America, why we're doomed.

 

 

Ah, the America of yesterday:

 

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And now we have the America of today................

 

 

 

 

Bonus video!!!!

 

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The problem with "diversity."

Turn your volume way down before playing the video.

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And then we have this interesting link:
http://www.jsonline.com/general/37714089.html?bcpid=23739055001&bctid=78489347001
The news story the video is based on (Link) :

A man convicted of murdering University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee film student Nathan Potter was wrestled to the ground, pepper-sprayed and taken under guard from a courtroom Friday after he was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole.

Seandell Jackson spat a string of obscenities at Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Rebecca Dallet as three deputies and Milwaukee police Detective James Hutchinson dragged Jackson to the floor of her courtroom.

Moments before, Jackson's attorney, Patrick Earle, had asked Dallet to weigh into her sentence the 19-year-old Jackson's youth and, as Earle put it, his "lack of impulse control."

As authorities struggled to subdue Jackson, members of his family stood in the back of the courtroom and taunted Potter's family.

"I hate you!" a woman yelled toward the Potters. "I hate you all!"

"God's the judge," another woman yelled toward Potter's mother and father, who held each other and wept.

"God's the judge."

In February, a jury convicted Jackson, 19, of being party to a crime of first-degree intentional homicide and attempted robbery in the shooting death of 21-year-old Potter.

Assistant District Attorney Mark Williams showed Dallet videos of Jackson's reaction when the jury delivered its verdict.

In the videos, Jackson turns to Potter's family, mouths an obscenity and smirks. The video also shows Jackson being led from the courtroom a few minutes after the verdict is announced. As he reaches the courtroom door, he turns toward Potter's family and laughs.

"Is there such a thing as pure evil?" Nathan Potter's father, John Potter, asked Dallet.

"There is the tape."

Jackson shot Potter in the chest in July as Potter walked to his Riverwest apartment in the 2500 block of N. Dousman St.

Jackson and an accomplice, Derek J. Thomas, were attempting to rob Potter. Potter had no money.

Dallet, her voice raspy from the fumes of the pepper spray, also sentenced Jackson to five years in prison for attempted robbery. In addition, she sentenced Jackson to five years in prison for an unrelated non-fatal shooting that occurred the same day that Potter was killed.

No one was seriously injured in the courtroom melee, though Hutchinson, the chief detective in Jackson's case, was hit in the eyes by the pepper spray.

Jackson was sentenced in the morning. Hutchinson was back in Dallet's court for Thomas' sentencing in the afternoon.

So was Sarah Potter, Nathan Potter's 13-year-old sister. She told her mother and father that she had been afraid someone was trying to kill them during the morning fracas.

Gulping back tears, Sarah told Dallet that she and her 11-year-old brother, David - who has autism - cannot understand why anyone would even hurt her older brother, whom she called "a loving and caring man."

"We can't sleep knowing he's gone," she said, sitting at the defense table beside her father.

John Potter said later that David wants him to keep all the lights on in their home all the time.

"He asked me to remove all the windows," John Potter said.

Thomas, 20, pleaded guilty in March to felony murder.

Williams told Dallet that Thomas played a limited role in the murder.

"Mr. Jackson was the shooter," Williams said. "Mr. Thomas was a follower."

While Williams asked Dallet to sentence Thomas to 12 years in prison, Nathan Potter's mother, Denise Potter, said he deserved to the maximum penalty for felony murder, which is 35 years.

" 'Help me!' (were) the last words he ever said," Denise Potter said.

"Derek did nothing," she said. "They ran away."

Dallet followed Williams' recommendation, adding eight years of extended supervision.

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Hmmm.......I wonder if those gang bangers and the murderer Seandell Jackson were products of a liberal or conservative public education system?

( Iknow liberals, I know, it's the gun's fault and not the homeboy with the gun---what was I thinking?)

Recovery?...and, if you thought Bush was an idiot...

 

 

So, it looks like we may have finally hit bottom and the recovery is starting to pick up speed. Not so fast. As Limbaugh has been mentioning, it appears Obama and the Dims have resigned themselves to a baseline 9 or 10 percent unemployment (we know the actual number is higher) as being the new norm. Let's see how that has been working out:

 

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=================================================================================== And, if you thought Bush 43 was an idiot, have a listen to Dimocrat Hank Johnson. Why do we continue to elect these people? ===================================================================================

FDIC encourages pension funds to buy failed banks.

 

Here is an interesting article excerpt from Bloomberg:

March 8 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is trying to encourage public retirement funds that control more than $2 trillion to buy all or part of failed lenders, taking a more direct role in propping up the banking system, said people briefed on the matter.

Direct investments may allow funds such as those in Oregon, New Jersey and California to cut fees for private-equity managers, and the agency to get better prices for distressed assets, the people said. They declined to be identified because talks with regulators are confidential.

Oregon’s retirement fund may contribute $100 million as regulators seek “the support of state pension funds to solve the crisis surrounding ongoing bank failures,” Jay Fewel, a senior investment officer at the Oregon State Treasury, said in a presentation at the fund’s Feb. 24 meeting. New Jersey’s fund may also participate, said Orin Kramer, chairman of New Jersey’s State Investment Council.

The FDIC shuttered 140 lenders last year and expects the tally may be higher in 2010. Regulators have avoided signing up private-equity firms as rescuers on concern that they might take too much risk. Pension funds, whose 100 largest members manage $2.4 trillion, could provide capital to acquire deposits and outstanding loans from collapsed banks, according to the people.

Welcome Mat

“The FDIC is constantly looking at structures where we can get the greatest opportunity to tap into capital that we have not had the success reaching through previous disposition methods,” FDIC spokeswoman Michele Heller said in an e-mailed statement. “We welcome and work with all investors.”

Current rules don’t prohibit pension funds from buying failed banks. Until now, they have typically chosen to invest through private-equity firms using limited partnerships, which gives pension funds little to no control over the day-to-day management of the investments. They also pay management fees levied on the amount of money committed as well as a percentage of any profit.

“We’ve been examining a broad range of alternatives to take advantage of what I believe are attractive transactions coming out of the FDIC,” said New Jersey’s Kramer. The state pension system faced a shortfall of about $46 billion as of last year because of investment declines and a failure to make full contributions, according to annual financial reports.

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OK, so the FDIC is running out of money (this might be a good time to mention that the top 25,000 bankers in the U.S. received bonuses averaging $308,000.00) and now wants to make it easier for the average American to lose their retirement savings. Who bails out the pension funds?

 

If you can't see the handwriting on the wall by this point, there is no hope for you. 

 

We aren't a third world country yet, however...

Record numbers go hungry in the U.S.. Too bad I have to go to news sources outside the U.S. to find out what is going on in our country. Here's the latest from guardian.co.uk.: (My bold)

 More than a million children regularly go to bed hungry in the US, according to a government report that shows a startling increase in the number of families struggling to put food on the table.

President Barack Obama, who pledged to eradicate childhood hunger, has described as "unsettling" the agriculture department survey, which says 50 million people in the US – one in six of the population – were unable to afford to buy sufficient food to stay healthy at some point last year, in large part because of escalating unemployment or poorly paid jobs. That is a rise of more than one-third on the year before and the highest number since the survey began in 1995.

The agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, said: "These numbers are a wake-up call … for us to get very serious about food security and hunger, about nutrition and food safety in this country."

Vilsack said he expected the numbers to worsen when the survey for this year is released in 2010.

The report said 6.7 million people were defined as having "very low food security" because they regularly lacked sufficient to eat. Among them, 96% reported that the food they bought did not last until they had money to buy more. Nearly all said they could not afford to eat balanced meals. Although few reported that this was a permanent situation throughout the year, 88% said it had occurred in three or more months.

Nearly half reported losing weight because they did not have enough money to buy food.

The number of children living in households where there were shortages of food at times rose by nearly one-third to 17 million. The report says that most parents who did not get enough to eat ensured their offspring received sufficient food but that more than 1 million children still suffered outright hunger.

The worst affected states are in the south with Mississippi having the largest proportion of its population enduring shortages of food followed by Texas and Arkansas. More than half of those affected are minorities, principally black people and Hispanics.

Millions more Americans do not go hungry only because they are so poor they receive government food stamps or rely on handouts from food banks such as Feeding America. In some states, such as West Virginia, one in six of the population is on food stamps. (I will add that nationally one in ten people are on food stamps)

Vicki Escarra, head of Feeding America which runs 200 food banks across the country feeding 25 million people, described the report as "alarming" and noted that the situation is continuing to deteriorate.

"Although these new numbers are staggering, it should be noted that these numbers reflect the state of the nation one year ago, in 2008. Since then the economy has significantly weakened, and there are likely many more people struggling with hunger than this report states," she said.

Feeding America said there had been a "dramatic increase" in requests for emergency food assistance from food banks across the US. It said that food banks in some parts of the country were requesting more than a 50% increase in assistance than over a year ago.

"Our network food banks are calling us every day, telling us that demand for emergency food is higher than it has ever been in our history," said Escarra.

The principal cause is unemployment, which has risen past 10%, as well as increasing numbers of people who have had their hours cut back or been forced in to minimum wage jobs. Even before the recent economic collapse many working people were struggling to meet rising living costs, such as those who drive long distances to their jobs in rural states who were hit by the rising cost of fuel.

Feeding America said 40% of the people it helps live in families with at least one working adult.

Charities say that many of those who fall into financial difficulties take years to get back on their feet and so the problem is likely to persist for years.

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 The above numbers actually make some sense as do the latest figures that show that over 6% of homeowners are 60 days or more behind on their mortgage. (No duh!! No job, no make the mortgage payment.)

Here is the latest from Nouriel Roubini:

"Think the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening. While the official unemployment rate is already 10.2% and another 200,000 jobs were lost in October, when you include discouraged workers and partially employed workers the figure is a whopping 17.5%.

While losing 200,000 jobs per month is better than the 700,000 jobs lost in January, current job losses still average more than the per month rate of 150,000 during the last recession. (My edit to add that 52% of college and HS grads cannot find work) 

Also, remember: The last recession ended in November 2001, but job losses continued for more than a year and half until June of 2003; ditto for the 1990-91 recession.

So we can expect that job losses will continue until the end of 2010 at the earliest. In other words, if you are unemployed and looking for work and just waiting for the economy to turn the corner, you had better hunker down. All the economic numbers suggest this will take a while. The jobs just are not coming back."

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Retail may not do too bad as I think many folks will spend out of desperation. If that happens, the retail numbers will be down after the first of next year. Conversely, people could see the handwriting on the wall and not spend much this holiday season. We will see what the stats show.

An additional unknown is what will happen on the international front. The Chinese are openly chiding Obama on America's reckless spending and when a major incident happens, such as Israel attacking Iran, which is looking more and more likely, then who knows what the domestic economy will do.

 

 

Oath Keepers

What is Oath Keepers:

Oath Keepers is a non-partisan association of currently serving military, reserves, National Guard, veterans, Peace Officers, and Fire Fighters who will fulfill the Oath we swore, with the support of like minded citizens who take an Oath to stand with us, to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help us God. Our Oath is to the Constitution

What does that mean?

1. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people.

2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people.

3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to military tribunal.

4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state.

5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.

6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.

7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.

8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control."

9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies.

10.We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

Who founded this group?

Stewart Rhodes

Stewart is the founder and Director of Oath Keepers. He served as a U.S. Army paratrooper until disabled in a rough terrain parachuting accident during a night jump.

He is a former firearms instructor and former member of Rep. Ron Paul’s DC staff.

Stewart currently writes the monthly Enemy at the Gates column for S.W.A.T. Magazine

Stewart graduated from Yale Law School in 2004, where his paper “Solving the Puzzle of Enemy Combatant Status” won Yale’s Miller prize for best paper on the Bill of Rights. He assisted teaching U.S. military history at Yale, was a Yale Research Scholar, and is writing a book on the dangers of applying the laws of war to the American people.

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I just found about this group. This isn't about right or left, Democrat or Republican, it's about protecting our constitution.

Right now about 3% of our military belongs to this group and it's numbers are growing fast. I am not a member, but will join as an associate if funds permit. (Things are tight for me right now)

The reason I am posting this is because I now feel like our situation is not hopeless. We now have a core group of military and law enforcement who WILL NOT be following orders to round up an exterminate or otherwise take action against their fellow Americans. This is important. We know some of what was going on under Bush 43 and we know Obama is continuing much of this stuff. The FEMA camps were set up by Reagan back in 1984, but for the non-nefarious purposes for which they are now envisioned.

Oath Keepers gives us an important and powerful ally in defense of the constitution and our liberties.

Please Digg and Reddit this and pass this post along to anyone you think may still care about our country. The good guys may finally be getting a foothold against the evil elite who are planning our demise.

Link: http://oathkeepers.org/oath/

The above photo shows an Oath Keeper patch being worn by an active duty soldier in Mosul, Iraq.

American Capitalism Gone With a Whimper

From Pravda.ru:

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.
First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.
So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.
The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Stanislav Mishin