the world will hit 8 billion in 2022…

The world’s population will reach 8 billion in November, United Nations researchers said Monday, marking a milestone moment even as the global growth rate continues a long-term slowdown.

The Earth’s 8 billionth inhabitant will be born on Nov. 15, according to the U.N.’s latest World Population Prospects 2022 report, released to mark World Population Day.

Meanwhile, the amount of energy that we are producing has started to decline.

As Chris Martenson has pointed out, 2018 may have actually been the year when we hit “peak oil”…

It all comes down to the amount of oil that’s available because oil is the KING of all energy sources. And the king is weak and fading…it’s entirely possible that we’ll never again see as much oil come out of the ground as we did back in 2018. That might have been the actual peak…

There are warning signs everywhere that oil supplies are extremely tight and that spare capacity simply doesn’t exist at the moment. Someday oil will forever be in the rearview mirror and this is why an economic collapse is inevitable.

From this point forward, it is going to be increasingly costly to get energy out of the ground.

And that means that our standard of living will inevitably keep going down. Please take 20 minutes and watch this video in which Chris Martenson goes into great detail about all of this.

You may have noticed that energy prices have been rising very aggressively over the past couple of years.

And energy prices have a direct impact on what literally everything else costs.

As food and other essentials continue to spike in price, that is going to cause societal breakdowns all over the globe.

In fact, just this week we have seen extreme civil unrest in Sri Lanka and Albania.

Sadly, what we have witnessed so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

What is eventually coming will be so much worse.

Here in the United States, everyone still has plenty of food for now.

But food prices have been going up and up and up.

Even Costco has had to raise prices substantially. Needless to say, a lot of people out there aren’t exactly pleased to be paying quite a bit more for chicken and soda at their food courts now…

According to Business Insider, the national price hikes on its chicken bake and 20-ounce soda were confirmed by a location in Rochester, New York, as well as food courts in other locations.

The chicken bake now sells for $1 more than in June, at $3.99.

The price of the soda has increased by 10 cents, up to $0.69.

A lot of people out there still seem to think that the economic symptoms that we are currently experiencing are just “temporary”.

I wish that was true.

Unfortunately, a “return to normal” is simply not in the cards, and global energy supplies are going to continue to get tighter with each passing day.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book I have written five other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, “Get Prepared Now”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned) When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending digital copies as gifts through Amazon to family and friends. Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible. I have published thousands of articles on 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 always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. 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. 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. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to ask Jesus to be your Lord and Savior today.

Who Is Behind A Series Of “Mysterious Explosions” At Natural Gas Facilities In The United States?

July 10, 2022July 10, 2022 by Michael

Are we under attack? Previously, I have written about a series of very strange fires that have occurred at key food production facilities in the United States this year. Authorities insist that each one of those fires was an “accident”, and maybe they are correct. But now the same thing is starting to happen to the energy industry. In particular, we have seen a number of “mysterious explosions” at natural gas facilities in the United States during the past two months. Of course natural gas prices were already spiking dramatically all over the world, and so this string of disasters comes at a really bad time.

On Saturday, an absolutely massive explosion at a very important natural gas facility in Medford, Oklahoma made headlines all over the nation. The following comes from CBS News…

A large fire Saturday afternoon engulfed a natural gas plant in the small northern Oklahoma town of Medford. Video posted to social media showed heavy flames and smoke billowing hundreds of feet into the air.

The fire occurred at a “natural gas liquids fractionation facility” operated by ONEOK, a company spokesperson confirmed in a statement to CBS News.

The explosion that caused this fire was so large that it actually caused “a 1.74 magnitude earthquake”.

Massive explosion at a natural gas plant in Oklahoma. Caused a 1.74 magnitude earthquake.

Expect more accidents like this.pic.twitter.com/6qbNhzS8gD

— The Plymothian (@plymouthian) July 10, 2022

The black smoke that came billowing from the plant could be seen for many miles all around, and the damage that was done is likely to disrupt operations at the facility for a long time to come.

Just two days earlier, there was another “mysterious explosion” near Houston, Texas…

Authorities say a fire is now out after an explosion along a natural gas line sent up a column of flames from a field in Fort Bend County on Thursday.

According to the Fort Bend County Pct. 1 Constable’s Office, the explosion occurred before 11 a.m. in the 15400 block of JoAnn near FM 1952, west of Orchard.

Nearby residents report hearing “a loud pop” when the explosion occurred…

Is it normal to have two major natural gas explosions like this in just a matter of three days?

No, it is not.

And it is important to note that there have been other “suspicious explosions” recently.

Last month, a massive explosion at a liquefied natural gas terminal in Quintana Island, Texas ended up “taking a substantial amount of the fuel off the market”…

An explosion at a liquefied natural gas terminal in Texas has left nearby residents rattled and is taking a substantial amount of the fuel off the market at a time when global demand is soaring.

Freeport LNG will be offline for at least three weeks, the company said Thursday, following a fire in its export facility.

So who would benefit from all of this?

I think that is a very important question to ask.

Some are suggesting that the Russians could be behind these “accidents”. According to Washington Examiner editor Tom Rogan, the Russians actually have a cyber unit that is fully capable of pulling off such attacks…

That brings us to the Russian cyber unit involved in the targeting reconnaissance against Freeport LNG.

Named XENOTIME by researchers, the unit has utilized boutique TRITON/TRISIS malware developed by the Russian Ministry of Defense’s Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics. That malware is designed for the seizure of industrial control systems and the defeat of associated safety systems. In 2017, GCHQ (Britain’s NSA-equivalent signals intelligence service) outlined the need for network compartmentalization to protect safety systems against this malware better. In March 2022, the FBI warned that TRISIS malware remained a threat.

XENOTIME is assessed by the U.S. and British governments as a critical infrastructure-focused, advanced persistent threat actor. The unit’s modus operandi involves targeting industrial control systems and supervisory control systems in order to effect unilateral control of a network. XENOTIME has caused specific concern in Western security circles for its targeting of safety systems that would otherwise mitigate threats to life during a cyberattack. XENOTIME’s activity has escalated in 2022.

Of course there are similar cyber units in the western world and in Asia that could be conducting such operations for their own reasons.

The truth is that even if it could be proven that cyberattacks are causing these explosions we will probably never know who was ultimately behind them.

This is just another reason why it is a major national security risk to have so much of our critical infrastructure connected to a global Internet.

Cyberattacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and we are exceedingly vulnerable.

Many on the Internet are pointing out that there was another very unusual fire at a facility in Valdez, Alaska on June 27th…

A tanker truck that caught fire at a Valdez refinery Monday afternoon halted fuel-loading activities at the facility on Tuesday, state officials say.

The truck was loading diesel when the explosion occurred, according to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

In the old days, a random fire like that never would have even made a blip in the news.

But with all of the other fires that are now happening, people are on alert.

Over and over again, really bizarre accidents have been happening, and people want answers.

I wish that I had all of the answers, but I don’t. Like many of you, I am just trying to ask the right questions.

What I do know is that we live in very chaotic times, and I have a feeling that they are about to get a whole lot more chaotic.

I fully expect that the second half of this year will be even crazier than the first half, and that is really saying something.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

Now An Outbreak Of The Marburg Virus Has Begun

July 8, 2022July 8, 2022 by Michael

Why are so many unusual outbreaks of disease suddenly happening all over the planet? We were already dealing with a seemingly endless global pandemic coming into 2022, and so far this year a bird flu pandemic has resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of our chickens and turkeys, the worst monkeypox outbreak in history has spread like wildfire in the western world, and now it is being reported that there is an outbreak of the Marburg Virus in Africa. We have already lost our opportunity to contain monkeypox, and that is really bad news. But if authorities are not able to successfully contain this new Marburg outbreak, we could potentially be facing a scenario that is downright apocalyptic.

The new outbreak of the Marburg Virus is happening in Ghana. The two victims that have died so far did not know each other, and officials believe that this is evidence that “the disease is spreading more widely”…

Two people are believed to have died from the extremely deadly Marburg virus in Ghana as officials gear up for a potential outbreak.

The patients, from the country’s southern Ashanti region, were not known to each other, suggesting the disease is spreading more widely.

Initial tests came back positive for the virus and the samples are being reanalysed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Global health authorities have always warned that the Marburg virus is a good candidate for a horrifying global pandemic because it can have a very long incubation period. The following information comes from the World Health Organization…

The incubation period (interval from infection to onset of symptoms) varies from 2 to 21 days.

Illness caused by Marburg virus begins abruptly, with high fever, severe headache and severe malaise. Muscle aches and pains are a common feature. Severe watery diarrhoea, abdominal pain and cramping, nausea and vomiting can begin on the third day. Diarrhoea can persist for a week. The appearance of patients at this phase has been described as showing “ghost-like” drawn features, deep-set eyes, expressionless faces, and extreme lethargy.

All of that sounds terrible, but the next stage of the disease is truly nightmarish…

Many patients develop severe haemorrhagic manifestations between 5 and 7 days, and fatal cases usually have some form of bleeding, often from multiple areas. Fresh blood in vomitus and faeces is often accompanied by bleeding from the nose, gums, and vagina. Spontaneous bleeding at venepuncture sites (where intravenous access is obtained to give fluids or obtain blood samples) can be particularly troublesome. During the severe phase of illness, patients have sustained high fevers. Involvement of the central nervous system can result in confusion, irritability, and aggression. Orchitis (inflammation of one or both testicles) has been reported occasionally in the late phase of disease (15 days).

In fatal cases, death occurs most often between 8 and 9 days after symptom onset, usually preceded by severe blood loss and shock.

The largest previous outbreak of the disease was in 2005.

During that outbreak, 88 percent of the victims died…

The largest outbreak to date was in Angola in 2005, when 374 caught the virus and 329 died – a fatality rate of 88 percent.

A disease that has a death rate of way less than one percent ended up paralyzing much of the planet for months on end.

So what do you think will happen if the Marburg Virus becomes a true global pandemic?

Needless to say, the panic would be off the charts, and there is no cure and no vaccine…

The Marburg virus is a top concern for public health officials who are worried about the next pandemic. It has the potential to cause serious public health emergencies but there are currently no vaccines or antiviral treatments approved to treat the virus.

Meanwhile, the number of monkeypox cases continues to rise at an exponential rate.

When I wrote about monkeypox yesterday, there were 7,534 global cases. Unfortunately, Friday was the worst day for this outbreak so far by a very wide margin, and now there are 9,109 global cases.

I had been hoping that this outbreak would fade after the initial spike of cases, but instead it seems to be rapidly picking up momentum.

Here in the United States, it has already spread to 39 different states and the total number of cases has now risen to 790.

If the number of cases continues to double at a very fast pace, it won’t be too long before we have a major national crisis on our hands.

Let us hope that doesn’t happen, because this is a disease that you definitely do not want to get.

This highly mutated version of monkeypox causes extremely intense pain. In fact, one victim that was interview by NBC News said that it was “the worst pain in my life”.

Since monkeypox causes very ugly sores on the skin, many have suggested that this sounds eerily similar to a future scenario that I described in my books.

But we don’t know if monkeypox will become a true global pandemic yet. We will just have to wait and see what happens.

Of course COVID has been a global pandemic for a long time, and now it is being reported that a new subvariant that is becoming dominant in the western world is “the worst so far”…

The latest subvariant of the novel coronavirus to become dominant in Europe, the United States, and other places is also, in many ways, the worst so far.

The BA.5 subvariant of the basic Omicron variant appears to be more contagious than any previous form of the virus. It’s apparently better at dodging our antibodies, too—meaning it might be more likely to cause breakthrough and repeat infections.

Despite everything that they have tried, authorities have failed to stop this pandemic. Our planet has been hit by wave after wave, and now hospitalizations in the U.S. are spiking once again…

Eighteen states reported more cases in the week of June 30-July 7 than in the week before, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins University data.

That has also led to a rise in hospitalizations, with hospitals in 40 states reporting more COVID-19 patients than a week earlier. Thirty-eight states had more patients in intensive care beds, and 17 states reported more deaths than a week earlier.

Personally, I am far, far more concerned about monkeypox.

If the number of monkeypox cases continues to explode like it has been, it won’t be too long before there is widespread panic among the general public.

And if the Marburg Virus starts getting loose in the western world we will be facing a scenario that is absolutely unthinkable.

So hopefully authorities in Africa are on top of this, because the death toll from a full-blown global pandemic would be off the charts.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

If There Is A Nuclear War Between The U.S. And Russia, Most Americans Will Die By Starving To Death

July 7, 2022July 7, 2022 by Michael

Can you imagine what it would be like to literally starve to death? Most Americans believe that if a nuclear war with Russia actually happens the vast majority of the U.S. population will be instantly wiped out. But that is not what the science says. What the studies have shown is that only about 20 percent of the U.S. population will be instantly killed during a nuclear exchange. If you live near a military base or some other highly strategic target you will probably be among that 20 percent. Otherwise, it is likely that you will starve to death during the horrifying “nuclear winter” that follows.

A brand new study that was just released has concluded that average global temperatures would immediately drop by a whopping 13 degrees following a full-blown nuclear exchange…

Firestorms would release ash and smoke into the upper atmosphere that would block out the Sun, resulting in crop failure around the world, according to researchers from Louisiana State University. In the first month following these catastrophic detonations, average global temperatures would plunge by about 13 degrees Fahrenheit, more than during the most recent Ice Age.

With much less sunlight reaching the Earth, the food chains in our oceans would collapse very rapidly…

The sudden drop in light and sea temperatures, especially from the Arctic to the North Atlantic and North Pacific, would kill algae — the bedrock of the marine food web.

Researchers said that fishing and aquaculture would be halted by the creation of ‘essentially a famine in the ocean.’

And as average temperatures plummeted, very little would be able to be grown for an extended period of time.

Since the U.S. and Russia are both in the northern hemisphere, the northern half of the globe would be affected much more than the southern half of the globe.

One study that was conducted in 2019 determined that temperatures in Iowa would ultimately stay below 0 degrees celsius for 730 days in a row…

A massive drop in temperature follows, with the weather staying below freezing throughout the subsequent Northern Hemisphere summer. In Iowa, for example, the model shows temperatures staying below 0°C for 730 days straight. There is no growing season. This is a true nuclear winter.

Nor is it just a short blip. Temperatures still drop below freezing in summer for several years thereafter, and global precipitation falls by half by years three and four. It takes over a decade for anything like climatic normality to return to the planet.

Since so little food would be grown during this period of time, we would see starvation in the northern hemisphere on a cataclysmic scale…

In the 4,400 warhead/150 Tg soot nuclear war scenario, averaged over the subsequent five years, China sees a reduction in food calories of 97.2 percent, France by 97.5 percent, Russia by 99.7 percent, the UK by 99.5 percent and the US by 98.9 percent. In all these countries, virtually everyone who survived the initial blasts would subsequently starve.

So can you see why I am so passionate about avoiding a nuclear war?

The Russians can see where the proxy war in Ukraine is heading, and they are sounding the alarm.

This week, Dmitry Medvedev warned that this conflict “potentially poses a threat to the existence of humanity”…

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday warned the US against trying to punish Russia for its war in Ukraine, saying that doing so would risk humanity since Moscow has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.

“The idea of punishing a country that has one of the largest nuclear potentials is absurd. And potentially poses a threat to the existence of humanity,” Medvedev wrote on Telegram.

Here in the United States, there are a handful of politicians that are speaking out rationally about this war.

One of them is Marjorie Taylor Greene…

“The American people do not want war with Russia, but NATO & our own foolish leaders are dragging us into one. We should pull out of NATO,” said right-wing Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene in a Twitter post on Thursday while referring to the Biden administration’s massive military aid to Ukraine as a “proxy war” against Russia that Americans have no appetite for.

Ukraine is the “new Iraq wrapped up with a pretty little NATO bow, with a nuclear present inside,” she further added in a series of tweets in which she has expressed fierce criticism of Washington’s response to the Ukraine conflict by sending billions of taxpayer dollars to the country and risking a potential nuclear war.

Sadly, she is right on target.

The longer this war goes on, the greater the risk that it could eventually become a nuclear conflict.

The Russians have been preparing for such a conflict for a very long time, and this week we learned that they have conducted more successful nuclear drills…

Vladimir Putin has staged nuclear drills with his road-launched intercontinental Yars missiles in a forest in western Siberia.

The 7,500-mile range of the missiles means they would be capable of striking Britain or anywhere in Europe.

Meanwhile, our most recent missile test exploded just 11 seconds after launch…

A test missile launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California exploded seconds after being fired late Wednesday night, according to officials.

The Minotaur II space launch vehicle exploded approximately 11 seconds after launching off the test pad at 11:01 p.m. local time, Vandenberg officials confirmed in a statement early Thursday.

The U.S. desperately needs to develop new systems, because right now Minuteman missiles that went into service back in the 1970s still form the backbone of our strategic nuclear arsenal…

Vandenberg Space Force Base was testing the Air Force’s new missile rocket, expected to be used with the developing LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, according to The Tribune of San Luis Obispo County, Calif.

Both are set to replace the U.S. military’s aging Minuteman missiles.

At this point, the Russian strategic nuclear arsenal is far superior to our own, and our anti-ballistic missile systems are not even worth comparing to what they possess.

But most Americans don’t understand any of this.

I was sounding the alarm about a military conflict with Russia long before the war in Ukraine ever started. Unfortunately, most of the population was not interested in such warnings.

Now a nuclear war with Russia has become a very real possibility thanks to the war in Ukraine, but most of the population is still not alarmed.

Meanwhile, leaders on both sides continue to escalate the conflict in Ukraine, and that is an extremely dangerous game to be playing.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

Thanks To The Rapidly Imploding U.S. Economy, Joe Biden’s Poll Numbers Have Plunged To Unprecedented Levels

July 6, 2022July 6, 2022 by Michael

These are not good times for Joe Biden. When the U.S. economy is performing well whoever is in the White House is going to get most of the credit. Likewise, when the U.S. economy is performing poorly whoever is in the White House is going to get most of the blame. That is just the way that it is, and that is one of the primary reasons why most Americans are quite displeased with Joe Biden right now. Things are not going well at all, and the outlook for the months ahead is even worse. The American people are becoming increasingly frustrated, and a new Gallup poll that was just released discovered that “confidence” in the presidency has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded…

President Joe Biden has pushed the presidency to a place it hasn’t been in nearly 50 years.

In the latest Gallup poll, less than a quarter of those surveyed have “confidence” in the presidency, worse than during the Trump presidency and nearly as bad as the end of the George W. Bush presidency.

Going back to 1975, Gallup has never recorded a confidence reading as low as Biden’s 23%.

Other polls have come up with similarly stunning results. For example, a different survey that was just released discovered that a whopping 88 percent of all Americans believe that the nation is heading in the wrong direction…

The White House was faced with another dire poll Tuesday that found that 54 percent of Americans believe the middle class hasn’t benefited ‘at all’ from President Joe Biden’s policies.

On top of that, the new Monmouth University Poll found that 88 percent of Americans surveyed said the country was headed in the wrong direction – with just 10 percent saying it’s headed the right way – a record low.

Just think about that.

88 percent.

In this day and age, it is difficult to get 88 percent of Americans to agree on anything.

But almost all of us seem to agree that the country is going downhill, and according to that same survey Americans are currently more concerned about economic matters than anything else…

Nearly half those surveyed said inflation and gas were the biggest concerns currently facing their families, with 33 percent saying inflation and 15 percent pointing to fuel costs.

A lot of people out there don’t really care much about what is going on in the world until it starts affecting their personal finances.

And these days the American people are feeling a tremendous amount of pain.

In fact, the consumer confidence index that is put out by the University of Michigan just fell to an all-time record low…

The University of Michigan’s gauge of consumer sentiment fell sharply to a record-low reading of 50.2, down from a May reading of 58.4. Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal had expected an June reading of 59.

The level is comparable to the low point reached in the middle of the 1980 recession, the university said.

The American people have never been more pessimistic about the economy.

Ever.

And we have a guy in the White House that has a really difficult time even putting a coherent sentence together at this point.

As you celebrate the 4th tomorrow, remember our President’s inspiring words about this great nation. pic.twitter.com/EcNoXNuY8l

— Bill D’Agostino (@Banned_Bill) July 3, 2022

Of course the team around Biden is not exactly competent either.

Time after time, the Biden administration has made colossal blunders. This week, we learned that someone in the Biden administration apparently thought that it would be a good idea to send oil from our strategic petroleum reserve to China…

Because he hates Americans, President Joe Biden is shipping much-needed American oil to foreign countries, including… China.

The whole idea of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which is owned by the U.S. government, specifically the U.S. Department of Energy, is to hold on to about 700 million barrels of oil in the event of an emergency or disruption.

I was floored when I first read that.

Who would be stupid enough to do such a thing?

Someday we are going to need the oil in the strategic petroleum reserve, and hopefully there will be some left when that moment finally arrives.

This week we have also been getting more numbers that indicate that the economic slowdown in the United States appears to be picking up speed.

According to LinkedIn, hiring in the U.S. is really starting to fall off…

LinkedIn, a unit of Microsoft, saw its hiring rate fall 5.4% month over month in June on a seasonally adjusted basis, the lowest level since December 2021, according to new data released on Friday. On an annual basis, the employment platform’s hiring rate tumbled 11.9% in June.

LinkedIn’s hiring rate is calculated based on the percentage of the platform’s members who added a new employer to their profile in the same month the new job began divided by the total number of LinkedIn members in the United States.

And we just learned that new vehicle sales during the month of June were depressingly low…

Automakers have now reported their June new vehicle sales, or their Q2 new vehicle sales, for the US, except Tesla, which doesn’t report US sales but only global sales. All automakers, even Toyota, and now even Tesla, are struggling with the ongoing semiconductor shortages, and they started the month of June with desperately low inventories on dealer lots and in transit.

And so new vehicle sales in June plunged by 13.5% from the already horribly beaten-down June 2021, to 1.127 million vehicles, and collapsed by 25% from June 2019, the last decent year in the industry, according to data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis today

It appears that a recession is already here, and the months ahead are going to be really tough.

So I would encourage you to get out of debt.

And I would also encourage you to build up your emergency fund.

This is not a time to fritter away your money on unnecessary things. You want to put yourself in the best position possible to weather the “perfect storm” that is ahead, because things certainly aren’t going to be getting easier from here.

As the economy deteriorates, the frustration of the American people is going to get deeper and deeper.

Needless to say, that isn’t good news for Joe Biden.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

5 Major Trends To Watch For During The Second Half Of 2022

July 5, 2022July 5, 2022 by Michael

Can you believe that it is the second half of 2022 already? I don’t know about you, but to me it seems like time goes by faster with each passing year. Perhaps that is just because I am getting older. In any event, the first six months of 2022 are already in the tank. During those six months, the largest land war in Europe since World War II has erupted, inflation has spiraled out of control all over the world, we have plunged into the worst energy crisis since the 1970s, a horrifying bird flu pandemic has killed tens of millions of turkeys and chickens in the U.S. alone, the worst monkeypox outbreak in history has begun, the S&P 500 had the worst start to a year since 1970, and global leaders have been relentlessly warning us that we are heading into an “unprecedented” planetary food crisis. Unfortunately, I expect the second half of 2022 to be even worse.

Recently, I have been finding myself using the word “accelerate” a lot in my discussions with other people. Global events have certainly accelerated during the first half of this year, and I am convinced that they will accelerate even more during the second half.

In particular, I believe that things will really start getting crazy once summer is over.

Let me give you a few areas that I will be focusing on in the months ahead. The following are 5 trends to watch for during the second half of 2022…

#1 Economic Shaking

Obviously things have not gone well economically during the first half of this year. Inflation is raging all over the globe, and economic activity is slowing down everywhere that you look. Based on the latest reading from the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model, it appears that the U.S. economy has already plunged into a recession. I expect the U.S. economy to continue to deteriorate as we move toward the end of 2022, but I am actually far more concerned about economic conditions in Europe.

The war in Ukraine has hit European economies really hard, and now many of them are potentially facing very serious shortages of natural gas this winter. The EUR/USD is rapidly approaching parity, and this is something that I have been anticipating for years. Once the EUR/USD drops below parity, I think that the dominoes in Europe are going to start falling fairly rapidly.

Meanwhile, I expect inflation rates to remain elevated all over the planet, and this is going to continue to cause tremendous problems.

#2 Widespread Famines

The head of the UN has publicly warned us that we are moving into an “unprecedented global hunger crisis”, and people are already starting to drop dead from starvation in some parts of eastern Africa.

Sadly, I believe that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Even before the war in Ukraine started, we were already headed into a major food crisis thanks to the soaring price of fertilizer and extremely bizarre global weather patterns. Now the war in Ukraine has reduced the flow of agricultural exports from one of the key breadbaskets in the world to just a trickle. At the same time, food production is going to come in well below expectations all over the planet due to a variety of factors that I have been documenting on my websites.

Food prices have already risen very aggressively, but the biggest problem will be the food that is not grown in the months ahead.

There simply is not going to be enough food for everyone, and that is going to cause enormous societal stress all over the globe in late 2022 and beyond.

#3 More War

The conflict in Ukraine has become extremely bitter and extremely bloody. Unfortunately, it appears that it is not going to end any time soon.

I would love to see a peaceful resolution to the war, because I think that is what would be best for everyone. But the president of Ukraine does not want to negotiate even though his government is losing more territory with each passing day.

So this horrible war will just keep going month after month, and the U.S. just keeps getting more deeply involved. Needless to say, at some point this proxy war between the U.S. and Russia could evolve into a shooting war between our two nations, and that is a scenario that we should be working very hard to avoid.

On the other side of the globe, I believe that China is planning on invading Taiwan while Joe Biden is still in office. They have seen how powerless he has been to stop the Russians, and I think that they are convinced that they have a window of opportunity to “reunify” with Taiwan by force.

But I actually think that another major war will start first.

The IAEA is now telling us that Iran “possesses enough fissile material to construct a nuclear bomb”, and that is a threshold that Israel always said that they would never allow the Iranians to cross.

Israel and Iran are already engaged in a “shadow war”, but I am entirely convinced that it will soon escalate into a full-blown regional conflict.

It may begin in a way that you might not expect, but one way or another it is going to happen.

Hopefully it will not erupt during the second half of this year, but the clock is definitely ticking.

#4 Pestilences

We already have COVID. In fact, they are now telling us that the worst version of the disease that we have seen so far is now circulating widely in the United States.

We are also dealing with a nightmarish bird flu pandemic which has killed tens of millions of our chickens and our turkeys.

On top of everything else, the number of monkeypox cases continues to rise at an exponential rate.

But I believe that more outbreaks are on the way.

We have entered an era when mad scientists all over the globe are monkeying around with the deadliest bugs that mankind has ever known.

And as time moves along, I believe that bad actors will increasingly use diseases that have been cooked up in labs as weapons.

#5 Geophysical Shaking

Let’s just call this one a hunch.

Unlike the first four areas that I have discussed, geophysical events have not made a lot of headlines lately.

Yes, there have been unusual earthquakes in diverse places such as South Carolina, and the sun has been behaving strangely in recent days, but overall things have been relatively quiet.

Unfortunately, I expect that to change.

If you disagree with me, that is perfectly fine. Let’s just watch and see how things play out.

Two years ago I tried to give everyone a big picture overview of what was coming, and since that time so many of the things that I listed have either happened or have started to happen.

We really have entered a “perfect storm”, and those that are still waiting for life to go back to “normal” are going to be bitterly disappointed.

If you always thought that it would be wonderful to live during one of the most important times in human history, you are about to get your wish.

What was once unthinkable will soon become reality, and nothing will ever be the same again.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

Most Young Adults Do Not Know Why We Celebrate July 4th

July 4, 2022July 4, 2022 by Michael

Do you know what we celebrate on July 4th? For most of my readers, such a question would be an insult because the answer is obvious. July 4th was the day that we officially declared our independence from the British. The Continental Congress actually voted in favor of independence on July 2nd, and then on July 4th the Declaration of Independence was formally adopted. Every year, the Declaration of Independence is read during 4th of July celebrations all over the country, and it turns out that this yearly reminder is greatly needed. According to one recent survey, most members of Generation Z do not know who the United States declared independence from in 1776…

As most elementary school students could tell you, July 4th commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 — signaling the nation’s freedom from British rule. However, the poll found two in three young adults in Gen Z don’t know who America declared its independence from.

In fact, one in three Gen Zers think July 4th celebrates America’s independence from the Native Americans!

Overall, less than 58 percent of all respondents correctly answered that America gained its freedom from Great Britain. Nearly eight percent said “Europe.” Over eight percent said “South America” and more than 12 percent chose “none of the above!”

Isn’t that sad?

When I was growing up, public schools were in rough shape but we were still taught the basics about our history.

These days, many of our young people are only taught an extremely warped view of American history if they are taught it at all.

As a result, most members of Generation Z don’t even know what July 4th is all about at this point.

In many of my articles I tend to rant about our rapidly decaying culture, because it truly is a national crisis.

Once upon a time, our culture pumped out the finest young people on the entire planet, but now we are mass producing freaks that have had their minds greatly twisted by the abhorrent “popular culture” that dominates our society today.

The young male that decided to shoot up a 4th of July parade in Highland Park on Monday is a perfect example. He got up on a rooftop and just started shooting at random targets. As a result, at least six people are dead and at least two dozen have been wounded…

Multiple law enforcement agencies launched a massive manhunt Monday evening for the gunman whose shooting rampage left six people dead and at least two dozen injured Monday at a Fourth of July parade in this affluent suburb north of Chicago.

Authorities identified a person of interest as Robert “Bobby” E. Crimo, 22, who is believed to be driving a 2010 silver Honda Fit. He was described as a white male with dark hair and considered armed and dangerous.

You can watch some video of the shooting right here. He was just randomly firing into the crowd, and it appears that he was motivated by a deep hatred for certain types of people.

His social media profiles reveal that he is a radical leftist that absolutely loathes Republicans. Needless to say, most of those that march in parades on July 4th tend to be on the right of the political spectrum, and that is probably why he chose such a parade as his target.

And like so many young people that end up choosing violent lifestyles, he was very deep into rap culture. In fact, he was a rapper himself…

The suspect in the shooting deaths of six people at a July 4th parade in the affluent Highland Park suburb of Chicago has been identified as 22-year-old Robert ‘Bobby’ Crimo III also known as Awake the Rapper.

The lyrics of his “songs” are very disturbing. In one, there is a line is which he states that “I know what I have to do”…

Crimo is from of the Highland Park area. In one song, the suspect wrote: ‘My actions will be valiant and my thought is unnecessary, I know what I have to do, I know what’s in it, not only for me, but for everyone else.’

Of course the music videos that he produced are teeming with violent imagery…

One of his music videos, for the song “Toy Soldier,” features crude, stick-figure-like animation of a man firing a long gun at people and later lying face-down in a pool of blood after apparently being shot by police. The accompanying lyric is: “I just want to scream/F*ck this world/Livin’ the dream.”

He also has an IMDb page that lists him as the writer, director, composer, producer and actor in a pair of music videos. In one, he is rapping on a set made to resemble a small classroom. He is seated at a desk and reaches into his backpack; the screen goes dark, and a gunshot-like sound is heard. When the video returns, he is on his knees and falls to the floor. Maniacal laughter is heard, he drops shell casings from his hands and rubs against an American flag.

There are photos of him all over social media right now, but the truth is that he didn’t have to turn out this way.

If he had been raised differently, educated differently and had never been exposed to rap culture he would have been a completely different person.

If we put garbage into the minds of our kids, we are going to get garbage out.

You may not want to hear that, but that is the truth.

We are the biggest reason why America is in such an advanced state of decline.

As I detail in all of my books, we are literally committing national suicide and most of the population doesn’t seem to care.

When I was growing up, being an American still meant something.

But now a recent Gallup poll discovered that the percentage of us that are “extremely proud” to be Americans has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded…

The 38% of U.S. adults who say they are “extremely proud” to be American is the lowest in Gallup’s trend, which began in 2001. Still, together with the 27% who are “very proud,” 65% of U.S. adults express pride in the nation. Another 22% say they are “moderately proud,” while 9% are “only a little” and 4% “not at all” proud.

And even though they currently have their guy in the White House, Democrats are less likely to be “extremely proud” to be Americans than anyone else…

Republicans’ pride in being American has consistently outpaced Democrats’ and independents’ since 2001 and does so today. However, Republicans’ extreme national pride (58%) is now at its lowest point in the trend. Independents’ extreme pride, at 34%, is likewise the lowest on record for the group.

After hitting a 22% low point in 2019, Democrats’ extreme pride rose to 31% in 2021 at the start of Joe Biden’s presidency, but it is down this year to 26%.

Our country is dying.

They keep telling us that young people are our future, but if that is the case we are in really big trouble.

We desperately need a national cultural revival, but right now we continue to run away from the values that this nation was founded upon as rapidly as we can.

When will enough be enough?

What will it take for the American people to finally wake up?

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

We Are Witnessing A Stunning Breakdown Of Law And Order, And The Overwhelmed Police Seem Powerless To Stop It

July 3, 2022July 3, 2022 by Michael

This country is not the same place that it was ten years ago. In fact, it is not even close to the same place that it was five years ago. Violent crime is out of control in many of our major cities, and there aren’t enough police to handle it all. So in many cases a police officer literally never shows up when someone reports a serious crime. Unfortunately, the number of serious crimes just keeps going up. In 2020, we witnessed the worst spike in violent crime in U.S. history, but 2021 was supposed to be a year when rates of violent crime started going back down. Of course that didn’t happen, and now 2022 is on pace to be even worse than either 2020 or 2021…

Violent crimes are on the rise in six of America’s major cities and set to outpace the already historic levels of 2021 violent crime.

Baltimore, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Atlanta, and New York City are all on pace to break their 2021 levels of violent crime halfway through this year, with the nation’s largest city leading the group, according to crime data reviewed by Fox News.

At this point, violent crime is up 25.8 percent in New York City compared to the first half of last year.

That is staggering.

Of course New York City still has a way to go before it gets as bad as Chicago.

In the Windy City, there are hundreds of thousands of “high-priority emergency service calls” each year, and last year there were no police available to respond to those calls 52 percent of the time…

New data uncovered by Wirepoints through public records requests to the Chicago Police Department (CPD) reveal that in 2021 there were 406,829 incidents of high-priority emergency service calls for which there were no police available to respond.

That was 52 percent of the 788,000 high-priority 911 service calls dispatched in 2021.

So if you are the victim of a violent crime in Chicago, your odds of having a police officer available to help you are about the same as guessing a coin flip correctly.

The following is a partial list of “high-priority emergency service calls” for which no police officer was available in 2021…

14,955 – assaults in progress.
17,828 – batteries in progress.
16,350 – person with a gun.
5,210 – person with a knife.
12,787 – shots fired (reports from people, not the city’s automated “Shotspotter”)
1,352 – person shot.
887 – person stabbed.
14,265 – domestic battery.

Despite numbers such as these, there are lots of people out there that are relentlessly calling for the police to be “defunded”.

Do they want total anarchy?

Because that is what would happen.

Our streets are already bad enough. As you can see from this video, police in Chicago are having a really difficult time even protecting themselves at this point.

But Chicago actually doesn’t have the highest murder rate in the nation.

That honor goes to New Orleans…

It’s no secret that New Orleans struggles with violent crime, but new statistics paint a grim picture of the Crescent City being on pace to be the murder capital of the United States if trends don’t change in 2022.

According to data from AH Datalytics, compiled using the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program, New Orleans has a per capita year-to-date homicide rate of 72 per 100,000 residents. The next three U.S. cities behind New Orleans are Birmingham with a per capita homicide rate of 59 per 100,000 residents and Baltimore and St. Louis, each with a per capita homicide rate of 58 per 100,000 residents.

So far this year, the murder rate in New Orleans is up 44 percent.

But the corporate media is trying to convince us that all of this is perfectly “normal”, aren’t they?

Do you believe them?

One man that will never be fooled is World War II veteran Carl Spurlin Deke. He just turned 100 years old on June 29th, and when he was interviewed by a local news outlet he boldly declared that the U.S. “is going to hell in a handbasket”…

Deke’s gratitude for his life quickly turned into an emotional confession about his concern about the entitlement and ungrateful grievance erupting from younger generations saying, “People don’t realize what they have. They b*tch about it. And then nowadays, I am so upset because the things we did, the things we fought for, and the boys that died for it, it’s all going down the drain.” Deke began weeping as he added “Our country is going to hell in a handbasket. We haven’t got the country we had when I was raised, not at all.”

The 100-year-old WWII vet cried for those growing up in America today saying, “Nobody will have the opportunity I had. It’s just not the same. That’s not what our boys, that’s not what they died for.”

Sadly, he is 100 percent correct.

We are in an advanced state of decline, and it is getting worse with each passing day.

If things are this bad now, what will this country look like once economic conditions deteriorate quite a bit more?

Previous generations of young Americans were equipped to handle adversity.

This generation of young Americans is not.

The thin veneer of civilization that we all used to be able to take for granted is steadily disappearing, and our society is evolving into a horror show that would have been unrecognizable to previous generations.

If we would have done things differently, we could have gotten much different results.

Our choices have consequences, and now most of our major cities are being transformed into crime-infested hellholes right in front of our eyes.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

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