Friday, November 1, 2013
While Obamacare stuns the U.S., ‘leading from behind’ destroys world peace
The U.S. is transfixed by the Obama administration’s massively bungled attempt to nationalize one sixth of the economy, the health welfare system.
But the rest of the world watches the slow motion unfolding of another debacle: the loss of post-World War II American leadership of the worldwide alliance for peace and stability.
Pro forma protests over snooping by the U.S. National Security Administration European and Latin American leaders are for popular consumption. Spying, and unfortunately counter-espionage which the Snowden revelations appear to be, have been and will continue to be a generally unspoken part of international relations.
But the rest of the world watches the slow motion unfolding of another debacle: the loss of post-World War II American leadership of the worldwide alliance for peace and stability.
Pro forma protests over snooping by the U.S. National Security Administration European and Latin American leaders are for popular consumption. Spying, and unfortunately counter-espionage which the Snowden revelations appear to be, have been and will continue to be a generally unspoken part of international relations.
In fact, one can imagine German Chancellor Angela Merkel berating her own intelligence organizations for superior U.S. technology’s ability to listen to her limousine cell phone. The Saudis’ “renunciation” of a UN Security Council seat is no more than a media event. With their new vulnerability brought on by the shale revolution in the U.S., Riyadh’s antediluvian princes in their colorful robes have no place to go.
But these are tokens, taglines to a much larger eroding international picture.
Of course, the current disarray is not sudden, nor only the product of the Obama administration. But Obama’s missteps have exaggerated growing difficulties for international governance “inevitably” arising from changes in the international balance of power over a half century since the Allied victory in World War II. And as always, of course, there is the unanticipated and the unintended consequences of well intended strategies and policies.
America’s junior partners, the European democracies, after five decades of unprecedented peace and prosperity, are facing domestic breakdown increasingly limiting their contribution to the world system. Social democratic remedies at the workplace have failed everywhere.
A demographic catastrophe not only threatens their economies, but growing unassimilated immigrants from alien societies threaten to overwhelm their post-Christian cultures. A pampered public will not accept belt-tightening much less painful surgical elimination of waste and corruption. Greece, ancient home of democracy, is the apotheosis of the problem, a ticking time bomb on the doorstep of the rest of Europe.
Furthermore, the attempt to create an integrated European economy – let along a new international polity which could speak with one voice on international affairs – is in jeopardy and probably failing. British participation, essential to the project, is now more remote than ever given the failures of the continental Euro and resurgent English as well as Scot and Irish nationalism.
European integration had been seen as the ultimate panacea. It is now clear that is not the case, nor, indeed, is it apparent it can even be effected. In Berlin Das Mädchen, representing the disproportionately most powerful of the member nation states, talks out of both sides of her mouth. She advocates a new European superstate but zealously guards Germany’s narrowest national interest as demanded by her role as an elected leader still obligated to put together an unstable governing coalition.
The Obama Administration’s answer to this dilemma is not that different from the waning years of the Bush administration. President George W. Bush’s earlier steadfast resolve gave way to Condoleeza Rice’s “clerk” management. In any case, Washington’s stance toward Europe in part always has been a myth about who led whom and how during the post-World War II recovery. Alas! the charismatic and determined [if occasionally misguided] leadership of Churchill, Adenauer, DeGaulle, and de Gaspari, and their technocratic supporters, has been replaced by feckless politicians. The 80s decade-long common-sense reign of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was only brief relief from the general intellectual decline.
The American standard around which the Europeans rallied, even when they were in denial or hypercritical, has been replaced by a bogus concept of “leading from behind”.
That kind of Machiavellian manipulation of others’ power would under the best of circumstances have been exquisitely difficult. But in the hands of the Obama amateurs, it descends into virtual chaos. Witness the Libyan intervention as its classic example. The Obama Administration and European friends failed to provide a model for a small, fragile but oil-rich Arab state. And the U.S. paid a terrible price with the murder of an ambassador and a major psycho-political blow to American prestige which will dog U.S. foreign – and domestic — politics for decades.
The naïve “transformation” which an inexperienced but arrogant elitist presidential mafia thought they could foist at home on a traditional society but one in revolutionary technological transition has been matched with aberrant theory abroad. For whatever reason, the idea that the Obama Administration could make a pact with a nonexistent, romantic version of Islam – a political religious belief still mired alternatively in pre-modern torpor and nihilistic violence — has shredded what was left of decades of Middle East strategy.
There Washington now finds itself on the wrong side of virtually every issue. By rote it nudges Israeli-Arab “negotiations”, which long ago foundered on Palestinian corruption and incompetence. Washington mistakenly believed it were the central issue, not the region’s poverty, illiteracy, tribal warfare and demagoguery.
Obama’s refusal to personally intervene for a status of forces agreement to permit a continued military presence in Iraq squandered 4,000 spent American lives. It removed all possibility Washington could have a major impact on a recreated but highly volatile Baghdad and its enormous oil resources.
Obama then launched into an effort to dethrone the barbarous al Assad Syrian regime, backed away, and now finds U.S. Syrian strategy at the mercy of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, himself increasingly turning to despotism and foreign adventure to hang on to his throne.
The Obama administration continuously has importuned Iran, oblivious to that regime’s single-minded goal of making itself the hegemonic power and arbiter of the region’s vast fossil fuel resources. In the process, the White House ignores the interests of America’s longtime allies in the Gulf including, until now, the world’s marginal oil producer, Saudi Arabia.
The Obama administration helped install and got into bed with the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo, the fountainhead of modern Islamic terrorism, apparently believing it some sort of Islamic equivalent of European Christian democracy. When that regime collapsed from ineptitude and domestic violence, Washington refused to accommodate to a popular military takeover endorsed by its other regional allies.
President Obama’s “best friend”, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has turned out to be a very bad regional weather vane. Even worse, Erdogan duplicity [confusion?] in dealings with Palestinian Islamicists, Israel, the Brotherhood, the jihadists in the Syrian opposition, aided by an intelligence chief who favors Iran’s Shia fanatics, is adding to the regional chaos. Worst of all, Erdogan with whom Obama fellow-traveled, endangers what’s left of NATO by playing with Chinese weapons possibilities.
The continued U.S. entanglement in the Mideast, always predictable, has put into question Washington’s announced “pivot” of resources to the growing Chinese Communist aggressive feints toward East and South Asia neighbors and Washington’s friends.
With that strange aloofness which characterizes this administration’s treatment of allies, it has failed to respond enthusiastically to the first strong government in two decades in the U.S.’ keystone Asia ally, Japan. [Luckily reflex collaboration between the U.S. military and its Asian allies, hangover from the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, has reinforced strategy in the absence of White House leadership.]
Perhaps the most important politico-economic Asia-Pacific instrument in Washington’s hands, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an effort to create a common market to meet the competition of China’s state capitalism and subsidized trading, is hanging. The concern is that the Obama Administration’s next three lame-duck years, especially after the drubbing it seems now likely to take in next year’s elections, will not pursue it forcefully. In the balance is a revolutionary overhaul of a quarter of the world’s commerce and what may be the reemergence of a more vital Japanese economy.
Alternatively, the Obama administration’s increasing reliance on the United Nations burdens that organization with more responsibility than its corrupt and incompetent secretariat can bear. Idealistic multilateralism is an excuse for lack of U.S. policy and inaction on a huge variety of fronts. Washington has, for example, increasingly abandoned leadership of the UN specialized agencies – whether the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, ignorant of the 17-year Tehran march toward nuclear weapons, or the growing specter of out of control biological breakthroughs which have enormous potential for solving life problems, or creating new diabolical weapons of destruction.
The shock and geopolitical lesson of 9/11 has been left behind somewhere in the bowels of the State Department and the Obama administration’s National Security Council. Lost is recognition that the American homeland was no longer – if it had ever been in the world of intercontinental missiles – immune to the kind of destruction that our allies and enemies in Europe and Asia suffered in World War II.
With the strong prospect that the U.S. domestic scene will continue an impasse, as Obamacare has proved, America’s role abroad will be in abeyance. The world will just have to get along with the beached whale of a U.S – at least for a while.
Credit to World Tribune
But these are tokens, taglines to a much larger eroding international picture.
Of course, the current disarray is not sudden, nor only the product of the Obama administration. But Obama’s missteps have exaggerated growing difficulties for international governance “inevitably” arising from changes in the international balance of power over a half century since the Allied victory in World War II. And as always, of course, there is the unanticipated and the unintended consequences of well intended strategies and policies.
America’s junior partners, the European democracies, after five decades of unprecedented peace and prosperity, are facing domestic breakdown increasingly limiting their contribution to the world system. Social democratic remedies at the workplace have failed everywhere.
A demographic catastrophe not only threatens their economies, but growing unassimilated immigrants from alien societies threaten to overwhelm their post-Christian cultures. A pampered public will not accept belt-tightening much less painful surgical elimination of waste and corruption. Greece, ancient home of democracy, is the apotheosis of the problem, a ticking time bomb on the doorstep of the rest of Europe.
Furthermore, the attempt to create an integrated European economy – let along a new international polity which could speak with one voice on international affairs – is in jeopardy and probably failing. British participation, essential to the project, is now more remote than ever given the failures of the continental Euro and resurgent English as well as Scot and Irish nationalism.
European integration had been seen as the ultimate panacea. It is now clear that is not the case, nor, indeed, is it apparent it can even be effected. In Berlin Das Mädchen, representing the disproportionately most powerful of the member nation states, talks out of both sides of her mouth. She advocates a new European superstate but zealously guards Germany’s narrowest national interest as demanded by her role as an elected leader still obligated to put together an unstable governing coalition.
The Obama Administration’s answer to this dilemma is not that different from the waning years of the Bush administration. President George W. Bush’s earlier steadfast resolve gave way to Condoleeza Rice’s “clerk” management. In any case, Washington’s stance toward Europe in part always has been a myth about who led whom and how during the post-World War II recovery. Alas! the charismatic and determined [if occasionally misguided] leadership of Churchill, Adenauer, DeGaulle, and de Gaspari, and their technocratic supporters, has been replaced by feckless politicians. The 80s decade-long common-sense reign of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was only brief relief from the general intellectual decline.
The American standard around which the Europeans rallied, even when they were in denial or hypercritical, has been replaced by a bogus concept of “leading from behind”.
That kind of Machiavellian manipulation of others’ power would under the best of circumstances have been exquisitely difficult. But in the hands of the Obama amateurs, it descends into virtual chaos. Witness the Libyan intervention as its classic example. The Obama Administration and European friends failed to provide a model for a small, fragile but oil-rich Arab state. And the U.S. paid a terrible price with the murder of an ambassador and a major psycho-political blow to American prestige which will dog U.S. foreign – and domestic — politics for decades.
The naïve “transformation” which an inexperienced but arrogant elitist presidential mafia thought they could foist at home on a traditional society but one in revolutionary technological transition has been matched with aberrant theory abroad. For whatever reason, the idea that the Obama Administration could make a pact with a nonexistent, romantic version of Islam – a political religious belief still mired alternatively in pre-modern torpor and nihilistic violence — has shredded what was left of decades of Middle East strategy.
There Washington now finds itself on the wrong side of virtually every issue. By rote it nudges Israeli-Arab “negotiations”, which long ago foundered on Palestinian corruption and incompetence. Washington mistakenly believed it were the central issue, not the region’s poverty, illiteracy, tribal warfare and demagoguery.
Obama’s refusal to personally intervene for a status of forces agreement to permit a continued military presence in Iraq squandered 4,000 spent American lives. It removed all possibility Washington could have a major impact on a recreated but highly volatile Baghdad and its enormous oil resources.
Obama then launched into an effort to dethrone the barbarous al Assad Syrian regime, backed away, and now finds U.S. Syrian strategy at the mercy of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, himself increasingly turning to despotism and foreign adventure to hang on to his throne.
The Obama administration continuously has importuned Iran, oblivious to that regime’s single-minded goal of making itself the hegemonic power and arbiter of the region’s vast fossil fuel resources. In the process, the White House ignores the interests of America’s longtime allies in the Gulf including, until now, the world’s marginal oil producer, Saudi Arabia.
The Obama administration helped install and got into bed with the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo, the fountainhead of modern Islamic terrorism, apparently believing it some sort of Islamic equivalent of European Christian democracy. When that regime collapsed from ineptitude and domestic violence, Washington refused to accommodate to a popular military takeover endorsed by its other regional allies.
President Obama’s “best friend”, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has turned out to be a very bad regional weather vane. Even worse, Erdogan duplicity [confusion?] in dealings with Palestinian Islamicists, Israel, the Brotherhood, the jihadists in the Syrian opposition, aided by an intelligence chief who favors Iran’s Shia fanatics, is adding to the regional chaos. Worst of all, Erdogan with whom Obama fellow-traveled, endangers what’s left of NATO by playing with Chinese weapons possibilities.
The continued U.S. entanglement in the Mideast, always predictable, has put into question Washington’s announced “pivot” of resources to the growing Chinese Communist aggressive feints toward East and South Asia neighbors and Washington’s friends.
With that strange aloofness which characterizes this administration’s treatment of allies, it has failed to respond enthusiastically to the first strong government in two decades in the U.S.’ keystone Asia ally, Japan. [Luckily reflex collaboration between the U.S. military and its Asian allies, hangover from the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, has reinforced strategy in the absence of White House leadership.]
Perhaps the most important politico-economic Asia-Pacific instrument in Washington’s hands, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an effort to create a common market to meet the competition of China’s state capitalism and subsidized trading, is hanging. The concern is that the Obama Administration’s next three lame-duck years, especially after the drubbing it seems now likely to take in next year’s elections, will not pursue it forcefully. In the balance is a revolutionary overhaul of a quarter of the world’s commerce and what may be the reemergence of a more vital Japanese economy.
Alternatively, the Obama administration’s increasing reliance on the United Nations burdens that organization with more responsibility than its corrupt and incompetent secretariat can bear. Idealistic multilateralism is an excuse for lack of U.S. policy and inaction on a huge variety of fronts. Washington has, for example, increasingly abandoned leadership of the UN specialized agencies – whether the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, ignorant of the 17-year Tehran march toward nuclear weapons, or the growing specter of out of control biological breakthroughs which have enormous potential for solving life problems, or creating new diabolical weapons of destruction.
The shock and geopolitical lesson of 9/11 has been left behind somewhere in the bowels of the State Department and the Obama administration’s National Security Council. Lost is recognition that the American homeland was no longer – if it had ever been in the world of intercontinental missiles – immune to the kind of destruction that our allies and enemies in Europe and Asia suffered in World War II.
With the strong prospect that the U.S. domestic scene will continue an impasse, as Obamacare has proved, America’s role abroad will be in abeyance. The world will just have to get along with the beached whale of a U.S – at least for a while.
Credit to World Tribune
Japan to start large-scale war games exercise
Japan is preparing to launch a major war games exercise today, in a calculated move to bolster its defences amid rising regional tensions.
An estimated 34,000 Self-Defence Force troops, accompanied by destroyers and F-2 fighter jets, are scheduled to take part in the large-scale exercise, which will run until November 18.
Drills will take place on air, sea and land, with exercises including live firing and amphibious landings and trial scenarios enacting how troops can best defend an island under attack.
At the same time, the Japanese government is also launching a global PR campaign, asserting its claims to two archipelagos disputed by China, South Korea and Taiwan with the release of on-line videos in ten languages.
The war games were signed off by Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, who has made a point of taking an increasingly hawkish stance in relation to decades-long territorial disputes since coming to power last December.
Credit ti the Telegraph
Today, America's Foodstamps Program Gets A 6% Haircut: What Happens Next?
Today, one of America's best-known welfare programs with 47.6 million participants or 15% of the total population, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program also known as "foodstamps" or EBT, is due for a substantial haircut: beginning Friday, there will be a phased in $5 billion reduction (6% of the program) for the 12 month period starting November 1st 2013. So what happens next?
Nick Colas of Convergex explains.
The U.S. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (a.k.a. Food Stamps) is the largest means-tested social support program in the country, with $6.3 billion in direct monthly cash transfers to individuals for the purchase of food. Some 47.6 million people (15% of the total population) are in the SNAP program as of the most recent data (July 2013) and these individuals receive an average of $132 per month. This support is set for a cut on Friday, with a $5 billion reduction (6% of the program) for the 12 month period starting November 1st 2013. From a Wall Street perspective, these numbers may seem small at 0.0003% of GDP. From the perspective of Main Street, however, is means a cut of $36/month for a family of four receiving full SNAP benefits. Record levels for stocks, record level for SNAP participants… An odd societal disconnect, to be sure.
We’ve written about the U.S. Supplemental Assistance Program (SNAP, also known as food stamps) in these pages over the years even though the topic bears no direct relationship to corporate earnings, interest rates, the Federal Reserve, or any other recognized business topic. The reason for this focus is threefold:
- It is a very large visible government program with monthly data updates. There are, for example, 47,637,407 Americans in the SNAP program as of the most recent update (July 2013) from U.S. Department of Agriculture. A total of 23,074,914 households receive an average monthly benefit of $272.51. This amounts to $6.3 billion in monthly support. As a percent of the population, this is 15% of all Americans and +20% of all households in the program.
- It is a good measure of how deeply the economic recovery in the U.S. is reaching through the socioeconomic strata. Qualifying for SNAP means you make no more than 130% of the poverty line and generally have limited assets. Those 47.6 million people in the SNAP program are, for all intents and purposes, a record high for food stamp participation once you exclude months where the program includes disaster assistance.
- It generates a large amount of hate email direct to my inbox and voicemail from both ends of the political spectrum. From the right comes criticisms over certain parts of the US population using EBT cards (the debit cards used to distribute the program’s payments) to buy beer and potato chips. This, yes, does occasionally happen. From the left, we get missives that feel a lot like that guy who told the world to “Leave Britney alone!” Food stamps, these folks argue, are part of living in a just society, which doesn’t allow anyone to go hungry. Half of all the people enrolled in SNAP are children, so it is pretty easy to see their point of view as well.
In the spirit of bringing our two warring readerships together, I would propose the following statement: “Something has changed about America since the Financial Crisis, and the still widespread popularity of the SNAP program is emblematic of that shift.” Or, in the words of Bill Parcells, “You are what your record says you are.” The American economic record, based on the Food Stamp data, is still pretty lousy:
- Before the Great Recession of 2009, enrollment in the SNAP program ebbed and flowed with the state of the U.S. economy. There are links to the data after this note, with the high water marks in 1976, 1981, 1992-4 and cyclical lows in the late 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
- From 2004 to the present day, SNAP enrollment has doubled from 23 million people to more than 46 million. The cost of the program over that period has moved from $25 billion annually to $75 billion in 2012.
- The notional economic “Recovery” which has helped domestic equities more than double from their March 2009 lows is entirely absent from the U.S. food stamp data. As mentioned, enrollments are still essentially at record highs.
- Sometimes big numbers are hard to visualize, so here’s a few ways to think about the size of the SNAP program. For example, if every SNAP participant lived in one state, it would be 20% more populous than California. If every person in the program linked hands, human chain style, they could circle the Earth (assuming a 3 foot reach per person).
We’ll sidestep the inevitable political discussion for a moment longer, and point out that things are about to change in the food stamp program. On November 1st, everyone in the SNAP program will see lower payments. Here’s the hows and whys:
- Monthly payments increased because of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but these increases expire on Friday. The jumps were substantial – the average benefit per person increased to $125 in 2010 from $102 in 2009 and topped out at $133/person in 2010 – 2012.
- The change cuts $5 billion out of the program for the November 2013 – 2014 period, on a base of $75 billion (based on the latest run rate of $6.3 billion/month). The USDA estimates that this will be a $36/month reduction in benefits for a family of four.
- The Center for Budget Policy Priorities, using USDA data, stated in a recent note that 80% of SNAP households live below the Federal poverty line ($19,500 for a family of three) and 40% live in households making less than half that amount. The SNAP program helps feed 25% of all US children and over 9 million seniors.
Let’s see if we can dodge the political bullet for one more paragraph, with a few more fact-based points:
- The SNAP program is explicitly NOT designed to provide the only income available to economically distressed Americans for the purpose of purchasing food. There’s been a raft of celebrity and CEO ‘Live on SNAP benefits’ challenges, where these economically fortunate individuals chose to live on $133/month in food purchases. This ignores the fact that the program is intended to be “Assistance” rather than 100% support.
- There are further cuts in the program coming in 2014 – 2016, to the tune of $11 billion over the period. It is an odd quirk of the SNAP program that its funding is part of the annual Farm Bill in Congress. That means these future cuts could be overturned as House and Senate consider this legislation. For right now, however, these proposed reductions would take the SNAP program down to $60 billion from the current $75 billion run rate. Truth be told, the pressure within Congress is to cut these payments further, rather than to increase them.
- If you are looking for a capital markets impact, retailers in southern and western states are one place to look. There are 13 states with over 1 million SNAP participants: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington. The economic “multiplier” on food stamp purchases is about 2:1, so the $5 billion reduction in 2013-2014 looks more like $10 billion in the real economy.
To sum up (apolitically, of course)… The amount of money 15% of the U.S. population uses to purchase food is about to go down, and by enough so this group will notice its absence. It may not matter to the economic data on which Wall Street hangs its fedora, but it is certainly enough to spark a political response. How this plays out, I honestly have no idea. We are in uncharted waters here, as the historical record clearly shows.
Credit to Zero Hedge
The Obama Facade Cracks at Last
Only now -- five years into his presidency -- are we seeing some cracks in the protective shield surrounding President Obama, and then only after the abuse of reporters' privacy has been threatened. Mainstream journalists have not scrutinized his controversial policies, nor have they held him accountable for questionable actions that have caused outrage among fair-minded critics and produced irreparable harm to the nation.
Some facts are irrefutable, but the president has, by and large, deflected all blame and few in the media have dared question his policies and actions. Investor's Business Daily reports that we are becoming a welfare state. The Census Department reported this week that almost half (49 percent) of Americans (151 million) are on federal aid. The U.S. has spent nearly $4 trillion ($3.7) on welfare over the past five years -- that is five times greater than the money spent on transportation, education, and NASA, combined. Further, more than 70 percent of all federal spending goes to assistance programs, and the Congressional Budget Office projects that welfare spending will rise 80 percent over the next decade. Even with all that spending, though, 46.5 million Americans live in poverty and nearly half of all Americans pay absolutely no federal income tax. It doesn't take an economics genius to realize that with the nation's debt at $17 trillion and with more than $50 trillion in unfunded liabilities, we are in deep economic trouble. In short, the buck stops with President Obama when it comes to assessing blame for "the weakest recovery from a recession in modern American history."
In the face of such dire statistics, it is instructive to review the president's economic performance to date. President Obama has been late in turning in a budget to Congress in four of the past five years. Current "solutions" to the fiscal crisis are to print more money, raise taxes, and, in the process, weakened the American dollar, threatening its status as the sole world reserve currency.
The president's signature legislation -- his legacy, if you will -- is ObamaCare. This massive health insurance legislation, taking over one-sixth of the American economy, was forced on the nation through a straight party-line vote. While the president constantly chided the Congress for not "negotiating" or being unwilling to be "bipartisan," President Obama himself was unwilling to talk with Republicans and repeatedly stated that "He Won" the election and "shouldn't have to offer anything."
The president has engaged in a pattern of lying to the American public. He has often repeated the ObamaCare mantra, "We will keep this promise to the American people. If you like your doctor you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your healthcare plan, you will be able to keep your healthcare plan. Period." He added, "Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have." Now, NBC News, no less, informs Americans that the president knew that he was not telling the truth about his healthcare plan. The NBC report quoted healthcare experts who expect more than half and perhaps as many as 80 percent of those with individual plans will have their policies terminated and have to buy new policies with expanded coverage they don't need or desire due to the requirements of ObamaCare. So how many single 27-year-old guys really need a policy that covers maternity costs?
Bob Woodward, one of the journalists famed for breaking the Watergate story, called the Obama Administration a "rat's nest of concealment and lies" and described it as a "secret government." That secret activity includes using the Internal Revenue Service to spy on and intimidate opponents. After he spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast, including critical remarks about President Obama's leadership, the famous Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Benjamin Carson joined a long line of conservative who have been audited by the IRS.
Some of the worst lying from the Obama Administration is related to the Benghazi tragedy; the president called it a "phony scandal." But four Americans, including an American ambassador, were murdered, and there was remarkably little willingness from the Administration to investigate. Instead, the public received "misinformation, confusion and intense partisanship." From the outset, the administration blamed the attack on an obscure anti-Muslim video that hardly anyone had seen. It quickly became clear that the video had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack; instead, there were numerous warnings ahead of time (including pleas from the ambassador himself for better protection) and time for rescue teams to provide assistance to the victims. All were told to "stand down" and, thus far, no one has accepted responsibility or been willing to seriously investigate the tragedy. That is, until Lara Logan, a reporter for CBS' 60 Minutes declared that numerous authorities "saw it coming" and "Benghazi was a planned, sophisticated attack by al Qaeda against a barely protected American outpost." Amazingly, even a year later, the administration stonewalls, concealing the identities and whereabouts of survivors to prevent them from testifying before Congress and attacking anyone who dares ask penetrating questions.
I have written previously about the president's demagoguery; he has often chosen inflammatory and divisive rhetoric over being a leader of the whole nation. He has operated in campaign mode throughout his presidency instead of focusing on bringing the nation together to work together on our financial, economic, and other problems. Not only are we a nation more divided than ever, as former Vice President Dick Cheney said, "Our allies no longer trust the U.S., our enemies don't fear us." In a stinging indictment of the president's leadership, Dennis Prager declared that the "United States is at its weakest, has fewer allies, and has less military and diplomatic influence than at any time since before World War I." All of that can be laid at the president's feet and finally a few brave investigative reporters (national and international) are holding him accountable for his failed policies, stunning arrogance and betrayal of the American Constitution. When a president's egregious actions yield a deterioration of conditions to the degree we face today, it is time for that leader who has presided over such a pathetic administration -- albeit from the golf course -- to be called to account for his empty hype of "hope and change" and claims of "Yes, we can."
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/10/the_facade_cracks_at_last.html#ixzz2jPIkEDy1
Bob Woodward, one of the journalists famed for breaking the Watergate story, called the Obama Administration a "rat's nest of concealment and lies" and described it as a "secret government." That secret activity includes using the Internal Revenue Service to spy on and intimidate opponents. After he spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast, including critical remarks about President Obama's leadership, the famous Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Benjamin Carson joined a long line of conservative who have been audited by the IRS.
Some of the worst lying from the Obama Administration is related to the Benghazi tragedy; the president called it a "phony scandal." But four Americans, including an American ambassador, were murdered, and there was remarkably little willingness from the Administration to investigate. Instead, the public received "misinformation, confusion and intense partisanship." From the outset, the administration blamed the attack on an obscure anti-Muslim video that hardly anyone had seen. It quickly became clear that the video had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack; instead, there were numerous warnings ahead of time (including pleas from the ambassador himself for better protection) and time for rescue teams to provide assistance to the victims. All were told to "stand down" and, thus far, no one has accepted responsibility or been willing to seriously investigate the tragedy. That is, until Lara Logan, a reporter for CBS' 60 Minutes declared that numerous authorities "saw it coming" and "Benghazi was a planned, sophisticated attack by al Qaeda against a barely protected American outpost." Amazingly, even a year later, the administration stonewalls, concealing the identities and whereabouts of survivors to prevent them from testifying before Congress and attacking anyone who dares ask penetrating questions.
I have written previously about the president's demagoguery; he has often chosen inflammatory and divisive rhetoric over being a leader of the whole nation. He has operated in campaign mode throughout his presidency instead of focusing on bringing the nation together to work together on our financial, economic, and other problems. Not only are we a nation more divided than ever, as former Vice President Dick Cheney said, "Our allies no longer trust the U.S., our enemies don't fear us." In a stinging indictment of the president's leadership, Dennis Prager declared that the "United States is at its weakest, has fewer allies, and has less military and diplomatic influence than at any time since before World War I." All of that can be laid at the president's feet and finally a few brave investigative reporters (national and international) are holding him accountable for his failed policies, stunning arrogance and betrayal of the American Constitution. When a president's egregious actions yield a deterioration of conditions to the degree we face today, it is time for that leader who has presided over such a pathetic administration -- albeit from the golf course -- to be called to account for his empty hype of "hope and change" and claims of "Yes, we can."
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/10/the_facade_cracks_at_last.html#ixzz2jPIkEDy1
The Unleashed Demonic Hordes of the Abyss
.The First Woe of the seven year tribulation period has to do with the demonic legions which are presently held prisoner in the bottomless pit called “the Abyss”. The demonic world is quite aware of this prison hold and when Jesus walked on this earth in His humanity the demonic legions feared greatly and begged Jesus NOT to send them to this prison hold before this day which will be at hand quite shortly (Matt. 8:16, 28-32, Mark. 1:23-27, 5:1-14, James 2:19). The demonic hosts - who presently are detained in this bottomless abyiss - were placed there by Almighty God for their gross transgressions and heavenly rebellion against Almighty God and His ETERNAL sovereignty. They were placed there after the Noaic flood for their excessive part in leading men to global rebellion against their Creator and His natural laws (Gen. 6, Isa. 14:12-17, Ezek. 28:12-19, 2 Peter 2:4, Jude 1:6).
These godless beings in their psychotic rage and violence will seek to – once again - tyrannically dominate and plague man, preparing all of humanity for the Third Woe which is to come.
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These demonic legions are described to us as locust. Locustsare a consuming and devouring terror to all plant life that stands before them. So devastating arelocust that they can wipe out vast plush green areas of vegetation in a matter of hours. These demonic hordes are told not to devour grass, but to torment men who have NOT the seal of Almighty God (Rev. 9:4). As these demonic hosts are released from their darkened prison in the abyss they will ravish and torment the unsaved defiant inhabitants of the earth for a period of five months (Rev. 9:5). These demonic hordes are lead by a demonic general named Abaddon, whose name means destroyer! What more do you need to know about this army and very hour!
These demonic hordes are lead by a demonic general named Abaddon, whose name means destroyer!
These tortured inhabitants of planet earth - who are also part of Lucifer’s satanic rebellion against Almighty God - are now being violently oppressed by Satan’s legions of fallen angels and are now driven as cattle by Satan to serve his destructive diabolical plan in his final war of this age against Almighty God (Rev. 16:13-16). Since these individuals out right reject the Divine revelation revealed to them by Almighty God, His Two Witnesses and His ministering angels, they have now opened themselves to the demonic influences and possession of their minds (2 Cor. 4:3-4, 2 Thess. 2:9-12).
Remember, by this time – the seven Seal Judgments and the first four Trumpet Judgments have passed (Rev. 6-8). Multitudes of millions (i.e.,1.5 billion) of the earth’s inhabitants have been slain by global war, pestilence and famine, not to mention the global environmental devastation that has ravished 1/3rd of the earth's natural resources, elements, sea creatures, shipping commerce, celestial lights. It is now - after all of this global devastation - that millions of enraged demonic hordes are released from their prison hold of the abyss and will now commence terrorizing and torturing countless millions of the surviving masses of unsaved mankind for five months.
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Could things get any more horrific than this? Oh… Yes! EXPONENTIALLY WORSE!!
At this time, one might ask himself, “Could things get any more horrific than this?” For in this brief time period since the Covenant of Peace was confirmed - which was suppose to usher in world peace and a new global age for all mankind (Dan. 9:27, 1 Thess. 5:3, Rev. 6:2) - the whole world has been ravished beyond compare and humanity laid waste on a scale unparalleled. Vexed and tormented beyond belief by man’s transgressions and demonic oppression, could things get any more worse than this? Oh… Yes! EXPONENTIALLY WORSE!! (Rev. 9-16)
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The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!
The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!
DJP I.F.
Credit to The ignorant fishermen blog
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