Culture

America 1956 vs. America 2016

Is America a better place today than it was back in 1956? Of course many Americans living right now couldn’t even imagine a world without cell phones, Facebook or cable television, but was life really so bad back then? 60 years ago, families would actually spend time on their front porches and people would actually have dinner with their neighbors. 60 years ago, cars were still cars, football was still football and it still meant something to be an American. In our country today, it is considered odd to greet someone as they are walking down the street, and if someone tries to be helpful it is usually because they want something from you. But things were very different in the middle of the last century. Men aspired to be gentlemen and women aspired to be ladies, and nobody had ever heard of “bling”, “sexting” or “twerking”. Of course life was far from perfect, but people actually had standards and they tried to live up to them.

So how did it all go so wrong?

Could it be possible that life in America peaked back then and we have been in decline ever since?

Before you answer, I want to share with you a list of comparisons between life in America in 1956 and life in America in 2016…

In 1956, John Wayne, Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe were some of the biggest stars in the entertainment world.

In 2016, our young people look up to “stars” like Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga.

In 1956, Americans were watching I Love Lucy and The Ed Sullivan Show on television.

In 2016, the major television networks are offering us trashy shows such as Mistresses and Lucifer.

In 1956, you could buy a first-class stamp for just 3 cents.

In 2016, a first-class stamp will cost you 49 cents.

In 1956, gum chewing and talking in class were some of the major disciplinary problems in our schools.

In 2016, many of our public schools have been equipped with metal detectors because violence has gotten so far out of control.

In 1956, children went outside and played when they got home from school.

In 2016, our parks and our playgrounds are virtually empty and we have the highest childhood obesity rate on the entire planet.

In 1956, if a kid skinned his knee he was patched up and sent back outside to play.

In 2016, if a kid skins his knee he is likely to be shipped off to the emergency room.

In 1956, “introducing solids” to a baby’s diet may have meant shoving a piece of pizza down her throat.

In 2016, we have “attachment parenting” which advocates treating children like babies almost until they reach puberty.

In 1956, seat belts and bicycle helmets were considered to be optional pieces of equipment, and car safety seats were virtually unknown.

In 2016, millions of us are afraid to leave our homes for fear that something might happen to us, and if something does happen we slap lawsuits on one another at the drop of a hat.

In 1956, many Americans regularly left their cars and the front doors of their homes unlocked.

In 2016, many Americans live with steel bars on their windows and gun sales are at all-time record highs.

In 1956, about 5 percent of all babies in America were born to unmarried parents.

In 2016, more than 40 percent of all babies in America will be born to unmarried parents.

In 1956, one income could support an entire middle class family.

In 2016, approximately one-third of all Americans don’t make enough money to even cover the basics even though both parents have entered the workforce in most households.

In 1956, redistribution of wealth was considered to be something that “the communists” did.

In 2016, the federal government systematically redistributes our wealth, and two communists are fighting for the Democratic nomination.

In 1956, there were about 2 million people living in Detroit and it was one of the greatest cities on Earth.

In 2016, there are only about 688,000 people living in Detroit and it has become a joke to the rest of the world.

In 1956, millions of Americans dreamed of moving out to sunny California.

In 2016, millions of Americans are moving out of California and never plan to go back.

In 1956, television networks would not even show husbands and wives in bed together.

In 2016, there is so much demand for pornography that there are more than 4 million adult websites on the Internet, and they get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined.

In 1956, the American people had a great love for the U.S. Constitution.

In 2016, “constitutionalists” are considered to be potential terrorists by the U.S. government.

In 1956, people from all over the world wanted to come to the United States to pursue “the American Dream”.

In 2016, 48 percent of all U.S. adults under the age of 30 believe that “the American Dream is dead”.

In 1956, the United States loaned more money to the rest of the world than anybody else.

In 2016, the United States owes more money to the rest of the world than anybody else.

And there is one more thing that I would like to share with you before I wrap up this article.

This is what the New York skyline looked like on March 31st, 1956…

And this is the kind of thing that we are seeing displayed on the Empire State Building these days…

For those that don’t know, that is an image of the Hindu goddess of death, time and destruction known as Kali. And next month a reproduction of the 48-foot-tall arch that stood in front of the Temple of Baal in Palmyra, Syria is going up in Times Square.

So now that you have seen what I have to share, what do you think?

Has America changed for the better, or has it changed for the worse?

*About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of End Of The American Dream. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.*

Depressing Survey Results Show How Extremely Stupid America Has Become

Ten years ago, a major Hollywood film entitled “Idiocracy” was released, and it was an excellent metaphor for what would happen to America over the course of the next decade. In the movie, an “average American” wakes up 500 years in the future only to discover that he is the most intelligent person by far in the “dumbed down” society that he suddenly finds himself in. Sadly, I truly believe that if people of average intellect from the 1950s and 1960s were transported to 2016, they would likely be considered mental giants compared to the rest of us. We have a country where criminals are being paid $1000 a month not to shoot people, and the highest paid public employee in more than half the states is a football coach. Hardly anyone takes time to read a book anymore, and yet the average American spends 302 minutes a day watching television. 75 percent of our young adults cannot find Israel on a map of the Middle East, but they sure know how to find smut on the Internet. It may be hard to believe, but there are more than 4 million adult websites on the Internet today, and they get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined.

What in the world has happened to us? How is it possible that we have become so stupid? According to a brand new report that was recently released, almost 10 percent of our college graduates believe that Judge Judy is on the Supreme Court…

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni publishes occasional reports on what college students know.

Nearly 10 percent of the college graduates surveyed thought Judith Sheindlin, TV’s “Judge Judy,” is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Less than 20 percent of the college graduates knew the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation. More than a quarter of the college graduates did not know Franklin D. Roosevelt was president during World War II; one-third did not know he was the president who spearheaded the New Deal.

It can be tempting to laugh at numbers like these until you realize that survey after survey has come up with similar results.

Just consider what Newsweek found a few years ago…

When NEWSWEEK recently asked 1,000 U.S. citizens to take America’s official citizenship test, 29 percent couldn’t name the vice president. Seventy-three percent couldn’t correctly say why we fought the Cold War. Forty-four percent were unable to define the Bill of Rights. And 6 percent couldn’t even circle Independence Day on a calendar.

Even worse were the extremely depressing results of a study conducted a few years ago by Common Core…

*Only 43 percent of all U.S. high school students knew that the Civil War was fought some time between 1850 and 1900.

*More than a quarter of all U.S. high school students thought that Christopher Columbus made his famous voyage across the Atlantic Ocean after the year 1750.

*Approximately a third of all U.S. high school students did not know that the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

*Only 60 percent of all U.S. students knew that World War I was fought some time between 1900 and 1950.

Of course survey results can be skewed, and much hinges on how the questions are asked.

However, even studies that are scientifically conducted confirm how stupid America has become. In fact, a report from the Educational Testing Service found that Americans are falling way behind much of the rest of the industrialized world. The following comes from CBS News…

Americans born after 1980 are lagging their peers in countries ranging from Australia to Estonia, according to a new report from researchers at the Educational Testing Service (ETS). The study looked at scores for literacy and numeracy from a test called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, which tested the abilities of people in 22 countries.

The results are sobering, with dire implications for America. It hints that students may be falling behind not only in their early educational years but at the college level. Even though more Americans between the ages of 20 to 34 are achieving higher levels of education, they’re still falling behind their cohorts in other countries. In Japan, Finland and the Netherlands, young adults with only a high school degree scored on par with American Millennials holding four-year college degrees, the report said.

Out of 22 countries that were part of the study, the Educational Testing Service found that Americans were dead last in tech proficiency, dead last in numeracy and only two countries performed worse than us when it came to literacy proficiency…

Half of American Millennials score below the minimum standard of literacy proficiency. Only two countries scored worse by that measure: Italy (60 percent) and Spain (59 percent). The results were even worse for numeracy, with almost two-thirds of American Millennials failing to meet the minimum standard for understanding and working with numbers. That placed U.S. Millennials dead last for numeracy among the study’s 22 developed countries.

So why has this happened?

Why have we become such an extremely stupid nation?

Well, at least a portion of the blame must be directed at our system of education. The following is an excerpt from an article written by reporter Mark Morford. In this article, he shared how one of his friends which had served for a very long time as a high school teacher in Oakland, California was considering moving out of the country when he retired due to the relentless “dumb-ification of the American brain”…

It’s gotten so bad that, as my friend nears retirement, he says he is very seriously considering moving out of the country so as to escape what he sees will be the surefire collapse of functioning American society in the next handful of years due to the absolutely irrefutable destruction, the shocking — and nearly hopeless — dumb-ification of the American brain. It is just that bad.

Now, you may think he’s merely a curmudgeon, a tired old teacher who stopped caring long ago. Not true. Teaching is his life. He says he loves his students, loves education and learning and watching young minds awaken. Problem is, he is seeing much less of it.

And of course things don’t get much better when it comes to our college students. In a previous article, I shared some statistics from USA Today about the rapidly declining state of college education in the United States…

-“After two years in college, 45% of students showed no significant gains in learning; after four years, 36% showed little change.”

-“Students also spent 50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago”

-“35% of students report spending five or fewer hours per week studying alone.”

-“50% said they never took a class in a typical semester where they wrote more than 20 pages”

-“32% never took a course in a typical semester where they read more than 40 pages per week.”

I spent eight years studying at some of the finest public universities in the country, and I can tell you from personal experience that even our most challenging college courses have been pathetically dumbed down.

And at our “less than finest” public universities, the level of education can be something of a bad joke. In another previous article, I shared some examples of actual courses that have been taught at U.S. universities in recent years…

-“What If Harry Potter Is Real?”

-“Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame”

-“Philosophy And Star Trek”

-“Learning From YouTube”

-“How To Watch Television”

Could you imagine getting actual college credit for a course entitled “What If Harry Potter Is Real?”

This is why many of our college graduates can barely put two sentences together. They aren’t being challenged, and the quality of the education most of them are receiving is incredibly poor.

But even though they aren’t being challenged, students are taking longer to get through college than ever. Federal statistics reveal that only 36 percent of all full-time students receive a bachelor’s degree within four years, and only 77 percent of all full-time students have earned a bachelor’s degree by the end of six years.

Of course our system of education is not entirely to blame. The truth is that young Americans spend far more time consuming media than they do hitting the books, and what passes for “entertainment” these days is rapidly turning their brains to mush.

According to a report put out by Nielsen, this is how much time the average American spends consuming media on various devices each day…

Watching live television: 4 hours, 32 minutes

Watching time-shifted television: 30 minutes

Listening to the radio: 2 hours, 44 minutes

Using a smartphone: 1 hour, 33 minutes

Using Internet on a computer: 1 hour, 6 minutes

When you add it all up, the average American spends more than 10 hours a day plugged into some form of media.

And if you allow anyone to pump “programming” into your mind for 10 hours a day, it is going to have a dramatic impact.

In the end, I truly believe that we all greatly underestimate the influence that the mainstream media has on all of us. We willingly plug into “the Matrix” for endless hours, but then somehow we still expect “to think for ourselves”.

There are very few of us that can say that we have not been exposed to thousands upon thousands of hours of conditioning. And all of that garbage can make it very, very difficult to think clearly.

It is not because of a lack of input that we have become so stupid as a society. The big problem is what we are putting into our minds.

If we continue to put garbage in, we are going to continue to get garbage out, and that is the cold, hard reality of the matter.

(Originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog)

The Temple Of Baal Coming To New York City Will Be Followed By Hundreds More All Over The World

The reproductions of the 50 foot arch that stood at the Temple of Baal in Palmyra, Syria that will be erected in New York City and London next month will only be the first of many. As you will see below, it turns out that there are plans to put arches in hundreds more cities all over the globe. The organization behind this is the Institute of Digital Archaeology, which is a joint venture between Harvard University, the University of Oxford and Dubai’s Museum of the Future. The initial arches from the Temple of Baal that will be erected in New York and London as part of UNESCO’s World Heritage Week in April are intended “as a gesture of defiance“, but ultimately the plan is to share this “cultural treasure” with as many cities around the planet as possible.

If you go to Times Square in New York or Trafalgar Square in London late next month, you will not be able to miss these giant arches. According to the New York Post, they will be 48 feet high and 23 feet wide…

The life-size model of the original 2,000-year-old structure, known as the Arch of the Temple of Bel, will stand approximately 48 feet high and 23 feet wide.

It will be one of two constructed in China for exhibition likely in Times Square and London’s Trafalgar Square as part of a World Heritage Week event in April 2016, said Roger Michel, executive director for the Institute for Digital Archaeology.

I suppose that it is appropriate that these giant arches are going to be made in China, because it seems like almost everyone is being made over there these days.

But these are not the only two giant arches that are going to be made. That same article from the New York Post says that the Institute for Digital Archaeology ultimately hopes to put 1,000 of these arches in cities all over the globe…

The institute plans to construct approximately 1,000 such versions of the arch in cities throughout the world.

If you are anything like me, this is an extremely disturbing development. Baal worship is definitely not something that we should be celebrating as a society. There were very good reasons why the God of the Bible found it so incredibly repulsive. The following description of what went on during Baal worship comes from Scott Brown…

We know that there were usually lots of people gathered, often on a high hill (like a theatre or stadium) to observe public sex, just like we see in movies and television and on the internet (Numbers 22:41, I Kings 12:25-33). We think that our watching these things is different than the idolatry of old, but this is not so.

The whole community came out and all of the best pagan ideas for success in crops and fertility were promoted, just like a business seminar that promotes unbiblical ideas that justify the worldliness of its origin.

The wicked personalities (promoters and performers) were respected and given the platform (like rock stars and Hollywood’s “People’.) Some of them were great dancers (like Brittany Spears and Madonna) while others were great musicians (like Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney) (I Kings 15:12-14). In our day, people who go to our churches celebrate celebrities when they should be doing the opposite. Psalm 101:1, 3 says “I will walk in my house… I will set no wicked thing before my eyes…”

People danced around the Asherah pole, which was nothing more than a phallic symbol. It is quite possible that these poles functioned somewhat like the poles in what are called, “gentlemen’s clubs.” The people also acted out lustful, licentious, bawdy scenes for the enjoyment of all who came (Isaiah 57:5-8; Deuteronomy 23:17).They had all the different kinds of sexual experiences on display including men with women, men with men and all of the combinations that are popular today in sit-coms, movies and news reports. On top of that, they invited the crowd to participate (I Kings 14:24).

In addition to everything that you just read, child sacrifice was a central feature of Baal worship. If you remember, this is something that I discussed yesterday as well. The following is what Jeremiah 10:4-6 says…

4 Because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burned incense in it unto other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents;

5 They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind:

6 Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter.

We like to think that we are so much more advanced than people back then, but are we really?

Just like ancient Baal worshippers, we are a society that is addicted to watching other people have sex. In fact, it has been estimated that 68 percent of all Christian men watch pornography on a regular basis.

And just like ancient Baal worshippers, we are a society that is engaged in child sacrifice. We call it “abortion”, but the motives are still the same. If an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy comes along, we have a mechanism “for getting rid of it” just like they did.

Since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, we have slaughtered more than 58 million of our own children. I would venture to say that the ancient Baal worshippers never got quite that much blood on their own hands.

On one level, I find it quite ironic that a reproduction of part of the Temple of Baal is going up in Times Square. David Wilkerson once preached a message entitled “Tearing Down The Altars Of Baal” at Times Square Church, and now a monument to Baal is actually being erected in Times Square.

In our next video, my wife and I will be covering all of this. When it is published, you will be able to find it on our YouTube channel. And don’t forget to hit the red subscribe button on the right hand side of our YouTube page.

Many people regard America as modern day Babylon, and now we are going to have a monument that directly links us to ancient Babylon right in the heart of our most important city.

To me, this is one of the most important news stories of 2016 so far.

But what do you think? Please feel free to join the discussion by posting a comment below…

April 2016: The Temple Of Baal Will Be Erected In Times Square In New York City

I realize that the headline of this article sounds like it must be false, but it is actually completely true. The Temple of Baal (also known as the Temple of Bel) was a world famous landmark that was located in Palmyra, Syria. In August 2015, this temple was destroyed by ISIS, and most of the world recoiled in terror at the loss of a “cultural heritage site”. In an attempt to “preserve history”, two exact replicas of the 50 foot arch that stood at the entrance to the temple will be erected in April 2016 in Times Square in New York City and in Trafalgar Square in London. Needless to say, a lot of people are quite disturbed by this. In ancient times, child sacrifice and bisexual orgies were common practices at the altars of Baal, and now we are putting up a monument of worship to this false god in the heart of our most important city.

When I first came across this story, I could hardly believe it. But this is not just some Internet rumor. This was reported by the New York Times…

NEXT month, the Temple of Baal will come to Times Square. Reproductions of the 50-foot arch that formed the temple’s entrance are to be installed in New York and in London, a tribute to the 2,000-year-old structure that the Islamic State destroyed last year in the Syrian town of Palmyra. The group’s rampage through Palmyra, a city that reached its peak in the second and third century A.D., enraged the world, spurring scholars and conservationists into action. Numerous nongovernmental organizations are now cataloging and mapping damaged cultural heritage sites in the region.

Of course most non-religious Americans don’t understand who Baal was, nor do they really care.

But the truth is that many of the elements of ancient Baal worship are being mirrored in our society in 2016. The following is an excerpt from an excellent article by Matt Barber…

Ritualistic Baal worship, in sum, looked a little like this: Adults would gather around the altar of Baal. Infants would then be burned alive as a sacrificial offering to the deity. Amid horrific screams and the stench of charred human flesh, congregants – men and women alike – would engage in bisexual orgies. The ritual of convenience was intended to produce economic prosperity by prompting Baal to bring rain for the fertility of “mother earth.”

The natural consequences of such behavior – pregnancy and childbirth – and the associated financial burdens of “unplanned parenthood” were easily offset. One could either choose to engage in homosexual conduct or – with child sacrifice available on demand – could simply take part in another fertility ceremony to “terminate” the unwanted child.

Modern liberalism deviates little from its ancient predecessor. While its macabre rituals have been sanitized with flowery and euphemistic terms of art, its core tenets and practices remain eerily similar.

So considering the child sacrifice and sexual immorality that we are engaged in today, perhaps it is only natural for us to have a Temple of Baal in Times Square.

In the ancient world, the names Baal and Bel were often interchangeable, and they both trace back to the ancient Babylonian god Marduk. The following comes from Wikipedia…

Bel became especially used of the Babylonian god Marduk and when found in Assyrian and neo-Babylonian personal names or mentioned in inscriptions in a Mesopotamian context it can usually be taken as referring to Marduk and no other god. Similarly Belit without some disambiguation mostly refers to Bel Marduk’s spouse Sarpanit. However Marduk’s mother, the Sumerian goddess called Ninhursag, Damkina, Ninmah and other names in Sumerian, was often known as Belit-ili ‘Lady of the Gods’ in Akkadian.

According to research published by Bruce W. Warren and John A. Tvedtnes, Marduk was “a huntergod” that was believed to have been the founder of ancient Babylon according to ancient Babylonian tradition…

The Akkadian name Marduk derives front the Sumerian MAR.UTU, a huntergod. He is said to have led a revolt of the gods against his parents, after which he was enthroned as king of the gods. In Babylonian tradition, it was he who founded Babylon (Babilu, “gate of the gods”). His temple at Babylon bore the name E.SAGILA, “house that lifts up the head”, and the tower associated with it was called, in Sumerian Etemenanki, “house of the foundation of heaven and earth.” The similarity to the tower of Babel is evident.

If you are familiar with the book of Genesis, this should remind you of Genesis 10:9 where we are told that Nimrod was “a mighty hunter before the Lord”. And ancient Jewish tradition specifically identifies Nimrod as the one that constructed the Tower of Babel. In addition to Marduk, other names from the ancient world that are linked with Nimrod include Ninurta, Gilgamesh, Osiris, Dionysus, Apollo, Narmer and Enmerkar. I know that this can get very confusing. In the following excerpt, Peter Goodgame helps us to connect some of the dots…

In Part Eight of this study we examined evidence that Nimrod was known in Egypt as King Narmer, who was later deified as the god Osiris, the Lord of the Underworld. In Part Five we looked at evidence that Nimrod was known to the ancient Sumerians as the great King Enmerkar who attempted to build a huge tower to the gods in the ancient city of Eridu—a city referred to as the original “Babylon” by the historian Berossos.[1] Traditionally the Tower of Babel event has been associated with Nimrod, and Jewish commentaries as well as the Jewish historian Josephus both seem very emphatic on this point. Regarding the Sumerian name Enmer-kar, the suffix “kar” means “hunter,” and so “Enmer-kar” is in fact “Enmer the Hunter,” just as Nimrod is referred to as the “Mighty Hunter” in Genesis 10. Furthermore, Enmerkar is named on the Sumerian King List as “the one who built Uruk,” just as Nimrod is described in Genesis 10:10 as having a kingdom that began in “Babel (Eridu) and Erech (Uruk)… in the land of Shinar.” After Enmerkar’s death he became honored in Sumerian myth as the semi-divine hero Ninurta, and eventually this cult evolved into the great cult of Marduk, which became the state religion of Babylon after the conquests and religious innovations of Hammurabi.

According to some traditions, the original Freemason was Nimrod. He created the very first “New World Order” in the post-flood world, and virtually all of the major gods of ancient Babylon, Greece and Rome ultimately trace back to him or traditions surrounding him.

But for many modern occultists, the story of Nimrod is far from done. A lot of secret societies and occult groups have traditions that tell them that Nimrod/Marduk/Osiris/Apollo/Baal will someday be resurrected and will once again rule the world.

And many Bible scholars believe that the coming Antichrist will either be a resurrected Nimrod or will be associated with him in some way. For an extensive examination of this view, I would commend to you The Second Coming of the Antichrist by Peter Goodgame and Babylon Rising by Rob Skiba.

With all of the preceding in mind, could it be possible that we are actually erecting a temple for the Antichrist in New York City next month?

If you are not religious, I know that all of this must sound very strange. But there are occultists that take this stuff deadly seriously, and nothing this large gets space in either Times Square or Trafalgar Square by accident.

There are very powerful people out there that made this happen, and perhaps someone should ask them what their intentions are.

Prescription Painkiller Crisis: Why Do Americans Consume 80 Percent Of All Prescription Painkillers?

If Americans are so happy, then why do we consume 80 percent of the entire global supply of prescription painkillers? Less than 5 percent of the world’s population lives in this country, and yet we buy four-fifths of these highly addictive drugs. In the United States today, approximately 4.7 million Americans are addicted to prescription pain relievers, and that represents about a 300 percent increase since 1999. If you personally know someone that is suffering from this addiction, then you probably already know how immensely destructive these drugs can be. Someone that was formally living a very healthy and normal life can be reduced to a total basket case within a matter of weeks.

And of course many don’t make it back at all. According to the CDC, more than 28,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2014. Incredibly, those deaths represented 60 percent of all drug overdose deaths in the United States for that year…

A report released by the US Centers for Disesase Control and Prevention (CDC) in January revealed that drug-overdose deaths reached a new high in 2014, totaling 47,055 people. Opioids, a type of powerful painkiller that requires a prescription, were involved in 60% of those deaths.

Many Americans that start out on legal opioids quickly find themselves moving over to heroin because it is often cheaper and easier to obtain, and the U.S. is now facing a tremendous epidemic of heroin abuse as well. In fact, the number of Americans that die of a heroin overdose nearly quadrupled between 2000 to 2013.

Finally, the federal government has started to take notice of this crisis. A bill was recently passed to spend more than a billion dollars over the next two year fighting this problem.

But as long as doctors are writing thousands upon thousands of new prescriptions for these painkillers each year, this crisis is not going to go away any time soon.

In the Appalachians, these prescription painkillers are commonly known as “hillbilly heroin“, and all of the attention that the New Hampshire primaries received focused a lot of attention on how this crisis is destroying countless numbers of lives up in the Northeast. But one survey found that the states with the biggest problems with painkiller addiction are actually in the West…

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health, a survey of approximately 67,500 people across the United States, found that the states with the highest rates of narcotic painkiller abuse were in the West – Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington.

Unless you are about to die, I would very strongly recommend that you resist any attempt by your doctor to put you on these “medications”. Just consider what happened to one stay-at-home mother named Norah Mangan…

I am an educated, suburban wife and stay-at-home mother of four. Life had been good to me until a fateful visit with an orthopedic physician, my chief complaint being mild arthritic pain in my toes. My physician handed me the first of many monthly prescriptions for Oxycodone and what followed that appointment was a rapid descent into hell. Within six months, I had become a raving drug addict.

Before too long, Norah had to turn to means that were less than legal in order to keep fueling her addiction. Her life was turned into a complete and utter disaster by drugs that were legally prescribed to her…

It wasn’t long before my legal monthly prescription fell woefully short in terms of keeping my life altering pain at bay. In the interest of not incriminating myself, I’ll simply share that when procured through other means, Oxycodone generally sells for one dollar per milligram. I was draining our savings and was out of my mind. I was so tortured that I didn’t care about the deterioration of my moral values, in fact, I didn’t even notice. It’s hard to imagine that in such a short period of time I had morphed from a Mrs. Cleaver, baking hot cinnamon buns in anticipation of my children’s arrival home from school, to Scarface crushing pills on the glass top of the executive desk in our home office while thinking to myself as I heard them arrive from school…why oh why are they home already?

You can read the rest of her amazing story right here…

The truth is that we are the most drugged people on the face of the planet. It has been estimated that 52 million Americans over the age of 12 have used prescription drugs in non-medical ways, and this problem gets worse with each passing year.

According to research that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 59 percent of all U.S. adults are currently on at least one prescription drug, and 15 percent of all U.S. adults are on at least five prescription drugs. And the numbers are far worse for older Americans. The following statistics come from one of my previous articles…

–According to the CDC, approximately 9 out of every 10 Americans that are at least 60 years old say that they have taken at least one prescription drug within the last month.

–There is an unintentional drug overdose death in the United States every 19 minutes.

–In the United States today, prescription painkillers kill more Americans than heroin and cocaine combined.

–According to the CDC, approximately three quarters of a million people a year are rushed to emergency rooms in the United States because of adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs.

–The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.

–Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants as children in Europe are.

–A shocking Government Accountability Office report discovered that approximately one-third of all foster children in the United States are on at least one psychiatric drug.

–A survey conducted for the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that more than 15 percent of all U.S. high school seniors abuse prescription drugs.

We are a deeply unhappy nation that has been trained to turn to pills as a “quick fix” for our hurt and our pain.

Yes, there are medical situations that call for prescription pain relievers. But what we are seeing in America today goes far, far beyond that. We are a nation of addicts that is always in search of a way to fill the gaping holes that we feel deep in our hearts. This prescription pain killer crisis is just another symptom of a much deeper problem.

So what is the solution?

Please feel free to tell us what you think by posting a comment below…

(Originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog)

Trump Rallies Reveal Increased Tensions Among Americans As This Nation Plunges Toward Civil Unrest

America is coming apart at the seams, and Trump rallies have become the latest flashpoint for the rising tide of civil unrest that is sweeping the nation. For years, I have been writing about the increasing levels of anger and frustration in this country, but now they are reaching a fever pitch. And rather than channeling all of our anger and frustration into solving our problems, we have allowed ourselves to become deeply divided and many Americans seem to be taking glee in fighting with one another. Instead of learning to hate one another, we should be learning how to love one another. Unfortunately, America has chosen another path, and 2016 is very rapidly starting to look very much like the chaotic political year of 1968. No matter how the rest of this election season plays out, it appears that we have entered a time of violence, chaos, civil unrest and greatly increased tension among Americans.

On Friday, thousands of radical leftists showed up at a planned Trump rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago with the express purpose of disrupting it. Fortunately Donald Trump cancelled the rally, because there was a very real possibility that mass violence could have erupted. The following description of what happened comes from Wikipedia…

On March 11, 2016, the Donald Trump presidential campaign canceled a planned rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), in Chicago, Illinois, citing “growing safety concerns” due to the presence of thousands of protesters in and outside of his rally^[3]. Thousands of anti-Trump demonstrators responding to civic leaders’ and social media calls to shut the rally down had gathered outside the arena, and several hundred more filled seating areas within the UIC Pavilion, where the rally was to take place. When the Trump campaign announced that the rally would not take place, there was a great deal of shouting and a few small scuffles between Trump supporters and anti-Trump protestors.

The Daily Caller has identified three groups that were heavily involved in organizing the planned disruption of the Trump rally in Chicago. Those three groups are ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Chicago, the Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Rights Reform, and La Raza Chicago.

In addition, MoveOn.org also appears to have been involved in what took place in Chicago. The following comes from Infowars…

“Mr. Trump and the Republican leaders who support him and his hate-filled rhetoric should be on notice after tonight’s events,” the George Soros funded MoveOn web page states. “To all of those who took to the streets of Chicago, we say thank you for standing up and saying enough is enough. To Donald Trump, and the GOP, we say, welcome to the general election.”

Following the cancelled rally in Chicago, a radical leftist protester named Thomas Dimassimo attempted to storm the stage while Trump was speaking at an event in Dayton, Ohio. This YouTube video contains footage of that chilling moment…

Thomas Dimassimo has been identified as a Bernie Sanders supporter, and even though his Twitter account has now been erased, this screenshot was taken while it was still up…

There was also another tweet where he said that his goal was “martrydom“. I have seen some news reports that link Dimassimo to ISIS, but those reports are being disputed. Either way, the fact that the Secret Service had to intervene to protect Trump from this lunatic is more than just a little bit alarming.

Following the incident in Dayton, a Trump rally in Kansas City was disrupted more than a dozen times by political agitators. At one point, police actually used pepper spray on some of the protesters.

Scenes such as these are starting to cause many people to make direct comparisons between 2016 and 1968.

And if the chaos is this bad already, what will things look like during the general election?

Candidates on all sides should be calling for peace and calm, but instead they are pointing fingers at one another.

For example, Hillary Clinton is putting the full blame for the unrest on Donald Trump…

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said this weekend that Trump is guilty of “political arson,” adding that “the ugly, divisive rhetoric we are hearing from Donald Trump and the encouragement of violence and aggression is wrong, and it’s dangerous,” The New York Times reported.

And Donald Trump is placing the blame at the feet of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton…

“You had professional disruptors, thousands of them, from Sanders and to a smaller extent, Hillary (Clinton),” he said of a Friday night event in Chicago that Trump canceled after chaos broke out there.

Unfortunately, most Americans have absolutely no idea where all of this is leading.

A house that is divided will fall, and America is now more divided than at any other time in my entire lifetime.

If there was a single set of values or principles that united us, it would be possible for us to come together as a nation and solve our problems. But there isn’t. We have rejected the values and the principles of our founders, and these days Americans are being pulled in dozens of different directions. In fact, if you ask 100 different Americans what we need to do to get our country back on the right track you are probably going to get 100 different answers.

The chaos and violence around our political process is going to get a lot worse than this. And we are going to see more communities erupt just like Ferguson and Baltimore did.

In the end, Americans are going to kill Americans, our cities are going to burn, and we are going to experience a period of governmental shaking unlike anything that we have ever seen before.

All of this could have been avoided if we could have simply learned to love one another. But instead, we have allowed ourselves to be divided in just about every way imaginable, and the mainstream media is constantly tossing more fuel on the fire.

This isn’t about Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton or any other politician. Rather, this is about a once great country that is deeply, deeply divided and that is coming apart at the seams right before our very eyes.

May God have mercy on the late, great United States of America.

(Originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog)

If You Don’t Warn The People, Their Blood Could Be On Your Hands

Why are so few voices warning the people about what is coming? We stand at the door of a period of distress that will be unlike anything that any of us have ever known before. And even though the signs are all around us, very few individuals appear to be willing to stand up and sound the alarm. Instead, there seems to be a large number of people that are quite eager to criticize the watchmen. Earlier today, I was having a conversation with a very prominent voice in the alternative media, and we were reflecting on this. There are so many individuals out there that love to shoot arrows at those that are sounding the alarm, and yet they are doing so little to make a difference themselves.

It is easy to sit back on your sofa munching on potato chips as the world around you goes to hell, and it is easy to criticize those that have chosen to have the courage to stand up and warn the people.

But it is not easy to stand up and say the hard things that need to be said in a society that does not want to listen.

Yes, there are some watchmen out there that are doing a great job of proclaiming the warning message. I have personally met a number of them, and I am proud to be their friends.

Unfortunately, they are few and far between. Most people either don’t believe that we are on the precipice of disaster, they don’t care enough to warn others, or they are too busy criticizing those that are trying very hard to warn others.

And of course you don’t need a media platform to sound the alarm. We all have family members that need to be warned about what is coming. We all have friends that need to be warned about what is coming. Each one of us is uniquely positioned to reach others that may not be able to be reached any other way.

In the end, we all have a choice to make. If we sound the alarm and people choose not to listen, the responsibility for failing to act falls on them.

But if we know what is coming and we choose to do nothing to warn others, then we may end up being responsible for their blood. This is a principle that we even seen in the Scriptures. The following is what Ezekiel 33:1-6 says…

Again the word of the Lord came to me, saying: ²Son of man, speak to the children of your people and say to them: If I bring a sword upon a land, and the people of the land take a man from among them and set him for their watchman, ³and he sees the sword come upon the land and blows the trumpet and warns the people, ⁴then whoever hears the sound of the trumpet and does not take warning, and a sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. ⁵He heard the sound of the trumpet yet did not take warning. His blood shall be upon himself. But he who takes warning delivers his soul. ⁶But if the watchman sees the sword come and does not blow the trumpet and the people are not warned and a sword comes and takes a person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity. But his blood I will require from the hand of the watchman.

Sadly, the few voices that are proclaiming the warning message in our society are being almost completely drowned out by everyone else.

Just look at our political leaders. None of them are warning the American people about what is really coming. Yes, they are warning that some bad things may happen if the wrong candidate gets elected, but all of them are promising that they can get this country completely turned around if they are elected.

Unfortunately, all of them are dead wrong. None of them are going to be able to keep America from experiencing the great storm that is directly ahead of us.

The mainstream media is even worse. According to the mainstream media, everything is great and things are only going to get even better in the years ahead. Of course the mainstream media is owned and controlled by the global elite, and just six giant media corporations produce more than 90 percent of the news and entertainment that we all consume.

Perhaps most disappointing of all are the religious leaders. You would think that if anyone should be “sounding the alarm” it would be them. But instead, ministers all over this country have become absolutely terrified of offending anyone. Church attendance has been declining for years, and most churches are desperate to do whatever they can to keep people coming back and putting money in the offering plate.

So many preachers know what is coming, and yet they have willingly chosen to be silent. They know that disaster is coming to America, and yet they have decided not to warn the people.

Yes, there are some good churches out there, but in general the church in America has failed. There is very little preaching about sin, repentance or the blood of Jesus anymore. Rather, most of what is coming from the pulpits these days are just feel good messages that sound like they were directly ripped off from the self-help gurus.

Sometimes I get frustrated because I wish that I could do a better job of warning the people. My articles are far from perfect, but I work very hard on them. And nobody can accuse me of not trying to sound the alarm. I have written more than a million words on The Economic Collapse Blog, and I have written more than a million words on End Of The American Dream. In addition, soon my wife and I will be doing a television show, and we will be posting the videos up on YouTube for free.

I am just an ordinary guy that is trying to warn the people as loudly as I can from my little spot on the wall. When I first started, my readership could have been measured with a microscope, but over time it has grown far beyond what I could have possibly ever imagined.

People know that they aren’t getting the truth from the “leaders” of our society, and so they are seeking out alternative sources of information. Thankfully, the Internet has allowed ordinary people like myself and others to get the warning message out.

And of course the warning message is only part of my mission. I also carry a message of hope, and that is going to be greatly needed in the days ahead.

As things completely fall apart during the years to come, millions are going to give in to depression and despair. Those people are going to need to know that there is hope even in the midst of all the chaos and all the darkness. My wife and I seek to live in a constant state of “shalom” (the Hebrew word for peace), and we believe that the greatest chapters of our lives are still ahead of us. Yes, we are heading for times that are going to be more challenging than most people would ever dare to imagine, but there is no other time in human history that we would have rather been alive for. We boldly look forward to the future, and we plan to bring light to a world that will be drowning in darkness.

This optimistic view of the future is going to be a central theme of my new book which should be coming out later this month. The things that I am going to share about Bible prophecy, the book of Revelation and the challenging years ahead of us are going to really shake up a lot of people out there, and it will likely be one of the most controversial Christian books of 2016.

But once again, someone needs to stand up and say the hard things that need to be said.

I am sure that I will get some criticism for this article, but that is okay. I just hope that I can inspire a few others to come up on the wall and help warn America (and the world) about what is rapidly approaching.

It doesn’t matter if your voice is big or small.

What matters is whether or not you are faithful with what you have been given.

Let us sound the alarm while we still can, because time is quickly running out.

(Originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog)

Planned Parenthood Switches Abortion Tactics to Harvest ‘More Intact’ Body Parts

In the first CMP undercover video, Planned Parenthood’s Senior Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, described using an ultrasound-guided procedure to flip the fetus to feet-first position in order to get intact specimens. When asked about using this procedure to harvest more intact body parts, Orange County’s Russo confesses, “Yeah, we like to do that too.”

Using ultrasound guidance to manipulate the fetus from vertex to breech orientation before intact extraction is the hallmark of the illegal partial-birth abortion procedure (18 U.S.C. 1531). Nucatola previously recommended Russo and Planned Parenthood in Orange County as good prospective partners for fetal body parts harvesting.

Russo also divulges that her Planned Parenthood affiliate is not using digoxin, the chemical used as feticide in later 2nd-trimester abortions to kill the fetus and prevent a live birth, due to a nationwide supply shortage. Without a feticidal procedure like digoxin, it is possible for a fetus extracted intact during an abortion to be born alive.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Blogger Celebrates Her ‘Awesome’ Abortion: ‘It Was a Joyful Experience’

Whatever your views on abortion, celebrating the act of ending a human life as “joyful” and “awesome” is completely vile.

But that’s what left-wing blogger Kristen V. Brown felt the need to do in the latest example of how liberals are attempting to turn what should be a sobering decision into a cause for jubilation.

Entitled I had an abortion and it was a totally joyful experience, the article, posted on Fusion.net, was illustrated with an image of smiley face emoticons, party paraphernalia and champagne bottles.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Take This Test To See If Most Americans Would Consider You To Be A ‘Religious Extremist’

Are you a religious extremist? For years, world leaders have been endlessly proclaiming that we need to eradicate “extremism”, but what actually is “extremism”? Many would point to the ISIS jihadists over in the Middle East that are beheading people that don’t agree with them as examples of religious extremists, and I think that very few people would argue with that. But our politicians (especially the liberal ones) rarely use the term “Islamic terrorists” anymore. Instead, they tend to use the term “religious extremists”, and that has a much, much broader connotation. In fact, if you are a Bible-believing Christian, you are probably included in that category.

Most Bible-believing Christians would never think of themselves as being similar to radical jihadists in the Middle East, but that is precisely how many of their fellow Americans very them. The Barna Group has just released a shocking new study which found that 45 percent of all “non-religious” Americans believe that “Christianity is extremist”…

The perception that the Christian faith is extreme is now firmly entrenched among the nation’s non-Christians. A full forty-five percent of atheists, agnostics, and religiously unaffiliated in America agree with the statement “Christianity is extremist.” Almost as troubling is the fact that only 14 percent of atheists and agnostics strongly disagree that Christianity is extremist. The remaining four in ten (41%) disagree only somewhat. So even non-Christians who are reluctant to fully label Christianity as extremist, still harbor some hesitations and negative perceptions toward the religion.

Even more troubling is what the study discovered about how the general population views specific religious activities. There has been a tremendous shift in society, and behaviors that were considered to be completely mainstream a few decades ago are now considered to be “extremism”.

Are you ready to take a test? Look over the Barna infographic that I have shared below very carefully. Have you ever participated in any of these “extremist activities”?…

If you have ever participated in any of the activities listed in category 1 or category 2, you are a “religious extremist” according to most Americans.

Of course every single one of the behaviors in category 2 would potentially apply to me, so I guess that would make me an “extremist” according to this definition.

This is where our society is heading. Of course “Christian extremists” are not normally put into prison in the United States quite yet, but hatred toward our faith in rapidly rising in society. Church attendance is dropping like a rock, the Christian faith is relentlessly mocked in movies and on television, and incidents of hostility toward Christians have doubled over the past three years.

And the truth is that even the federal government and the military are rapidly turning against Bible-believing Christians. For example, the slide that I have posted below comes from a U.S. Army Reserve Equal Opportunity training brief that described “Evangelical Christianity” and “Catholicism” as examples of “religious extremism”…

Once this came out, there was a huge uproar and some people got into trouble over this. But it should be exceedingly alarming to people of faith that U.S. military personnel were being trained that evangelical Christians are on the same level as the Ku Klux Klan.

And of course this is far from the only example of this phenomenon. In fact, Christians have regularly been described as “extremists” and “potential terrorists” in official U.S. government documents since the day that Barack Obama first stepped into the White House.

The following is an extended excerpt from my previous article entitled “72 Types Of Americans That Are Considered ‘Potential Terrorists’ In Official Government Documents“…

*****

Below is a list of 72 types of Americans that are considered to be “extremists” and “potential terrorists” in official U.S. government documents. To see the original source document for each point, just click on the link. As you can see, this list covers most of the country…

1. Those that talk about “individual liberties”

2. Those that advocate for states’ rights

3. Those that want “to make the world a better place”

4. “The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule”

5. Those that are interested in “defeating the Communists”

6. Those that believe “that the interests of one’s own nation are separate from the interests of other nations or the common interest of all nations”

7. Anyone that holds a “political ideology that considers the state to be unnecessary, harmful,or undesirable”

8. Anyone that possesses an “intolerance toward other religions”

9. Those that “take action to fight against the exploitation of the environment and/or animals”

10. “Anti-Gay”

11. “Anti-Immigrant”

12. “Anti-Muslim”

13. “The Patriot Movement”

14. “Opposition to equal rights for gays and lesbians”

15. Members of the Family Research Council

16. Members of the American Family Association

17. Those that believe that Mexico, Canada and the United States “are secretly planning to merge into a European Union-like entity that will be known as the ‘North American Union’”

18. Members of the American Border Patrol/American Patrol

19. Members of the Federation for American Immigration Reform

20. Members of the Tennessee Freedom Coalition

21. Members of the Christian Action Network

22. Anyone that is “opposed to the New World Order”

23. Anyone that is engaged in “conspiracy theorizing”

24. Anyone that is opposed to Agenda 21

25. Anyone that is concerned about FEMA camps

26. Anyone that “fears impending gun control or weapons confiscations”

27. The militia movement

28. The sovereign citizen movement

29. Those that “don’t think they should have to pay taxes”

30. Anyone that “complains about bias”

31. Anyone that “believes in government conspiracies to the point of paranoia”

32. Anyone that “is frustrated with mainstream ideologies”

33. Anyone that “visits extremist websites/blogs”

34. Anyone that “establishes website/blog to display extremist views”

35. Anyone that “attends rallies for extremist causes”

36. Anyone that “exhibits extreme religious intolerance”

37. Anyone that “is personally connected with a grievance”

38. Anyone that “suddenly acquires weapons”

39. Anyone that “organizes protests inspired by extremist ideology”

40. “Militia or unorganized militia”

41. “General right-wing extremist”

42. Citizens that have “bumper stickers” that are patriotic or anti-U.N.

43. Those that refer to an “Army of God”

44. Those that are “fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation)”

45. Those that are “anti-global”

46. Those that are “suspicious of centralized federal authority”

47. Those that are “reverent of individual liberty”

48. Those that “believe in conspiracy theories”

49. Those that have “a belief that one’s personal and/or national ‘way of life’ is under attack”

50. Those that possess “a belief in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism”

51. Those that would “impose strict religious tenets or laws on society (fundamentalists)”

52. Those that would “insert religion into the political sphere”

53. Anyone that would “seek to politicize religion”

54. Those that have “supported political movements for autonomy”

55. Anyone that is “anti-abortion”

56. Anyone that is “anti-Catholic”

57. Anyone that is “anti-nuclear”

58. “Rightwing extremists”

59. “Returning veterans”

60. Those concerned about “illegal immigration”

61. Those that “believe in the right to bear arms”

62. Anyone that is engaged in “ammunition stockpiling”

63. Anyone that exhibits “fear of Communist regimes”

64. “Anti-abortion activists”

65. Those that are against illegal immigration

66. Those that talk about “the New World Order” in a “derogatory” manner

67. Those that have a negative view of the United Nations

68. Those that are opposed “to the collection of federal income taxes”

69. Those that supported former presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin and Bob Barr

70. Those that display the Gadsden Flag (“Don’t Tread On Me”)

71. Those that believe in “end times” prophecies

72. Evangelical Christians

*****

Are you starting to get the picture?

There is a systematic attempt by the radical leftists that dominate our society to demonize Bible-believing Christians. They want to portray us as “religious extremists” that are just as dangerous as ISIS is.

Given enough time, they would not just come after us with words. Throughout history, we have seen the same thing happen with so many other groups. First they were marginalized, then they were demonized, then they were criminalized, and then ultimately they were marked for elimination.

If you are a Bible-believing Christian, you need to get ready for intense persecution, because it is most definitely heading our way.

The U.S. Air Force Is Promoting Witchcraft

Judicial Watch just issued a report that reveals the academy used its “Chapel Tithes and Offering Fund” to pay for cadets to participate in worship services marked by witchcraft, “Faery Magick” and voodoo. According to the watchdog group, records show the academy shelled out money to send cadets to a Wiccan festival and a Denver Witches Ball in 2014. A group called “Spiritual Programs in Religious Education” hosted the events at the Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel Falcon Circle on the Academy campus.

Chapel tithes and offerings were also used to pay for registration and meals for cadets attending the “Earth Centered Beltania festival,” which is “a retreat and festival for all who follow Earth-honoring religion or spiritual path.” At the festival, attendees are encouraged to “dance with ecstasy around the maypole,” “drum with the heartbeat of Mother Earth” and “conjure Springtime within nature and yourself.”

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Latest Post-Christian Era Fad Rejects God’s Image, Replaces With Frightening, Demonic Features, Eyes

Some bioethicists have concerns about cosmetic, or aesthetic, surgery because patients are being pressured to conform to stereotypes of beauty. But what if they are conforming to stereotypes of ugliness? Does that make an ethical difference? Take eyeball tattooing, a fad which started with a US tattoo artist who goes by the name Luna Cobra. He injects pigment directly into the eyeball so it rests under the eye’s thin top layer. “If you want to amuse yourself by decorating your eyeball, why not do it?” he told the BBC. “I do a lot of things that look like tie-dye or ‘cosmic space’. I think it brings a realm of fantasy into everyday life.” Mr Cobra says that his first clients wanted to have blue eyeballs like characters in the science fiction novel Dune. Black has become the colour du jour amongst gentlemen who wish to look dangerous.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Jury finds Colorado woman guilty of cutting baby from stranger’s womb

Jurors convicted a Colorado woman Tuesday of unlawful termination of a pregnancy and multiple assault charges after she cut an unborn baby from the stomach of a pregnant woman she met through Craigslist.

Dynel Lane, 36, showed no reaction as the judge read guilty verdicts on all six counts, including attempted first-degree murder. Police arrested Lane following the March 2015 attack on Michelle Wilkins in Longmont, a city near Boulder. Wilkins, 27, survived but her unborn daughter died.

Lane faces a maximum of more than 100 years in prison and will receive a minimum of 16 years, prosecutors said.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Suicide Epidemic: Why Does The Number Of People Killing Themselves Just Keep Going Up?

Did you know that more Americans now die from suicide than are killed in car crashes each year? According to the CDC, there has been a substantial spike in suicide deaths in the United States in recent years. Today, approximately 9.3 million Americans admit to having suicidal thoughts, and approximately 2.7 million Americans each year actually make a plan for how they would commit suicide. We are a deeply, deeply unhappy nation, but of course this phenomenon is not just limited to America. According to the World Health Organization, suicide is now the third highest cause of death in the entire world. Globally, suicide rates have soared by 60 percent over the past 45 years, and the WHO is now projecting that by the year 2020 someone will be committing suicide somewhere in the world every 20 seconds.

There was an article in the Guardian that I came across today that was entitled “Financial despair, addiction and the rise of suicide in white America“. It discussed the extremely alarming rise in the suicide rate among Americans that are approaching retirement age. Many in this age group are drowning in debt, dealing with out of control medical bills, have saved very little for retirement and are dealing with significant physical pain. One fact that I was astounded to learn is that in the state of Montana there are 82 painkiller prescriptions for every 100 people. In a desperate attempt to find a way out, many Americans this age are considering suicide. 56-year-old Kevin Lowney is one example…

Kevin Lowney lies awake some nights wondering if he should kill himself.

“I am in such pain every night, suicide has on a regular basis crossed my mind just simply to ease the pain. If I did not have responsibilities, especially for my youngest daughter who has problems,” he said.

The 56-year-old former salesman’s struggle with chronic pain is bound up with an array of other issues – medical debts, impoverishment and the prospect of a bleak retirement – contributing to growing numbers of suicides in the US and helping drive a sharp and unusual increase in the mortality rate for middle-aged white Americans in recent years alongside premature deaths from alcohol and drugs.

And this isn’t just an American phenomenon. Over in the United Kingdom, one study discovered that the suicide rate for men between the ages of 45 and 49 had increased by 40 percent over a seven year period…

The number of middle-aged men taking their own lives has increased dramatically over the course of the last decade.

New research, published today by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, reveals that the last seven years have seen a 40 percent increase in the suicide rate of men between the ages of 45 and 49.

Younger people are killing themselves more frequently as well.

According to a Fox News report, the suicide rate for Americans age 10 to age 24 has “gone up every year”…

Their deaths as well as other recent teen suicides to make national headlines — from Westport, Conn., to Omaha, Neb., — are part of a steady rise in self-inflicted deaths among young people, ages 10 to 24, since 2007, according to health officials.

“We are seeing significant increases in suicide for those ages,” Dr. Thomas Simon, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s suicide expert, told FoxNews.com. “When you go back to 2007, the rates in that age group have gone up every year.“

So why is this happening?

Without a doubt, the decline of our economy is playing a role. The middle class is steadily shrinking, and more Americans are falling out of the middle class with each passing month. Many Americans that are approaching retirement age do not see any viable future for themselves, and thus many of them are completely giving in to depression and despair.

But I don’t think that explains all of it. I think another major factor is the fact that our society is being drugged into oblivion. At this point, nearly 60 percent of all Americans are on at least one prescription drug, and many drugs are known to substantially increase the risk of suicide.

Instead of addressing these root causes, many want the government to step in and magically solve this problem somehow. In fact, there is a new proposal for mandatory depression screening that many are warning could have very serious consequences. The following is an excerpt from a piece that Ron Paul recently authored…

The United States Preventive Services Task Force recently recommended mandatory depression screening for all Americans. The task force wants to force health insurance companies to pay for the screening. Basic economics, as well as the Obamacare disaster, should have shown this task force that government health insurance mandates harm Americans.

Government health insurance mandates raise the price of health insurance. Consumers will respond to this increase by either choosing to not carry health insurance or by reducing their consumption of other goods and services. Imposing new health insurance mandates will thus make consumers, many of whom are already suffering from Obamacare’s costly mandates, worse off by forcing them to deviate from their preferred consumption patterns.

Mandatory depression screening will not just raise insurance costs. In order to ensure that the screening mandate is being properly implemented, the government will need to create a database containing the results of the screenings. Those anti-gun politicians who want to forbid anyone labeled “mentally ill” from owning a firearm will no doubt want to use this database as a tool to deprive individuals of their Second Amendment rights.

Mandatory screening is not going to solve this problem. That will just result in even more people being put on anti-depressants and make the pharmaceutical companies even wealthier.

In the end, the real problem is in our hearts. We have pushed God to the outer fringes of society, and we have decided that we can set up our own version of utopia without Him.

Well, that isn’t exactly working out too well, is it?

If you know someone that is depressed and may be considering suicide, the following are some of the signs that livescience.com says that you should watch for…

feelings of hopelessness or desperation
insomnia
panic attacks
social isolation
irritability
rage
feelings of being a burden

Life is about so much more than the amount of things that we own or the amount of money in our bank accounts.

Many of these people that are contemplating suicide could have futures that are brighter beyond what they could possibly imagine, but they are focusing on all the wrong things.

So what do you think is causing the stunning rise in suicide both here in the United States and around the globe?

Please feel free to share your thoughts with the rest of us by leaving a comment below…

You Will Be Shocked At These Numbers That Show How Much Pornography Americans Are Watching

I’m no longer shocked by anything I uncover when I’m researching the porn industry. But when PornHub, the Internet’s largest online sewage facility, released statistics for 2015, I felt sick.

A couple of examples:

People watched 4,392,486,580 hours of porn on PornHub in 2015. Just to put that in perspective, that means that in one year, people around the world spent 501,425 years watching pornography—on one porn site.

On PornHub, people watched 87,849,731,608 porn videos. As the porn site hastened to point out, that’s 12 porn videos viewed for every single person on the planet.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

ISIS Plot To Shoot Up A Detroit Megachurch Revealed As ‘Christianophobia’ Spreads Across America

If you are a Christian, you better brace yourself for great persecution. It has gotten very little attention from the mainstream media, but federal authorities have uncovered an ISIS plot to “shoot up” a Detroit megachurch. 21-year-old Khalil Abu-Rayyan of Dearborn Heights, Michigan told authorities that he actually intended to take a gun into a very large church in Detroit that can seat up to 6,000 people and start killing Christians. He has been charged with supporting the Islamic States and with “illegally having a firearm while using a controlled substance”. Abu-Rayyan actually admitted that since he can’t be part of the jihad in the Middle East, that he would “do my jihad over here”. As I have warned so many times before, ISIS terrorists are already here, and what we have seen so far is just the beginning.

I can’t understand why this story is not headlines news all over America. If Khalil Abu-Rayyan had succeeded in conducting the megachurch attack that he was planning, hundreds of Christians could have potentially been killed. The people that go to that church might not ever know just how close they actually came to being slaughtered…

“I tried to shoot up a church one day,” Abu-Rayyan is quoted as saying in court records. “I don’t know the name of it, but it’s close to my job. It’s one of the biggest ones in Detroit. Ya, I had it planned out. I bought a bunch of bullets. I practiced a lot with it. I practiced reloading and unloading. But my dad searched my car one day, and he found everything. He found the gun and the bullets and a mask I was going to wear.”

Investigators didn’t name the church Abu-Rayyan allegedly eyed, but claim the property covers about two blocks less than half a mile from his work and can accommodate up to 6,000 members. He allegedly purchased a gun and told an undercover FBI employee that attacking a church would be “easy.”

“A lot of people go there. Plus people are not allowed to carry guns in church,” the affidavit quotes him as saying. “Plus it would make the news. Everybody would’ve heard. Honestly I regret not doing it. (If I) can’t go do jihad at the Middle East, I would do my jihad over here.”

These comments show us precisely what these terrorists want.

They want to create fear, and they want to get as much media attention as possible.

Terrorists like Khalil Abu-Rayyan do not fear death, because they have been promised that they will go to a wonderful paradise where they will be showered with attention by virgins when they die. In fact, many of them seem quite eager to receive a one-way ticket to their sex-fueled religious fantasy.

Unfortunately, mainstream media outlets in both the United States and Europe purposely downplay the hatred that these Islamic radicals have for ordinary Christians, because they don’t want to make Muslim immigrants look bad. That is why the mainstream media almost entirely ignored the fact that the main target of the San Bernardino shootings was a Messianic Christian, and that is why the mainstream media is burying this current story about Khalil Abu-Rayyan.

If a Christian baker refuses to bake a cake for a gay wedding, that is front page news, but if a Muslim admits to planning to shoot up a church of several thousand people that is a non-event according to the media.

This anti-Christian bias is growing stronger with each passing year, and it has now become institutionalized in our society in so many ways. A recent article by Selwyn Duke highlighted some examples of this phenomenon that we have recently witnessed…

A student is punished for refusing to “stomp on Jesus,” a Christian baker faces a year in jail for refusing to cater faux marriages, two men are arrested for reading the Bible aloud near a government building, a school “purges” Christian works from its library. Critics asserting the existence of an institutional anti-Christian bias, and a resultant war on the faith, have often been labeled paranoid. But now two University of North Texas sociologists have produced research showing that just such an agenda exists — among America’s most powerful people.

The two sociologists that he was referring to are Professor George Yancey and Professor David Williamson, and they shared their research in a newly published book entitled “So Many Christians, So Few Lions: Is There Christianophobia in the United States?” The Christian Post interviewed Yancey about this new book and the following is an excerpt from that interview…

In the minds of many of the respondents Christians are ignorant, intolerant and stupid individuals who are unable to think for themselves. The general image they have of Christians is that they are a backward, non-critical thinking, child-like people who do not like science and want to interfere with the lives of everyone else.

But even worse, they see ordinary Christians as having been manipulated by evil Christian leaders and will vote in whatever way those leaders want. They believe that those leaders are trying to set up a theocracy to force everybody to accept their Christian beliefs. So, for some with Christianophobia, this is a struggle for our society and our ability to move toward a progressive society. Christians are often seen as the great evil force that blocks our society from achieving this progressive paradise.

If you are a “liberal”, it is quite likely that this is how you view Christians.

Many non-religious liberals consider evangelical Christianity to be the biggest “problem” that America is facing today, and some of the potential solutions that liberal activists are advocating for this “problem” are quite chilling.

During their research, Yancey and Williamson personally interviewed a number of “cultural progressive activists”, and the following are a few examples of what some of them said should be done to “the Christian right”…

“I want them all to die in a fire.” (Male, aged 26-35 with Doctorate).

“They should be eradicated without hesitation or remorse. Their only purpose is to damage and inflict their fundamentalist virus onto everyone they come in contact with.” (Female, aged 66-75 with Master’s degree).

“They make me a believer in eugenics…. They pollute good air…. I would be in favor of establishing a state for them…. If not, then sterilize them so they can’t breed more.” (Male, aged 46-55 with Master’s degree).

So what makes a liberal activist that wants to “eradicate” Christians that much different from an Islamic terrorist that wants to achieve the same goal?

Of course radical Islamic terrorists are probably more likely to use violent means to achieve their goal right now, but what would happen if our government became dominated by people that think like the liberal activists quoted above?

And don’t think that it can’t happen. When radical leftists took power in the Soviet Union, they killed countless numbers of Christians. When radical leftists took power in China, they killed countless numbers of Christians. And when radical leftists took power in Nazi Germany, they intended to completely eradicate Biblical Christianity.

On December 15th, 1941 U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt made the following statement: “To Hitler, the church…is a monstrosity to be destroyed by every means.”

Most Christians today don’t realize just how much Hitler hated our faith. But if you do the deep research, you will find some absolutely incredible things. In a previous article, I included the following information which was originally uncovered by author Bruce Walker, the author of “The Swastika Against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity“…

The Nazi tract Gott und Volk was distributed in 1941, and it describes the life cycle of German youth in the future, who would: “With parties and gifts the youth will be led painlessly from one faith to the other and will grow up without ever having heard of the Sermon on the Mount or the Golden Rule, to say nothing of the Ten Commandments… The education of the youth is to be confined primarily by the teacher, the officer, and the leaders of the party. The priests will die out. They have estranged the youth from the Volk. Into their places will step the leaders. Not deputies of God. But anyway the best Germans. And how shall we train our children? Thus, as though they had never heard of Christianity!”

We like to think that we are so much better than Nazi Germany, but the truth is that the exact same spirit is at work today.

Americans have been trained to want a society that has completely sanitized all references to the Bible and to the Christian faith from the public arena.

Our children are being raised in public schools that are specifically modeled after the German system. If you doubt this, just look it up. Prayer has been banned, and if you try to read a Bible during school hours it can get you suspended.

We may not call ourselves Nazis, but in so many ways we are just like them.

And the hatred toward Christianity in this country just continues to grow every time a comedian makes jokes about our faith and every time Christians are portrayed as stupid, evil or crazy in our movies and television shows.

Christians over in the Middle East are being crucified and are having their heads cut off, and of course the persecution of Christians in the western world is not even worth comparing to that at this point.

But all over the world hatred for Biblical Christianity is on the rise, and great persecution is coming.

The half-hearted, lukewarm religion that passes for Christianity in so many of our churches today has got to go, because that kind of faith is simply not going to cut it during the times that we are moving into.

It has already got to be settled in our hearts that we are willing to lay down our lives for what we believe, because someday that is precisely the choice that many of us may be forced to make.

Los Angeles Police Urge Residents ‘To Protect Themselves’ As Violent Crime Skyrockets

All over America, rates of violent crime are absolutely soaring. As you will see below, violent crime overall shot up by 20 percent in Los Angeles last year, and the police are telling people that “they need to be able to protect themselves” because the police may not be able to get there in time when they call. Thanks to deep budget cuts, police departments across the nation are already severely undermanned, and our major cities are now seeing crime rates increase at a pace that we have not seen in ages. In a previous article, I encouraged my readers to focus on the five basics of preparation – food, water, shelter, energy and self-defense. Of those five, it is often self-defense that is the most neglected. When bad people break into your house in the middle of the night intending to do bad things, what are you going to do? Many of us have not had to think about that for a long time, but now conditions are rapidly changing in America.

If you don’t believe me, perhaps you will believe the head of the union for the LAPD. According to him, people living in L.A. “need to be able to protect themselves” because the police “can’t guarantee we’re going to get there in time to help you”…

“The citizens need to know they need to be able to protect themselves because if they call 911, we can’t guarantee we’re going to get there in time to help you,” says Police Protective League President Jamie McBride.

He told Paige that Thursday morning between 5:30 and 10 a.m., there were just three patrol cars assigned to the West LA division. Two cars to protect more than 200,000 people in a 65 square mile radius.

“West Los Angeles, at the minimum, should have seven patrol units, two-man units working,” McBride said.

Have you ever been to Los Angeles?

I have, and even in the best of times it can be quite a mean place.

And of course these are not the best of times. In fact, the overall rate of violent crime in the city was up by 20 percent last year…

Crime is up across the board in the nation’s second-largest city.

Statistics released Wednesday by the Los Angeles Police Department show that homicides and rapes are each up 9 percent and that robberies are up 13 percent. Violent crime overall increased by 20 percent.

Perhaps you are tempted to think that L.A. is just an anomaly.

Well, let’s go from the second largest city in the country to the third largest city in the country.

There were 51 homicides in Chicago last month, which was the highest total for the city in at least 16 years. Sadly, this is just a continuation of a trend that has been going on for quite some time. The following comes from USA Today…

Chicago routinely records more homicides annually than any other American city, but the grim January violence toll marks a shocking spike in violence in a city that recorded 29 murders for the month of January last year and 20 murders for the month in 2014. In addition to the jump in killings, police department said that it recorded 241 shooting incidents for the month, more than double the 119 incidents recorded last January.

The rise in violence comes after the Chicago Police Department reported 468 murders in 2015, a 12.5% increase from the year before. There were also 2,900 shootings, 13% more than the year prior, according to police department records.

Some of the crimes that I have been seeing in the news lately are almost too horrible for words. If reading about acts of violence deeply troubles you, then you might want to stop reading this article right now. I want to share with you something that recently happened in New York City, and it is the kind of stuff that nightmares are made out of…

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday denounced the rape of a woman by five men at a Brooklyn playground, pledging police would work to swiftly apprehend the suspects in “this vicious crime.”

Police said on Saturday the men took turns raping the 18-year-old woman at the playground operated by the New York City Parks Department in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn just after 9 p.m. on Thursday. One man pointed a gun at the father and told him to leave, police said.

After the father left, the men each assaulted the woman, police said. They fled when her father returned a short while later, accompanied by two officers.

One rapist is bad enough, but how do five young men come together and decide that they are going to randomly rape someone?

To do something so despicable your heart has got to be hard as a stone.

What in the world has happened to the morality of our society?

And to me, one of the biggest questions of this entire story is why the father decided to walk away from his daughter.

If I was in the same position, I would have stood my ground. Maybe those young men would have shot me, but there is no way that I would have ever let them have my daughter. They would have had to go over my dead body to get to her.

But this is what we are told to do today. We are told to let the criminals do whatever they want and then call the police.

Unfortunately, now the police are openly telling us that they probably won’t be able to get there in time to do any good.

As the economy slows down, crime rates are going to go even higher. When unemployment and poverty rise, people get desperate, and desperate people do desperate things.

We all need to start thinking about how we are going to protect ourselves and our families during the hard times that are coming. Different people have different methods that they prefer, and that is okay. But we are all going to have to start taking security a lot more seriously.

(Originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog)

Just A Coincidence That A Historic Blizzard Named ‘Jonas’ Hit D.C. On The Anniversary Of Roe v Wade?

On January 22nd, one of the worst east coast blizzards in history slammed into Washington D.C. like a freight train. More than three feet of snow was dumped on some areas, hundreds of thousands of people were left without power, and coastal cities all long the eastern seaboard experienced flooding to a degree not seen since Hurricane Sandy. Tens of millions of people live in communities that were completely paralyzed by this storm, and it is being projected that the total amount of economic damage done will ultimately be in the billions of dollars. January 22nd also happens to be the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in all 50 states. Since that Supreme Court decision, more than 58 million babies have been murdered in abortion clinics in America. Could it be possible that it is more than just a “coincidence” that both of these events happened on January 22nd?

In a previous article, I noted that this east coast blizzard was officially given the name “Jonas”. It turns out that “Jonas” is actually a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name “Jonah”.

In the Bible, Jonah was sent to the city of Ninevah to warn that the judgment of God was about to come. Some are suggesting that it may not be any accident that a historic blizzard named after this Biblical prophet hit Washington D.C. on the exact anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision.

And without a doubt, this was a whopper of a storm. According to USA Today, some cities broke their all-time records for snowfall from a single storm…

It was the biggest snowstorm ever recorded for three cities — Baltimore (29.2 inches), Allentown, Pa. (31.9) and Harrisburg, Pa. (34), the National Weather Service said. New York City picked up 26.8 inches of snow, missing its all-time record by one-tenth of an inch.

In the D.C. area things were absolutely crazy. Dulles Airport got a total of 29.3 inches of snow, and Baltimore-Washington International Airport got 29.2 inches of snow. Some of the outlying areas actually got closer to three feet of snow, and it could take weeks for transportation in the region to get back to normal.

New York City got absolutely pummeled as well. CNN is reporting that John F. Kennedy International Airport got 31 inches of snow and New York’s Central Park has been buried under 27 inches of snow.

In addition to crazy amounts of snow, vast stretches right along the coast had to deal with tremendous flooding. In fact, CNN is reporting that the flooding was even worse than during Hurricane Sandy in some areas…

Margate City, just down the coast from Atlantic City, was also affected.

“In a lot of our business areas and our back bay areas, water is coming over the bulkhead in a lot of the same areas as Hurricane Sandy hit,” Lt. Matt Hankinson of the Margate City Police Department said. “Some areas I would say it’s thigh- to waist-deep.”

Farther south in North Wildwood, the high tide was much higher than anticipated and caught many of the town’s 5,000 year-round residents off guard — with flooding levels that actually exceeded those during Hurricane Sandy, said Patrick Rosenello, the city’s mayor.

Meanwhile, a very powerful El Nino pattern continues to send storm after storm slamming into the west coast. It didn’t get much publicity because of the giant blizzard on the east coast, but the California coastal city of Pacifica just declared a state of emergency due to the damage from these storms. The following comes from the Daily Mail…

As the East Coast is hit with one of the most powerful storms in recent years, the West Coast is continuing to be slammed with storms thanks to El Nino.

The city of Pacifica in northern California declared a state of emergency Friday after continuous El Nino storms slammed into the city’s coastline,KNTV reported.

A sinkhole and a severely damaged sea wall are part of the destruction in the city from the wild winter weather.

‘El Nino is hitting the city’s coastline very hard and creating almost daily reports of impacts to both public and private property,’ City Manager Lorie Tinfow told KNTV.

All of this continues a very unusual pattern of disasters that we have been witnessing over the past six months. Just consider what we have seen happen since last September…

-Around the turn of the year the middle part of the country experienced absolutely horrific flooding. The only thing people can really compare it to is the great flood of 1993, and Missouri Governor Jay Nixon says that some communities saw floodwaters get to “places they’ve never been before”. Normally if the middle of the country is going to see flooding like this, it is going to happen when the snow begins to thaw in the spring. For something like this to happen in December is absolutely unprecedented.

-Prior to that, a conveyor belt of storms that barreled into coastal areas of Oregon and Washington caused horrible flooding in many areas. In fact, in early December we witnessed the wettest day in the history of Portland, Oregon. The resulting landslides and floods made headlines all over the nation.

-Before that, the remnants of Hurricane Patricia caused nightmarish flooding in many parts of Texas. The flooding was so bad that at one point an entire train was knocked off the tracks.

-Out on the west coast, flash flooding in southern California sent rivers of mud streaming across highways in southern California. The lifeless body of one man that had his vehicle completely buried in mud was recovered several days later because that is how long it took emergency workers to get to him.

-To kick things off, moisture from Hurricane Joaquin caused horrible flooding all up and down the east coast back in early October. The governor of South Carolina said that it was the worst rain that some parts of her state had seen in 1,000 years.

All of this flooding has happened since the end of September.

Never before in U.S. history have we ever seen a series of catastrophic floods like this within such a concentrated space of time.

And let us not forget that 2015 was also the worst year for wildfires in all of U.S. history, the state of Oklahoma absolutely shattered their yearly record for earthquakes, and much of the rest of the country has been experiencing highly unusual natural disasters. In fact, the state of Alaska was hit by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake just today.

In addition, my regular readers already know that global financial markets have just had their worst start to a year in all of modern history.

Could someone be trying to tell us something?

Most people out there would dismiss such a suggestion without even thinking about it. To most Americans, it must just be a “coincidence” that we have been hit by major disaster after major disaster since the month of September.

But there are others that would point out that you eventually reap what you sow, and this nation has been doing a tremendous amount of evil for a very long time.

As I mentioned at the top of this article, America has murdered more than 58 million babies since 1973. Instead of being horrified at our crimes, we just continue to shake our fist at God as we celebrate all of the evil that we are doing. In fact, Barack Obama took time out of his day on Friday to actually celebrate the anniversary of Roe v. Wade…

President Barack Obama issued a statement today, celebrating the 43rd anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that declared abortion a constitutionally protected right.

“Today, we mark the 43rd anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, which affirmed a woman’s freedom to make her own choices about her body and her health,” said Obama.

Despite being shown our guilt over and over again, we have absolutely refused to change our ways, and so now we will pay the price for our crimes.

As I have said on television, on the radio and in my articles, 2016 is the year when everything changes.

(Originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog)

Franklin Graham on SOTU: ‘Our Nation is Broken – It’s Broken Morally, It’s Broken Spiritually, It’s Broken Politically’

In anticipation of President Barack Obama’s last State of the Union Address on Tuesday night, Rev. Franklin Graham said he could already reveal the condition of our nation – it is broken, morally, spiritually, politically, and racially.

The reverend added that he hoped President Obama would “turn to God for wisdom and direction” in leading America for his last 12 months in office.

“Tonight the president is set to give his final State of the Union address,” said Rev. Graham in a Jan. 12 post on Facebook. “I can tell you the state of our union.”

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Planned Parenthood Gets More Than 550 Million Dollars A Year From The U.S. Government

According to its brand new annual report, Planned Parenthood received 553.7 million dollars from the federal government during the 12 months that ended on June 30th. Within those 12 months, Planned Parenthood conducted 323,999 abortion procedures. These are numbers that should deeply sadden every American. In recent months a series of undercover videos have been released that show that Planned Parenthood is harvesting organs and other body parts from the babies that they slaughter. These organs and body parts are then sold off to the highest bidder, and many of them end up being used in some of the most bizarre scientific experiments imaginable.

But even after seeing all of this, the American people did not want it to stop. A survey conducted back in September found that the American people want the federal government to continue to fund Planned Parenthood by a more than 2 to 1 margin.

According to that survey, only 29 percent of all Americans wanted to cut off funding.

I was absolutely astounded when I saw that number.

Have we really fallen that far?

What in the world is happening to this country?

And ultimately Congress gave the American people what they wanted. The “budget deal” that the Republicans just agreed to will continue to fully fund the Planned Parenthood abortion mills.

After watching all of this happen, I can only come to one inescapable conclusion…

America is done.

America is finished, and now we are going to start experiencing the consequences of our actions.

Thanks to the undercover Planned Parenthood videos, our guilt was put on display for all the world to see. We were given one more opportunity to repent, but instead we shook our fists at God.

Most Americans seem to think that we can keep getting away with this, but in the end our punishment is going to match the severity of our crime.

America is headed for judgment, and we are going to deserve every bit of what is about to happen to us.

Violent Crime In Los Angeles Was Up 19.9 Percent In 2015

For the first time in more than a decade, all categories of crime rose across Los Angeles in 2015 as police struggled to get control of the problem, according to LAPD data.

Violent crime in L.A. climbed 19.9% and property crime increased 10.3% through Dec. 26 compared with the same period last year, according to the police data. It marked the second year in a row that violent crime rose, but the first time since 2003 that both violent and property crime rose.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

You Could Be Fined 250,000 Dollars If You Offend A Transgender Woman In New York City

Political correctness is officially out of control in New York City. According to brand new rules that were just issued by the New York City Commission on Human Rights, you could potentially be fined $250,000 if you purposely offend someone that is transgender. This includes such offenses as calling a transgender woman “him” when she wants to be called “her”, or not allowing a transgender woman to use the women’s bathroom. These guidelines are particularly focused on the behavior of landlords, employers and businesses, but they will undoubtedly create a chilling effect on speech all throughout New York City.

Needless to say, these new regulations will result in a flood of litigation as transgender individuals exercise their new “rights”. According to the New York City Commission on Human Rights, employers must now use “an individual’s preferred name, pronoun and title” when referring to that person. And some of the pronouns that were given as examples by the Commission were only recently introduced to the English language and many people don’t even know how to pronounce them. The following comes directly from the new “guidelines”…

The NYCHRL requires employers and covered entities to use an individual’s preferred name, pronoun and title (e.g., Ms./Mrs.) regardless of the individual’s sex assigned at birth, anatomy, gender, medical history, appearance, or the sex indicated on the individual’s identification. Most individuals and many transgender people use female or male pronouns and titles.

Some transgender and gender non-conforming people prefer to use pronouns other than he/him/his or she/her/hers, such as they/them/theirs or ze/hir.

All facilities in New York City will now also be required to allow transgender individuals to use whatever bathrooms and locker rooms they prefer. Here is more from the new “guidelines”…

The NYCHRL requires that individuals be permitted to use single-sex facilities, such as bathrooms or locker rooms, and participate in single-sex programs, consistent with their gender, regardless of their sex assigned at birth, anatomy, medical history, appearance, or the sex indicated on their identification. The law does not require entities to make existing bathrooms all-gender or construct additional restrooms. Covered entities that have single-occupancy restrooms should make clear that they can be used by people of all genders.

So what would stop some sick pervert from pretending to be transgender just so that he can go into the women’s locker room at the gym?

Presumably nothing.

You would think that New York City would have far bigger priorities to deal with than this. Right now, almost 60,000 people are sleeping in homeless shelters in New York City every night, and the homeless crisis there has gotten so bad that it is being called an “epidemic”.

This is just another example of our society’s growing obsession with political correctness. And if you think that it is bad now, just wait until the next generation takes over.

Our colleges and universities have become political correctness indoctrination centers. One survey found that 62 percent of our colleges and universities have implemented “speech codes” that “severely departed from First Amendment standards”, and students are going to ridiculous extremes to try to insulate themselves from any language that could possibly be considered “racist”, “sexist” or threatening. Just check out the following excerpt from a recent article about political correctness at U.S. colleges that was published by the Telegraph…

The lexicon of college has changed: students now speak about “micro-aggressions”, “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces”.

The notion of the “safe space” first emerged to describe a place of refuge for people exposed to racial prejudice or sexism. But the phrase has changed meaning to the point where now it often implies protection from “exposure to ideas that make one uncomfortable”, according to Nadine Strossen, a prominent law professor and former head of the American Civil Liberties Union.

At Brown University – like Harvard, one of the eight elite Ivy League universities – the New York Times reported students set up a “safe space” that offered calming music, cookies, Play-Doh and a video of frolicking puppies to help students cope with a discussion on how colleges should handle sexual assault.

And all over America, colleges and universities are seemingly obsessed with getting our young people to use the right words. For example, just check out what is happening at the University of Michigan…

Dozens of posters plastered across the University of Michigan caution students not to say things that might hurt others’ feelings, part of a new “Inclusive Language Campaign” at the state’s flagship public university that cost $16,000 to implement.

Words declared unacceptable through the campaign include “crazy,” “insane,” “retarded,” “gay,” “tranny,” “gypped,” “illegal alien,” “fag,” “ghetto” and “raghead.” Phrases such as “I want to die” and “that test raped me” are also verboten.

Meanwhile, the quality of the education being served at these institutions has plummeted and millions of students are graduating each year without any real marketable skills. Most parents assume that their children are being prepared for “the real world” when they attend college, but in many cases that simply is not happening.

I attended public universities here in the United States for eight years, so I know what I am talking about. Instead of learning skills and abilities that apply to the marketplace of tomorrow, our young adults are being taught all sorts of gobbledygook. The following are some real courses that have been taught at U.S. colleges in recent years…

-“What If Harry Potter Is Real?”

-“Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame”

-“Philosophy And Star Trek”

-“Learning From YouTube”

-“How To Watch Television”

But these mindless courses are actually preferable to the courses which systematically pump radical leftist propaganda into the minds our our impressionable young people. Thanks in part to our system of education, each generation of Americans has steadily become more liberal. And at this point we are already so far gone as a society that it appears that there is not much hope left for us.

If you doubt this, just look at what is in the headlines. Once again this year, Barack Obama is “the most admired man” in America. He has now won that title eight times.

And Hillary Clinton was once again crowned “the most admired woman” in America. She has won that title 14 years in a row, and 20 times overall.

The American people love Obama and Clinton and the politically correct system that they represent. I wish I could be more optimistic about the future of our country, but at this point it is hard to see much hope.

So what do you think?

Is there any hope that any of this could ever be turned around?

Please feel free to tell us what you think by posting a comment below…

100 Year Old Christmas List From A 7 Year Old Boy Shows How Materialistic Our Society Has Become

If there were no presents at all, would you still want to celebrate Christmas? 100 years ago, a little seven-year-old boy named Homer Mellen sent Santa Claus a letter asking for “a box of paints, also a nine cent reader, and a school bag to put them in.” And he added that if Santa happened to have “any nuts, or candy, or toys to spare” that he would love to have some. My, how times have changed. Today, nearly all of us expect to be showered with presents on Christmas morning, and then almost immediately people begin posting photos of their “Christmas loot” on social media websites such as Facebook. And as you will see below, the “Rich Kids of Instagram” have taken boasting about wealth to an extreme that nobody has ever seen before. Our society has become deeply, deeply materialistic, and whatever “meaning” Christmas once may have had has become almost completely lost at this point.

When I first came across this 100 year old Christmas list, I was quite stunned. First of all, this young boy was able to express himself far better than most seven-year-old boys can today. Secondly, his letter to Santa reflected a sense of humility and thoughtfulness that is extremely rare in this day and age. In case you cannot read the letter that I have posted below, here is what it says…

“Dear Santa Claus,” the boy begins in cursive handwriting. “Will you please send me a box of paints, also a nine cent reader, and a school bag to put them in.”

He modestly continues, “And if you have any nuts, or candy, or toys to spare, would you kindly send me some.” If so, Homer concludes, “You will please a seven year old boy.”

The Mellen family kept and cherished this note for 98 years in a little box containing “private little things like locks of hair, or the first picture that was taken,” Mellen explained, in order to “put away for memories for grandchildren.”

I don’t know about you, but that letter touched my heart, and it made me long for an era that has long since passed away.

In 2015, things are very different. Most people spend the month of December eagerly anticipating all of the stuff that they are about to get, and this is ingrained in our children from a very early age.

If you don’t think that this is true, just spend some time on the “Rich Kids Of Instagram” Tumblr page this holiday season. You will see example after example of rich kids boasting about the stuff they hauled in over their holidays.

To these young adults, Christmas is far better when you are rich. And from a worldly perspective, it is hard to argue with their logic. Just check out how “rich kid” Serena Marron spent her holiday season last year…

Need a break from parties? Spare a thought for Serena Marron, who is waking up after a week of uninterrupted revelry that started at lunchtime on Boxing Day.

That was when the 20-something student, who lives in New York, stepped off a private jet on the holiday island of St Kitts in the Caribbean and took up residence on a 62m motor yacht called the Apogee.

The next week saw her spend her days lying on the deck of the yacht (which costs £350,000 a week to charter) and nights flexing her Wall Street financier father Donald’s credit card in exclusive bars, restaurants and nightclubs.

In just two days, Serena and friends lunched at the £300-a-head Hotel Isle de France on St Barths, drank £150 fishbowl cocktails at the Le Thi nightclub and knocked back £400-a- bottle champagne at Nikki Beach bar.

She ended this bender shortly before dawn yesterday, posing bleary-eyed at £3,000-a-night Villa Rockstar at the Eden Roc hotel.

Does that sound like any Christmas that you have ever had?

And check out how 20-year-old “rich kid” Evan Luthra spends his dough…

Another major spender is self-made millionaire Evan Luthra, who boasts 126,000 Instagram fans.

‘I go to clubs and spend maybe $20,000 (£14,000) a night on alcohol or charter a yacht for $50,000 (£33,000) day,’ he said.

The 20-year-old who lives in LA has been developing apps since the age of 12 and the wealth he’s amassed allows him to travel around by helicopter.

‘One of the services I have, it’s like Uber for helicopter,’ he revealed. ‘You press the button and they give you a helicopter near you in five minutes.’

In his downtime, Evan likes to hire a yacht and post an invitation on his Instagram account for people to join him.

Within an hour he’ll have 20 girls texting him, eager to come along.

Where did these young people learn to act this way?

The truth is that this is what our society glorifies, and most of our young adults would act like this if they had enough money to do so.

As it is, the average American will spend 830 dollars on Christmas this year. Most people pile up lots of debt on their credit cards buying lots of useless stuff, and much of it will just end up sitting on a shelf somewhere taking up space. But most Americans do this year after year because society tells them that this is what they need to do in order to be happy.

Of course the truth is that most people do not find happiness during the Christmas season. In fact, the rate of suicide spikes to the highest level of the entire year during “the holidays”, and one survey found that 45 percent of all Americans say that they dread the Christmas season.

Where did we go wrong?

If Christmas really is all about stuff, what does that mean for those that cannot afford to buy much? Are their holidays “worse” than those that have a lot of money for presents?

It is often said that “whoever dies with the most toys wins”, but I totally disagree with that. Our lives are not about the stuff that we accumulate, and we can’t take any of it with us when we die. Instead, our lives should be about loving God and loving each other.

Rather than teaching our children to greedily look forward to all of the goodies they are going to get on Christmas morning, what if we taught them to try to be people of great love?

How different would our society look?

Just something for you to think about as you and your family enjoy “the holiday season”…

The Triumph Of Materialism: The Average American Will Spend 830 Dollars On Christmas In 2015

Has there ever been a major holiday more focused on materialism than the modern American Christmas? This year, Americans are planning to spend an average of 830 dollars on Christmas gifts, which represents a jump of 110 dollars over the average of 720 dollars last year. But have our incomes gone up accordingly? Of course not. In fact, real median household income in the United States has been experiencing a steady long-term decline. So in order to fund all of our Christmas spending, we have got to go into even more debt. We love to pull out our credit cards and spend money that we do not have on lots of cheap, useless stuff made on the other side of the world by workers making slave labor wages. We do the same thing year after year, and most of us have grown accustomed to the endless cycle of growing debt. In fact, one Pew survey found that approximately 70 percent of all Americans believe that “debt is a necessity in their lives”. But then we have to work our fingers to the bone to try to make the payments on all of that debt, not realizing that debt systematically impoverishes us. It may be hard to believe, but if you have a single dollar in your pocket and no debt, you have a greater net worth than 25 percent of all Americans. I know that sounds crazy, but it is true.

Overall, when you add up all forms of debt (consumer, business, local government, state government and federal government), Americans are more than 60 trillion dollars in debt.

Let that sink in for a bit.

40 years ago, that number was sitting at about 3 trillion dollars.

We have been on the greatest debt binge in the history of the world. Even though we were “the wealthiest, most prosperous nation on the entire planet”, we always had to have more. We just kept on borrowing and borrowing and borrowing from the future until we completely destroyed it.

And we still haven’t learned anything. Instead, this Christmas season we will be partying like it’s 2007…

Americans are planning on celebrating Christmas like it’s 2007.

A November survey by Gallup found that US adults are planning on spending about $830 on average on Christmas gifts this year.

That’s a huge jump from last year’s $720 average.

Notably, American consumers haven’t suggested a number that high since November 2007, when they were planning on spending $866 on average.

Sadly, our incomes simply do not justify this kind of extravagance. As Zero Hedge has pointed out, household incomes “actually peaked at least 15 years ago in 81% of U.S. counties.”

So why can’t we adjust our lifestyles to match?

Why must we always have more?

Here are more details on our declining incomes from the Visual Capitalist…

Income peaked one year ago for many of the counties that are a part of the shale boom. This includes much of North and South Dakota, as well as parts of Texas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. Income in Washington, D.C. and neighboring Arlington County also peaked then.
In 1999, a total of 1,623 counties had their households reach peak income. The majority of these counties are in the Midwest and Southeast.
The most southern part of California and parts of New England both peaked around 25 years ago.
Many states along the Rocky Mountains such as Wyoming and Montana had counties that peaked roughly 35 years ago.
Household income peaked in upstate New York, the northern tip of California, and southern Nevada at the same time that humans were first landing on the moon in 1969.

But you won’t hear this reported on the mainstream news, will you?

They want us to think that happy days are here again.

The following chart comes from the Federal Reserve, and it shows that real median household income in the United States has been trending down since 1999…

Americans should be having smaller Christmases instead of bigger ones, but that doesn’t fit the image of who we still think that we are.

Recently, I published an article entitled “Goodbye Middle Class: 51 Percent Of All American Workers Make Less Than 30,000 Dollars A Year” that was shared more than 44,000 times on Facebook. In that article, I included brand new figures that were just released by the Social Security Administration. As you can see, the quality of our jobs is not great…

-38 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000 last year.

-51 percent of all American workers made less than $30,000 last year.

-62 percent of all American workers made less than $40,000 last year.

-71 percent of all American workers made less than $50,000 last year.

Without a doubt, most American families should not be spending hundreds of dollars a year on Christmas gifts.

At these income levels, most American families are just barely surviving.

But once again this year, millions upon millions of Americans will flock to the malls and big box stores in a desperate attempt to make themselves happy.

Sadly, those efforts will be in vain. In fact, in a previous article I highlighted the fact that Christmas is the unhappiest season of the year. The suicide rate spikes to the highest level of the year during “the holidays”, and 45 percent of all Americans report that they dread the Christmas season. The following is an excerpt from a Psychology Today article…

We are told that Christmas, for Christians, should be the happiest time of year, an opportunity to be joyful and grateful with family, friends and colleagues. Yet, according to the National Institute of Health, Christmas is the time of year that people experience the highest incidence of depression. Hospitals and police forces report the highest incidences of suicide and attempted suicide. Psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals report a significant increase in patients complaining about depression. One North American survey reported that 45% of respondents dreaded the festive season.

In recent years, an increasing number of Americans have given up the tradition of Christmas gifts entirely, and many of them that I know seem quite happy to have done so.

Of course most people are still quite satisfied with the status quo, and there are many that will get very angry with you if you dare to suggest that the way that Americans celebrate Christmas has gotten way out of hand.

But shouldn’t it alarm us that for most Americans the biggest holiday of the year is all about the “stuff” they are going to buy, the “stuff” they are going to give and the “stuff” they are going to get?

As a society, we are obsessed with things, but those things are never going to make us happy.

Perhaps we should all take some time to reflect on the traditions that we choose to participate in and what they really mean to us during this “holiday season”…

(Originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog)

America Is Charlie Sheen: The CDC Says There Are 20,000,000 New STD Cases In America Each Year

Charlie Sheen’s announcement that he is HIV positive has created a huge uproar as critics attack him from every direction, but the truth is that Charlie Sheen is simply a reflection of our society as a whole. You see, the truth is that it isn’t just big Hollywood stars that are engaged in insanely risky sexual behavior. According to the CDC, there are 110 million cases of sexually-transmitted disease in America today, and another 20 million STD cases are added to that total every year. The United States has the highest STD infection rate in the entire industrialized world, and more than half of all Americans will have a sexually-transmitted disease at some point during their lives. Approximately one out of every four teen girls in the U.S. has at least one sexually transmitted disease, and our nation spends $16,000,000,000 a year treating STDs. So go ahead and point a finger at Charlie Sheen if you want, but just remember that he is only a very small part of a raging national epidemic.

Now don’t get me wrong – I am certainly not defending Charlie Sheen. I am simply pointing out our hypocrisy. We love to tear others down while not realizing our own faults.

On Tuesday morning, Charlie Sheen told the world that he is HIV positive. The following is how USA Today announced the story…

Charlie Sheen is HIV positive, he told Matt Lauer during a much-touted exclusive Today show interview Tuesday morning.

The actor, whose drug use, rehab stints, legal issues, outbursts, on-set antics and many romantic entanglements have shaped his bad-boy image, confirmed the news, which had been swirling since Monday.

Of course Charlie Sheen is not being criticized for being HIV positive. Rather, the reason why so many people are jumping on him is because he continued to have unprotected sex even after he learned that he had HIV…

When Lauer asked Sheen if he had engaged in unprotected sex since his diagnosis, the actor responded in the affirmative. “The two people I did that with were under the care of my doctor and they were completely warned ahead of time.”

Talk about stupid.

And yet millions of other Americans are also running around having casual sex with people even after becoming infected with a sexually-transmitted disease.

For example, let’s take a look at chlamydia. According to the CDC, last year we broke the all-time record for the number of new chlamydia cases reported…

Chlamydia cases had dipped in 2013, but last year’s total of more than 1.4 million — or 456 cases per 100,000 — was the highest number of annual cases of any condition ever reported to the CDC.

The chlamydia rate was up almost three percent from 2013, new figures revealed.

The CDC is also reporting that cases of gonorrhea and syphilis are rising as well…

The CDC report revealed gonorrhea cases totaled 350,062, up five percent from 2013, and the most contagious forms of syphilis jumped 15 per cent to 20,000 cases.

What makes these numbers even more heartbreaking is the fact that our young people are being disproportionately hit by these diseases.

Of the 20 million new STD cases each year, Americans from the age of 15 to 24 account for about half of them.

This should not be happening. We have dramatically failed our young people, and the numbers just keep getting worse.

But instead of changing course and trying to do things differently, our entire culture continues to promote casual sex. As I wrote about just recently, the average American spends an average of 293 minutes a day watching television. And these days it is hard to find any show on television that is not talking about sex, and sometimes the commercials are the worst. I get so disgusted when I am trying to watch a football game and a Viagra commercial comes on. The reason I get so disgusted is that I know that millions of little boys are watching the games along with their fathers, and these commercials are communicating things to them that they do not need to know yet.

We need to teach our young people that there are rules, and that there can be very serious consequences for breaking those rules.

Above, I wrote about the latest numbers for chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, but there are other STDs that are raging out of control as well. The following statistics for HBV, genital herpes and HPV come from the American Sexual Health Association…

One out of 20 people in the United States will get infected with hepatitis B (HBV) some time during their lives. Hepatitis B is 100 times more infectious than HIV.
Approximately half of HBV infections are transmitted sexually. HBV is linked to chronic liver disease, including cirrhosis and liver cancer.
It is estimated that as many as one in five Americans have genital herpes, a lifelong (but manageable) infection, yet up to 90 percent of those with herpes are unaware they have it.
With more than 50 million adults in the US with genital herpes and up to 776,000 new infections each year, some estimates suggest that by 2025 up to 40% of all men and half of all women could be infected.
Over 14 million people acquire HPV each year, and by age 50, at least 80 percent of women will have acquired genital HPV infection. Most people with HPV do not develop symptoms.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that we have a massive problem in this country.

But we certainly don’t want to hear about “morality”, do we?

We don’t want it anywhere in our schools, in our courts, in our government or in our entertainment.

We just want to do whatever we want to do, but then we are shocked when we learn that there are very serious consequences for being so reckless.

This STD epidemic is going to continue to rage out of control until we find a solution.

So how do we solve this problem?

Is there any hope that things can be turned around?

Please feel free to tell us what you think by posting a comment below…

(Originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog)

Stephen Hawking: There is no God and the theory of evolution better explains the origin of life

For someone that is supposedly so “brilliant”, Stephen Hawking really doesn’t have a clue. In a recent interview with Spain’s El Mundo, Hawking publicly declared that God doesn’t exist, that he is an atheist, and that science provides a better explanation of where the universe came from than the Bible does. While I certainly respect much of the great work that Hawking has done throughout the years, I don’t think that he has thought through these issues very clearly. As you will see below, it takes a ridiculous amount of blind faith to believe that the theory of evolution is true, and the cold, hard evidence clearly points to a Creator. Unfortunately, to be a respected member of the scientific establishment today one must fully embrace an evolutionary model for the origin of life, and at this point Stephen Hawking has left no doubt as to where he stands.

Somehow most of us have become convinced that it is not “intellectual” to believe that God created all things. And a big reason for this is due to the public pronouncements of big name scientists such as Hawking. The following excerpt comes from an article that was posted on cnet.com, and I was very disappointed when I first read this…

He gave an interview to Spain’s El Mundo in which he expressed his firm belief that el mundo was the work of scientifically explainable phenomena, not of a supreme being.

Hawking said: “Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation.”

I’m not sure whether there was a specific moment in which science overtook the deistic explanation of existence. However, El Mundo pressed him on the suggestion in “A Brief History of Time” that a unifying theory of science would help mankind “know the mind of God.”

Hawking now explained: “What I meant by ‘we would know the mind of God’ is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God. Which there isn’t. I’m an atheist.”

He added: “Religion believes in miracles, but these aren’t compatible with science.”

In the end, Hawking can believe whatever he wants to believe, but he should at least be honest about the fact that he is making a faith choice as well.

You see, the truth is that the theory of evolution is not backed up by hard science. I will go into this much more below. In fact, when you choose to “believe” in evolution, you are doing so in spite of the evidence.

So why would anyone do this?

Why would anyone believe something as ridiculous as the theory of evolution?

Well, in my experience most people believe exactly what they want to believe. And what Stephen Hawking apparently wants to believe is that there is no God and that our existence is some sort of great cosmic accident.

Recently someone asked Coach Dave Daubenmire if he “believed” in evolution, and after reflecting on that question for a while he wrote an entire article in which he shared his thoughts on the matter. The following excerpt is the part that I enjoyed the most…

Why did he ask me if I “believed” in evolution? I thought evolution was, ahem, settled science. Science, I had always been taught, was based on the scientific method and the veracity of the topic was no longer in doubt. Examples began to rumble through my head.

Why has no one ever asked me if I “believed” in gravity? Do you “believe” in darkness? Does one “believe” in grass? Do you “believe” in the wind? Does one “believe” in fire?” Of course not. Seeing is believing, they tell us. Fire proves itself. So does gravity, and wind, and grass. If macro-evolution is true, why did my friend ask me if I “believed” in it?

We are taught that it takes faith to “believe” in God, or angels, or your spouse. But the truth is; faith is required in order to ‘believe” anything. Christianity is a religion that requires faith to believe. So are Hinduism, Buddhism, Wicca, Islam, and Santa Claus.

But evolution and climate change are religions as well. Macro-evolution is a faith-based belief system regarding the origins of the species. Global warming is a faith-based system regarding the ebb and flow of the climate. Macro-evolution and climate change are far less fact-based than a belief in Jesus.

But these days, many prominent religious leaders are caving in to the immense pressure from the scientific community to accept the theory of evolution. For example, Pope Francis has made headlines all over the globe for publicly embracing the Big Bang and the theory of evolution. The following are some of the Pope’s statements that have appeared in newspapers worldwide…

-“When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so.”

-“The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it.”

-“Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”

In 2015, most people consider the Pope to be the number one representative of the Christian faith on the entire planet, and so it is quite alarming that he is making statements such as these.

Other prominent members of the Catholic clergy are making even stronger statements.

For instance, the head of the Vatican Observatory says that a belief in young earth creationism is “almost blasphemous theology”…

As previously reported, earlier this month, Guy Consolmagno with the Vatican Observatory told Australia’s Fairfax Media that young earth creation beliefs are nearly tantamount to blasphemy.

“It’s almost blasphemous theology,” Consolmagno alleged, according to the Brisbane Times. “It’s certainly not the tradition of Catholicism and never has been and it misunderstands what the Bible is and it misunderstands what science is.”

Really?

I simply do not understand how anyone can look at the evidence and come to that sort of conclusion.

Just look at our DNA. It is a self-replicating information system that utilizes a code that is so incredibly complex that we are only just now starting to understand it a little bit. The amount of information that would be contained in just one pinhead of DNA would completely fill a stack of books that could stretch from our planet to the moon about 500 times.

So where did such a complex and remarkably efficient information system come from?

DNA is both a code and a language, and the truth is that codes and languages don’t just pop into existence out of nothing. There is always an intellect behind every code and every language.

So where did DNA come from, and who designed it?

This is just one of the exceedingly important questions that evolutionists do not have an answer for.

For those that are interested in learning more, I would like to share a list of 44 points about the creation vs. evolution debate that I included in a previous article. Unless you have really looked into these things on your own, you may have never encountered some of these points before. The next time that someone tries to convince you that evolution isn’t just a fairy tale for adults, share this list with them…

#1 If the theory of evolution was true, we should have discovered millions upon millions of transitional fossils that show the development of one species into another species. Instead, we have zero.

#2 When Charles Darwin came up with his theory, he admitted that no transitional forms had been found at that time, but he believed that huge numbers certainly existed and would eventually be discovered…

“Lastly, looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking closely together all the species of the same group, must assuredly have existed. But, as by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?”

#3 Even some of the most famous evolutionists in the world acknowledge the complete absence of transitional fossils in the fossil record. For example, Dr. Colin Patterson, former senior paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History and author of “Evolution” once wrote the following…

“I fully agree with your comments about the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them …. I will lay it on the line – there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.”

#4 Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology at Harvard University, once wrote the following about the lack of transitional forms…

“The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.”

#5 Evolutionist Stephen M. Stanley of Johns Hopkins University has also commented on the stunning lack of transitional forms in the fossil record…

“In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another.”

#6 If “evolution” was happening right now, there would be millions of creatures out there with partially developed features and organs. But instead there are none.

#7 If the theory of evolution was true, we should not see a sudden explosion of fully formed complex life in the fossil record. Instead, that is precisely what we find.

#8 Paleontologist Mark Czarnecki, an evolutionist, once commented on the fact that complex life appears very suddenly in the fossil record…

“A major problem in proving the theory has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth’s geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin’s hypothetical intermediate variants – instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God.”

#9 The sudden appearance of complex life in the fossil record is so undeniable that even Richard Dawkins has been forced to admit it…

“It is as though they [fossils] were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. Both schools of thought (Punctuationists and Gradualists) despise so-called scientific creationists equally, and both agree that the major gaps are real, that they are true imperfections in the fossil record. The only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation and both reject this alternative.”

#10 Nobody has ever observed macroevolution take place in the laboratory or in nature. In other words, nobody has ever observed one kind of creature turn into another kind of creature. The entire theory of evolution is based on blind faith.

#11 Evolutionist Jeffrey Schwartz, a professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, openly admits that “the formation of a new species, by any mechanism, has never been observed.”

#12 Even evolutionist Stephen J. Gould of Harvard University has admitted that the record shows that species do not change. The following is how he put it during a lecture at Hobart & William Smith College…

“Every paleontologist knows that most species don’t change. That’s bothersome….brings terrible distress. ….They may get a little bigger or bumpier but they remain the same species and that’s not due to imperfection and gaps but stasis. And yet this remarkable stasis has generally been ignored as no data. If they don’t change, its not evolution so you don’t talk about it.”

#13 Anyone that believes that the theory of evolution has “scientific origins” is fooling themselves. It is actually a deeply pagan religious philosophy that can be traced back for thousands of years.

#14 Anything that we dig up that is supposedly more than 250,000 years old should have absolutely no detectable radiocarbon in it whatsoever. But instead, we find it in everything that we dig up – even dinosaur bones. This is clear evidence that the “millions of years” theory is simply a bunch of nonsense…

It’s long been known that radiocarbon (which should disappear in only a few tens of thousands of years at the most) keeps popping up reliably in samples (like coal, oil, gas, etc.) which are supposed to be ‘millions of years’ old. For instance, CMI has over the years commissioned and funded the radiocarbon testing of a number of wood samples from ‘old’ sites (e.g. with Jurassic fossils, inside Triassic sandstone, burnt by Tertiary basalt) and these were published (by then staff geologist Dr Andrew Snelling) in Creation magazine and Journal of Creation. In each case, with contamination eliminated, the result has been in the thousands of years, i.e. C-14 was present when it ‘shouldn’t have been’. These results encouraged the rest of the RATE team to investigate C-14 further, building on the literature reviews of creationist M.D. Dr Paul Giem.

In another very important paper presented at this year’s ICC, scientists from the RATE group summarized the pertinent facts and presented further experimental data. The bottom line is that virtually all biological specimens, no matter how ‘old’ they are supposed to be, show measurable C-14 levels. This effectively limits the age of all buried biota to less than (at most) 250,000 years.

#15 The odds of even a single sell “assembling itself” by chance are so low that they aren’t even worth talking about. The following is an excerpt from Jonathan Gray’s book entitled “The Forbidden Secret“…

Even the simplest cell you can conceive of would require no less than 100,000 DNA base pairs and a minimum of about 10,000 amino acids, to form the essential protein chain. Not to mention the other things that would also be necessary for the first cell.

Bear in mind that every single base pair in the DNA chain has to have the same molecular orientation (“left-hand” or “right hand”)? As well as that, virtually all the amino acids must have the opposite orientation. And every one must be without error.

“Now,” explained Larry, “to randomly obtain those correct orientations, do you know your chances? It would be 1 chance in 2110,000, or 1 chance in 1033,113!

“To put it another way, if you attempted a trillion, trillion, trillion combinations every second for 15 billion years, the odds you would achieve all the correct orientations would still only be one chance in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion … and the trillions would continue 2755 times!

“It would be like winning more than 4700 state lotteries in a row with a single ticket purchased for each. In other words…impossible.”

#16 How did life learn to reproduce itself? This is a question that evolutionists do not have an answer for.

#17 In 2007, fishermen caught a very rare creature known as a Coelacanth. Evolutionists originally told us that this “living fossil” had gone extinct 70 million years ago. It turns out that they were only off by 70 million years.

#18 According to evolutionists, the Ancient Greenling Damselfly last showed up in the fossil record about 300 million years ago. But it still exists today. So why hasn’t it evolved at all over that time frame?

#19 Darwinists believe that the human brain developed without the assistance of any designer. This is so laughable it is amazing that there are any people out there that still believe this stuff. The truth is that the human brain is amazingly complex. The following is how a PBS documentary described the complexity of the human brain: “It contains over 100 billion cells, each with over 50,000 neuron connections to other brain cells.”

#20 The following is how one evolutionist pessimistically assessed the lack of evidence for the evolution of humanity…

“Even with DNA sequence data, we have no direct access to the processes of evolution, so objective reconstruction of the vanished past can be achieved only by creative imagination.”

#21 Perhaps the most famous fossil in the history of the theory of evolution, “Piltdown Man”, turned out to be a giant hoax.

#22 If the neutron were not about 1.001 times the mass of the proton, all protons would have decayed into neutrons or all neutrons would have decayed into protons, and therefore life would not be possible. How can we account for this?

#23 If gravity was stronger or weaker by the slimmest of margins, then life sustaining stars like the sun could not exist. This would also make life impossible. How can we account for this?

#24 Why did evolutionist Dr. Lyall Watson make the following statement?…

“The fossils that decorate our family tree are so scarce that there are still more scientists than specimens. The remarkable fact is that all of the physical evidence we have for human evolution can still be placed, with room to spare, inside a single coffin!”

#25 Apes and humans are very different genetically. As DarwinConspiracy.com explains, “the human Y chromosome has twice as many genes as the chimpanzee Y chromosome and the chromosome structures are not at all similar.”

#26 How can we explain the creation of new information that is required for one animal to turn into another animal? No evolutionary process has ever been shown to be able to create new biological information. One scientist described the incredible amount of new information that would be required to transform microbes into men this way…

“The key issue is the type of change required — to change microbes into men requires changes that increase the genetic information content, from over half a million DNA ‘letters’ of even the ‘simplest’ self-reproducing organism to three billion ‘letters’ (stored in each human cell nucleus).”

#27 Evolutionists would have us believe that there are nice, neat fossil layers with older fossils being found in the deepest layers and newer fossils being found in the newest layers. This simply is not true at all…

The fossil layers are not found in the ground in the nice neat clean order that evolutionists illustrate them to be in their textbooks. There is not one place on the surface of the earth where you may dig straight down and pass through the fossil layers in the order shown in the textbooks. The neat order of one layer upon another does not exist in nature. The fossil bearing layers are actually found out of order, upside down (backwards according to evolutionary theory), missing (from where evolutionists would expect them to be) or interlaced (“younger” and “older” layers found in repeating sequences). “Out of place” fossils are the rule and not the exception throughout the fossil record.

#28 Evolutionists believe that the ancestors of birds developed hollow bones over thousands of generations so that they would eventually be light enough to fly. This makes absolutely no sense and is beyond ridiculous.

#29 If dinosaurs really are tens of millions of years old, why have scientists found dinosaur bones with soft tissue still in them? The following is from an NBC News report about one of these discoveries…

For more than a century, the study of dinosaurs has been limited to fossilized bones. Now, researchers have recovered 70 million-year-old soft tissue, including what may be blood vessels and cells, from a Tyrannosaurus rex.

#30 Which evolved first: blood, the heart, or the blood vessels for the blood to travel through?

#31 Which evolved first: the mouth, the stomach, the digestive fluids, or the ability to poop?

#32 Which evolved first: the windpipe, the lungs, or the ability of the body to use oxygen?

#33 Which evolved first: the bones, ligaments, tendons, blood supply, or the muscles to move the bones?

#34 In order for blood to clot, more than 20 complex steps need to successfully be completed. How in the world did that process possibly evolve?

#35 DNA is so incredibly complex that it is absolutely absurd to suggest that such a language system could have “evolved” all by itself by accident…

When it comes to storing massive amounts of information, nothing comes close to the efficiency of DNA. A single strand of DNA is thousands of times thinner than a strand of human hair. One pinhead of DNA could hold enough information to fill a stack of books stretching from the earth to the moon 500 times.

Although DNA is wound into tight coils, your cells can quickly access, copy, and translate the information stored in DNA. DNA even has a built-in proofreader and spell-checker that ensure precise copying. Only about one mistake slips through for every 10 billion nucleotides that are copied.

#36 Can you solve the following riddle by Perry Marshall?…

1) DNA is not merely a molecule with a pattern; it is a code, a language, and an information storage mechanism.

2) All codes are created by a conscious mind; there is no natural process known to science that creates coded information.

3) Therefore DNA was designed by a mind.

If you can provide an empirical example of a code or language that occurs naturally, you’ve toppled my proof. All you need is one.

#37 Evolutionists simply cannot explain why our planet is so perfectly suited to support life.

#38 Shells from living snails have been “carbon dated” to be 27,000 years old.

#39 If humans have been around for so long, where are all of the bones and all of the graves? The following is an excerpt from an article by Don Batten…

Evolutionists also claim there was a ‘Stone Age’ of about 100,000 years when between one million and 10 million people lived on Earth. Fossil evidence shows that people buried their dead, often with artefacts—cremation was not practised until relatively recent times (in evolutionary thinking). If there were just one million people alive during that time, with an average generation time of 25 years, they should have buried 4 billion bodies, and many artefacts. If there were 10 million people, it would mean 40 billion bodies buried in the earth. If the evolutionary timescale were correct, then we would expect the skeletons of the buried bodies to be largely still present after 100,000 years, because many ordinary bones claimed to be much older have been found. However, even if the bodies had disintegrated, lots of artefacts should still be found.

#40 Evolutionists claim that just because it looks like we were designed that does not mean that we actually were. They often speak of the “illusion of design”, but that is kind of like saying that it is an “illusion” that a 747 airplane or an Apple iPhone were designed. And of course the human body is far more complex that a 747 or an iPhone.

#41 If you want to be part of the “scientific community” today, you must accept the theory of evolution no matter how absurd it may seem to you. Richard Lewontin of Harvard once made the following comment regarding this harsh reality…

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, . . . in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated commitment to materialism. . . . we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

#42 Time Magazine once made the following statement about the lack of evidence for the theory of evolution…

“Yet despite more than a century of digging, the fossil record remains maddeningly sparse. With so few clues, even a single bone that doesn’t fit into the picture can upset everything. Virtually every major discovery has put deep cracks in the conventional wisdom and forced scientists to concoct new theories, amid furious debate.”

#43 Malcolm Muggeridge, the world famous journalist and philosopher, once made the following statement about the absurdity of the theory of evolution…

“I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it’s been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has.”

#44 In order to believe the theory of evolution, you must have enough blind faith to believe that life just popped into existence from non-life, and that such life just happened to have the ability to take in the nourishment it needed, to expel waste, and to reproduce itself, all the while having everything it needed to survive in the environment in which it suddenly found itself. Do you have that much blind faith?

So what do you believe about the origin of life?

Please feel free to join the debate by posting a comment below…

(Originally published on End of the American Dream)

21 Facts About Depression In America That Will Absolutely Shock You

How can we possibly be so miserably unhappy? For a nation that supposedly “has it all”, we sure are depressed. In America today, suicide rates are soaring, antidepressant use is skyrocketing and virtually every new survey that comes out shows that we are deeply dissatisfied about something. But we live at a time when there are more things to enjoy than ever before. When I was growing up there was only a handful of television channels to choose from, but now there are hundreds. We have more movies than we could ever possibly watch, more books than we could ever possibly read, and the greatest video games ever made are at our fingertips. With all of the entertainment that surrounds us, you would think that Americans would be happier than ever before, and yet we continue to become even more depressed. Everywhere I go, I see people that look like they have had the life completely sucked out of them. So why is this happening? The following are 21 signs that Americans are the unhappiest people in the entire world…

#1 A scientific study that was just released found that U.S. adults are becoming less happy over the years…

“Adults over 30 are less happy than their predecessors,” concludes a study published online Thursday in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science, which examined happiness data from more than 50,000 adults, gleaned from the General Social Survey, carried out by NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan, independent research organization, which has collected information about American adults since 1972.

From 2010 to 2014, adults over 30 had an average happiness score of just 2.18, compared with 2.24 a decade ago. That’s significant considering happiness scores were measured on a tiny scale from just 1 to 3, with 1 being “not too happy” and 3 being “very happy.”

#2 Young people are also becoming increasingly depressed. Just check out what one study conducted at San Diego State University discovered…

Americans are more depressed now than they have been in decades, a recent study has found. San Diego State University (SDSU) psychology professor Jean M. Twenge analyzed data from nearly 7 million adolescents and adults from across the country and found that more people reported symptoms of depression — including sleeplessness and trouble concentrating — compared to the 1980s.

Twenge’s findings show that teenagers in the 2010s experience memory trouble 38 percent more often than their 1980s counterparts. Teens are also 74 percent more likely to have trouble sleeping and twice as likely to see a professional for mental health issues. College students in the study reported feeling overwhelmed by academic and personal demands 50 percent more often than their 1980s counterparts.

#3 Back in 1987, 61.1 percent of all Americans reported being happy at work. Today, 52.3 percent of all Americans say that they are unhappy at work.

#4 A different survey found that 70 percent of all Americans do not “feel engaged or inspired at their jobs”.

#5 One survey of 50-year-old men in the U.S. found that only 12 percent of them said that they were “very happy”.

#6 The number of Americans diagnosed with depression increases by about 20 percent each year.

#7 According to the New York Times, more than 30 million Americans take antidepressants.

#8 Doctors in the United States write more than 250 million prescriptions for antidepressants each year.

#9 The rate of antidepressant use among middle aged women is far higher than for the population as a whole. It is hard to believe, but right now one out of every four women in their 40s and 50s is taking an antidepressant medication.

#10 Compared to children in Europe, children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants.

#11 In America today, there are 60 million people that abuse alcohol and there are 22 million people that use illegal drugs.

#12 America has the highest rate of illegal drug use on the entire planet.

#13 One recent poll found that 71 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction that things are going in this country.

#14 America has the highest divorce rate in the world by a wide margin.

#15 America has the highest percentage of one person households on the entire planet.

#16 100 years ago, 4.52 people were living in the average U.S. household, but now the average U.S. household only consists of 2.59 people.

#17 According to the Pew Research Center, only 51 percent of all American adults are married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all adults in the United States were married.

#18 The suicide rate in the United States is now the highest that it has been in 25 years.

#19 According to one absolutely shocking study, 22 military veterans kill themselves in the United States every single day.

#20 The suicide rate for Americans between the ages of 35 and 64 rose by close to 30 percent between 1999 and 2010. The number of Americans that are killed by suicide now exceeds the number of Americans that die as a result of automobile accidents every year.

#21 The rate of suicide is highest during the holidays that come at the end of the year, and 45 percent of all Americans say that they dread the Christmas season. The following comes from a Psychology Today article…

We are told that Christmas, for Christians, should be the happiest time of year, an opportunity to be joyful and grateful with family, friends and colleagues. Yet, according to the National Institute of Health, Christmas is the time of year that people experience the highest incidence of depression. Hospitals and police forces report the highest incidences of suicide and attempted suicide. Psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals report a significant increase in patients complaining about depression. One North American survey reported that 45% of respondents dreaded the festive season.

So why in the world is this happening?

We have one of the highest standards of living in the world and we are surrounded by massive amounts of entertainment.

Yet we are severely depressed.

And during the “happiest time of the year” we get even more depressed.

Clearly something has gone very wrong.

Even more entertainment is not going to fix us, and neither will more drugging.

So what will finally make us happy?

Please feel free to tell us what you think by posting a comment below…

(Originally published on End of the American Dream)

18 Reasons Why I Don’t Celebrate Halloween

This year, 64 percent of all Americans will celebrate Halloween, but I will not be one of them. For me, it is a wretched, horrible holiday that celebrates the darkest side of humanity, and it is deeply rooted in ancient pagan traditions that would get people thrown in prison if they attempted to duplicate them today. With each passing year, the sexually suggestive costumes being marketed to our young girls become even skankier, the horror movies become darker and even more demonic, and the number of Americans that participate in occult ceremonies just continues to grow. In fact, it has been estimated that the number of self-identified witches in the United States is doubling every 30 months. Those that are deeply into the occult take this holiday very seriously, and the dark forces that they are dealing with are very real. So no, I don’t want anything to do with this festival of death. In no particular order, the following are 18 reasons why I don’t celebrate Halloween…

#1 I don’t want anyone in my family to observe a holiday that celebrates death, witchcraft and the occult. This year, millions of Americans will participate in activities that could potentially open up a door for demonic activity.

#2 The average American spends $74.34 on the holiday. I would rather save the money.

#3 Millions of women use Halloween as an excuse to dress like street walkers, and millions of men use Halloween as an excuse to act like sexual predators.

#4 Even little girls as young as three years old are being dressed up in sexually provocative costumes. What kind of message does this send to them?

#5 Dressing up little children as ghosts, demons and vampires is not healthy for them. In recent years, there has been a trend to make costumes for children as hellish as possible.

#6 Originally, costumes were worn on October 31st “to change the personality of the wearer to allow for communication with the spirit world“. For 11 years in a row, dressing up as a witch has been the number one costume choice for adults in the United States.

#7 In ancient Britain, the festival known as Samhain was celebrated on October 31st. It was supposedly a day when dead souls would revisit their old homes. Personally, I don’t want anything to do with contacting the souls of the dead.

#8 According to the History Channel, Samhain was also the day when the Druids “gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities”.

#9 As I have written about previously, the fastest growing religion in America still practices a holiday known as “Samhain” to this very day.

#10 According to Wiccans, Halloween is the time when the veil between the living and the dead is considered to be the thinnest. They believe that on this day their god “dies” and is reborn every year on the Winter Solstice. This year the winter solstice falls on December 22nd.

#11 In ancient times, the resurrection of the sun god required human and animal sacrifice. The following is what occult expert Bill Schnoebelen says that the Druids would do at this time of the year…

Druids worshiped the sun god, called by names like Bel (Ba’al?) or Chrom. On October 31, they believed that he died and went into the kingdom of the dead, Anwynn. The purpose of Samhain was to insure his return. Even witches admit this involved human sacrifice.

Both animal and human blood were believed to be needed to resurrect Bel on Samhain. Human blood was believed to open the gates of Anwynn and released the spirits for a night. Thus, October 31 came to be associated with ghosts. This is not just history. Samhain is still celebrated by Pagans and is the most solemn ceremony on their “religious calendar”.

#12 To this day, animal torture and sacrifice is still practiced on Halloween by occultists. Many animal shelters will not adopt out black cats during the month of October for this very reason.

#13 In the early seventh century, a Catholic Pope known as Gregory the First decided that the best approach to ensure the continued spread of Catholicism was to “christianize” existing pagan holidays and practices…

As a result of their efforts to wipe out “pagan” holidays, such as Samhain, the Christians succeeded in effecting major transformations in it. In 601 A.D. Pope Gregory the First issued a now famous edict to his missionaries concerning the native beliefs and customs of the peoples he hoped to convert. Rather than try to obliterate native peoples’ customs and beliefs, the pope instructed his missionaries to use them: if a group of people worshipped a tree, rather than cut it down, he advised them to consecrate it to Christ and allow its continued worship.

#14 The tradition of “trick-or-treating” was one of the existing pagan traditions that was later “Christianized”…

The idea of trick-or-treating is further related to the ghosts of the dead in pagan, and even Catholic, history. For example, among the ancient Druids, “The ghosts that were thought to throng about the houses of the living were greeted with a banquet-laden table. At the end of the feast, masked and costumed villagers representing the souls of the dead paraded to the outskirts of town leading the ghosts away.”

As already noted, Halloween was thought to be a night when mischievous and evil spirits roamed freely. As in modern poltergeist lore, mischievous spirits could play tricks on the living—so it was advantageous to “hide” from them by wearing costumes. Masks and costumes were worn to either scare away the ghosts or to keep from being recognized by them

#15 The tradition of carving out a “Jack-O-Lantern” also comes from paganism. The following comes from wicca.com…

Turnips were hollowed out and carved to look like protective spirits, for this was a night of magic and chaos. The Wee Folke became very active, pulling pranks on unsuspecting humans. Traveling after dark was not advised.

And as Bill Schnoebelen has noted, pumpkins eventually replaced turnips, but the meaning remained the same…

Here it’s a pumpkin, but in Europe it was often a turnip, or a skull with a candle in it. This serves two symbols, 1) the lord of the Dead, a “god” just like a Buddha – in short, an idol. 2) The fearsome face represented the god, Samhain, who would drive off less powerful demons that night. The lights in the Jack-o-Lantern symbolize the “faery fires” or “Will’o the Wisps” which were believed to be the lost souls flitting through the night. They also hearken back to the huge Samhain “balefires” which were lit to help conjure back the god from the darkness.

#16 On all Satanic holy days, there are children that get ritually abused. This has been documented repeatedly, and yet most people (including most Christians) don’t want to hear about it.

#17 For Satanists, Halloween is one of the most important celebrations of the year. On page 96 of the Satanic Bible, Anton LaVey wrote the following…

“After one’s own birthday, the two major Satanic holidays are Walpurgisnacht (May 1st) and Halloween.”

#18 The Scriptures are very clear about this sort of thing. Deuteronomy 18:9-13 says the following: “When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults with the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord”.

So what about you?

Will you and your family celebrate Halloween this year?

Please feel free to participate in the discussion by posting a comment below…

(Originally published on End of the American Dream)

America Looks A Lot Like Nazi Germany Did Just Prior To World War II

Once upon a time America fought a great war to rid the world of the Nazis, but now we have become just like them. In fact, I would venture to say that the Nazification of the United States is pretty much complete. As you will see below, we have a heavily socialized economy where tax rates are out of control and lots of freebies are given out just like the Nazis did. And just like the Nazis, our society has become highly militarized and our government has become increasingly obsessed with watching, tracking, monitoring and controlling the general population. But more than anything else, all of the pageantry and beauty in our society masks an evil which has grown to a level that is almost unspeakable. The other day, my wife and I were watching some footage of the beautiful parades and celebrations that were held in Germany before World War II, and they certainly were very impressive. But under the surface, a great evil was growing. Just because something happens behind closed doors does not make it okay, and just like the Nazis, our society is about to learn an exceedingly painful lesson in that regard.

Let’s start out by talking about the economy. Most people tend to regard the Nazis as “far right”, but the truth is that they were socialists. By heavily taxing and spending, the Nazis were able to temporarily restore economic prosperity after the great economic crisis that occurred under the Weimar Republic, and this helped fuel their wild popularity. The following comes from Wikipedia…

In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending and a mixed economy. Extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of Autobahns (high speed highways). The return to economic stability boosted the regime’s popularity.

Just like the Democrats of today, most people don’t consider the Nazis to have been socialists, but that is precisely what they were. I think that former game show host Chuck Woolery nailed it with some of his recent public statements…

Chuck Woolery, perhaps best known for being the host of the show “Love Connection” from 1982-94, also frequently takes to Twitter to express political viewpoints. In a recent series of tweets Woolery, 74, offered his opinion on politics, the size of government, and the political nature of the Nazi party:

“Nazi is described as a right wing organization, Yet their were Socialists [sic]. They were left. But Chuck. But My BUTT.”

“National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Nazi Party. Hitler. Need I go on?”

“Maybe better. Democrats don’t value the country. They value the power of Government. There is a difference ya know.”

I knew there was a reason why I always liked that guy.

Just like Barack Obama and the Democrats, the Nazis loved to give out free stuff. Kitty Werthmann was a child in Austria at the time the Nazis took over, and her description of the freebies the Nazis were handing out sounds very much like what the Democrats want to do today…

Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families. All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.

I like free stuff too, but in the end someone always has to pay for all of that free stuff. According to Kitty Werthmann, “our tax rates went up to 80% of our income“, and in America we are moving in the same direction.

In the United States today, when you add up all federal taxes, all state taxes, all local taxes, all property taxes and all sales taxes, there are some Americans that actually pay more than 50 percent of their incomes in taxes.

Somehow we still have the audacity to claim that we are not socialists even though that is exactly what we have become.

And the Germans had their own version of Obamacare too. The following is more eyewitness testimony from Kitty Werthmann…

Before Hitler, we had very good medical care. Many American doctors trained at the University of Vienna . After Hitler, health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full. If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.

There is no way that you can get around it. The Nazis were never on “the far right”. The were always leftists, and they always hated capitalsim. National Socialist theologian Gregor Strasser once made the following statement…

We National Socialists are enemies, deadly enemies, of the present capitalist system with its exploitation of the economically weak … and we are resolved under all circumstances to destroy this system.

Not even Barack Obama or Bernie Sanders would make such an extreme statement today.

And like the Nazis, our society has become highly militarized.

Just prior to World War II, the Germans probably had the most powerful military on the entire planet, and they loved to use that military to push other countries around. They stunned the entire world when they swept through Poland, and the lightning speed with which they defeated France changed the way war is waged forever.

But just like the leftists in our own nation, the Nazis definitely did not want the general population to be armed. Kitty Werthmann remembers very well what happened in Austria under the Nazis…

Next came gun registration. People were getting injured by guns. Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns. Most citizens were law abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms. Not long after-wards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns. The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.

And just like the leftists of today, the Germans were extremely suspicious of individual liberty and freedom. The secret police were everywhere, and anyone that was even suspected of anti-government activity was monitored very closely.

Sadly, we are becoming just like the Nazis in this regard, only now we have the technological capability to take things so much farther. Government control freaks are systematically watching us, tracking us, recording our phone calls and monitoring our emails. It has gotten so bad that even 64 percent of all reporters believe that the government is spying on them. We spy on our enemies, we spy on our friends (just ask the French and the Germans about this) and we even spy on the little old lady down the street.

We have been sold the lie that we have to give up our privacy and our liberty in exchange for security.

It is the same lie that the Nazis told.

But perhaps our greatest similarity to the Nazi regime of the 1930s is our lust for blood.

What the Nazis did behind closed doors was so horrific that it is hard to even speak about it. Once the Holocaust was revealed, the world should have never allowed crimes against humanity like that to ever happen again.

But they are happening.

They are happening behind closed doors in America today, and most Americans are perfectly okay with this.

In this country, millions of babies are being systematically murdered and their organs are being harvested. Those organs are then sold off to the highest bidder and they are ultimately used in extremely bizarre scientific experiments.

In recent months these crimes have been put on display for all the world to see, and yet the American people have not responded with outrage. In fact, only 29 percent of Americans even want to cut off the hundreds of millions of dollars that Planned Parenthood is getting from the federal government every year.

Do you know what that 29 percent figure tells me?

It tells me that America is done.

America is finished.

And it turns out that Hitler was actually a huge fan of the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger. As I have written about previously, it was Sanger that once said the following…

“The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”

Hitler echoed this sentiment when he penned the following in Mein Kampf…

“The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective offspring. . . represents the most humane act of mankind.”

Of course those on the left are going to get very upset by all of this, and I am sure that some of them will leave some very nasty comments following this article.

But the truth is the truth.

And it isn’t just Democrats – most Republicans in Congress are in the exact same boat too.

If we don’t want to be like the Nazis, we should stop acting like them, and that includes not pushing Christianity out of every area of public life. The following information was uncovered by author Bruce Walker, the author of “The Swastika Against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity“…

The Nazi tract Gott und Volk was distributed in 1941, and it describes the life cycle of German youth in the future, who would: “With parties and gifts the youth will be led painlessly from one faith to the other and will grow up without ever having heard of the Sermon on the Mount or the Golden Rule, to say nothing of the Ten Commandments… The education of the youth is to be confined primarily by the teacher, the officer, and the leaders of the party. The priests will die out. They have estranged the youth from the Volk. Into their places will step the leaders. Not deputies of God. But anyway the best Germans. And how shall we train our children? Thus, as though they had never heard of Christianity!”

Our nation is falling apart because we have rejected the values and the principles that were handed down to us by our forefathers.

We have embraced the same lies that the Nazis embraced, and if we don’t turn around we will experience a similar fate.

I think that the following excerpt from a recent RT editorial sums things up pretty well…

The United States is in decline. While not all major shocks to the system will be devastating, when the right one comes along, the outcome may be dramatic.

Not all explosives are the same. We all know you have to be careful with dynamite. Best to handle it gently and not smoke while you’re around it.

Semtex is different. You can drop it. You can throw it. You can put it in the fire. Nothing will happen. Nothing until you put the right detonator in it, that is.

To me, the US – and most of the supposedly free West – increasingly looks like a truck being systematically filled with Semtex.

But it’s easy to counter cries of alarm with the fact that the truck is stable – because it’s true: you can hurl more boxes into the back without any real danger. Absent the right detonator, it is no more dangerous than a truckload of mayonnaise.

But add the right detonator and you’re just one click away from complete devastation.

Absent a major crisis, the United States may be able to keep going down this same road for a few years more.

But I wouldn’t count on it.

We have willingly chosen to tear down and destroy everything that our forefathers built, and we were convinced that we had a better way.

Now decades of incredibly foolish decisions are starting to catch up with us, and yet we still persist in our stubbornness.

So where do we go from here?

What will the fate of America be?

Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…

(Originally published on End of the American Dream)

36 Facts That Prove That America Is An ‘Exceptional’ Nation

Is the United States an “exceptional” nation? Well, the facts show that we are, but not for the reasons that you may think. Now that it is election season, we have all sorts of politicians running around proclaiming that America is the greatest nation on the entire planet. And just this week, Warren Buffett stated that “America’s great now — it’s never been greater“. But is it actually true? Is the United States still a great nation? I would submit that the numbers suggest otherwise. I love America, and in my opinion there is not much hope for us until we are willing to admit to ourselves just how far we have fallen. The following are 36 facts that prove that the United States is an “exceptional” nation…

#1 According to a brand new report that was just released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has the fattest population in the entire industrialized world by a wide margin.

#2 That same report from the OECD also found that we are number one in child obesity. In fact, at 38 percent our rate of childhood obesity is even higher than our overall rate of obesity.

#3 According to USA Today, the obesity rate in the United States has more than doubled over the past 25 years.

#4 The Washington Post has reported that Americans spend an average of 293 minutes a day watching television, which is the most in the world by a wide margin. And as I have discussed previously, more than 90 percent of the “programming” that we absorb is created by just 6 enormously powerful media corporations.

#5 One study found that the average American spends more than 10 hours a day using some sort of electronic device.

#6 By the time an American child reaches the age of 18, that child will have seen approximately 40,000 murders on television.

#7 The average young American will spend 10,000 hours playing video games before the age of 21.

#8 Out of 22 countries studied by the Educational Testing Service, Americans were dead last in tech proficiency, dead last in numeracy and only two countries performed worse than us when it came to literacy proficiency.

#9 In more than half of all U.S. states, the highest paid public employee in the state is a football coach.

#10 The percentage of wealth owned by middle class adults is lower in North America than it is anywhere else in the world.

#11 Almost half of all Americans (47 percent) do not put a single penny out of their paychecks into savings.

#12 It turns out that Americans are very good at locking people away in prison. At 716 per 100,000 members of the population, the United States has the highest incarceration rate on the entire planet by a very wide margin.

#13 Approximately one-fourth of the entire global prison population is in the United States.

#14 In 2014, police in the United States killed 1,100 people. During that same year, police in Canada killed 14 people, police in China killed 12 people and police in Germany didn’t kill anyone at all.

#15 One recently published study found that one out of every six young Americans has stolen something during the past year.

#16 There are more car thefts in the United States than anywhere else in the world by far.

#17 According to Fox News, approximately 70 percent of married men in the United States admit to having cheated on their wives.

#18 Americans spend far more on health care than anyone else in the world, and yet we only rank 26th in life expectancy and our entire health care system has been transformed into a giant money making scam.

#19 According to a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic, nearly 70 percent of all Americans are on at least one prescription drug, and an astounding 20 percent of all Americans are on at least five prescription drugs.

#20 According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 31 percent of all food in the United States gets wasted. In case you were wondering, that amounts to approximately 133 billion pounds of food a year.

#21 In 2013, women earned 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees that were awarded that year in the United States.

#22 A survey conducted by the Barna Group discovered that 77 percent of Christian men in America in the 18 to 30-year-old age bracket view pornography at least monthly.

#23 There are more than 4 million adult websites on the Internet, and they get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined.

#24 70 percent of Americans do not “feel engaged or inspired at their jobs”.

#25 When LBJ’s “War on Poverty” began, less than 10 percent of all U.S. children were growing up in single parent households. Today, that number has skyrocketed to 33 percent.

#26 In 1950, less than 5 percent of all babies in America were born to unmarried parents. Today, that number is over 40 percent.

#27 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are 20 million new cases of sexually-transmitted disease in the United States each year.

#28 Today, the United States has the highest STD infection rate in the entire industrialized world.

#29 According to a survey that was just released within the last 30 days, only 29 percent of Americans want to cut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood even after all of the shocking undercover videos that were released this year.

#30 America has the highest rate of illegal drug use on the entire planet.

#31 Doctors in the United States write more than 250 million prescriptions for antidepressants each year.

#32 One survey of 50-year-old men in the U.S. found that only 12 percent of them said that they were “very happy”.

#33 Every single year, the United States has the largest trade deficit in the entire world by a very wide margin. But most Americans still don’t seem concerned that thousands of businesses and millions of good jobs have been leaving our country.

#34 As you read this article, there are 102.6 million working age Americans that do not have a job.

#35 We are supposed to have a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”, but only 25 percent of all Americans know how long U.S. Senators are elected for (6 years), and only 20 percent of all Americans know how many U.S. senators there are in total.

#36 On average, we have been stealing more than 100 million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day since Barack Obama entered the White House.

(Originally published on End of the American Dream)