Money

The Sky Is Falling, It Is Time To Panic And The U.S. Economy Has Fallen And It Can’t Get Up

So many economists and financial pundits seem absolutely shocked that the U.S. economy is slowing down again.  It is as if this latest wave of bad economic data has caught them completely by surprise.  Now, in the mainstream media we are seeing all kinds of headlines declaring that the U.S. economy is headed for disaster.  But anyone with half a brain could have seen this coming.  This year alone, we have seen the worst tsunami in Japanese history, the worst U.S. tornado season in recent memory and the worst Mississippi River flooding in decades.  In addition, chaos in the Middle East has pushed the price of oil up to very high levels.  Of course all of those things were going to have an effect on the economy.  In addition, all of the long-term trends that have been destroying the U.S. economy for decades have not been taken a breather.  In fact, the truth is that all of our long-term economic problems have been accelerating.  So yes, the sky is falling, it is time to panic and the U.S. economy really has fallen and it really can’t get up.  It is just that everyone in the mainstream media seems to have believed that Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama would just sprinkle a bunch of fairy dust on the economy and everything would just magically get better.  Well, in the real world things simply do not work that way.

Despite an unprecedented debt binge by the federal government and nightmarish money printing by the Federal Reserve, the economic downturn continues to drag on.  Andrew Barber, a strategist at Waverly Advisors in Corning, New York recently told CNN the following….

“People are starting to see that this sort of malaise is not just going to go away no matter what you do.”

And “malaise” is a really good word for what we have been experiencing.  For those that remember the late 1970s, what we are going through today is similar in a lot of ways.

But what is perhaps even more frightening is that 2011 is starting to look a lot like 2008 all over again.

In particular, we are starting to see some real signs of instability in the financial markets.

When Moody’s downgraded Greek debt again on Wednesday all the way down to Caa1, I was only moderately alarmed.  The truth is that everyone knows Greece is a basket case so a debt downgrade wasn’t really all that surprising.

When Moody’s announced that it plans to review the U.S. government’s AAA debt rating “if there is no progress on increasing the statutory debt limit in coming weeks” that got the attention of a lot of people around the world, but it was not totally unexpected. Moody’s is telling Congress that they better raise the debt ceiling or else.  A lot more pressure will be applied to Congress before this is over.

When Moody’s warned that it may downgrade the debt ratings of Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, that really set off alarm bells for me.

Do you all remember what set off the financial panic in 2008?

Do the names “Bear Stearns” and “Lehman Brothers” ring a bell?

Well, right now there are some frightening indications that we may see more trouble at some “too big to fail” institutions.

But will there be any willingness to do more bailouts this time?

Right now the financial markets are closely mirroring their performance just prior to the financial collapse of 2008.  One great example of this is these charts which were recently posted by the Financial Armageddon blog.  It looks like bank stocks may once again be leading the way down.

Hopefully the financial system can hold together and we won’t have a repeat of 2008 right now, because if it happens it is going to be really messy.

But even without a “financial collapse” we already have all of the economic problems that we can handle.

Robert Brusca, the chief economist at FAO Economics, is being quoted by CNN as saying the following….

“We’ve had a poor economic recovery to begin with, and now it appears to be segueing into an end.”

At this point, U.S. consumer confidence is already lower than it was back in September 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed.  U.S. consumers are holding on to their money more tightly these days and that is not a good sign for an economy that is so highly dependent on consumer spending.

The latest manufacturing numbers have also been very distressing.  Measures of manufacturing activity all over the world are indicating that we have now entered an economic slowdown.  This is also similar to what we saw a few years ago.

We should all feel really bad for anyone that is entering the workforce right now.  We are in the midst of graduation season, and the only thing that our new graduates have to look forward to is an economic crisis that never seems to end.

On a recent article entitled “Global Financial Markets Tremble As Bad Economic News Continues To Pour In” a reader named Esta left the following comment….

I feel sad for yet another year of graduates entering a horrible job market. I recently read, and I think it was in the mainstream media, that only half the 2010 college grads have found jobs of any kind, only half of those have found jobs requiring a college education, and that 85 percent of all grads moved right back in with their parents. The job growth rate is so low that we keep employing fewer and fewer people as a percentage of our adult population. Why isn’t that still a recession?

What a future our college graduates have to look forward to, eh?  Moving back in with your parents, a crappy job (if you can find one) and a pile of student loan debt that will crush you financially for decades.

We are always told that “more education” is the answer, but even many of our most highly educated young people can’t find jobs.  In fact, it turns out that a third of last year’s law school graduates aren’t even practicing law….

The law school class of 2010 is making news for all the wrong reasons. The budding legal minds who managed to find employment last year have set a new record–only 68.4 percent of them are in jobs that require them to pass the bar exam, the lowest share since the Association for Legal Professionals began collecting data.

Now it looks like the economy is going to starting heading downhill once again.

What is that going to do to the job market?

Last year, only 45.4% of Americans had jobs.  That was the lowest figure since 1983.

In some states it was even worse than that.  In states like California, Arizona and Mississippi only about 37 percent of people had a job last year.

The economic news just seems to get worse and worse and worse.  The American people have been relatively calm over the past several years as they have waited for the promised “economic recovery”, but what do you think is going to happen if we have another major economic downturn and unemployment spikes back up by several more percentage points?

And what in the world can our “leaders” really do to “help” the economy if we do have a repeat of 2008?

We are already running trillion dollar deficits.

The Federal Reserve is already printing money like it is going out of style.

So what would their next moves be?

Most Americans have no idea how fragile our financial system and our economy really are.

Let us hope and pray that things can hold together for as long as possible, because when the next wave of the economic collapse happens it is going to be really, really messy.

Global Financial Markets Tremble As Bad Economic News Continues To Pour In

As the U.S. economy starts to slow down once again, global financial markets are beginning to tremble.  Over the past couple of weeks, all kinds of bad economic news has been pouring in.  The ADP jobs report was a “disaster”, the housing numbers are dismal, manufacturing has slowed way down and consumer confidence is dropping like a rock.  The Democrats and the Republicans are bickering over the debt ceiling and this is causing a lot of uncertainty as well.  All of this bad news is starting to spook investors.  On Wednesday, the Dow was down 279 points and the NASDAQ was down 65 points. It was the worst day of the year for the Dow, and many are wondering what is going to happen next if we see even more bad economic data.  QE2 is slated to end at the end of the month, and already the bond markets seem to be anticipating QE3.  If the U.S. economy enters another significant downturn during the second half of 2011, it seems quite likely that the Federal Reserve would attempt to do something to stimulate the economy and that would probably mean more money printing.

This article is essentially the second part to an article I wrote yesterday about how we are seeing warnings about the next financial collapse all over the place right now.  Panic is building and a lot of investors are trying to figure out where to put their money.  Suddenly everyone seems a whole lot less optimistic than they were a couple of months ago.

Michael Sheldon, the chief market strategist at RDM Financial, believes that all of the bad economic news we are seeing right now is clear evidence that we are entering an “economic slump”….

“Initially, we just had bad news from the weekly jobless claims data, but now we’re starting to see a broad-based economic slump.”

So what are some of the numbers that have investors so concerned?

Mike Riddell, a fund manager at M&G Investments in London, recently explained to CNBC why he is so alarmed right now….

“US house prices have fallen by more than 5 percent year on year, pending home sales have collapsed and existing home sales disappointed, the trend of improving jobless claims has arrested, first quarter GDP wasn’t revised upwards by the 0.4 percent forecast, durables goods orders shrank, manufacturing surveys from Philadelphia Fed, Richmond Fed and Chicago Fed were all very disappointing.”

The bad economic news just keeps rolling in.  It is almost as if someone has slammed on the economic brakes.

The following are a few more examples of the bad economic numbers that have come out over the past couple of days….

*According to the latest ADP Employment Services report, private employers in the United States only added 38,000 jobs last month.  That number had been expected to be somewhere around 175,000.  This jobs report is being called a “disaster“.

*Manufacturing activity in May was much lower than most economists were projecting.  The following is how CNBC described the newest numbers from ISM….

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said its index of national factory activity fell to 53.5 in May from 60.4 the month before. The reading missed economists’ expectations for 57.7.

*Moody’s downgraded Greek debt again on Wednesday, and stated that they believe that there is a 50/50 chance that Greece will default.  This time Moody’s downgraded Greek debt by three levels all the way down to Caa1, and that caused the euro to fall like a rock.

To get an idea of just how imbalanced the European financial system has become at this point, just check out this article.

*Earlier this week it was announced that U.S. home prices have declined 5.1% from a year ago.  Sadly, U.S. home prices have now fallen more than they did during the entire Great Depression.

*As I mentioned yesterday, the consumer confidence index fell from 66 in April to 60.8 in May.

So what is causing all of this?

Well, the truth is that the “sugar high” that the U.S. economy has been enjoying is coming to an end.

QE2 is almost over and the vast majority of the federal “stimulus money” has been spent.  Now the federal government is talking about getting spending under control and we are seeing austerity programs being implemented on the state and local level from coast to coast.

But without massive intervention by the Federal Reserve and by the U.S. government will the U.S. economy be able to stand?

Douglas Borthwick, a managing director with Faros Trading in Stamford, Connecticut is not optimistic….

“The sugar high that has buoyed the U.S. economy over the past six months is wearing out, and there is little in economic growth or foundation to show for it.”

The truth is that the Fed and the U.S. government went all-out in an attempt to keep the economy from falling into a total depression.  The U.S. government has been running budget deficits well in excess of a trillion dollars and the Fed has been printing money like mad.  If these measures are removed, the economic crisis we are experiencing might just get a whole lot worse.

How much worse?

Well, just check out what Peter Yastrow, a market strategist for Yastrow Origer, recently told CNBC….

“Interest rates are amazingly low and that, thanks to Ben Bernanke, is driving everything,” Yastrow said. “We’re on the verge of a great, great depression. The [Federal Reserve] knows it.”

Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama keep talking about the “economic recovery” but most Americans know better.

According to one new poll, 66% of Americans believe that we are still in a recession.

Perhaps this is a sign that the American people are starting to wake up to the new economic realities that we are facing.

The U.S. economy is being ripped apart and shredded.  Thanks to our short-sighted trade policies, the Chinese economy has roared to life while the U.S. economy continues to ship jobs and factories overseas.

But instead of facing up to our economic problems and coming up with some solutions, our nation has been on a horrific debt binge over the last couple of decades in a desperate attempt to maintain our standard of living.

One of the reasons why I pound on the economic news day after day is so that more people will really understand what is going on and will start to wake up.

In fact, if you have a family member of a friend that just doesn’t get it, the following is a great article to share with that person: “50 Things Every American Should Know About The Collapse Of The Economy“.

Look, even Barack Obama says that the present state of affairs is “unsustainable” and that changes have to be made.

But if the U.S. government decided that it was going to go to a balanced budget tomorrow, that would suck approximately a trillion and a half dollars out of the economy.

What do you think would happen if that came to pass?

Of course by going into even more debt we are destroying the economic future of our children and our grandchildren.

We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and we expect future generations to pay it off.

It is absolutely disgusting what we have done and it is thievery on the highest level.

Everyone knows that we are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world and that at some point it is going to pop.

Perhaps the best we can hope for at this point is for a little bit more time before economic disaster strikes.

Unfortunately, all of the latest economic news seems to be pointing toward another economic slowdown.

Hold on to your seats.

Extreme Paranoia

Have you noticed that our entire society operates on fear now? Everyone is afraid of everybody else. We are taught not to trust anyone that we do not know and that we should literally spy on our neighbors because they might be a threat. If you do not participate in all of the extreme paranoia that is going on then supposedly something is wrong with you. In fact, if you are not paranoid like everyone else is then you might be a threat.  After all, according to FBI Director Robert Mueller, “homegrown terrorists” represent as big a threat to American national security as al-Qaeda does.  But in the midst of all of this extreme paranoia, we have thrown common sense out the window.  We are told that it is Islamic extremists that want to attack us, and yet we are so obsessed with being politically correct that the TSA will grope grandma, grandpa and all the little children they can get their hands on but they will allow men in full Islamic dress to walk right through airport security without even being checked.  We will put up video cameras to watch schoolchildren eat their lunches and yet we are leaving our borders completely wide open.  Thousands of real terrorists could be crossing our borders each day and we would never even know it.  But this is what happens when extreme paranoia sets in – people (and governments) start behaving very irrationally.

Recently, U.S. Representative Paul Broun went through airport security and what he witnessed absolutely shocked him….

“I walked through there was right behind me there was a grandmother — little old lady, and she was was patted down. Right behind her was a little kid who was patted down. And then right behind him was a guy in Arabian dress who just walked right through. Why are we patting down grandma and kids?”

What ever happened to common sense?

The American people are constantly whipped into a state of fear by the mainstream media and so there is a never ending call for even more “security” so that we can all feel safe.

Meanwhile, the most basic things that need to be done for our security, such as securing our borders, are totally ignored because they are not politically correct.

Instead, most of the focus seems to be on keeping as many eyeballs on American citizens of possible.

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden made headlines recently when he revealed that the U.S. government interprets the Patriot Act much more “broadly” than the general public does….

“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says.”

That doesn’t sound good.

According to Wyden, “the government is relying on secret interpretations of what the law says without telling the public what those interpretations are.”

Isn’t that great?

Now the government has such extreme paranoia that they won’t even tell us what the rules are so we won’t even know if we are breaking them.

Have you noticed that everything seems to be “secret” these days?

Everywhere you turn someone in the government is claiming that “national security” is at risk for one reason or another.  The American people are being increasingly kept in the dark about everything because we cannot be “trusted”.

Secrecy and extreme security measures are now equated with patriotism.

Recently, U.S. Representative Ron Paul gave a speech on “The Patriot Act” on the floor of the House of Representatives.  The following is a brief except from that speech….

Our Presidents can now, on their own:

*Order assassinations, including American citizens,
*Operate secret military tribunals,
*Engage in torture,
*Enforce indefinite imprisonment without due process,
*Order searches and seizures without proper warrants, gutting the 4th Amendment,
*Ignore the 60 day rule for reporting to the Congress the nature of any military operations as required by the War Power Resolution,
*Continue the Patriot Act abuses without oversight,
*Wage war at will,
*Treat all Americans as suspected terrorists at airports with TSA groping and nude x-raying.

And the Federal Reserve accommodates by counterfeiting the funds needed and not paid for by taxation and borrowing, permitting runaway spending, endless debt, and special interest bail-outs.

Does that sound “patriotic” to you?

The following is a short video that includes even more of Ron Paul’s remarks….

Sadly, Ron Paul is vastly outnumbered in Congress by those that want even more secrecy and even more extreme security measures.

America is becoming a much different place.  The truth is that even if we give up all of our liberties and all of our freedoms we will still be extremely vulnerable to outside threats.

Do you really want to live in a society where there is very little liberty or freedom?  That is the direction America is going.  We may feel slightly safer, but we will cease to be Americans.

Recently, I wrote about the growing “big brother” control grid going up all over the country on The American Dream….

Do you want your children and grandchildren to live in a futuristic “big brother” control grid where everything they do is watched, recorded, tracked and tightly controlled?  Well, that is exactly where things are headed.  We witnessed some really bad totalitarian regimes during the 20th century, but what is coming is going to be far more restrictive than any of the despots of the past ever dreamed was possible.  Today, nearly every government on earth is tightening their grip on their citizens.  Paranoia has become standard operating procedure all over the planet and nobody is to be trusted.

All of this extreme paranoia must stop.

Sometimes people will say something like this: “Well, I don’t mind if the government watches me or searches me because I have nothing to hide.”

The next time someone tells you something like that, do the following….

Pull out a chair and set it down six inches away from that person.  Then sit in the chair and stare directly at him or her without moving.  After a few moments that person will say something like: “What in the hell are you doing?”

In response, just tell them that they just said that they didn’t mind being watched.

The truth is that none of us want eyeballs on us 24 hours a day.

Our founding fathers included the Bill of Rights in the Constitution for a reason.  The Bill of Rights is there to protect our most basic liberties.

If we allow those liberties to be stripped away in exchange for a little bit more security we will only have ourselves to blame.

9 Ways That The World Has Gotten Even Crazier In May

In case you haven’t noticed, the world has gotten even crazier in May. Just when you think that things can’t get any more bizarre, events go to a whole new level. Sadly, millions of Americans seem almost completely oblivious to all of the world-altering things that are going on all around us. I recently got back from doing a bit of traveling, and the reality is that most people out there are so busy living their lives and trying to survive from month to month that they don’t really have much time to pay attention to what is going on in the world around them. They are too busy working their tails off to make a living, they are too busy stocking up on groceries and foreign-made goods at the big box retail stores and they are too busy cheering for Scotty on American Idol. Unfortunately, what little information about the rest of the world that most Americans actually take in comes from the mainstream media. Most of the time the mainstream media is very adept at lulling the American people to sleep, but things are starting to get so crazy out there that a growing minority of Americans are starting to sit up and take notice.

When I was away on vacation I kept a bit of an eye on the news, but I had no idea just how crazy things were getting until I returned home. These days more seems to happen in a single week than used to happen in an entire month. The globe has become an incredibly unstable place, and you never know what is going to happen next.

The following are 9 ways that the world has gotten even crazier in May….

#1 What in the world is going on with the weather?  All of a sudden “unprecedented tornadoes” are popping up almost every day now.  Did you see what happened in Joplin, Missouri the other day?  There are very few things that will put sheer terror into you like an F5 tornado will.  If you doubt that, just check out this video.

The National Weather Service says that the Joplin tornado was the 8th worst tornado to ever hit the United States.  At least 122 people were killed and at least 750 people were injured.

Sadly, the Joplin tornado is part of a larger trend.  Many are already calling this a “100 year” tornado season.  It seems like a major tornado outbreak somewhere in the U.S. is a nightly occurence now.  For example, just tonight a huge tornado near Oklahoma City killed a couple of people.

In April, there were approximately 600 tornadoes across the country.  That is the most tornadoes that have ever been recorded in a single month inside the United States.  Usually, we only have about 1,200 tornadoes for the entire year.

There is nothing “normal” about these tornado outbreaks.  Something really weird is happening.

In addition, we have just experienced the worst Mississippi River flood ever.  That flood is also being called something that only happens “once in a hundred years”.

Why are such horrible natural disasters striking the United States right now?

Can anyone explain why this is happening?

#2 The globe continues to inch ever closer to World War III.  Just consider a few of the headlines we have seen just this week….

*NATO Warplanes in New Bombing Campaign on Tripoli

*Obama’s hidden war: US intensifies drone attacks in Pakistan

*US, Pakistan Near Open War; Chinese Ultimatum Warns Washington Against Attack

*Netanyahu’s defiance on deal is ‘declaration of war’

Sadly, it appears that the appetite for war is growing.  Many had hoped that Barack Obama would be a peacemaker, but that definitely is not the case.

The United States has been at war for so long that the American people have learned to accept it as a normal part of life.  As long as it is something that happens “over there”, most Americans don’t really seem too concerned about it.

But in the end, what is unfolding in the Middle East will have dramatic consequences for the United States.  Unfortunately, most Americans have become so “dumbed down” that they simply do not understand what is happening.

#3 The news from Japan just continues to get worse and worse.  Now TEPCO is finally admitting that there were at least partial meltdowns at three of the reactors at Fukushima.  Why we are only finding this out now is anyone’s guess.

It has been more than 2 months since the tsunami and officials in Japan still do not have Fukushima under control.  Every single day the complex continues to release massive amounts of radioactive material into the environment and the effects of this disaster will be felt for decades to come.

#4 When all of the crazy new security measures went into airports, we were all assured that scanners and “enhanced pat-downs” would never show up in subway stations, bus stations, sporting events and public schools.

Well, sadly the ridiculous security measures that have been implemented at our airports are spreading.  In fact, if you can believe it, a “certified TSA official” was brought in to oversee student searches at the Santa Fe High School prom last weekend.

When TSA officials start showing up at high school proms that should be a major red flag for all of us.  America is becoming a much different place than it used to be.

Do you enjoy living in a prison grid where we are all being constantly watched, tracked and searched?  If not, you better say something now before it is too late.

#5 The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld an order from a three-judge panel in California that mandates the release of approximately 40,000 inmates from California prisons.

Yes, the prisons are so overcrowded that up to 54 prisoners are using a single toilet, but you can’t just release thousands upon thousands of criminals on to the streets of California and expect that there will not be major problems.

California Governor Jerry Brown is proposing a “realignment plan” which would shift tens of thousands of prisoners to county jails, but the California legislature so far has not authorized the hundreds of millions of dollars that it is going to take to implement the plan.

Hopefully something can be done, because releasing more than one out of every four California inmates back on to the streets sure does seem like a bad idea to me.

#6 It is looking more likely than ever that the U.S. debt ceiling may not be raised and that we could actually see the U.S. government default on some debt.  The Democrats and the Republicans are fighting like cats and dogs again and there is such a deadlock right now that this could actually happen.

U.S. Representative Barney Frank certainly does not sound optimistic….

“It may be that we’re going to have to see some failure to raise the debt limit and some temporary hiatus in our ability to pay our bills (for lawmakers to act).”

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is using language that is even more apocalyptic.  Dimon says that a U.S. debt default would “dwarf Lehman Brothers” and that in the event of a default things will take place “that are not going to be pretty”.

#7 The U.S. real estate crash continues to get even worse. This week it was announced that U.S. commercial real estate is now down 47 percent from 2007 and has now reached a post-crash low. The following is how an article by Bloomberg described the latest data….

U.S. commercial property prices fell to a post-recession low in March as sales of financially distressed assets weighed on the market, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

The Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Index dropped 4.2 percent from February and is now 47 percent below the peak of October 2007, Moody’s said in a statement today.

But it is not just commercial real estate that is a giant mess.  New home sales also continue to struggle mightily.

In April, the number of new homes sold in the United States tied the lowest level ever recorded for that month.

These latest statistics just underscore the reality that the U.S. housing crash if very far from over.  As I have written about previously, the real estate crisis is absolutely crippling the economy and instead of signs of hope arising, things seem to be getting even worse.  For example, during the first quarter of 2011, home values declined at the fastest rate since late 2008.

So when in the world are things going to finally start turning around?

#8 Most Americans don’t realize it, but Europe is closer to a financial meltdown than it ever has been before. Greece is either going to get another bailout or it is going to default.  If you do not understand the kind of chaos this would set off on world financial markets, just read this editorial.

The Greek debt crisis continues to get worse.  At this point, the yield on 10-year Greek bonds has now reached an astounding 16.76%.

But it is not just Greece that is in trouble.  All over Europe there are nations that are on the verge of financial collapse.  In Spain, nearly half of those between the ages of 18 and 25 are unemployed and the economic protests there have reached a frightening level.

Everyone hoped that a bailout or two would be enough to make the European debt crisis go away.  It has now become obvious that is not going to happen.

A financial meltdown in Europe is happening.  The only question is how it is going to play out.

#9 Over the past couple weeks, one of the most talked about people in the world has been Harold Camping.  I have avoided writing about him because there are at least a billion issues that are more important than what Harold Camping is saying.

But this is what the mainstream media loves to do.  They love to find a Christian with a crackpot theory and splash him all over the front page.

Camping has a very limited following and the vast majority of Christians think he is totally and completely wrong.

However, the mainstream media loves to talk about people like Camping because it is a tremendous opportunity for them to mock Christians and Christianity.

Look, anyone that put any stock in any of Camping’s predictions is seriously deceived.  In case you didn’t know, Camping predicted the date of the rapture before.  On September 6th, 1994, hundreds of Camping’s followers gathered at an auditorium in Alameda, California waiting for the rapture.

So now Camping has been wrong two times.

Now Camping is saying that Judgment Day is going to be on October 21st and he says that he has figured out why he was wrong about May 21st.

If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.

If you are a Christian, then you know that there are dozens of prophecies that still need to be fulfilled before “the end of the world”.  What Camping is proposing is literally impossible according to the Bible.

Of course the mainstream media knows this, but they have no problem turning Camping into a household name while ignoring the thousands upon thousands of Christians around the world that are doing really great things.

But this is the crazy world we live in.  We are all talking about Harold Camping because the big media companies decided that was the way it was going to be.

It is time that all of us wake up and start thinking for ourselves.

Our world is becoming crazier by the minute and the mainstream media is certainly not helping things.  In times like these, it is going to be absolutely vital for all of us to engage our critical thinking skills and to not just blindly accept anything that someone else is trying to tell us.

Bed Bugs

The United States is currently experiencing a nightmarish epidemic of disgusting blood sucking parasites, and no, I am not talking about our politicians.  There is a full blown bed bug epidemic happening all across America and it just seems to get worse with each passing year. For cities such as New York and Philadelphia which are at the epicenter of the outbreak, bed bugs have become an important political issue.  Once bed bugs become entrenched in an area, virtually everyone is thinking about them.  Bed bugs will not kill you, but they can drive you insane.  Anyone that has ever had big, red welts all over their bodies from bed bug bites knows how terribly frustrating bed bugs can be.  They can be incredibly difficult to get rid of.  So why am I talking about bed bugs when there are hundreds of other important economic issues to talk about right now?  Well, this is just another example of how our country seems to be cursed.  Even the simplest things seem to become major problems for us these days. The reality is that there were almost no bed bugs inside the U.S. between the end of World War II and the 1990s.  But today the number of bed bugs is absolutely exploding.  I remember when I was young my mother would tell me to “sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite”, but I didn’t even know what bed bugs were because I had never seen any.  But today, CBS News says that more than 250 million dollars a year (and rising) is spent fighting bed bugs.

Things have gotten so bad that a “National Bed Bug Summit” was held earlier this year in Washington D.C.

Will we soon have a “war on bed bugs”?

I can just see it now: “You are either with us or you are with the bed bugs”.

So exactly what are bed bugs?

Well, basically bed bugs are small, brown, flat insects that love to suck the blood of animals and humans.  They are commonly found in hospitals, businesses, homes, sofas, mattresses, buses, subways, trains, airplanes, classrooms, retail stores, movie theaters and especially in hotels.

As mentioned above, you will not die from bed bug bites.  But many people have been driven absolutely crazy from constant bed bug bites for weeks or months on end.

One of the worst things about a bed bug infestation is all of the itching that bed bug bites cause.  It can get to a point where it can be absolutely debilitating.

Some people become so traumatized by the fear of having bed bugs crawl all over them and bite them all night that they actually become afraid to go to sleep.  A really bad bed bug infestation can cause panic attacks and even depression.

Right now there are large numbers of New Yorkers that are absolutely obsessed with bed bugs.  The bed bug infestation in the city just seems to get worse and worse.  The following is a quote from a local NBC news station in New York….

New statistics from the city’s Department of Housing, Preservation and Development reveal an epidemic: Manhattanites have been complaining about bed bugs at six times the rate they did in 2005. On Staten Island, the number of complaints has soared 32 times higher than it was five years ago.

Just because you have bed bugs does not mean that you are dirty or unsanitary.  The truth is that some of the finest hotels in the country have bed bugs.

According to The New York Post, bed bugs have even infested the Metropolitan Opera House, the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the Empire State Building and the United Nations.

I once experienced a problem with bed bugs myself.  Back when I was much younger and barely scraping by financially, I figured I would save a few bucks by buying a used mattress.

That was a huge mistake.

For weeks I would wake up with huge red bites all over my legs.

Never, ever again will I buy a used mattress.

Once bed bugs arrive in your home, they can be almost impossible to get rid of without professional help.

Throwing out one piece of furniture or covering your mattress in plastic might help a little bit but it will not solve the problem.

Some adult bed bugs can live for up to 12 months without feeding at all.

Just when you think they are gone they can come out and start feasting again.

Also, bed bugs are great at multiplying.  Female bed bugs can lay up to 5 eggs in a single day and can lay up to 500 eggs during a lifetime.

Perhaps your area of the country does not have a problem with bed bugs yet, but this epidemic is spreading.  Just check out the CBS News video report posted below….

Perhaps you saw in the news recently that some scientists have found that bed bugs are now carrying a “superbug” known as MRSA.

Scientists in Vancouver, Canada say that for the first time ever they have found bed bugs that have methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.  The following is a quote from a recent CTV article about this discovery….

Researchers discovered that a sample of the blood-sucking insects taken from three patients who live in Vancouver’s gritty Downtown Eastside were carrying two types of drug-resistant bacteria.

Co-investigator Dr. Marc Romney, a medical microbiologist at nearby St. Paul’s Hospital, said five bedbugs plucked from the patients or their belongings were carrying MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) or VRE (vancomycin-resistant enterococci). Dubbed superbugs, the bacteria are resistant to many standard antibiotics.

The good news is that these scientists do not have any evidence that bed bugs are spreading MRSA to humans.

Bed bugs are able to be infected by at least 28 different human pathogens, but at least to this point they are not very effective at spreading them.

Let us hope that does not change.

It turns out that MRSA has also been found in our supermarket meat.

For the first time in the United States, scientists have found antibiotic-resistant MRSA in supermarket meat.

According to Business Insider, “scientists at Wayne State University tested 289 raw meat samples from 30 Detroit grocery stores. Six of the samples were infected with the potentially deadly bacteria, including three chicken, two beef and one turkey.”

Yuck!

MRSA is not something you want to mess around with.

This is yet another example of how unsafe our food is becoming.

We like to think of ourselves as so advanced, but we can’t even protect ourselves from annoying little bed bugs and we can’t even keep very serious pathogens out of our food supply.

If you stop and think about all of the gross things in our society it can really stress you out.  For example, the next time you use a soda fountain at a fast food restaurant there is a good chance that you may encounter fecal contamination.  Just check out the following quote from Organic Health….

According to a study published in the January issue of the International Journal of Food Microbiology, nearly half of the 90 beverages from soda fountain machines in one area in Virginia tested positive for coliform bacteria – which could indicate possible fecal contamination.

But getting back to bed bugs, for those dealing with an infestation the number one thing they want to know is what to do about it.

Well, there was one very effective chemical known as “Propoxur”, but it has been banned by the EPA.  It turns out that Propoxur “is a known human carcinogen” and is very dangerous to children.

Some are urging the EPA to reconsider this ban, but so far the EPA has been standing firm.

Meanwhile, the bed bugs continue to multiply and terrorize more Americans.

On one bed bug forum, one woman identified as “avenae” shared a particularly brutal bed bug horror story….

It all started in April, woke up one morning with a red welt on my leg. Never really thought much of it. Then it kept happening, so I thought I had fleas, treated my animals, checked the house for them. Never saw a single flea. Also no one else in my home was being affected. Then I thought maybe I was having an allergic reaction to a new soap I had bought so I stopped using that and nothing changed. Kept realizing I was waking up in the middle of the night scratching my body parts almost raw. The itch was so intense it felt like a million fire ants biting me all over. So I start researching, read up on bed bugs and searched my entire home….nothing. But I seem to be having a sever reaction to the bites.

Mind you I hadn’t traveled, had any visitors, nothing that would have brought these nasty little creatures into my home.

Ever night I wake up, every morning new red welts all over me. One night I thought I’d wear long pants and sock and a long sleeve shirt, only to wake up with bites all over my neck and face! STILL could not find a single bug. It got to the point were I was crying myself to sleep at night and taking sleeping pills just to be able to sleep. Didn’t want to start sleeping on the couch out of fear of them following me out.

Do you have a similar bed bug horror story?

If so, we would love to hear about it.  Please feel free to share your thoughts about bed bugs below….

***UPDATE***

A reader named Emily left the following comment that I think we all should consider the next time we travel….

“I use to work as a Hotel Manager. Trust me when I say, all hotels are infested with bed bugs. It was terrible fighting with the corp. owners of the property; they only weighed your safety against profits and profits always won! We did try to kill the bugs, but nothing really is effective so we rented out infective rooms and if guest complained, we would offer them a discount on the room. It finally got to the point I could not look people in the face so I left. It goes with out saying; I would never stay in a hotel room, period! What can you do if you must travel, I don’t know! It is a fact of life that we must expose our selves to many nasty parasites in the environment and most of the time we survive, but nature is coming up with much more deadly threats all the time and it is no longer an option to be exposed. We need to wake up to these threats.”

Barack Obama Is Wrong: 18 Facts Which Prove That Illegal Immigration Is An Absolute Nightmare For The U.S. Economy

Barack Obama has declared that “immigration reform is an economic imperative“, and is promising to do his best to get an immigration bill pushed through Congress this year.  But will “legalizing” all of the illegal immigration that has taken place over the last several decades improve the struggling U.S. economy or will it actually make our economic problems worse?  One of the favorite tricks of top politicians is to promise that the economy is going to improve if we just support what it is that they are currently pushing.  Hopefully the Americans people will not buy the nonsense that Obama is spewing.  The truth is that Barack Obama is wrong about the economic impact of illegal immigration.  Illegal immigrants don’t do jobs that Americans “don’t want” to do.  A million Americans recently showed up to apply for a job at McDonald’s.  That is how desperate Americans are for work these days.  Please don’t try to tell me that there aren’t millions of Americans out there that would not pick fruit for minimum wage.  The millions upon millions of illegal immigrants in this country are stealing jobs, they are depressing wages in a whole host of industries and they are a huge factor in the erosion of the middle class.  Millions of middle class American families can’t afford to provide for their families anymore and are losing their homes, drowning in debt or going bankrupt.  Rather than what Barack Obama is proposing (which is to essentially “legalize” illegal immigration), we need an immigration policy that makes sense and that protects American jobs.

Before we go any further, it is important for me to make a few points.  It is not a bad thing that people want to come to this nation from another country.  A lot of people that want to come to the United States are really hard working and have really solid character.  This nation has a long tradition of immigrants arriving to build a better life here. At different times this country will need different levels of immigration, but we will always need new immigrants.  People on one side of a border are not more “valuable” than people on another side of a border.  There is a reason why our founding fathers believed that “all men are created equal”.  In every nation on earth there are really wonderful people.  We should love all men, women and children no matter where they were born and no matter what they look like.  God created us all and He loves us all dearly.

The reason I went into all that is because of the way politics is played in America in 2011.  The moment that anyone suggests that there might be a problem with illegal immigration they are immediately branded with all kinds of horrible labels.  To put a horrible label on someone that is completely and totally untrue just to score political points is absolutely despicable.

The funny thing is that some of the organizations that denounce others the loudest should actually be examining themselves.  For example, one of the largest pro-illegal immigration organizations is called “La Raza”, which literally means “The Race” (as if we all couldn’t figure it out).  Perhaps it is time for them to come up with a new name.

Look, we all have to start learning to love each other.  If not, our society is going to continue to break down.

A majority of the American people (yes, that is what the polls show) are not against illegal immigration because they “hate” another group of people.  Rather, they just want all immigrants to go through the “front door” and they want the government to be sensitive to changing economic conditions.

The sad truth is that the U.S. government has absolutely refused to secure the U.S. border with Mexico for decades, and this has allowed millions upon millions of criminals, drug dealers and gang members to cross freely into the United States.  In addition, by refusing to secure the border we have allowed new diseases to spread unchecked into this country.

Meanwhile, the law abiding people that would like to get into this country legally are put through absolute hell.  I used to practice law and I have filled out immigration forms.  The process is a complete and total nightmare.

So we have been making it really easy for law breakers to sneak in the back door of our country and we have been making it really hard for law abiding people to get in the front door.

What in the world could be wrong about wanting to fix that?

Once many illegal immigrants arrive in the United States they either try to make a living legally (by directly competing with blue collar American workers  for jobs and driving their wages down) or illegally by selling drugs or being involved in other kinds of criminal activity.

Apparently Barack Obama believes that this kind of behavior should be rewarded with a “path to citizenship”.

The vast majority of illegal immigrants pay absolutely no federal or state income taxes and they never intend to.  At the same time, they seem more than happy to take advantage of the free social services and benefits offered to them.  In fact, stories of how “good” life in America is just encourages more and more immigrants to come to the United States illegally.

We need an immigration policy that insists that everyone come in through the front door.

Is there anyone out there that cannot agree with that?

We also need to set immigration levels that our economy can handle.

Right now our economy is struggling.  Millions upon millions of Americans are out of work.  44 million Americans are on food stamps.  47 million Americans are living in poverty.  We just can’t take in a whole lot of extra workers right now.

You would think that would just be common sense.

But instead, Barack Obama wants to grant amnesty to all of the illegal immigrants that are already here and put them on a path to citizenship.

Wow – do you think that might embolden millions more illegal immigrants to come flooding in?

Barack Obama is against a border fence.  He says we don’t need it.

Meanwhile, thousands more illegal immigrants pour into this country every single day.

Barack Obama supports all of the “sanctuary cities” that have openly declared that they are not going to enforce our immigration laws.

So where do you think illegal immigrants are going to flock to?  The truth is that word about these “sanctuary cities” gets around really fast.  If you live in one of these cities, then you probably know all about it.

If Barack Obama gets his way, nobody will be breaking our immigration laws because essentially there will not be any more immigration laws.

Not that George W. Bush was any better.  He was an absolute disaster on immigration as well.

The truth is that our immigration policy has been slowly eroding the U.S. middle class for many decades.

But according to Barack Obama, we desperately need to implement his “immigration reform” plan for the good of the middle class….

“One way to strengthen the middle class in America is to reform the immigration system, so that there is no longer a massive underground economy that exploits a cheap source of labor while depressing wages for everybody else.”

What a joke.  The reality is that illegal immigration hurts that U.S. middle class and it is severely damaging to the U.S. economy.  Because of illegal immigration, every single day wages are lost, taxes don’t get collected, hospitals provide “free health care” for which they are never paid, huge criminal gangs of foreigners are roaming our streets and the cost of providing social services to illegal aliens is slowly bankrupting state and local governments.

The following are 18 facts which prove that illegal immigration is an absolute nightmare for the U.S. economy….

#1 Illegal immigrants take jobs away from American citizens. According to a review of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau data, legal and illegal immigrants gained over a million additional jobs between 2008 and 2010 even as millions of American citizens were losing their jobs during that same time period.

#2 The majority of our immigrants now sneak in through the “back door” that the federal government purposely leaves open.  Thanks to the negligence of the federal government, far more people move into the United States illegally than come in through the legal immigration process.  This has got to change.

#3 Illegal immigrants generally don’t pay taxes.  The vast majority of illegal aliens would never even dream of paying income taxes, but Mexicans living in America send billions upon billions of dollars out of the United States and back to Mexico every single year.

#4 Although illegal aliens pay next to nothing in taxes, they have no problem receiving tens of billions of dollars worth of free education benefits, free health care benefits, free housing assistance and free food stamp benefits.  Many communities in the United States now openly advertise that they will help illegal aliens with these things.

#5 The cost of educating the children of illegal immigrants is staggering. It is estimated that U.S. taxpayers spend $12,000,000,000 a year on primary and secondary school education for the children of illegal immigrants.

#6 Thanks to illegal immigration, California’s overstretched health care system is on the verge of collapse.  Dozens of California hospitals and emergency rooms have shut down over the last decade because they could not afford to stay open after being endlessly swamped by illegal immigrants who were simply not able to pay for the services that they were receiving.  As a result, the remainder of the health care system in the state of California is now beyond overloaded.  This had led to brutally long waits, diverted ambulances and even unnecessary patient deaths.  Sadly, the state of California now ranks dead last out of all 50 states in the number of emergency rooms per million people.

#7 It was estimated that there were approximately 7.7 million illegal aliens employed by U.S. employers during 2008.  How much better would our economy look if all of those jobs were being filled by American workers?

#8 The region along the U.S./Mexico border is now an open war zone. Just across the U.S. border, the city of Juarez, Mexico is considered to be one of the most dangerous cities on the entire planet because of the brutal drug war being waged there. In fact, Juarez has now become the murder capital of the western hemisphere.  Much of that violence has begun to spill over into areas of the southwestern United States.

For example, a while back NPR described one incident in the Juarez Valley that involved American citizens….

A couple of weeks ago, gunmen in the Juarez Valley killed the Mexican relative of a Fort Hancock high school student. When the student’s family in Fort Hancock heard about it, they crossed the border at 10 a.m. to see the body, and took the student with them.

“By 10:30, they had stabbed the relatives that went with him, which included his grandparents, with an ice pick,” says school superintendent Jose Franco. “My understanding is that the gentleman is like 90 years old, and they poked his eyes out with an ice pick. I believe those people are still in intensive care here in a hospital in the U.S.”

#9 A substantial percentage of young illegal immigrants end up in gangs.  U.S. authorities say that there are now over 1 million members of criminal gangs operating inside the United States. According to federal statistics, these 1 million gang members are responsible for up to 80% of the violent crimes committed in the U.S. each year.  Latino gangs made up primarily of illegal aliens are responsible for much of this violence.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, some of the most notorious gangs in the country are made up almost entirely of illegal immigrants….

“Gang investigators in Virginia estimate that 90% of the members of MS-13, the most notorious immigrant gang, are illegal immigrants.”

#10 The “18th Street Gang” is certainly giving MS-13 a run for their money.  It is believed that the 18th Street Gang has thousands of members in the city of Los Angeles alone. In fact, the gang has become so notorious that there are even rumors that some police officers in Los Angeles simply will not venture into the areas most heavily controlled by the 18th Street gang.

The following is what Wikipedia says about the 18th Street Gang….

A US Justice Department report from 2009 estimates that the 18th Street gang has a membership of some 30,000 to 50,000 with 80% of them being illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America and is active in 44 cities in 20 states. Its main source of income is street-level distribution of cocaine and marijuana and, to a lesser extent, heroin and methamphetamine. Gang members also commit assault, auto theft, carjacking, drive-by shootings, extortion, homicide, identification fraud, and robbery.

#11 The “drug war” in northern Mexico is one gigantic bloodbath. The Mexican government says that as many as 28,000 people have been slaughtered by the drug cartels since 2007.  A very significant percentage of those deaths have happened in areas right along the U.S. border, and yet our federal government still sees no reason to get serious about border security.

#12 It is an open secret that Mexican drug cartels are openly conducting military operations inside the United States.  The handful of border patrol agents that we have guarding the border are massively outgunned and outmanned.

One agent who patrols the border and who asked to remain anonymous told Fox News the following….

“To say that this area is out of control is an understatement.”

A different federal agent put it this way in an email to Fox News….

“Every night we’re getting beaten like a pinata at a birthday party by drug, alien smugglers.”

#13 Federal border officials say that Mexican drug cartels have not only set up shop on U.S. soil, but they are actually maintaining lookout bases in strategic locations in the hills of southern Arizona.  If you go to Arizona today, there are actually signs that have been put up by the federal government warning American citizens not to venture into certain wilderness routes that are used by Mexican drug cartels to bring in drugs.

#14 The drug war being waged on both sides of the border is so violent that it is almost unimaginable.  For example, one very prominent Mexican assassin known as “the soupmaker” has confessed that he made approximately 300 bodies disappear by dissolving them in acid baths.  But right now there is essentially nothing that is preventing the next “soupmaker” from crossing the U.S. border and moving into your neighborhood.

#15 Arizona police are being openly warned by the Mexican drug cartels that if they try to interfere with the drug traffic in their area that they will be “taken out” by drug cartel snipers.

#16 While the U.S. military endlessly hunts for “members of al-Qaeda” in the caves of Afghanistan and on the streets of Iraqi cities, a very real threat has been building just south of the border.  Over the past 15 to 20 years, Hezbollah has set up operations all over Mexico, Central America and South America.  Hezbollah is reportedly making a lot of money in the drug trade and in trafficking illegal aliens.  Sadly, our government is largely ignoring this.

#17 Each year, it costs the states billions of dollars to incarcerate illegal immigrant criminals that should have never been allowed into the country in the first place. It is estimated that illegal aliens make up approximately 30 percent of the population in federal, state and local prisons and that the total cost of incarcerating them is more than $1.6 billion annually.

#18 The drug cartels and the gangs always seem to be a couple steps ahead of our agents along the border. Approximately 75 tunnels along the U.S. border with Mexico have been discovered by law enforcement authorities in the last four years alone.

How much do you think all of this crime, gang violence and drug cartel activity is costing our economy?

Why won’t the federal government do what the Constitution requires and secure the border?

Oh, but Barack Obama says that he has a plan.

He says that he is going to save the day.

The following is how Barack Obama describes his plan…

“We are not going to ship back 12 million people, we’re not going to do it as a practical matter. We would have to take all our law enforcement that we have available and we would have to use it and put people on buses, and rip families apart, and that’s not who we are, that’s not what America is about. So what I’ve proposed… is you say we’re going to bring these folks out of the shadows. We’re going to make them pay a fine, they are going to have to learn English, they are going to have to go to the back of the line…but they will have a pathway to citizenship over the course of 10 years.”

So how many illegal immigrants do you think are going to step forward to pay a fine?

One percent?

How many of them do you think are going to show up for English classes?

Who is going to make them do it?

Obama?

Are we going to have law enforcement officials running around trying to collect fines from illegal immigrants and trying to get them to attend their English lessons?

According to Obama, the millions upon millions of illegal immigrants that are in this country are going to be glad to willingly do the following….

1) Admit they broke the law

2) Pay back taxes and a fine

3) Learn English

4) Be willing to undergo background checks before starting the legalization process

Those four points are taken directly from Obama’s plan.

So what are illegal immigrants going to do when this plan is passed?

99 percent of them are going to laugh and they are just going to keep on doing what they have been doing.

Large numbers of illegal immigrants are already enjoying the “high life” in the dozens of “sanctuary cities” across the United States.

The following is how the Ohio Jobs & Justice PAC defines sanctuary cities….

Generally, sanctuary policies instruct city employees not to notify the federal government of the presence of illegal aliens living in their communities. The policies also end the distinction between legal resident aliens and illegal aliens–so illegal aliens often benefit from taxpayer funded government services and programs too.

Sounds like a good deal to me.

Can I sign up for that plan?

After all, who wouldn’t want to earn all income tax-free and yet enjoy unlimited government services?

Today we are being told that we need to make life as comfortable as possible for the waves of illegal immigrants that are coming in.  In fact, Barack Obama says that all of us need to make sure that our kids are learning how to speak Spanish….

“I don’t understand when people are going around worrying about, we need to have English only. They want to pass a law, we just, we want English only…Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English, I agree with this. But understand this, instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English, they’ll learn English, you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish.”

All of this is utter insanity.

The cold, hard reality of the matter is that we have tightly secured the border between South Korea and North Korea for over 50 years and we could secure our own borders if we really wanted to.

But instead, we continue to leave our border with Mexico completely wide open. Thousands of criminals, gang members and drug pushers continue to come in completely unchecked every single day.

Meanwhile, the rest of us have to subject ourselves to some of the most humiliating “security measures” imaginable before we are even allowed to get on to an airplane.

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it?

Americans Gone Wild

Gerald Celente is known to love to make the following statement: “When people lose everything and have nothing left to lose – they lose it.”  Sadly, Celente is exactly right about this.  As the U.S. economy continues to collapse, Americans are going to becoming increasingly frustrated, and this frustration will inevitably boil over into rioting and violence.  Could we be starting to see the start of this already?  The number of Americans that have “gone wild” seems to be escalating.  Years ago, losing a job was not that big of a deal.  Now a job loss is enough to cause some Americans to snap and go over the edge.  We are seeing restaurant brawls and open violence in the streets that would have been unthinkable 50 years ago.  All over the nation people are losing it and are literally going crazy.  The news stories and the videos posted below of “Americans gone wild” are very graphic and very shocking.  There is a reason for this.  These examples are meant to show you that the very fabric of our civilized society is falling apart.  It won’t matter who ends up leading us politically if this is the kind of people we become.

Sadly, it appears that we are not the same kind of people that we used to be.  Something has changed in America.  Something is different.  We have forgotten many of the things that made us great as a nation.  We no longer live by the same principles.  We no longer value the same truths.

There are examples of “Americans gone wild” all over the nation.  The things  you are about to read about below are not just isolated incidents.  The truth is that I could have easily included dozens more examples.

As the economy continues to crumble this trend is going to get even worse.  The following are just a few examples of how Americans have been freaking out and losing it recently….

*One elementary school teacher in the town of Monroe, Georgia was arrested recently for something very unusual.  One day he made the decision to walk around the halls of his school completely naked.  So why was he naked?  Well, it turns out that he learned that he was going to be fired and so he snapped.

*As I have written about previously, McDonald’s recently held a “National Hiring Day” and about a million Americans showed up to apply for jobs at McDonald’s restaurants all around the nation.  Well, in Cleveland a horrible fight broke out between some girls and it ended up with three people being run over by a car.  Do not watch this video if you are sensitive to graphic violence….

*In Sioux City, Iowa a 41 year old man recently walked into the office where his boss worked and beat the living daylights out of him.  The boss suffered four chipped teeth and needed surgery to repair his nose.  Apparently the boss was planning to fire the man.

*At a McDonald’s restaurant in the Baltimore, Maryland area two young girls recently beat and kicked another young girl so brutally that she started having seizures.  The following video is very graphic and has some very strong language….

*Recently, one gold thief was so desperate to get into a jewelry store that he rammed his truck backwards through a wall of the store at very high speed.  The thief got away with a bunch of gold and jewelry and the owner is scared to death that he is going to come back and do it again.

*In the following video from a Denny’s restaurant, young women are actually throwing plates and furniture at each other….

*In Brooklyn, New York a security camera recently captured chilling footage of a cold-blooded execution right in the middle of the street.  One resident has named that particular street “body-a-week avenue”.

*In Atlanta, two dozen teens violently assaulted two Delta flight attendants on a train recently for no apparent reason.  The following is how a local Atlanta newspaper described the attacks….

Their “Clockwork Orange” style blitz was over soon after it began. The teens boarded the train, headed to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, at the Garnett station a little after midnight seemingly intent on instilling fear. They succeeded.

“There was blood everywhere, people were hollering and screaming,” a witness told Channel 2 Action News. “We were intimidated. People were terrified. People were trying to run. But there was nowhere to run.”

Sadly, there are hundreds more examples like these.  There are so many restaurant brawl videos up on YouTube that it would take an entire weekend to watch them all.

You don’t think America has changed?

What does it say about America when the murder rate in Flint, Michigan is worse than the murder rate in Baghdad?

There are some areas of the country where people simply do not go out of their homes at night.

We refused to discipline our young people and demand the best out of them so now we are reaping a bitter harvest.

According to one recent report, approximately half of all the people that live in the city of Detroit are illiterate.

Can you imagine that?

Half of the people that live in a major American city can’t even read?

Can that possibly be true?

What does that say about the way that we are educating our children?

Sadly, due to harsh economic conditions up in Detroit, about half of the schools in the city are being closed down for good.

That certainly isn’t going to make anything better.

But this is where we are at as a nation.

We borrowed and borrowed and borrowed and we never thought that we were going to pay the price.

Now the “credit card bills” are coming due, and state and local governments from coast to coast are completely broke.

There are signs of economic decline all over the United States.  More than 33 percent of our men do not have a  job.  Over 44 million of our fellow citizens are on food stamps.  Our country is literally falling apart.

So is there any hope for our nation or are we going to see even more “random acts of violence” as frustration comes to a boiling point for tens of millions of Americans?

The Worst Mississippi River Flood Ever?

Please pray for those living along the Mississippi River.  They are going to need it.  The tornadoes that just ripped through the southeast U.S. are being called one of the worst natural disasters in American history, and now the flooding along the Mississippi River may top the damage done by those tornadoes.  In fact, some are now projecting that this will be the worst Mississippi River flood ever recorded since the United States became a nation.  You don’t believe that?  Well, Bob Anderson, an Army Corps of Engineers spokesman based in Vicksburg, Mississippi says that there has “never been a flood of this magnitude on the upper Mississippi“.  And you know what they say – “never” is a really, really long time.  Hopefully everyone in the region has really good flood insurance.  The flood that this is being compared to is the great 1937 Mississippi River flood.  That flood was so nightmarish that it changed the whole way that the U.S. government approaches floods, but now this flood is surpassing the record levels set back in 1937 in many areas.  This truly is a historic flood.

This is not a disaster that happens over one or two days and then is over.  This disaster is going to literally take weeks to unfold.  Residents of 8 states are bracing for the worst.

Many are rapidly filling sandbags and are trying to keep the flood waters at bay.  Others are packing up and getting ready to evacuate.

The flood is so massive that it actually has caused some of the tributaries along the Mississippi River to actually start flowing backwards.

So how long is this flooding going to last?

At this point, the Mississippi River is expected to crest at 48 feet around May 11th.

But this disaster will last much longer than that.

Authorities are saying that the Mississippi River could stay at flood stage for more than a month.

The economic damage, the property damage and the loss of crops is going to be incalculable.

It is important to understand that this is just not another flood.  This is literally a history changing nightmare.

Just check out this quote from Gene Rench of the National Weather Service….

“Right now the Mississippi river is in the process of going through what we call an epic flood, meaning it’s more than historic, it’s more than a 100 year flood, it’s more like a 500 year flood.”

A “500 year flood”?

That is some pretty strong language.

Part of the problem is that the Ohio River and the Mississippi River are both flooding at the same time.  In a recent article on CNN, local farmer Bob Byrne described the damage and noted that this is the first time he has ever seen both of those mighty rivers flood at the same time….

“We’ve seen the Ohio River rampage, water right up to the top of the levee. We’ve seen this one (Mississippi) on the rampage, but never the two together.”

Byrne also said that the loss of wheat crops that he has already suffered comes to about $40,000.

Sadly, this flooding is going to cost the region billions upon billions of dollars.

But didn’t we just see another disaster that is going to cost billions upon billions of dollars?

Yes we did.

The “tornadoes of 2011” absolutely destroyed big chunks of the southeast United States.

There was one mile-wide tornado with winds over 200 MPH that basically ripped Tuscaloosa, Alabama to shreds.  There are parts of Tuscaloosa that look like they have been through a nuclear war.

What in the world is going on?

In just one 24 hour period last week, there were a whopping 226 active tornadoes in the United States.

Overall, there were approximately 600 tornadoes in the United States during April.  That is the most tornadoes that have ever been recorded in a single month in all of American history.

Usually, there are only about 1,200 tornadoes in the U.S. during an entire year.

Meanwhile, the state of Texas is being ravaged by drought and wildfires.  So far the wildfires down in Texas have scorched more than 2 million acres.

Why is all of this happening to us?

Could it be just a coincidence that so many “historic” natural disasters are happening all at once or is something else going on here?

Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below, and please remember to pray for the millions of Americans that are suffering through these disasters right now.

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