Fire Hydrant of Freedom

https://gellerreport.com/2019/12/gunman-opens-fire-in-texas-church-courageous-armed-parishioners-take-him-out.html/

Another excellent piece by Caroline Glick:

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/why-american-jews-slander-president-trump-caroline-glick/

Here is my prediction:  I believe Trump will win with a larger margin than he did the first time, and the Republicans will take back the house and possibly increase their majority in the Senate.  Once again, the mainstream media is completely detached from the sentiment among average Americans about this impeachment sham.  Many independents and Democrats will, I believe, vote for Trump this time around.

As Robert Spencer correctly states here - either Abdullah is kidding himself, or the U.S.  He cannot possibly be ignorant of these relevant verses in the Koran:

www.jihadwatch.org/2018/02/king-abdullah-of-jordan-maybe-theres-a-lack-of-understanding-of-islam-in-washington

http://dailysignal.com/2017/05/17/feminism-drives-people-deny-basic-facts

Trump Embraces The PLO Fantasy

The new president is gearing up to make the same mistake as his predecessor.

March 15, 2017
Caroline Glick

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post.

US President Donald Trump is losing his focus. If he doesn’t get it back soon, he will fail to make America great again or safe again in the Middle East.

After holding out for a month, last week Trump indicated he is adopting his predecessors’ obsession with empowering the PLO.

This is a strategic error.

There are many actors and conflicts in the Middle East that challenge and threaten US national interests and US national security. Iran’s rise as a nuclear power and regional hegemon; the war in Syria; Turkey’s abandonment of the West; and Russia’s regional power play all pose major threats to US power, security and interests. The Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State, Hamas and other Sunni jihadist movements all threaten the US, Europe and the US’s Sunni allies in the region in a manner that is strategically significant to America.

None of these issues, none of these actors and none of these threats are in any way related to or caused by the PLO and its interminable, European-supported hybrid terror and political war against Israel. None of these pressing concerns will be advanced by a US embrace of the PLO or a renewed obsession with empowering the PLO and its mafia-terrorist bosses.

To the contrary, all of these pressing concerns will be sidelined – and so made more pressing and dangerous – by a US reengagement with the PLO .

And yet, over the past week, Trump has indicated that the PLO is now his focus.

Last Friday, Trump spoke on the telephone with Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas is head of the PLO and the unelected dictator of the corrupt, terrorism-sponsoring, PLO -controlled Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria.

According to media reports, Trump told Abbas – whose legal term in office ended eight years ago – that he views him as a legitimate leader. According to the official White House report of the conversation, Trump also reportedly told Abbas that he supports reaching a deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Such a deal, to the extent it is ever reached, involves expanding PLO control over Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem at Israel’s expense.

Trump also invited Abbas for an official visit to Washington. And the day after they spoke, the Trump administration moved $250 million in US taxpayer dollars to Abbas’s police state where for the past 25 years, Abbas and his cronies have enriched themselves while feeding a steady diet of antisemitic, anti-American jihadist bile to their impoverished subjects.

To build up his credibility with the PLO , Trump put his electoral pledge to move the US embassy to Jerusalem on ice. The real estate mogul ordered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deny Jews the right to their property and their legal right to use state lands in Judea and Samaria.

And swift on the heels of that conversation with Abbas, Trump’s chief negotiator Jason Greenblatt was dispatched to Jerusalem to begin empowering the PLO at Israel’s expense.

According to media reports, Greenblatt intended to use his meeting Monday with Netanyahu to reject Netanyahu’s commitment to build a new Israeli town in Samaria. Greenblatt was also reportedly intending to dictate the parameters for yet another round of negotiations with the PLO.

After meeting with Netanyahu, Greenblatt continued on to Ramallah to embrace Abbas.

Also during his stay, Greenblatt is scheduled to meet with IDF generals who are responsible for giving money and providing services to the PLO.

And Greenblatt doesn’t have the Palestinians to himself.

Following Trump’s conversation with Abbas, plans were suddenly afloat for Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump to visit Israel and spend an afternoon with Abbas in Ramallah.

If things develop as reported, then Trump is serious about embracing the PLO and intends to have his top advisers devote themselves to Abbas and his henchmen. If that is the case, then Trump is setting himself, his advisers, his daughter and the US up to fail and be humiliated.

The PLO is the Siren that drowns US administrations. It is to the PLO that America’s top envoys have eagerly flown, gotten hooked on the attention of the demented, anti-Israel press corps, and forgotten their purpose: to advance US national interests.

If Trump is serious about repeating this practice, then rather than repair the massive damage done to the US and the Middle East by his two predecessors, the 45th president will repeat their mistakes. Like them, he will leave office in a blaze of failure.

To understand why this is the case, three things must be clear.

First, the PLO will never make peace with Israel. There will never be a Palestinian state.

There will never be a peace or a Palestinian state because the PLO wants neither. This is the lesson of the past 25 years. Both Abbas and his predecessor Arafat rejected peace and statehood multiple times and opted instead to expand their terrorist and political war against Israel.

Why did they do that? Because they are interested in two things: personal enrichment – which they achieve by stealing donor funds and emptying the pockets of their own people; and weakening, with the goal of destroying Israel – which they achieve through their hybrid war of terrorism and political warfare.

The second thing that needs to be clear is that the Palestinians are irrelevant to the rest of the problems – the real problems that impact US interests – in the region. If anything, the Palestinians are pawns on the larger chessboard. America’s enemies use them to distract the Americans from the larger realities so that the US will not pay attention to the real game.

Iran will not be appeased or defeated if Trump empowers the PLO in its war against Israel and continues feeding PLO leaders’ insatiable appetite for other people’s money.

The Sunni jihadists will not beat their swords into plowshares if the US coerces Israel to cough up land to the PLO . To the contrary, they will be emboldened.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will not move his forces out of Syria or stop giving nuclear technologies to Iran if the US turns the screws on Israel. Putin will come to the conclusion that Trump is either weak or stupid to damage Israel, the US’s most serious ally.

And of course, Israel will not be better off if Trump decides to push it back onto the peace train which has caused it nothing but harm for the past quarter century.

Trump’s election opened up the possibility, for the first time in decades, that the US would end its destructive obsession with the PLO. For three months, Israelis have been free for the first time to discuss seriously the possibilities of applying Israeli law to all or parts of Judea and Samaria. And a massive majority of Israelis support doing just that.

On the Palestinian side as well, Trump’s election empowered the people who have been living under the jackboot of Abbas and his cronies to think about the possibility of living at peace with Israel in a post-PLO era. Polling results indicate that they too are eager to move beyond the Palestinian statehood chimera.

But now, it appears that Trump has been convinced to embrace the PLO obsession. The same entrenched bureaucrats at the State Department and the same foreign policy establishment in Washington that brought the US nothing but failure in the Middle East for a generation appear to have captivated Trump’s foreign policy. They have convinced him it is better to devote his top advisers to repeating the mistakes of his predecessors than to devote his energies and theirs to fixing the mess that Obama and George W. Bush left him with. They have gotten him to believe that it is better to empower the PLO than develop coherent strategies and plans for dealing with the problems of the region that actually endanger US interests and imperil the security and safety of the American people.

'IMMIGRANT PRIVILEGE' DRIVES CHILD RAPE EPIDEMIC

Ann Coulter - March 8, 2017

Before breathing a sigh of relief that, unlike Western Europe, we don't have Muslim rapists pouring into our country, recall that we have Mexican rapists pouring into our country.

Almost all peasant cultures are brimming with rapists, pederasts and child abusers. Latin America just happens to be the peasant culture closest to the United States, while the Muslims are closest to Europe.

According to North Carolinians for Immigration Reform and Enforcement, immigrants commit hundreds of sex crimes against children in North Carolina every month -- 350 in the month of April 2014, 299 in May, and more than 400 in August and September. More than 90 percent of the perpetrators are Hispanic.

They aren't even counting legal immigrants. Aren't those worse? Only certain Republicans get excited about the difference between legal and illegal immigrants. The rest of America is trying to understand the point of the last 40 years of legal immigration. Why was this necessary?

Below is a very short excerpt from a few days in November 2013. As Stalin is supposed to have said, sometimes quantity has a quality all its own.

-- Abundez, Jose, Juan (11/12/2013): Felony Sex Offense -- Parental Role

-- Aguilar-Sandoval, Jersson, Iss (11/21/2013): Felony First Degree Sexual Offense; Felony First Degree Rape; Felony First Degree Kidnapping

-- Aguilar, Rafael (11/04/2013): Felony Indecent Liberties With Child

-- Aguilar, Rigoberto, Castellano (11/04/2013): Felony First Degree Rape; Felony Indecent Liberties With Child; Felony Stat Rape/Sex Offn Def>4-<6yr

(Note: That's sex with a child between 4 and 6 years old.)

-- Manzano, Gustavo, Adolfo (11/20/2013): Felony Indecent Liberties With Child; Felony Rape of Child

-- Monje, Alcides, Aguilar (11/18/2013): Felony Stat Rape/Sex Offn Def >=6yr; Felony Indecent Liberties With Child, 13.

The list, for a single month in a single state, goes on in the same vein through 87 separate offenders. When not providing North Carolina meatpackers with cheap labor, immigrant workers seem to spend all their time raping little girls.



To be fair, there are also Asian names, such as Y'Hon Nie (Indecent Liberties With Child, First Degree Sex Offense-Child, Second Degree Sexual Offense); and David Vo Minh (First Degree Sex Offense-Child, Indecent Liberties With Child).

North Carolina's cheap labor advocates better be paying Sen. Thom Tillis well. It sure isn't the average North Carolinian demanding that he shill for amnesty. Illegal immigration alone costs North Carolina taxpayers billions of dollars per year.

Our nation's epitaph, with a photo of Sen. Tillis, could be: "We built a powerful economic engine that attracted people, but then some businessmen saw their chance to screw the country and make a pile for themselves. Let's bring in low-wage workers so we can externalize our costs to the taxpayer!”

Except North Carolina's businesses aren't just externalizing their costs to the taxpayers. They're externalizing their costs to little girls.

The reason websites like North Carolinians for Immigration Reform and Enforcement are so important is that the government and the media hide immigrant crime from the public.

They cite bogus studies that compare immigrants to America's criminal class. (We didn't want immigrants who are only slightly less criminal than our worst inner cities.)

Or they announce their impressionistic conclusions. (I heard about a crime in Montana -- that state must have a lot of crime, is not a scientific way to argue.)

Or they refuse to count any criminal without an ICE detainer against him as an immigrant, at all. (Is the court translator a hint that the defendant isn't a 10th-generation American?)

The way to determine how many immigrants are committing crime is to count them. Why does the government refuse to do this?

The number of immigrants in prison would be a good start, but that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Immigrant criminals flee back to their own countries after arrest. Prosecutors deport illegals rather than imprison them -- and then the illegals come right back. Some George Soros-inspired prosecutors allow illegals to plea guilty to a minor offense, to prevent them from being deported.

To get the full picture, government investigators will need to talk to crime victims, police and prosecutors, too.

And we want honesty -- not studies that count anchor babies and second-generation immigrants as "the native population.”

The media is the government's co-conspirator in hiding immigrant crime. I have approximately 1,000 examples of media subterfuges on immigrant crime in Adios, America! The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole.

Here are a few recent examples from Sen. Tillis' North Carolina.

Headline: "Burke County man convicted of raping 13-year-old girl," Charlotte Observer, Feb. 1, 2017 (Ricardo Solis Garcia -- an illegal whom Mexico refused to take back);

Headline: "Burlington man charged with child rape," The Times News, Jan. 19, 2017 (Felipe Samuel Rivera Rodriguez);

Headline: "Angier man accused of having sex with 14-year-old girl," The Fayetteville Observer, Aug. 29, 2016 (Estevan Roberto Silva).

NOTE TO READERS: The North Carolina Estevan Roberto Silva -- sex with a 14-year-old girl -- should not be confused with the Texas Esteban Villa Silva -- sex with a 12-year-old girl about 60 times -- or the Alabama Esteban Silva Jr. -- 42-year-old man convicted of sex with a 12-year-old girl. All these child rapes were revealed in coded headlines like "Man pleads to sexual relationship with girl.”

Other informative North Carolina headlines:

Headline: "Man, 42, arrested for sexual offense with girl under 13" (Carlos Gumercindo Crus);

Headline: "Man charged with sexual assault of a minor" (Jose Freddy Ambrosio-Gorgonio);

Headline: Man Pleads Guilty in Child Rape Case (Luis Perez-Valencia).

It's too relentless to be a coincidence.

There have been more stories in the American media about a rape by white lacrosse players that didn't happen than about thousands of child rapes in North Carolina that did.

I'm pretty sure our media is opposed to rape. But evidently, not as opposed as they are to America.

COPYRIGHT 2017 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

This is a transcript from today's radio show:

CALLER:  The point I wanted to make, you were talking earlier about what’s going on with President Trump and the possible wiretapping of Trump Tower. And I’ve also read online that supposedly there’s a possibility that Jeff Sessions’ office was being tapped also, at least that’s what Corey Lewandowski said, but my point I wanted to make was I think that Trump should take this opportunity to turn the tables on the Dems and the libs. I don’t like their tactics, but they are effective.  And one of the things you’ve talked about in the past many times is the idea that investigations need to be done because of the seriousness of the charge.

RUSH:  Right.

CALLER:  I can’t think of anything more serious than the possibility that the presidential campaign was being wiretapped, and I would use that argument and just push the Democrats back on their heels and say, “The seriousness of the charge, we have to look.”  I mean, you could run with this for months.  That’s what I would do.

RUSH:  Trump is doing that.  So far, he doesn’t have anybody willing to join him in the investigation, ’cause most people’s reaction — can I share this with you?

CALLER:  Of course.

RUSH: The first Trump tweet was on Saturday, and I’m on the golf course Sunday, and it’s a mother-in-law convention out there.  The winds are like 35 miles an hour.  It’s just impossible.  So we started talking about things to try to distract from how poorly we were playing, and these guys — and these are, you know, my age, 50 to 55, 60, successful people, and they’re shocked at what Trump said. They think, “Oh, no, the guy’s going off his rocker, oh, my God, oh, my God.”

I tried to bring ’em back down.  I said, “No,” that’s when I hit them.  “Wait a minute, now.  What do you mean?  Is it more reasonable to think that it could be or that it isn’t?”  And so they started thinking about it the way I was thinking about it.  So I think the initial reaction of even some people on Trump’s team, “Oh, my God, you don’t say that, oh, gee.”  Because in their minds, you never win accusing Obama or the Democrats of anything.  The media’s gonna come out and destroy you.

But Trump is not everybody.  Trump doubled down on it today.  You better be applauding Donald Trump. If what you just said you want, you better be applauding Donald Trump.  Because he’s taking it — this is exactly what he’s doing out there, Pete.  He’s doing exactly what they have been doing to him.  This whole Russia-rigged-the election thing is a bogus charge and he decided to pick the grenade up and throw it right back at the media-Democrat complex.

And it’s working.  They’re now running around like stuck pigs.  “What investigation?  He wasn’t under investigation.”  He wasn’t under investigation?  I thought the last six months — “No, no, no, there are no wiretaps on Trump.  That’s absurd.”  Well, then how do people get hold of his phone calls to these foreign leaders?  “Well, I don’t know, but he’s not under investigation.  Nobody ever said he’s under investigation.”

Katy Tur, infobabe NBC, was on Meet the Press Sunday saying there hasn’t even been a single report alleging that Trump was working with the Russians.  I looked at that.  I didn’t watch it live, I was on the way to the golf course.  I looked at it later.  I said, “Are you kidding me?”  This is the same reporter who had not heard that Obama had told the Russians to tell Vladimir to wait, he’ll be more flexible after the election.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: My point yesterday about is it reasonable to think that Obama could indeed have wiretapped Trump and his campaign, given other aspects of the investigation we’ve been hearing. We know that Trump’s under investigation. We know that some of his peeps are under investigation supposedly ’cause of collusion with the Russians. So we know there was an investigation going on.

Is it unreasonable or reasonable to think that Trump could have been wiretapped too? People were saying, “That’s outrageous! Trump’s off his rocker.” No, no. It’s entirely reasonable if everybody — and Trump’s phone calls have been transcribed and broadcast and reported in the media. So they played that segment — in fact, here it is — and they asked Newt to react to it.

RUSH ARCHIVE: There has been a sabotage effort to undermine Trump and his administration since the election. … t’s totally reasonable to believe that something like this could be happening. It would be unreasonable to think that this is crazy, unreasonable to think that this is absurd, unreasonable to think that this is nothing more than a big batch of conspiracy theories stitched together for whatever purpose.

RUSH: Bill Hemmer played that for Newt Gingrich today on America’s Newsroom, and he said, “Okay, flip Limbaugh’s logic around. Is it reasonable to think that actually this is crazy?”

GINGRICH: I think if you’re a left-winger and you believe that everything Trump does is wrong, you can believe that. But if you look at the unending process of leaks — by the way, all of them breaking the law. You have a New York Times columnist actively calling on IRS agents to break the law and leak President Trump’s taxes. The left has gone crazy since the election. There’s this whole model right now that anything goes on the left, and then they want the rest of us to believe that they’re reasonable.

RUSH: Right. And then here’s Mike Pence. He was on Brian Kilmeade’s Fox News Radio show this morning, and they were talking about Trump’s tweets accusing Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower, and Pence said this…

PENCE: I think the president’s tweet speaks for itself. He’s expressed himself on it, and, you know, we’re very pleased that the congressional committees have made it clear that they will look into that matter just as they’re looking into every aspect it.

RUSH: See, this is why it’s a brilliant thing that Trump did, whether he knew it or not, ’cause it’s gonna come back and bite them. We just had a caller saying, “Look, why don’t we play the game the way they do? They say, no evidence. That means we have to investigate it. The seriousness of the charge.”

Well, you know what? You can’t get a more serious charge than a sitting president wiretapped a presidential campaign. You can’t get a more serious charge. And by the Democrats’ own definition that mandates an investigation. And Congress said they’ll do it. They’re gonna fold Trump’s allegation into the rest of this. And now the Democrats are walking it back, “There wasn’t any investigation, there wasn’t any investigation, what do you mean? Where are you getting this?”

It’s like Katy Tur, the infobabe on NBC. She’s on Meet the Press Sunday. She said she’s not aware of any news agency alleging that there was collusion between Trump and the Russians. I saw that, and I said, “What is it, does she really not know,” which is the entirely possible. I think journalists are some of the most ill-educated people. I don’t even think they’re educated. They’re indoctrinated. They know one side of things and they have no curiosity about anything else.

She’s also the infobabe who did not know that Obama was overheard on an open mic telling Dmitry Medvedev in 2012, Putin’s second in command; he’s the president of the Russian Federation, said (paraphrasing), “You tell Vladimir that I’ll have much more flexibility in getting rid of our nukes here after I’m reelected.” She didn’t know that had happened. How do you not know that? Well, NBC didn’t report it. CBS didn’t report it. ABC didn’t report it. The New York Times didn’t report it.

There’s no way she would know it. Yet it happened, and they don’t know it. And now she’s out there saying there’s no new organization that’s ever alleged collusion between Trump and the Russians. She was dead serious. And her own network is reporting that. Everybody else in the Drive-Bys is reporting that.

David Stockman correctly diagnoses (IMHO) the current debt calamity we are living in, and says that stocks are wildly overvalued, and Trump is powerless to stop this train wreck from occurring this year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xgNncFHAng

This is entirely unprecedented - but then - so is Barack Obama and his efforts as U.S. President to dismantle the nation as founded:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265808/obamas-shadow-presidency-matthew-vadum

The author is correct here - this ought to be blindingly obvious at this point:

www.sovereignman.com/trends/worlds-largest-hedge-fund-manager-predicts-bleak-future-for-markets-20855/

http://www.alt-market.com/articles/3115-are-you-ready-for-an-inflationary-depression

As always, Sowell makes a calm assessment of the situation we face:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265136/where-are-we-thomas-sowell

Yes - sadly, I think Beck is essentially a con man, quite possibly with a serious psychiatric disorder.  I say this having attended his "Restoring Honor Rally" in Washington, D.C. at the Lincoln Memorial in 2010.  At that point I thought he was genuine.  
His actions and statements since then have proven otherwise.

Despite mall shooter’s “SubhanAllah” post and admiration for ISIS caliph, police search for motive

September 26, 2016 10:44 am By Robert Spencer

He had a history of violence and sexual abuse of women — almost as if he grew up in a culture that revered violence and thought of non-Muslim women as “uncovered meat.” He posted admiration for al-Baghdadi and Khamenei and a call for Muslims to repeat “SubhanAllah” multiple times.

Maybe he wasn’t a jihadi and there is some mitigating explanation for all of this. When authorities refuse to discuss it and appear to dismiss it out of hand, however, it only reinforces the impression that there is some deliberate effort to cover up jihad attacks — an impression that authorities reinforce all too often.



“A portrait of violence emerges of suspect in Washington state mall killings,” by Rick Anderson, Los Angeles Times, September 25, 2016 (thanks to Darcy):

    A disturbing portrait began to emerge Sunday of Arcan Cetin, the man suspected of killing five people at a Washington state mall, but authorities appeared no closer to determining the motive for the crime.

    Cetin, 20, who came to the United States from Turkey as a child, was described by authorities as having called out women’s names as he allegedly killed them in a hail of bullets Friday night at the Cascade Mall in Burlington.

    By the time he was found carrying a computer bag near his home in nearby Oak Harbor about 24 hours later, he was depicted by the sheriff who arrested him as “zombie-like” and docile….

    As Lt. Chris Cammock of the police department in Mount Vernon, south of Burlington, said Saturday, he and a task force investigating the shooting have a lot of questions to answer.

    “I don’t know what his motivations were to do this. I don’t know what his motivations were to continue [shooting]. I don’t know what his motivations were to stop,” Cammock said….

    Investigators have not revealed what, if anything, Cetin — who pronounces his first name as “ar-zhan” — has told them since his arrest. But his capture and jailing were greeted with both relief and anger.

    Uhlaine Finnigan, 19, a former classmate at Oak Harbor High School, remembered Cetin as someone to avoid in the school hallways. She didn’t want to comment further Sunday but gave permission to use her recollections from a Facebook post after his arrest.

    “He’d grab and slap my friends and … even caressed my friends chest, along with other women,” she wrote. “Has been known to be violent towards girls too.”

    Another classmate, Austin Hendrix, 19, told the Seattle Times, “He would grope women in high school and middle school.”…

    According to his Facebook page, Cetin is a native of Turkey, not Russia, and goes by the nickname “the Turk.” He came to the U.S. with his parents and is a legal permanent resident, officials said.

    The Associated Press quoted a neighbor, Amber Cathey, 21, describing Cetin as “really creepy, rude and obnoxious” — so much so, she said, that she complained to apartment management and kept a stun gun handy. Cathey said she blocked him on Snapchat after he sent her a photo of his crotch.

    His Tumblr page, with “arcanmotherrussiavodkaandak47” as part of the Web address, includes a photo of him with an apparent assault-style weapon. He also posted, without comment, a photo of serial killer Ted Bundy at age 4, sitting next to a snowman.

    Court records show Cetin has faced three domestic violence assault charges in Skagit and Island counties, involving disputes with his stepfather. There is no record of any convictions. In December, however, a judge ordered Cetin not to possess firearms. The judge also suggested imposing a no-contact order, but the stepfather objected, saying Cetin was going through “a hard time” and needed the stepfather’s help.

    One post on Cetin’s Tumblr page urged readers to repeat the phrase “Subhan Allah” (“Glory to God”) 10 times “and then reblog this, do not stop reblogging it.”

    Police had no comment on the suspect’s religious beliefs.

DEPORT THE RAHAMI FAMILY

It’s time to send Muslim terrorists a message.

September 21, 2016  Daniel Greenfield - FrontPageMag.com


The Rahami family came to America from Afghanistan as refugees. They made life miserable for their neighbors. When the police tried to bring some order, they cried Islamophobia.

Two of the Rahamis have posted in support of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and other Islamic terror groups on social media. The third actually built and planted bombs to kill Americans. He terrorized two states, tried to kill and maim countless Americans and then shot it out with police.

Ahmad Khan Rahami, the central figure in the terror case, brought his wife here from Pakistan and she departed days before his attack. His mother left for Pakistan a few weeks before his bombing spree.

The media, eager for a story of redemption, has widely broadcast the claim that Mohammed Rahami, Ahmad’s father, told the FBI that he was a terrorist. But that was years ago. And Mohammed didn’t turn in his son because there was a terror plot, but because he attacked family members.

As Mohammed put it, “Because he doing bad. He stab my son and hit my wife. I put him in the jail."

This wasn’t Mohammed Rahami being a good citizen. It was a dysfunctional oversized family of Muslim refugees causing problems for local law enforcement over their own internal disputes.

Ahmad stabbed his brother in the leg with a knife. His father told the FBI that Ahmad was a terrorist. Then he recanted the accusation and said that he had made it out of anger.

This wasn’t patriotism. It wasn’t helpful. It was selfish abuse of the system.

We get a lot of lectures from politicians about the contributions of Muslims, especially refugees, to America.

Here are the sum total contributions of the Rahami family to America. 29 wounded people in Manhattan. 1 wounded police officer in Linden, New Jersey. A chicken place that was the subject of disputes with law enforcement. A lawsuit against Elizabeth, New Jersey stemming from that chicken place, which threw around accusations of Islamophobia. Previous legal issues and a jail sentence for Ahmad over his family dispute. 1 assaulted police officer due to issues with the chicken place.

Then there’s Ahmad’s unwed girlfriend and his baby whose case will be wending through the courts.

A conservative ballpark figure for the Rahamis and their various legal issues would be $100 million. Considering the sheer cost of scrambling manpower and resources across states, the hospital bills, the various insurance costs, the jail time, trial and security, that’s probably erring on the thrifty side.

Unless one of the Rahamis cures cancer, there is nothing they can do to even the score.

3 of the Rahami children support Islamic terrorists. For all the nonsense about “internet radicalization”, it’s obvious that support for terrorism and hatred for America ran in the family. And it might not even end with Ahmad sneering on a stretcher. There’s a history of multiple siblings engaging in terrorism. The most effective Islamic terror cells in this country in recent years have been siblings and married couples.

We can waste more time puzzling it out or we can just get the Rahamis out of the country and let them be Pakistan’s problem or Afghanistan’s annoyance. They don’t have to be our problem anymore.

And that is what we should have done back when these “refugees” first tried to set up shop here.

America does not have a desperate need for terrible fried chicken places or domestic disputes. The FBI doesn’t need to waste more time chasing terror suspects who might not have evolved into terrorists yet because they’re too busy stabbing other family members. It doesn’t need more accusations of Islamophobia. And it does not need the Rahamis.

Immigration policy is about making intelligent choices. And we are making the dumbest immigration choices possible.

The Rahamis and the Tsarnaevs, two dysfunctional terror families of asylumites, are typical of our terrible decisions. Both ate up large numbers of resources while giving us only terror and death.

Politicians tell us that Muslim refugees “contribute” to this country. But is it possible that we can get non-terrorists to make us fried chicken? And is cheap fried chicken really worth the cost of bombs going up? Would we be willing to pay a dollar more for fried chicken so we can just get on a plane without the TSA or so that the countless people who have been killed from 9/11 and onward could still be with us?

Let’s have an adult conversation about this crisis. And we can start by recognizing that granting asylum to the Rahamis was a mistake. If Ahmad’s bombs had worked properly, it might have been an even bigger mistake. As it was countless people were traumatized, countless millions have been squandered on dealing with the Rahamis and there’s no reason to believe that’s about to stop.

We can and should undo that mistake.

Denaturalizing those Rahami family members who have made statements supportive of Islamic terror and then deporting them would be an excellent start. It would send a message to other terror families that playing dumb after their son goes on his terror spree won’t work anymore.

But, for that matter, there’s no reason not to deport the entire Rahami family except technicalities.

We let them in under false pretenses. We let them stay under false pretenses. They have been nothing but trouble. We can’t undo the damage they have done in the past, but we can prevent them from doing any more of it in the future.

It’s either that or we can rerun the same tired narrative from every previous attack. The family will offer contradictory statements. Neighbors and school friends will be shocked at how normal Ahmad was. Rahami’s lawyer will blame everything from discrimination to mental illness. The whole soap opera will play out for the next few days until we all get tired of it. Just the way that it did with the Tsarnaevs.

We’ve seen this movie too many times. Maybe we should change the channel.

Denaturalization and deportation will send a message that we’re serious. It will encourage families of terrorists to come forward when they actually suspect something, instead of abusing the system.

When a Muslim terrorist kills Israelis, Israel demolishes his house. This sends a message that the terrorists are destroying exactly the thing that they are trying to gain. They want to conquer Israel and take over its land. But instead their racist atrocities are depriving them of the land.

Ahmad Rahami sought to kill non-Muslims in order to impose the rule of Islam on America. His writings contained a call to kill non-Muslims. They expressed admiration for Anwar Al-Awlaki, the Al Qaeda leader, who had declared, "We will implement the rule of Allah on earth by the tip of the sword."

We don’t need to demolish the Rahami family home or their fried chicken place. But we do need to make it clear that Rahami’s actions have not only failed to bring this goal closer, but represent a setback toward that goal by removing the rest of his family from the country.

The Rahamis have been our problem for far too long. It’s time to make them someone else’s problem. We can go back to living in denial until the next attack or we can send the Muslim terrorists of tomorrow a message.

Thank you, GM!    Wesbury conveniently fails to mention that JUST TO MAINTAIN PACE WITH THE POPULATION GROWTH (workers retiring vs. new young people reaching working age) requires that the economy create approximately 250,000 jobs/month.  That hasn't happened on average SINCE 2008.  There is no recovery.  It doesn't exist.  It's a BIG LIE.  It's nothing more than propaganda designed to prop up the political status quo which is benefiting people like Wesbury.

The World is Turning Ugly as 2016 Winds Down

Brandon Smith - www.alt-market.com

I have to say that the negative reverberations in our current economic and political environment are becoming so strong that it is impossible for people to not feel at least some uneasiness in their gut. I imagine this is the same kind of sensation many felt from 1914 to 1918 during World War I and the terrible birth of communism, or perhaps in the early 1930s at the onset of the Great Depression and the rise of fascism. Some global changes are so disturbing that they send shockwaves through the collective unconscious before they ever hit the mainstream. People know that something is about to happen, even if they cannot yet clearly define it.

At the beginning of August in my article “2016 Will End With Economic Instability And A Trump Presidency” I stated that:

"I believe a softer downturn will begin before the election (the U.S. presidential election) takes place, most likely starting in September. This will give a boost to the Trump campaign, or at least, that is what the polls will likely say. I would also watch for some banking officials and media pundits to blame this downturn on Trump’s rise in the polling data. The narrative will be that just the threat of a Trump presidency is “putting the markets on edge."

Unfortunately, it would seem so far that this prediction was correct. Currently global markets have crossed into severe volatility with a vengeance after around three months of eerie calm. Why? Well, as I warned in the same article linked above as well as numerous others since the beginning of this year, the Federal Reserve is determined to continue raising interest rates into a recessionary environment as they almost always do, and equities markets addicted to cheap debt cannot tolerate even one additional rate hike from the central bank.

So far all evidence suggests that the Fed plans to raise rates again soon; I believe at the end of this month.  The only seemingly "anti-hike" voice at the Fed so far has been board member Lael Brainard, but even her statements promote a false narrative that a America is on track to "recovery".

Many normally “dovish” members of the Fed have openly suggested that now is the time to hike.  Voting members at the Fed have been vocal about a shift in policy.  The latest example being head of the Bank of Cleveland, Loretta Mester. She argues that rates have remained “too low for too long,” and rejected notions that lower rates are necessary to maintain stability.

This is the same kind of language Fed members used right before the rate hike in December 2015, the first rate hike in around a decade.  And, to add to the fervor, even JP Morgan Chase head Jamie Dimon is calling for interest rates to rise.

Get ready folks, because all the naysayers that claimed another rate hike is “impossible" are probably about to be proven wrong yet again.

My warning on an accelerating Trump campaign being blamed for weak stock markets has also come true. Already, Bloomberg is launching the meme that the idea of Hillary Clinton losing the election to Trump “because of her health” is a “landmine for vulnerable markets.”

This is some incredible spin by the elitist controlled media, but again, very predictable. The globalists are setting the stage to blame the economic collapse they created on conservative movements. Clinton’s “health issues” are being set up as the scapegoat for a Trump win, which conjures additional social unrest as many on the Left will argue (in the event of a Trump win) that Trump prevailed on a technicality. That is to say, the extreme Left will argue that Trump’s presidency is not legitimate.

Another scenario is also possible but I think less likely — the potential for Clinton to bow out of the election due to her health, causing a rationale for a postponed election. I do not think a postponed election really serves the interests of the elites, but it would certainly trigger massive chaos if it occurred. Only in the strangest of any election year in American history could this even be thought of as a legitimate danger.

Another global indicator, oil, is tumbling yet again as all the jawboning from OPEC on a “production freeze” has failed to boost crude prices for more than a week at a time. Frankly, no one is buying the hype anymore. Those who bet on the WTI index shooting past $50 to $60 a barrel this year should have been paying more attention to alternative analysts. The only other factor that has kept oil from crashing down into the $30 range has been random inventory draws. These reports, though, are little more than a stop gap. Companies have been shifting crude to different facilities in order to create the illusion of inventory draws and higher demand. But usually within a week the reports catch up to the real supply and an inventory spike sends oil crashing down again.

Add to this the latest news that Congress has passed a bill allowing the families of 9/11 victims to sue the Saudi government for their part in the attack, and you have a recipe for a dumping of the dollar as the world’s petrocurrency. Even if Obama vetoes the bill, I believe a two-thirds majority of congress will override that veto. A catastrophe in oil markets is inevitable.

Whether in oil markets or other sectors of finance and social stability, make no mistake, catastrophe is exactly what national governments are preparing for.

This is most obvious today in the European Union. The German government in their first revision of their civil defense plan since the cold war has warned the public to prepare for an unspecified event by stockpiling at least 10 days worth of food and five days worth of water. Germany is also debating the idea of placing troops on the streets to “protect against ISIS.”

And Germany is not alone. French presidential candidate Nickolas Sarkozy has made some highly disturbing statements on security in a recent interview, outlining measures he believes will best protect the public from “militants.” From Reuters:

France needs to get tough on militants by creating special courts and detention facilities to boost security, the country’s former President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a interview published in Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.

“Every Frenchman suspected of being linked to terrorism, because he regularly consults a jihadist website, or his behavior shows signs of radicalization or because is in close contact with radicalized people, must by preventively placed in a detention center,” Sarkozy said in the interview.

Sarkozy, who announced last month his candidacy for the April 2017 presidential election, has said there is no place for “legal niceties” in the fight against terrorism.

Even in the face of Islamic extremism and terrorism, the concept of “detention facilities” where people are held without charge and without trial on the mere suspicion of being a danger to society should horrify anyone with any sense. The fact of the matter is, these violations of personal freedom and of due process are NEVER used for only one group of people. Totalitarian governments ALWAYS use one group as an excuse for the police state, then over time they expand the police state outwards to oppress everyone.

This is the kind of rhetoric that liberty movement activists in the U.S. fought against in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA); but it is making a resurgence in Europe and in America as well. If you think Sarkozy is a marginal example, I recommend you re-watch this interview with Gen. Wesley Clark, who argues that “radicalized people” who are disloyal to the U.S. government should be placed in internment camps. He suggests that Britain, Germany and France need to take similar measures. It would appear that they are doing just that.

Never forget that “radicalism” is an arbitrary designation, and the label can be applied to just about anyone for any reason. A trend in police state language is growing in the mainstream in the name of fighting terrorism, but the abrupt urgency in Europe is rather odd. Only a few months ago, EU leaders were using some outrageous mental gymnastics in order to avoid confronting the notion of Islamic terrorism. Now, they are suddenly concerned? Why?

I believe Europe is about to witness a catalyst for financial crisis, and they are using terrorism as an excuse to preposition martial law resources before this event takes place. They don’t care about stopping ISIS, but they do care about locking down and controlling an angry citizenry in the wake of an economic downturn. If a few more terrorist attacks occur in the meantime, then hey, that only helps the elites in their efforts to pacify the public for the sake of “security.”

Official preparedness warnings from Germany, for example, are of little use to the public. A supply of a mere ten days of food and five days of water is useless during any sizable crisis. But, the German government can now say that they “tried to warn people.” Sarkozy’s statements are the most blatant call for a police state I have yet seen from an establishment puppet politician, and this should worry people. The fact that he is being so open and honest about the end game indicates to me that a dangerous shift is imminent.

It would appear, according to EU government behavior, that whatever is about to happen globally is going to hit hardest in Europe first and then spread to the U.S. and the rest of the world. I recommend readers watch the EU very carefully over the next few months. If you have any financial or survival preparations you have been putting off, I suggest you take care of them before the end of this year. From what I see so far, geopolitically and economically the global situation is only going to become more unstable in the near term.

Trump Calls for More High-Skill Immigration

By Michael Barone
September 07, 2016

Would he go hard or go soft? That was the mainstream media template for judging Donald Trump's speech on immigration in Phoenix last Wednesday. The verdict: hard. "How Trump got from Point A to Point A on immigration," was the headline in the Washington Post's recap.

Similarly, the often-insightful Talking Points Memo blogger Josh Marshall characterized Trump's discourse as "hate speech." "Precisely what solution Trump is calling for is almost beside the point."

That's precisely wrong. Marshall found the Phoenix crowd's raucous shouts distasteful, and so did I. But a search through Trump's prepared text and his occasional digressions fails to disclose anything that can be fairly characterized as "hate speech."

Instead it discloses some serious critiques and proposals for recasting our immigration laws, which almost everyone agrees need changing.

Start near the end, with the 10th of Trump's 10 points. He notes that we've admitted 59 million immigrants since the last major revision of immigration law in 1965, and that "many of these arrivals have greatly enriched our country." No asides about criminals or rapists.

Then he proposes a major policy change: "to select immigrants based on their likelihood of success in U.S. society, and their ability to be financially self-sufficient ... to choose immigrants based on merit, skill and proficiency."

That's not racism or hate speech, and it's not out of line with American tradition.

Emma Lazarus' oft-quoted poem commends America for welcoming "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses" and "the wretched refuse of your teeming shore." But during the great wave of immigration from eastern and southern Europe from 1892 to 1914, the Ellis Island inspectors, in line with national policy, excluded those deemed incapable of supporting themselves as well as those with communicable diseases.

And the United States deported immigrants judged to be terrorists. American immigration policy even then wasn't completely open door.

Trump seems to be calling, in non-provocative language, for changing immigration law to give priority to high-skill immigrants, as do the immigration laws of Canada and Australia. That's not racist: Those countries admit plenty of non-whites. But they do require proficiency in English (or French in Canada).

Both have higher foreign-born percentages of population than the United States, and both have students who score higher on PISA international achievement tests than U.S. students do. No wonder a diplomat from one of those countries told me, half in jest, "Please do not adopt our immigration system."

Every serious expert concedes that the 1965 immigration act resulted in an unexpected huge flow of low-skill immigrants, especially but not only from Mexico. Most serious scholars agree that has tended to reduce, at least a little, wages for low-skill Americans. Do we really need another inrush of unskilled workers in the next few decades?

Near the beginning of his speech, Trump said, "The media and my opponent discuss one thing, and only this one thing: the needs of people living here illegally." That's an exaggeration, but not by much: mainstream media judges Trump hard or soft depending on what he says about illegals. "The central issue is not the needs of the 11 million illegal immigrants -- or however many there may be," he went on. "The only one core issue" is "the well-being of the American people."

To some, this sounds like bigotry, prejudice against foreigners, a preference for a mostly (but far from totally) white populace over a vastly larger (and mostly non-white) humanity. They instinctively prefer Hillary Clinton's version of open borders, allowing anyone who gets here and isn't criminally convicted to stay.

Trump's answer came earlier in the day, in Mexico City, as he shook hands and spoke cordially with President Enrique Pena Nieto. I like and admire him, Trump said; he loves his country and I love mine. Nieto's invitation, much criticized in Mexico, was prompted by his need to get along with whoever is elected U.S. president. That need likewise prompted his cautious remarks about Trump in a joint news conference with Barack Obama earlier this summer.

Trump's threats of trade retaliation and suggestion he might not honor NATO obligations provide rationales for voting against him as irresponsibly reckless. His immigration proposals don't.

His proposals for visa tracking and E-Verify validation of job applicants -- similar to Marco Rubio's -- would marginally reduce the illegal population, as would his deportation of some illegals.

More important, though ignored by mainstream media, is that his policies would produce more high-skill immigrants and Hillary Clinton's plan would produce more low-skill immigrants. Which is better for America?

COPYRIGHT 2016 CREATORS.COM

Michael Barone is senior political analyst for  the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.

I don't "assume" the markets are propped up by Fed stimulus, that is a verifiable fact.

As already linked in the article above, stock buybacks are indeed propping up equities prices artificially. Companies are seeking to counteract poor fundamentals:

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/28/companies-that-do-buybacks-do-worst-over-time-.html

The Fed's overnight loans and near zero interest rates feed the coffers of various banks and international businesses. This has allowed them to institute constant debt fueled stock buybacks:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-buybacks-analysis-idUSKCN0RN0D320150923

The Fed cut rates because it was the only way to prop up the dying markets. In fact, every time stocks began to retrace the initial crash of 2008-2009, the Fed introduced more QE, boosting markets again. THIS WAS OPENLY ADMITTED by Dallas Fed head Richard Fisher. Here is the quote:

"What the Fed did — and I was part of that group — is we front-loaded a tremendous market rally, starting in 2009.

It’s sort of what I call the “reverse Whimpy factor” — give me two hamburgers today for one tomorrow.

I’m not surprised that almost every index you can look at … was down significantly." [Referring to the results in the stock market after the Fed raised rates in December.]

Fisher went on to hint at the impending danger:

I was warning my colleagues, “Don’t go wobbly if we have a 10-20% correction at some point…. Everybody you talk to … has been warning that these markets are heavily priced.”

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000474362

Alan Greenspan also openly admitted that the Fed's main concern was propping up equities:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-18/greenspan-admits-feds-plan-was-always-pushing-stocks-higher

Of course, it does not surprise me that a "mainstream economist" would be completely oblivious to this information. They live in another world separate from reality.

As far as the so called "recovery" is concerned, all fundamental data has indicated since last DECEMBER that the global economy is not only in consistent decline, but that decline is now accelerating. This did not stop the Fed from raising rates the first time. I am not sure why mainstream economists think that data makes any difference to the Fed today.

No one asked the fed to raise rates in the first place, yet they did. And now, they are going to raise again. Today's job numbers gave no indication whatsoever that the Fed will back off from another hike. That is all mainstream news gossip and nothing more.

I have been consistently right over the years about Federal Reserve activity. I am right again this time. When they raise again this year, I hope you are willing to accept that perhaps the mainstream knows very little about how the economy and the central banks operate

Central Banks Ready to Launch Their "Brave New World"

Brandon Smith - www.alt-market.com - August 31, 2016

The latest Federal Reserve meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is over and so far it would seem that the general investment world is not too happy about Janet Yellen’s statements as well as those of other Fed officials.  In fact, many people are looking for some simple clarity as to what the central bank is actually planning.

Most importantly, investors want to know why the Fed is suddenly so adamant about continued interest rate hikes in 2016.  Only a couple months ago, almost everyone (including alternative economic analysts) was arguing that the Fed would “never dare” to raise rates again so soon, and that there was no chance of a rate hike so close to the presidential elections.

Instead, investors have been greeted with surging rate-hike odds as Fed officials openly hint of another boost, probably in September.

As I have been saying for years, if you think the Fed’s motivation is to protect or prolong the U.S. economy, then you will never understand why they do the things that they do.  Only when people are willing to accept the reality that the Fed’s job is to undermine the U.S. economy can they grasp central bank behavior.

Here is the issue that scares mainstream markets — many day traders are greedy, but not necessarily dumb.  They KNOW full well that the only pillar holding up stocks at record highs has been central bank intervention.  A vital part of this intervention has been the use of near-zero interest rates.  That is to say, cheap and free overnight loans through the Fed have allowed banks and other corporations to remain “solvent,” and these loans have been the fuel companies have used for corporate buybacks of stocks.

Corporate buybacks have been a primary driver in the bull market rally that supposedly saved the world from the ongoing deflationary destruction of capital.  In 2015, buybacks reached historic levels and garnered one of the largest equities reversals in history.   While these buybacks do little or nothing to heal the economy on Main Street, they certainly do wonders for equities portfolios.  By buying up their own shares, corporations boost the value of remaining shares through a brand of legal trickery.  And, in the process, these corporations also boost the overall perceived value of global stock markets.

As Edward Swanson, author of a study from Texas A&M, noted on stock buybacks used to offset poor fundamentals:

“We can’t say for sure what would have happened without the repurchase, but it really looks like the stock would have kept going down because of the decline in fundamentals… these repurchases seem to hold up the stock price.”

Yes, to us he seems to be stating the obvious, but for the average American, a green stock market means a recovering economy.  There is no deeper question of why the markets are rallying, and this lack of understanding is dangerous for our country.

Even marginal hikes in borrowing costs will kill the party and, while people not involved in finance and stocks are oblivious, day traders know exactly what is going on.  This is the reason for the underlying panic felt by the investment world at any hint of a rate hike by the Fed.

As we saw with the limited audit of TARP, the Fed was pumping tens of trillions in overnight loans into distressed banks and companies, even foreign companies overseas.  I suggest that if a FULL audit of the Fed were ever conducted, we would find tens of trillions more in overnight loans since 2008.

Imagine for a moment if those loans never stopped.  Imagine that such loans have been an ongoing mainstay of our financial system and stock markets in general.  Now, ask yourself, what would happen if the companies reliant on these free loans suddenly had to pay interest on them?

Think about it; what would the interest cost be on a mere .5% to 1% of $16 trillion in overnight loans through TARP?  What would the cumulative cost be on all the loans banks and companies need to survive every quarter?   In the end, corporations would either drown in billions of dollars in exponential debt or they would have to stop accessing loans from the Fed.  Once the loans stop, the stock buybacks stop.  Once the buybacks stop, stock markets crumble.

Without free cash from the Fed, the bubble in stock markets will finally and thoroughly implode, crashing down to meet all other fundamentals.

Why would the central bank pull the plug on life support to stock markets?  There are multiple reasons, but a top reason is that this is the Federal Reserve’s modus operandi.  They consistently seem to raise rates into recessionary conditions that they also tend to create.  In essence, the Fed likes to acclimate and addict markets to low interest percentages, and then increase those percentages to agitate and elicit a chaotic reaction.

In my article Brexit Aftermath - Here’s What Will Happen Next, I stated:

“Really, the only safe measure the Fed can take from now on is to do nothing.  I highly doubt that they will do nothing.  In fact, even in the face of the Brexit I still believe the Fed will raise rates a second time before the end of the year.  Why?  This is what the Fed has always done as recession takes hold.  Historically, the Fed raises rates at the worst possible times.  As with the Brexit, I am going to have to take the contrary position to most analysts on this.”

What analysts out there need to understand, whether they are independent or mainstream, is that a great shift in central bank policy and attitude is coming. Christine Lagarde at the IMF calls it the “economic reset,” some Fed officials, like Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, state that central banks are entering a “brave new world.” These are highly loaded phrases that represent a drastic overhaul of the global financial system; an overhaul that is quite deliberate and inevitably destructive for certain nations and economies, including the U.S.

If we examine the policy pursuits and recently stated goals of central banks around the world, and those statements made after the Brexit referendum, we find that a process of complete global centralization is underway. This includes a push for all central banks to “coordinate policy” under a single directive.

Alternative analysts already know that all central banks are ALREADY covertly coordinated by the Bank for International Settlements.  So, when central bankers call for policy coordination in the mainstream press, what they really mean is, they want the existing coordination that is covert to become publicly accepted and celebrated.  They want that which is illegal to become legal.  That which is morally reprehensible to become morally relative.

Central bankers also want their position of authority over the global economy to become a public priority.  Ten years ago, when I asked average people what they knew about the Federal Reserve, most of them responded with confusion.  They had never heard of the institution, let alone what its function was.  Today, almost everyone knows about the Fed, but there is also an assumption attached that central banks, whether they are successful or not, are supposed to maintain economic stability.  Keep in mind that global stocks barely vibrate today until a central bank somewhere publishes a policy statement.  This is not how investment is supposed to function.  The jawboning of central banks should be mostly meaningless.

The brave new world of central banking is a plan to expand on this corrupt correlation.  That is to say, the general public and the mainstream should be questioning whether central banks should exist at all.  Instead, people are arguing over what policies are better for central banks to adapt.  The existence of central banks is considered an absolute.  The masses are only given the option to debate what faces and what hats central banks should wear.  If we get anything out of this deal, we only get to choose the form of our destructor.

I should point out also the growing trend in the mainstream media of criticism against the Fed.  This is a relatively new thing.  For the past several years the more effectively critical the alternative media became against the Fed, the louder MSM talking heads would cheerlead for the establishment.  With central bankers becoming more open about their global shift into something "different", a new program of stabbing at the Fed has been initiated.  This is not a coincidence.

As I have argued in various articles, the Fed itself may be just as sacrificial to the elites as the U.S. economy.  In the process of global centralization, the Fed would eventually have to take a back seat to the IMF, World Bank and the BIS.  It is not surprising to me in the slightest that the bought-and-paid-for mainstream media is changing gears and attacking the institution they once desperately defended.  Priorities are evolving.

I believe that with the advent of a second rate hike in 2016, many conditions will change.  The Dow and some emerging markets will no longer enjoy unmitigated support, and they will begin to fall going into the elections.  As I have mentioned many times in past articles, Donald Trump is the most likely candidate to take up residence in the White House.  Conservatives will be lulled into a temporary euphoria, happy just to have defeated she-demon Hillary Clinton, only to discover that an overall global implosion has entered a new stage.  This implosion will of course be blamed on those same conservative movements.

In the meantime, central banks around the world are going to start openly coordinating while the IMF will take up a “leadership role” in managing international policy.  Central banks will also be branching out and taking on new powers.  As suggested at Jackson Hole, many central bankers are arguing for “new tools” to fight future fiscal downturns, and no, this does not mean negative interest rates.  Instead, watch for central banks to change the definition of inflation on a whim, or adjust the relative value of currencies through agreements with other countries instead of allowing free markets to determine values, and watch for complete overhauls in how economic instability is calculated.

What we are heading for is a world in which many nations will suffer from reductions in living standards and where some first world nations will be reduced to third world conditions.  In order to normalize increased global poverty, you have to stop calling it poverty and start calling it a “brave new world.”  You have to convince the populace that the economic degradation is not a problem that can be solved — rather, it is a problem we must all adapt to and accept.

Be very wary when elites and international financiers mention “global reset,” or a “brave new world,” or a “new world order.”  What they are talking about is not a program that is in your best interest.  What they are talking about is the deliberate creation of chaos; a slow burning calamity that can be exploited to derive the benefits of even more centralization and even more power.

They will call it random.  They will call it coincidence or fate or even blame it all on their ideological opponents.  In the end, they will eventually call it a natural progression of events; a social and financial evolution.  They will call it inevitable.  None of this will be true.  There is nothing natural about a totalitarian framework — it is a machine that is carefully crafted piece by piece, maintained by the hands of a select few tyrants and fed with the labor, sacrifice and fear of the innocent.

The only solution is to expunge the parasites from our fiscal body.  These institutions and the people behind them should not exist.  Most if not all of our sociopolitical distress today could be cured if a “brave new world” meant wiping the slate clean and dispelling financial elites and central bankers into a bottomless pit.

Donald Trump took any hope of beating the Crooked Hillary machine out onto 5th Ave. and shot it in the head.

Hillary is the next president. Plan accordingly.

Your prediction of Hillary's win is highly premature - and I believe influenced by the crooked media's phony polls and wishful thinking (on the media's part) that Trump will go down to defeat.  Don't be so sure.

Fed Officials Suggest Rate Hike On The Way In September

Friday, 26 August 2016   Brandon Smith

As predicted here at Alt-Market, despite all other indications of a receding economy the Fed is pushing for yet another rate hike in 2016.  This is a CLASSIC move for the Federal Reserve.  They almost ALWAYS hike rates into a recession/depression, and this usually accelerates the downturn.  Keep in mind the timing of these announcements; only two months before the U.S. presidential elections.  I believe the goal here by the elites is to initiate a soft downturn going into the elections which will boost Donald Trump's campaign.  I believe that they plan to place Trump into office and then allow the system to crash completely.  The point?  To place conservatives at the helm and then blame them for an economic collapse that was already engineered to happen by international financiers...

 

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said Friday that the case for an interest rate hike “has strengthened in recent months” in light of recent strong job growth, but she gave no signal that Fed policymakers will make a move at a meeting next month.

At the Fed’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Yellen said the Fed’s policymaking committee “continues to anticipate that gradual increases in the federal funds rate will be appropriate over time” to meet the Fed’s goals for inflation and employment.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose after Yellen’s remarks, but logged a small decline at midday as the market digested the news that met its expectations. Meanwhile, Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said on CNBC that next Friday's report on August job gains could factor into the Fed's decision at its September 20-21 meeting, a remark that appeared to keep a rate increase on the table. The 10-year Treasury yield was up .03 percentage points in early afternoon trading at 1.6%.

The Fed raised its benchmark interest rate in December for the first time in nine years but has stood pat since then, leaving it at a historically low 0.4%.

Trump and the American Dream 

By CAROLINE B. GLICK - The Jerusalem Post
 08/25/2016   
 
 
According to most polls taken since last month’s party conventions, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton enjoys an insurmountable lead over Republican nominee Donald Trump. Consequently, a number of commentators on both sides of the partisan divide have declared the race over. Clinton, they say, has won.

 There are several problems with this conclusion.

 First of all, the “official campaign,” won’t begin until September 26, when Clinton and Trump face off in their first presidential debate. Clinton is not a stellar debater and Trump, a seasoned entertainer, excels in these formats.

 Second, recent polls indicate that Trump is closing the gap. Whereas until this past week Clinton enjoyed a 6-8 point lead in the polls, in two polls taken this week, her lead had contracted to a mere 1-3 points.

 Third, it is quite possible that Clinton’s problems have only begun. Her peak popularity may be behind her. Since her nomination, barely a day has passed without another stunning exposé of apparently corrupt behavior on the part of Clinton and her closest advisers. This week’s AP report that half of Clinton’s non-official visitors during her tenure as secretary of state were donors to the Clinton Foundation was merely the latest blow.

 The continuous drip of corruption stories will have a corrosive effect on Clinton’s support levels. If the revelations to come are as damaging as many have claimed, their impact on Clinton’s candidacy may be fatal.

 In light of Clinton’s weaknesses, Trump’s main hurdle to winning the election may very well lie with the NeverTrump movement. That movement encompasses much of the Republican establishment – that is, the political class of centrist elected officials, opinion-shapers, former officials and ideologues. Its members have vowed not to vote for Trump even if it means that Clinton wins the White House. The fact that so many prominent Republican voices continue to oppose Trump even after he has been nominated hurts his ability to build support among swing voters.

 As far as the NeverTrumpsters are concerned, Trump carried out a hostile takeover of their party.

 The man who discussed his private parts on national television and brutally and personally attacked his opponents may have won more primary votes than any Republican candidate in the past. But he also won the enmity of more members of the party establishment than any other Republican presidential hopeful.

 In an interview with CNN in late May,  Wall Street Journal columnist (and former Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief) Bret Stephens spoke for many in the NeverTrump camp when he said that he wants Trump to be “the biggest loser in presidential history.”

Stephens explained, “It’s important that Donald Trump and what he represents, this kind of ethnic quote ‘conservatism’ or populism, be so decisively rebuked that the Republican Party and Republican voters will forever learn their lesson that they cannot nominate a man so manifestly unqualified to be president in any way, shape or form.”

In June Stephens told radio host Hugh Hewitt that a Trump presidency would be more devastating for the US than a Clinton presidency. Stephens argued that whereas a Clinton presidency would be “a survivable event” he was unsure that the US could survive a Trump presidency.

 He explained, “The United States survives so long as at least one of its major parties is politically and intellectually healthy. I don’t think the Republican Party... as the vehicle for modern American conservative ideas, survives with Donald Trump.”

This week, The Washington Times published a list of 50 senior Republicans who not only will not support Trump, but have switched sides and are publicly supporting Clinton.

 The problem with Stephens’s view, which again, is widely shared by the intellectual and political establishment of the party, is that it ignores the cause of Trump’s primaries victory.

 On the eve of his 2008 electoral victory, Barack Obama pledged to “fundamentally transform,” America.

 He kept his word.

 And it is this fundamental transformation and the Republican leadership’s failure to stop it that transformed a loud-mouthed, brash billionaire into the Republican nominee. It was this transformation, and the Republican establishment’s failure to block it, that made it impossible for moderates like Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush to win the Republican primaries in 2016.

 Not only has the country been transformed, the Republican electorate has been transformed.

 Today America is steeped in crisis. Foreign audiences concentrate on the crisis of American power overseas. Today, due to Obama’s decision to prefer his failed attempt at rapprochement with Iran over longtime US allies in the region, the Americans have lost their strategic superiority in the Middle East and are on the way to losing whatever residual influence they still maintain over regional affairs.

 Turkey’s ground invasion of Syria on Wednesday is a clear sign of the disintegration of America’s regional position. While the invasion was ostensibly launched against ISIS, the plain fact is that its main target is the Kurds. That is, NATO member Turkey invaded Syria to take out the US’s primary ally in its campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

 And the US is providing air cover to the Turkish invaders while abandoning the Kurds.

 Every advance the US has made in its campaign against ISIS has been achieved on the backs of the Kurds. And yet, Vice President Joe Biden, who was visiting in Ankara the day of the Turkish invasion, openly threatened the Kurds. Biden said the US will abandon them if they refuse to conform with Turkey’s demand that they withdraw to the eastern side of the Euphrates River.

 Biden’s move merely reinforced the growing impression that the US is only dangerous to its allies. The Iranians, for instance responded to the Turkish move by harassing the US Navy destroyer USS Nitze as it traversed the Strait of Hormuz. Rather than sink the Iranian vessels that threatened it, the Nitze responded by shooting off a couple of flares. The State Department then whined about the assault, calling Iran’s act of war “unprofessional.”

And the worst part about the US’s strategic crackup is that it is but one of the crises endangering America today.

 Economically, the US has been steeped in stagnation for eight years. Largely as a result of overregulation, entrepreneurship is producing almost no new jobs. The housing crisis has not ended. People who purchased homes before 2008 remain stuck with underwater mortgages, doomed to remain in towns with no jobs because they can’t afford to sell their homes.

 Obamacare has made healthcare unaffordable for people who have insurance. Co-payments have risen so steeply that for many insured Americans, medical care is now viewed as a luxury item.

 In Rust Belt states, tens of millions of blue collar workers find themselves living in ruined towns. In the past two decades company after company closed its factories, shipped its operations out of the US or went bankrupt in the face of foreign competitors. And their former workers, people who believed in the American Dream, and actually achieved it, now have no dreams and no hope of ever getting back what they lost, much less of seeing their children do better than they did.

 The economic crisis has caused deeper crises.First and foremost the US is now in the midst of a crisis of faith. A Pew poll released this week showed that between 2007 and 2014, church attendance declined from 39 to 36 percent over the seven-year period. A significant number of nonobservant Americans no longer believe in God.

 Those numbers themselves are highly inflated. A multiyear study of church attendance data gathered from the majority of churches in the US by sociologists C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler and published in 2005 showed that fewer than half of those who claim to go to church regularly actually do so. Hadaway and Marler assessed that a mere 17.7 percent of Americans go to church on a regular basis. The rest just tell pollsters that they attend because they are embarrassed that they don’t attend.

 In other words, what the Pew survey shows is not a reduction in religious worship but a shift in values. Today fewer Americans view church attendance as normatively superior to nonattendance.

 Loss of faith may well be directly correlated with a diminished view of the value of life. In Appalachia and the Midwest, the economic crisis and the spiritual crisis have also engendered a drug epidemic unprecedented in rural America. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 125 Americans die every day from drug overdoses. That is more than the number of Americans who die in car accidents. The most significant rise in drug addiction rates has occurred in rural America. New Hampshire is the heroin capital of the US.

 Just last weekend, 10 people died of heroin overdoses in one rural county in Ohio. The heroin in question was laced with a tranquilizer generally used on elephants.

 This is the American transformation that Obama has brought about. And the suffering and misery it has engendered are the reason that Trump is now the Republican presidential nominee.

 Trump is no Billy Sunday. He is not a champion of free trade or social conservativism. He isn’t a neoconservative interventionist. Trump is the bar brawler who says things no one else will say. And the people who lack faith in the country’s ability to help them, who have lost hope that things that used to work can work again, adore him for it.

 This brings us to the issue of the lessons that will be learned by Republican voters if Trump loses as the NeverTrumpsters hope and expect.

 If Trump loses, his voters will not realize that they were mistaken to believe in him and support him in defiance of their party’s intellectual class. They will blame the NeverTrumpsters for the election results and boot them out of the party altogether. If the Republican Party even exists in 2020 and 2024, its candidates will make Trump look like a moderate.

 If Trump wins, on the other hand, while it is true that the NeverTrumpsters will not maintain their unquestioned control over Republican policies, they will likely get a seat at the table and retain some influence.

 More important, if Trump wins, the US will have a chance of changing back to the country it was before Obama fundamentally transformed it.

 Clinton, who like Obama and the NeverTrumpsters scoffs at Trump’s dark descriptions of American life today, has pledged to double down on Obama’s foreign and domestic policies. Indeed, she even pledged to destroy what’s left of the coal industry.

 So if Clinton is elected, what Republicans think about illegal immigration and free trade and foreign policy will be irrelevant. America’s fundamental transformation will become irreversible.

 In that event, America as a whole – not Trump, and not even the NeverTrumpsters – will be the greatest loser of November’s election.

www.CarolineGlick.com 

American journalism is collapsing before our eyes

By Michael Goodwin August 21, 2016 - The New York Post.


Donald Trump may or may not fix his campaign, and Hillary Clinton may or may not become the first female president. But something else happening before our eyes is almost as important: the complete collapse of American journalism as we know it.

The frenzy to bury Trump is not limited to the Clinton campaign and the Obama White House. They are working hand-in-hand with what was considered the cream of the nation’s news organizations.

The shameful display of naked partisanship by the elite media is unlike anything seen in modern America.

The largest broadcast networks — CBS, NBC and ABC — and major newspapers like The New York Times and Washington Post have jettisoned all pretense of fair play. Their fierce determination to keep Trump out of the Oval Office has no precedent.

Indeed, no foreign enemy, no terror group, no native criminal gang, suffers the daily beating that Trump does. The mad mullahs of Iran, who call America the Great Satan and vow to wipe Israel off the map, are treated gently by comparison.

By torching its remaining credibility in service of Clinton, the mainstream media’s reputations will likely never recover, nor will the standards. No future producer, editor, reporter or anchor can be expected to meet a test of fairness when that standard has been trashed in such willful and blatant fashion.

Liberal bias in journalism is often baked into the cake. The traditional ethos of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable leads to demands that government solve every problem. Favoring big government, then, becomes routine among most journalists, especially young ones.

I know because I was one of them. I started at the Times while the Vietnam War and civil-rights movement raged, and was full of certainty about right and wrong.

My editors were, too, though in a different way. Our boss of bosses, the legendary Abe Rosenthal, knew his reporters leaned left, so he leaned right to “keep the paper straight.”

That meant the Times, except for the opinion pages, was scrubbed free of reporters’ political views, an edict that was enforced by giving the opinion and news operations separate editors. The church-and-state structure was one reason the Times was considered the flagship of journalism.

Those days are gone. The Times now is so out of the closet as a Clinton shill that it is giving itself permission to violate any semblance of evenhandedness in its news pages as well as its opinion pages.

A recent article by its media reporter, Jim Rutenberg, whom I know and like, began this way: “If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?”

Whoa, Nellie. The clear assumption is that many reporters see Trump that way, and it is note­worthy that no similar question is raised about Clinton, whose scandals are deserving only of “scrutiny.” Rutenberg approvingly cites a leftist journalist who calls one candidate “normal” and the other ­“abnormal.”

Clinton is hardly “normal” to the 68 percent of Americans who find her dishonest and untrustworthy, though apparently not a single one of those people writes for the Times. Statistically, that makes the Times “abnormal.”

Also, you don’t need to be a ­detective to hear echoes in that first paragraph of Clinton speeches and ads, including those featured prominently on the Times’ Web site. In effect, the paper has seamlessly ­adopted Clinton’s view as its own, then tries to justify its coverage.

It’s an impossible task, and Rutenberg fails because he must. Any reporter who agrees with Clinton about Trump has no business covering either candidate.

It’s pure bias, which the Times fancies itself an expert in detecting in others, but is blissfully tolerant of its own. And with the top political editor quoted in the story as ­approving the one-sided coverage as necessary and deserving, the prejudice is now official policy.

It’s a historic mistake and a complete break with the paper’s own traditions. Instead of dropping its standards, the Times should bend over backwards to enforce them, even while acknowledging that Trump is a rare breed. That’s the whole point of standards — they are designed to guide decisions not just in easy cases, but in all cases, to preserve trust.

The Times, of course, is not alone in becoming unhinged over Trump, but that’s also the point. It used to be unique because of its adherence to fairness.

Now its only standard is a double standard, one that it proudly ­confesses. Shame would be more appropriate.