Afghanistan

A Very Odd Confluence Of Events

August 29, 2021August 29, 2021 by Michael

August has definitely been a “turning point”, and in recent weeks we have had the opportunity to watch some incredibly shocking events unfold which will change the course of history permanently. At this moment, Hurricane Ida is the biggest story that everyone is discussing. As I warned about on Friday, Ida went through a period of “rapid intensification” in the Gulf of Mexico before coming ashore in Louisiana on Sunday as an absolutely monstrous storm. It hit New Orleans exactly 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina did, and many are pointing out that this seems to be a really “strange” coincidence.

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana in 2005, it was a Category 3 storm, but Hurricane Ida was actually a Category 4 storm when it made landfall near Port Fourchon…

Hurricane Ida’s initial impacts began early Sunday as the outer bands brought heavy rain to the Louisiana coast early Sunday. The Category 4 hurricane, packing sustained winds of 150 mph came ashore at 11:55 a.m. CDT near Port Fourchon, Louisiana.

Ida has become the first landfalling hurricane on United States soil in 2021, and AccuWeather forecasters, expecting extreme impacts for the Gulf Coast, have rated Ida a 4 on the AccuWeather RealImpact™ Scale for Hurricanes.

The extremely high winds have torn roofs from countless homes and buildings, and in some cases power lines have been snapped in two.

At this hour, hundreds of thousands of local residents are without power, and Governor John Bel Edwards is telling the press that Ida could be the most powerful storm to hit Louisiana in over 160 years…

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said the storm could be the most powerful to pound the state in more than 160 years. Hurricane Katrina, which flooded most of New Orleans, killing almost 2,000 people and causing damages estimated at $125 billion, made landfall 16 years ago to the day – as a Category 3 storm.

From an economic standpoint, one of the biggest concerns is that nearly all of the oil production facilities in the Gulf of Mexico have been forced to temporarily close down…

More than 95% of the Gulf of Mexico’s oil production facilities have been shut down, regulators said Sunday, indicating the massive storm is having a significant impact on energy supply.

Six refineries in the New Orleans area — including PBF, Phillips, Shell, Marathon and two Valero refineries — are shut down right now, Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, a Houston-based consulting firm, told CNN Business. “It’s now a waiting game to assess whatever wind and flooding damage will be caused as the hurricane passes through the area.”

Needless to say, this is likely to cause another supply crunch, and we already being warned to expect significantly higher gasoline prices…

The Gulf of Mexico federal offshore oil production accounts for 17% of the country’s crude oil production and 5% of its federal offshore dry gas production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates in Houston, said Saturday that if the New Orleans refineries take a direct hit from a Category 4 storm, gas prices would likely rise by about 10 cents a gallon in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic markets.

Meanwhile, the greatest foreign policy debacle in modern American history continues to unfold in Afghanistan.

The way that the Biden administration has handled this crisis has been utterly shameful, and it has resulted in the deaths of 13 service members.

As Hurricane Ida was pummeling Louisiana on Sunday, Joe Biden and his minions were overseeing the transfer of the remains of those service members…

In a silence broken only by the sobs of bereaved families, Joe Biden stood Sunday, hand over his heart, to pay tribute as the remains of the US service members killed in the Kabul bombing attack were transferred from a military C-17 cargo plane to a closely parked row of gray hearses.

But Biden grew impatient at one point, and footage of the event actually shows him checking his watch.

If you have not seen this shocking moment yet, you can view it right here.

Did he really think that nobody would notice?

Later on, reporters wanted to ask Biden some questions about Afghanistan, but he abruptly refused…

‘I’m not supposed to take any questions, but go ahead,’ he said as he turned to the travelling press pool.

‘On Afghanistan…’ said a reporter before he cut him off.

He snapped: ‘I’m not going to answer Afghanistan now.’

The president turned away from the press pool to talk to FEMA staff as the reporter continued with a question about whether he still believed ‘there was an extreme risk at the airport.’

This crisis has clearly demonstrated that our new “woke military” has become weak and pathetic, and it is being led by weak and pathetic brass at the Pentagon.

Of course these days “weak” and “pathetic” are words that are often used to describe the man that is currently residing in the White House.

The Biden administration desperately needs a new distraction, and it appears the one has conveniently come along.

We are being told that the most extreme COVID variant yet has been identified in South Africa…

A new coronavirus variant, C.1.2, has been detected in South Africa and a number of other countries, with concerns that it could be more infectious and evade vaccines, according to a new preprint study by South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases and the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform. The study is awaiting peer review.

Scientists first detected C.1.2 in May 2021, finding that it was descended from C.1, which scientists found surprising as C.1 had last been detected in January. The new variant has “mutated substantially” compared to C.1 and is more mutations away from the original virus detected in Wuhan than any other Variant of Concern (VOC) or Variant of Interest (VOI) detected so far worldwide.

There are now dozens of variants running around out there, and each new variant is a threat to cause another new “wave” of this pandemic.

Prior to 2020 I was warning that it would be “one thing after another” once we got into the “perfect storm” that we are currently experiencing, and we are now being told that Americans are developing “disaster fatigue” because of all of the bad things that have happened over the last couple of years.

Sadly, many believe that much more chaos is dead ahead.

These are extremely troubled times, and we desperately need strong leadership from our representatives in Washington.

Unfortunately for all of us, Washington has become a complete and total cesspool, and the whole world is laughing at the endless stream of incompetence emanating from the White House.

***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 Snyder 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 others 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) By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe. 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. During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

This Is A Moment In U.S. History That Will Forever Live In Infamy

August 26, 2021August 26, 2021 by Michael

There are certain moments that just make you want to cry. The bombings in Kabul that killed 13 U.S. troops and at least 90 Afghans didn’t have to happen. If we didn’t have completely and utterly incompetent political leaders and completely and utterly incompetent military leaders, things could have turned out very differently. The end of a 20 year war is being capped off in humiliating fashion, and nobody is going to be afraid of the United States after this. And that is actually a really bad thing, because fear of U.S. retribution has kept China, Russia, North Korea, Iran and a whole host of terror groups largely in check for the past several decades. Now that the U.S. is seemingly unable to play the “restrainer” role any longer, the stage is set for tremendous global instability.

For years, our generals were telling us that the Taliban had been defeated.

Obviously, that wasn’t even close to the truth.

And ISIS had supposedly been bombed into oblivion, but apparently that wasn’t true either.

Everyone knew that having so many evacuees crammed into such a small area would be a really tempting target, and our leaders were depending on the Taliban (the guys we have been shooting at for 20 years) to protect us.

Needless to say, that was a recipe for disaster, and that is precisely what we got.

In the aftermath of the bombings, Joe Biden promised to hunt down those that had attacked us…

Speaking to the American people in the wake of a devastating terror attack at the Kabul airport that left scores dead on Thursday — including numerous U.S. troops — President Biden promised the U.S. would strike back against those responsible.

“To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this — we will not forgive, we will not forget, we will hunt you down and make you pay,” the president said in a somber White House address.

Yes, I am sure that they are shaking in their boots.

At this point, nobody is afraid of our “woke military” and the snowflake generals that are leading them.

The head of U.S. Central Command was asked if the Taliban allowed the ISIS terrorists to get close to the Marines, and “there’s a failure somewhere” was the best that he could come up with in response…

The commander of U.S. Central Command said Thursday he did not know if the Taliban — whose members the U.S. was relying on to screen individuals getting to the airport — let Islamic State suicide bombers get through and conduct at least two bombings that have so far killed 12 Marines and injured 15 more.

“Clearly if they were able to get up to the Marines…at the entry point of the base, there’s a failure somewhere,” said Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie at a press briefing on Thursday.

We know that more ISIS terrorists are lurking in the vicinity right now.

So will there be additional attacks in the days ahead?

One source told Fox News that it is “likely” that there will be more…

A source briefed on the situation in Kabul told Fox News that some Americans stranded in Afghanistan will likely be left behind after Thursday’s bombings.

The source told Fox News that “hundreds” of ISIS-K fighters remain in the vicinity of the Kabul airport and that the attacks are “likely to continue.”

Hearing that “some Americans stranded in Afghanistan will likely be left behind” should make your blood boil.

What in the world is wrong with our leaders?

Trump was impeached over a phone call. How much more does Biden deserve to get impeached if he leaves Americans behind in the hands of the Taliban?

And what makes things even worse is the fact that the Biden administration has actually given the Taliban a list of Americans and others that needed to be evacuated…

U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that’s prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials.

The move, detailed to POLITICO by three U.S. and congressional officials, was designed to expedite the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan as chaos erupted in Afghanistan’s capital city last week after the Taliban seized control of the country. It also came as the Biden administration has been relying on the Taliban for security outside the airport.

Some are calling this a “kill list”, and that is exactly how the Taliban could choose to view it once all U.S. military forces are gone for good.

And thanks to our recklessness, Taliban fighters are going to be armed to the teeth as they begin their new reign…

A government watchdog group says the U.S. military is leaving behind 75,000 vehicles, 600,000 weapons and 208 aircraft in Afghanistan as forces evacuate the country after a 20-year war.

We’ve made the Taliban into a major U.S. arms dealer for the next decade,” said Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of Open the Books. “They now control 75,000 military vehicles. This is about 50,000 tactical vehicles, 20,000 Humvees they control about 1,000 mine-resistant vehicles, and even about 150 armored personnel carriers.”

To make matters worse, you and I paid for all of that equipment.

How can any of the brass at the Pentagon keep their jobs after such a debacle?

I just keep looking at those numbers and I keep wondering how our military leaders could possibly be so grossly incompetent.

And the rest of the world is watching.

If a ragged group of opium dealers and goat herders can absolutely humiliate the once mighty U.S. military, why should anyone else ever be afraid of us ever again?

What the Taliban has pulled off is going to greatly inspire terror organizations all over the globe, and it is going to embolden America’s most prominent enemies.

I think that the Biden administration was hoping that withdrawing from Afghanistan would be a move toward peace, but instead their incompetence has set the stage for more war.

As America is humiliated in Afghanistan, there have been lots of news stories about how China has been practicing for an invasion of Taiwan…

China’s long-standing threats to invade Taiwan would require the biggest amphibious invasion in human history — and analysts say recent military activities, including exercises using commercial ferries, appear designed to practice exactly that.

If you think that global supply chains are messed up now, just wait until that happens.

I know that a lot of people are cheering the fact that things are becoming more unstable geopolitically, but this new period of instability will not end well.

For decades, the United States dealt with everyone else from a position of strength.

But now the rest of the world can see that the emperor doesn’t have any clothes, and a power vacuum will always be filled.

***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 Incompetence On A Colossal Scale Throughout Our Society

August 23, 2021August 23, 2021 by Michael

These days, it is a surprise when someone actually does something competently. It is often said that if you want something done right you have got to do it yourself, and today that is more true than ever. Just think about it. How often have you had a delivery delayed or messed up? How often have you had someone supposedly “fix” something but it isn’t actually fixed? How often have you purchased something that breaks shortly thereafter? And don’t even get me started on the complete and utter incompetence that we see in the tech industry. How hard could it possibly be to release a piece of software that is not riddled with all sorts of nightmarish bugs that need to be “patched” as soon as possible?

Sadly, in our upside down society some of the most incompetent people that you can imagine end up running entire organizations, and if you are particularly corrupt and useless you may get to be a politician.

By now, you are probably thinking that I am going to talk about Joe Biden in this article, and you are right.

In this era of extreme incompetence, it somehow seems appropriate that sleepy Joe is presiding over our “idiocracy”.

Barack Obama knew that this could happen. According to Politico, he once said that nobody should “underestimate Joe’s ability to **** things up”.

Everything that Biden touches seems to turn into a failure. Just look at the crisis on the border. It is the worst that it has ever been in our entire history, and we are being told that “morale is in the toilet” among our Border Patrol agents…

“Morale is in the toilet,” Jon Anfinsen, a spokesman for the Border Patrol’s union, told the Washington Examiner. “Morale is low because agents aren’t allowed to do their job — if our job is to be out patrolling the border in between the ports of entry and actively searching for people who have crossed illegally, but we’re not allowed to go do that job, it basically creates this defeated feeling in everyone.”

Thanks to Biden’s wonderful new policies, our Border Patrol agents have their hands tied and are not able to do their jobs, and as a result many of them show up to work “sort of downtrodden, almost dead inside”…

“Everyone shows up to work sort of downtrodden, almost dead inside, for lack of a better term,” Anfinsen stated. “They’re not allowed to [do] the job, and they know that people are getting away every single day, every hour.”

Of course it isn’t just on the border where Biden is completely and utterly failing.

He is doing such a “great job” with the economy that the term “Bidenflation” has been coined less than a year into his presidency.

And his response to the COVID pandemic has been a nightmare of historic proportions. If I were to tell you how I really feel about the decisions that he has been making during this pandemic, I would get censored into oblivion by the social media companies.

Right now, what everyone is talking about is how incompetent the Biden administration has been in handling the situation in Afghanistan.

The fall of Saigon in 1975 and the Iranian hostage crisis during the Carter administration both made America look really weak, but we have never seen anything like the debacle at the airport in Kabul.

The “terrorists” that we went it to destroy in 2001 now have us surrounded and cornered in half an airport, and there are still countless numbers of people that can’t get to the evacuation planes.

In fact, staff members that worked at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul feel like they have been completely betrayed by our government at this point…

Local staff members at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul are “deeply disheartened” by U.S. evacuation efforts and have expressed a sense of betrayal and distrust in the U.S. government, according to a State Department diplomatic cable obtained by NBC News.

The cable, which was sent Saturday, said memos were sent Wednesday inviting Afghan staff members at the embassy to head to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. It told them to take food and to prepare for difficult conditions.

When staffers went to the airport in response to that cable, they quickly found themselves in the middle of a nightmare…

Staffers reported being jostled, hit, spat on and cursed at by Taliban fighters at checkpoints near the airport, it said, adding that criminals were taking advantage of the chaos while the U.S. military tried to maintain order “in an extremely physical situation.”

Some staff members reported that they were almost separated from their children, while others collapsed in a crush of people and had to be taken to hospitals with injuries, the cable said. Others said they had collapsed on the road because of heat exhaustion, it said.

British forces have been leaving the airport and bringing back people that need to be evacuated, but for some reason the U.S. hasn’t done the same thing.

There are still thousands of Americans inside the country, and time is running out, because the Taliban won’t move the August 31 deadline…

The White House repeatedly refused to address the Taliban’s August 31 deadline to get US troops out of Afghanistan on Monday, dodging questions on the subject and snapping at reporters who asked how the government planned to save the remaining Americans stuck in Kabul.

The Taliban’s spokesman issued the sternest threat yet to Biden on Monday morning, saying there will be ‘consequences’ if US troops – who are holed up at the airport in Kabul evacuating tens of thousands of people and fending off an increasingly desperate crowd – don’t leave in the next eight days.

Biden should immediately resign, but he will never do that.

Of course there are others that also should share in the blame.

Just like much of the rest of our society, the brass at the Pentagon has been getting increasingly incompetent over the years, but up until recently it hasn’t been talked about too much.

But now that our failures in Afghanistan have been exposed for the whole world to see, the mainstream media is having a field day mocking them. For example, the following comes from the New York Post…

To the surprise of only the Biden administration and its top brass, the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan last week after 20 years of frivolous American adventurism. It was a spectacular failure of American diplomacy, statecraft, intelligence and, most of all, military capability. In short, mission very much not accomplished.

But that’s pretty much standard operating procedure for the nearly useless behemoth called the Pentagon, which hasn’t won a war since the kinder, gentler American government changed its name from the War Department to the Defense Department shortly after World War II.

So why don’t any of our top military officials ever get fired?

As Darren Beattie has pointed out, NFL head coaches are held to a much higher standard than our generals and admirals are…

Is the head coach always the problem with a bad NFL team? Obviously not. But a head coach is the highly-compensated captain of a $200 million operation, and his job is to win. Coaches who don’t win get fired, because being a perpetual, complacent loser is unacceptable.

The ongoing collapse of the U.S.-backed regime in Afghanistan is the geopolitical equivalent of an NFL team going 0-16 twenty seasons in a row. Perhaps it’s worse than that, in fact. The Afghanistan disaster is the equivalent of an NFL All-Pro team taking on a Division III liberal arts college, being shut out, and then crashing the team bus into a ditch.

If we were to start holding military officials accountable for their performance, firing Mark Milley would be a really good start.

I have absolutely no idea how someone like that got to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Personally, I would not even trust him to mop the floors of the local Dairy Queen.

What is even more tragic is that millions upon millions of Americans unquestionably accept whatever our incompetent leaders tell them to believe without taking the time and effort to think for themselves and come to their own conclusions.

The blind are truly leading the blind, and we are steamrolling down a highway that doesn’t lead anywhere good.

Every great society throughout history has crumbled eventually, and now our society is crumbling too.

I suppose that it was probably inevitable, but do we really have to look so completely and utterly incompetent in the process?

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

The Myth Of U.S. Invincibility Has Now Been Completely Shattered

August 15, 2021August 15, 2021 by Michael

Nobody is going to respect the power of the U.S. military after this. We spent nearly 20 years and more than 2 trillion dollars fighting the war in Afghanistan. Much more importantly, 2,448 U.S. service members lost their lives and thousands more were seriously wounded. After so much heartbreaking sacrifice, the Taliban have won the war. It is inconceivable that the U.S. military could lose to a ragged collection of drug dealers and goat herders, but thanks to an appalling failure of leadership at the White House and in the Pentagon it has happened. Not only have we lost, but the Taliban is actually coming out of this conflict in better shape than ever before. Incredibly, the Taliban appears to be much stronger today than it was just prior to the U.S. invasion in 2001.

How could this happen? For almost two decades the U.S. military has been pounding on them, and you would think that all of that pounding should have completely wiped out the Taliban by now.

But instead, the Taliban has thrived.

Everyone expected the status quo to change once the Biden administration announced that U.S. troops were leaving, but nobody expected the Taliban to conquer the entire country in just a matter of weeks.

It would have been one thing if the Taliban had reconquered the country a year or two after we left. That would have been embarrassing, but not completely and totally humiliating.

At this point, the Taliban are kicking us in the rear on our way out the door. The Afghan army that we trained collapsed like a house of cards, and U.S. helicopters are racing to evacuate “thousands of U.S. diplomats” as the Taliban take full control of Kabul…

In a swift and stunning rout, Taliban fighters seized control of Afghanistan’s capital Sunday, completing their sweep of the besieged nation as the Afghan government collapsed after two decades of U.S. efforts to reshape the region as part of its “war on terror.”

Embattled President Ashraf Ghani fled the country as the Taliban entered the capital city of Kabul, and American troops scrambled to evacuate thousands of U.S. diplomats and Afghans from the U.S. Embassy.

On Sunday afternoon, the entire world was shocked by footage of Taliban fighters “lounging in chairs” inside the presidential palace…

Later, video put out by Al Jazeera appeared to show extraordinary images of armed Taliban fighters inside the Afghan presidential palace, lounging in chairs, strolling around with their guns and taking pictures of each other. The fighters give a tour to the Al Jazeera journalist, and at one point one rolls up an Afghan flag in the palace and puts it on a mantle piece.

They rolled into Kabul with no fear, because they know that the U.S. doesn’t have the will to fight anymore.

If someone else was in the White House, U.S. air power may have been used to bomb Taliban forces into oblivion and prevent them from conquering the capital.

But with Biden in power, nothing was done, and a Taliban commander that spent eight years in Guantanamo Bay gave a victory speech that the rest of the world will not soon forget…

A Taliban commander claimed he spent eight years in Guantanamo Bay in a triumphant speech from inside the Presidential Palace in Kabul as the militants declared an Islamic state of Afghanistan after the country’s president joined thousands of Afghan nationals in a mass exodus.

Taliban fighters stormed the ancient palace on Sunday and demanded a ‘peaceful transfer of power’ as the capital city descended into chaos, with US helicopters evacuating diplomats from the embassy in scenes echoing the 1975 Fall of Saigon which followed the Vietnam War.

The Biden administration is trying to insist that this is nothing like the fall of Saigon, but the truth is that it is exactly like the fall of Saigon.

In fact, iconic photographs taken 45 years apart that are eerily similar are going viral all over social media right now.

After watching what has just transpired, do you think Iran will fear us?

I think not.

And of course the Russians and the Chinese are almost certainly howling with laughter as they watch this drama play out.

We desperately needed to keep the illusion of U.S. military might alive, because the reality is that the U.S. military is now only a mere shadow of what it once was.

Traditional military men have been forced out of the service in large numbers, and they are being replaced by “woke” snowflakes that are far more interested in “social justice” than they are in fighting real wars. Needless to say, this transformation is being spearheaded by the White House and the brass at the Pentagon. When I look at the “men” that are running the Pentagon now, I feel like I am going to throw up in my mouth.

My father served in the U.S. military, and I was proud to be the son of an officer in the U.S. Navy.

But I am not proud of the U.S. military today.

Instead, I am deeply embarrassed by what it has become.

We have completely lost our way, and when it comes time to fight a major war we are going to get our rear ends handed to us.

And now thanks to the Taliban, the rest of the world has been shown how weak we really are.

Nearly 20 years ago we went into Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban, but now we are the ones that have been defeated…

“On Day One, we go in, and the Taliban is in charge. Twenty years later, the Taliban is back in charge,” said Jack Weinstein, a former Pentagon official and expert on international security.

“I don’t know how you couch that as a victory,” he said.

So where do we go from here?

There will come a time when the U.S. military is desperately needed, but at this point it is not ready for any sort of a large scale conflict.

The U.S. military should be the greatest fighting force on the entire planet, but instead our politicians have turned it into a giant social justice experiment.

Sadly, many Americans may not understand the importance of having a competent military until it is far too late.

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

Retired Air Force Colonel With Three Graduate Degrees Is Homeless And Sleeps In A Van

January 6, 2014January 6, 2014 by Michael

What advice would you give to a retired Air Force Colonel that has three graduate degrees and that cannot even find work as a janitor? 59-year-old Robert Freniere once served as a special assistant to General Stanley McChrystal, and he has spent extensive time in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But now this man who once had an office in the heart of the Pentagon cannot find anyone who will hire him. In addition to his story, in this article you will also hear about several other middle-aged professionals that cannot find work in this economy either. Despite what the Obama administration and the mainstream media are telling you, the truth is that there has been no employment recovery in this country. What you are about to read is absolutely heartbreaking, but it represents the reality of what is really going on out there in the streets of America today.

A lot of unemployed Americans believe that they cannot find work because they don’t have enough “education” or enough “experience”. Well, the truth is that there are a whole lot of people out there like Freniere that have lots of both and still can’t even get hired as a janitor…

After a 30-year military career in which he earned three graduate degrees, rose to the rank of colonel, and served as an aide to Pentagon brass, Robert Freniere can guess what people might say when they learn he’s unemployed and lives out of his van:

Why doesn’t this guy get a job as a janitor?

Freniere answers his own question: “Well, I’ve tried that.”

Freniere, 59, says that his plea for help, to a janitor he once praised when the man was mopping the floors of his Washington office, went unfulfilled. So have dozens of job applications, he says, the ones he has filled out six hours a day, day after day, on public library computers.

So Freniere, a man who braved multiple combat zones and was hailed as “a leading light” by an admiral, is now fighting a new battle: homelessness.

You can read the rest of that article right here. This just shows how badly the private sector in the United States is failing. Someone with Freniere’s education and experience should be able to find work easily if our economy truly was healthy.

And of course Freniere is far from alone. Just consider the story of 59-year-old Nancy Shields…

Earlier last year, the 59-year-old Shields lost her townhouse and now rents a single room in her Southern California town. At one point, she managed a team of 60 people for a large retailer. She lost that job in 2011 but took another one—and a 20 percent pay cut—some months later. When that store closed in 2012, her luck ran out, and she has been looking for work ever since.

“My federal [unemployment] benefits (were) about $1,200 a month, and that’s all I get. … I have been very dependent on the generosity of my family members,” Shields said.

Her retirement savings exhausted, Shields said she doesn’t know what she’ll do if Congress doesn’t eventually authorize an extension.

As I have written about previously, a lot of unemployed Americans are going to lose their last lifeline now that their extended unemployment benefits are being cut off. In fact, it is being projected that a total of 5 million unemployed Americans will lose their benefits by the end of 2014. Many of those unemployed workers will end up losing everything. One example of this is 53-year-old biotech researcher Vera Volk…

Massachusetts resident Vera Volk also has a master’s degree, but the 53-year-old biotech researcher lost her job at the end of May and has been selling prized possessions in order to stay afloat.

“We’ve had to cash in everything that we could potentially cash in,” Volk said. “We’ve got our water heater down to the lowest we could potentially tolerate.” Volk’s extended unemployment benefits of $480 a week are the couple’s sole source of income. They’re four months behind on their mortgage, and although she and her husband have chronic health conditions, they couldn’t afford to keep paying for health insurance.

What would you do if you lost your job and couldn’t find another one no matter how hard you tried?

How would you stay afloat?

For 37-year-old Jeremy Botta, it is probably going to come down to selling off his most important possessions…

The pickup truck will probably be the first thing to go.

It’s the first new car that Jeremy Botta has ever bought, using his savings from working for more than 14 years at the same auto repair shop. “I bent over backwards—I worked almost a 100 hours a week on my salary to turn that store around,” said Botta, 37, who was laid off in April after the shop changed owners.

Have you ever worked 100 hours a week?

There are many Americans out there that put in crazy hours month after month and end up with nothing to show for it.

Now Botta is facing the very real possibility that he will have to sell his house just to survive…

“If it comes down to it, I’ll have to sell the house,” says Botta, who bought the place in Bend, Ore., just months before he suddenly lost his job, which netted him as much as $60,000 in a good year. Having already raided his retirement savings, Botta thinks he’ll need to take three or four part-time jobs, working 60 to 70 hours a week just to get by without the unemployment checks.

“I don’t know how people make it on minimum wage,” says Botta. Having applied for nearly 100 jobs without luck—including cashier’s positions at Home Depot and Lowe’s—Botta expects he’ll be pumping gas if he’s lucky.

In a previous article entitled “15 Signs That The Quality Of Jobs In America Is Going Downhill Really Fast“, I detailed how the quality of the jobs in the United States is rapidly deteriorating.

And these days it is not just those with little education that are being forced to work low paying jobs. In fact, the number of college graduates working minimum wage jobs has doubled since 2007.

In addition, according to a National Employment Law Project study about 60 percent of the jobs that have been “created” since the end of the last recession pay $13.83 or less an hour.

But you can’t support a family on that kind of an income. In millions of homes in America today, both the father and the mother work multiple jobs and there still isn’t enough money at the end of the month.

The middle class is being systematically destroyed and poverty is absolutely soaring. In some areas of the country, more than 40 percent of the people live below the poverty line. You can check out an interactive map which shows where the highest levels of poverty in America are right here. As you can see, the southern half of the nation has been hit particularly hard.

In a desperate attempt to stay afloat, more Americans than ever are turning to emergency loans. I have written about the payday loan scam previously, but now a new twist on that scam has emerged.

They are being called “workplace loans”, and companies all over America are beginning to offer them as “benefits” to their workers. But the effective annual percentage rate on these loans can be as high as 165 percent…

Arizona Restaurant Systems Inc., a Scottsdale, Ariz., company that operates 28 Sonic locations in the state, allows workers to take out loans ranging from $150 to $500 that typically last two weeks.

The fees, ranging from $8 to $25 plus interest, don’t go to the restaurant franchisee, but to a lender called Think Finance Inc., which makes the loans. Based on the fees, the loans carry an effective annual percentage rate of 100% to 165%.

Please don’t get trapped in any of those loans. They simply are not worth it.

Unfortunately, this is just the start of our economic problems. We are in the midst of a long-term economic decline that will soon greatly accelerate.

And despite relentless propaganda from the mainstream media about how “good” things are, most Americans are very pessimistic about where things are headed. According to a survey conducted in December by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 54 percent of all Americans believe that life in America will “go downhill” as we approach 2050, and only 23 percent believe that life will improve during the next few decades.

Also, Americans seem to have very little faith in the federal government at this point. According to a shocking new poll that was just released, only one out of every 20 Americans believe that the government is functioning well and needs no changes, and 70 percent of all Americans do not have confidence that the government will “make progress on the important problems and issues facing the country in 2014.”

If you are waiting for our politicians to fix everything and save the day, you can quit holding your breath. They are way too busy having fun and raising money for their next campaigns.

For example, despite the fact that our country is falling apart all around us, Barack Obama just took an extended holiday vacation out in Hawaii and played his 160th round of golf since taking office.

Our “leaders” are not going to rescue us from what is coming. That is why it is imperative to get prepared for the coming storm while you still can.

Time is running out.

What Have We Gotten For The Trillion Dollars We Have Spent On Wars In Afghanistan, Iraq And Libya?

October 25, 2011October 25, 2011 by Michael

Over a trillion U.S. taxpayer dollars have been spent on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Whether you are for the wars or against the wars, it is important for all of us to step back and evaluate what we have really gotten for all of that money. In Libya, we have actually helped al-Qaeda forces that were shooting at U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan take over the country. Now they have announced that they will be imposing strict Sharia law on all of Libya. After 10 years of having our boys shot up in Afghanistan, the Afghan government is so “grateful” that they are publicly saying that they will side with Pakistan in any future war against the United States. In Iraq, Islamic radicals are beheading and murdering dozens and dozens of Christians and the new Iraqi government seemingly can’t wait to push the remaining U.S. soldiers out of the country. We ran up well over a trillion dollars of new debt to “liberate” these countries, but are they really in better shape than they were before these wars? Are we really in better shape than we were before these wars?

Today, the United States military has at least one base in more than half of all the nations on the planet.

The U.S. spends more than 7 times as much on the military as any other country on earth does.

Without a doubt, the United States will always need a strong military. But with the national debt soaring to unprecedented heights, is it really wise for us to try to be the police of the entire globe?

We have poured well over a trillion dollars into Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and we have very little to show for it.

Are Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya safer places than before we went to war with them?

No.

Are Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya producing fewer “terrorists” than before we went to war with them?

No.

Are we safer than before we started all these wars?

No.

Our government has spent well over a trillion dollars and the blood of thousands upon thousands of U.S. soldiers has been spilled and in the final analysis very little has actually been accomplished.

Let’s take a closer look at these conflicts and see exactly what we have gotten for all of the money that we have spent….

Libya

In Libya, we have actually helped al-Qaeda take power.

In Afghanistan and Iraq we were supposedly fighting to do just the opposite.

So just what in the world is going on here?

The price tag for the first week of airstrikes on Libya alone was 600 million dollars.

Yes, Gaddafi was a tyrant, but have we invested a lot of time and effort only to watch as an even worse government takes power?

According to The Telegraph, the leader of the Libyan rebels was openly admitting that his “troops” included jihadists that were firing bullets at U.S. forces in Iraq….

Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

A recent article by Kurt Nimmo for Infowars.com discussed some of the other ways that al-Qaeda has been active in Libya during the fight against Gaddafi….

Despite Aujali’s assurance, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, the former head of LIFG, was appointed to run a military council in September. He fought with al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In February, it was reported that al-Qaeda had set-up an Islamic emirate in Derna, in eastern Libya, headed by a former prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, Abdelkarim al-Hasadi.

Now that they have won, the “rebels” have announced that they will be imposing strict Sharia law all over Libya.

According to a new article posted on The Telegraph, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the chairman of NATO’s National Transitional Council, has even announced plans to repeal polygamy laws because they are not compliant with Sharia law….

Mr Abdul-Jalil went further, specifically lifting immediately, by decree, one law from Col. Gaddafi’s era that he said was in conflict with Sharia – that banning polygamy.

Should we be cheering this?

Why would the U.S. government want to spend a single penny helping al-Qaeda take over Libya and set up Sharia law there?

There should not be a single American (conservative or liberal) that supports what has gone down in Libya.

Afghanistan

The U.S. military has now been in Afghanistan for 10 years. World War II lasted less than 6 years. The U.S. government has spent over 467 billion dollars on the war in Afghanistan, and thousands upon thousands of our troops have been killed or wounded there.

Even after all this time, a single day of the war in Afghanistan costs more money than it took to build the entire Pentagon.

So are the Afghans grateful that we have sacrificed so much to bring “democracy” to that nation?

Of course not.

Just check out what Afghan President Hamid Karzai said during one recent interview….

“God forbid, If ever there is a war between Pakistan and America, Afghanistan will side with Pakistan”

Did you catch that?

Karzai says that in a future war between Pakistan and the United States, Afghanistan is going to be fighting against us.

But didn’t we bring them freedom?

No, we did not.

Instead, one radical Islamic government replaced another.

Today, there are officially zero Christian churches left in Afghanistan.

The new constitution of Afghanistan says that that Islam is the “religion of the state“.

The new constitution of Afghanistan also states that “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam”.

Earlier this year, I wrote about one Afghan man that was actually sentenced to death for converting to Christianity….

In Afghanistan right now, a one-legged Afghan Red Cross worker named Said Musa is sitting in a prison cell awaiting his execution. Musa, a father of six children, was arrested by the Afghan government as he attempted to seek asylum at the German embassy last year. He was sentenced to death by an Afghan court that was established by the new Afghan government that the United States worked so hard to set up. He has been tortured and sexually abused for months. An Afghan judge has told him that he will be hung within a matter of days. So what was his crime? He was a Muslim that has become a Christian. Under Sharia law, that is punishable by death. Is this is the “freedom” that we have sacrificed so many American lives to bring to Afghanistan?

Thankfully he was later released from prison and was able to get out of the country.

However, this just shows that the people of Afghanistan are currently experiencing a level of freedom that is quite comparable to what they experienced under the Taliban.

After all that the United States has done over there, very little positive change has taken place.

Iraq

Up to now, it is estimated that the U.S. government has spent over 800 billion dollars on the war in Iraq.

Thousands upon thousands of U.S. soldiers lost arms and legs in Iraq.

Thousands of U.S. soldiers will never be coming home at all.

But after all of our efforts, Iraq is still a far less safe place than it was before we invaded.

Christians and other religious minorities once were able to worship in peace, but now they are racing to get out of Iraq as fast as they can.

Why?

Well, because Christians and other religious minorities are being brutally targeted by Islamic radicals.

For example, about a year ago more than 80 Iraqi Christians were beheaded on a single day. All that the Christians were trying to do was attend a church service. One four-month-old baby was actually beheaded right in front of her parents. You can see pictures of the shocking violence from that day right here.

Iraq is a complete and total disaster zone at this point.

The Iraqi government says that it is willing for U.S. military trainers to stay in the country, but they also say that there will be no more immunity for U.S. soldiers.

We have left the country in far worse shape than we found it, and Iraq is now a bigger breeding ground for terrorists than it ever was before.

You see, the truth is that the populations of these countries will continue to hold a grudge once we leave. They are simply not going to forgive and forget. There are millions of Islamic radicals in these countries that will never, ever, ever forgive the United States. The hatred that they feel for us could be passed down for generations.

We have not brought freedom to the people of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Instead, we have just replaced the tyranny that they were suffering under with new forms of tyranny.

Meanwhile, we continue to spend ourselves into oblivion.

Yes, the U.S. will always need a strong military.

Yes, there are areas where we actually need to spend more on the military. For example, now that Barack Obama has completely gutted our strategic nuclear arsenal, that is one area that we desperately need to attend to.

However, we simply cannot continue to recklessly spend money like we are today. We are in debt up to our eyeballs, and trying to be “the police of the world” is very expensive….

*Before the start of the “War on Terror”, the U.S. national debt was under 6 trillion dollars. Today, it is getting very close to 15 trillion dollars.

*Right now, the U.S. military is in nearly 130 different nations and it has a total of approximately 700 military bases around the world. It takes about 100 billion dollars a year to maintain these bases.

*U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined.

*The United States accounts for 46.5% of all military spending on the planet. China is in second place with only 6.6%.

Meanwhile, our national security just continues to deteriorate. Millions of people have illegally poured across our border with Mexico and the federal government is actually suing border states such as Arizona to keep them from trying to stop this.

Our national security priorities are way, way out of whack. We continue to waste money in some of the most bizarre ways imaginable and yet we continue to become less secure with each passing year.

Yes, the United States needs a very, very strong military.

Yes, national security needs to be a very, very high priority.

But what we have been doing over the past decade has not worked. In fact, the Bush/Obama foreign policy has been an abject failure. We have poured hundreds of billions of dollars down the drain and we are less secure today than at any point since World War II.

It is time to admit that Barack Obama and George W. Bush have been fundamentally wrong about these wars. Because of their foolishness, we are less safe today and our allies are less safe today.

Afghanistan is not our friend now. Neither is Iraq. Libya looks like it is going to become an al-Qaeda paradise thanks to us.

There is very little “freedom” in those 3 nations today. Instead, “Islamic law” is being shoved down the throats of the people living in those countries.

So, in the final analysis, what have we really accomplished?