Are the End Times Upon Us? Author Says ‘Unrestrained Immorality’ Mirrors ‘Pandemic Godlessness’ Seen in the Bible

The Blaze
May 3, 2014

Is mankind evolving into a more peaceful and prosperous people – or are we on a path toward ever-increasing moral depravity, social chaos and destruction?

Harvest House Publishers

Answering that dichotomy depends on one’s worldview, but Christian author Jeff Kinley is in the latter camp, telling TheBlaze that he sees human beings continuously and perilously cutting God out of society.

“I look around my world and I think, ‘Wow, we’ve written God out of our own story here,’” Kinley recently said in an interview. “We’re content in living in our own lives.”

The author, who believes Noah, the flood and the ark unfolded as the Bible recounts, draws parallels between contemporary culture and the “pandemic godlessness of the earth” during Noah’s in his new book “As It Was in the Days of Noah.”

Human behavior then and now, he posits, isn’t all that different.

“Humanity had forgotten God so literally every man just did what they thought was right in their own eyes,” Kinley said of the days of Noah.

As for the current conditions, the author described what he sees as “pandemic unrestrained immorality” and “a falling away of the purity of faith.”

Kinley proceeded to de.scribe how society’s current treatment of God mirrors the Bible’s depiction of the “end times” – a time-frame in Christian theology that precedes the Earth’s end.

While he said it’s impossible to judge when the end times might unfold, Kinley described the current conditions as matching those presented in the Bible, citing Matthew 24, among other references.

“As we ramp up to the end times, there’s going to be, as Romans 1 describes, a simmering hostility against God, against biblical morality,” Kinley told TheBlaze

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US accused of operating secret prisons in Afghanistan

RT News 
April 30, 2014

Hamid Karzai is accusing US led coalition forces of operating secret detention facilities in Afghanistan. A commission appointed by the Afghan president supposedly found six such facilities on coalition bases in southern Afghanistan, according to the New York Times. The US denied the accusations of the leader who has been a frequent critic of the detention of Afghan citizens by coalition forces, saying every facility is disclosed to the government and the Red Cross. RT's Lindsay France has more details on this latest development out of Afghanistan.

McWages for the McAmerica job recovery: The scorecard – 3.6 million higher-wage jobs lost due to recession with only 2.6 million added back. 2 million lower-wage jobs lost during recession but 3.8 million added since the recovery.

MyBudget360
April 29, 2014

We are witnessing an economic race to the bottom. The recovery has largely been one of low-wage work. This is easily seen through the paychecks Americans are receiving. What isn’t readily visible is what is being slashed on the backend including healthcare, benefits, and the expanding impact of inflation on purchasing power. A report from the National Employment Law Project finds the continuing trend of the McWage recovery. This is a suitable name for what is occurring in this so-called recovery that is only exacerbating wealth and income inequality. For example, 3.6 million higher-wage jobs were lost due to the recession and only 2.6 million jobs in this segment have been added back. We are in a net-deficit of good paying jobs by 1 million. On the other hand, we lost 2 million low-wage jobs during the recession but have added 3.8 million lower-wage jobs during the recovery. A net add of 1.8 million lower-wage jobs. This is the kind of recovery being dished out by the bailout happy Wall Street and their aggressive behind the scenes shenanigans of raiding the pockets of Americans. The story is the same: corporate welfare and financial handouts while austerity and a race to the bottom for the rest.

The low-wage recovery

Higher paid industries like those in accounting and legal work for example shed 3.6 million jobs during the recession only to have 2.6 million being added back. However, the lower-wage industries like those in fast food, retailing, and hospitality lost 2 million jobs during the recession but have added a stunning 3.8 million back since. In reality, what is occurring is a two-tiered workforce. You have massive salaries at the executive level while we are growing an army of lower-wage workers that barely have enough to pay the rent. The middle class? Largely evaporating one worker at a time.

This matters for a variety of reasons but for one, it is showing a growing inequality gap that is booming in America that is deeply problematic. People realize that there will be gaps in income and wealth but the current system favors a plutocracy. Money is buying more influence in politics and the media already dishes out watered down content to keep the public numb and blind to what is happening. This is how we can have 47 million people on food stamps yet have a peak in the stock market. The majority of Americans own no stocks because they don’t have enough to save after they are paid their wages. The financial sector in the US has become a giant rent seeking apparatus that draws money and energy from the productive sectors in the country. Think of all the big bank bailouts. Just look at pay at the big banks and ask yourself what the trillions of dollars in bailout funds and central bank gimmicks have wrought onto the nation. Inflation is absolutely happening contrary to the watered down CPI.

Take a look at the net scorecard on what kind of recovery we are in:

Source: NELP

This is a very telling chart but illuminates what is going on in the country. Those in the top one percent have done exceptionally well during this recovery but most other Americans are falling further and further behind.

“Most Americans are playing out the Alice in Wonderland Red Queen’s race: you keep running faster and faster just to stay in the same place.”

The above chart truly shows what kind of job recovery we are facing. The McJobs are outpacing the middle class jobs. Can someone really get by in the US making $9 or $13 an hour? Not if you want decent healthcare, a college education for your kids, and the ability to own a house. However, the structure of the bailouts has allowed large banks to flood the housing market and crowd out regular Americans. This is why the homeownership rate continues to fall even though interest rates are very low:

Being a homeowner in the US used to be the cornerstone of a middle class life. That is now becoming much more difficult as fewer Americans have the income needed to support such a big purchase. Also, many have a hard time coming up with a down payment because banks have juiced up the system where low rates focus only on the monthly payment but fail to look at the actual base cost of an item. In other words, they try to trick people with low monthly payments while jacking prices up. In large part, this was the entire mission of QE and all the other bailout programs – basically freeze accounting rules, lower rates into negative territory, and let banks rewrite their balance sheets. In the end, what you have is an economy where housing prices are going up, college costs are soaring, healthcare costs are going up, yet incomes are stagnant and falling on an inflation adjusted basis.

The race to the bottom is on and the circus of this election year is kicking off. The theme should be the middle class but good luck having any champions for that cause. Remember, lower-wages and watered down benefits save someone money. Just look at the wealth gap in this country and you can see how things are playing out in this McWage recovery.

A Doctor's Declaration of Independence

Wall Street Journal
April 29, 2014

It's time to defy health-care mandates issued by bureaucrats not in the healing profession.

In my 23 years as a practicing physician, I've learned that the only thing that matters is the doctor-patient relationship. How we interact and treat our patients is the practice of medicine. I acknowledge that there is a problem with the rising cost of health care, but there is also a problem when the individual physician in the trenches does not have a voice in the debate and is being told what to do and how to do it.

As a group, the nearly 880,000 licensed physicians in the U.S. are, for the most part, well-intentioned. We strive to do our best even while we sometimes contend with unrealistic expectations. The demands are great, and many of our families pay a huge price for our not being around. We do the things we do because it is right and our patients expect us to.

So when do we say damn the mandates and requirements from bureaucrats who are not in the healing profession? When do we stand up and say we are not going to take it any more?

Enlarge Image

Corbis

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services dictates that we must use an electronic health record (EHR) or be penalized with lower reimbursements in the future. There are "meaningful use" criteria whereby the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services tells us as physicians what we need to include in the electronic health record or we will not be subsidized the cost of converting to the electronic system and we will be penalized by lower reimbursements. Across the country, doctors waste precious time filling in unnecessary electronic-record fields just to satisfy a regulatory measure. I personally spend two hours a day dictating and documenting electronic health records just so I can be paid and not face a government audit. Is that the best use of time for a highly trained surgical specialist?

This is not a unique complaint. A study commissioned by the American Medical Association last year and conducted by the RAND Corp. found that "Poor EHR usability, time-consuming data entry, interference with face-to-face patient care, inefficient and less fulfilling work content, inability to exchange health information between EHR products, and degradation of clinical documentation were prominent sources of professional dissatisfaction."

In addition to the burden of mandated electronic-record entry, doctors also face board recertification in the various medical specialties that has become time-consuming, expensive, imposing and a convenient method for our specialty societies and boards to make money.

Read the entire article

Email Shows Blaming Benghazi Attack On ‘The Video’ Was Obama Administration’s Idea

Personal Liberty Digest
April 29, 2014

A top Obama Administration official strongly urged Susan Rice, National Security Advisor at the time of the Benghazi, Lybia terror attack on Sept. 11, 2012, to go before the press and blame the strike on grass-roots Islamist backlash against “The Innocence of Muslims,” a satirical YouTube video.

According to a White House email obtained by Judicial Watch, White House Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes specifically fingered the video on Sept. 14, 2012 as a talking point Rice should focus on when making the obligatory TV news junket following the attack. Oh, and the email unswervingly calls what happened “protests,” not a terror attack, or even, simply an “attack.”

Under the ‘Goals’ outline in the State Department email – an email specifically created to dictate talking points for media to consume – the video stands alone as a named culprit. The purpose of Rhodes’ memo was to “underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy…”

That email was sent out on a Friday. By Sunday, Rice was in songbird mode.

One of the talking points (Rhodes calls them “Top-lines”) that Rice was instructed to play up was to focus on the video as the villain simply by denouncing it.

Only twice does Rhodes advise using speech that would denounce the attack at all, and then only in flyover language that puts the blame back on that dastardly video. “[W]e’ve encouraged leaders around the globe to speak out against the violence, and you’ve seen very important statements in the Muslim world by people like Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey, President Morsi of Egypt, and others who have condemned the violence and called for a peaceful response,” Rhodes wrote.

The State Department’s real outrage is focused on the bad guys who would foment unrest in Islamists who can’t help themselves by making such hurtful and offensive video clips:

 [W]e’ve made our views on this video crystal clear. The United States government had nothing to do with it. We reject its message and its contents. We find it disgusting and reprehensible. But there is absolutely no justification at all for responding to this movie with violence.

And on and on.

Well, there’s confirmation that the Obama Administration was behind the whole “blame the video” narrative.

But the question remains: why in the hell was the State Department even talking about a video?

Read the entire bevy of emails Judicial Watch obtained here – the Rhodes memo is on page 14. Elsewhere, expect a lot of white boxes where the words are supposed to go.

The Real Unemployment Rate: In 20% Of American Families, EVERYONE Is Unemployed

Michael Snyder
American Dream
April 29, 2014

According to shocking new numbers that were just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20 percent of American families do not have a single person that is working. 

Image: Family (YouTube).

So when someone tries to tell you that the unemployment rate in the United States is about 7 percent, you should just laugh.  One-fifth of the families in the entire country do not have a single member with a job.  That is absolutely astonishing.  How can a family survive if nobody is making any money?  Well, the answer to that question is actually quite easy.  There is a reason why government dependence has reached epidemic levels in the United States.  Without enough jobs, tens of millions of additional Americans have been forced to reach out to the government for help.  At this point, if you can believe it, the number of Americans getting money or benefits from the federal government each month exceeds the number of full-time workers in the private sector by more than 60 million.

When I was growing up, it seemed like anyone that was willing to work hard could find a good paying job.  But now that has all changed.  At this point, 20 percent of all the families in the entire country do not have a single member that has a job.  That includes fathers, mothers and children.  The following is how CNSNews.com broke down the numbers…

A family, as defined by the BLS, is a group of two or more people who live together and who are related by birth, adoption or marriage. In 2013, there were 80,445,000 families in the United States and in 16,127,000—or 20 percent–no one had a job.

To be honest, these really are Great Depression-type numbers.  But over the years “unemployment” has been redefined so many times that it doesn’t mean the same thing that it once did.  The government tells us that the official unemployment rate is about 7 percent, but that number is almost meaningless at this point.

A number that I find much more useful is the employment-population ratio.  According to the employment-population ratio, the percentage of working age Americans that actually have a job has been below 59 percent for more than four years in a row…

That means that more than 41 percent of all working age Americans do not have a job.

When people can’t take care of themselves, it becomes necessary for the government to take care of them.  And what we have seen in recent years is government dependence soar to unprecedented levels.  In fact, welfare spending and entitlement payments now make up 69 percent of the entire federal budget.  For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “18 Stats That Prove That Government Dependence Has Reached Epidemic Levels“.

And what is even more frightening is that more families are falling out of the middle class every single day.  As a recent CNN article explained, approximately one-third of all U.S. households are living “hand-to-mouth”.  In other words, they are constantly living on the edge of financial disaster…

About one-third of American households live “hand-to-mouth,” meaning that they spend all their paychecks. But what surprised the study authors is that 66% of these families are middle class, with a median income of $41,000. While they don’t have liquid assets, such as savings accounts or mutual fund holdings, they do have homes and retirement accounts, with a median net worth of $41,000.

“We don’t expect them to be living paycheck to paycheck,” said Greg Kaplan, study co-author and assistant professor of economics at Princeton University.

The American Dream is rapidly becoming an American nightmare.

When I was growing up, I lived in a pretty typical middle class neighborhood.  Everyone had a nice home, a couple of cars and could go on vacation during the summer.  I don’t remember ever hearing of anyone using food stamps or going to a food bank.  In fact, I can’t even remember anyone having a parent that was unemployed.  If someone did leave a job, it was usually quite easy to find another one.

But today, the middle class is being ripped to shreds and according to one new report there are 49 million Americans that are dealing with food insecurity in 2014.

How can anyone not see what is happening to us?  America is in the midst of a long-term economic decline, but the mainstream media and most of our politicians seem to think that things are better than ever.  They continue to try to convince us that “business as usual” is the right path to take.

But one-fifth of the families in the entire nation are already totally unemployed.

At what point will we finally admit that what we are doing right now is simply not working?

30 percent of all families unemployed?

40 percent?

50 percent?

If we stay on the road that we are on now, things are going to continue to get worse.  Millions more jobs will be shipped overseas, millions more jobs will be replaced by technology and crippling government regulations will kill millions more jobs.  The middle class will continue to shrink and government dependence will continue to rise.

Most people just want to work hard, put food on the table, pay their mortgages and provide a nice life for their families.

But the percentage of Americans that are successfully able to do that just keeps getting smaller.

Wake up America.

Your middle class is dying.

Cliven Bundy, The Racist?

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!!! News

Mark Matheny
April 28, 2014

Since the showdown in Nevada between the Bundy family and the BLM, the leftists who wish to destroy patriotism and freedom have pulled out one of their famous tools used when they can't demean their enemies with cold hard facts -Racism.

It seems the media wants to call Cliven Bundy a racist for using the term "colored" when referring to African Americans now. In a video Cliven Bundy actually made statements sympathetic toward Blacks and Mexicans:

I was in the Watts riots. I seen the beginning fire and I seen the last fire. What I seen was civil disturbance, people were not happy. People thinking they don’t have freedom, didn’t have these things — and they didn’t have them. We’ve progressed quite a bit from that day until now, and we sure don’t want to go back. We sure don’t want these colored people to go back to that point. We sure don’t want the Mexican people to go back to that point. And we can make a difference right now by taking care of some of these bureaucracies and do it in a peaceful way....

The New American covered this and made excellent points on why Mr. Bundy was not making racist statements:

 Any fair rendering of the above comment would have to admit that Bundy is saying that he’s glad for the gains that racial minorities have made and he doesn’t want to see them to the pre-1960s status. So, is he then saying in the next breath that he wants to see them go back to their status in the pre-1860s? Is he really saying they we’re better off under slavery, that he would have favored slavery back then, that they should have stayed in slavery, that he would like to see them in chattel slavery once again?That’s the message his critics are promoting. And if it were true, Cliven Bundy’s statements would indeed be reprehensible, and he would, understandably, be a much less sympathetic character. It would not change the facts in his case or affect the merits (or lack thereof) of his claims that the federal government is acting unfairly toward him and abusing its authority. But it would cause support for him to diminish, if not collapse. And that, of course, is the point of this whole media “gotcha” provocation.



Much of what Mr. Bundy is saying closely parallels what even many black leaders, authors and intellectuals — such as Prof. Walter Williams, Rev. C.L. Bryant, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, Bill Cosby, Alveda King, Star Parker, and Alan Keyes — have been saying. But Cliven Bundy’s “sin” is that he is an elderly white man who is unschooled in traversing the minefield of political correctness — and he was careless in failing to make important distinctions and clarifications. He “sinned” by being born when he was born, and failing to keep up with the constantly changing terminology for ethnic designations. He still uses the terms “Negro,” “colored people,” and “Mexican,” instead of “black/ African American” or “Hispanic/Latino” — but then, race activists still argue amongst themselves concerning the “proper” ethnic label to apply to their lineage and group identity.

Of course Media matters shortened the video, taking things out of context in order to attack this man when the BLM could no longer bully his ranch or steal his cattle.

Below is a video where a Black gentleman defends Mr. Bundy's remarks.



Related video:

Congressional Budget Office Confirms Obama's Attack on the Middle Class

The New American
April 25, 2014

Robert Klein, a nationally renowned accountant who has written widely on taxes for many respected journals, was astonished to learn how much the taxes on his wealthy clients jumped just in the last year:

For [my] clients in the 39.6% tax bracket … their average federal income tax liability was $436,000, $51,000 greater than their 2012 tax liability … an average increase [of] 13.3%....

In summary, if you were in the 39.6% tax bracket in 2013, the 4.5% increase in your tax bracket, combined with additional income-tax liability resulting from additional tax on Medicare wages, a loss of itemized and personal exemption deductions, a 5% surcharge on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends, and the 3.8% tax on net investment income, reduced your spendable income considerably.

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Motorcycle Gang Of Military Veterans Help Force Out Ex-Cons Squatting In Soldier's Vacant Home

Opposing Views
April 25, 2014

A soldier from New Port Richey, Florida says that squatters took over his house while he was stationed in Hawaii for two years, and when it came time to move back into his home with his wife, the squatters refused to leave.

As reported earlier this week, Army Spc. Michael Sharkey says that he and his wife haven’t lived in their Florida home in the two years that he’s been stationed in Hawaii, but upon learning they could go back to Florida, they were shocked to discover that two ex-cons broke in, changed the locks, and were refusing to leave. Unfortunately for Sharkey, he was told that legally, there was nothing he could do to force them out.

“They are criminals,” said Sharkey to WFLA. “I am serving my country, and they have more rights to my home than I do.”

Police told Sharkey that they could do nothing about the couple, Julio Ortiz and Fatima Cardosa, since they already established residency, so the matter would have to be settled in a civil court.

Ortiz claims that he made a verbal agreement with Sharkey’s friend, who was overseeing the home while the soldier and his wife were gone, that they could live there for free as long as they did repairs on the house. Both Sharkey and his friend say those claims are lies, but Ortiz has continued to defend himself.

"The people that are in this house cannot produce any documentation, lease, agreement, anything that they belong in that house," said Sharkey.

Once word got out that the squatters had taken over Sharkey’s house, a group of military veteran bikers announced that they would be paying a visit to the home to “peacefully make the squatters uncomfortable.”

That seems to be all it took because now, reports say that Ortiz and his girlfriend have packed up their belongings and are leaving the home for good.