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The Tornadoes Of 2011: The Worst Natural Disaster In The United States Since Hurricane Katrina

The worst natural disaster in the United States since Hurricane Katrina just happened, and many in the mainstream media are already treating it like back page news.  It can be really tempting to want to talk about whatever the next “news cycle” brings us, but right now we really need to pray for those affected by “the tornadoes of 2011”.  There are parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia that will never, ever be the same again.  Entire towns have been wiped off the map.  Hundreds are dead and thousands have been seriously injured.  Over a million people lost power.  One of the tornadoes that ripped through the region was reported to be a mile wide.  How in the world are you supposed to get away from something like that once it is on top of you?  Many in the mainstream media have already acknowledged that this was the worst natural disaster in the U.S. since Hurricane Katrina took 1,800 lives back in 2005.  Over and over and over, those living in the region are describing the devastation by saying that they have “never seen anything like it”.  This truly was one for the history books.

The F5 tornado that ripped through the Tuscaloosa, Alabama area was reportedly so monstrous that it is still kind of difficult to believe that it was actually real.  The thing was a mile wide and scientists are estimating that it had winds that exceeded 260 miles an hour.

According to National Geographic, this monster tornado may have traveled a whopping 300 miles across Alabama and Georgia.

Can you even imagine the kind of devastation that we are talking about?

It is hard to even conceive of how much damage a mile-wide F5 tornado with winds of up to 260 MPH would do as it traveled across 300 miles.

Dozens are dead and close to a thousand people are injured in the city of Tuscaloosa alone.

At this point, the city looks like a war zone.  In fact, Tuscaloosa mayor Walter Maddox says that his city has been “obliterated”.

A stunned Maddox was quoted by The Telegraph as saying the following about the devastation….

“I don’t know how anyone survived,” said Mr Maddox. “It’s an amazing scene.

A state of emergency has been declared in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

But this disaster will not be “cleaned up” in a few days or a few weeks.

This was literally a history changing event for millions of people.

The last time the death toll from a tornado outbreak was this high was back in March 1932.

If you have the time, try to watch some videos of the devastation caused by these tornadoes.  It is incredibly difficult to try to do the damage caused by these tornadoes justice using only words.

The following is how an article posted on USA Today describes the devastation in the town of Smithville, Mississippi….

Powerful tornadoes swept through this northeastern Mississippi hamlet and across much of the South on Wednesday, splintering homes, shearing roofs and destroying lives. Smithville’s Town Hall was destroyed, as were the local high school, four churches and each of the town’s 14 businesses. Mattresses hung from tree branches, cars were flattened as if stepped on by giant feet, and rows of three-story pine trees snapped in half.

Do you think that Smithville will ever be the same?

Yes, the tornadoes of 2011 will be remembered for a very, very long time.

The people living in these areas deserve our prayers.

Thousands of lives have been permanently altered forever.  The following is just one example that CNN reported on….

Janet Puckett stands outside what’s left of her home on 30th Avenue in Alberta. Its walls crumbled under the force of the storm. Her living room and a front bedroom disappeared. The roof of the house got sucked up, too.

“A war zone,” she says of the mountains of broken 2-by-4s and other debris all around.

How would you feel if your roof and half your house were suddenly missing?

Would you rebuild?

Would you feel safe living in the same area?

Would your life ever be the same again?

Sadly, massive tornado outbreaks seem to be happening with increasing frequency in the South.

Back on April 16th, a similar wave of very violent thunderstorms spawned approximately 140 tornadoes.  During that event, 22 people were killed in the state of North Carolina.

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

Usually, the U.S. only experiences about 1,200 tornadoes for the entire year.  So what we are seeing right now is highly unusual.

The tornadoes that just ripped through the South also had a massive impact on the economy down there.

It has been estimated that up to 25 percent of all of the poultry houses in Alabama were either significantly damaged or destroyed.  It is also believed that millions of birds were killed.

Alabama produces more chicken than anywhere else in the United States except for Georgia and Arkansas.

So get ready to pay more for chicken.

Meanwhile, many key agricultural areas of Texas are experiencing their worst drought in decades.  According to CNBC, climate experts are becoming extremely concerned about the lack of rainfall….

Data issued Thursday by a consortium of national climate experts said 95 percent of Texas was suffering “severe drought,” or worse, up from 92 percent a week earlier. More than 70 percent of the state was in the worse conditions of “extreme drought” or “exceptional drought.” That is up from 68 percent a week ago in extreme and exceptional drought.

Not only that, some areas along the Mississippi River are having to deal with “historic flooding” right now.  The following is from a recent article on Accuweather.com….

As if tornadoes and damaging thunderstorms were not enough, historic flooding is also threatening the Mississippi River, below St. Louis, as well as the lower part of the Ohio River.

The rising waters are expected to top levels set during February 1937. This mark is the middle Mississippi Valley’s equivalent to the 1993 event farther north along Old Man River.

Things are really crazy out there right now.

Please pray for those that lost family and friends during these recent tornadoes.  There are thousands upon thousands of good people down in the South that are really hurting right now.  They could really use our prayers.

As I have written about previously, our world is seemingly going crazy right now and nothing is stable anymore.  The earth is shaking, natural disasters are becoming worse, the economy is falling apart and America appears to be coming apart at the seams.

Unfortunately, I believe that things are going to become even more unstable in the months and years ahead.

So what do all of you believe?  Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….

Student Loan Debt Hell: 21 Statistics That Will Make You Think Twice About Going To College

Is going to college a worthwhile investment?  Is the education that our young people are receiving at our colleges and universities really worth all of the time, money and effort that is required?  Decades ago, a college education was quite inexpensive and it was almost an automatic ticket to the middle class.  But today all of that has changed.  At this point, college education is a big business.  There are currently more than 18 million students enrolled at the nearly 5,000 colleges and universities currently in operation throughout the United States.  There are quite a few “institutions of higher learning” that now charge $40,000 or even $50,000 a year for tuition.  That does not even count room and board and other living expenses.  Meanwhile, as you will see from the statistics posted below, the quality of education at our colleges and universities has deteriorated badly.  When graduation finally arrives, many of our college students have actually learned very little, they find themselves unable to get good jobs and yet they end up trapped in student loan debt hell for essentially the rest of their lives.

Across America today, “guidance counselors” are pushing millions of high school students to go to the very best colleges that they can get into, but they rarely warn them about how much it is going to cost or about the sad reality that they could end up being burdened by massive debt loads for decades to come.

Yes, college is a ton of fun and it is a really unique experience.  If you can get someone else to pay for it then you should definitely consider going.

There are also many careers which absolutely require a college degree.  Depending on your career goals, you may not have much of a choice of whether to go to college or not.

But that doesn’t mean that you have to go to student loan debt hell.

You don’t have to go to the most expensive school that you can get into.

You don’t have to take out huge student loans.

There is no shame in picking a school based on affordability.

The truth is that pretty much wherever you go to school the quality of the education is going to be rather pathetic.  A highly trained cat could pass most college courses in the United States today.

Personally, I have had the chance to spend quite a number of years on college campuses.  I enjoyed my time and I have some pretty pieces of parchment to put up on the wall.  I have seen with my own eyes what goes on at our institutions of higher learning.  In a previous article, I described what life is like for most “average students” enrolled in our colleges and universities today….

The vast majority of college students in America spend two to four hours a day in the classroom and maybe an hour or two outside the classroom studying. The remainder of the time these “students” are out drinking beer, partying, chasing after sex partners, going to sporting events, playing video games, hanging out with friends, chatting on Facebook or getting into trouble. When they say that college is the most fun that most people will ever have in their lives they mean it. It is basically one huge party.

If you are a parent and you are shelling out tens of thousands of dollars every year to pay for college you need to know the truth.

You are being ripped off.

Sadly, a college education just is not that good of an investment anymore.  Tuition costs have absolutely skyrocketed even as the quality of education has plummeted.

A college education is not worth getting locked into crippling student loan payments for the next 30 years.

Even many university professors are now acknowledging that student loan debt has become a horrific societal problem. Just check out what one professor was quoted as saying in a recent article in The Huffington Post….

“Thirty years ago, college was a wise, modest investment,” says Fabio Rojas, a professor of sociology at Indiana University. He studies the politics of higher education. “Now, it’s a lifetime lock-in, an albatross you can’t escape.”

Anyone that is thinking of going to college needs to do a cost/benefit analysis.

Is it really going to be worth it?

For some people the answer will be “yes” and for some people the answer will be “no”.

But sadly, hardly anyone that goes to college these days gets a “good” education.

To get an idea of just how “dumbed down” we have become as a nation, just check out this Harvard entrance exam from 1869.

I wouldn’t have a prayer of passing that exam.

What about you?

We really do need to rethink our approach to higher education in this country.

Posted below are 21 statistics about college tuition, student loan debt and the quality of college education in the United States….

#1 Since 1978, the cost of college tuition in the United States has gone up by over 900 percent.

#2 In 2010, the average college graduate had accumulated approximately $25,000 in student loan debt by graduation day.

#3 Approximately two-thirds of all college students graduate with student loans.

#4 Americans have accumulated well over $900 billion in student loan debt. That figure is higher than the total amount of credit card debt in the United States.

#5 The typical U.S. college student spends less than 30 hours a week on academics.

#6 According to very extensive research detailed in a new book entitled “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses”, 45 percent of U.S. college students exhibit “no significant gains in learning” after two years in college.

#7 Today, college students spend approximately 50% less time studying than U.S. college students did just a few decades ago.

#8 35% of U.S. college students spend 5 hours or less studying per week.

#9 50% of U.S. college students have never taken a class where they had to write more than 20 pages.

#10 32% of U.S. college students have never taken a class where they had to read more than 40 pages in a week.

#11 U.S. college students spend 24% of their time sleeping, 51% of their time socializing and 7% of their time studying.

#12 Federal statistics reveal that only 36 percent of the full-time students who began college in 2001 received a bachelor’s degree within four years.

#13 Nearly half of all the graduate science students enrolled at colleges and universities in the United States are foreigners.

#14 According to the Economic Policy Institute, the unemployment rate for college graduates younger than 25 years old was 9.3 percent in 2010.

#15 One-third of all college graduates end up taking jobs that don’t even require college degrees.

#16 In the United States today, over 18,000 parking lot attendants have college degrees.

#17 In the United States today, 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.

#18 In the United States today, approximately 365,000 cashiers have college degrees.

#19 In the United States today, 24.5 percent of all retail salespersons have a college degree.

#20 Once they get out into the “real world”, 70% of college graduates wish that they had spent more time preparing for the “real world” while they were still in school.

#21 Approximately 14 percent of all students that graduate with student loan debt end up defaulting within 3 years of making their first student loan payment.

There are millions of young college graduates running around out there that are wondering where all of the “good jobs” are.  All of their lives they were promised that if they worked really hard and got good grades that the system would reward them.

Sometimes when you do everything right you still can’t get a job. A while back The Huffington Post featured the story of Kyle Daley – a highly qualified UCLA graduate who had been unemployed for 19 months at the time….

I spent my time at UCLA preparing for the outside world. I had internships in congressional offices, political action committees, non-profits and even as a personal intern to a successful venture capitalist. These weren’t the run-of-the-mill office internships; I worked in marketing, press relations, research and analysis. Additionally, the mayor and city council of my hometown appointed me to serve on two citywide governing bodies, the planning commission and the open government commission. I used to think that given my experience, finding work after graduation would be easy.

At this point, however, looking for a job is my job. I recently counted the number of job applications I have sent out over the past year — it amounts to several hundred. I have tried to find part-time work at local stores or restaurants, only to be turned away. Apparently, having a college degree implies that I might bail out quickly when a better opportunity comes along.

The sad truth is that a college degree is not an automatic ticket to the middle class any longer.

But for millions of young Americans a college degree is an automatic ticket to student loan debt hell.

Student loan debt is one of the most insidious forms of debt.  You can’t get away from student loan debt no matter what you do.  Federal bankruptcy law makes it nearly impossible to discharge student loan debts, and many recent grads end up with loan payments that absolutely devastate them financially at a time when they are struggling to get on their feet and make something of themselves.

So are you still sure that you want to go to college?

Another open secret is that most of our colleges and universities are little more than indoctrination centers.  Most people would be absolutely shocked at how much unfiltered propaganda is being pounded into the heads of our young people.

At most colleges and universities, when it comes to the “big questions” there is a “right answer” and there is virtually no discussion of any other alternatives.

In most fields there is an “orthodoxy” that you had better adhere to if you want to get good grades.

Let’s just say that “independent thought” and “critical thinking” are not really encouraged at most of our institutions of higher learning.

Am I bitter because I didn’t do well?  No, I actually did extremely well in school.  I have seen the system from the inside.  I know how it works.

It is a giant fraud.

If you want to go to college because you want to have a good time or because it will help you get your career started then by all means go for it.

Just realize what you are signing up for.

Young Girls BANNED From Selling Girl Scout Cookies On Their Own Front Lawn

Once upon a time in America, if you were a couple of little girls and you wanted to sell lemonade or girl scout cookies at a little stand in front of your home nobody would give you any problems.  In fact, most of the people passing by would have smiled and would have seen it as a sign of hope that the next generation was being so industrious.  Well, that is not the way that it works anymore.  Today, all across America nightmarish control freaks are seeking to micromanage every single aspect of our lives.  That includes banning young girls from selling girl scout cookies on their own front lawns.  Yes, you read that correctly.  In Missouri of all places, two young girls named Abigail and Caitlin Mills were recently taught a lesson on how to be good citizens in the emerging totalitarian control grid going up all over the United States.  After a complaint from a neighbor, the city of Hazelwood cracked down on the two girls and told them that they must shut down the girl scout cookie stand that they had been operating in their front yard.

So were the girls doing anything wrong?  No.  There are very few things that are more “American” than selling girl scout cookies.  In fact, they had been operating the stand during this time of the year for the past 6 years.  It had become a community tradition.  But according to the city of Hazelwood, the girls were violating a city ordinance that bans “the sale of commodities” from a home.

You see, the truth is that there is a “rule” for almost everything today.  In fact, we have so many “laws” and “rules” and “regulations” in the United States that it is literally impossible to be in compliance with all of them.

However, this incident with the girl scout cookies would probably never have exploded if a nearby neighbor had not snitched on the girls.  Apparently the neighbor did not like the fact that the extra people coming around to buy girl scout cookies made her dogs bark.

This is what America is turning into.  We are all being taught to be suspicious of each other and to “inform” on our neighbors.  Instead of living in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we are suddenly living in a country that more closely resembles East Germany or Soviet Russia with each passing day.

Well, fortunately this story had somewhat of a happy ending.  Philanthropist George “The Shoeman” Hutchins bought the remaining 36 boxes of girl scout cookies that the girls were trying to sell.  He even had the girls deliver one of the boxes to the angry neighbor for free.  But even that turned into a bit of an incident.  A local news report about the story put it this way….

After “The Shoeman” bought the remaining cookies he wrote a special note on one box for the neighbor who had the stand shut down.  The box of Shortbread Cookies read, “Have a nice day.  Sorry for all your troubles.”  Mills says the neighbor refused the cookies when her daughters brought it by.  But the girls eventually convinced the woman to give the cookies to a child in the home.

But that is not the end of the story.

The city of Hazelwood is not backing off.  They still insist that those girls (and all other girls in the city) will be banned from selling girl scout cookies on their front lawns from now on.

That is life in America today.  We are taught that we should never try to do anything on our own.  Instead, we are all encouraged to just give up, work for the system, and when we are not working for the system or shopping at their stores we are to stay in our homes watching the endless hours of “programming” on television.

In the old days, the streets of America were teeming with life.

In America today, how many people do you see out and about enjoying life in our neighborhoods?

The country that so many of us once loved is dying.

Unfortunately, the incident in Hazelwood, Missouri is far from an isolated incident.

For example, last year a 7 year old little girl in Tulare, California had set up a little lemonade stand because she wanted to raise money so that she could go to Disneyland.

How could anyone have a problem with that?

Well, apparently the authorities had a problem with that.  They came in and shut her down cold because she did not have a proper business permit.

That is the way it is in America today.  You have to have a “permit” to do almost anything.

Sadly, a growing number of Americans are buying into the idea that life will be better when we allow government to micromanage our lives.

One example of this that I wrote about recently is the new federal regulations regarding light bulbs.  The old light bulbs that have worked so wonderfully are being totally banned and are being replaced by new bulbs that are more expensive, that are more dangerous for children and that are actually worse for the environment.  The following is a brief excerpt from an article I recently posted about these ridiculous new light bulbs….

Back in 2007, President George W. Bush signed a law that mandates the following: “Manufacturers will no longer be able to make the 100-watt Thomas Edison bulb after Jan. 1, 2012, followed by the 75-watt version in Jan. 2013, and the the 60- and 40-watt bulbs in Jan. 2014.”  Yes, you read that correctly.  Federal bureaucrats are running wild and the nanny state has decided that you are simply not going to have the choice to buy traditional light bulbs anymore.  So why the change?  Incandescent light bulbs have not been proven to be unsafe and consumers still want to buy them.  The new CFL (compact fluorescent lamp) light bulbs are more expensive and are actually worse for the environment.  So why was this law passed?  The feds passed it because they decided that existing light bulbs use too much energy and have too large of a “carbon footprint”.  Instead of giving us choices and attempting to persuade us to change, the federal government is ramming their will down our throats.

Now that the government has banned us from selling girl scout cookies in our front yards and is telling us what kind of light bulbs we have to buy, what is next?

Will they arrest us for not recycling properly?

Don’t laugh – the city of Cleveland has announced plans to have “trash supervisors” go snooping through trash cans to ensure that people are actually recycling according to city guidelines.

Will they arrest us for smoking in a public park?

Don’t laugh – in New York City they will.  The New York City Council has voted to ban smoking in all public parks and on all public beaches.

Will they arrest us for trying to do good to others?

Don’t laugh – in Houston, Texas a couple named Bobby and Amanda Herring that had been feeding homeless people for over a year has been banned by the city from doing so.  They were told that they needed a permit to feed the homeless and city officials said that they are not going to get one.

Sadly, the American people do not really speak up much about these ridiculous regulations on the local level.  Instead, we all just keep going back to the ballot boxes and keep sending the same control freaks back into positions of power over and over again.

If there is not a major shift in the political culture of this country, the crazy regulations are just going to become more and more suffocating.

Someday will we need a “permit” or a “license” to take a breath of fresh air?  Will we need a “permit” or a “license” to step outside of our homes?

Wake up and take a look around you.  Our society is being turned into one big prison grid.

Is this really how you want to live?

Global Financial Markets Plunge As The World Watches Japan Descend Into A Nuclear Nightmare

Global financial markets are in turmoil as the situation in Japan continues to deteriorate.  Stock markets are plunging all over the world as investors flock to investments that are considered to be safer.  The 9.0 earthquake and the unprecedented tsunami in Japan would have been more than enough to spook investors and unleash chaos on world financial markets, but now the unfolding nightmare at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility is really starting to cause panic.  Right now there is a mass exodus out of the city of Tokyo.  But not everyone can leave the city.  There are over 30 million people living in and around Tokyo.  So where in the world could you possibly put 30 million refugees?  Sadly, the truth is that millions of Japanese are going to stay in Tokyo no matter how high the radiation gets.  Let us hope that Japanese authorities can get the situation at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility under control, but the fact that they have resorted to dropping water from helicopters and shooting water cannons at these nuclear reactors is not comforting.

World financial markets are certainly not expressing a lot of confidence right now.  This week alone, $300 billion in U.S. stock values have been wiped out.  The Dow Jones industrial average lost about 2 percent of its total value on Wednesday.  The Nikkei 225 stock index has lost about 10 percent of its total value since the beginning of this crisis.  At one point it was down more than 16 percent, but a gigantic monetary injection from the Bank of Japan has helped to stabilize things at least for now.  There are also some that believe that the Japanese government is now directly buying up stocks to keep them from falling even further.

Stock markets across Europe have been plunging as well.  An article posted on the USA Today website described some of the carnage on Wednesday….

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares closed down 97.05 points, or 1.7% at 5,598.23 while France’s CAC-40 fell 84.29 points, or 2.2%, to 3,696.56. Germany’s DAX ended 133.82 points, or 2%, lower at 6,513.84.

The financial ripples from this crisis are going to be felt for a long, long time.

In order to rebuild Japan, the Japanese government is somehow going to have to borrow massive amounts of money.  But the Japanese national debt was already projected to reach 228 percent of GDP this year.

The Japanese government has become an incredibly bad credit risk, but lowering their credit rating right now would seem to be in very bad taste.  So far, all three major credit rating agencies are taking a “wait and see” approach when it comes to Japan.

Unfortunately, the crisis in Japan is far from over.

The situation at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility just seems to grow more dire with each passing day.  Right now, the primary concern is the 40 years of spent fuel rods that are stored throughout the complex.

Ed Lyman, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, recently explained why the pools that store the spent fuel rods are the biggest problem at this point….

“For the time being, the greatest concern is the spent fuel pools because there is a clear pathway for release of radioactivity from the pools into the environment.”

The phrase “spent fuel rods” may make it sound like they should no longer be a threat, but the truth is that these fuel rods remain extremely hot and extremely radioactive for years after they are done being used.  For some reason, someone thought that it would be a good idea to store these spent fuel rods in huge pools of water near the top of each of the nuclear reactor buildings at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex.

These spent fuel rod pools are not housed in the same kind of containment vessels that the nuclear reactors are.  Therefore there is a much greater danger that radiation from these spent fuel rods could be released into the surrounding environment.

A recent article by Paul Joseph Watson did a great job of explaining just how big of a problem these spent fuel rods represent….

The Fukushima Daiichi plant has seven pools dedicated to spent fuel rods. These are located at the top of six reactor buildings – or were until explosions and fires ravaged the plant. On the ground level there is a common pool in a separate building that was critically damaged by the tsunami. Each reactor building pool holds 3,450 fuel rod assemblies and the common pool holds 6,291 fuel rod assemblies. Each assembly holds sixty-three fuel rods. In short, the Fukushima Daiichi plant contains over 600,000 spent fuel rods – a massive amount of radiation that will soon be released into the atmosphere.

Each of these 600,000 spent fuel rods is a potential “dirty bomb”.

Are you starting to grasp just how serious this all is?

It is absolutely critical that all of these spent fuel rods remain submerged in water.

If the water drops in the spent fuel pools there will be nothing to keep the spent fuel rods cool and they will start to degrade very, very quickly.

Unfortunately, things don’t look good right now.  U.S. authorities today expressed their belief that the spent fuel rods in unit 4 are now exposed and that a great deal of radiation is being released.  In fact, Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, stated during Congressional testimony today that he believes that an extremely high level of radiation is being released by exposed spent fuel rods at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility at this point….

We believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures.

It would be hard to understate the courage of those that are working inside the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility right now. They all likely realize that they are all going to die very quickly. They are laying down their lives in an effort to save their countrymen. According to a recent report from CBS News these workers say that they are not afraid to die….

Although communication with the workers inside the nuclear plant is nearly impossible, a CBS News consultant spoke to a Japanese official who made contact with one of the workers inside the control center.

The official said that his friend told him that he was not afraid to die, that that was his job.

Would all of us respond the same way?

Even the media that are reporting on this disaster in Japan are starting to be affected by this radiation.  Lester Holt revealed this morning that his entire crew had tested positive for radiation after returning from an assignment.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama is acting as if all of this stuff going on in Japan is no big deal. In fact, as Keith Koffler recently observed, Obama seems to be really enjoying himself in the midst of this crisis….

This morning, as Japan’s nuclear crisis enters a potentially catastrophic phase, we are told that Obama is videotaping his NCAA tournament picks and that we’ll be able to tune into ESPN Wednesday to find out who he likes.

Saturday, he made his 61st outing to the golf course as president, and got back to the White House with just enough time for a quick shower before heading out to party with Washington’s elite journalists at the annual Gridiron Dinner.

If you are curious about Obama’s picks for the NCAA tourney, they are posted on the official White House website.

This weekend, the Obamas are headed down to Brazil. According to an article in Forbes, the Obama plan to do a good bit of sightseeing while they are there….

The Obama family will also take in the sights in Rio. A trip to Corcovado mountain, where the Christ the Redeemer statue stands (France gave us Lady Liberty, gave Brazil Jesus) is supposedly on the itinerary. What trip to Rio would be complete without it?

Isn’t it great to see Obama acting like a true leader in the midst of one of the greatest moments of crisis that the world has seen since World War 2?

What in the world is Obama possibly thinking?

One thing about a major crisis is that it reveals the true character of those affected by it.  Many are responding to this crisis in Japan with great acts of courage and heroism.

Others are not rising to the occasion.

Let us just hope and pray that the Japanese figure out a way to get the situation at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex under control.  If a “worst case scenario” happens we could soon be facing an unprecedented nuclear nightmare.

27 Signs That The Nuclear Crisis In Japan Is Much Worse Than Either The Mainstream Media Or The Japanese Government Have Been Telling Us

How much of a threat is the nuclear crisis in Japan?  That question is on the minds of millions of people around the globe tonight.  Unfortunately, the Japanese government and the mainstream media have both been doing their best to downplay this crisis.  Even though there have been massive explosions at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility, authorities in Japan have still been very stingy with information and they keep insisting that the situation is under control.  But the situation is not under control.  In fact, it just seems to get worse with each passing day.  Radiation levels are now incredibly high at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex and the radiation cloud is starting to spread.  Radiation levels in Tokyo are already 10 times above normal levels, and there are reports in the international media that some people have begun to flee the city.  It is imperative that the Japanese government tell the truth about what is going on because this could potentially affect the health of millions of people.  There are over 12 million people in the city of Tokyo alone.  If this nuclear crisis continues to get worse it could potentially end up killing more Japanese than the tsunami just did.

Yes, things really are that serious.

We are not just talking about a repeat of Chernobyl.

We are possibly talking about “many Chernobyls”.

It is somewhat understandable that the Japanese government and the mainstream media do not want to panic the public, but the reality is that people need the truth about what is going on.

Unfortunately, it is not likely that the Japanese government or the mainstream media are going to “change their stripes” overnight, so in order to try to get an idea of what is really going on we need to look at the clues.

Sometimes it is much more important to watch what people are doing rather than what they are saying.

For example, a significant number of foreign governments are now evacuating personnel from Tokyo.

Why would they be evacuating if there was no threat?

Posted below are 27 signs that the nuclear crisis in Japan is much worse than either the mainstream media or the Japanese government have been telling us.  When you take all of these clues and you put them together it really does paint a frightening picture….

#1 Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan is urging all people living within 30 kilometers of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility to stay indoors.

#2 Andre-Claude Lacoste, the head of France’s Nuclear Safety Authority, says that the containment vessel surrounding the No. 2 reactor at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex is “no longer sealed“.

#3 Radiation levels in Tokyo are already 10 times above normal levels.

#4 Reuters is reporting that some residents of Tokyo are already starting to flee the city.

#5 Radiation levels in one city north of Tokyo, Utsunomiya, were recently reported to be 33 times above normal levels.

#6 Radiation levels in the city of Saitama have been reported to be 40 times above normal levels.

#7 According to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, the “possibility of further radioactive leakage is heightening.”

#8 The Japanese government is admitting that radiation levels near the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex are very harmful to human health.

#9 According to the World Nuclear Association, exposure to over 100 millisieverts of radiation a year can lead to cancer.  At this point the level of radiation being measured right outside the number 4 reactor at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex is 400 millisieverts per hour.

#10 A U.S. Navy crew that was assisting in relief efforts was exposed to a month’s worth of nuclear radiation in just a single hour.

#11 According to the U.S. Navy, low levels of radiation have been detected at their bases in Yokosuka and Atsugi.

#12 The USS Ronald Reagan recently detected significant levels of radiation 100 miles off the Japanese coast.

#13 The operator of the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex has pulled out 750 of the 800 workers that were working at the facility.

#14 The French embassy in Tokyo is advising French citizens to leave the city.

#15 The German embassy in Tokyo is advising all German citizens to leave the country entirely.

#16 German technology company SAP is evacuating their offices in Tokyo.

#17 Austria has announced that it is moving its embassy from Tokyo to Osaka due to fears about the radiation.

#18 Finland is urging all of their citizens to leave Tokyo.

#19 The Czech military is sending planes to Japan specifically to evacuate the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.

#20 Air China is canceling many flights to Tokyo.

#21 The Chinese Embassy has announced that it will be evacuating all Chinese citizens from the Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaraki and Iwate prefectures.

#22 Russia is making preparations to evacuate civilians and military units from the Kuril Islands.

#23 Physicist Frank von Hippel recently told the New York Times the following about this disaster: “It’s way past Three Mile Island already”.

#24 The president of France’s nuclear safety authority says that this crisis is now almost as bad as Chernobyl was….

“It’s clear we are at Level 6, that’s to say we’re at a level in between what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.”

#25 There have been reports of extremely high radiation at another nuclear facility in Japan.  It has been reported that at the Onagawa nuclear plant radiation that is 700 times the normal level was detected at one point.

#26 One anonymous senior nuclear industry executive told The Times Of India that Japanese power industry managers are “basically in a full-scale panic” and that “they don’t know what to do”.

#27 It is also being reported that there were over 600,000 spent fuel rods stored at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex.  Most of these rods were apparently stored near the top of the 6 reactor buildings.  There have already been major explosions at three of those buildings.  It is now feared that there is now nothing to prevent many of these spent fuel rods from releasing radiation into the atmosphere.  That is really, really bad news.

So is there a threat that nuclear radiation from Japan could reach the United States?

Well, actually everyone agrees that radiation could reach the United States.  The controversy is whether or not it will be enough to be harmful to human health.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is admitting that it is “quite possible” that nuclear fallout from this disaster could reach the United States.  In fact, Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman David McIntyre says that there could already be radiation from Japan over America….

Right now it’s quite possible that there could be some radiation floating over the United States.

But most government officials in the U.S. are insisting that there is “no threat” to the health of American citizens from this crisis at this point.

So how would nuclear radiation from Japan get transported to the United States?

Well, if radiation released by a damaged nuclear reactor got up into the jet stream, the first major land mass that it would encounter would be North America.  In fact, the jet stream commonly takes air from over Japan directly over the west coast of the United States.  The following video demonstrates this fact beautifully….

So is there any reason for those of us living in the United States to be concerned?

According to the Japanese government, the U.S. government and the mainstream media there is not.

But do you believe them?

The truth is that they seem much more concerned with keeping the public calm rather than telling the public the truth.

Radiation levels are increasing all over northern and central Japan.  People are starting to leave Tokyo and other major cities in the region.  Foreign governments are evacuating personnel.  Fires continue to erupt at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex.  The authorities in Japan seem to have no idea how to solve this crisis.

If even one of those damaged nuclear reactors fully melts down it is going to be a complete and total nightmare.  If you live in an area that could potentially be affected by nuclear radiation from Japan you might want to start figuring out how you and your family are going to handle this crisis.

Federal Bureaucrats: Get Your Dirty Hands Off Of Our Light Bulbs

In the United States today, thousands upon thousands of ridiculous federal regulations tightly control almost every area of our lives.  One example of this is that starting on January 1st, we are no longer going to be able to buy certain kinds of light bulbs in the United States.  Back in 2007, President George W. Bush signed a law that mandates the following: “Manufacturers will no longer be able to make the 100-watt Thomas Edison bulb after Jan. 1, 2012, followed by the 75-watt version in Jan. 2013, and the the 60- and 40-watt bulbs in Jan. 2014.”  Yes, you read that correctly.  Federal bureaucrats are running wild and the nanny state has decided that you are simply not going to have the choice to buy traditional light bulbs anymore.  So why the change?  Incandescent light bulbs have not been proven to be unsafe and consumers still want to buy them.  The new CFL (compact fluorescent lamp) light bulbs are more expensive and are actually worse for the environment.  So why was this law passed?  The feds passed it because they decided that existing light bulbs use too much energy and have too large of a “carbon footprint”.  Instead of giving us choices and attempting to persuade us to change, the federal government is ramming their will down our throats.  Well, it is about time that we told the federal bureaucrats that are trying to take our freedoms away that we want them to get their dirty hands off of our light bulbs.

Thankfully there are some members of the House and Senate that are seeking to repeal this law, but right now it looks extremely doubtful that a repeal would ever be signed into law by Barack Obama.

Some people may not think that light bulbs are a big deal, but the truth is that the fact that the government tells us what kind of light bulbs to buy is just another sign of how rapidly liberty and freedom are dying in this country.

The founding fathers intended for this nation to have a very limited central government and lots of room for liberty and freedom.

But today we are “fenced in” by thousands and thousands and thousands of government regulations.  We only get to enjoy very small amounts of  “liberty” and “freedom” within the very-tightly defined boundaries that the federal government has set up for us.

Unfortunately, this “control grid” has been developing for decades.  The elite that make up America’s ruling class are raised and educated to believe that they know better than the rest of us how things should be done.  They are taught all through school that it is their “responsibility” to impose their vision of “a better life” on all the rest of us.  To the ruling elite, we are all just a bunch of sheep that do not even understand what is best for us.

If it seems like the people running this country are a bunch of “control freaks”, that is because that is exactly what they are.  They are smug, arrogant and convinced that they are better than you are.  They believe that democracy needs to be “directed” and that all of us need to be told what to do and what to believe.

But it is not just politicians that have these attitudes.  The elites that own and operate the mainstream news have these attitudes as well.

Do you ever get the impression that television news is “talking down” to you?

Well, that is because that is exactly what is happening.

The people that own and deliver the news come from wealth and privilege.  They have been “educated” at schools like Yale, Harvard and Stanford.  They live in cities like New York and Los Angeles and they mingle with the ultra-wealthy and the very famous.  They feel like they are making the world a better place by not only delivering the news but also by telling you what you should think about it.

So when the “establishment” passes a law that bans you from buying certain kinds of light bulbs, most of those in the “establishment” media are going to back them up on it.

The establishment has decided that the rest of us are not smart enough to want “the green agenda” on our own, so they are just going to start imposing it on all of us.

So what is so great about the new light bulbs?

Well, the new light bulbs that they are trying to push on us use less energy and therefore leave less of a “carbon footprint”.

But instead of giving us a choice and trying to make their case, they are just banning the old light bulbs that we have been using for decades.

What kind of “freedom of choice” is that?

In addition, these new light bulbs are actually worse for the environment and they have been known to cause health problems.

The following are just a few of the known issues with CFL bulbs….

*When a CFL light bulb is broken it releases high levels of mercury into the air.

*The quality of light produced by CFL bulbs is poorer.

*CFL bulbs are dimmer.

*CFL bulbs tend to flicker and this causes some people to become dizzy or ill.

*CFL bulbs have been associated with migraine headaches and sleep abnormalities.

*CFL bulbs are so toxic that they require special disposal.

*The mercury in CFL bulbs is particularly harmful to fetuses and children.

*The amount of mercury in a CFL bulb is enough to make 1,000 gallons of water unsafe for human consumption.

So what do you do if you break one of these toxic little bulbs in your home?

Well, you better have a few hours to set aside.  The following are some of the guidelines from Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection on how to properly clean up a broken CFL bulb….

What if I accidentally break a fluorescent lamp in my house?

The lamp contains a small amount of mercury, but you can clean this up yourself if you do the following:

* Do not use a vacuum cleaner to clean up the breakage. This will spread the mercury vapor and dust throughout the area and could potentially contaminate the vacuum.

* Keep people and pets away from the breakage area until the cleanup is complete.

* Ventilate the area by opening windows, and leave the area for 15 minutes before returning to begin the cleanup. Mercury vapor levels will be lower by then.

* For maximum protection and if you have them, wear rubber gloves to protect your hands from the sharp glass.

* Carefully remove the larger pieces and place them in a secure closed container, preferably a glass container with a metal screw top lid and seal like a canning jar. A glass jar with a good seal works best to contain any mercury vapors inside.

* Next, begin collecting the smaller pieces and dust. You can use two stiff pieces of paper such as index cards or playing cards to scoop up pieces.

* Pat the area with the sticky side of duct tape, packing tape or masking tape to pick up fine particles. Wipe the area with a wet wipe or damp paper towel to pick up even finer particles.

* Put all waste and materials into the glass container, including all material used in the cleanup that may have been contaminated with mercury. Label the container as “Universal Waste – broken lamp.”

* Remove the container with the breakage and cleanup materials from your home. This is particularly important if you do not have a glass container.

* Continue ventilating the room for several hours.

* Wash your hands and face.

* Take the glass container with the waste material to a facility that accepts “universal waste” for recycling.

Have you got all that?

You might want to be very careful not to drop any light bulbs in the future.  As you can see, cleaning one up in a huge pain.

But all in the name of conforming to the “green agenda” of the ruling elite, eh?

You know what one of the saddest things about all of this is?

This freedom-killing regulation was signed into law by George W. Bush.  Millions of Republicans went along with it because they were just blindly following whatever Bush did.

Well, you know what?

Bush was an absolutely horrible president and if Republicans want to have any credibility they need to start admitting that.

The elitist Bush passed lots of freedom killing laws like this one, and now the elitist Obama is cramming them down all of our throats.

The sad truth is that Bush and Obama are much more alike than they are different.

Fortunately, there are still a few members of the U.S. government that have some common sense.

For example, have you seen the recent video of U.S. Senator Rand Paul questioning Kathleen Hogan, the deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency at the Energy Department?

During a recent hearing in the Senate, Rand Paul told Paul told Hogan “my toilets don’t work in my house. And I blame you and people like you who want to tell me what I can install in my house.”

Video of this exchange is posted below….

U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann has also come out against these ridiculous regulations.  She recently had the following to say about her new bill to repeal the light bulb ban….

“The government has no business telling an individual what kind of light bulb to buy.”

She is right about that.

Federal bureaucrats should quit trying to be little “gods”.  They are supposed to be “public servants”.  Americans are fully capable of getting along just fine without the federal government micromanaging every single little detail of our lives.

How can we claim that we are still living in a country that cherishes liberty and freedom if things have progressed this far?

Sadly, every new crop of federal bureaucrats just seems to be worse than the one before it and the U.S. government just continues to grow in size.  There are thousands upon thousands of control freaks that sit in their offices all day thinking of new ways to tighten the “Big Brother” control grid that is being constructed all around us.

Do you feel like you are being suffocated by all of this government control sometimes?

Well, you are not alone.

The truth is that there are millions of Americans that are absolutely sick of it.

It is time for the federal government to get off our backs.

We don’t need some sick, twisted control freaks in Washington D.C. telling us what light bulbs we can or cannot buy.

We are Americans, and our forefathers bled and died so that we could enjoy liberty and freedom in this land.  They did not sacrifice so much so that a bunch of elitists could impose a nanny state on all of us and micromanage all of our lives.

We just want the basic liberties and freedoms that we were taught about as we grew up.

Is that too much to ask?

Become A Teacher? 10 Examples That Show Why Becoming A Teacher Is A Dead End In This Economy

Today budget cutters are on the rampage from coast to coast and often one of their first targets is public school teachers. What we have witnessed recently in Wisconsin is just one example of this. The truth is that you do not want to become a teacher if you want to have financial security in America today. Teacher salaries are being slashed from sea to shining sea. But to a certain extent the teachers that are having their wages cut are the fortunate ones. There are thousands upon thousands of teachers that have already been laid off, and there are tens of thousands more that are about to be laid off. It is absolutely brutal out there right now. So if you are thinking about becoming a teacher you might want to think twice. Not that there are a whole lot of other jobs that are more secure right now. The truth is that there is no such thing as a “safe job” in America today.

It is very unfortunate that what is going on right now is going to scare so many young people away from becoming a teacher because the next generation could definitely use some quality teachers.

But the truth is that it is getting really hard to honestly recommend that anyone become a teacher at this point. Just consider some of the following news stories that we have seen around the nation recently….

#1 In Providence, Rhode Island the school district plans to send out dismissal notices to every single one of its 1,926 teachers.

#2 Michigan has just approved a plan to shut down nearly half of the public schools in Detroit.  Under the plan, 70 schools will be closed and 72 will continue operating.

#3 In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie has laid off thousands of teachers and he cut a billion dollars from the state education budget.

#4 Bills in Wisconsin, Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana and Idaho would either significantly alter or completely take away the collective bargaining rights of public school teachers.

#5 The eyes of the whole country are on Wisconsin right now.  Teachers there are very alarmed about the $900 million in cuts to school funding over the next two years that are being proposed.

#6 Clay Robison, a spokesman for the Texas State Teachers Association, recently said that his organization is projecting that 100,000 school employees in the state of Texas could lose their jobs.

#7 The current plan is for more than 4,500 New York City school teachers to be laid off after this current school years ends.  This will be the most significant teacher layoffs in New York since the 1970s.

#8 In Los Angeles, more than 5,000 teachers will be receiving preliminary layoff notices due to budget cuts.

#9 Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval is being deeply criticized for the teacher pay cuts that he is proposing.

#10 StudentsFirst.org is projecting that 161,000 teachers across the United States are in danger of losing their jobs this year alone.

So in light of the facts above, should we advise any of our young people to try to become a teacher?

The worst thing about all this for young teachers is that in many areas of the country there is a rule that says the last teachers hired are the first ones that get laid off.

That is another huge incentive for young people not to choose teaching as a profession.

So why are so many teacher layoffs happening?

Well, the truth is that most of our state and local governments are very deep in debt and have run out of money.

State and local government debt has reached at an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP, and hordes of state and local governments are teetering on the brink of insolvency at this point.

When there is no more money, the cuts have to come from somewhere.  It is just really unfortunate that so many teachers are going to be put out onto the street.

People that have gone into the teaching profession have all spent a lot of time and money to get the education that they need to teach.  If they are told that they can’t do that anymore, what are they supposed to do?

Most of the time when teachers are forced out of the profession they end up having to take jobs that pay much less.  In this economy, many ex-teachers will not be able to find jobs at all.  Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps, and sadly many teachers may soon be joining them.

So why don’t we just raise taxes so that all of these teachers can keep their jobs?  Well, the truth is that middle class Americans are already being taxed into oblivion.  When you add up the dozens and dozens of different taxes that Americans pay each year the overall tax burden is absolutely frightening.  There is only so much that you can squeeze out of the American people.

No, the truth is that the American people are taxed way too much already, and the big corporations and the ultra-wealthy have become experts at avoiding taxation.  Our current tax system needs to be completely scrapped and replaced with something entirely new.

If our state and local governments had not been so addicted to debt, and if our economy had been managed correctly and if about a hundred other things had been done differently we would not be having these problems.

But here we are.

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any easy answers.

Or are there some solutions that most of us have been overlooking?  What do you all think?  What should be done about all of the teacher layoffs that are taking place all over the country?  Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below….

The Internet Kill Switch – One Of The Favorite New Tools Of Tyrannical Governments All Over The Globe

This past week was a perfect example of how the “Internet kill switch” is rapidly becoming one of the favorite new tools of tyrannical governments all over the globe. Once upon a time, the Internet was a bastion of liberty and freedom, but now nation after nation is cracking down on it. In fact, legislation has been introduced once again in Congress that would give the president of the United States an “Internet kill switch” that he would be able to use in the event of war or emergency. Of course there would be a whole lot of wiggle room in determining what actually constitutes a true “emergency”. The members of Congress that are pushing this “Internet kill switch” bill want the U.S. to become more like China in this regard. In China, the Internet is highly controlled, highly regulated and highly censored. In fact, China has shut down the Internet in entire regions when they have felt it necessary. So what Egypt did in shutting down the Internet this past week is not unprecedented – but it was quite shocking.

Organizers of the protests in Egypt had been using the #Jan25 hashtag on Twitter and had been communicating with each other via Facebook, and so the Mubarak regime thought that they could significantly derail the protest movement by shutting down the Internet.

It has been widely reported that approximately 88 percent of the Internet in Egypt was shut down at one point.  Jim Cowie, the chief technology officer of an Internet monitoring firm known as Renesys, described on his blog just how complete and total this Internet shutdown in Egypt actually was….

“Every Egyptian provider, every business, bank, Internet cafe, website, school, embassy, and government office that relied on the big four Egyptian ISPs for their Internet connectivity is now cut off from the rest of the world.”

So how was this all done?  How could such a large section of the Internet be taken offline so rapidly?  Well, a recent article on MSNBC described how it works….

According to David Clark, an MIT computer scientist whose research focuses on Internet architecture and development, a government’s ability to control the Internet depends on its control of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), the private sector companies that grant Internet access to customers.

“ISPs have direct control of the Internet, so what happens in any country depends on the control that the state has over those ISPs,” Clark told Life’s Little Mysteries in an e-mail. “Some countries regulate the ISPs much more heavily. China has in the past ‘turned off’ the Internet in various regions.”

Whenever the subject of Internet censorship comes up, China always seems to be involved in the conversation.  China has more Internet users than anyone else in the world, but they also have the tightest controls.

The Chinese government is absolutely obsessed with “maintaining order” and it has shown that it will go to extreme lengths to quell dissent.

For example, the government of China cut off the entire Xinjiang region from the Internet for nearly a year after civil unrest erupted there in 2009.

The Chinese government is so sensitive to political dissent that they even began censoring the word “Egypt” on a number of micro-blogging websites this past week.

A recent article posted on Raw Story explained what happened….

On the sina.com and sohu.com sites, the Chinese equivalents of Twitter, which is censored in China, a query with the word “Egypt” returned the response: “According to the laws in force, the results of your search cannot be given.”

Isn’t that bizarre?

Nothing like that would ever happen in the United States, right?

Well, don’t be so sure.

Last year, U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman made the following statement to CNN’s Candy Crowley….

“Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too.”

That statement should chill you to your bones.

U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman wants Chinese-style Internet censorship to come to the United States.

In fact, as mentioned above, legislation that would give the president of the United States an “Internet kill switch” has been introduced in the Senate once again, and in fact it has already been approved by a Senate panel.

The legislation has bipartisan support, and it is being pushed this time by Maine Senator Susan Collins, who is a ranking member on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

This bill, S.3480, is entitled “The Protecting Cyberspace As A National Asset Act of 2010“.  It would create a brand new government agency (as if we needed more of those) known as the National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications.

This new agency would be given extraordinary power over the Internet – including the power to completely shut down the Internet for 30 days.

Collins insists that this new law is necessary because it would enable us to protect the Internet against “cyber threats” before they could cause serious damage.

While that may sound good on paper, the reality is that giving the government an “Internet kill switch” would create opportunities for tremendous government abuse.

Wired recently ran an article that detailed some of these concerns….

A congressional white paper (.pdf) on the measure said the proposal prohibits the government from targeting websites for censorship “based solely on activities protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.”

Oddly, that’s exactly the same language in the Patriot Act used to test whether the government can wiretap or investigate a person based on their political beliefs or statements.

Of course we all know how that turned out.

It has been revealed time after time after time that the U.S. government has been investigating large numbers of people based on their political beliefs.

The Internet is a great way for people to express and share their political thoughts and ideas, but it is also providing a way for governments around the world to watch and track dissenters.

For example, major news websites in China now require users to register their true identities before they are able to leave any comments.  This enables the government to be able to identify (and potentially deal with) anyone that does not express the “right” views.

In the same manner, the Obama administration is now proposing the introduction of a “universal Internet ID” for Americans.  The program is being touted as “voluntary”, but how long do you think it would be before a whole host of government agencies started to use these universal Internet IDs to watch, monitor, track and control the Internet activities of tens of millions of Americans?

The following is a video news report from CBS News about these new universal Internet IDs….

So where does all of this Internet censorship end?

Well, the truth is that it is only going to get tighter and tighter as the years go by.

Eventually you will probably need a government-issued license to put up websites such as this one, and in fact someday you will probably need a government-issued license before you can even log on to the Internet.

So enjoy this era of relatively unlimited Internet freedom while you can, because it is rapidly coming to an end.  Tyrannical governments all over the globe are realizing that in order to maintain “control” they must place a much tighter grip on the flow of information on the Internet.

If you live in the United States or another nation where there is still at least a limited amount of liberty and freedom, it is going to be important to let your representatives know that you do not want Internet censorship and you certainly do not want any sort of an Internet kill switch.

Liberties and freedoms are incredibly precious, and once they are taken away they are very difficult to get back.

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