NBC Nightly News, however, has advised viewers to get ready for 1998-QE2′s imminent fly-by:

Circle May 31st on the calendar just to be on the safe side.

…

While scientists think it’s a safe distance – in other words what could go wrong – it’s probably best to stock up on canned goods none the less.

Video via The Daily Sheeple:

(Alternate video link via Rense.com)

As noted by Steve Quayle earlier this week, four massive fireballs within a 24 hours period were spotted over different parts of the United States according to the American Meteor Society. And just last week we received reports from NASA that they recorded the largest meteorite strike on the moon in about a decade – an event that was coordinated with parallel strikes on earth during the same time period.

It’s clear that 1998-QE2 will miss earth by a fairly significant distance, so there is no threat from a direct impact. But, with our limited ability to monitor the skies for asteroid threats, it’s theoretically possible, though not confirmed, that there are companion objects moving along with 1998-QE2.

Emergency planners have been simulating the possibility of an asteroid strike on earth in recent years, so it’s not out of the question that such a scenario could unfold in the future.

Chances are it won’t happen on May 31, 2013. But, of course, were a massive asteroid headed our way it would, in all likelihood, be kept a secret from the citizens of earth until the last minute.

Whatever the case, it’s always good practice to have some canned goods on hand, along with other preparedness items that include reserve water considerations, self defense armaments, and other critical supplies.

The foundation of the Soviet model of trade and investment was centralization under the guise of “universal public ownership”. The entire goal of communism in general was not to give more social and political power to the people, but to extinguish alternative options and focus power into the hands of a select few. The process used to reach this end result can vary, but the goal always remains the same. In most cases, such centralization begins with economic hegemony, and it is in our fiscal structure that we have the means to see the future. Sovietization in our financial life will inevitably lead to sovietization in our political life.

Does the U.S. economy’s path resemble the Soviet template exactly? No. And I’m sure the very suggestion will make the average unaware free market evangelical froth at the mouth. However, as I plan to show, the parallels in our fundamentals are disturbing; the reality is that true free markets in America died a long time ago.

The Tyranny Of Planned Economy

The characteristics of a free market society defy the use of centralized planning. Adam Smith’s original concept of free market trade stood as an antithesis to what was then referred to as “mercantilism,” a select few “joint stock companies” (corporations) monopolizing production while using government ties to destroy any new competition. Unfortunately, there are to this day economists and politicians who believe that corporate centralization is a “natural” function of a free market. In reality, corporate monopolies are an unnatural creation of collusion between governments and big-money interests designed to suffocate any entrepreneurship outside of their sphere of influence. Over time, as we now see in the United States today, government power and corporate power begin to hybridize, until one can barely be distinguished from the other.

The bottom line is that you cannot have planned structures, monopolized production or controlled capital flow within an economy and still claim it to be a “free market. There are no exceptions to this rule.

The Soviet system was the ultimate in centralization. Every aspect of financial life was dictated by the communist government, from industrial input and output to investment to food production and rationing to wages and retail prices. Some people might argue that this structure is a far cry from what we now have in the United States, but let’s look at the fundamentals.

Controlled Money Creation

One of the primary tenets of The Communist Manifesto was the creation of a central bank meant to keep tight controls over currency issuance. The existence of a central bank immediately disrupts any chance of a true free market. Central banking without competition allows an oligarchy, whether corporate or political or a meshing of the two, to manipulate interest rates as well as adjust prices through inflation. Lending standards (which the central bank determines arbitrarily) built on fractional reserve banking opens the door to murky debt instruments and toxic financial products that are further used to either fabricate a “high” standard of living (as we saw in the U.S. in the 90s and early 2000s) or execute a bubble implosion causing a lower standard of living (as the U.S. is experiencing today).

Since the establishment of the Federal Reserve through subversive collusion between banking interests and corrupt politicians in 1913, America has not had a free market system. From that point forward, every boom and bust, every interest rate disaster, every inflationary increase in prices has been scientifically engineered.

Dominance Of Industry

Soviet controls on industrial output are legendary. Every part of the resource allocation process became subject to bureaucracy, and this led to stunted manufacturing growth as well as a culture of misrepresented economic data. In the United States, the establishment has taken a slightly different approach but with the same end result.

Heavy taxation on business ventures within the U.S. against entrepreneurs not lucky enough to run in elitists circles has erased incentives for manufacturing experiments within our borders. In the meantime, members of the corporate glee club receive government subsidization while they simultaneously outsource industrial projects to Third World nations. Controlled industry within communist Russia was meant to force the population to depend upon the government for every means of survival. In the United States, dependency on government has been replaced by interdependency on the globalized model in general. Necessities are now compartmentalized, and only select international businesses with cooperation from government have the ability to bring all the pieces together to keep our domestic economy running smoothly. Our society has been so distanced from self-sufficiency that many people now consider the globalist dynamic indispensable.

The next step in this degradation of free market industry is the introduction of “public works projects” by the federal government, which gives the illusion that job creation through centralization is possible.  This is the same strategy used in the Soviet Union and to this day, socialists still argue that the communist design for industrial expansion was “effective”.  In truth, the soviet public works plan with all its trains and transits and bridges and buildings was an absolute failure, as the collapse of the country made clear.  Tax funded infrastructure is no replacement for free market invention, and at bottom, no public works enterprise can be undertaken without the government first stealing capital from one area in order to fund another.  Governments can never and will never create wealth or jobs.  They can only present the semblance of economic progress while siphoning wealth away from private citizens.

Bureaucracy And Food Production

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations, based on dubious junk science and often instituted on high without congressional oversight, further erode business possibilities, especially for young companies as well as private agriculture, while giving free reign to elitist entities like Monsanto, an organization the government actually PROTECTS through specialized legislation making it nearly immune to civil litigation.

While farms in the United States are not exactly “controlled” by the Federal government in the Soviet sense, many of them are subsidized through welfare on the condition that they grow only particular kinds of crops, raise particular animals or grow nothing at all. This subsidization is an indirect form of price control, creating engineered scarcity or abundance. At the same time, agricultural empires like Monsanto make private farm ownership increasingly difficult by using their government protection to harass and squeeze out independent food producers.

This destabilization of private resource management by common citizens has culminated in the passage of President Barack Obama’s executive order National Defense Resource Preparedness, which allows under a “national emergency” (which the President can declare for any reason) the confiscation of any and all private resources, including farms and businesses, to be redistributed by the government to ensure security conditions. This is the Stalinist model, pure and simple.

Centralized Control Of Investment

We now know that since at least 2008, the U.S. stock market, often presented by the mainstream as a paragon of free market prowess, has actually been propped up and inflated by Federal Reserve fiat. Both former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and current branch head Richard Fisher have openly admitted in separate news interviews that the central bank spends considerable energy in “artificially sustaining” equity markets. This has been done, I suspect, with full knowledge of the U.S. Treasury and the Obama Administration.

The Soviet model for investment was to remove all uncertainties from their domestic markets, often in the name of preventing manipulation by “speculators.” The speculator rationale was generally a distraction away from the attempt to dictate the natural forces of supply and demand. The idea was that if the government could dismiss legitimate demand or lack of demand or hide excess supply or lack of supply, the perception of a balanced economy could be conjured for the population. This led to strict redirection of capital to areas where manipulation was needed to artificially pump up (or deflate) a particular part of the economy. The government became the sole investor of the Soviet system and, thus, the sole determinant of the success or failure of any particular market.

This is EXACTLY what is going on in America today, in what mainstream economists now call “the new normal”. Federal Reserve fiat is being printed and dumped into every financial mechanism that supposedly maintains our country’s fiscal health, including stocks, Treasuries and municipals, while trade volume remains low and private investment disappears. The Federal government now owes its very existence to the continued support of central bank dollars, and the Dow Jones does as well. If this is not the Soviet ideal, then I don’t know what is.

Labor Oppression, Dismal Living Standards And Government Dependency

Poverty levels within the United States are at record highs. Nearly 50 million Americans are now dependent on government-subsidized food stamps for their survival. Nearly 100 million Americans receive welfare (or Social Security) in one form or another from the establishment. That is almost one-third of our entire population that relies on the system for at least a part of their sustainment. If Obamacare is fully realized, millions more Americans will also be conditioned to become dependent on government-designated healthcare providers. The point is not to pass judgment on those people who get money or services from the government, only to make clear our progression away from freedom and into centralized servitude.

For a Soviet structure to thrive, poverty among common citizens has to be institutionalized. Dependency requires a constant state of desperation. In America, this has been accomplished through a combination of inflated prices and reduced wages in conjunction with the destruction of labor options.

At the height of the communist machine in Russia, employment was ample; but the kind of employment one could apply for was dependent on bureaucratic red tape and availability based on a worker’s record. Only the academic “elite” within the government-run cesspools of Soviet universities and military schools had their choice of employment; even then, they were often pressured into particular specialized fields, depending on the kind of labor the state needed done at that particular time.

In the United States anyone can certainly aspire to do whatever job he hopes to do. But again, options have been removed economically; and the same academic elitism pervasive in Soviet Union labor markets exists in America today. In a recent installment of his weekly radio show,New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was better for “so-so” high school students to pursue a career in plumbing rather than go to college.

Though I rarely agree with Bloomberg on anything, my initial reaction was surprise at his willingness to steer American youth away from university indoctrination centers. However, upon further examination, it became clear that Bloomberg was not trying to save the next generation time and money. Instead, he is promoting a shift in the labor dynamic of the U.S. economy toward a Soviet-style foundation. Bloomberg knows well that the U.S. labor market will never return to its former glory, partly because he is a supporter of the globalist policies that ruined our economy in the first place. Instead of suggesting ways to reverse the trend of progressive poverty and the lack of high-end jobs that engender ingenuity and invention, elitists like Bloomberg are saying “forget your dreams and get used to being a drone.”

In a 70% service and retail economy, where job availability is increasingly degraded and independent business is discouraged, Americans will have two choices:  Excel in the world of federally funded and propagandized education and sell your soul just for a chance at obtaining a professional career in a field of influence, or, settle for the leftovers.  Modern socialists often sing the praises of the soviet educational model for raising the literacy rates of once agricultural and isolated people to 98%, but what they fail to mention is that this literacy was only encouraged in order to create a more efficient servant class that was easier to propagandize.  The U.S. is moving into a similar paradigm.  For some people, being a plumber is a fine thing; but it should not be the only thing. In a true free market, a smart man can make his own way, even if he does not conform to the ideologies of the educational racket. In a Sovietized market, a smart man is prohibited from accomplishing anything unless he conforms to the ideologies of the educational racket.

Some people may respond that the centralization conspiracy within the American economy is an obvious thing today, and that there is little need to expose it any further.  I would point out that centralization is not the only issue here; the guidebook by which that centralization is being implemented is also important.  This has all been done before on the other side of the world only decades ago, and the end result was a horrifying cascade of social enslavement and mechanically inclined death.

In the end, the Soviet economy was so utterly fraudulent that the final breakdown of the system came as a complete surprise to many in political and economic fields of the era.  This is what happens when governments control all source data for financial statistics; transparency dies and collapse creeps in. Centralization is an absolute affront to the natural laws of supply and demand and an oppressive hindrance to the innovation that humanity thrives on. Such systems require constant theft from the populace in the form of reduced employment, reduced wages, reduced resources, increased taxes, increased price controls and a highly ignorant citizenry in order to function even for a short time. Sadly, the United States is well on its way in all of these areas, emulating a poisonous fiscal system and lending itself to a global economic tyranny in which all of us work much harder, for much less, and all for a government that seeks to use our very labor against us.

You can contact Brandon Smith at:  brandon@alt-market.com

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But most Americans are only focused on the short-term because the mainstream media is only focused on the short-term.  Things are good this week and things were good last week, so there is nothing to worry about, right?

Unfortunately, economic reality is not going to change even if all of us try to ignore it.  Those that are willing to take an honest look at what is coming down the road are very troubled.  For example, Bill Gross of PIMCO says that his firm sees “bubbles everywhere”…

We see bubbles everywhere, and that is not to be dramatic and not to suggest they will pop immediately. I just suggested in the bond market with a bubble in treasuries and bubble in narrow credit spreads and high-yield prices, that perhaps there is a significant distortion there. Having said that, it suggests that as long as the FED and Bank of Japan and other Central Banks keep writing checks and do not withdraw, then the bubble can be supported as in blowing bubbles. They are blowing bubbles. When that stops there will be repercussions.

And unfortunately, it is not just the United States that has a bubble economy.  In fact, the gigantic financial bubble over in Japan may burst before our own financial bubble does.  The following is from a recent article by Graham Summers…

First and foremost, Japan is the second largest bond market in the world. If Japan’s sovereign bonds continue to fall, pushing rates higher, then there has been a tectonic shift in the global financial system. Remember the impact that Greece had on asset prices? Greece’s bond market is less than 3% of Japan’s in size.

For multiple decades, Japanese bonds have been considered “risk free.” As a result of this, investors have been willing to lend money to Japan at extremely low rates. This has allowed Japan’s economy, the second largest in the world, to putter along marginally.

So if Japanese bonds begin to implode, this means that:

1)   The second largest bond market in the world is entering a bear market (along with commensurate liquidations and redemptions by institutional investors around the globe).

2)   The second largest economy in the world will collapse (along with the impact on global exports).

Both of these are truly epic problems for the financial system.

And of course the entire global financial system is a giant bundle of debt, risk and leverage at this point.  We have never seen anything like this in world history.  When you step back and take a good, hard look at the numbers, they truly are staggering.  The following statistics are from one of my previous articles entitled “Why Is The World Economy Doomed? The Global Financial Pyramid Scheme By The Numbers“…

-$70,000,000,000,000 - The approximate size of total world GDP.

-$190,000,000,000,000 - The approximate size of the total amount of debt in the entire world.  It has nearly doubled in size over the past decade.

-$212,525,587,000,000 - According to the U.S. government, this is the notional value of the derivatives that are being held by the top 25 banks in the United States.  But those banks only have total assets of about 8.9 trillion dollars combined.  In other words, the exposure of our largest banks to derivatives outweighs their total assets by a ratio of about 24 to 1.

-$600,000,000,000,000 to $1,500,000,000,000,000 - The estimates of the total notional value of all global derivatives generally fall within this range.  At the high end of the range, the ratio of derivatives to global GDP is more than 21 to 1.

The financial meltdown that happened back in 2008 should have been a wake up call for the nations of the world.  They should have corrected the mistakes that happened so that nothing like that would ever happen again.  Unfortunately, nothing was fixed.  Instead, our politicians and the central bankers became obsessed with reinflating the system.  They piled up even more debt, recklessly printed tons of money and kicked the can down the road for a few years.  In the process, they made our long-term problems even worse.  The following is a recent quote from John Williams of shadowstats.com…

The economic and systemic solvency crises of the last eight years continue. There never was an actual recovery following the economic downturn that began in 2006 and collapsed into 2008 and 2009. What followed was a protracted period of business stagnation that began to turn down anew in second- and third-quarter 2012. The official recovery seen in GDP has been a statistical illusion generated by the use of understated inflation in calculating key economic series (see Public Comment on Inflation). Nonetheless, given the nature of official reporting, the renewed downturn likely will gain recognition as the second-dip in a double- or multiple-dip recession.

What continues to unfold in the systemic and economic crises is just an ongoing part of the 2008 turmoil. All the extraordinary actions and interventions bought a little time, but they did not resolve the various crises. That the crises continue can be seen in deteriorating economic activity and in the panicked actions by the Federal Reserve, where it proactively is monetizing U.S. Treasury debt at a pace suggestive of a Treasury that is unable to borrow otherwise.

And there are already lots of signs that the next economic downturn is rapidly approaching.

For example, corporate revenues are falling at Wal-Mart, Proctor and Gamble, Starbucks, AT&T, Safeway, American Express and IBM.

Would revenues at Wal-Mart be falling if the economy was getting better?

U.S. jobless claims hit a six week high last week.  We aren’t in the danger zone yet, but once they hit 400,000 that will be a major red flag.

And even though we are still in the “good times” relatively speaking, the federal government is already talking about tightening welfare programs.  In fact, there are proposals in Congress right now to make significant cuts to the food stamp program.

If food stamps and other welfare programs get cut, that is going to make a lot of people very, very angry.  And that anger and frustration will get even worse when the next economic downturn strikes and millions of people start losing their jobs and their homes.

What we are witnessing right now is the calm before the storm.  Let us hope that it lasts for as long as possible so that we can have more time to prepare.

Unfortunately, this bubble of false hope will not last forever.  At some point it will end, and then the pain will begin.

Michael T. Snyder is a graduate of the University of Florida law school and he worked as an attorney in the heart of Washington D.C. for a number of years. Today, Michael is best known for his work as the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog. If you want to know what things in America are going to look like in a few years read his new book The Beginning of the End.

One of the most powerful tools in the arsenal of the grass roots food freedom fight is social media. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and many more networks allow people to instantly connect and provide a platform for information to be passed on exponentially. Facebook and Google are the two biggest websites in the entire world, and their reach is nearly unlimited.

Last week, the Monsanto Company made it very clear that they were under the gun via social media, and they went on the defense, weakly claiming that those who object with their toxic seeds and deadly farming methods were “elitist,” thereby attempting to undermine us as snobbish people who don’t see the big picture and who don’t care about world hunger.

This week, they’ve upped their game. Mysterious things have been occurring on the social networks: posts have disappeared, some posts are hidden from the timelines of readers, and trolls abound on pages promoting this weekend’s March Against Monsanto, happening worldwide on May 25.

Like any cornered rat, the leviathan seed company can see the very large threat coming their way, and it appears that they are pulling out all the stops to fight as dirty as they can. But the movement against the company is so powerful, that despite paid-off politicians and billions of dollars in the war chest, Monsanto knows that they’ve been outmatched. What we’re seeing now are the last, desperate attempts to keep the general public from learning about the man-made global disaster that was created by Monsanto.

On my own page, I found an interesting anomaly. I posted this yesterday:

Delivered by The Daily Sheeple

Contributed by Daisy Luther of The Organic Prepper.

Daisy Luther is a freelance writer and editor. Her website, The Organic Prepper, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her atdaisy@theorganicprepper.ca

It’s not a stretch to suggest that Americans are over medicated. In 2011 doctors across the nation wrote an astounding four billion medical prescriptions, amounting to an average of 13 prescriptions for every  man, woman and child in the United States.

In the next few weeks the American Psychiatric Associations is releasing their updated fifth version their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5); the so-called ‘bible’ of psychiatric diagnoses. The new manual promises to take mental illness and the use of prescription drugs to a whole new level.

You may not be considered “crazy” or “mentally ill” today, but under the new guidelines experts say half of us will be diagnosed with a psychiatric condition in the future.

The odds will probably be greater than 50 percent, according to the new manual, that you’ll have a mental disorder in your lifetime.

…

The increasing number of disorders comes about because some “problems” that were not previously considered to be mental illness were reclassified as such by their inclusion in the DSM—and it is the DSM that functionally defines mental illness in the United States.

You see, in the DSM-5 the definitions for mental illness have been expanded to include a whole host of new symptoms and conditions.

For example, under the new guidelines if your 6 to 18 year-old child throws a temper tantrum from time to time or has a mood swing, a psychiatrist could diagnose the condition as a “Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder” requiring professional treatment. Keep in mind that in psychiatry “professional treatment” almost always means prescription drugs.

Are you over the age of 55 and have “senior moments” like forgetting where you put your keys? If so, then in all likelihood you have a neurocognitive disorder.

Do you stockpile food, supplies or other items in anticipation of a disaster? If so, you may have what’s called an obsessive compulsive hoarding disorder.

“The reality shows have raised awareness, but they tend to sensationalize the patients, and they rarely talk about treatment.”

“The big change,” Dr. Saxena said, “will be an official recognition of hoarding as an important neuropsychic disorder that will increase screening, increase detection and diagnosis, and refer patients in for treatment.”

While the new hoarding guidelines don’t specifically target “preparedness,” the fact is that some ‘professionals’ have already suggested that if you have any level of anxiety about the possibility of a major catastrophe, or your motivation for preparing for unforeseen events includes a distrust of the government, then you’ve got psychological problems.

Now, with the DSM-5, they can officially diagnose you as crazy.

Dr. Allen Frances, the author of Saving Normal, says that the new requirements will, ”turn everyday anxiety, eccentricity, forgetting and bad eating habits into mental disorders.”

The changes being introduced by the DSM-5 are nothing short of a sweeping overhaul of our mental health care system, and they will have effects that many experts can’t even fathom. But those behind the DSM, who work very closely with government experts, know exactly what they’re doing.

Let’s connect the dots a little bit to get an idea of how this is going to have a direct impact on your life in the very near future.

Under the new regulations set forth by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, certain groups of Americans like school children, seniors, those on government health plans, active-duty military personnel, and veterans will be required to submit to mental health screenings.

Page 1137 of the The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act provides grants for the operation of school-based health centers required to include “mental health and substance abuse disorder assessments” for children and adolescents.

On page 1191 is found a section on Mental Health Screening that refers to a program called “Healthy Aging, Living Well”. Persons ages 55-64 are being targeted for screening activities that can include “mental health/behavioral health and substance use disorders.”

Obamacare requires mental health services for many other groups.

These include Medicaid recipients, addicts, mothers with postpartum depression, the elderly, and soldiers. There’s even has a section called “Mental Health in Small Businesses” which awards grants to small businesses willing to provide workplace wellness programs that encourage “healthy lifestyles, healthy eating, increased physical activity and improved mental health.”

Are you starting to see where this is going?

You’ll be forced by your child’s school, by the government, and even your private employer to be  involuntarily screened. And the psychiatrists who’ll be performing the diagnoses will be utilizing the criteria outlined in the DSM-5.

According to the afforementioned statistics, there’s a 50% chance that those being screened will be found to have some type of mental health condition.

But that’s just the beginning.

As we know, once diagnosed, failure to take the treatment (e.g. medication) prescribed could then be deemed unlawful behavior, especially in the case of children.

Not possible in America? Think again:

Earlier this year, administrators from the Berne-Knox-Westerlo school district called Albany County Child Protective Services, alleging child abuse when the Carrolls said they wanted to take Kyle off the drug.

As a result, the Carrolls are now on a statewide list of alleged child abusers, and they have been thrust into an Orwellian family court battle to clear their name and to ensure their child isn’t removed from their home.  “It’s beyond the point of whether he should be on it. Now it’s the point of them telling us what we’re going to do,” said Michael Carroll. “They’re telling me how to raise my child.”

…

“The schools are now using child protective services to enforce their own desires and their own policies,” said David Lansner, a New York City lawyer who has seen cases similar to the Carrolls’. “The parents’ authority is being undermined when people have to do what some public official wants,” Lansner added. “This thing is so scary,”

It’s already happening, and with nearly 4 million children every year being (mis)diagnosed with ADHD, we can expect the numbers to rise significantly under the new DSM guidelines.

It’s important to understand, however, that they’re not just targeting our children. They’re coming after all of us.

The DSM-5, coupled with Obama Care legislation, will allow the government unprecedented control over lives.

One such example is the targeting of America’s gun owners. Legislation is in the works in many states, as well as the U.S. Congress, that would require mental health screenings for firearms ownership. Should these bills pass, then about half of America’s gun owners would immediately lose their right to bear arms for any manner of “disorders” that could include stress, anxiety, depressed mood or even poor eating habits!

And while gun control proponents would applaud the victory, what they fail to understand is that by green-lighting such a government intrusion, they are setting themselves up for future legislation that may restrict their own rights for activities that may include maintaining employment or caring for their children.

Once a diagnoses is made the government will then have the ability to enforce it at the barrel of a gun.

If your child is diagnosed with ADHD or separation anxiety disorder, and you refuse to feed them their prescription cocktail, then the government will step in and take your children under the guise of protecting them… from you!

Likewise, you may one day be forced to be screened by your employer and found to be mentally ill (remember, 50/50 shot!). If you refuse the professional treatment that’s recommended, you could lose your job as a result. And because the Department of Homeland Security has been busy creating a Domestic No-Work List all prospective employers will know of your condition and your refusal to seek professional treatment.

The possibilities, now that the door has been opened, are endless.

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was originally established to protect American citizens from the federal use of military troops to enforce and execute the laws of the land unless expressly authorized by the Constitution or  Congress. Since then, for over a century, this task has fallen upon local and federal law enforcement. But with the War on Terror taking center stage in the United States for the last decade, elements within the government have been working tirelessly to expand the mission of the US military on the domestic front.

First, they passed the Patriot Act, which gave the government sweeping new powers to categorize any individual as a terrorist, whether they are operating on foreign lands or here at home. In 2011, as America brought in the New Year, they signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act, which made it possible for American citizens who were categorized as domestic terrorists under the Patriot Act to be detained and imprisoned indefinitely without charge or trial.

Finally, last week we learned that, as President Obama came under fire for the many scandals rocking his administration, the government was quietly moving to give the Department of Defense unprecedented authority on U.S. soil, effectively nullifying Posse Comitatus.

Eric Blair of Activist Post writes:

First, the senate is debating an expansion of the already broad powers of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) so the U.S. can essentially engage any area in the world in the war on terror, including America. Which brings us to the second development: the Pentagon has recently granted itself police powers on American soil.

Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Sheehan told Congress yesterday that the AUMF authorized the US military to operate on a worldwide battlefield from Boston to Pakistan.  Sheehan emphasized that the Administration is authorized to put boots on the ground wherever the enemy chooses to base themselves, essentially ignoring the declaration of war clause in the US Constitution.

While Americans were distracted with three developing scandals pushed by both wings of the mainstream media, sinister developments were taking place behind closed doors. In essence, the US military has granted itself the power to deploy troops on the streets of America without approval from the President or Congress, and the AUMF, which was originally designed to target the terrorists responsible for 9/11, has been expanded to give the government authority to use military assets on the domestic front without a declaration from Congress.

Charlie McGrath of Wide Awake News explains:

Thanks to the hard work of Eric Blair at Activist Post we understand that Washington D.C. has been very busy eroding your freedom.

In fact, Senator Angus King went so far as to say that the hearing he was involved in was the most astonishing and disturbing hearing he has ever seen.

Even John McCain, war hawk John McCain, came out and said the government has gone way beyond its authority.

What are they talking about? The AUMF – Authorization to Use Military Force.

This piece of legislation that was put into place way back when we started the war on terror that is now turning from foreign enemies to YOU. Don’t be shocked by that, because you are on the list if you are a freedom minded, free thinker that believes in a Constitutional Republic.

They are changing the wording of this thing so that the military can be used on the streets of this country.

It’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s not some kind of a fancy fantasy that may come true down the road.

It is happening right now, in the guise of other news events that are not news events.

Even more terrifying is the fact that West Point has come out recently and said that you – if you have a theory that the federal government is trying to take over and implement a national police force – you could fall into the category of a domestic terrorist.

A domestic terrorist that can be dealt with by military force…

The only conspiracy here is what the government is telling us.

This legislation is real. The militarization of America is in full force. We are the targets.

They write the rules. One set for them. One set for us.

50 million of our fellow countrymen starve and depend on paltry government distributions to put food on the table every month. Millions have lost their homes and their jobs. And future generations are saddled with trillions of dollars in debt that can never be repaid.

All the while, those who are supposed to serve the people have only one goal: to enrich themselves and raise their elite status.

While the majority of America drinks Kool-Aid, they drink $500 bottles of wine. And, all of it is achieved at our expense.

47% of our Congress members are millionaires. The craziest part is, they tend to get richer in office. And, that is no coincidence.

They get richer in many unsavory ways.

One [way] is by using private information they obtain in office to make trades in the stock market. And, although they’re not supposed to do that, it’s pretty obvious that they do… Right before the stock market crashed in 2008, many of them invested in instruments that went up in value because the market went down.

…Then, there are earmarks, where Congress people secure federal money, as in your tax dollars, for projects that will benefit them directly. Take Nancy Pelosi. she owns an office building in San Francisco. She secured about $900 million in federal earmarks to build a light rail system that would, surprisingly, stop right by her own building. Once the project is completed, the value of her building could skyrocket 150%.

… Then there’s the revolving door, where members of Congress agree to do the bidding of lobbyists and corporations while they’re in office. In exchange, they get big fat salaries at jobs when they get out of Congress.

79% of members  of Congress who have left office since 1998 have gone to work as lobbyists.

…

The bottom line is, Americans, almost half of your Congress people are millionaires and many of them got that rich by using their powers in office.

Do you really think they’re there to represent you? Or to gain wealth for themselves?

(Video via Rense.com)

A stunning 50% of Americans surveyed said yes. What’s more, a full 25% of democrats polled by the firm agreed. The poll has a margin of error of 4.36%.

“It may be early in the process for members of Congress to start planning for impeachment of Barack Obama, but the American public is building a serious appetite for it,” said Fritz Wenzel.

…

“Half or nearly half of those surveyed said they believed Obama should be impeached for the trifecta of scandals now consuming Washington.”

Actually, on the issue of the Benghazi scandal, where four Americans were killed when in what may have been a politically motivated series of moves, a surging danger to Americans at the foreign service facility there was ignored until al-Qaida-linked terrorists attacked, 50.1 percent of Americans said Obama should be impeached. That included 27.6 percent of the responding Democrats.

On the scandal of the Internal Revenue Service intentionally harassing conservative and Christian organizations? Forty-nine percent said they agree that impeachment is appropriate, including 24.4 percent of the Democrats.

And on the fishing trip the Obama administration took into AP reporters’ telephone records in search of something that may well have been done by his own administration, 48.6 percent impeachment is appropriate. That included 26.1 percent of the Democrats.

WND Poll

Is this the most corrupt administration ever?

Let’s see how I do with the list.

• Fast And Furious (guns for drug lords, resulting in murder of Americans and Mexicans)
• Robosigning (over 100,000 perjured affidavits filed in court cases)
• IRS Tea Party and other group and individual abuse in direct violation of the law (politically-based harassment and now apparently-perjured testimony before Congress)
• Money Laundering for terrorists and drug lords (by multiple large banks)
• Intentional and unlawful destruction of property rights (GM bondholders screwed for political cronies in the UAW)
• Intentional and unlawful destruction of your saved wealth (QE, QE2, QE3, QEinfinity, $1 trillion+ deficits, etc; Treasury and Federal Reserve actions)
• Benghazi (apparent illegal arming of terrorists, then an attempt to reverse that leading to the attack on our CIA outpost and what appears to beintentional indifference and orders to stand down during the attack that had to come from the White House despite ability to respond; this amounts to conspiracy with the terrorists to kill Chris Stevens and the others who died.)
• Swindles by the billions in countless schemes during the 2000s related to securitizations and other hinky deals (where despite black letter legal requirements for actual endorsement and delivery of documents banks simply did not comply and now argue there should be no penalty for not having done so, and that these defects are “mere procedural errors” despite intent to not comply.)  The result is that our land title system no longer has any resemblance of integrity.
• Intentional destruction of anything approaching a “free market” for health care going back 30+ years and now compounded through active conspiracy by Obama and all of the political parties to grant, protect and enforce through government monopolies and cost-shifting resulting in cost escalations of 500-1,000% or even more against market prices and now, with Obamacare, abuse of the IRS tax power to force another 100% or more increase in those expenses down your throat for the express purpose of enrichment of those in the medical industry.

Source: Karl Denninger’s Market Ticker

This administration is involved in machinations and back-office deals that have not only cost Americans trillions of dollars in economic losses, but countless lives as evidenced by Benghazi and the Fast & Furious gun running operation.

As an American citizen you live under the rule of law; it’s a law that is supposed to apply to every one of us, equally.

If you forge signatures on official documents you go to prison.

If you fail to pay your taxes you go to prison.

If you attempt to hide money within our banking system you go to prison.

If you tap someone’s phone – or even attempt to record federal or state officials in public venues with your cell phone, they send you to prison.

If you knowingly sell guns to criminals you go to prison.

If you conspire to create a story and lie about your involvement in the murder of others you go to prison.

But if you’re an Obama administration official or have political and financial ties to the President, you have immunity or “Executive Privilege”.

This is NOT how our system of justice is supposed to work.

One set of laws for us – another set of laws for them.

There is only one solution – and it involves handcuffs… for a lot of people, from the President of the United States on down.

How 50% of Americans can sit idly by while their nation and their personal liberties are supplanted at every turn is beyond words.

Remember, impeachment does not mean the President would be kicked out of office. It means that he and his administration would be extensively investigated by independent prosecutors, questioned by Congress, and judged by the American people in a public forum.

To the question of “Should President Obama be impeached,” 100% of Americans should have responded with a resounding yes.

The integrity of the highest office in our land is being called into question – and half of our countrymen don’t care.

It’s a stark reminder of where we’re headed.

Microstamping, or ballistic imprinting, is a technology patented in the 1990′s by engineer and NRA member Todd Lizotte. When a gun is fired, a tiny engraving on the firing pin etches a microscopic identifier onto the cartridge as it is expended by the firearm.

The law, which requires every semi automatic gun sold in the state to imprint the gun’s serial number on the cartridge, was signed into law by former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2007 and was delayed due to patent stipulations in the legislation.

The legislation specified that it would take effect only when the technology was available and all private patents had expired.

But at a Los Angeles news conference Friday, Harris announced that micro-stamping had cleared all technological and patenting hurdles and would be required on newly sold semiautomatics, effective immediately.

“The patents have been cleared, which means that this very important technology will help us as law enforcement in identifying and locating people who have illegally used firearms,” Harris said.

According to proponents of the legislation, ballistic micro-stamping will help law enforcement investigators track down firearms used in the commission of crimes:

Attorney Benjamin Van Houten of San Francisco’s Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence said the announcement should send a message to other states, the Obama administration and the gun industry that “this is the future and it’s really critical to helping law enforcement solve gun crimes.”

Implementation of micro-stamping “moves California to the forefront of the nation in combatting gun crime,” said the law’s author, former Assemblyman Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, who attended the news conference and is running for city attorney.

It’s not clear exactly how a firearm that has been illegally purchased, such as through straw buyers who purchased semi-automatic rifles to Mexican drug cartels from federal agents in Operation Fast and Furious, could help track down criminals using untraceable guns in the commission of a crime.

In addition to being ineffective in tracking gun crimes, NRA attorney C.D. Michel suggests that with firearm sales across the country already putting overwhelming demand on gun manufacturers, the new California law could lead to widespread shortages of handguns in the state:

“This is not going to help solve crimes,” he said. “It’s easily defeated, easily wears out and can be used to lead police down false alleys” if the serial numbers are altered.

Worse yet, Michel said, manufacturers will be unwilling to add this expensive feature to guns sold in a single state, and will instead keep manufacturing weapons for the other states, where demand already far exceeds supply.

The effect, he said, would be a ban on new semiautomatic handguns in California, which the NRA will challenge in court.

As has been the case with California’s 1990′s ban on semi-automatic rifles and larger capacity magazines, the microstamping legislation aims to reduce availability of firearms to law abiding citizens. Because the legislation specifically targets semi-automatic handguns, a staple personal self defense firearm, the vast majority of those affected will be people who simply want to own a handgun to protect themselves and their families.

The law will have almost no effect on a criminal’s ability to gain access to firearms through the black market. This has been proven time and again with semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, which are already illegal in California but are regularly used by gangs and criminals.

It will also be the case with new micro-stamped handguns, which just like non-ballistically identified firearms, can be stolen and moved through back channels without restriction. If anything, criminals will prefer stolen micro-stamped guns over others because when police forensic teams show up, their investigations will be diverted to the original owner of the firearm, not to the criminal who stole it or purchased it through underground dealers.

And for those who think this is restricted to the left-coast, similar legislation is under consideration in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maryland, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Likewise, a federal push for micro-stamping was attempted in 2008 by both the House and the Senate in the form of the National Gun Crime Identification Act.

Microstamping is yet another purported “common sense approach” that makes no sense in the real world.

Watch: Stealing Freedom: Microstamping, Firearms and Ammunition

Hattip BigB

According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the CPI (Consumer Price Index) inflation rate remains well below the Federal Reserve’s 2.5% threshold. Insofar as the government is concerned America’s core inflation rate is just 1.7%, a testament to the economic prowess of our central bank and Chairman Ben Bernanke.

And because there is no significant price rise being realized in consumer goods based on the government’s calculations, the millions of Americans dependent on disbursements like social security, disability assistance and nutritional food support will see no adjustments to their monthly stipend. And why would they? Prices aren’t rising!

Or are they?

According to Peter Schiff, who is well known for his dire economic warnings leading up to the crash of 2008, the government is involved in a wide array of manipulations and fuzzy-math in an effort to convince us that the price increases we’ve seen in stores, restaurants and gas stations over the last decade are merely a figment of our imagination.

“What we get from the government when it comes to inflation is not information, it’s propaganda. “

Citing anecdotal evidence because of a complete lack of transparency from the Fed, BLS and government as a whole, Schiff points to the “Big Mac Index,” which has tracked the price of a McDonald’s Big Mac at restaurant chains across the world for decades.

Because McDonald’s caters to tens of millions of customers yearly and offers food at a fairly low cost compared to others in the food service industry, it is a fairly insightful gauge of consumer activity.

According to the Big Mac Index, and contrary to the government’s claims of stable prices, since 2003 when the Federal Reserve really began cranking hundreds of billions of dollars into an already troubled financial system, the price of inflation is more than double what is being claimed.

The Big Mac has gone up by over 6% per year, yet the government claims CPI is only 2.5% per year. So something’s wrong. Either something’s changed at McDonald’s, or something has changed in the way we report inflation. And I trust a hamburger more than I trust the U.S. government.

That price [of the hamburger] went up in line with the CPI for sixteen years, and then in 2002 they started to diverge.

What’s the explanation?

Look at the chart below, and you’ll see that the divergence started taking place when the Federal Reserve started expanding our monetary base after the 2002 crash (with the largest spikes occurring after the 2008 crisis) and when the U.S. government turned to tripling our national debt.

We got news from Tyson foods that showed a big drop in meat processing and pork processing, and an increase in chicken because Americans can’t afford the rising cost off food, so they’re trading down.

The government claims we’re spending more and prices aren’t rising, but the only reason we’re spending more is because prices ARE rising.

In fact, imports from China last month plunged to a three month low because we’re spending so much more money on food, utilities and rent because we can’t afford to buy the things that we want because we’re paying more for the things that we need.

…

Look, the government is creating inflation. The money supply has exploded. The Fed’s got interest rates at zero. It’s buying $85 billion worth of mortgages and government bonds every month. 

That’s the inflation.

You can see it manifest itself in stock prices, in real estate prices, in bond prices… it’s all over the place.

But the government can’t acknowledge that exists, because they can’t do anything about it.

Because if the Fed takes away the cheap money, if they raise interest rates, this whole phony recovery that they’ve created will collapse and we’ll be in a worse economic crisis than 2008. 

So the government cannot tell us the truth about inflation. They’re going to keep lying until people wake up.

Video via SGT Report:

It’s a Catch 22. There’s no way out.

If the government acknowledges what is happening, confidence in the economy and financial markets will be lost and we’ll have a repeat of 2008 or worse.

If the Federal Reserve stops expanding the monetary base and puts an end to the monthly $85 billion in purchases, the entire house of cards will collapse in on itself.

So, their only option is to continue on this course. But it is a trajectory that will lead to a collapse so severe that our civilization may not be able to survive it.

The inflation we’re seeing in the price of our milk, our gas, our electricity and other good and services we depend on is a symptom of a much greater problem.

We have blown the largest bubble in the history of mankind.

One day we’re going to pay for it – not with money. But, rather, it will be paid with the collateral that was used to back the loans – our lives.

Our creditors will soon come for their pound of flesh.

The government of the United States is already preparing for the economic collapse and the civil unrest that will follow.

You should to.