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.

A Spirit Of Violence And Civil Unrest Is Rising In America

Riot 2 - Public DomainIt was only a matter of time before our deeply divided nation was going to start coming apart at the seams.  Waves of anger, frustration, violence and civil unrest are starting to sweep across the United States, and political rallies for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump have become a focal point for releasing some of that energy.  The angry mob that threw rocks, bottles and burning T-shirts at police and Donald Trump supporters on Tuesday night wanted to get the attention of the national media, and they got it in droves.  Now that the election is less than five months away, this kind of scene is going to be repeated over and over, and this is something that I warned about back in March.  Millions upon millions of our young people have fully embraced the radical left, and they have already made it exceedingly clear that they are not afraid to use violence to advance their cause.

Never before in my lifetime have I seen America so divided.  Our politicians and the mainstream media have been endlessly pitting various groups against one another for years, and wherever you look hearts are growing very cold.

I have said it before, and I will say it again.  I believe that this is going to be the most chaotic election season that we have ever experienced, and the chaos and violence that are going to be unleashed over the next five months are going to shock the entire world.

On Tuesday night, the angry mob that gathered outside of the Albuquerque Convention Center didn’t seem to care who they hurt as they unleashed their anger.  According to Fox News, some of the protesters even tried to set police horses on fire…

The rampaging gang was made up of anti-Trump goons — waving the Mexican flag and burning a Trump banner.

“Viva Mexico,” protesters shouted, according to the Albuquerque Journal.

The rioters even targeted police horses — knocking one down – and throwing burning T-shirts at others. Who tries to burn down a horse?

How sick and twisted do you have to be to try to set a horse on fire?

But this is what happens when a spirit of violence descends on a group of people.  The consequences can quickly spiral out of control in unexpected ways.

Here is how CNS News described the chaotic scene outside of the Albuquerque Convention Center…

In one of the presidential campaign year’s more grisly spectacles, protesters in New Mexico opposing Donald Trump’s candidacy threw burning T-shirts, plastic bottles and other items at police officers, injuring several, and toppled trash cans and barricades.

Police responded by firing pepper spray and smoke grenades into the crowd outside the Albuquerque Convention Center.

According to at least one report, rocks thrown by some of the rioters were actually flying through the convention center windows, and a number of innocent people got hurt.

What would make people act like that?  This isn’t what America is supposed to look like.  But when fundamental institutions such as the family and the church start to crumble, this is how people start to behave.  You can see a clip that includes footage of protesters jumping on police cars last night in Albuquerque right here

And of course the spirit of violence and civil unrest that is rising in America is not limited to Donald Trump rallies.

In major cities all over the nation, violent crime is rising by double digit percentages.  In Chicago, the number of people that have been shot so far in 2016 is 50 percent higher than during the same period last year

This past weekend in Chicago saw another five killed and 40 wounded in shootings, slightly down from Mother’s day weekend when eight people were killed and 42 wounded. The two weekends are indicative of what’s taking place in the homicide riddled city, in which the number of people shot so far this year is running an astonishing 50% above this time last year – what’s worse, summer is not even here yet, which is traditionally the city’s most violent period.

Yikes!

Other big cities are seeing similar spikes in violent crime.  The following is an excerpt from a recent article in the New York Times

Experts cannot agree on what to call a recent rise in homicides, much less its cause, but new data on Friday that showed a sharp spike in homicide rates in more than 20 cities rekindled debate over whether it was time for alarm.

The data showed particularly significant increases in homicides in six cities in the first three months of the year compared with the same period last year — Chicago, Dallas, Jacksonville, Fla., Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Memphis.

If this is happening now, with the stock market soaring and unemployment a bit lower than it was during the depths of the last recession, what is going to happen when things start getting really bad in this country?

Desperate people do desperate things, and if people are willing to hurl rocks and set horses on fire because they are upset at a political candidate, what are they going to do when there is no food for their families?

Just look at what is happening down in Venezuela.  People are hunting down dogs and cats because they don’t have anything to eat.  There have been at least 107 mass looting events so far in 2016 alone, and crime is completely and utterly out of control.

What is happening down there is eventually coming to America too, and the chaos and violence that we will see during the coming months will be a small preview of that.

The funny thing is that none of these political protests are going to matter anyway.  It remains my contention that the elite will move heaven and earth to do whatever is necessary to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.  They have already spent tens of millions of dollars against him and they have continuously had their media outlets put out “hit pieces” in an attempt to destroy him.

But their bag of tricks goes a lot deeper than that, and this is not a game to them.

I know that a lot of people out there have some very high hopes for Donald Trump, and we should be praying for him and for his family.

However, the time when the people determined the direction of this nation is long past, and the elite guard their monopoly over the political process very zealously.

Radical Leftists Unleash Anti-Trump Riots Starting On March 19th

Democracy SpringMany of the exact same groups that participated in Occupy Wall Street and helped organize protest rallies in Ferguson and Baltimore are now promising to bring us “the largest civil disobedience actions in a generation”.  I recently wrote about the trouble that radical leftists have caused by attempting to disrupt Trump campaign events, but now there is a very organized effort to turn this into a national movement.  On March 19th, thousands of angry protesters will descend on Trump Tower in New York City to denounce Donald Trump’s “fascist policies”, and on April 2nd dozens of leftist organizations will join together to launch “Democracy Spring” in Philadelphia.  From there, large numbers of liberal activists will march to Washington D.C. where they will “risk arrest” during a “peaceful” sit-in at the U.S. Capitol from April 11th to April 18th.  If the radical left is this freaked out about Donald Trump now, how bad will things get if he actually becomes the Republican nominee?

I suppose that it was only a matter of time before the radical left began to specifically target Trump properties.  I hope that Trump has good security, because it will definitely be tested starting tomorrow

Left-wing demonstrators have announced their latest anti-Trump event – a march on Trump Tower in New York City to protest against The Donald’s “fascist policies”.

A Facebook page for the rally outlines the plan, organized by a group called ‘Cosmopolitan Antifascists’, to march on the building at 2pm on Saturday afternoon.

“Donald J. Trump has made headlines in recent months with his divisive rhetoric, hate speech, and extremist plans to “make America great again”. We, in fact, believe this will do the opposite to this nation. Trump’s policy threatens many of us in the Black, Latino, LGBT, Muslim, and other communities,” states the page.

According to the Facebook page for “Cosmopolitan Antifascists”, 5,000 people plan to show up and 15,000 more are “interested” in this event.

Will it turn out to be a completely peaceful protest?

Let’s certainly hope so.

Perhaps even more disturbing is what is going to happen in early April.  Dozens of far left groups have gotten behind a movement that has been officially dubbed “Democracy Spring”.

Obviously, that name was chosen to conjure up memories of the “Arab Spring”, and we all remember how “peaceful” that was.

The official website of Democracy Spring tells us the following about the goals…

This spring, in the heart of the primary season, as the national election begins to take center stage, Americans of all ages, faiths, political perspectives, and walks of life will bring the popular cry for change to Washington in a way that’s impossible to ignore: with nonviolent civil disobedience on a historic scale.

We will demand that Congress listen to the People and take immediate action to save our democracy. And we won’t leave until they do — or until they send thousands of us to jail, along with the unmistakable message that our country needs a new Congress, one that that will end the legalized corruption of our democracy and ensure that every American has an equal voice in government.

Do you understand the threat that is being made there?

They are purposely planning to break the law and get arrested.  In fact, their website says that there are already more than 2,000 people that have “pledged to risk arrest” between April 11th and April 18th…

The campaign will begin on April 2nd with a march from the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. where thousands will gather to reclaim the US Capitol in a powerful, peaceful, and massive sit-in that no one can ignore. Over 2,000 people have already pledged to risk arrest between April 11th-18th in what will be one of the largest civil disobedience actions in a generation.

And the list of groups that are backing this movement reads like a who’s who of radical leftist organizations…

15 Now Philly
99Rise
100 Grannies for a Livable Future
act.tv
African American Ministers in Action
American Ethical Union
American Family Voices
American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)
Avaaz
Backbone Campaign
Big Apple Coffee Party
Brave New Films
Catholics United
Center for Biological Diversity
Center for the Working Poor
Citizen Action NY
Code Pink
Coffee Party USA
Columbus Campaign for Arms Control
Conscious Elders Network
Courage Campaign
Ctzn Well
Demand Progress
Democracy Chronicles
Democracy Coffee
Democracy for America
Democracy Matters
Democratic Socialists of America
Demos
Dolores Huerta Foundation
East Coast Cannabis Coalition (ECCC)
East Point Peace Academy
Elder Activists
Elders Climate Action
Every Voice
Energy Action Coalition
Food & Water Watch
Franciscan Action Network
Friends of the Earth
Get Money Out – Maryland
Human Earth Animal Liberation (HEAL)
Hightower Lowdown
Institute for Policy Studies
Interfaith Moral Action on Climate (IMAC)
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement
Jewish Voice for Peace
Just Foreign Policy
Leadership Development Initiative
March Against Corruption
March Against Monsanto
Maryland Committee to Amend
Massachusetts Communities Action Network (MCAN)
MAYDAY.US
Money Out! People In!
MoveOn
National Organization for Women (NOW)
National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund
National People’s Action
Network of Spiritual Progressives/ Tikkun Magazine
New Hampshire Rebellion
Occupy Catholics
Office of the Americas
Other 98%
PA United to Amend
Pay 2 Play
Peace Action
People Demanding Action
People for Bernie
People for the American Way
People Over Politics
People’s Empowerment Project
Pride at Work-New York City/Long Island
Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC)
Progressive Democrats of America
Public Citizen
Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU)
ReThink Media
RootsAction
Rootskeeper.org
Rootstrikers
Shalom Center
Small Planet Institute
Social Security Works
South Central Wisconsin United To Amend
Stamp Stampede
Stop Police Terror Project DC
Sustain US
Unitarian Universalist Association
Unitarian Universalist Church of Delaware County
United Native Americans
United for Peace and Justice
United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS)
United States Student Association (USSA)
United We Dream
U.S. Climate Plan
Ursulines of Tildonk for Justice & Peace
We are Woman
We the People Massachusetts
WildEarth Guardians
WolfPAC
Women’s Promise
Working Families Party
Workmen’s Circle
World Beyond War
Yes Men
Young Democratic Socialists
Youth Jobs Coalition / We Have a Future

This is just the beginning.  The radical left has won the hearts and minds of millions of our young people, and many of these groups are preaching a message of anger, frustration and direct confrontation.

For now, let’s hope that these “protests” are at least somewhat peaceful.  But throughout history, leftist revolutions have almost always turned violent at least to a certain degree.

And let there be no confusion – the radical left very much wants a revolution.  There is a reason why Bernie Sanders uses that word so much in his applause lines.  It is a buzzword that evokes some very powerful imagery for the radical left.

America is changing, and not for the better.  From this point forward, the radical left in America is going to become much more active, and in the end that is going to have dramatic consequences for all of us.

Trump Rallies Reveal Increased Tensions Among Americans As This Nation Plunges Toward Civil Unrest

Anti-Trump Protesters In Chicago - Photo by nathanmac87America is coming apart at the seams, and Trump rallies have become the latest flashpoint for the rising tide of civil unrest that is sweeping the nation.  For years, I have been writing about the increasing levels of anger and frustration in this country, but now they are reaching a fever pitch.  And rather than channeling all of our anger and frustration into solving our problems, we have allowed ourselves to become deeply divided and many Americans seem to be taking glee in fighting with one another.  Instead of learning to hate one another, we should be learning how to love one another.  Unfortunately, America has chosen another path, and 2016 is very rapidly starting to look very much like the chaotic political year of 1968.  No matter how the rest of this election season plays out, it appears that we have entered a time of violence, chaos, civil unrest and greatly increased tension among Americans.

On Friday, thousands of radical leftists showed up at a planned Trump rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago with the express purpose of disrupting it.  Fortunately Donald Trump cancelled the rally, because there was a very real possibility that mass violence could have erupted.  The following description of what happened comes from Wikipedia

On March 11, 2016, the Donald Trump presidential campaign canceled a planned rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), in Chicago, Illinois, citing “growing safety concerns” due to the presence of thousands of protesters in and outside of his rally[3]. Thousands of anti-Trump demonstrators responding to civic leaders’ and social media calls to shut the rally down had gathered outside the arena, and several hundred more filled seating areas within the UIC Pavilion, where the rally was to take place. When the Trump campaign announced that the rally would not take place, there was a great deal of shouting and a few small scuffles between Trump supporters and anti-Trump protestors.

The Daily Caller has identified three groups that were heavily involved in organizing the planned disruption of the Trump rally in Chicago.  Those three groups are ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Chicago, the Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Rights Reform, and La Raza Chicago.

In addition, MoveOn.org also appears to have been involved in what took place in Chicago.  The following comes from Infowars

“Mr. Trump and the Republican leaders who support him and his hate-filled rhetoric should be on notice after tonight’s events,” the George Soros funded MoveOn web page states. “To all of those who took to the streets of Chicago, we say thank you for standing up and saying enough is enough. To Donald Trump, and the GOP, we say, welcome to the general election.”

Following the cancelled rally in Chicago, a radical leftist protester named Thomas Dimassimo attempted to storm the stage while Trump was speaking at an event in Dayton, Ohio.  This YouTube video contains footage of that chilling moment…

Thomas Dimassimo has been identified as a Bernie Sanders supporter, and even though his Twitter account has now been erased, this screenshot was taken while it was still up…

Marlon Bando Tweet

There was also another tweet where he said that his goal was “martrydom“.  I have seen some news reports that link Dimassimo to ISIS, but those reports are being disputed.  Either way, the fact that the Secret Service had to intervene to protect Trump from this lunatic is more than just a little bit alarming.

Following the incident in Dayton, a Trump rally in Kansas City was disrupted more than a dozen times by political agitators.  At one point, police actually used pepper spray on some of the protesters.

Scenes such as these are starting to cause many people to make direct comparisons between 2016 and 1968.

And if the chaos is this bad already, what will things look like during the general election?

Candidates on all sides should be calling for peace and calm, but instead they are pointing fingers at one another.

For example, Hillary Clinton is putting the full blame for the unrest on Donald Trump

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said this weekend that Trump is guilty of “political arson,” adding that “the ugly, divisive rhetoric we are hearing from Donald Trump and the encouragement of violence and aggression is wrong, and it’s dangerous,” The New York Times reported.

And Donald Trump is placing the blame at the feet of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton

“You had professional disruptors, thousands of them, from Sanders and to a smaller extent, Hillary (Clinton),” he said of a Friday night event in Chicago that Trump canceled after chaos broke out there.

Unfortunately, most Americans have absolutely no idea where all of this is leading.

A house that is divided will fall, and America is now more divided than at any other time in my entire lifetime.

If there was a single set of values or principles that united us, it would be possible for us to come together as a nation and solve our problems.  But there isn’t.  We have rejected the values and the principles of our founders, and these days Americans are being pulled in dozens of different directions.  In fact, if you ask 100 different Americans what we need to do to get our country back on the right track you are probably going to get 100 different answers.

The chaos and violence around our political process is going to get a lot worse than this.  And we are going to see more communities erupt just like Ferguson and Baltimore did.

In the end, Americans are going to kill Americans, our cities are going to burn, and we are going to experience a period of governmental shaking unlike anything that we have ever seen before.

All of this could have been avoided if we could have simply learned to love one another.  But instead, we have allowed ourselves to be divided in just about every way imaginable, and the mainstream media is constantly tossing more fuel on the fire.

This isn’t about Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton or any other politician.  Rather, this is about a once great country that is deeply, deeply divided and that is coming apart at the seams right before our very eyes.

May God have mercy on the late, great United States of America.

Protesters Declare They Are Ready For War As America’s Impoverished Inner Cities Threaten To Erupt

Ferguson Unrest - Photo by LoavesofbreadAre we about to witness a new round of racially-charged protests, riots and demonstrations all across the United States?  On Sunday night, a protest that had been organized to commemorate the one year anniversary of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri took a very violent turn.  An 18-year-old named Tyrone Harris that is being described as a “real close” friend of Michael Brown opened fire on police with a stolen handgun.  Police returned fire and Harris got hit.  He is now in the hospital and his prognosis is uncertain.  Of course this just raised tensions to an entirely new level, and at this point a state of emergency has been declared in Ferguson.

So what would cause an 18-year-old young man to pick up a gun and start firing at police?

This didn’t just happen in a vacuum.  An environment of violence and racial conflict is being purposely created, and the mainstream media and our politicians are continually fueling the fire.

On July 30th, the leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, delivered a speech during which he stated that he was looking for “10,000 fearless men who say death is sweeter than continued life under tyranny”.  The following is an excerpt from that speech

“Death is sweeter than to continue to live and bury our children, while white folks give the killer hamburgers.

“Death is sweeter, than watching us slaughter each other, to the joy of a 400-year-old enemy. Yes, death is sweeter.

“The Quran teaches persecution is worse than slaughter. Then it says, ‘Retaliation is prescribed in matters of the slain.’ Retaliation is a prescription from God, to calm the breast of those whose children have been slain.

“So if the federal government will not intercede in our affairs, then we must rise up and kill those who kill us. Stalk them and kill them and let them feel the pain of death that we are feeling.

In the social media world, the ominous hashtags #fightback and #JusticeOrElse are being heavily promoted.  The implication is that African-Americans have a right to commit violence because of the injustices that have been committed against them in the past.

And on Sunday night, the “peaceful protesters” in Ferguson were repeating the following chant over and over: “Ready for what?! We’re ready for war!

When you understand the context, it becomes much clearer why some of these young people are doing what they are doing.

Instead of trying to cool things down on Monday, protesters continued to push the envelope.  Several very prominent activists, including Cornel West, were arrested when they crossed a barrier in front of a courthouse in St. Louis

Cornel West, and several prominent protesters including DeRay McKesson, 30, and Johnetta Elzie, 26, were arrested Monday afternoon during a protest outside the U.S. courthouse in St. Louis. The demonstration was part of a move by several clergy members to purposefully be detained by police.

Anger and violence are not what America needs.

If we could just learn to love one another and to treat one another with respect, things could be so much different in this country.

But instead, we are being set up for a race war.

Just consider the response to a recent incident that happened in Alabama

An Alabama police officer was pistol-whipped with his own gun during a traffic stop — and then mocked by cop critics online.

The plainclothes Birmingham detective was investigating a string of burglaries when he stopped a GMC Yukon and was attacked by the driver, authorities said.

This particular police officer has never been charged with doing anything wrong, but just because he is a cop he was mercilessly attacked online.  The following are just a couple of examples

“Pistol pimped his face n um chillen now,” Twitter user @TriggaMane666 posted with a picture of the wounded officer.

“Pistol whipped his ass to sleep,” a Facebook user wrote before deleting a post showing the officer face down on the sidewalk.

Anger and frustration are growing to frightening levels all over the nation, and the surging poverty that we are seeing in many areas is playing a significant role in all of this.

Despite what you may be hearing from the mainstream media, the truth is that the economy is not getting better.  In fact, in a whole bunch of different ways our economy is already in worse shape than it was during the depths of the last recession.

If you live in a nice neighborhood, you may not even be aware of what is going on in much of the rest of the country.  According to the Atlantic, the number of Americans living in high poverty areas has nearly doubled since the year 2000…

The number of people living in high-poverty areas—defined as census tracts where 40 percent or more of families have income levels below the federal poverty threshold—nearly doubled between 2000 and 2013, to 13.8 million from 7.2 million, according to a new analysis of census data by Paul Jargowsky, a public-policy professor at Rutgers University-Camden and a fellow at The Century Foundation. That’s the highest number of Americans living in high-poverty neighborhoods ever recorded.

The development is worrying, especially since the number of people living in high-poverty areas fell 25 percent, to 7.2 million from 9.6 million, between 1990 and 2000. Back then, concentrated poverty was declining in part because the economy was booming.

People living in highly concentrated areas of poverty can become very desperate, and desperate people do desperate things.

Don’t let the misleading economic numbers fool you.  As Paul Craig Roberts has pointed out, if honest numbers were being used our current unemployment rate would not be too far away from the unemployment rate at the height of the Great Depression…

In 1994 the Clinton regime stopped counting long-term discouraged workers as unemployed. Clinton wanted his economy to look better than Reagan’s, so he ceased counting the long-term discouraged workers that were part of Reagan’s unemployment rate. John Williams (shadowstats.com) continues to measure the long-term discouraged with the official methodology of that time, and when these unemployed are included, the US rate of unemployment as of July 2015 is 23%, several times higher than during the recession with which Fed chairman Paul Volcker greeted the Reagan presidency.

An unemployment rate of 23% gives economic recovery a new meaning. It has been eighty-five years since the Great Depression, and the US economy is in economic recovery with an unemployment rate close to that of the Great Depression.

But instead of telling us the truth, the mainstream media continues to put out lots of happy stories.

For instance, one of my readers just sent me this one: “4 signs the Des Moines economy is surging“.

I had to smile when I saw that.  You know, even though the U.S. economy has been collapsing, it is collapsing right now and there are all sorts of signs that our collapse is about to greatly accelerate, there are still lots of people out there that mock “the collapse crowd” and insist that everything is going to be just fine.

And of course the mainstream media continues to mock anyone that is seriously trying to prepare for the coming hard times.  The following is an excerpt from a recent Toronto Star article

Preppers anticipate various disasters by stockpiling food, honing wilderness survival skills and learning self-defence.

If a Katrina-like storm knocked out power in Toronto, you’d know the preppers by the lights in their windows, running on generators. And if things ever descend into chaos, they’ll grab their prepacked bags, loaded with essential survival equipment, and split, leaving the rest of us to fight over the last drops of gasoline and fresh water.

The mockers will continue to mock, and their jokes will continue to be very funny up until the moment when everything starts falling apart all around us.

But those that are wise understand what is happening, and they are preparing in advance.

Baltimore Has Descended Into A State Of Lawlessness – And More Cities Will Soon Follow

Baltimore Riot Police - Public DomainDid you really think that Baltimore would return to normal after everything that has happened?  On Thursday, a mother and her 7-year-old son were both shot in the head in a double murder that has shocked the entire nation.  Police believe that the son may have been shot in order to prevent him from identifying the individual that shot his mother.  So is this what America is turning into?  A place where 7-year-old kids are executed in cold blood?  That mother and son were the 37th and 38th murder victims in the city of Baltimore so far this month.  That makes this the deadliest month in Baltimore in 15 years, but because of all the controversy surrounding the death of Freddie Gray, police in Baltimore are afraid to do their jobs at this point.  In some areas of the city, young men boldly smoke weed in public and wave guns around at innocent bystanders without any worry that police will intervene.  Baltimore has descended into a state of lawlessness, and this is just the beginning.  As I discussed just the other day, the same kind of lawlessness will soon sweep all across this country.

Have you ever been afraid to step outside of your own home?  That is what day to day life is like for many residents of Baltimore right now.  In fact, one woman is even barricading her door and setting up metal slabs behind her windows to deflect gunfire.  Just check out the following excerpt from a recent news report about what is going on in the city

I’m afraid to go outside,” said Antoinette Perrine, whose brother was shot down three weeks ago on a basketball court near her home in the Harlem Park neighborhood of West Baltimore. Ever since, she has barricaded her door and added metal slabs inside her windows to deflect gunfire.

It’s so bad, people are afraid to let their kids outside,” Perrine said. “People wake up with shots through their windows. Police used to sit on every corner, on the top of the block. These days? They’re nowhere.”

I think that this is an indication of what we can expect from the police when chaos erupts in cities all over America.  In some places there will be troops in the streets to maintain order, but in other areas it will be like the wild west.

Right now, police officers in Baltimore are running scared.  They know that they are targets, and they know that one mistake can land them in prison or on the front page of newspapers all over the nation.  According to Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts, there have been times when officers have gone into an area only to be immediately surrounded by “30 to 50 people”

Our officers tell me that when officers pull up, they have 30 to 50 people surrounding them at any time,” Batts said.

Batts provided more details at a City Council meeting Wednesday night, saying officers now fear getting arrested for making mistakes.

“What is happening, there is a lot of levels of confusion in the police organization. There are people who have pain, there are people who are hurt, there are people who are frustrated, there are people who are angry,” Batts said. “There are people, and they’ve said this to me, `If I get out of my car and make a stop for a reasonable suspicion that leads to probable cause but I make a mistake on it, will I be arrested?’ They pull up to a scene and another officer has done something that they don’t know, it may be illegal, will they be arrested for it? Those are things they are asking.”

The criminals have the upper hand in Baltimore now, and they know it.

Just consider the words of the head of the police union.  He says that the police in the city “are under siege”

“The criminals are taking advantage of the situation in Baltimore since the unrest,” said Gene Ryan, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3. “Criminals feel empowered now. There is no respect. Police are under siege in every quarter. They are more afraid of going to jail for doing their jobs properly than they are of getting shot on duty.”

Wicomico County Sheriff Mike Lewis made even stronger remarks during a recent appearance on Fox News.  He told Sean Hannity that police in Baltimore have been “eviscerated”, “disemboweled”, and have had their “guts removed”…

Wicomico County, MD Sheriff Mike Lewis (R) declared that police officers are “fearful” of doing their jobs on Wednesday’s “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel.

“Sean, the Baltimore City Police Department, the officers particularly on the street, have been eviscerated, they’ve been disemboweled, their guts removed to have the courage to go out there and do this job. They’re very fearful that if they go out there and be proactive, which we all should be doing in law enforcement today, we can’t afford to be reactive, especially in urban areas. Those officers are no longer being proactive, and as you see, the violence has surged. … And I hope this is a shot fired across the bow of mayors and urban leaders across this country. Once you disembowel your law enforcement officers, then you cannot no longer expect them to go out there and protect you, or protect your communities. This is very troubling the worst I’ve ever seen in 31 years of law enforcement.”

Can you imagine what must be going through the heads of Baltimore police officers at this point?

One wrong move and you could start a riot.

One wrong move and you could go to prison.

One wrong move and you could be on the front page of every newspaper in the country and be labeled the biggest villain in America.

In early April, I publicly stated that civil unrest was coming to Baltimore, and what we are seeing happen there is eventually going to start happening all over the nation.  Police are going to start pulling back from the most violent areas and will allow chaos to reign in the streets.

It is only human nature.  Police officers are going to be extremely hesitant to risk their lives in communities where they are deeply hated and where they risk ruining their entire lives with a single wrong move.

It is going to take a lot of courage to be a cop in America’s inner cities in the years ahead.  Last year, the number of officers “feloniously killed” in the line of duty increased by 89 percent, and things are only going to get worse.

America is changing, and not for the better.  As economic conditions deteriorate, many of our major cities are going to turn into war zones.  If you are expecting the government to step in and fix things when that happens, you will be deeply disappointed.

This nation is filled with anger and hate, and it is getting worse with each passing day.

I truly wish that things had not turned out this way, but they did.  I truly wish that we could just all learn to love one another and live in peace, but it isn’t happening.

The hatred and frustration that are boiling just under the surface in this country are about to explode, and when that happens we will all pay a very great price.

96 Percent Of Americans Expect More Civil Unrest In U.S. Cities This Summer

Baltimore Riot 2015 - YouTube ScreenshotAre you ready for rioting, looting and mindless violence in major U.S. cities all summer long?  According to a brand new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 96 percent of all Americans believe that there will be more civil unrest in America this summer.  That leaves only 4 percent of people that believe that everything will be just fine.  In this day and age, it is virtually impossible to get 96 percent of Americans to agree on anything.  So the fact that just about everyone agrees that we are going to see more civil unrest should really tell you something.  The anger that has been building under the surface for so many years in this country has finally started to erupt.  If you have been following my website for a while, you know that this is something that I have been warning about for a very long time.  Many people may have thought that I was exaggerating when I talked about the civil unrest that was coming to American cities.  But I was not exaggerating at all.  In fact, if anything I was downplaying it.  In the years to come, we are going to see things happen in our cities that are going to absolutely shock the world.

Ever since the violence first erupted in Baltimore, what has surprised me more than anything has been the level of hate that I am seeing all over the Internet.  I am seeing white people openly proclaim how much they hate black people.  I am seeing black people openly proclaim how much they hate white people.  I am seeing things said about the police that are absolutely horrifying.  Yes, there has been a tremendous amount of police brutality in this nation.  In fact, I have been one of the leaders in writing about it.  But most police officers are just trying to serve their communities the very best that they can.  So why is there so much hate for anyone that is a police officer these days?

If all of this hate continues to grow, it is going to eat our nation alive.  Why can’t we just learn to forgive one another, love one another and work together to rebuild our once great nation?

I know that what I just said is going to mostly fall on deaf ears.  But it needs to be said.

I wish that we could change course as a nation and avoid all of the rioting, looting and senseless violence that is coming.  Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening, and neither does the rest of the country

Americans are bracing for a summer of racial disturbances around the country, such as those that have wracked Baltimore, with African Americans and whites deeply divided about why the urban violence has occurred, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has found.

A resounding 96% of adults surveyed said it was likely there would be additional racial disturbances this summer, a signal that Americans believe Baltimore’s recent problems aren’t a local phenomenon but instead are symptomatic of broader national problems.

What happened in Ferguson set the precedent, and now what has happened in Baltimore has provided the spark for a national movement.  Similar “demonstrations” are popping up all over the nation, and a number of them have already turned violent.

For example, check out what happened in Seattle on Friday night…

Demonstrations turned violent in Seattle after night fell, with police reporting that protesters hurled rocks and wrenches at officers and damaged 25 vehicles. Police reported that an “explosive device” was thrown at officers, and a trash bin was pushed down a hill toward police.

Three officers were injured, two seriously enough that they were taken to a hospital, Seattle police said on Twitter. At least 16 people were arrested Friday night, police said.

And just down the coast in Portland, we also witnessed some very ugly violence…

One Portland, Oregon, police officer was injured by a protester, according to police. Portland Police reported on Twitter that protesters were throwing “projectiles” and “incendiary devices” at officers.

Police used pepper spray on protesters who tried to march on a bridge Friday afternoon and later sheriff’s deputies used stingballs, filled with tiny rubber balls, on protesters who were throwing chairs at police, according to the department.

These protesters are just copying what they saw in Baltimore.  And things would not have ever gotten so bad in Baltimore if the police had not been ordered to stand down and let the riots spiral out of control.  Now, we have learned that many police officers were so outraged by this that they want Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to immediately resign…

During a Baltimore-based radio talk show on Thursday, a man who identified himself as a Baltimore police officer named “Jeff” called into the program and said fellow police officers were organizing to push out the city’s mayor.

There is right now over 50 of us officers who are immediately asking for [Baltimore Mayor] Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to step down for what she did to us Monday,” the caller told WBAL radio host Derek Hunter.

The Baltimore mayor has denied giving “stand down” orders and blamed the media for misinterpreting her comments about providing “a space” for protesters to loot.

“Any other time in my career, if somebody were to throw a brick or a block at me, we would take immediate actions to pull our weapons on them. Numerous times on Monday when our officers were being injured, our commanders are telling us ‘stand down, stand down.’  You had no idea what it did to us as police officers to sit there,” said the self-described “21-year veteran” of the Baltimore police department.

Scenes of protesters attacking police were broadcast all over the nation, and it was inevitable that we would start to see “copycat attacks” against the police start to happen.  In New York City, a plainclothes police officer was shot in the head on Saturday…

A plainclothes New York City police officer was shot in the head and critically injured while in an unmarked police car Saturday as he and his partner attempted to stop and question a man they suspected of carrying a gun, officials said.

Officer Brian Moore and his partner, Erik Jansen, noticed Demitrius Blackwell “walking and adjusting an object in his waistband” when they pulled up on him in their car, exchanging words with him before he turned and suddenly fired at least two rounds into the car, police Commissioner William Bratton said.

“The man immediately removed the firearm from his waistband and turned in the direction of the officers and deliberately fired several times at the vehicle, striking Officer Moore in the head,” Bratton said at a press conference at a Queens hospital. The 25-year-old Moore was undergoing surgery but listed in stable condition.

We are seeing the same thing when it comes to racially-motivated violence.  This is something that we witnessed in Baltimore, and now all over the nation people are being attacked just because of the color of their skin.

For instance, one young man in California attacked a random passerby with a baseball bat

A Fontana man accused of beating a passerby with a bat in an apparently random attack in Rialto, leaving the victim with life-threatening injuries that he was not expected to survive, was charged Wednesday with attempted murder allegedly committed as a hate crime.

Jeremiah Ajani Bell, 22, was arrested Monday, a day after a daylight assault on 54-year-old Armando Barron, who was walking down the street when he was attacked.

So why did this happen?  Well, apparently it was because the passerby had the wrong skin color

“It appears he was targeting anybody who wasn’t black,” Rialto police Detective Sgt. Paul Stella said Wednesday.

We witnessed an even more disturbing example of racially-motivated violence just the other day in South Carolina

Witnesses and police say a mob of 60 black teens took to the streets of Charleston, South Carolina, to unleash attacks on unsuspecting drivers and pedestrians, all but one of whom were white.

And of course police in some areas of the country are also using unnecessary violence.  Just consider what happened to a group of peaceful protesters in Denver on Wednesday…

With much of the nation focused on the police abuse protests happening in Baltimore and New York City, the Denver police and their actions against a group of protesters on Wednesday has largely gone unnoticed.

But police were dressed for war. Paramilitary style. And they weren’t going home without using a few cans of pepper spray and filling up a paddy wagon.

Video that surfaced shows a group of about 100 protesters walking the streets of downtown Denver where they were met with line of motorcycle cops who forced the group on to the sidewalk.  One overzealous officer can be seen breaking away from the pack chasing down pedestrians, using his motorcycle as a large weapon.

It’s war on the streets of America, and this is only just the beginning.

As we enter the next major economic downturn, people are going to become angrier and even more desperate.  And desperate people do desperate things.  The next few years are not going to be a good time to be living in urban areas.  Even if you only have peace and love in your heart, that doesn’t mean that you won’t get caught in the crossfire as the violence escalates.

For years, most of our politicians have been preaching hate and division.  For years, the mainstream media has been preaching hate and division.  For years, Hollywood has been preaching hate and division.

Now we have a nation that is deeply, deeply divided and that is filled with hate.

Things didn’t have to turn out this way, but they did.  I hope that you are getting ready for what comes next.

It’s Official: Police Were Ordered To Stand Down And Let The Baltimore Riots Rage Out Of Control

Baltimore Riot Police - Public DomainWe now have official confirmation that the rioting in Baltimore on Monday was purposely allowed to spiral out of control.  Up until now, there had been some unconfirmed reports that police in Baltimore had been ordered to “stand down” during the riots, but nobody had been willing to come forward and go on the record.  Now that has all changed.  Michael Lewis is the Sheriff of Wicomico County, Maryland and what he has to say is absolutely jaw dropping.  When he saw what was happening in Baltimore, he gathered up some of his fellow officers and drove down to the city to help.  But when he got there, he says that all of the police were being ordered not to take any action and to let the rioters destroy property.  Lewis made this astounding claim during a discussion on a Baltimore radio station

A Maryland sheriff who traveled to Baltimore to help law enforcement stop Monday’s riots told 105.7 The Fan that he was stunned when officers alerted him of the orders to stand down.

Lewis says that he never heard the mayor give any particular orders, but he is very clear about the fact that the police were being instructed to “stand down” and to “let them destroy property“….

“I was sick to my stomach like everybody else. … This was urban warfare, no question about it. They were coming in absolutely beaten down. The [city officers] got out of their vehicles, thanked us profusely for being there, apologized to us for having to be there. They said we could have handled this, we were very capable of handling this, but we were told to stand down, repeatedly told to stand down,” he said. “I had never heard that order come from anyone — we went right out to our posts as soon as we got there, so I never heard the mayor say that. But repeatedly these guys, and there were many high-ranking officials from the Baltimore City Police Department … and these guys told me they were essentially neutered from the start. They were spayed from the start. They were told to stand down, you will not take any action, let them destroy property. I couldn’t believe it, I’m a 31-year veteran of law enforcement. … I had never heard anything like this before in my life and these guys obviously aren’t gonna speak out and the more I thought about this, … I had to say a few things. I apologize if I’ve upset people, but I believe in saying it like it is.”

The claims made by Lewis seem to be confirmed by “a senior law enforcement source” quoted by Fox News.  And this “senior law enforcement source” says that the order to stand down came directly from the mayor

Fox News is reporting — citing a senior law enforcement source who spoke with correspondent Leland Vittert — that Democratic Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake ordered police to allow rioters to loot stores Monday night, saying, “Let them loot, it’s only property.”

“This is coming from a very senior law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the orders that were given by the mayor and by her police commanders, down to the very core of the police riot units,” Vittert said on “Your World with Neil Cavuto” Wednesday afternoon. “What I am quoting now from him is, quoting the mayor, ‘Let them loot, it’s only property.’”

If this is true, this is not just a minor scandal.  If what these law enforcement officers are saying is accurate, this is a scandal of monumental proportions.

And could it be possible that the scandal goes even higher?  Did Rawlings-Blake speak to anyone before making this decision?  Could the Obama administration be involved somehow?

In a previous article entitled “12 Unanswered Questions About The Baltimore Riots That They Don’t Want Us To Ask“, I noted that Rawlings-Blake has very close ties to the Obama administration.  Could it be possible that Rawlings-Blake was told to order the police to stand down by someone in the White House?

What we do know at this point is that after public schools were let out on Monday afternoon, high school kids were forced to get off of buses and herded into the Mondawmin mall area where the “purge” that had been hyped on social media was supposed to take place.

We also know that police dressed in full riot gear were waiting for them.

But then once the rioting started, the police pulled back and let it rage wildly out of control.

This all seems very orchestrated to me.

And were they specifically ordered to not even defend their own police vehicles?  On Monday afternoon, there were lots of police vehicles conveniently parked along the streets right in the middle of the riot zones.  But the police officers that those vehicles belonged to were nowhere to be seen.  So why didn’t the police protect their own vehicles?  This all seems very strange.

Dramatic images of police vehicles being smashed and burning wildly have now been seen by hundreds of millions of people all over the planet, and those images send a very powerful message.

Of course the biggest victims in all of this are the impoverished African-American communities where the worst of the rioting took place.  The police were ordered to stand down while these African-American neighborhoods were vandalized, looted and set on fire.  Many businesses that were destroyed will choose to never rebuild, and many others that did survive will flee as soon as they can.  In the end, those neighborhoods will be much worse off than they were before.

So did mayor Rawlings-Blake (or someone above her) purposely betray those communities?

The American people deserve some answers, because this is a very big deal.

First we saw this happen in Ferguson, and now it has happened in Baltimore.

When riots and looting break out where you live, will the police be ordered to “stand down” as well?

Chaos has come to America, and it is only going to get worse.  I hope that you are getting prepared for what comes next.