Fundamentally Changing America: Obama Then and Now

When President Obama promised Americans ‘hope and change’ during the run up to the 2008 Presidential election his supporters thought he meant a change for the better.

Few would have believed that when Barack Obama said he would “fundamentally change America,” it would actually make things worse – much worse.

This latest video montage from Fox News and now disavowed by the network as the work of a rogue associate producer, has democrats and some republicans claiming it is biased against the President and reminiscent of 1930′s propaganda.

The video, which takes a look at where the nation stood on jobs, prices for food and energy, the national debt, and government assistance programs, compares how far we’ve come (or fallen) since President Obama took office.

Roseanne Barr on Presidential Run: Two Major Parties Are a 'Bunch of Prostitutes Who Work for Big Money'

The irrepressible comic is trying to bring attention to electoral issues that are too often ignored.

Roseanne Barr leveraged her comedic skills to become a household name. But while she's known for her biting humor, and some critically acclaimed acting in the film adaptation of Fay Weldon's novel, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, Barr's life experiences also left her with an appreciation of just how hard it is to climb the ladder today. It was reflected in her writing; in her standup routine and on her hit TV show, Roseanne was always most comfortable breathing life into the struggles of working-class families. An outspoken small “d” democrat, Roseanne is now running to head the Green Party's presidential ticket on a platform that stresses empowering the “little guy.”

A few weeks back, AlterNet interviewed Jill Stein, Barr's primary opponent in the race (you can read that interview here). This week, Barr appeared on the AlterNet Radio Hour for some equal time. Below is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion (you can listen to the whole show here).

Joshua Holland: Roseanne, I want to say that I’m a big fan. I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but you kind of remind me of my mother.

Roseanne Barr: Oh, I don’t take that wrong. I take that as a great compliment.

Charles Ferguson's 'Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America'

Ferguson, who lives at the far west end of Soho in New York City, spent a lot of time around Prince and Mercer streets when working on Inside Job, so I met him at the Mercer Hotel on the day his book was officially published.

The title of Ferguson’s book certainly gets the reader’s attention, and he powerfully delivers the goods, with a scathing, detailed history of what led to the biggest financial disaster since the Great Depression. Ferguson takes the reader on a revealing journey -- a sordid and corrupt trail that leads from the Pandora’s box of deregulation from 1980 through 2000, through the two major economic bubbles. The first was the dot.com stock market bubble of 2000, exacerbated by the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Then came the much larger housing/mortgage bubble, fueled by sub-prime lending and the emergence of a host of new esoteric financial tools, meant to protect investments -- in fact, they did the opposite, provoking the financial crash.

The economic disaster was driven, Ferguson writes, by a combination of “very low interest rates, pervasive dishonesty through the financial system, massive lending fraud, speculation, demand for high yield securities, and not insignificantly, a squeezed American consumer desperate to maintain living standards, and told by everyone – including George Bush and Alan Greenspan, the brokers and the banks, that home borrowing was the way to do it.”

20 Years of GMO Policy That Keeps Americans in the Dark About Their Food

Dan Quayle and Michael Taylor's nightmare lives on

Popular resistance is boiling over on the GMO labeling issue, as the New York Times reported last week in a front-page story.

More than a million people have asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for mandatory labeling of genetically engineered food on a legal petition in March and on May 2, nearly a million voter signatures were submitted in California to place a GMO labeling initiative on ballot in November. Clearly, Americans believe strongly in their right to know what's in their food. Ninety percent of U.S. voters want this type of labeling. Yet we still don't have it. Why?

Twenty years ago this week, then-Vice President Dan Quayle announced the FDA's policy on genetically engineered food as part of his "regulatory relief initiative." The policy, Quayle explained, was based on the idea that genetic engineering is no different than traditional plant breeding, and therefore required no new regulations.

Doomsday Prepper Sentenced to 21 Months In Prison For Stockpiling “Destructive Devices” After Insider Rats Him Out

OpSec, or Operational Security, is an important rule to follow for those who have chosen to prepare for emergencies by stockpiling food, self defense armaments and disaster supplies.

It’s simple, really. Don’t talk about your preparedness supplies unless it is with trusted people with whom you will be working if a worst case scenario comes to pass. Otherwise, if the world around you collapses and your neighbors and acquintances known you have supplies, guess who they will turn to for help. If you deny them help when they come asking, and they have no place else to turn, you can be relatively certain they will do everything in their power to get at your larder – and that means collaborating with those who would do you harm.

The other key reason we don’t talk about our preps, especially the sharing of critical details like what we store and where we store it, is that you are a potential domestic terror suspect with respect to newly disseminated bulletins from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.

Case in point: Alfred C. Dutton, known for his appearance on the National Geographic reality show Doomsday Preppers, was recently convicted of possession of unregistered destructive devices.

4 in 10 Democrats desert Obama in Arkansas, Kentucky primaries

Four in ten Democratic voters chose someone other than President Obama on Tuesday in primaries in Arkansas and Kentucky.

In Arkansas, John Wolfe — a perennial, long-shot candidate — took 41 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary, with 71 percent of precincts reporting. Obama came in just under 60 percent. The Associated Press did not call the race for Obama until close to midnight.

And in Kentucky, 42 percent of Democrats chose "uncommitted" rather than cast a vote for the incumbent president. Obama took 58 percent, with 99 percent of precincts reporting.

With turnout low, Obama did get more total votes than presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, who won his primary with almost 67 percent of the vote. Obama had more than 118,600 votes to about 117,100 for Romney.

Obama's nomination for a second term by the Democratic Party has never been in danger. But the large number of defections is bad optics for Obama, highlighting widespread discontent with his administration among Democrats who come from conservative states.

A felon incarcerated in Texas took 41 percent of the vote from the president when Democrats in West Virginia cast ballots in the primary earlier in May.

The results in both Kentucky and Arkansas were not unexpected; both are solid red states. In 2008, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) won Kentucky with 58 percent and Arkansas with 59 percent.

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Romney vows to lower unemployment rate to 6 percent by end of first term

Mitt Romney says his administration would lower the unemployment rate to 6 percent by the end of his first term.

“I can tell you that over a period of four years, by virtue of the policies that we’d put in place, we’d get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent, and perhaps a little lower,” Romney says in a Time magazine interview.

The 6 percent prediction is a bold claim that Romney will surely be held to by Democrats if he’s elected.

When Obama took office in January 2009, unemployment stood at 7.8 percent and rose throughout the year, peaking at 10 percent in October. It’s been slowly declining since, hitting 8.1 percent in April, although job growth has slowed in recent months.

“This is a President who spends his time blaming other people for the fact that he has been unsuccessful in turning around this economy,” Romney says in the Time interview. “And I think the reason you’re seeing across the country, people saying they’d like to try someone new, is because they believe this President, while he may be a nice guy, is simply not up to the task of helping guide an economy.”

National Security Threat: Over 1 Million Counterfeit Chinese Parts Discovered In Defense Department Supply Chain

While America’s surveillance infrastructure turns inwards to identify domestic terror threats to the homeland such as those people who have guns, ammunition, food reserves or pay cash for their purchases, a shocking new report from Congress suggests that legitimate national security threats from foreign governments have been all but ignored by those agencies tasked with providing for the defense of the American people.

The year long investigation by the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services found that counterfeit parts from our nation’s largest financial benefactor are flooding into critical military defense systems that include everything from special operations helicopters and surveillance planes, to missile guidance and global positioning systems.

[The report] found a total number of suspect counterfeit parts involved in those 1,800 cases exceeding 1 million.


“Our report outlines how this flood of counterfeit parts, overwhelmingly from China, threatens national security, the safety of our troops and American jobs,” Levin said. “It underscores China’s failure to police the blatant market in counterfeit parts – a failure China should rectify.”

Leading Cycle Theorist Predicts “BIG Volatility Come September/October” ; Reality Will Make Its Way Known

In the 1970′s he predicted gold’s meteoric rise and its 1980 top to the day. He published a full page advertisement in USA Today warning of the impending collapse of stock markets in the 1987 Savings & Loan crash – and nailed that one to the day. He saw the collapse of the Japanese real estate market and warned his clients that a depression was coming. In the late 1990′s he contacted Russian officials to advise them of an impending meltdown of their currency due to forces beyond their control – and he was right again.

He lives in New York today, but for the better part of the last decade he was held in federal prison. His charge? Officially, nothing. Unofficially, he was held in contempt of court for nearly ten years for refusing to hand over his cyclical economic models to Goldman Sachs and the US Government. According to the powers that be, Armstrong was manipulating the world economy, and because he refused to share his prescient models, they locked him away without charge or trial – indefinitely.

He may sound like a fictional character out of a Hollywood blockbuster, except Martin Armstrong is the real deal, and he’s been warning of a paradigm shift unlike any we have witnessed in history.

The 4TH Greatest President Ever *Video*

I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any President with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln.

-President Barack Obama



It’d be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

“Jobs aren’t coming back”

Wealth is concentrated with the 1 percent because America no longer makes things: Financiers just manipulate money

The Occupy movement has been an extremely exciting development. Unprecedented, in fact. There’s never been anything like it that I can think of. If the bonds and associations it has established can be sustained through a long, dark period ahead — because victory won’t come quickly — it could prove a significant moment in American history.

The fact that the Occupy movement is unprecedented is quite appropriate. After all, it’s an unprecedented era and has been so since the 1970s, which marked a major turning point in American history. For centuries, since the country began, it had been a developing society, and not always in very pretty ways. That’s another story, but the general progress was toward wealth, industrialization, development and hope. There was a pretty constant expectation that it was going to go on like this. That was true even in very dark times.

I’m just old enough to remember the Great Depression. After the first few years, by the mid-1930s — although the situation was objectively much harsher than it is today — nevertheless, the spirit was quite different. There was a sense that “we’re gonna get out of it,” even among unemployed people, including a lot of my relatives, a sense that “it will get better.”

The real job creators

Consumers, not the wealthy, are the key to an economic rebound, and GOP austerity is shackling them

Republicans have made it official: “The wealthy” must be called “the job creators” in any debate about tax policy. Democrats are playing their own word games: Centrists insist the 2012 campaign shouldn’t focus on “income inequality,” or whether the worst concentration of riches since the Great Depression might have to do with what Paul Krugman has taken to calling the Lesser Depression. “Income inequality” is a downer, the centrists say; better to talk about “growth” and “prosperity.”

But it’s becoming increasingly clear that growth and prosperity are threatened by the declining share of income going to the non-wealthy over the last 35 years.

Friday’s disappointing jobs report confirms that “the job creators” should be fired, since they only created 115,000 new jobs in April, which isn’t even enough to employ new entrants to the workforce. And while the unemployment rate ticked down from 8.2 to 8.1 percent, that’s only because more unemployed people gave up and left the labor market entirely. Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom (Mr. Etch-A-Sketch) blames President Obama, and he even pretends his candidate cares that “people are so discouraged they are dropping out of the workforce all together.”

Rise of the New Economy Movement

A growing number of theorists and activists are experimenting with new business models that go beyond profit

Just beneath the surface of traditional media attention, something vital has been gathering force and is about to explode into public consciousness. The “New Economy Movement” is a far-ranging coming together of organizations, projects, activists, theorists and ordinary citizens committed to rebuilding the American political-economic system from the ground up.

The broad goal is democratized ownership of the economy for the “99 percent” in an ecologically sustainable and participatory community-building fashion. The name of the game is practical work in the here and now—and a hands-on process that is also informed by big picture theory and in-depth knowledge.

Thousands of real world projects — from solar-powered businesses to worker-owned cooperatives and state-owned banks — are underway across the country. Many are self-consciously understood as attempts to develop working prototypes in state and local “laboratories of democracy” that may be applied at regional and national scale when the right political moment occurs.

GOP blasts $1 million Hawaii conference for judges in wake of GSA scandal

Two senior Senate Republicans on Monday blasted plans by judges in the 9th Circuit to hold a conference in Hawaii this August that they said could run up a tab of $1 million or more, and includes a schedule of sport fishing, yoga, surfing lessons and Zumba dancing lessons.

Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) last week wrote to 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski to warn that the Hawaii meeting does not appear to fit with the 9th Circuit's own opinion that the federal budget is tight. The letter was sent just weeks after Republicans took the General Services Administration (GSA) to task for a notorious $800,000 conference that led several GSA officials to resign.

"We are concerned about the overall cost of this conference and do not believe that discussions about the administration of justice would be less successful were they held somewhere other than a spa and resort in Hawaii," the senators wrote. The letter adds that while conference organizers note that government funds are not to be used for recreation, the conference program "reads more like a vacation than a business trip to discuss the means of improving the administration of justice."

Dem-backed law may be downfall of Obama's birth control mandate

The biggest legal threat to the White House’s birth control mandate could come from a decades-old law that was championed by liberal Democrats, according to legal experts.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) has been mentioned in nearly all of the more than 30 lawsuits pending against President Obama’s administration over the mandate. One, filed by the University of Notre Dame on Monday, cited RFRA’s protections in the first paragraph.

Legal scholars see the merit in challenging the mandate with RFRA, which then-Rep. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) introduced in 1993 to protect religious exercise from laws that might unintentionally restrict it.

But Democrats have dismissed claims that the mandate violates the religious freedom of groups that object to birth control. Now-Sen. Schumer said Republicans “walked the plank” earlier this year by voting to weaken the policy.

Iraqi military to buy unmanned US drones to monitor oil fields

American military drones are returning to the skies above Iraq more than five months after U.S. troops withdrew from the country.

But this time, the drones will be operated by members of the Iraqi navy and will provide overwatch for the country's oil platforms off its southern coast, U.S. officials in Baghdad said Wednesday.

The deal being will cover the sale of roughly 12 of the U.S. Navy's Scan Eagle unmanned drones, a State Department official told The Hill on Monday.

The drones will be equipped with surveillance packages that will allow the aircraft to conduct day and night missions, the official said on the condition of anonymity.

The official ruled out any possibility of arming the Scan Eagles for offensive operations by the Iraqi military, noting it was "not even feasible" to arm the drone.

The Iraqi military already owns and operates a number of Scan Eagle drone to support its ongoing security operations. The biggest issue will be training Iraqi sailors to operate the aircraft on the open sea, the official said.

Ron Paul 2012 - The Shocking Truth About YOUR Money Revealed

Ron Paul 2012 - The Shocking Truth About YOUR Money Revealed

In this video
- Ron Paul the only Honest Politician
- Why Ron Paul has exposed the Bankers and Corporations
- What you can DO about the Giant Economic Collapse

Rawles: “It Would Be Impossible to Disarm the People of This Country”

How likely is it that we will actually experience a disaster that brings down our national power grid?

Will the government seize all guns in the United States?

If Continuity of Government response plans are initiated, will they be able to effectively lock down every major city and the country as a whole under a martial law scenario?

Is an economic collapse in our near future?

These and a host of other critical topics are covered in the latest interview from SGT Report with Survival Blog editor James Rawles.

Rawles on Gun Confiscation:

I think it would be impossible to disarm the people of this country. Along with Yemen we’re the most heavily armed society on the planet. It would be absolutely impossible to disarm the citizenry.
There might be an attempt to do it incremently over the course of generations. I think that’s the only way that would happen.
There are so many guns being produced each year – a couple of million guns each year – it’s just mathematically impossible, if not socially impossible, to even envision the logisitics of trying to disarm the American citizenry. It just can’t happen. There’s too many guns in circulation and they’re essentially the final guarantor of our freedom.

The next phase of the financial collapse:

The Top 50 Excuses For Not Prepping

With the way that things are heading in this country, it is not surprising that there are approximately 3 million preppers in the United States today. What is surprising is that there are not more people prepping. The economy is rapidly falling to pieces, the national debt is absolutely soaring, the earth is becoming increasingly unstable, a major war could erupt in the Middle East at any time and the fabric of our society is coming apart right in front of our eyes.

We have become incredibly dependent on technology and we have become incredibly dependent on our economic system. If a major natural disaster, a killer pandemic, an EMPattack or the imposition of martial law caused a significant transportation disruption, America would literally change overnight. We live during a time of tremendous global instability, and yet most people still see no need to start prepping at all. Most people just continue to have blind faith in our leaders and in our system. But what happens if our leaders fail us? What happens if our system collapses? What are they going to do then?

GOP blasts $1 million Hawaii conference for judges in wake of GSA scandal

Two senior Senate Republicans on Monday blasted plans by judges in the 9th Circuit to hold a conference in Hawaii this August that they said could run up a tab of $1 million or more, and includes a schedule of sport fishing, yoga, surfing lessons and Zumba dancing lessons.

Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) last week wrote to 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski to warn that the Hawaii meeting does not appear to fit with the 9th Circuit's own opinion that the federal budget is tight. The letter was sent just weeks after Republicans took the General Services Administration (GSA) to task for a notorious $800,000 conference that led several GSA officials to resign.

"We are concerned about the overall cost of this conference and do not believe that discussions about the administration of justice would be less successful were they held somewhere other than a spa and resort in Hawaii," the senators wrote. The letter adds that while conference organizers note that government funds are not to be used for recreation, the conference program "reads more like a vacation than a business trip to discuss the means of improving the administration of justice."

Notre Dame, Catholic institutions sue Obama over contraception mandate

The University of Notre Dame joined other Catholic institutions Monday in suing the Obama administration over its contraception mandate.

The lawsuit argues the mandate in the healthcare law requiring that insurance plans cover birth control for women without a co-pay violates the religious freedom of Catholic institutions.

The Archdiocese of Washington, the Michigan Catholic Conference and the Catholic University of America are among the other plaintiffs in the suit.

Notre Dame's participation is notable because Obama gave a controversial commencement speech at the school in 2009. Anti-abortion-rights groups criticized the school for inviting Obama because of his position on abortion.

The suit was one of 12 similar actions filed Monday around the country, a release from the Archdiocese of Washington stated, bringing the total number of cases now pending over the mandate to more than 30.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, praised the trend in a statement.

"We have tried negotiation with the administration and legislation with the Congress — and we’ll keep at it — but there's still no fix," he said.

Was Columbus secretly a Jew?

Today marks the 508th anniversary of the death of Christopher Columbus.

Everybody knows the story of Columbus, right? He was an Italian explorer from Genoa who set sail in 1492 to enrich the Spanish monarchs with gold and spices from the orient. Not quite.

For too long, scholars have ignored Columbus's grand passion: the quest to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims.

During Columbus's lifetime, Jews became the target of fanatical religious persecution. On March 31, 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella proclaimed that all Jews were to be expelled from Spain. The edict especially targeted the 800,000 Jews who had never converted, and gave them four months to pack up and get out.

The Jews who were forced to renounce Judaism and embrace Catholicism were known as "Conversos," or converts. There were also those who feigned conversion, practicing Catholicism outwardly while covertly practicing Judaism, the so-called "Marranos," or swine.

Tens of thousands of Marranos were tortured by the Spanish Inquisition. They were pressured to offer names of friends and family members, who were ultimately paraded in front of crowds, tied to stakes and burned alive. Their land and personal possessions were then divvied up by the church and crown.

America in Transition

I am used to surprises from the New York Times—a newspaper so far from me culturally and politically it might as well be a daily bulletin about life in a parallel universe—but last August I read a personal essay in the “Modern Love” space of the “Styles” section that really brought me up short. “My Husband is Now My Wife” (quite a tabloidy title for this genteel newspaper) was about the deeply ambivalent day the author escorted her husband to a hospital for surgery in which he would “take his first surgical step into womanhood.”

I’m a jaded ex-Manhattanite, awright? “Sexual reassignment surgery,” as it is called, is not news. I know about the clinics in Colorado where they slice up existing organs and then do Play-Doh sculpturing with the tissue that’s left. The surgery thing has been going on since the sixties. And I know from cross-dressing. On my Upper West Side block it was not uncommon to encounter a neighbor—skinny, middle-aged, bald pate surrounded by a cap of stringy graying locks—taking his daily constitutional…on roller skates, wearing a tiara and a pink tutu, blessing passersby with a Tinkerbell wand.

So it wasn’t the soo-last-century, Dude-Looks-Like-a-Lady part that startled, it was the part near the end where the author lets slip that all her fussing about losing a husband and gaining a wife was actually over a hospital stay in which her husband would have “facial feminization surgery, a not uncommon procedure in male-to-female transitions, in which a surgeon carves out a more femininely proportioned version of a male face.”

KILLSHOT: Solar Flares So Powerful They Will Cause the Death of Billions *Full Documentary*

If you want to challenge yourself to the possibility that our mind is capable of seeing things beyond our reality, then you may be interested to watch the following video documentary which predicts (via ‘remote viewing’) a solar ‘killshot’ that will end it all, for many of us. Whether or not you are willing to let notions of remote-viewing or ‘esp’ into your consciousness, the scenario predicted within the video is a scientific possibility, one which we can do nothing to prevent. But, maybe, just maybe, we could do something to prepare for.

Disclaimer: We have no affiliation or promotional motivations in any way with the person or information contained within or related to the video. Instead, I found it fascinating, and given the author’s credentials and apparent authority I thought some of you may appreciate it. Maybe it will motivate you to reinforce your preparedness plans, maybe it will simply start you to thinking about the ‘what if’, or maybe you will think it’s a bunch of hot air.

The video ‘The Killshot’ by ‘Remote Viewing Products’, is in the public domain and is free for the viewing at their website (and others), while their DVD can also be had for free from their website (thekillshot.com and learnrv.com) – which is why I believe it to be within our right to post it here while at the same time providing fair credit to the source.


About Major Ed Dames:
Major Edward A. Dames, United States Army (ret.), is a decorated military intelligence officer and an original member of the U.S. Army prototype remote viewing training program. He served as both training and operations officer for the U.S. government’s TOP SECRET psychic espionage unit (PSIINT). Major Dames has been awarded the Legion of Merit, and two Meritorious Service Medals. Major Dames retired from the U.S. Army in 1991 and began a full-time effort to advance remote viewing technology, and to create teams of professional civilian Remote Viewers to work on complex projects. He currently serves as executive director for the Matrix Intelligence Agency, a private consulting group.

Policing For Profit: “I Absolutely Would Not Believe That This Could Happen In America”

You may think your biggest threat when carrying any amount of cash over $1000 is a thief or armed robber, but you’d be wrong.

Your most immediate concern is not being robbed by a criminal, but rather, by the very people who are supposed to serve and protect the public.

As one New Jersey man found out when he was on his way to pay for a car he purchased on Ebay, a new heavy handed trend called “policing for profit” is empowering law enforcement officers to ignore fundamental Constitutional safeguards against warrant-less searches.

George Reby was driving down Interstate 40, heading west through Putnam County, when he was stopped for speeding.
A Monterey police officer wanted to know if he was carrying any large amounts of cash.
“I said, ‘Around $20,000,’” he recalled. “Then, at the point, he said, ‘Do you mind if I search your vehicle?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t mind.’ I certainly didn’t feel I was doing anything wrong. It was my money.”
That’s when Officer Larry Bates confiscated the cash based on his suspicion that it was drug money.
Bates said the amount of money and the way it was packed gave him reason to be suspicious.
“The safest place to put your money if it’s legitimate is in a bank account,” he explained. “He stated he had two. I would put it in a bank account. It draws interest and it’s safer.”
“But it’s not illegal to carry cash,” we noted.
“No, it’s not illegal to carry cash,” Bates said. “Again, it’s what the cash is being used for to facilitate or what it is being utilized for.”

Born In Kenya: Fact or Fiction?

Considering the following appeared as a Acton & Dystel biography for President Barack Obama for over 15 years, perhaps it’s time an official investigation be opened into the President’s background. Constitutional law is clear on this matter, stating that only a natural born citizen can be President of the United States (meaning, arguably, that he or she must be born on U.S. soil). As such, it is well within the right of the people to demand that his birthplace be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. He is, after all, the “most powerful man in the world” as acting U.S. President.

Fact or fiction? (You really never know with Mr. Obama)

Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obama’s then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, which touts Obama as “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.”
The booklet, which was distributed to “business colleagues” in the publishing industry, includes a brief biography of Obama among the biographies of eighty-nine other authors represented by Acton & Dystel.
It also promotes Obama’s anticipated first book, Journeys in Black and White–which Obama abandoned, later publishing Dreams from My Father instead.

This biography was more than likely approved by President Obama himself; either that or he chose to never request a correction, suggesting there may very well be truth to it.

The American people have been subjected to a massive expansion of the police and welfare state under his reign. At the very least we should know with 100% certainty whether the man signing the legislation and Executive Orders is, in fact, an American by birth.

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Forget Retirement... and Retirement Savings

You've been sold a bill of goods for the last four to six decades. You've been told that nation-states, democracy and socialism is good. You've been told our monetary system prevents instability. And, while the government and central banks put your unborn children or grandchildren into debt for life they've been telling you that there will be a socialist safety net to protect you and that the "American dream" includes retiring in your 50s or 60s to a wonderful life of golf and lying on the beach.

It even appeared to work for a short while thanks to demographics and the greatest advances in human history.

The baby boom caused by the nation-state (which created World War II) and central banking (which created the depression and funded World War II) was truly a boom creating a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make it appear as though some of these inane socialist theories could work.

A look at the number of workers per retiree in the US shows this plainly.

And, with the advent of the internet, productivity also increased massively in the 1990s and 2000s, further obscuring the collapse to come. And it is coming. In fact, it's already started. So, if you are basing your future retirement plans on what has happened in your living memory you better snap out of it.

SOCIALIST SECURITY - THE ULTIMATE PONZI SCHEME

A ponzie scheme is defined as "a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation". By this definition, the Socialist Security system in the US is a ponzi scheme.

Why U.S. House Prices Won't Recover

When will U.S. house prices recover? Likely never. But that's no reason not to buy.

The latest S&P / Case-Shiller numbers, reported last week, show that prices in 20 major markets declined 3.5% over the year through February. They're now back to 2002 levels. If we subtract for inflation, they're back to 1998 levels.

But consider: After subtracting for inflation, prices are also back to 1986 levels. And 1955 levels. And 1895 levels (see chart).

That's because the natural rate of price appreciation for houses is zero after inflation. Prices will eventually stop falling. They'll resume rising. But over the long term, they're unlikely to resume rising faster than inflation.

That's why prospective buyers should stop focusing on the vague hope that house prices will jump from here and focus instead on the functional value houses provide for the money. In most markets, they provide enough of that to make buying a good deal.

One in five Americans believes the world is coming to an end; many point to 2012 prophecies

Even I was surprised at the results of a recentIpsos Global Public Affairs poll of over 16,000 people around the world. The poll, underwritten by Reuters, sought to determine the percentage of people who believe the world is coming to an end in their own lifetime. Astonishingly, the two countries with the highest percentage of people who believe in such a thing were Turkey and the USA.

The nations with the lowest number of people believing the world is coming to an end (in their lifetimes) include Belgium and Great Britain.

Globally, about one in seven people believe the world is coming to an end, and about one in ten believe it will happen in 2012.

Of course, the meaning in all this is difficult to nail down, given that everybody’s definition of “the world coming to an end” is different. For some people, the shopping mall being closed is the end of their world. For many of today’s teens, the “end of the world” means losing their texting device.

How The U.S. Dollar Will Be Replaced

After being immersed in the world of alternative economic analysis for several years, it sometimes becomes easy to forget that most people do not track forex markets, or debt to GDP ratio, or true unemployment, or hunch over IMF white-papers highlighting subsections which expose the trappings of the globalist ideology. Sometimes, you just assume the average person knows what the heck you are talking about. This is, of course, a mistake. However, it is a mistake that is borne from the inadequacy of our age and our culture, and is not necessarily a product of weak character, either of the analyst, or the casual reader.

The great frustration of being actively involved in the Liberty Movement is the fact that many people are rarely on the same page (or even the same book) during political and economic discussion. Where we see the nature of the false left/right paradigm, they see “free democracy”. Where we see a tidal wave of destructive debt, they see a “responsible government” printing and spending in order to protect our “best interests”. Where we see totalitarianism, they see “safety”. Where we see dollar devaluation, they see dollar strength and longevity. Ultimately, because the average unaware citizen is stricken by the disease of normalcy bias and living within the doldrums of a statistical fantasy world, they simply have no point of reference by which to grasp the truth when exposed to it. It’s like trying to explain the concept of ‘color’ to a man who has been blind since birth.

First Things First: Key Questions Facing The Beginning Prepper by Norse Prepper

Inspired by the article regarding how horrific it’s going to get for the non prepper, I thought I might also submit the following article on what it is like to be a new prepper. The purpose of this article is not to tell my story, but to give perspective on how overwhelming it was for me as a beginning prepper.

With the amount of knowledge that readers at this website display, what could I possibly add?

My answer to that is perspective.

Many on this site and others have been preparing for years and are prepared. I know one of the first replies will be that you can never be fully prepared and it’s a journey more than a destination and I subscribe to that 100%. I personally will never be done prepping. One thing that I have found in my years of work is that after someone has done something for some time, it’s hard to remember what it was like in the beginning. I work in an engineering field and things that are very simple and seem like basics can be complicated and not easily understood by someone who is new in their engineering career. Hopefully this article takes you back to when you first began prepping and helps you relate to us newbies.

Think back to when you first felt the tugging of something in the back of your mind leading you to do more research and eventually coming to the conclusion that you must become a prepper. It may have been as blunt as a Katrina event, or possibly it was just little things here and there that eventually and gradually led you to where you are at today. Regardless of the journey, I believe it to be important to remember your roots and by doing so you will be more armed to help other people to come in to the light of what is going on in the world around us and help them get more prepared.

3 THINGS I THINK I THINK…OR 2…

There’s a lot going on again this week, but my fried brain couldn’t think of 3 things I think I think. So here’s 2 things I think I think:

1) The math in Europe still doesn’t work…

I’ve gotten quite a bit of backlash from some readers because of my negative stance on Europe. Last year I highlighted several reports on the potential for peripheral countries to grow their way out of their debt problems. And the math was simple. It would take a miracle for austerity to result in the peripheral nations growing their way out of the debt crisis and reaching a sustainable trend. But the LTRO appears to be working so that means Europe is fixed, right?! Not in my opinion. The story remains simple. It’s a currency crisis and until the currency problem is solved the problems will continue to fester.

The recent economic data across much of Europe only confirms this thinking. We see a new bout of weakness coming and Europeans are finally beginning to realize that austerity doesn’t work. So we’re once again seeing bond yields creep higher as private investors stop thinking about the LTRO arbitrage and once again focus on the issue that trumps everything – national solvency. And even more frightening are the persistent rumors of default and defection by some nations. This has the potential to set off a frightening chain of events very similar to Lehman. Europe needs to move towards greater unity, but they must stop kicking the can. Eurobonds should be moving to the forefront shortly….The only other option is potential disaster.

Revolution Trailer: “It’s Gonna Turn Off, and It Will Never, Ever Turn Back On”

A new series this Fall from NBC looks like an exciting must watch for preppers (and we think some non-preppers may just be swayed into at least putting something away for an emergency).

While we can’t speak for the quality of the show, it looks quite interesting, especially the collapse of the power grid, which is something we’ve detailed in numerous posts and videos over the years.

Like Jericho, this one may prove to be pure Doomer entertainment at its best.

Revolution – coming this Fall:

Greeks Rush the Banks; Lines Form at ATMs; Nearly $1 Billion Withdrawn in Past Week

Without a government for the last eleven days, and amid mainstream discussion of a Euro Zone exit, the Greek people are realizing that the economic and political system as they know it is rapidly descending into chaos.

With massive jobless rates that have forced many into bartering to survive, and facing credit destruction across the entirety of the country that has led to shortages of critical supplies like life saving medicines, those with any money left at national banks are taking the desperate step of withdrawing as much of their savings as they can from a banking system on its last leg.

This is what it looks like when a populace plagued with uncertainty finally loses trust in the credibility of their country’s leadership and financial system.

Anxious Greeks have withdrawn as much as 700 million euros ($893 million) from the nation’s banks since the inconclusive May 6 election, President Karolos Papoulias told party leaders yesterday, according to a transcript of the meeting posted on the presidency’s website today. Papoulias said he got the information from the head of the Bank of Greece, the central bank, George Provopoulos, according to the transcript.

Greeks line up at ATM’s across the country to withdraw cash:

As has been said before, Greece is the canary in the coal mine.

The debt has piled up across Europe and the United States. Like the Greeks, Americans will soon hit a breaking point from which there will be no return. When it does finally happen you can be assured that your local ATM’s and banks will be inundated with panicked depositors attempting to take possession of as much of their money as possible.

But once the lines start forming it will be too late. Banks will have no choice but to limit withdrawals and close their doors (even to safe deposit box owners), because they will not have enough cash on hand to meet demand.

The choice is simple: Either prepare now and have physical assets in your possession, or join the crowds and hope the government will come up with a solution to the massive outflows that will ensue when the bank run begins.

Considering the madness we’ve seen when people can’t get their hands on a Black Friday discounted Xbox or flat screen TV, our guess is that any solution the government puts forth to deal with the anger and frustration of people who can’t access their money will involve something like this:

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Collapse Investing: Money and Wealth Preservation During Times of Uncertainty and Instability

We could spend a significant portion of our time outlining the various reasons for why the world’s economic, financial and political systems sit on the brink of an unprecedented paradigm shift that promises to change the landscape of the entire system as it exists today.

I could try to convince you that it’s a good idea to prepare for what’s coming, but the fact that you are reading this article via Tess’ Ready Nutrition newsletter means that you’re already in action planning and execution mode. If you’ve been following the 52 Weeks to Preparedness from the beginning, then you’ve spent the last 44 weeks establishing an emergency and disaster response plan that would probably make FEMA jealous.

Like Tess and I, you’ve probably done your research and spent months or years gathering as much information as you can about the many possibilities that could significantly impact your life and the lives of your family members and close friends, and you’ve actively involved yourself in making sure that you’re as insulated as possible from whatever may befall us.

A Crazy Idea That Might Just Work: Greece’s New Currency, the U.S. Dollar

Before you dismiss my crazy idea out of hand, hear me out. It might not be as crazy as it seems on first blush.

I have a straightforward three-point plan to set Greece on a sustainable, positive pathway. But before we can understand how the plan resolves Greece’s no-win situation (yet another Kobayashi Maru scenario), we first need to understand very clearly why the euro currency failed.

If we had to distill the dynamic down to a single paragraph, it would be this: By accepting the “strong currency” euro that was supported by promises of fiscal prudence, Greece and the other weaker economies of Europe artificially raised market willingness to lend them money and lowered the interest rate they would pay. At the same time, the euro also lowered the cost of goods from Germany by eliminating the market arbitrage of currencies.

I know this may sound complicated, but we can grasp the core dynamics using household analogies.

The willingness of lenders to lend and the rate of interest they charge is based on economic fundamentals: the balance sheet of assets and liabilities, and cash flow: how much income goes to pay liabilities and how much is left over as surplus to spend or invest.

Celente Warns of 2012: Economy Will Crash, Banks Will Close, Chaos Will Ensue, Military Will Take Over

If you’ve followed trend forecaster Gerald Celente for any period of time you’ve probably realized he knows what he’s talking about. For the better part of two decades Celente and his Trends Journal have been forecasting political, financial, economic and social trends with an uncanny ability for accuracy.

In his latest interview Celente discusses a variety of different topics – from Iran and Europe to domestic militarization and the economy – and warns that our worst fears will soon be realized.

Bottom line? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet:

This passed (National Defense Authorization Act) the Senate by 93-7. I’m mentioning this because all the pieces are in place now.
The economy is going to crash. There is going to be chaos. Economic martial law will be called. Banks will close. And, chaos will ensure.
The law is now in place for the military to come in and take over. Fascism has come to America.
And if anyone thinks that I’m over blowing this, you may recall, for those of you who have been listening to Jeff Rense for the years that I’ve been on, that when Obama got elected I said there was a high probability, in 2009, of a bank holiday because of the disastrous economic conditions.
I came across a video that’s on Youtube… June of 2009… Corzine is running for re-election for Governor of New Jersey… and there’s Joe Biden… he’s campaigning for Corzine… He’s telling the audience, you know, ‘the day that we were sworn into office, the top of our agenda, the top of our list, was whether or not to call a bank holiday.’
…The point that I want to make is, and I want to drive this home, it should be headline news – the Obama administration was prepared to call a bank holiday in 2009. Economic conditions are much worse now.

Martial Red Zone In America: Heavily Armed Security Teams To Patrol Chicago, Feds Prepare for Mass Detentions, Evacuation Planning Underway

If Transportation Security pat downs at public venues, thousands of drones over the skies of America, and the National Security Agency’s new Echelon-like listening center in Utah weren’t enough to convince you that we’re living in a police state, then perhaps the latest news out of Chicago will change your mind.

As world leaders prepare to meet in the windy city for their annual NATO summit, U.S. federal officials are working feverishly to implement a security net so broad that it encompasses the entirety of Cook County, Illinois. While international summits are traditionally met with a larger police presence and preparations for the possibility of protests or rioting, what’s taking place on American soil in anticipation of the May 20 meeting in downtown Chicago can be interpreted in only one way – the implementation of regionalized martial law.

Last week Red Cross officials reported that the City of Chicago, Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service had instructed them to prepare for a mass evacuation of the city in the event of an emergency during the NATO summit. The Red Cross was to prepare to shelter and feed residents in the event of such an evacuation.



On the heels of that announcement, more details have emerged and they suggest the Federal security apparatus has completely lost its marbles.

How Horrific Will It Be For The Non-Prepper?

I have become personally so disenchanted with the way people fail to prep. People still don’t understand how important it is to put away. I have gotten into arguments over this and had cretins call me a fool because I put away food, water, and supplies. I thought about this and the frustration that other preppers have with this laid back idiotic attitude that there is no need for preparation. There are good people that just can’t/won’t start preparing. They have the money to do so, but just don’t want to. Many have only seen what happens to non-preppers on TV, but it still doesn’t make an impact.

In this article I detail some hard core realities to show just how awful it will be for those that don’t prep. Every one of these scenarios is something that has occurred to the non-prepper throughout history. While strong images come to mind, the purpose is to jar some people out of their inaction and into action before it is too late.

EDERAL AND STATE GOVERNMENTS IMPLEMENTING THE DRACONIAN PLAN TO FORCE PEOPLE TO LIVE ONLY IN CERTAIN AREAS USING A FALSE "CRISIS" OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION AS THE CATALYST

fore the actual implementation of the New World Order, their "orators will expound such great problems which have turned humanity upside down in order to bring it, at the end, under our beneficent rule". Now, what "great problems", which are turning our world upside down, have we been hearing about for the past 20 years? We have been hearing about how man-- the highest of all the animals in the Evolutionary ladder -has been irretrievably damaging the Earth's environment, in all the following ways:

* Polluted waterways, lakes, ground water, and streams

* Polluted air

* Ozone layer holes

* Smog in all the cities, with all the damage created worldwide

* Polluted landfills

* Carcinogens in the air

* Global warming - or is it cooling now?- caused by man's activities

* Mining operations that are damaging the environment, and the "ecological diversity' of the Earth

* Cutting of forests, especially rain forests

* Human overconsumption that constitutes tremendous waste of Mother Earth's limited resources.

Romney Supporter Caught Handing Out Fake Ballots in Nevada Wearing a Ron Paul Shirt

As Ron Paul continues to rack up delegates leading up to the national convention in Tampa, several mainstream media outlets have finally begun to pay attention, but most articles and news casts stress that Congressman Paul still has no chance at winning the nomination.

If Ron Paul doesn't have a shot, then why is the Romney campaign and the establishment GOP freaking out?

Last week, GOP Chairman Michael McDonald threatened Nevada that if Ron Paul delegates take over national convention slots, they won't be invited to Tampa. If these mafia tactics weren't enough, the Romney campaign resorted to the lowest form of dirty tricks at the Nevada convention.

The video below shows a provocateur, presumably working for the Romney campaign but wearing a Ron Paul shirt, being caught red handed distributing fake ballots to Ron Paul supporters.



Despite these despicable efforts by a seemingly desperate Romney campaign, Paul supporters delivered a dominant 22 Nevada delegates to Ron Paul, leaving Romney with only 3.

US fears Israeli attack on Iran at 'any moment'

The State of Israel may launch a military strike on the Islamic Republic of Iran any time now, reports Israeli television network Channel 10 News.

Channel 10, a decade-old broadcasting network with international distribution, reports that authorities in the United States are rushing this week to discuss an impending Israeli attack on Iran. The reports have developed in recent days following news that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has formed an alliance with Shaul Mofaz, the leader of the nation’s largest opposition party.

Speaking of the deal between the two, PM Netanyahu has said the newfangled alliance will stabilize the country’s government. Reporting from Jerusalem, the UK’s Independent adds that the relationship installs “a commanding mandate” for Netanhau, “should he choose to strike against Iran.”

In the United States, many have feared that it would only be a matter of time before such a strike occurred. Only now, however, are top US officials reportedly trying to find a way to prevent an immediate attack.

Israel National News reports that the strike could be carried out at "any given moment.”

This Now Poses Huge Dangers to the Continent

One of the lone voices of reason in the European Union Parliament, the UK’s Nigel Farage, outlines the dangerous consequences facing the whole of the European continent as unemployment and tempers rage, debts pile up, and lack of access to basic necessities in some afflicted regions takes its toll.

In his impassioned plea to EU leaders Farage warns of the rise of extreme political environments on the right and left of the spectrum, and urges Parliament members to take the necessary step of breaking up the union by releasing debt-ridden nations instead of further impoverishing them. A failure to act, cautions Farage, leaves Europe facing the prospect of mass civil unrest and nationalistic revolution.

JP Morgan Suffers ‘Massive’ Losses: $4.2 Billion Probable; May Spread to Entire Sector

If you’ve wondered what investment banks have been doing with those hard earned bail-out tax dollars lent to them by the Federal Reserve and US government at nearly zero percent interest, here’s your answer and a demonstration in how to vaporize the GDP of a small nation in just a few weeks’ time.

In an unexpected after hours call with investors CEO Jamie Dimon said JPMorgan was facing massive losses – legal losses of $4.2 billion were reasonably possible, he said — with trading losses totaling $800 million in the second quarter.

And Dimon said it could take until the end of the year to restructure the portfolio.

Although information was still coming together at the time of writing, the Fast Money traders say developments look like they’re a game changer.

It Can't Happen America? It Already Did!

Tim Case writes: "Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

If there are two things that can be said with all confidence they are that throughout American history the American public has had and continues to have an enduring commitment to owning firearms. Second is the government’s unerring ability to be the sole cause of economic calamities, regardless of how vibrant the markets.

War and the market place are strange bedfellows. A case in point is the Spencer Repeating Rifle.

On March 6, 1860 the Spencer Repeating Rifle was patented in the United States. This rifle was developed for the sole purpose of brother using it against brother during the War Between the States. In the words of Warren Fisher, Jr. treasurer of the Spencer Repeating Rifle company:

"…In the hands of scouts or sharpshooters, or regular troops – taking into consideration all the elements of range, rapidity of firing, and facility of reloading, the Spencer Rifle is so effective as to render one man with it fully equal to half a dozen men armed with single-loading muskets…"

'It will lead to war' - Ron Paul fights to end military aid for Israel

Presidential hopeful Ron Paul has condemned a plan being considered in the United States House of Representatives that would allow for the US to continue aiding in the defense of Israel by equipping the Jewish state’s military with added weaponry.

From Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) attacked the contents of an act currently up for discussion that, if passed, would reestablish America’s major role in Israeli affairs. Rep Paul fears, however, that it would do more harm than good for all nations involved.

To House Speak John Boehner, Paul said that H.R. 4133, the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012, “is another piece of one-sided and counter-productive foreign policy legislation.”

“This bill's real intent seems to be more saber-rattling against Iran and Syria,” insisted Paul, “and it undermines US diplomatic efforts by making clear that the US is not an honest broker seeking peace for the Middle East.”

Anti-Gold Propaganda Push, Gold Cover Clause for Enabling Competing New Currencies

If today's landscape was a war setting, it would feature collapsed buildings, rubble on the streets, empty warehouses, smoke spewing upward from numerous city heaps, and fire hoses sending water in every conceivable direction throughout the entire city. And sadly, also dead bodies littered everywhere. They serve as the economic damage. The city ruins are marred by additional water damage, rubber boots a necessity. The buildings can be seen as the crumbled sovereign bonds. The street rubble is the home equity destroyed, some still underwater. The shattered warehouses are businesses either wrecked or in fast retreat. The smoke is the painful emotions based in despair, loss, and absent opportunity. In stark display, the fire houses are the central banks printing and dispensing money from tainted sources, not from factory income but rather the vacuous Weimar press. Of key significance is the compounded damage inflicted by the water itself. ZIRP and QE are tandem weapons of mass destruction that have been at work toward business destruction and capital ruin of the USEconomy for three full years. The zero interest rate policy assures the wrong pricing of money, the capital fuel, thus distorting all markets. The quantitative easing is based in extreme desperation, as the USGovt has lost the majority (80%) of its foreign creditor support.

Caught on Tape: Rampant Vote Fraud By Government Officials On House Floor

As voter registration and identity fraud becomes a hot button issue across State legislatures you’d think that at least one group of voters – our elected officials – would understand the importance of laws and procedures designed to maintain the integrity of our legislative process.

According to the rules of the Texas State House of Representatives, for example:

Any member found guilty by the House of knowingly voting for another member on the voting machine shall be subject to discipline deemed appropriate by the house.

Given how clearly this rule is defined, and the fact that it’s common sense for each House member to be allowed only a single vote as is generally the case in all democratic voting proceedings, you’ll be astonished to see legislators not only voting for laws on their colleague’s voting machines when they’re not present, but actually racing to beat each other to the punch.

Expert Warns: 100% Certainty of Total Catastrophic Failure of the Entire Power Infrastructure Within 3 Years

As smart grid metering systems expand across the developed world, many are starting to ask whether the threats posed by the new devices, which officials promise will save energy and reduce end user utility costs, outweigh their benefits. In addition to documented health concerns resulting from radiation emissions and no cost savings being apparent, opponents of the technology argue that smart meters are violative of basic privacy rights and give the government yet another digital node of unfettered access to monitor and control personal electricity consumption.

Now, an alarming new documentary suggests that security problems with the inter-connected and seemingly convenient smart grid may be so serious that they could lead to a catastrophic failure of our nation’s entire power infrastructure.

In an interview for the upcoming documentary titled Take Back Your Power, Cyber defense expert David Chalk warns that our nation is in crisis. Not only are our smart power grids susceptible to hacking, but they may very well already be infected with Trojan viruses and back doors that will ultimately lead to disastrous consequences:

The One Investment Strategy You Need to Know to Protect Yourself Against the Coming Inflation Monster

Let’s just take a quick review of the situation as we know it. The real inflation rate is over 10% and the real u6 unemployment rate is over 22% according to Shadowstats.com. General Mills recently reported that their input costs rose from 10% to 11% year over year. This is no shock to anyone that goes to the grocery store every week. The Baltic dry index, the measure of shipping rates worldwide , dropped over 65% between Nov 2011 and Mar 2012. This means a lot of cargo ships are sitting around with nothing to do. The housing sector is still in shambles and will take at least a decade to work off the Millions of foreclosures on the books and the millions about to be added in the next few years. This means the price of houses will continue to fall for the foreseeable future so if you decide to buy please do some research and go into it with both eyes open.

Recently the BRICS countries held a meeting and agreed to conduct more commerce in their own currencies instead of U.S. dollars. Iran is selling oil for anything but dollars. Saudi Arabia is building a huge new refinery in cooperation with China on the Red Sea. It is estimated that there are about $700 Trillion in derivatives in the world banking system. This is over 10 times the World GDP. This is insane.