Obama Betrays Israel At The United Nations – Is America’s Reprieve Now Over?

un-security-council-meeting-public-domainBarack Obama actually did it.  Despite enormous pressure from the government of Israel, President-elect Donald Trump and members of his own party in Congress, Barack Obama decided to stick a knife in Israel’s back at the United Nations.  On Friday, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution that calls for a “two-State solution based on the 1967 lines” and that shockingly states that “the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity”.  This resolution was approved by a vote of 14 to 0, and the U.S. abstained from voting.  But essentially the outcome of the vote was going to be determined by Barack Obama.  For decades, the U.S. veto power on the UN Security Council has shielded Israel from these types of resolutions, but this time around Obama decided to betray Israel by allowing this vote to pass.  Needless to say, this vote is going to have enormous implications for Israel, for the United States, and for the entire globe.

Just five days ago, I published one of the most important articles that I have ever written.  It was entitled “The Real Reason Why America Has Been Given A Reprieve“, and in that article I explained why the U.S. has experienced a season of blessing since blocking a potential UN Security Council resolution that France wanted to introduce that would have formally divided the land of Israel in September 2015.  If you have not read that article yet, please go back and read it, because it will be of great aid in understanding why this new UN Security Council resolution is so incredibly important.

As I stated in that previous article, it is my contention that the reason why things have gone so well for the United States over the past 16 months is because Barack Obama made the right decision in September 2015 and chose to protect the land of Israel from being divided.

But now that Barack Obama has reversed course and has greatly betrayed Israel, is America’s reprieve now over?

For months, I have been warning that Barack Obama may do something like this at the UN during the waning days of his presidency.  You can see some examples of my previous warnings here, here and here.  And I have also been warning about the severe consequences that the United States would face if our government did ultimately decide to betray Israel.

This UN Security Council resolution that was passed on Friday was originally going to be put up for a vote on Thursday.  But after enormous pressure from the government of Israel and from President-elect Donald Trump, Egypt decided to withdraw the resolution that they had proposed at the last moment.

When that happened, it looked like everything was going to be okay.

However, temporary members of the UN Security Council New Zealand, Malaysia, Venezuela and Senegal immediately objected to Egypt’s move, and they indicated that they would submit the resolution for a vote if Egypt would not.

So on Friday a vote took place, and Obama did what many had been fearing.  The following comes from the New York Times

Defying extraordinary pressure from President-elect Donald J. Trump and furious lobbying by Israel, the Obama administration on Friday allowed the United Nations Security Council to adopt a contentious resolution that condemned Israeli settlement construction.

The administration’s decision not to veto the measure broke a longstanding American tradition of serving as Israel’s sturdiest diplomatic shield.

President-elect Trump publicly said that he would have vetoed this resolution, but now it will be virtually impossible for him to reverse it.

Another vote of the UN Security Council would be necessary to reverse it, and the votes simply would not be there.  And even if they were, either Russia or China could use the veto power that they possess to block it.

So this resolution is going to be permanent, and it is considered to be legally binding on both Israel and the Palestinians.

It seems fitting that Barack Obama is vacationing in Hawaii while all of this drama is playing out.  Perhaps while he is on the golf course he is enjoying a good laugh about how he really stuck it to his long-time nemesis Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Needless to say, the Israeli government is absolutely furious that Obama has betrayed them.  The following comes from U.S. News & World Report

An Israeli official on Friday accused President Barack Obama of colluding with the Palestinians in a “shameful move against Israel at the U.N.” after learning the White House did not intend to veto a Security Council resolution condemning settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem the day before.

“President Obama and Secretary Kerry are behind this shameful move against Israel at the U.N.,” the official said. “The U.S administration secretly cooked up with the Palestinians an extreme anti-Israeli resolution behind Israel’s back which would be a tail wind for terror and boycotts and effectively make the Western Wall occupied Palestinian territory,” he said calling it “an abandonment of Israel which breaks decades of US policy of protecting Israel at the UN.”

You can read the full text of the UN Security Council resolution that was just adopted right here.  These are some of the highlights that I pulled out of the document…

-It refers to Israel as “the occupying Power”

-It calls for a “two-State solution based on the 1967 lines”

-It speaks of a Middle East “where two democratic States, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace within secure and recognized borders”

-It demands “the dismantlement of all settlement outposts erected since March 2001”

-To me, the following is the key paragraph in the entire resolution…

Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace

-It stipulates “that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem”

-It states that the UN Security Council “will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations”

-It expresses a belief that “the cessation of all Israeli settlement activities is essential for salvaging the two-State solution, and calls for affirmative steps to be taken immediately to reverse the negative trends on the ground that are imperilling the two-State solution”

-It calls on all UN member states “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967”

This is the most anti-Israel resolution that the UN Security Council has ever passed, and it never would have happened without Barack Obama’s approval.

The Israeli government and the Obama administration have had a very strained relationship for years, and this moment represents the culmination of tensions that have been building for a very long time.

But does this resolution actually represent the “division of the land of Israel” at the United Nations that so many have been waiting for?

I don’t know if I have a definitive answer to that question for you today.  The language of this resolution does not directly give formal recognition to a Palestinian state, but it does speak of a “democratic state” of “Palestine”, and it does speak of “Palestinian territory”.  It calls Israel “the occupying Power”, and it does say that all Israeli settlements in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem are illegal.  And on top of everything else, the UN Security Council clearly stated that it “will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations”.

So it seems clear that the UN Security Council has affirmed three major points that we have been watching for…

#1 A Palestinian state exists.

#2 The 1967 ceasefire lines represent the borders between the state of Israel and Palestine, but future negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians could alter these borders.

#3 East Jerusalem belongs to the Palestinians.  This resolution does not refer to East Jerusalem as the future capital of Palestine, but that is obviously what is intended.

But perhaps another resolution will come later which will give official UN Security Council recognition to a Palestinian state.

At this point, we just don’t know.

However, what we do know is that for decades whenever the U.S. has taken steps toward dividing the land of Israel it has resulted in dramatic consequences for our nation.

It is my contention that this betrayal of Israel at the United Nations by Barack Obama represents a major turning point.  I believe that America’s reprieve is now over, and that many of the things that people have been anticipating since September 2015 will start happening.

Barack Obama just made the worst decision of his entire presidency, and from this point forward nothing is ever going to be the same again.

The Real Reason Why America Has Been Given A Reprieve

america-has-been-given-a-reprieve-public-domainThis is one of the most important articles that I have written in a long time.  The strange events of the past year and a half have befuddled and mystified many, and in this article I am going to explain why America has been given a temporary reprieve.  If you go back to June 2015, I warned my readers that major financial problems were imminent, and sure enough in August 2015 we witnessed the greatest financial shaking that we had seen in seven years.  I remember getting emails from my readers applauding me for absolutely nailing that prediction, but we were all concerned about what was coming next in September.  If you will recall, there was more buzz about September 2015 than any other month that I can ever recall.  That was the month of the last blood moon, the end of the Shemitah year and the Pope’s visit to the United States among other things.  There was a tremendous amount of anticipation that the crisis that had begun in August 2015 would greatly accelerate in September and lead us into a period of cataclysmic global chaos.  But that did not happen.  Instead, U.S. financial markets calmed down and eventually recovered.  There was a shift in the political realm as well, as the second half of 2015 marked the rise of Donald Trump.  During those key months, Trump miraculously built a commanding lead in the race for the Republican nomination that none of his opponents were ever able to overcome.  And now that Trump has won the election, an economic surge appears to be happening that is unlike anything that we have witnessed in many years.

Compared to much of the rest of the world, America appears to have been blessed over the past year and a half.  Our financial markets have performed extremely well, the U.S. dollar is the strongest that is has been in over a decade, and jobs are coming back to the United States.

None of this was supposed to happen.  In fact, our financial system was in such bad shape a year and a half ago that it was being projected that the U.S. would be on the bleeding edge of the next crisis.  But instead here we stand safe, prosperous and seemingly secure.

How in the would can we explain this?

What I am about to share with you I have previously shared on national television down at Morningside, but it has been brought to my attention that I have never shared this with my readers on The Economic Collapse Blog.  I apologize for this, because the past year and a half doesn’t make any sense until you understand these things.

When people look back at September 2015, they always forget the most critical event.  In addition to everything else that was going on that month, France had a UN Security Council resolution all ready to go that would have permanently divided the land of Israel, that would have given formal UN Security Council recognition to a Palestinian state for the very first time, and that would have given East Jerusalem to the Palestinians as the capital of their new state.

The rest of the UN Security Council was ready to go along with the French resolution, but there was just one country standing in the way.

The United States has veto power on the UN Security Council, and so the Obama administration had the power to potentially block the resolution.  After carefully considering the matter, the Obama administration decided that it was not the time for such a resolution, and so France never submitted it for a vote.

Just about everything else that Barack Obama did throughout his entire presidency was bad, but in this instance he got something completely right.  The decision whether or not to divide the land of Israel was in his hands, and he made the right call.

Once this decision was made, it was almost as if someone hit a “pause button”.  None of the bad things that people were forecasting ending up happening, and since that decision America has been blessed compared to the rest of the world.

And this is perfectly consistent with what God said that He would do.  Starting in Genesis 12 and continuing all throughout the Scriptures, God promises to bless those that bless Israel and to curse those that curse Israel.

In this case, Barack Obama blessed Israel by preventing the UN Security Council from dividing the land, and so we were blessed as a result.

But of course there have been many other instances over the past several decades when we have been cursed as a nation for attempting to take steps toward the division of the land of Israel.  One of the most notable instances took place in 1991 when George H. W. Bush got the Israelis and the Palestinians together for the very first time to discuss the dividing of the land of Israel into two states…

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At that conference, the New York Times reported that Bush told Israel that “territorial compromise is essential for peace”.  Needless to say, this upset a lot of people…

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At the exact same time that conference was going on, the “Perfect Storm” was raging in the North Atlantic.  Three major storms merged together, and instead of canceling one another out, they formed the kind of storm that is normally only seen once in a lifetime.  If you will remember, Hollywood made a big blockbuster with George Clooney that was based on this storm.  This gigantic storm went 1000 miles the wrong direction and slammed directly into the home of George H. W. Bush while he was at the Madrid conference talking about the need to divide the land of Israel…

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Another very notable example of this phenomenon came in 2005.  At that time, George W. Bush (the son of George H. W. Bush) had convinced Israel that it should pull all of the settlers out of Gaza and turn it entirely over to the Palestinians.  According to the New York Times, the last of the settlers was evacuated on August 23, 2005…

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On that exact same day, a little storm that came to be known as Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas.  It shocked forecasters by turning directly toward New Orleans, and it ultimately became the costliest natural disaster in all of U.S. history up until that time.

There are dozens more examples like this, and men like John McTernan, William Koenig and David Brennan have done a great job documenting them.

Today, 137 nations have already recognized a Palestinian state.  The holdouts are mostly in North America and Europe…

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France and most of the rest of Europe have been eager and ready to recognize a Palestinian state for quite a while now, but they don’t really want to move forward without the United States.

And of course they can’t officially do anything at the UN Security Council without U.S. approval.

Barack Obama had been hoping to achieve something through direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but those totally broke down and there is no hope that there will be any new negotiations any time soon.

So Barack Obama knows that his only shot at “leaving a legacy” in the Middle East is at the United Nations, and earlier this year he said that a UN Security Council resolution that would recognize a Palestinian state was “on the table” for the very first time…

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At that time he did not indicate which way that he would go, and although there have been rumblings that something might happen, he has not taken any action yet.

But now time is running out for Obama, because his term is scheduled to end on January 20th.  The advocates of a “two state solution” are becoming increasingly desperate, because they know that Donald Trump has already promised not to support a UN Security Council resolution that would divide the land of Israel.  So they know that if something is going to be done, it has got to be done now.

A UN Security Council resolution would be legally binding on both the Israelis and the Palestinians, and it would be something that Donald Trump would not be able to undo.  Another vote of the UN Security Council would be required to revoke a resolution once it has been passed, and the votes would not be there to do that.

So the next month is absolutely critical.  The UN Security Council still has time to take action while Obama is still in office, and we know that such a move is actively being considered.  For much, much more on this, please see the following articles that I have recently authored…

-“Jimmy Carter Urges Barack Obama To Divide The Land Of Israel At The United Nations Before January 20th

-“John Bolton Warns That Obama May Divide The Land Of Israel At The UN Before The Inauguration

-“The Danger Zone: Why Israel Greatly Fears Barack Obama’s Last Few Months In Office

-“The New York Times Calls For Obama To Support A UN Resolution That Would Divide The Land Of Israel

If we can get to January 20th and the land of Israel has not been divided by the UN Security Council and Donald Trump successfully takes office, perhaps our reprieve will be extended for a while.

But if Barack Obama very foolishly allows the land of Israel to be divided at the UN Security Council before January 20th, the “pause button” will be unpaused, our blessing will be turned into a curse, and all hell will break loose in America.

Dead People And Illegal Immigrants Are Being Registered To Vote All Over America

votingWithout free and fair elections, what hope is there for the future of America?  The integrity of our voting process is of the utmost importance, and yet so little attention is being paid to it.  Later this week I am going to share some documented facts about voting fraud during the 2012 election that most Americans have never even heard about, and it is absolutely imperative that we don’t allow this kind of funny business to happen again this time.  Today, I am going to share some examples of how dead people and illegal immigrants are actually being registered to vote all over America.  Despite very strong and very angry denials by the mainstream media, the truth is that election fraud is absolutely rampant in this country, and when someone tries to steal an election they are committing a crime against all of us.

Let’s start with what just happened in Virginia.  A college student at James Madison University is under investigation for registering 19 dead people to vote so that he could vote for Hillary Clinton a whole bunch of times

Just yesterday we wrote about an FBI investigation into potential voter fraud in the critical swing state of Virginia after it was revealed that 19 dead people had recently been re-registered to vote (see “FBI Investigating More Dead People Voting In The Key Swing State Of Virginia“).  While the Washington Post caught wind of the investigation, it was not known who was behind the operation…until now.

Meet, Andrew Spieles, a student at James Madison University, and apparently “Lead Organizer” for HarrisonburgVOTES.  According to the Daily News-Record, Spieles confessed to re-registering 19 deceased Virginians to vote in the 2016 election cycle.

While this should come as a surprise to precisely 0 people, Spieles just happens to be Democrat who, accorded to a deleted FaceBook post, apparently recently ran for Caucus Chair of the Virginia Young Democrats.

In recent weeks I have been researching election fraud extensively, and almost every time it involves Democrats.  Perhaps they take lying, cheating and stealing a lot less seriously than Republicans do.  This student at James Madison University was caught when a note congratulating a deceased veteran for registering to vote was sent to his family.  The following comes from the Washington Post

One case came to light after relatives of a deceased man received a note congratulating him for registering, Rockingham County Commonwealth’s Attorney Marsha Garst said Thursday.

“His family members were very distraught,” said Garst, who confirmed the existence of the FBI and police investigation but said she could provide few details because the case is ongoing.

Of course there are lots of other examples of this kind of thing happening around the nation.  In the swing state of Colorado, an investigation has uncovered a “very serious” pattern of dead people actually casting votes in multiple elections.  One has to wonder how long this has been going on

Local officials in Colorado acknowledged “very serious” voter fraud after learning of votes cast in multiple elections under the named of recently-deceased residents.

A local media outlet uncovered the fraud by comparing voting history databases in the state with federal government death records. “Somebody was able to cast a vote that was not theirs to cast,” El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Chuck Broerman told CBS4 while discussing what he called a “very serious” pattern of people mailing in ballots on behalf of the dead.

It’s not clear how many fraudulent ballots have been submitted in recent years. CBS4 reported that it “found multiple cases” of dead people voting around the state, revelations that have provoked state criminal investigations.

It also turns out that dead people have been voting in California.  In fact, one dead man in the state has been casting votes since 2004, and authorities have found “hundreds” of similar examples…

“He took a lot of time choosing his candidates,” said Annette Givans of her father, John Cenkner.

Cenkner died in Palmdale in 2003. Despite this, records show that he somehow voted from the grave in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2010.

But he’s not the only one.

CBS2 compared millions of voting records from the California Secretary of State’s office with death records from the Social Security Administration and found hundreds of so-called dead voters.

Do these instances of voting fraud make you angry?

If so, that is good, because they should.  Countless numbers of Americans have laid down their lives to give us the right to vote, and the people behind this vote fraud are making a mockery of their sacrifices.

In the swing state of Pennsylvania, an investigation has found dozens of instances where illegal immigrants have been allowed to vote in recent elections

At least 86 non-citizens have been registered voters in Philadelphia since 2013, and almost half — 40 — even voted in at least one recent election, according to a legal group that sued to get voter registration records.

Joseph Vanderhulst, an attorney with the Public Interest Legal Foundation, noted Philadelphia knows about those 86 illegal voters only because officials received specific requests — in almost every case from the voters themselves — to remove the names from the rolls. He said there is no way to know how many non-citizens might be registered to vote in Philadelphia, let alone in the rest of politically crucial Pennsylvania.

But of course Pennsylvania is far from alone.  It also turns out that lots of illegal immigrants have been voting in Virginia

Philadelphia becomes the latest jurisdiction that the Public Interest Legal Foundation has revealed to have irregularities in the voter rolls. The group recently found 1,046 non-citizens who had been registered to vote in eight Virginia counties and that nearly 200 cast ballots between 2005 and 2015.

It should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense that we need to tighten up our voting laws and that we need much stricter enforcement.  Unfortunately, Democrats typically fight tooth and nail against such measures.

In Indiana, state police just raided a voter registration agency that appears to have been involved in a voting fraud scheme that spanned nine counties.  What they have uncovered so far is extremely alarming

Police said the growing number of involved counties leads investigators to believe that the number of fraudulent records might be in the hundreds.

The possible fraudulent information is a combination of fake names, addresses and dates of birth with real information.

No matter what your political perspective is, the facts that I just laid out should deeply disturb you.

There are documented incidents of voting fraud all over the nation, and it is inexcusable that dead people and illegal immigrants are being allowed to cast votes in our elections.

And later this week I am going to share with you some absolutely amazing evidence that a systematic attempt was made to alter the outcome of the last presidential election.

If we don’t stop these crooks from messing with our elections, it is just going to keep happening over and over again.  So if you see something strange when you go to vote in 2016, please let me know, because I plan to make this a major issue if there is evidence of fraud this time around.

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Creepy Clowns Are Terrorizing Children, Parents And Schools All Over America

creepy-clown-posted-by-karen-mann-hicks-on-facebookAn epidemic of creepy clown sightings is sweeping America, and authorities don’t know who or what is behind it.  In some instances, clowns with horrific expressions painted on their faces have been spotted standing on the side of the road, lurking near the edge of the woods or just roaming about town staring at random people.  But in other instances there have been reports of clowns actually attempting to lure children with gifts, and there have even been some reports of children running away from creepy clowns that were chasing after them.  While doing research for this article, I came across recent creepy clown sightings from South Carolina, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, California, Alabama, Georgia and West Virginia.  This is truly a nationwide phenomenon, and many believe that it will get even worse as Halloween approaches.

This creepy clown trend appears to have begun with a very disturbing case at an apartment complex in South Carolina

Donna Arnold, one of the people residing at the complex who received the letter, said she called the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office to come out to Fleetwood Manor after her son and others reported seeing clowns behind the basketball court.

“I thought my child was seeing things,” Arnold said. “And then the next day I had about 30 kids come up to me and say, ‘Did you see the clown in the woods?”

Community activist Bruce Wilson said he is getting involved at the apartments to make sure children are safe, even if the sightings turn out to be harmless.

Authorities say that their investigation into this incident found that the clowns were approaching children with the intent “to persuade them into the woods further by displaying large amounts of money“.

At least one child that personally interacted with these clowns testified “that they had candy and they would give it to them if they came there“.

Whether people are dressed as clowns or not, attempting to abduct children in no joke.

Unsurprisingly, this case made national headlines, and at that point it appears that a whole host of copycats started to come out of the woodwork.  The following is how an article in the Week summarized what happened next…

A week later, a boy at an apartment ten miles away reported seeing a man in a clown mask in the woods near his home. Later that night, a boy at an apartment just three miles from Fleetwood Manor reported seeing another clown. That apartment also sits on the edge of a wooded area. There was another local sighting the next day. The following day, a woman told police she saw a clown standing outside a Greenville laundromat, simply staring at her.

By then, the clowns had begun to mobilize. The previous day, a 14-year-old boy in Columbus, Ohio, said that a man wearing a clown mask chased him with a knife while the boy was walking to his school bus stop. Less than a week later, on Sept. 5, two children in Winston-Salem, N.C., claimed a clown was offering candy, as long as they would follow him into the woods. Later that night, a woman in the area claimed that a clown tried to coax her into the woods, except this one was carrying a machete. He wore black gloves and a black tie. The next morning, in the nearby town of Greensboro, a man said he saw a clown in the woods behind his apartment. Yellow polka-dotted shirt, blue pants.

Since that time the creepy clown sightings have not stopped, and one of the most alarming incidents of all just took place in McDuffie County, Georgia

“It was this morning at 6:30 when we were leaving at the house,” said Cameron Frails, who saw the clown.

But as Frails and his neighbor, Hannah Rice, started walking, they noticed something.

“I was standing over there,” said Rice. “And I was like, ‘who’s that guy following Cameron?'”

“We saw a man with all black on, clown mask and a red wig,” said Frails.

They said they saw at least two men dressed in all black coming toward them between two trailers, so they started running.

But that isn’t the only report of these creepy clowns trying to chase down children.  Here is another one from Georgia

According to the police report, the woman said the children told her they were leaving the community center as it was getting dark Monday evening when five people dressed as clowns and wearing masks emerged from a white panel van and began chasing them.

The 48-year-old woman also told police she saw a white panel van slowly driving past her home prior to the supposed incident at the community center around the corner, on McKinley Drive.

A lot of the copycats out there may be doing this sort of thing as a prank, but law enforcement authorities are beginning to take this threat very seriously.

In fact, Time Magazine is reporting that two schools in Alabama “were put on lockdown” on Friday due to threats from a group known as “Flomo Clowns”…

Two southern Alabama schools were put on lockdown Friday because of threatening Facebook messages and emojis posted on the now-deleted page of a group called the ‘Flomo Klowns.’

The sinister Facebook messages said “It’s going down tonight,” followed by revolver emojis, and “I love kids.” A parent also contacted the Flomaton Police Department to say her child had been sent threatening messages by the group.

The entrances to Flomaton High School, which has around 400 students, and Flomaton Elementary School, which has about 300, were locked, as well as internal doors. Local officers and sheriff deputies secured the school grounds and searched the area, AL reports.

I think that this is another example of how sick and twisted our society has become.  There are a lot of unbalanced people out there that get a thrill from spreading terror, and the initial clown stories have inspired them to capitalize on this trend.

If you are able to take a photograph or some video of these creepy clowns, please feel free to contact me.  “Killer clown” costumes are always extremely popular during the Halloween season, and I have a feeling that this wave of terror is only going to intensify as we approach the end of October.

One photograph of a creepy clown that was taken on Simmons River Road near Duhring, West Virginia has gotten a lot of attention on social media.  It was originally posted by Karen Mann Hicks on Facebook, and you can view it right here

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Hopefully this creepy clown craze will soon fade, but it is a quick way for deeply disturbed individuals to “get on the news”, and so it seems likely that there will be even more copycats.

But those that are tempted to dress up like creepy clowns and terrorize children should be aware that police all over the nation are taking this very seriously, and arrests will likely be made at the first sign of trouble.

America The Debt Pig: We Are A ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Society – And ‘Pay Later’ Is Rapidly Approaching

America The Pig - Public DomainIf you really wanted to live like a millionaire, you could start doing it right now.  All you have to do is to apply for as many credit cards as possible and then begin running up credit card balances like there is no tomorrow.  At this point, I know what most of you are probably thinking.  You are probably thinking that such a lifestyle would not last for long and that a day of reckoning would eventually come, and you would be exactly right.  In fact, anyone that has ever had a tremendous amount of credit card debt knows how painful that day of reckoning can be.  To mindlessly run up credit card debt is exceedingly reckless, but unfortunately that is precisely what we have been doing as a nation as a whole.  We are a “buy now, pay later” society, and our national day of reckoning is approaching very, very quickly.

Often we like to focus on our exploding national debt, but household debt is out of control too.  In fact, the total amount of household debt in the United States is now up to a whopping 12.3 trillion dolllars

In the second quarter, total household debt increased by $35 billion to $12.3 trillion, according to the New York Fed’s latest quarterly report on household debt. That increase was driven by two categories: auto loans and credit cards.

We throw around words like “trillion” so often these days that they often start to lose their meaning.  But the truth is that 12.3 trillion dollars is an astounding amount of money.  It breaks down to about $38,557 for every man, woman and child in the entire country.  So if you have a family of four, your share comes to a grand total of $154,231, and that doesn’t even include corporate debt, local government debt, state government debt or the gigantic debt of the federal government.  That number is only for household debt, and there aren’t too many Americans that could cough up their share right at this moment.

Do you remember when I wrote about how credit card companies are specifically targeting less educated and less sophisticated consumers?  Well, that is where much of the credit card debt growth has come lately.  Just check out these numbers

Now, credit cards are returning among individuals with low credit or subprime credit scores below 660. Among people with credit scores between 620 and 660, the share that had a credit card rose to 58.8% in 2015 from a low of 54.3% in 2013. Among those with scores below 620, the number of people with a credit card increased to 50% from a low of 45.6% two years ago. Both figures for 2015 are the highest since 2008.

In America today, we are enjoying a standard of living that we do not deserve.

We consume far more wealth than we produce.  The only way we are able to do that is by going into debt.

Debt takes future consumption and brings it into the present.  In other words, we are damaging the future in order to make the present a little bit better.  On an individual level, we may enjoy the big screen television we buy with a credit card today, but we are taking away our ability to spend money later.  And on a national level, what our unprecedented debt binge is doing to future generations of Americans is beyond criminal.

Earlier this month I explained these things to a live studio audience down at Morningside, and you can view a video of that right here

In this article I haven’t even talked about corporate debt yet.  Instead of learning their lessons from the last financial crisis, big corporations have gone on the biggest debt spree of all time.  If you can believe it, corporate debt has approximately doubled since the last financial crisis.  In other words, since the last recession we have essentially matched the total amount of corporate debt that we accumulated from the beginning of the country up to 2009.

Unfortunately, a lot of that debt is now going bad.

In previous articles I have documented that corporate debt delinquencies are now the highest that they have been since the last financial crisis, and corporate debt defaults are also the highest that they have been since the last financial crisis.

At this point, even the mainstream media is acknowledging that we have a corporate debt “crisis”.  The following comes from an article that was just put out by the Denver Post

The number of companies that have defaulted so far this year has already passed the total for all of last year, which itself had the most since the financial crisis. Even among companies considered high-quality, or investment grade, credit-rating agencies say a record number are so stretched financially that they’re one bad quarter or so from being downgraded to “junk” status.

Companies whose debt is already deemed “junk” are in the worst shape in years. To pay back all they owe, they would have to set aside every dollar of their operating earnings over the next eight and a half years, more than twice as long as it would have taken during the 2008 crisis, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Are you starting to get the picture?

And I haven’t even started talking about our national debt yet.  When Barack Obama entered the White House, we were 10.6 trillion dollars in debt.  Today, we are 19.4 trillion dollars in debt.  That means that we have added 8.8 trillion dollars to the national debt under Obama, which breaks down to an average of 1.1 trillion dollars of additional debt a year.

We have been taking more than 100 million dollars of future consumption and bringing it into the present every single hour of every single day during the Obama administration.  That is why I am constantly referring to our “debt-fueled standard of living”.  We do not deserve to live the way that we do, but since we are able to steal from our children and our grandchildren we are able to enjoy a standard of living that most people in the world can only dream about.

Of course we are literally destroying the future of America in the process, but very few people seem to care about that these days.

Without all of this debt, we would be in a very deep economic depression right now.

But even with all of this “stimulus”, we are still mired in the worst economic “recovery” since 1949.  In fact, Barack Obama is actually on track to be the very first president in all of American history to not have one single year when U.S. GDP grew by 3 percent or better, and he has had two terms in which to try to get that accomplished.  The percentage of working age Americans that actually have a job is way down from where it was just prior to the last recession, and in this video I explain why the employment numbers put out by the government are not nearly as good as the administration would have us believe…

If the American people would have been willing to sacrifice and make some very hard choices a long time ago, maybe we could have gotten a handle on all of this debt.

But instead we continue to rack up debt as if there is no tomorrow, and in the process we are literally destroying tomorrow.

Every dollar of debt that we accumulate now makes life worse for our children and our grandchildren.

Unfortunately, we are a bunch of debt pigs, and we just can’t help ourselves.  We have come to believe that it is “normal” to go into so much debt, and as a society we continue to race toward economic oblivion.

America: You Will Go Insane Because Of What Your Eyes Will See

Woman Eyes Water - Public DomainA cloud of madness is descending on America, and most of us are completely unprepared for the chaos that will be unleashed during the months ahead.  This morning, I was reading through Deuteronomy when I came to a phrase that really resonated with me.  In the Modern English Version, this is what Deuteronomy 28:34 says: “You will go insane because of what your eyes will see”.  As I read that, it struck me that this is precisely what America is heading for.  There are going to be people that have vast quantities of food and supplies stored up that are still going to blow their brains out when they see what happens to this country because they don’t have any hope.  Without hope, I don’t know how anyone is going to make it through what is coming.  If you think that the unrest and violence in Milwaukee are disturbing, just wait for a while, because much, much worse is on the way.

On Monday, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker declared a state of emergency in Milwaukee, and the National Guard was brought in but not deployed after another night of chaos made headlines all over the globe.  According to Fox News, 11 police officers have been injured by the violence so far…

Chunks of concrete and rocks hurled at police — and shards of glass from shattered squad car windows — injured seven officers, upping the two-day tally to 11 wounded cops, Police Chief Edward Flynn said on Monday.

Additionally, an 18-year-old man was shot and seriously injured, and officers had to use an armored vehicle to retrieve the man and take him to a hospital. Flynn said the city’s ShotSpotter system recorded 30 instances of gunfire on Sunday night, after 48 instances were recorded on Saturday.

It has also been reported that another police vehicle was set on fire late Monday night.  Authorities are desperate to avoid a third night in a row like this, and so a strict curfew has been put in place

After 10 o’clock your teenagers better be home or in a place where they’re off the streets,” Mayor Tom Barrett said.

Barrett made the announcement as tensions remained high in the Sherman Park neighborhood and police were out in force while the National Guard was on standby and ready to move in if necessary.

And that is one of the saddest things about this latest round of violence.  So much of it is being done by youngsters that are just kids.  Their minds have been poisoned, their emotions have been stirred up, and they are committing random acts of violence that would have been unthinkable for American teens to commit just a couple generations ago.

Racial tensions are constantly being fueled by many of our politicians and by the big mainstream news networks.  As a result, instead of coming together as a country and learning to love people no matter where they are from or what they look like, we have entered a time when people are literally becoming fearful of being around others that don’t have the same skin color that they do.  Just check out this quote from CNN

People are afraid of each other,” resident Reginald Jackson said last year. “Black people are afraid of the white parts of town. White people are afraid of the black and Latino parts of town.”

Just two days ago, I delivered an address down at Morningside that was all about love.  As a society, we have got to learn to love one another or we are simply not going to make it.

Since I am the publisher of several major websites, I get to review comments that people leave on the various articles.  Many of those comments never get published on my websites, and in a lot of those instances this is because they contain some of the most hateful racist language imaginable.

Every single person, no matter who they are, where they are from or what they look like, is of immense value.  When we decide to believe otherwise, we are making an absolutely tragic mistake.

It isn’t just in Milwaukee that violence is rising.  Over in Chicago, we just witnessed the deadliest day in more than a decade.  As I recently detailed on The Most Important News, there are at least 150,000 gang members living in Chicago today, and only about 13,000 law enforcement officers of all types to deal with them.  That means that the police are outnumbered by a more than 10 to 1 margin, and at this point shootings are up about 50 percent compared to the same time last year…

Last week the Chicago Tribune pointed out that nearly 100 people had been shot in Chicago in less than a week.  9 people were killed on Monday alone marking the deadliest day for the city in 13 years.  Now, with weekend data out, turns out the story is even worse.  For the week ended 8/13, a total of 110 people were shot in Chicago with 24 of them killed.  YTD statistics indicate the city is spiraling out of control with total shootings up to 2,621, a mere ~50% YoY increase, with 445 total homicides.

The ironic thing is that Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the entire nation.  Obviously, what the liberal politicians have been attempting to do is not working.  The following comes from the New York Times

Not a single gun shop can be found in this city because they are outlawed.  Handguns were banned in Chicago for decades, too, until 2010, when the United States Supreme Court ruled that was going too far, leading city leaders to settle for restrictions some describe as the closest they could get legally to a ban without a ban. Despite a continuing legal fight, Illinois remains the only state in the nation with no provision to let private citizens carry guns in public.

If unrest and violence are spiking this dramatically in places like Milwaukee and Chicago now, what are things going to be like when economic conditions start getting really, really bad in this nation?

During the months and years ahead, we are all going to see things that we never thought we would see happen in America.

In a world gone crazy, people are going to need hope, and that is why hope is going to become a larger and larger part of my message.

Hal Lindsey once said that we “can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air…but only for one second without hope.”

So let us all be a source of hope, because it is going to be in very short supply during the days to come.

Dozens Shot Over Memorial Day Weekend As The Collapse Of Chicago Accelerates

Gang Violence - Public DomainChaos and violence threaten to spiral out of control in America’s third largest city, and nobody seems to have any idea how to solve the problem.  After decades of control by the radical left, many parts of the “Windy City” have become rotting, decaying, gang-infested hellholes.  Just like Detroit, the city of Chicago is rapidly becoming a joke to the rest of the world, but a horribly corrupt political culture likely stands in the way of any type of major reform any time soon.  And just like much of the rest of the nation, a spirit of violence and civil unrest is rising in Chicago.  So far this year, the number of shootings in Chicago is up 50 percent compared to the same time period last year, and that was before we even got to Memorial Day weekend.  As of Sunday morning, at least 40 people had already been shot, and authorities were bracing for even more violence as the holiday weekend stretched on…

A string of nearly two dozen shootings on the West Side has pushed the number of people shot during the Memorial Day weekend to at least 40, with two more days to go.

As of early Sunday morning, the toll stood at four dead and 36 wounded across the city, including a 15-year-girl shot to death as she rode in a Jeep on Lake Shore Drive near Fullerton Avenue, police said.

The cries to fix what is wrong with Chicago are becoming increasingly desperate, but at this point the city is drowning in debt and is pretty much flat broke.

So the options for doing anything about this growing crisis are quite limited.

But that isn’t stopping prominent city leaders from speaking out.  According to the New York Times, Rev. Corey Brooks believes that “we could be looking at a blood bath” this summer if nothing changes…

“If something doesn’t change, if we don’t get jobs for these kids, if we don’t change the economic situation, I’m worried that we could be looking at a blood bath,” said the Rev. Corey Brooks, a pastor on the city’s South Side, a mostly African-American area where some of the shootings have been concentrated. “If something doesn’t happen, I fear that we’re potentially looking at one of the worst summers we’ve ever had.”

As of Friday morning, homicides in Chicago were up 52 percent in 2016, compared with the same period a year ago, and shootings had increased by 50 percent, though the pace of violence had slowed in recent weeks, the police said.

I believe that Rev. Brooks is correct, but he isn’t identifying the core of the problem.

Thanks in large part to unchecked illegal immigration, gang membership has been surging in Chicago.  Back in 2012, the Chicago Crime Commission estimated that there were 150,000 gang members living in the city, but of course by now that number is likely far higher.

No city in the United States has a higher population of gang members than Chicago does, and hundreds of factions are constantly battling for turf.  The police in Chicago insist that they have the situation under control, but everyone can see that they do not.

And how could they?  There are only 13,318 law enforcement officers of all types in the city of Chicago.  They are outnumbered by the gangs by much more than a 10 to 1 margin.  There is no way in the world that they are ever going to be able to stop the gang violence.  All they can do is hope to contain it.

Sadly, they are fighting a losing battle, because with each passing month thousands more gang members cross our southern border illegally and head directly for our major cities where they are warmly received by their gang brothers.

Perhaps this helps to explain why 3,000 millionaires left the city of Chicago last year.

Do you want to know somewhere else that has been controlled by the radical left for decades and that is now seeing chaos and violence spin out of control?

In Venezuela, we get to see what it looks like when an entire country starts to shut down.  The following comes from the New York Times

The courts? Closed most days. The bureau to start a business? Same thing. The public defender’s office? That’s been converted into a food bank for government employees.

Step by step, Venezuela has been shutting down.

This country has long been accustomed to painful shortages, even of basic foods. But Venezuela keeps drifting further into uncharted territory.

At this point, more than 80 percent of all basic consumer products are in short supply, and some people have become so desperate that they are actually hunting cats and dogs for food.  My wife and I had a lot more to say about the rapidly deteriorating situation down in Venezuela during a recent episode of our new television show.  It is so important to watch what is going on down there right now, because eventually the same things will be happening here in America too.

When society breaks down, people become very desperate, and crime spirals out of control.  The mafia and the gangs are having a field day at the moment, and the police are so overwhelmed that they can’t do much to stop them.

And if you need medical treatment down in Venezuela right now, you might as well forget it

The Luis Razetti Hospital in the portal city of Barcelona looks like a war zone.

Patients can be seen balancing themselves on half-broken beds with days-old blood on their bodies.

They’re the lucky ones; most are curled up on the floor, blood streaming, limbs blackening.

Children lie among dirty cardboard boxes in the hallways without food, water or medication.

Without electricity or functioning machines, medics have had to create their own solutions. Two men who had surgery on their legs have their limbs elevated by makeshift slings made out of water bottles.

Most Americans would scoff at the suggestion that we could ever see scenes like that in the United States, but just a few years ago most Venezuelans would have probably said the exact same thing.

For so long, watchmen all over America have been endlessly warning people to get prepared.

But at some point, time runs out.

In fact, down in Venezuela time has already run out.  Store shelves all over the country are empty, there are chronic shortages of basic supplies, some people are hunting dogs and cats for food, and there has been an almost total breakdown of public services.

I wish that I could say that these kinds of conditions are only going to be limited to Venezuela.  But I cannot say that.  Great suffering is going to eventually spread all over the world, and that is going to include our own nation.

I hope that you are using this short period of relative stability wisely, because it will be gone way too soon.

6 Giant Corporations Control The Media, And Americans Consume 10 Hours Of ‘Programming’ A Day

Faces - Public DomainIf you allow someone to pump hours of “programming” into your mind every single day, it is inevitable that it is eventually going to have a major impact on how you view the world.  In America today, the average person consumes approximately 10 hours of information, news and entertainment a day, and there are 6 giant media corporations that overwhelmingly dominate that market.  In fact, it has been estimated that somewhere around 90 percent of the “programming” that we constantly feed our minds comes from them, and of course they are ultimately controlled by the elite of the world.  So is there any hope for our country as long as the vast majority of the population is continually plugging themselves into this enormous “propaganda matrix”?

Just think about your own behavior.  Even as you are reading this article the television might be playing in the background or you may have some music on.  Many of us have gotten to the point where we are literally addicted to media.  In fact, there are people out there that become physically uncomfortable if everything is turned off and they have to deal with complete silence.

It has been said that if you put garbage in, you are going to get garbage out.  It is the things that we do consistently that define who we are, and so if you are feeding your mind with hours of “programming” from the big media corporations each day, that is going to have a dramatic affect on who you eventually become.

These monolithic corporations really do set the agenda for what society focuses on.  For example, when you engage in conversation with your family, friends or co-workers, what do you talk about?  If you are like most people, you might talk about something currently in the news, a television show that you watched last night or some major sporting event that is taking place.

Virtually all of that news and entertainment is controlled by the elite by virtue of their ownership of these giant media corporations.

I want to share some numbers with you that may be hard to believe.  They come directly out of Nielsen’s “Total Audience Report“, and they show how much news and entertainment the average American consumes through various methods each day…

Watching live television: 4 hours, 32 minutes

Watching time-shifted television: 30 minutes

Listening to the radio: 2 hours, 44 minutes

Using  a smartphone: 1 hour, 33 minutes

Using Internet on a computer: 1 hour, 6 minutes

When you add all of those numbers together, it comes to a grand total of more than 10 hours.

And keep in mind that going to movie theaters, playing video games and reading books are behaviors that are not even on this list.

What in the world are we doing to ourselves?

The combination of watching live television and watching time-shifted television alone comes to a total of more than five hours.

If you feed five hours of something into your mind day after day, it is going to change you.  There is no way around that.  You may think that you are strong enough to resist the programming, but the truth is that it affects all of us in very subtle ways that we do not even understand.

And as I mentioned above, there are just six giant corporations that account for almost all of the programming that we receive through our televisions.  Below is a list of these six corporations along with a sampling of the various media properties that they own…

Comcast

NBC
Telemundo
Universal Pictures
Focus Features
USA Network
Bravo
CNBC
The Weather Channel
MSNBC
Syfy
NBCSN
Golf Channel
Esquire Network
E!
Cloo
Chiller
Universal HD
Comcast SportsNet
Universal Parks & Resorts
Universal Studio Home Video

The Walt Disney Company

ABC Television Network
ESPN
The Disney Channel
A&E
Lifetime
Marvel Entertainment
Lucasfilm
Walt Disney Pictures
Pixar Animation Studios
Disney Mobile
Disney Consumer Products
Interactive Media
Disney Theme Parks
Disney Records
Hollywood Records
Miramax Films
Touchstone Pictures

News Corporation

Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox News Channel
Fox Business Network
Fox Sports 1
Fox Sports 2
National Geographic
Nat Geo Wild
FX
FXX
FX Movie Channel
Fox Sports Networks
The Wall Street Journal
The New York Post
Barron’s
SmartMoney
HarperCollins
20th Century Fox
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Blue Sky Studios
Beliefnet
Zondervan

Time Warner

CNN
The CW
HBO
Cinemax
Cartoon Network
HLN
NBA TV
TBS
TNT
TruTV
Turner Classic Movies
Warner Bros.
Castle Rock
DC Comics
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
New Line Cinema
Sports Illustrated
Fortune
Marie Claire
People Magazine

Viacom

MTV
Nickelodeon
VH1
BET
Comedy Central
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Home Entertainment
Country Music Television (CMT)
Spike TV
The Movie Channel
TV Land

CBS Corporation

CBS Television Network
The CW (along with Time Warner)
CBS Sports Network
Showtime
TVGN
CBS Radio, Inc.
CBS Television Studios
Simon & Schuster
Infinity Broadcasting
Westwood One Radio Network

Fortunately, those enormous media conglomerates do not have quite the same monopoly over the Internet, but we are starting to see a tremendous amount of consolidation in the online world as well.  Just check out these numbers

Overall, the top 10 publishers — together owning around 60 news sites — account for 47% of total online traffic to news content last year, with the next-biggest 140 publishers accounting for most of the other half, SimilarWeb found.

The biggest online news publisher for the U.S. audience was MSN, owner of MSN.com, with just over 27 billion combined page views across mobile and desktop, followed by Disney Media Networks, owner of ESPN and ABC News, with 25.9 billion.

The battle for the future of this nation is a battle for the hearts and minds of individuals.

And it is hard to see how things will be turned in a dramatically different direction as long as most of us are willingly feeding our hearts and minds with hours of “programming” that is controlled by the elite each day.

The good news is that there are signs of an awakening.  More Americans than ever are becoming disenchanted with the mainstream media, and this is showing up in recent survey numbers.  Here is one example

Trust in the news media is being eroded by perceptions of inaccuracy and bias, fueled in part by Americans’ skepticism about what they read on social media.

Just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public’s view of other institutions.

As Americans (and people all over the world) have lost confidence in the mainstream media, they have been seeking out other sources of news and entertainment.  This has greatly fueled the rise of the alternative media, and the dozens of websites all over the Internet where this article will ultimately be published are examples of this explosion.

You can only enslave people for so long.  Ultimately, they will want to break free of the chains that are holding them back and they will want to find the truth.

In this day and age, it is absolutely imperative that we all learn to think for ourselves.  If you find that you are still addicted to the “programming” that the giant media corporations are feeding you, I would encourage you to start unplugging from the matrix more frequently.

In the end, you will be glad that you did.