"It is not enough to know that there is a shadow government pulling the strings of the visible government- we must also act to expose it, and defeat it!"-Mark Matheny
Dianne Feinstein: “If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States, for an outright ban, picking up [every gun]… Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ‘em all in.”
Senator Dianne Feinstein’s ultimate plan has always been to have Mr. and Mrs. America turn in their guns to the government, period. Feinstein has admitted that the bill is about gun confiscation.
She tells us a gun ban is about saving the children and reducing crime, but her comments on 60 Minutes in 1995 reveal her true plan is to disarm the American people.
On Thursday, Feinstein will introduced her dream bill to disarm the American people. The legislation is open-ended and includes provisions to re-register firearms and submit the fingerprints of law-abiding Americans as if they’re sex offenders.
Feinstein’s bill will also include a buy-back provision that will allow the government to confiscate all firearms. Both Feinstein and New York governor Andrew Cuomo have said that is their plan.
It’s no coincidence that the communist Chinese, the biggest holders of U.S. debt, have demanded the American people be disarmed. It is the simple action of the authoritarian.
For more on Feinstein’s gun-grabbing legislation, see these articles:
Joe Biden shows the length Democrats will go to steal our guns. In 2008 during the election, he told voters Obama wouldn’t take his shotgun or his Beretta. The Beretta is a semi-automatic pistol. But in 1989, Biden introduced his own version of the assault weapons ban.
Gun advocates say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms to prevent a tyrannical government from oppressing us.
They quote the Founding Fathers:
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms, disarm only those who are neither inclined, nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants. They serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. – Thomas Jefferson, 1764
What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms. – Thomas Jefferson
Those who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who didn’t. – Ben Franklin
Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property… Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them. –Thomas Paine
A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government. – George Washington
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined…The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun. –Patrick Henry.
Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands? – Patrick Henry, 3 Elliot, Debates at 386.
The Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms. –Samuel Adams, debates & Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 86-87.
The right of the people to keep and bear…arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country… –James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434 (June 8, 1789).
(The Constitution preserves) the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation…(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. –James Madison.
If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government… – Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist (#28) .
The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed. –Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-B.
To disarm the people is the best and most effective way to enslave them. – George Mason
The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. –Noah Webster, “An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (1787) in Pamplets on the Constitution of the United States (P.Ford, 1888)
[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or the state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the People. – Tench Coxe, Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.
Gun control advocates want to ban all arms … or at least semi-automatic, high-capacity weapons.
But George Orwell – author of 1984 – had a different take on the whole issue. Orwell pointed out in theTribune (October 19, 1945), the effectiveness of arms in preventing tyranny partly depends on whether the average citizen can afford the current weapon of choice possessed by the government:
The connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon–so long as there is no answer to it–gives claws to the weak.The great age of democracy and of national self-determination was the age of the musket and the rifle. After the invention of the flintlock, and before the invention of the percussion cap, the musket was a fairly efficient weapon, and at the same time so simple that it could be produced almost anywhere. Its combination of qualities made possible the success of the American and French revolutions, and made a popular insurrection a more serious business than it could be in our own day. After the musket came the breech-loading rifle. This was a comparatively complex thing, but it could still be produced in scores of countries, and it was cheap, easily smuggled and economical of ammunition. Even the most backward nation could always get hold of rifles from one source or another, so that Boers, Bulgars, Abyssinians, Moroccans–even Tibetans–could put up a fight for their independence, sometimes with success. But thereafter every development in military technique has favoured the State as against the individual, and the industrialised country as against the backward one …The one thing that might reverse it is the discovery of a weapon–or, to put it more broadly, of a method of fighting–not dependent on huge concentrations of industrial plant.
If he were alive today, Orwell might say that – unless the American people create and adopt high-tech ways to defend themselves – guns will not be able to compete with drones, robots and other high-tech weapons created by the virtually unlimited American military budget.
Max Keiser linked to the following video under the headline, “Assault rifles are so passe… Say Hello To Citizen Drone Warfare”
Is this going too far … creating a recipe for violence?
On the other hand, is it insufficient to create any real checks and balances in relation to a government that possesses nuclear weapons and military drones?
In a little under three minutes, Ron Paul explains to a somewhat nonplussed CNBC anchor just how ridiculous the charade that is occurring in D.C. actually is. This succinct spin-free clip should be required viewing for each and every asset-manager, talking-head, propagandist, and mom-and-pop who are viewing the last-minute idiocy of the ‘fiscal cliff’ debacle with some hope that things will be different this time.
“We have passed the point of no return where we can actually get our house back in order,” Paul begins, adding that “they pretend they are fighting up there, but they really aren’t. They are arguing over power, spin, who looks good, who looks bad; all trying to preserve the system where they can spend what they want, take care of their friends and print money when they need it.” With social safety nets available to rich and poor, there is no impetus for change and “the country loses,” but Paul concludes, the markets are starting to say “there is a limit to this.”
President Obama on Sunday said he would make gun control a priority in his new term, pledging to put his “full weight” behind passing new restrictions on firearms in 2013.
“I'm going to be putting forward a package and I'm going to be putting my full weight behind it,” Obama said in an interview aired on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I'm going to be making an argument to the American people about why this is important and why we have to do everything we can to make sure that something like what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary does not happen again.”
In the wake of the Dec. 14 mass shooting at a Newtown, Conn., school, the president has launched a White House task force led by Vice President Biden to present proposals in January to help stem gun violence. Obama has said that he would seek a broad approach to the problem addressing the role of violence in entertainment and measures to improve mental healthcare.
But he has also called on Congress to move quickly to reinstate the federal assault weapons ban and a ban on the sale of high-capacity magazines.
Obama on Sunday repeated those calls and said he would meet with lawmakers on both sides of the aisles to see action.
“I've been very clear that an assault-rifle ban, banning these high capacity clips, background checks, that there are a set of issues that I have historically supported and will continue to support,” the president said.
Americans are living in an Orwellian state argue Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick, as they sit down with RT to discuss US foreign policy and the Obama administration’s disregard for the rule of law.
Both argue that Obama is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and that people have forgiven him a lot because of the “nightmare of the Bush presidency that preceded him.”
“He has taken all the Bush changes he basically put them into the establishment, he has codified them,” Stone told RT. “It is an Orwellian state. It might not be oppressive on the surface, but there is no place to hide. Some part of you is going to end up in the database somewhere.”
According to Kuznick, American citizens live in a fish tank where their government intercepts more than 1.7 billion messages a day. “That is email, telephone calls, other forms of communication.”
RT’s Abby Martin in the program Breaking the Set discusses the Showtime film series and book titled The Untold History of the United States co-authored by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick.
America is rapidly becoming a nation of takers. An increasing number of Americans expect the government to take care of them from the cradle to the grave, and they expect the government to dig into the pockets of others in order to pay for it all. This philosophy can be very seductive, but what happens when the number of takers eventually outnumbers the number of producers? In 11 different U.S. states, the number of government dependents exceeds the number of private sector workers. This list of states includes some of the biggest states in the country: California, New York, Illinois, Ohio, Maine, Kentucky, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, New Mexico and Hawaii. It is interesting to note that seven of those states were won by Barack Obama on election night. InCalifornia, there are 139 “takers” for every 100 private sector workers. That is crazy! The American people have become absolutely addicted to government money, and it gets worse with each passing year. If you can believe it, entitlements accounted for 62 percent of all federal spending in fiscal year 2012. It would be one thing if we could afford all of this spending, but unfortunately we simply cannot. We are drowning in debt, and we are stealing more than a hundred million more dollars from future generations with each passing hour. No bank robber in history can match that kind of theft.
Yes, we will always need a safety net. There are many people out there that simply cannot take care of themselves. We certainly don’t want to see anyone sleeping in the streets or starving to death.
But if the number of people jumping on to the safety net continues to grow at the current pace, the net will break and it will not be available for any of us.
For example, the number of Americans on food stamps grew from about 17 million in 2000 to more than 47 million today. It nearly tripled in just 12 years.
What will happen if it nearly triples again over the next 12 years?
The federal government even has a website (benefits.gov) that guides people through the process of figuring out what welfare programs they can take advantage of.
Overall, the federal government runs nearly 80 different “means-tested welfare programs” and more than 100 million Americans are already enrolled in at least one of those programs.
Yes, I realize that figure is very hard to believe. I had a hard time believing it when I first came across it.
And it is even more shocking when you realize that the figure of 100 million Americans does not even include those who only receive Social Security or Medicare.
Today, there are 56.76 million Americans on Social Security.
To support all of those Americans on Social Security, there are only about 94.75 million full-time private sector workers.
So there are just 1.67 full-time private sector workers to support each American that is on Social Security.
Medicare is also growing like crazy. As I wrote about the other day, the number of Americans on Medicare is expected to grow from 50.7 million in 2012 to 73.2 million in 2025.
How much farther can we push things before the entire system collapses?
In order to support this exploding entitlement system, we need a lot more Americans to be working good paying jobs.
Unfortunately, millions of good paying jobs continue to be shipped overseas and they aren’t coming back.
We are even losing good jobs to our own prisoners. The United States has the largest prison population in the world by far, and the exploitation of that low wage labor pool has become a boom industry in America. Even Microsoft and Boeing are using prison labor now. Just check outthis video.
Meanwhile, there are millions upon millions of law-abiding Americans that cannot find jobs and that cannot take care of their families.
So poverty and dependence on the government are absolutely exploding. We have a system that is so messed up that it is hard to even put it into words. The middle class is being viciously shredded, and most Americans just continue to applaud the politicians from both parties that are doing this to us.
Our economy is being gutted at the same time that the welfare state is experiencing unprecedented growth. Instead of giving us real answers, our “leaders” just continue to borrow, spend and print more money. We are about to hit the debt limit again, and the Obama administration is saying that we should just do away with the debt limit permanently.
Most of our politicians don’t seem to understand that they are systematically destroying our economy and the bright futures that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.
But there are some politicians out there that get it. Unfortunately, many of them live in other countries. For example, Canadian MP Pierre Poilievre seems to have a firm grasp on what debt is doing to the United States. The following are some excerpts from one of his speeches…
“By 2020, the US Government will be spending more annually on debt interest than the total combined military budgets of China, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, Italy, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Spain, Turkey, and Israel.”
“Through government spending the indulgence of one is the burden of another; through government borrowing, the excess of one generation becomes the yoke of the next; through international bailouts, one nation’s extravagance becomes another nation’s debt”
“Everyone takes, nobody makes, work doesn’t pay, indulgence doesn’t cost, money is free, and money is worthless.”
And if we continue down this path it is most definitely true that our money will eventually become worthless at some point. Just today I was down at the grocery store, and a can of chili that I was able to get on sale for 75 cents a couple of years ago now has a “sale price” of $1.69. If the Federal Reserve keeps recklessly printing dollars, eventually we will be fortunate to get a can of chili for 10 bucks. Things cost too much already, and the Fed seems absolutely determined to cut the legs out from under the U.S. dollar.
Unfortunately, printing money is the only way that we are going to be able to service the gigantic amounts of debt that we are accumulating.
According to Chris Cox and Bill Archer, two men who served on Bill Clinton’s Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform, there is no way in the world that we could raise taxes high enough to pay for all of the obligations that we are currently taking on. They say that even if we taxed all corporations and all individuals at a 100% tax rate on all income over $66,193, “it wouldn’t be nearly enough to fund the over $8 trillion per year in the growth of U.S. liabilities.”
Are you starting to get an idea of how much trouble we are in?
We don’t have enough money to pay for all of this.
We are broke.
Our current economy is a debt-induced illusion, and we will soon be waking up to a tremendous amount of pain.
Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California has stirred up a hornets’ nest with her latest proposal to ban so-called “assault weapons” and standard capacity magazines while creating a federal registry of gun owners, complete with pictures and fingerprints. Analystssay supporting the measure would be “political suicide” for Democrats, and some opponents of Sen. Feinstein’s most recent assault on the Second Amendment are evenasking the White House to put the far-left lawmaker on trial for treason. More than a few critics also suggested the move against gun rights could start another revolution or civil war.
Despite claims by the Obama administration and the establishment media, recent polls show that a majority of Americans oppose Feinstein’s scheme, not that opinion polls matter when discussing rights enshrined in the Constitution. Analysts also say the dangerous legislation is unlikely to pass — especially with GOP control of the House and even liberal so-called “RINO” Republicans in the Senate vowing to oppose the measure. The previous “assault weapons” ban, which expired in 2004, was also entirely ineffective, according to studies.
Sen. Feinstein’s proposed legislation, which she promised to introduce in 2013, would purport to ban the sale, manufacture, or importation of 120 types of guns — essentially semi-automatic firearms that some politicians and their allies in the establishment press have arbitrarily describedas “assault weapons.” Included on the list are many of the most popular pistols, rifles, and shotguns owned by tens of millions of Americans. The bill would also seek to criminalize the possession of standard capacity magazines that accept more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
The anti-gun extremists in Washington, D.C., critics say, are hoping to completely disarm America. “The bottom line: If we are foolish enough to embrace a ban on any weapon in the coming Congress then we are unwittingly embracing a ban on every weapon,” noted AWR Hawkins with the pro-Second Amendment group AmmoLand Shooting Sports, saying Feinstein’s plan was really a thinly veiled attempt to ban handguns as well. “The Democrats cannot be trusted with our freedoms, and they will politicize every tragedy to accomplish their ends.”
Another one of the most troubling aspects of the Feinstein scheme is a provision that would purport to mandate a federal database of gun owners, which, aside from being anti-constitutional, is also currently prohibited by statute. According to a summary of the legislation released by Sen. Feinstein, the bill would unconstitutionally seek to register weapons in a federal database that would include photographs and fingerprints of gun owners.
Also required to be able to keep one’s “grandfathered” weapons under the proposal would be local law enforcement verification placed in the federal registry, as mandated by the “National Firearms Act” (NFA) — essentially requiring a signature from a county sheriff or city police chief. One of the many problems already cited with the plan is that some anti-gun local law enforcement bosses could refuse to sign, as they already do oftentimes for machine guns, leaving gun owners with the option of either giving up their weapons, facing arrest, or hiding them.
To most of America the fiscal cliff is some sort of fiscal enigma. Most realize that we are spending more than we are bringing in and also that taxes are part of our system. What most have a harder time understanding is the machine of the Fed and how it selects winners and losers at will by digitally bailing out an entire banking industry. Yet here we are counting down the days to a new year and we are no closer to solving this fiscal problem. Congress is full of millionairesand come what may with the negotiations, they will remain this way. This fiscal cliff is largely a reflection of our three legged fiscal problems; a shrinking middle class with a growing population in poverty, a ritualistic process of hiking up debt ceilings, and the taxes versus spending equation.
Leg one: Middle class and poor
We have a large number of Americans living in poverty:
This is the highest percentage of our population living in poverty in over a generation. Today, we now have over 47 million Americans receiving food stamps:
In the last year alone, a year of recovery at least on paper, we added close to one million Americans to the food stamp program. Many Americans are no longer one paycheck away from poverty. They are now one food stamp payment away from being in hunger, in the most prosperous nation in the world. The growth in these numbers is largely coming from many people falling off the middle class track. The middle is getting smaller while both ends get more and more crowded.
To the point of the fiscal cliff, if nothing is resolved between now and January 1 then 2 million Americans are set to see their unemployment insurance expire:
We still have 12 million Americans receiving unemployment insurance. Compare this to the 7 million or so in 2006 at a more baseline level. Many Americans are already living in a fiscal cliff version of reality and they are simply struggling to get by with government support. How would this nation look with those 47 million Americans on food stamps without that access or these 12 million unemployed not receiving any support? It would look like the US did during the Great Depression. In other words, we are one food stamp payment and one insurance payment away from reliving the darkest time in our nation’s financial history. You would think that would create some urgency in Congress but here we are, days away from the new year and no solid reform on the table.
Little by little we have become a low wage service oriented society. All we need to do is look at the top job sectors in this country by the number of people employed:
In the past, you would expect to see higher paying manufacturing jobs near the top but that is no longer the case. Our two top occupations are retail salespersons and cashiers. You can see that it is becoming increasingly hard to get by with blue collar work at least given the cost of goods in the country. Many view the only option out as a college education butbe suspicious about the levels of debt you take on and the quality of the school you attend (a selection of your career is also important).
This leads us to the next leg of the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling.
Leg two: Debt Ceiling
Raising the debt limit is nothing new:
What is new, however is that our debt ceiling is now larger than our annual GDP. Like crossing the Rubicon this is a critical new stage. We will hit the $16.4 trillion limit on December 31. All of this is happening at the end of the year and there is now a sense of urgency although all of this was expected. Politically not much is happening because there is very little to gain from taking away the punchbowl. This is why the Fed never stepped in to stop the housing bubble from going way overboard. Yet this is the reason for their existence to monitor the deep financial health of our banking system and not allow for this kind of graft to occur. In many ways they have failed to live up to this mission. If Congress does pass anything expect it to be watered down to the point of uselessness. We’ll be back dealing with these issues one year from now.
Leg three: Taxes and spending
If we reach no fiscal cliff solution, taxes will go up on virtually everyone:
Source: CNN Money
These are sizeable gains given how tepid the economic recovery has been. For many poor Americans they are already cash strapped as is. The problem of course is we have been spending way beyond our means for well over a decade and the bill is coming due (since the 1970s we have been deficit spending). Who will pay? No one really wants to pay. So we are left with a Congress that represents the wealthy and has lost touch with the public making this:
Only 4 percent of US families make more than $200,000 a year (2 percent make more than $250,000). Yet this is all we hear about in the media as if this was the standard to go by. Again, the real picture is rarely reported. The three legged stool is now very wobbly and is tilting over. Unfortunately there are only hard choices ahead. In our current global economy low wages are being pushed on countries like Greece and Spain for example. The more they resist, the longer their unemployment rate will stay high. This is the unfortunate reality. How can you compete with people making $1 a day? Is this the future for our low skilled workforce? The ideal scenario would have been for the overall economy to grow and revenues would have increased because of this. That is not the case. The fiscal cliff is very real but something that has been coming down the pipeline for many decades.
SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!!! Mark Matheny December 29, 2012
The liberal left wants to make us believe that armed citizens make virtually no difference when it comes to stopping crimes from happening.
Here is a study from the Cato Institute (Feb. 8, 2012) that says otherwise! :
Cato Institute study says armed citizens prevent thousands of crimesBy Bruce Vielmetti of the Journal SentinelFeb. 8, 2012 | Researchers at the Cato Institute have reviewed eight years worth of news reports about shooting in self-defense and conclude, "the vast majority of gun owners are ethical and competent, and tens of thousands of crimes are prevented each year by ordinary citizens with guns." The libertarian Washington, D.C. think tank has released "Tough Targets: When Criminals Face Armed Resistance from Citizens," just a few days after Wisconsin's first instance of a concealed carry permit holder shooting at an armed robber, at a Milwaukee grocery store. In fact, the incident is already on the Cato Institute's interactive map that accompanies the report.
The report's authors argue that because only when a citizen actually shoots a criminal subject does the incident make the news, there are likely thousands of times when the mere display of a legal weapon stops a crime from happening. But the study also acknowledges that prior estimates range widely, from less than a million to more than 2 million a year. »Read Full Blog Post
CBS News DC December 29, 2012 Editor's Note: Luke 21:26 Men'shearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
WASHINGTON (CBS DC) – American soldier suicides continue to outnumber combat-related deaths in 2012, and the trajectory for soldier suicides continues to get worse.
Statistics released by the Department of the Army show that through November potentially 303 active-duty, Reserve and National Guard soldiers committed suicide. As of Dec. 7, Stars and Stripes reports that 212 soldiers have died in combat-related deaths in Afghanistan.
The Army set a grim new record of 177 potential active-duty cases with 2012 coming to a close on Tuesday – 64 of these cases remain under investigation, 113 have been confirmed.
If the elites in our country are anything they are consistent. Consistently hypocritical.
In a passionate speech just days after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre made what many saw as a bold, outside-the-box suggestion for keeping schools safer moving forward: Put trained, armed guards in them as a way to thwart future attacks by well-armed lunatics and crazies who are doped up on psychotropic drugs:
…[F]or all the noise and anger directed at us over the past week, no one – nobody – has addressed the most important, pressing and immediate question we face: How do we protect our children right now, starting today, in a way that we know works? The only way to answer that question is to face up to the truth. Politicians pass laws for Gun-Free School Zones. They issue press releases bragging about them. They post signs advertising them. And in so doing, they tell every insane killer in America that schools are their safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.
The politics of hypocrisy
Mocked by an absurdly biased mainstream media, labeled as “crazy” by left-wing pundits and politicians, LaPierre went on to point out the blatant hypocrisy of those who have condemned him and his suggestion as unworkable, unwise and simply unthinkable:
How have our nation’s priorities gotten so far out of order? Think about it. We care about our money, so we protect our banks with armed guards. American airports, office buildings, power plants, courthouses – even sports stadiums – are all protected by armed security. We care about the President, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by armed Capitol Police officers. Yet when it comes to the most beloved, innocent and vulnerable members of the American family – our children – we as a society leave them utterly defenseless, and the monsters and predators of this world know it and exploit it.
This hypocrisy was epitomized by none other than NBC‘s David Gregory, who badgered LaPierre over his stance during a Dec. 23 interview:
You proposed armed guards in school. We’ll talk about that in some detail in a moment. You confronted the news media. You blamed Hollywood and the gaming industry. But never once did you concede that guns could actually be part of the problem. Is that a meaningful contribution, Mr. LaPierre, or a dodge?
In trying to be too clever by half, Gregory went on. Citing mass shootings at Columbine and Virginia Tech, both incidents in which armed guards or police officers were present on the grounds, he tried to bait LaPierre: “But you would concede that, as good as an idea as you think this is, it may not work. Because there have been cases where armed guards have not prevented this kind of massacre, this kind of carnage. I want you would concede that point, wouldn’t you?”
Only the privileged deserve protection?
Not so surprisingly, Gregory himself conveniently left out the fact that he sends his children to the Quaker school Sidwell Friends where there is a security department consisting of 11 personnel, according to the Weekly Standard, many of whom are police officers and therefore presumed armed.
But even if they aren’t, Gregory’s kids – and those of a number of political and media elites who also send their children there – will benefit from the full-time Secret Service protection afforded Obama’s children, who attend the school. The others whose children attend Sidwell represent a cornucopia of voices now calling for more gun laws, stricter gun control and outright gun bans.
Finally, there is this: Gregory smugly asserted that the armed guards at Columbine and Virginia Tech did nothing to prevent the armed attacks on those schools.
Fine. But I have to ask: Would he consider placing his children in a school without armed guards? Is he willing to take a chance with the lives of his kids to practice what he and others who hold his point of view (and who also have kids in elite, well-protected schools) condescendingly preach?
One of Britain's leading inventors has warned that a 'Google generation' who rely on the internet for everything are in danger of becoming 'brain-dead'.
Trevor Baylis, who invented the wind-up radio, said children are losing creativity and practical skills because they spend too much time in front of screens.
The 75-year-old said he fears that the next generation of inventors is being lost, with young people often unable to make anything with their hands.
Trevor Baylis, inventor of the wind up radio, has warned the internet is leaving children 'brain-dead'
But he said children could rediscover vital skills if schools used Meccano and other practical toys.
Mr Baylis said: 'Children have got to be taught hands-on, and not to become mobile phone or computer dependent.
'They should use computers as and when, but there are so many people playing with their computers nowadays that spend all their time sitting there with a stomach.
'They are dependent on Google searches. A lot of kids will become fairly brain-dead if they become so dependent on the internet, because they will not be able to do things the old-fashioned way.'
Recalling how his career had its roots in the very different world in which he grew up, he said he was about five or six years old when he began to invent devices. 'During the war, when I was not at school I used to go out and collect the rubbish,' said Mr Baylis.
'One day I was out and went to this house around the corner from where I grew up in Southall, Middlesex, and this lady said, “I've got a box of stuff for you Trev, you'd better get a wheelbarrow.” So I picked up this thing and on the way back I was intrigued and I looked inside and it turned out to be a huge Meccano set.
Inventor Trevor Baylis says today's children are dependent on Google searches
'If I wanted to make a five-wheeled motor car then I could, or a forklift truck. And that's really what it is about, because that stays with you all of your life.'
The inventor, who was awarded the OBE in 1997, believes that simple challenges in schools using tools such as Meccano model kits would give children invaluable skills.
What a year 2012 has been! The mainstream media continues to tell us what a “great job” the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are doing of managing the economy, but meanwhile things just continue to get even worse for the poor and the middle class. It is imperative that we educate the American people about the true condition of our economy and about why all of this is happening. If nothing is done, our debt problems will continue to get worse, millions of jobs will continue to leave the country, small businesses will continue to be suffocated, the middle class will continue to collapse, and poverty in the United States will continue to explode. Just “tweaking” things slightly is not going to fix our economy. We need a fundamental change in direction. Right now we are living in a bubble of debt-fueled false prosperity that allows us to continue to consume far more wealth than we produce, but when that bubble bursts we are going to experience the most painful economic “adjustment” that America has ever gone through. We need to be able to explain to our fellow Americans what is coming, why it is coming and what needs to be done. Hopefully the crazy economic numbers that I have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up.
The end of the year is a time when people tend to gather with family and friends more than they do during the rest of the year. Hopefully many of you will use the list below as a tool to help start some conversations about the coming economic collapse with your loved ones. Sadly, most Americans still tend to doubt that we are heading into economic oblivion. So if you have someone among your family and friends that believes that everything is going to be “just fine”, just show them these numbers. They are a good summary of the problems that the U.S. economy is currently facing.
The following are 50 economic numbers from 2012 that are almost too crazy to believe…
#1 In December 2008, 31.6 million Americans were on food stamps. Today, a new all-time record of 47.7 million Americans are on food stamps. That number has increased by more than 50 percent over the past four years, and yet the mainstream media still has the gall to insist that “things are getting better”.
#2 Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.
#3 According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”
#4 According to one recent survey, 55 percent of all Americans have received money from a safety net program run by the federal government at some point in their lives.
#5 For the first time ever, more than a millionpublic school students in the United States are homeless. That number has risen by 57 percentsince the 2006-2007 school year.
#6 Median household income in the U.S. has fallen for four consecutive years. Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.
#7 Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.
#8 The percentage of working age Americans with a job has been under 59 percent for 39 months in a row.
#9 In September 2009, during the depths of the last economic crisis, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans were employed. In November 2012, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans were employed. It is more then 3 years later, and we are in the exact same place.
#10 When you total up all working age Americans that do not have a job in America today, it comes to more than 100 million.
#11 According to one recent survey, 55 percent of all small business owners in America “say they would not start a business today given what they know now and in the current environment.”
#12 The number of jobs at new small businesses continues to decline. According to economist Tim Kane, the following is how the decline in the number of startup jobs per 1000 Americans breaks down by presidential administration…
#17 According to the Pew Research Center, 61 percent of all Americans were “middle income” back in 1971. Today, only 51 percent of all Americans are.
#18 The Pew Research Center has also found that 85 percent of all middle class Americans say that it is harder to maintain a middle class standard of living today than it was 10 years ago.
#19 62 percent of all middle class Americans say that they have had to reduce household spendingover the past year.
#20 Right now, approximately 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.
