When you use the Internet in a public place, do you prefer to have as much privacy as possible?  Well, that makes you a potential terrorist.  According to the FBI, Internet privacy is now considered to be suspicious activity.  If you are out in public and you attempt to keep snoopers from peeking at your computer screen, then according to the FBI they should gather as much information about you as they can and they should report you to the authorities immediately. If this seems completely and totally ridiculous to you, then you are not alone.  Millions of Americans have become deeply concerned about the constantly expanding definition of "suspicious activity" in the United States.  Sadly, the federal government is now engaging in an all-out attempt to have us all spy on one another.  All over America, the Department of Homeland Security is running ads promoting the "See Something, Say Something" campaign.  They even had 8,000 stadium workers at the Super Bowl this year go through special training on how to spot potential terrorists.  So the next time you see a hot dog vendor, keep in mind that he might also be part of a special anti-terrorism task force.

The following are some quotes from a government document entitled "Potential Indicators of Terrorist Activities Related to Internet Café".  In between each quote, I have included some commentary.  It is absolutely amazing what the definition of "suspicious activity" now includes....

"Are overly concerned about privacy, attempts to shield the screen from view of others"

Look, if I am doing some online banking or am composing an email to a friend I don't want someone peeking at my screen.  Aren't most Americans "concerned about privacy" and don't most people want to keep their Internet activity to themselves?

"Always pay cash or use credit card(s) in different name(s)"

We have seen the government warn about this before.  It appears that from now on using cash in America is going to get you labeled as a potential terrorist.  How bizarre is that?

"Act nervous or suspicious behavior inconsistent with activities"

Some people are just naturally nervous.  This kind of vague language could be applied to almost anyone.

"Are observed switching SIM cards in cell phone or use of multiple cell phones"

What if your cell phone battery is dead and you need to use your wife's cell phone?  Does that make you a potential terrorist?

"Travel illogical distance to use Internet Café"

A lot of times people will use Internet cafes when they are out of town on a trip.  Is there something inherently suspicious about that?

"Evidence of a residential based internet provider (signs on to Comcast, AOL, etc.)"

Why in the world would this be considered to be suspicious activity?

"Use of anonymizers, portals, or other means to shield IP address"

These are lots of people out there that take Internet security very seriously and that use things like this.  And how would a casual observer know that these kinds of things are being used?  You would have to be watching someone pretty closely to know that something like this is going on.

"Suspicious or coded writings, use of code word sheets, cryptic ledgers, etc."

What would "suspicious or coded writings" include?  Again, this is very vague language and could include a vast array of different things.

"Encryption or use of software to hide encrypted data in digital photos, etc."

So nobody should use encryption anymore?

"Suspicious communications using VOIP or communicating through a PC game"

What exactly would fall under the category of "suspicious communications"?

Also, if you are talking to someone through a PC game, there is a good chance that it is a very violent PC game and that you would say something that you normally wouldn't say in real life.

You might say something like this: "Okay let's get the guys together and go kill the boss.  We'll meet at the Gates of Endor in a half hour."

According to the FBI, that could easily be labeled as "suspicious activity" that needs to be reported to the authorities.

So exactly what are we being instructed to do if we see something suspicious?

Well, the following is one of the action points from the FBI flyer....

"Identify license plates, vehicle description, names used, languages spoken, ethnicity, etc."

That sounds like something the KGB would ask people to do.

You can view the complete FBI flyer right here.

But it isn't just Internet privacy that the FBI is concerned about.

There is another FBI flyer out there that is directed at those running hotels and motels.

The document is entitled "Potential Indicators Of Terrorist Activities Related To Hotels And Motels", and you can view the entire document for yourself right here.

The following are things that the FBI says make a hotel guest "suspicious"....

"Request specific room assignments or locations."

I do this all the time.  I always request a non-smoking room and I always prefer a king size bed.  Also, if I have a lot of stuff to carry I may request a room on the ground floor.  Does that make me suspicious?

"Use cash for large transactions or a credit card in someone else’s name."

Once again, using cash is considered to be a suspicious activity.  How long will it be before they try to outlaw cash?

"Arrive with unusual amounts of luggage."

Has the person writing these things ever even traveled with a woman?

"Make unusual inquiries about local sites, including government, military, police, communications, and power facilities."

When I am visiting a new area, I will often talk with hotel staff about places to eat or places to visit.

Is that a problem?

"Refuse cleaning service over an extended time."

This is something that I have done for years.  I don't want a maid to wake me up at the crack of dawn.  If I refuse cleaning service will that get me put on a list somewhere?

"Use entrances and exits that avoid the lobby."

Many hotels have entrances all around the building so that you don't have to walk a mile to get to your car.

If I walk out a side door directly to my car does that make me a potential terrorist?

"Abandon a room and leave behind clothing and toiletry items."

How many of us have ever left something behind in a hotel room by mistake?  Sometimes I triple check the room and still manage to leave something behind.

"Do not leave their room."

Sometimes when you have a day off you just want to stay in bed all day.

Or if you are newly married you may not want to leave your room for a few days.

Should newly married couples be reported to the government as potential terrorists?

"Change their appearance."

I change my appearance all the time.

If I am on vacation, I may not shave for several days.

And most people I know wear different clothes every single day.

So exactly how dramatic would a "change" of appearance have to be in order to be considered suspicious?

"Leave the property for several days and then return."

Sometimes people have business plans or vacation plans that involve an unusual schedule.

Whoever wrote these flyers does not seem to have a lick of common sense.

Using the criteria above, almost anyone could be considered to be engaging in suspicious activity.

And it is highly offensive that the federal government is instructing us to watch one another so closely.

When did the United States turn into East Germany?

Unfortunately, these flyers are just another sign of the mass paranoia that seems to have descended on this country.

In America today, everyone is a "potential terrorist" and will be treated as such.

If the authorities will detain U.S. Senators at our airports for "security reasons" and if they will issue hundreds of thousands of tickets to school children, then there is no reason to believe that you are going to be treated with dignity and respect.

The United States is rapidly becoming a Big Brother police state.  I didn't sign up to live in North Korea, but that is exactly where we are headed.

We have been told that all of our rights are now "limited privileges" that can be taken away at any time for the sake of "national security".

Sadly, most Americans have become convinced that if we give up large amounts of liberty and freedom it will help the authorities keep us safe.

But that is a lie.  Without a doubt, more bad things are going to happen in the future.

When those bad things happen, we will be told that we need to give up even more liberty and freedom.

In the end, we will be living like slaves.

And we will still not be safe.

Please wake up America.

Do you ever get the feeling that the world around you is going crazy?  If you live in America today and you are not in a television-induced coma, then you have probably had that feeling.  It seems like almost everywhere you turn these days, there is someone that is seriously losing it.  It is not just our politicians either.  In every profession and on every level of society there are lots of people that appear to be a few fries short of a Happy Meal.  So what do you do when the country where you live is literally going insane?  When paranoia, fear and delusional thinking are commonplace, it is very difficult for a society to function normally.  And unfortunately, some of the craziest people out there are working for the federal government. These days you literally do not know who you can count on.  If you contact someone in a position of authority, that person may help you or that person may turn out to be a raving lunatic.  Once upon a time, there was a feeling that most people in America shared a set of common values, but those days are long gone.  These days, it seems like nearly everyone has their own idea of what "right and wrong" are, and so when you meet someone you never know what you are going to get.  What may seem "totally insane" to you may seem perfectly normal to the person that you are trying to interact with.

Yes, of course part of the problem is that the U.S. population has been very much "dumbed-down" over the years.  Our government schools are pumping out millions upon millions of kids that are dumb as a rock, and our entertainment industry is slowly turning the American people into a bunch of jibbering idiots.

But our problems go way beyond the fact that a large percentage of our population is uneducated.  The truth is that some of the most paranoid and irrational Americans you will meet are actually very highly educated.

For example, it really does take someone extremely paranoid to believe that we need to strip-search 80-year-old women at our airports for the sake of national security.

Have you ever met someone that is truly paranoid?  Everyone and everything is a threat to them.

Well, it is the same thing with those running the Department of Homeland Security.  The size of the "no fly list" in the U.S. has more than doubled over the past 12 months.  A year ago, there were about 10,000 names on it, and today there are approximately 21,000 names on it.

In fact, your name might be on it right now and you may never even know until you try to get on to an airplane.

But the "terrorist" watch list is even worse.  The "terrorist watch list" now has over a million names on it.  According to the Washington Post, a "single tip" can get you put on to that list forever.

In America today, we are all "potential terrorists", and we have been told that we must give up our rights so that the government can keep us safe from the "dangerous people" that could be living right down the street from us.

Yes, there are real terrorists out there, but getting us all scared to death of our neighbors is not going to help anything.

Sadly, the truth is that it is often law enforcement authorities that we need to be most afraid of.

The other day, a team of FBI agents hacked down the front door of one lady's apartment with a chainsaw....

“I just happened to glance over and saw this huge chainsaw ripping down the side of my door,” she explains. “And I was freaking out. I didn’t know what was going on.”

They had her on the floor for 35 minutes before they finally figured out that they had the wrong apartment.

Oops.

Of course the criminals are becoming more insane as well, and they are increasingly acting in groups.  Over the past few years, we have seen a frightening rise in the number of crimes committed by mobs of criminals.  The following is one recent example from Syracuse, New York....

Authorities say a group of nine people swarmed a neighborhood grocery store in Syracuse and stole nearly $40,000 by distracting the clerk and blocking her view.

Syracuse police tell local media that they believe the thieves are a roving band of scam artists who target small stores with few employees.

A few months ago, I wrote an article about the flash mob epidemic that we are now seeing in America.  Large groups of kids are banding together and are deciding that it would be a really good idea to go out and commit a crime together.

Some would call such behavior stupidity while others would call it sheer insanity.

But whatever you want to call it, the reality is that it is quite an alarming trend.

People also seem to be becoming more sadistic these days as well.

The other day, two sisters in Wisconsin were arrested for sexually assaulting a man with a pair of pliers and having him drink a glass of urine.

Does anyone remember women acting this way 40 or 50 years ago?

Unfortunately, if you are a victim of a crime and you call the authorities for help, you never know what you are going to get.

If a good police officer responds, you may get help.

If a bad police officer responds, you may get raped.  Yes, that is actually true.  Sometimes the police end up being even worse than the criminals.  When one 19-year-old single woman in Milwaukee called 911 for help, she didn't expect to get raped by the police.  But that is exactly what happened.

Teachers are probably even worse.  As I wrote about the other day, another story appears in the mainstream media about some teacher doing perverted things with students almost every single day now.

So what should you do?

Should you just go live out in the middle of the woods somewhere to escape all of this insanity?

Unfortunately, that will not work either.  The crazies can find you back there too.  The following is a comment that a reader identified as BenjiK shared on one of my recent articles....

I had a 1962 Chevy Bel-Air given to me by my grandfather that was stored under a car cover, behind a solid fence, and COMPLETELY out of public site. It was going to be a project for me and the kids when they got a little older. We lived on over 2 acres, on a dirt road, outside the city limits and we were friends with the few neighbors we had. I received a letter in the mail from the county stating I had 30 days to get the “abandoned” vehicle out of my yard or face fines up to $117 a day for every day not in compliance. I about flipped. Upon contacting a county official I learned that I wasn’t being “singled out”, this was a county wide “crackdown” on “unsightly debris”. When I explained there was no possible way that the car was visible to ANYONE, I was informed the county was using “satellite imagery” for enforcement.

However, they were “gracious” enough to give me 3 options: 1) Get rid of the vehicle 2) Get the vehicle in running condition and license and insure it or 3) Build an extra garage to store it in. (Of course contingent upon the county’s approval, paid permits, fees, inspections, etc….)

We ended up storing it in our 2-car garage with my truck sitting outside until we sold our home and moved.

Isn't that comforting?

They could be using a satellite to look at your home right now and you would never even know it.

Our country is becoming crazier all the time.

Sadly, even those that are supposed to be the "cream of the crop" are completely and totally insane as well.

Just look at all the corruption on Wall Street.  As this chart shows, when debt levels in America go up, so do the earnings of the Wall Street bankers.  They don't care that the debt bubble that they are creating is going to destroy the financial system.  All they care about is the big bonus checks that they are going to get at the end of the year.

The big banks run up ridiculous levels of debt and leverage at their own firms because they know that if they guess right, they will win big, and if they guess wrong the taxpayers will bail them out because they are "too big to fail".

Our financial system has become a gambler's paradise.  It is a gigantic casino where the crazy and the corrupt place massive bets that are so large they would blow the minds of most average Americans.

But very few places are insane as Washington D.C. is.

It has been said that the American people are going to get the government that they deserve, and that definitely appears to be true.

One of our major political parties is being led by a legendary con artist who appears to be completely and totally incompetent and the other major political party is being led by a man that would literally say almost anything in order to win an election.

Once there was a famous song that included the following line....

Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right

Unfortunately, that is a perfect description of U.S. politics today.

And the guy occupying the White House is barely even qualified to run a Dairy Queen.

The following is what Barack Obama recently said was his goal for the U.S. economy....

"I laid out a blueprint for an economy that's built to last, that has a firm foundation. Where we're making stuff and selling stuff and moving it around and UPS drivers are dropping things off everywhere."

And he is supposed to be one of the great orators of our time?

Barack Obama seems to know next to nothing about our economic system.  Perhaps that is why he nominated Ben Bernanke for another term as the head of the Federal Reserve despite the fact that Bernanke had a track record of failure that would make the Washington Generals look good.

This week, Bernanke promised Congress that the Federal Reserve will protect the U.S. economy from whatever happens next....

"We are in frequent contact with European authorities, and we will continue to monitor the situation closely and take every available step to protect the U.S. financial system and the economy"

Talk about delusional!  Bernanke is not going to be able to protect us from what is coming.

But Bernanke is a perfect example of the modern American.  We tend to think that we know it all, and yet the rest of the world is just laughing at us.

Sadly, just electing the right person to be president is not going to fix what is wrong with this country.

The entire nation is literally going insane.

We need to understand what has happened to us, turn around, and start doing the things that once made us great.

So what do all of you think?

Is there much hope for America?

Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below....

With each passing year, the difference between America's prisons and America's public schools becomes smaller and smaller.  As you read the rest of this article, you will be absolutely amazed at some of the crazy things that school children in America are being arrested for.  When I was growing up, I don't remember a single police officer ever coming to my school.  Discipline was always handled by the teachers and by the principals.  But today, there are schools all over the country that have police officers permanently stationed in the halls.  Many other schools will call out police officers at the drop of a hat.  In the classrooms of America today, if you burp in class, if you spray yourself with perfume or if you doodle on your desk, there is a chance that you will be arrested by the police and hauled out of your school in handcuffs.  Unfortunately, we live in a country where paranoia has become standard operating procedure.  The American people have become convinced that the only way that we can all be "safe" is for this country to be run like a militarized totalitarian police state.  So our public schools are run like prisons and our public school students are treated like prisoners.  The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world by far, and our schools are preparing the next generation to either "do time" in the prison system or to live as good little slaves in the Big Brother prison grid that is being constructed all around us.  But what our schools are not doing is giving these children the critical thinking skills that they need to live as free citizens in a nation that used to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave".

Of course very few people would deny that the character of American schoolchildren has changed dramatically over the decades.  Back in the 1950s, some of the biggest school discipline problems were gum chewing and hair pulling.  Today, kids bring knives, guns and drugs with them to school.  Gang activity is rampant in many of our schools and in some schools kids are even having sex in the school bathrooms.

So there is definitely a discipline problem in our schools.

But what is going on in many areas of the country is absolutely ridiculous.  For example, in 2010 alone police down in Texas issued an astounding 300,000 tickets to school children.

Yes, if a kid pulls a knife on someone the police should get involved, but teachers and administrators should be able to use some common sense and handle the vast majority of discipline problems that happen themselves.

What you are about to read is absolutely going to amaze you.  The following are 19 really crazy things that school children are being arrested for in America....

#1 At one public school down in Texas, a 12-year-old girl named Sarah Bustamantes was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume.

#2 A 13-year-old student at a school in Albuquerque, New Mexico was recently arrested by police for burping in class.

#3 Another student down in Albuquerque was forced to strip down to his underwear while five adults watched because he had $200 in his pocket.  The student was never formally charged with doing anything wrong.

#4 A security guard at one school in California broke the arm of a 16-year-old girl because she left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning up some cake that she had spilled.

#5 One teenage couple down in Houston poured milk on each other during a squabble while they were breaking up.  Instead of being sent to see the principal, they were arrested and sent to court.

#6 In early 2010, a 12-year-old girl at a school in Forest Hills, New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. "I love my friends Abby and Faith" was what she reportedly scribbled on her desk.

#7 A 6-year-old girl down in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.

#8 One student down in Texas was reportedly arrested by police for throwing paper airplanes in class.

#9 A 17-year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father's lunch with her to school.  It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples.  So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this?  The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.

#10 In Allentown, Pennsylvania a 14-year-old girl was tasered in the groin area by a school security officer even though she had put up her hands in the air to surrender.

#11 Down in Florida, an 11-year-old student was arrested, thrown in jail and charged with a third-degree felony for bringing a plastic butter knife to school.

#12 Back in 2009, an 8-year-old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.

#13 A police officer in San Mateo, California blasted a 7-year-old special education student in the face with pepper spray because he would not quit climbing on the furniture.

#14 In America today, even 5-year-old children are treated brutally by police.  The following is from a recent article that described what happened to one very young student in Stockton, California a while back....

Earlier this year, a Stockton student was handcuffed with zip ties on his hands and feet, forced to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and was charged with battery on a police officer. That student was 5 years old.

#15 At one school in Connecticut, a 17-year-old boy was thrown to the floor and tasered five times because he was yelling at a cafeteria worker.

#16 A teenager in suburban Dallas was forced to take on a part-time job after being ticketed for using foul language in one high school classroom.  The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.

#17 A few months ago, police were called out when a little girl kissed a little boy during a physical education class at an elementary school down in Florida.

#18 A 6-year-old boy was recently charged with sexual battery for some "inappropriate touching" during a game of tag at one elementary school in the San Francisco area.

#19 In Massachusetts, police were recently sent out to collect an overdue library book from a 5-year-old girl.

Unfortunately, what is going on in our schools is a reflection of the broader society as a whole.  Our schools are being turned into prisons because our entire society is being turned into a giant prison.

Our nation is rapidly heading down the toilet, and the children of this nation do not have a bright future to look forward to.

If the police really want to find some criminals, they should start investigating some of the sickos that are in charge of some of these classrooms.

It seems like almost every day now there is a news story about some public school teacher that is involved in some kind of really perverted stuff.

For example, just check out what police down in Los Angeles recently found that one teacher was hiding....

A former Los Angeles elementary school teacher has been arrested for felony molestation of nearly two dozen students, accused of gagging children and putting live cockroaches on some of their faces. Deputies say the crimes were committed on campus.

Sickos who do that kind of stuff to kids should be punished very severely.

America's schools are changing, and not for the better.

Personally, I went to public schools all my life, but I would not recommend that anyone send their kids to public schools today.  There is just way too much crazy stuff that goes on.

And our kids are learning less than ever in these public schools.  As I have written about previously, many of them are coming out of the system as dumb as a rock.  Instead of teaching our kids how to think critically and examine all sides of an issue, these schools are indoctrinating our kids and pushing particular social and political agendas on them.

There are a few public schools out there that are still good, but the vast majority of them are horrible.  They are not producing the leaders of tomorrow and they are not preparing the next generation with the tools that they need to survive in a complex world.

So is there much hope that our schools can be turned around?  Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below....

Have you ever wondered what our world is going to look like five or ten years down the road?  Well, today our world is changing at a pace that is faster than ever before, and the decisions that we all make right now are going to have a dramatic affect on the years ahead.  In many ways, 2012 represents a huge turning point for America.  There will be a presidential election, 33 seats in the U.S. Senate will be contested and every single seat in the U.S. House of Representatives will be up for grabs.  But the changes that are happening in America go much deeper than politics.  Anger and frustration are growing to frightening levels, and we have become a deeply divided nation.  Our affluence is rapidly crumbling and our national values are being transformed at a staggering pace.  America is drowning in debt, addicted to entertainment and full of people that think they know it all.  America is arrogant, cocky, smug, brash and full of pride.  But if we continue down the road that we are currently on, we will be greatly humbled someday.  It is just a matter of time.

In life, sometimes the questions are almost more important than the answers.

A good question can get you to focus on something you may not have considered before.

A good question can often get you to look at things at an entirely new angle.

Our nation is in big trouble and we desperately need to start making better decisions while there is still time.

Hopefully the questions below will cause you to do some thinking.  I know that they caused me to do some thinking....

Have you ever noticed that a lot of countries are now quietly talking about paying for oil in something other than U.S. dollars?

Have you ever wondered why top officials in the government get away with so much?  Right now, 36 top officials in the Obama administration owe a combined $833,000 in back taxes.  How in the world can they get away with that?  And why don't they pay their "fair share" before trying to convince the rest of us that we need to pay more taxes?

Have you ever wondered how it is possible that the federal government has been operating without an approved budget for over 1000 days?

Have you ever taken the time to read some of the foreclosure horror stories that are out there on the Internet?  Some of them are absolutely nightmarish.  It kind of makes you wonder why anyone would ever want to buy a house.

Have you ever wondered why so many Tea Party Republicans are voting for Newt Gingrich?  Considering the fact that he endorsed Obamacare a few years ago and considering the fact that he has been promoting individual health care mandates for years, it is amazing that any Republican is willing to vote for the guy.

Have you ever wondered why so many Tea Party Republicans are voting for Mitt Romney?  When he was governor of Massachusetts, he created Romneycare (which is what the plan for Obamacare was based upon) and he appointed large numbers of radical leftists to the judiciary in Massachusetts.

Have you ever wondered why Wall Street is pouring such a massive amount of money into Mitt Romney's campaign?

Have you ever noticed that the EU seems to hold a lot of "summits" but that nothing actually ever seems to get accomplished?

Have you ever noticed how almost everyone in America is scared to death of getting sued?  No wonder people dislike lawyers so much.

Have you ever wondered why the Department of Homeland Security is so obsessed with monitoring Twitter?

Have you ever noticed that many major U.S. cities have become very unpleasant places in which to live?

Have you ever wondered why we didn't build wider roads?  Most of our cities are terribly congested.  Each year, a total of approximately 4.8 billion hours are wasted on the roads of America due to traffic congestion.

Have you ever why so many Americans are constantly doped up on prescription drugs?  The percentage of Americans that say that they have taken two or more prescription drugs within the last month has risen to 31 percent, and the percentage of Americans that say that they have taken five or more prescription drugs within the last month has risen to 11 percent.

Have you ever noticed that the term "perfect storm" is being used a lot more frequently these days?

Have you ever noticed that virtually nobody in Washington D.C. is much concerned about China's rapidly rising military strength?

Have you ever noticed that even European newspapers admit that Barack Obama is trying to turn the United States into a European-style socialist welfare state?

Have you ever noticed that the mainstream media avoids certain stories almost completely?  For example, a judge in Massachusetts recently ordered a 32-year-old pregnant woman to undergo a forced abortion and also ordered her to be sterilized.  The mainstream media ignored the story almost entirely.  Fortunately that decision was later reversed, but it is kind of frightening that a story like that did not make more national headlines.

Have you ever noticed that the FDA spends a massive amount of time and resources persecuting those that promote natural cures?  For example, the FDA recently sent in U.S. marshals to raid one company that was selling elderberry juice concentrate.

Have you ever wondered why information about natural substances that have been shown to fight cancer is suppressed in the United States?

Have you ever wondered who makes all that cheap plastic crap from China that fills our store shelves?  It turns out that working conditions are so nightmarish in many of those factories that many of the workers end up committing suicide.

Have you ever wondered why prominent news anchors such as Erin Burnett would call China "our greatest friend"?

Have you ever wondered why all of the big websites that protested SOPA so vigorously are not saying much about ACTA at all?

Have you ever wondered why U.S. state governments spend millions of dollars to train workers for big corporations?

Have you ever wondered how the area along the U.S. border with Mexico got to be one of the most dangerous places on earth?

Have you ever noticed how many of the latest Bible versions go to extreme lengths to avoid offending anyone?  It is almost as if those translating these Bibles are actually embarrassed of Christianity.

Have you ever wondered why America imprisons far more people than anyone else in the world?

Have you ever wondered why Greece is in such a financial mess?  Maybe it is because government officials in Greece do not seem to have any common sense.  According to the New York Times, the following categories of people are now considered to be "disabled" in Greece and can receive financial benefits from the government: pedophiles, exhibitionists, kleptomaniacs, pyromaniacs, compulsive gamblers, fetishists and sadomasochists.

Have you ever wondered why gang activity is increasing so dramatically in America?  It is estimated that there are 68,000 gang members living in the city of Chicago alone.

Have you ever wondered why more than 10,000,000 guns were sold in the United States during 2011?

Have you ever wondered how America would be different if we had not killed more than 50 million babies since Roe vs. Wade was decided back in 1973?

Have you ever wondered why so many young children drop dead or become severely disabled shortly after getting injected with vaccines?

Have you ever wondered why we don't hear more about all the scientists that believe that man-made global warming is a hoax in the mainstream media?

Have you ever wondered why we can't find a home for all Americans since there are far more vacant homes in America than there are homeless people?

Have you ever wondered what would happen if Barack Obama actually got thrown off the ballot in Georgia?

Have you ever wondered what life would be like without the Internet?  Every single minute, 168 million emails are sent.  What would we do without all that email?

Have you ever wondered why so many Americans are busy preparing for the collapse of civilization?

Have you ever wondered if this is the year when we will see a war with Iran erupt in the Middle East?

So do you think that you have answers to the questions above?

Please feel free to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below....

An economic nightmare is descending on Europe.  With each passing month, the economic numbers across Europe get even worse.  At this point it is becoming extremely difficult for anyone to deny that Europe is plunging into a full-blown economic depression.  In fact, some parts of Europe are already there.  In Spain the overall unemployment rate is over 22 percent, and in Greece one out of every five retail establishments has already been closed down.  All over Europe, economic activity is rapidly slowing down, unemployment is skyrocketing and bad debts are unraveling.  It isn't even going to take a default by a nation such as Greece or a collapse of the euro to push Europe into an economic depression.  All Europe has to do is to stay on the exact path that it is on right now and it will get there.  Normally, European governments would respond to an economic slowdown by increasing government spending.  But this time most of them are already drowning in debt.  Instead of increasing government spending, most governments in Europe are actually cutting back.  All over Europe, national governments are being encouraged to implement even more tax increases and even more budget cuts.  The hope is that all of this austerity will help solve the nightmarish sovereign debt crisis that Europe is facing.  But unfortunately, all of these tax increases and budget cuts are also going to involve a tremendous amount of economic pain.

The frightening thing is that we are just at the beginning of the process for most European nations.  If you want to see where nations such as Portugal, Italy and Spain are headed, just take a look at Greece.  Greece has been going down this road for several years, and there is still no light at the end of the tunnel for them.

The tax increases and budget cuts that are being implemented right now in Europe will be felt for years to come.  The tremendous economic prosperity that was fueled by unprecedented amounts of debt will now give way to tremendous economic suffering.

The following are 20 signs that Europe is plunging into a full-blown economic depression....

#1 The unemployment rate for those between the ages of 16 and 24 is 28 percent in Italy, 43 percent in Greece and 51 percent in Spain.

#2 Overall, the unemployment rate for those under the age of 25 in the EU is 22.7 percent.

#3 Citigroup is projecting that the economy of Portugal will shrink by 5.7 percent this year.

#4 The total of all forms of debt in Portugal (government, business and consumer) is equivalent to 360 percent of GDP.

#5 The Greek "recession" is now entering a fifth year.

#6 The Greek economy shrank by 6 percent during 2011.

#7 It is being projected that the Greek economy will shrink by another 5 percent during 2012.

#8 The overall unemployment rate in Greece is now 18.5 percent.

#9 In Greece, 20 percent of all retail stores have been permanently shut down.

#10 The number of suicides in Greece rose by 40 percent in just one recent 12 month time period.

#11 According to the IMF, the amount of debt accumulated by the Greek government is equal to approximately 160 percent of GDP.

#12 In total, there are now more than 5 million unemployed workers in Spain.

#13 Bad loans in Spain recently reached a 17-year high.

#14 The overall unemployment rate in Spain is now a whopping 22.8 percent.

#15 The number of property repossessions in Spain has risen by 32 percent over the past year.

#16 When the maturing debt that the Italian government must roll over in 2012 is added to their projected budget deficit, the total comes to approximately 23.1 percent of Italy's GDP.

#17 Manufacturing activity in the euro zone has fallen for five months in a row.

#18 The UK economy actually contracted during the 4th quarter of 2011.

#19 The German economy actually contracted during the 4th quarter of 2011.

#20 The Baltic Dry Index, often used as a gauge for the health of the world economy, has fallen a staggering 61 percent since October.

Economic gloom is slowly spreading throughout Europe like a dark cloud.  Some of the strongest economies in Europe are only just starting to slow down.  Others are already gripped by tremendous economic pain.  Trends forecaster Gerald Celente recently explained to ABC Australia that much of the EU is already experiencing an economic depression....

"If you live in Greece, you’re in a depression; if you live in Spain, you’re in a depression; if you live in Portugal or Ireland, you’re in a depression,” Celente said. “If you live in Lithuania, you’re running to the bank to get your money out of the bank as the bank runs go on. It’s a depression. Hungary, there’s a depression, and much of Eastern Europe, Romania, Bulgaria. And there are a lot of depressions going on [already]."

As things fall apart in Europe, the political wrangling is going to become even more intense.

For example, over the past few days a shocking new German proposal has come to light.  Germany apparently would like Greece to give a "EU budget commissioner" the power to veto all Greek decisions on taxes and spending.

That would represent an unprecedented loss of sovereignty for Greece, and obviously Greek politicians are not excited about the idea at all.

In fact, Greek education minister Anna Diamantopoulou said that the proposal was "the product of a sick imagination".

But the sentiment in Germany is that since Greece must be bailed out by them, Greece should be willing to submit to some oversight for a certain amount of time.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Meanwhile, the Greek people continue to become angrier.  According to one recent poll, about 90 percent all of Greek citizens are unhappy with the interim government led by Prime Minister Lucas Papademos.

Things are also unraveling very quickly in Portugal.  Now there is talk that private investors will be required to take a "haircut" on Portuguese debt as well.

The following is from a recent article in the Telegraph....

"Portugal's debt is unsustainable. That is the only possible conclusion," said David Bencek, the co-author, warning that no country can achieve a primary budget surplus above 5pc for long.

Sadly, that article is exactly right.

Portugal is marching down the exact same road that Greece went down.

The yield on 5 year Portuguese bonds is now up to an all-time record 19.8 percent.

A year ago, the yield on those bonds was only about 6 percent.

This is the same thing that happened to Greece.

A year ago, the yield on 5 year Greek bonds was about 12 percent.

Now the yield on those bonds is more than 50 percent.

The world is facing a debt crisis unlike anything ever seen before, and Europe is right at the center of it.

Right now, the major industrialized nations of the world are 55 trillion dollars in debt.

Everyone knew that at some point that debt bomb was going to explode.

So what is going to happen next?

Well, Europe appears to be heading for a full-blown economic depression.

Will the rest of the globe be able to escape a similar fate?

Global Internet censorship is here.  SOPA and PIPA have been stopped (at least for now) in the United States, but a treaty known as ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) is far worse than either of them.  ACTA was quietly signed by Barack Obama back on October 1st, 2011 and most Americans have never even heard of it.  But it could mean the end of the Internet as we know it.  This new treaty gives foreign governments and copyright owners incredibly broad powers.  If you are alleged to have violated a copyright, your website can be shut down without a trial and police may even show up at your door to take you to prison.  It doesn't even have to be someone in the United States that is accusing you.  It could just be a foreign government or a copyright owner halfway across the world that alleges that you have violated a copyright.  It doesn't matter.  So far, the U.S., the EU and seven other nations have signed on to ACTA, and the number of participants is expected to continue to grow.  The "powers that be" are obsessed with getting Internet censorship one way or another.  The open and free Internet that you and I have been enjoying for all these years is about to change, and not for the better.

So how come the U.S. Senate never voted on ACTA?  Doesn't the U.S. Constitution mandate that all treaties must be approved by a two-thirds vote in the Senate?

Of course it does.

But Barack Obama has gotten around this by calling ACTA an "executive agreement", which is a load of crap.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of nonsense we are getting out of Obama on a regular basis now.  He has shown endless disdain for the U.S. Constitution.

Some members of Congress are expressing deep alarm over ACTA.  For example, U.S. Representative Darrell Issa is calling ACTA "more dangerous than SOPA".

There are some members of Congress that are even demanding that ACTA be submitted to the U.S. Senate for a vote.  Unfortunately, their voices are very few so far, and ACTA is getting next to no coverage in the mainstream media.

But this new treaty is very, very serious.  It basically mandates that all Internet communications be constantly monitored for copyright infringement.  Sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter will have to monitor accounts for copyright infringement 24 hours a day.

If you are alleged to have committed a violation, you might not just lose your social media account or your website.

You could potentially be sent to prison.

Yes, seriously.

What we are talking about is Chinese-style Internet censorship for the entire globe.

The following comes from a recent Forbes article....

“Why does ACTA matter to the media and citizens?” writes Alex Howard. “Consider the phrase “intermediary liability.” That’s the principle that websites on the Internet, like YouTube, Internet service providers, web hosting companies or social networks, should not be held liable for the content created or uploaded by their users.”

The new rules proposed in ACTA essentially transform Western ISPs into something more along the lines of ISPs in China and other more restrictive nations.

One of the worst elements of ACTA is that it would allow accusers of copyright infringement to completely and totally bypass judicial review.

If you don't think that ACTA will change the Internet, just check out the following excerpt from a recent article by Paul Joseph Watson....

Under the provisions of ACTA, copyright holders will be granted sweeping direct powers to demand ISPs remove material from the Internet on a whim. Whereas ISPs normally are only forced to remove content after a court order, all legal oversight will be abolished, a precedent that will apply globally, rendering the treaty worse in its potential scope for abuse than SOPA or PIPA.

Big sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter may just decide that it is too much of a hassle to monitor millions of pieces of content.  Allowing users to constantly post content on their sites would be a huge risk.  In fact, if they are found to be allowing "copyright infringement", those sites could be permanently shut down.

The American people need to get educated about this new treaty before it is too late.  There is still a chance that we could get the U.S. Congress to take action against this new treaty.

Under ACTA, Internet service providers will essentially be required to become the police of the Internet.  This was explained in a recent article by Cory Doctorow....

New revelations on ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a secretive global copyright being privately negotiated by rich countries away from the UN: ACTA will require ISPs to police trademarks the way they currently police copyright. That means that if someone accuses you of violating a trademark with a web-page, blog-post, video, tweet, etc, your ISP will be required to nuke your material without any further proof, or be found to be responsible for any trademark violations along with you. And of course, trademark violations are much harder to verify than copyright violations, since they often hinge on complex, fact-intensive components like tarnishment, dilution and genericization. Meaning that ISPs are that much more likely to simply take all complaints at face-value, leading to even more easy censorship of the Internet with nothing more than a trumped-up trademark claim.

One of the big problems with ACTA is that it is way too broad and way too vague.

Vague language allows authorities to "interpret" the law any way that they see fit.

This can often lead to selective enforcement.  Websites that authorities like will be left alone, while those that they don't like will be harassed or completely shut down.

ACTA was written in secret and it has been pushed through very, very quietly.  The following comes from a recent CNN article....

Like many trade agreements, ACTA is a confusing mess. Even its signatories don't agree on how it's supposed to work. The way it's been pushed forward has also been unruly -- talks have been held in secret, without any kind of legislative oversight or input from citizens or public-interest groups. The public only became aware of it in 2008, a couple of years after discussions began, when Wikileaks published a discussion paper. Since then, drafts of the pact have been released to the public, each successively less onerous to critics. Reportedly, though, big media and pharmaceutical lobbyists have been privy to the talks all along

Of course - this is a chance for big media and big corporations to take control of the Internet.

The way ACTA has been pushed on us has been absolutely disgusting.  In fact, one key EU official that was in charge of investigating ACTA has resigned in protest over how this whole thing has gone down.  He says that ACTA is basically being crammed down the throats of the European people....

I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament’s demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly.

As rapporteur of this text, I have faced never-before-seen manoeuvres from the right wing of this Parliament to impose a rushed calendar before public opinion could be alerted, thus depriving the Parliament of its right to expression and of the tools at its disposal to convey citizens’ legitimate demands.”

Everyone knows the ACTA agreement is problematic, whether it is its impact on civil liberties, the way it makes Internet access providers liable, its consequences on generic drugs manufacturing, or how little protection it gives to our geographical indications.

This agreement might have major consequences on citizens’ lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.

For much more on ACTA, please watch the remarkable video posted below.  It does a great job of explaining exactly what ACTA is and why we need to be so concerned about it....

The world is changing and the Internet is changing.

If you don't speak up now, the Internet as we know it today may soon be gone for good.

As the U.S. economy falls apart and as the world becomes increasingly unstable, more Americans than ever are becoming "preppers".  It is estimated that there are at least two million preppers in the United States today, but nobody really knows.  The truth is that it is hard to take a poll because a lot of preppers simply do not talk about their preparations.  Your neighbor could be storing up food in the garage or in an extra bedroom and you might never even know it.  An increasing number of Americans are convinced that we are on the verge of some really bad things happening.  But will just storing up some extra food and supplies be enough?  What is going to happen if we see widespread rioting in major U.S. cities like George Soros is predicting?  What is going to happen if the economy totally falls to pieces and our city centers descend into anarchy like we saw in New Orleans during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina?  In some major U.S. cities such as Detroit, looting is already rampant.  There are some sections of Detroit where entire blocks of houses are being slowly dismantled by thieves and stripped of anything valuable.  Sadly, the economy is going to get a lot worse than it is at the moment.  So is now the time to move away from major U.S. cities?  Should preppers be seeking safer locations for themselves and their families?  Those are legitimate questions.

According to a recent Gallup poll, satisfaction with the government is now at an all-time low.  Americans are rapidly losing faith in virtually every major institution in society.

Anger and frustration are rising to very dangerous levels, and we are rapidly approaching a boiling point.

When people feel as though they have lost everything, they get desperate.

And desperate people do desperate things.

In many communities in the United States today, crime has become so terrifying that people are literally sleeping with their guns.

The following is a story from Rancho Cordova, California that one of my readers recently sent me....

When I first moved here, it was not a bad place, it was quiet and clean.

However, over the past three years this place has gone to the dumps there are thugs and unruly people everywhere.

I have prevented two car break-ins by scaring these thugs away.

While I was home on thanksgiving weekend, someone decided to break into my apartment.

They trashed my place stole all my items and even took my law enforcement (LE) vehicle to include my equipment.

I m sure they had been watching me for a while because they did not take items that contained my identification.

Thank god, I had my weapon with me.

In many areas of the country, law enforcement resources are being dramatically cut back due to budget problems at the same time that crime is rapidly rising.

Right now, the city of Detroit is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy.  Officials there recently announced that due to budget constraints, all police stations will be closed to the public for 16 hours a day.  From now on, they will only be open to the public from 8 AM to 4 PM.

But in Detroit the police are needed now more than ever.  The following is what one British reporter found during his visit to Detroit....

Much of Detroit is horribly dangerous for its own residents, who in many cases only stay because they have nowhere else to go. Property crime is double the American average, violent crime triple. The isolated, peeling homes, the flooded roads, the clunky, rusted old cars and the neglected front yards amid trees and groin-high grassland make you think you are in rural Alabama, not in one of the greatest industrial cities that ever existed.

The population of Detroit is less than half of what it used to be.  Over the past few decades people have left in droves, and large sections of the city are in an advanced state of decay.

Not too many people want to buy homes in Detroit now.  At this point, the median price of a home in Detroit is just $6000.

The following video contains some video footage of the "ruins of Detroit" that is hard to believe....

Detroit has become a very scary place.  100 bus drivers in Detroit recently refused to drive their routes out of fear of being attacked on the streets.  The head of the bus drivers union, Henry Gaffney, said that the drivers were literally "scared for their lives"....

“Our drivers are scared, they’re scared for their lives. This has been an ongoing situation about security. I think yesterday kind of just topped it off, when one of my drivers was beat up by some teenagers down in the middle of Rosa Parks and it took the police almost 30 minutes to get there, in downtown Detroit,” said Gaffney.

But it is not just Detroit that is having these kinds of problems.

In Cleveland, over 50 percent of all children are living in poverty and abandoned houses are everywhere.

The city has already demolished about 1,000 homes, and there is a plan to demolish 20,000 more homes.  The following comes from a recent CBS News report by Scott Pelley....

Perfectly good homes, worth 75, 100 thousand dollars or more a couple of years ago, are being ripped to splinters in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Here, the great recession left one fifth of all houses vacant. The owners walked away because they couldn't or wouldn't keep paying on a mortgage debt that can be twice the value of the home. Cleveland waited four years for home values to recover and now they've decided to face facts and bury the dead.

Down in St. Louis they have a different problem.  In some of the worst areas of the city, roving packs of wild dogs are a serious threat to children that are walking to school.  A recent report by the local CBS affiliate in St. Louis described the situation this way....

...Lewis Reed is sounding the alarm. "I’ve witnessed packs of dogs, 10 and 15 dogs running together, and I’ve seen all these dogs I’m talking about they don’t have collars, they don’t have tags, these are truly wild dogs," he said.

Reed says stray dogs are terrorizing the north side. "It’s obscene that parents have to walk their kids to school, in some parts of the city, with a golf club to fend off wild dogs."

How would you feel if you had to fend off wild packs of dogs as you walked your child to school?

These kinds of conditions can be found out on the west coast as well.

For example, there is an area of San Francisco that is known as "Hunter's Point" that is an absolute nightmare.  In Hunter's Point, over half of the population lives in poverty and more than half of all children live in a home where there is no father present.  The following is what one reporter discovered on a visit to Hunter's Point....

Abernathy and I cut through the complex, tromping over an expanse of dirt and concrete toward the northeast end of the development, where a row of apartments looked down from a grassy hill. We paused next to a vacant, boarded-over unit to take in the scene: A stream of ****, piss, tampons, and toilet paper spewed from a dark hole in the sidewalk, poured down the hill, and formed a sort of **** lagoon next to the street. Weeds, about six inches tall, were growing in the little lagoon.

Raw ****, obviously, is not cool. Beyond the fact that it smells and looks nasty, fecal matter provides a haven for dangerous bacteria, most notably E. coli, a virulent pathogen that can sicken and even kill humans, especially infants.

When conditions like this reign, it is a prime breeding ground for crime.

In major U.S. cities all over the United States, drug dealing, gang activity and prostitution are on the rise.  The following comes from a recent article in the New York Times....

In November, a terrified 13-year-old girl pounded on an apartment door in Brooklyn. When a surprised woman answered, the girl pleaded for a phone. She called her mother, and then dialed 911.

The girl, whom I’ll call Baby Face because of her looks, frantically told police that a violent pimp was selling her for sex. He had taken her to the building and ordered her to go to an apartment where a customer was waiting, she said, and now he was waiting downstairs to make sure she did not escape. She had followed the pimp’s directions and gone upstairs, but then had pounded randomly on this door in hopes of getting help.

In some major U.S. cities, the gangs have virtually taken over.  In an article entitled "City of Ruins", Chris Hedges described what life is like today in Camden, New Jersey....

There are perhaps a hundred open-air drug markets, most run by gangs like the Bloods, the Latin Kings, Los Nietos and MS-13. Knots of young men in black leather jackets and baggy sweatshirts sell weed and crack to clients, many of whom drive in from the suburbs. The drug trade is one of the city's few thriving businesses. A weapon, police say, is never more than a few feet away, usually stashed behind a trash can, in the grass or on a porch.

As I wrote about the other day, the FBI says that there are now 1.4 million gang members inside this country.  That number has increased by 40 percent since 2009.

Organized criminal behavior by groups of young people is on the rise all over the nation.  Just check out this video which shows a flash mob robbery happening in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Sadly, this is just the beginning.

This country is still enjoying a tremendous amount of prosperity.  We still have a very high standard of living compared to most of the rest of the world.

So how nightmarish are things going to get when the economy gets really bad?

The most frightening thing is when these criminals start invading private homes.

The following home invasion story from Sacramento, California was sent to me by one of my readers a while back....

Somebody got into my sister's house last night while she was out. My mom was upstairs, but didn't hear anything. Whoever it was, they ate some chips and sorted through a stack of maternity clothes my sister had ready for selling on ebay. He left a dirty pair of boxer shorts and a bottom dentures on the dining room table. Fortunately, he was gone when she got home. I'm amazed, but the police actually came out and collected fingerprints and his boxers and false teeth. Probably a homeless guy. He may have switched his dirty boxers for a clean pair of maternity jeans, so the police just have to look for a guy wearing women's maternity pants with no lower teeth. 

Because of stuff like this, an increasing number of Americans have decided that it is better to be armed.

The truth is that you never know when you will get jumped.

For example, in Pennsylvania the other day one 65-year-old man was suddenly knocked off his bicycle by three teen thugs.

The 65-year-old man responded by pulling out his gun and shooting two of them.  One of the teens was killed.

Down along the border with Mexico, many ranchers have discovered that a gun battle could potentially erupt on any night.  The federal government has refused to protect the border, and so millions of illegals just keep streaming on in.  The following was recently posted on standwitharizona.com....

Barbed wire fencing doesn’t keep illegal aliens off the property anymore. One Starr County, TX rancher doesn’t have time to worry about the illegals these days. He now worries about the smugglers protecting their loads.

“I don’t think they would have any conscience of taking someone’s life,” the rancher says.

He saw that will to kill firsthand. A smuggler shot at him on his own land.

“One round was fired at me, and it missed my head by about two feet,” says the rancher.

He says there’s only way to react.

“Fire all the rounds you have, reload, and do it again,” says the rancher.

The more stories like this you read, the easier it is to understand why more than 10 million guns were sold in the United States during 2011.

The truth is that you never know when you may need to defend yourself.

This past New Year's Eve, a single mother named Sarah McKinley was home alone with her three-month old son when she discovered that two armed men were trying to invade her home.  If she had not had a gun, there is no telling what might have happened.  The following is from a news story  about that incident....

An Oklahoma woman was recently home with her 3 month old son when two men tried to break in.  Armed with a shot gun and a pistol she called 9-1-1.

Operator: "Are your doors locked?"

Caller: "Yes, I've got two guns in my hand.   Is it ok to shoot him if he comes in this door?"

Operator: "I can't tell you what you can do but you do what you have to do to protect your baby."

The mother did shoot killing one of the intruders.  Oklahoma police called the shooting justified.

What would you have done in that situation?

America is rapidly changing, and we all need to adapt to the new reality all around us.

The truth is that America is not the same place it used to be.  In some U.S. cities, authorities are actually dumping dead bodies into mass graves.

Just check out what the Daily Mail says has been going on in Chicago....

It's a practice more closely associated with third world countries, but in bleak times in a Chicago-area suburb, 30 people were buried in a mass grave on Wednesday.

The pauper's burial section at Homewood Memorial Gardens was established for those who could not afford to pay for a burial plot.

And it is a problem that's sweeping America as tough economic times have led to an increase in the number of indigent burials the morgue must perform.

All over the country, major U.S. cities are flat broke and are rapidly decaying.  They are filled with impoverished people that are rapidly becoming angrier and more frustrated.

There simply are not enough jobs for everyone.  Millions of ordinary Americans spend their days agonizing over the fact that they cannot provide even a basic living for themselves and their families.

And as the economy gets even worse, the economic despair in this country is going to grow to unprecedented levels.

So is now the time to move away from major U.S. cities?

In the end, each of us is going to have to answer that question for ourselves.

Jobs are scarce, so if you have a good job right now it may not be wise to give it up.  It can be incredibly challenging to move to a new area when you don't have a job.

One solution may be to move farther away from your current job so that you are in a more rural setting.  But the rising cost of gasoline can make that a very expensive proposition.

Some families are purchasing second homes that they can "bug out" to in the event of a major disaster or emergency.  But if your financial resources are limited that may not be an option for you.

In the final analysis, you have just got to do the best you can with what you have.

But if you are able to move, it is better to do it while times are relatively stable (like now) than when times are very unstable.

So what do all of you think?

Do you think that now is the time to move away from major U.S. cities?

Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below....

If you are an American under the age of 30, you have probably figured out by now that the entire economic system is stacked against you.  The way that our economy is structured today is ridiculously unfair to younger Americans.  First, we endlessly push our young people to go to our ridiculously expensive colleges and universities where the pile up enormous amounts of debt.  Then they get out into the real world where they find that only a handful of really good jobs are available for the vast army of college graduates entering the workforce.  Sadly, most of the jobs that our young people are working these days do not pay enough to be able to support a family or buy a decent home.  Meanwhile, our politicians are busy mortgaging their future.  Our young people are expected to support a Social Security system that will not be there when they get older, and every single day more than 2 billion dollars is added to a debt that will hang around the necks of younger Americans and their children for the rest of their lives.  If you stop and think about all of this for too long, your head might just explode with anger.  Well, not literally, but you get the point.  The truth is that this is going to be the first generation in U.S. history that is going to do significantly worse than their parents, and that is a terrible shame.

Are you not convinced that things are really bad for younger Americans?

Do you think that they should just shut up and quit whining about things?

Well, keep reading.  You just might change your mind by the time this article is over.

The following are 24 facts that show how ridiculously unfair our economy is for Americans under the age of 30 that will make your head explode....

#1 U.S. households led by someone 65 years of age or older are 47 times wealthier than U.S. households led by someone 35 years of age or younger.

#2 Today, only about 55 percent of all Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 have a job.

#3 Back in the year 2000, more than 50 percent of all Americans teens had a job.  This past summer, only 29.6% of all American teens had a job.

#4 Since the year 2000, incomes for U.S. households led by someone between the ages of 25 and 34 have fallen by about 12 percent after you adjust for inflation.

#5 It is absolutely ridiculous how much it costs to get a college education in America today.  After adjusting for inflation, U.S. college students are now borrowing about twice as much money as they did a decade ago.

#6 Average yearly tuition at private colleges and universities in the United States is now up to $27,293.  That figure has increased by 29% in just the past five years.

#7 Back in 1952, a full year of tuition at Harvard was only $600. Today, it is $35,568.

#8 The cost of college textbooks has tripled over the past decade.

#9 In 2010, the average college graduate had accumulated approximately $25,000 in student loan debt by graduation day.

#10 At some point this year, total student loan debt in the United States will surpass the 1 trillion dollar mark for the first time ever.

#11 The total amount of student loan debt in the United States now exceeds the total amount of credit card debt in the United States.

#12 Our economy is not producing nearly enough jobs for our college graduates.  The percentage of mail carriers with a college degree is now 4 times higher than it was back in 1970.

#13 One-third of all college graduates end up taking jobs that don't even require college degrees.

#14 In the United States today, there are more than 100,000 janitors that have college degrees.

#15 In the United States today, 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.

#16 Right now, there are 5.9 million Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 that are living with their parents.  According to recent Census data, men are almost twice as likely to live with their parents as women are.

#17 At this point, there are more than 3.5 million Americans that are behind on their mortgage payments.  Young people that were offered "teaser rates" on their first homes before the housing collapse represent a large proportion of these mortgages.

CNN recently featured the story of 29-year-old Ginny Gant....

I followed "the plan" to achieve the American dream and now I feel like I'm caught in a stagnant nightmare.

My husband now works for the Navy as a civilian and I am a high school teacher. We bought our two-bedroom townhouse nearly at the peak of the housing boom for $196,500. We're underwater on our mortgage with a high interest rate. I'm looking at having to stick with this house for eight, nine, 10 years.

I really would like to have two or three children, but I just don't think it's feasible to have that many children in this house. It's too small to have a family and it's not what I envisioned for myself when I followed the rules.

#18 The total value of household real estate in the U.S. has declined from $22.7 trillion in 2006 to $16.2 trillion today.  As noted above, large numbers of young Americans bought homes in the years leading up to the housing crash, and they lost a ton of wealth when home values plummeted.

#19 We are facing a retirement crisis that is absolutely unprecedented in U.S. history.  Right now, more than 10,000 Baby Boomers are turning 65 every single day.  Young Americans are expected to pay for their Social Security benefits, but Social Security will not be there when Americans under the age of 30 get older.

#20 Young Americans get arrested at a far higher rate than older Americans do.  Amazingly, 30% of all Americans get arrested by the time they reach the age of 23.  Once you spend time in prison, getting a good job becomes much tougher.

#21 Approximately one out of every five Americans under the age of 30 is currently living in poverty.

#22 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.  A very large percentage of those single mothers are under the age of 30.

#23 According to one recent survey, only 14 percent of all Americans that are 28 or 29 years old are optimistic about their financial futures.

#24 The U.S. government is stealing about 150 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour.  Younger Americans will have to bear the burden of this debt far longer than older Americans will.

So what do you think about the plight of Americans that are under the age of 30?

Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below....

On Monday, U.S. Senator Rand Paul was detained by the TSA for about two hours at an airport in Nashville.  By doing so, TSA officials directly violated the U.S. Constitution and they demonstrated once again why the rest of the world is coming to regard us as a bunch of disgusting, arrogant "pig people".  Do we really want to get such a bad reputation that virtually nobody will ever want to visit this country?  We are going to absolutely destroy our tourism industry with this nonsense.  Yes, we all want to fly safely, but other countries get the job done without their security officials running around acting like a bunch of Nazi prison guards.  The TSA should be shut down, but if Congress wants it to continue to exist it should be given a dual mandate.  It should be directed to protect the dignity of the American people first, and the safety of the American people second.  If those running the TSA don't believe that this is possible, then they should be immediately replaced, because there are a whole lot of good people out there that could get the job done.  Right now, TSA officials are treating American citizens like they aren't even human.  The truth is that Rand Paul got off easy compared to what has happened to many other Americans.  As I have written about previously, some elderly Americans have been strip-searched, some have had their adult diapers removed, and some have even been left covered in urine by invasive TSA searches.  If the TSA will treat Senator Rand Paul like a scumbag, and if they will brutally strip-search elderly women, than what do you think they are going to do to you when the time comes?

I don't know about you, but I did not sign up to live in North Korea.

I signed up to live in America.

But the country we are living in does not look much like America anymore.

It is as if the U.S. Constitution does not even matter anymore.

When TSA thugs detained Senator Rand Paul, they directly violated the U.S. Constitution, and nobody in the mainstream media seems upset by this.

Fortunately, many in the alternative media have taken note of this constitutional violation.  The following is from an article by Steve Watson....

The Constitution specifically protects federal lawmakers from being detained while en route to Washington DC.

Article I, Section 6 states:

“The Senators and Representatives…shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same….”

Rand Paul was travelling from his home in Louisville to attend a session in the Senate today.

The TSA is publicly saying that "normal procedure" was followed during the episode involving Senator Rand Paul.  He was detained in a small cubicle for approximately two hours after he inadvertently set off a scanner alarm.

A Daily Caller article described what happened to Senator Paul when he attempted to leave the cubicle that he was being held in....

“I tried to leave the cubicle to speak to one of the TSA people and I was barked at: ‘Do not leave the cubicle!’ So, that, to me sounds like I’m being asked not to leave the cubicle. It sounds a little bit like I’m being detained.”

That is how TSA agents are trained to behave.  They are trained to bark orders at us.  It doesn't even matter if you are a U.S Senator apparently.

TSA agents on the scene wanted to subject Senator Paul to an "enhanced pat-down" during which his genitals would be touched.  Understandably, Senator Paul did not want to submit to such a humiliating inspection....

“For an hour and a half, they said ‘absolutely, I would have to [accept a pat-down],’” Paul said. “And, because I used my cell phone, they told me I would have to do a full body pat down because you’re not allowed to use your cell phone when you’re being detained.”

Thankfully, Senator Paul was eventually allowed to go back through the original scanner and it did not beep the second time through.

Other travelers have not been treated so nicely.

When informed about this incident, the Obama administration was quick to defend the TSA.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said the following about the incident....

"I think it is absolutely essential that we take necessary actions to ensure that air travel is safe."

Of course that is a bunch of nonsense.  Dozens of other countries have a far better air security record than we do and yet they do not subject their citizens to this kind of abuse.

Rand Paul's father, presidential candidate Ron Paul, issued a statement which strongly condemned the actions of the TSA....

"The police state in this country is growing out of control.  One of the ultimate embodiments of this is the TSA that gropes and grabs our children, our seniors, and our loved ones and neighbors with disabilities.  The TSA does all of this while doing nothing to keep us safe."

Hopefully this will become a major issue during the race for the Republican nomination.

Instead of spending all of our time discussing Mitt Romney's taxes or Newt Gingrich's "skeletons", we should be spending a lot more time talking about how the United States of America is rapidly being transformed into a totalitarian police state.

It is absolutely disgusting what some Americans are being forced to endure just to get on a flight.

During a Congressional hearing in 2011, Senator Paul expressed outrage over the fact that TSA agents are feeling up the private areas of little girls in the name of "national security"....

"You’ve gone overboard and you’re missing the boat on terrorism because you’re doing these invasive searches on six-year-old girls."

And you know what?

What the federal government does sets an example for the rest of the nation.

Over in Stark County Ohio a couple of years ago, it was documented that police strip-searched female suspects until they were fully naked, recorded them on video and then left them naked in their cells for up to six hours.

Of course all of that was done in the name of "keeping us safe", right?

Some example we are setting for the rest of the world, eh?

Our country is going downhill so fast that it is hard to find words to describe it.

A lot of us are not flying anymore because we don't want the TSA examining our private parts, but now the TSA is bringing its own special brand of "security" to thousands of other locations across the United States as the Los Angeles Times recently detailed....

The Transportation Security Administration isn't just in airports anymore. TSA teams are increasingly conducting searches and screenings at train stations, subways, ferry terminals and other mass transit locations around the country.

"We are not the Airport Security Administration," said Ray Dineen, the air marshal in charge of the TSA office in Charlotte. "We take that transportation part seriously."

The TSA's 25 "viper" teams — for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response — have run more than 9,300 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations in the last year. Department of Homeland Security officials have asked Congress for funding to add 12 more teams next year.

Who ever thought that we would see the day when "VIPER teams" were running around all over America setting up internal security checkpoints?

Even if you just sit home all day there is still a good chance that you will get the attention of the Department of Homeland Security.

The Department of Homeland Security has announced that it is now diligently watching the Internet.

According to a recent Fox News article, the Department of Homeland Security has decided that it is important for them to keep an eye on "forums, blogs, public websites and message boards"....

Though still in development, DHS is looking to establish a system for monitoring "forums, blogs, public websites and message boards." The idea is to gather and analyze publicly available information, and then use that information to help officials respond to disasters and other situations.

In case you were wondering, yes, they will probably read this article.  Hopefully it will shame some of them into cleaning up their acts.

This country is being run by a bunch of psychotic control freaks that are obsessed with watching, monitoring, tracking and controlling virtually everything that we do.

Sadly, most Americans have bought into the lie that unless they give up huge chunks of liberty and freedom none of us will be safe.

But when we give these un-American control freaks an inch, they just keep trying to take a mile.

With our children, they are starting very early.  As I have written about previously, most of our public schools are being turned into indoctrination centers and prison camps.  Millions upon millions of Americans children are being trained to be good little slaves and most parents have no idea what is going on.

America is supposed to be about freedom and liberty.

It is supposed to be a place where we don't have control freaks on our backs 24 hours a day.

But instead we are becoming the exact opposite of what America is supposed to be.

No matter how much liberty and freedom we give up, the world is always going to be a very dangerous place.

In the future, there are undoubtedly going to be some very bad things that happen in our world.

But having TSA thugs touch the private parts of our women and our children is not going to prevent any of it from happening.

Instead of being an example for the rest of the world, we are becoming a bad joke.

Please wake up America.

A vast army of heavily armed criminals has embedded itself in every major city in the United States.  In fact, nearly every community in America is now affected by these thugs.  Drugs, theft and brutal violence are all part of the every day lifestyle of the members of this army.  They aggressively recruit our young people and floods of illegal immigrants are joining their ranks.  Once civil unrest erupts in America, they will go on a crime spree that will be absolutely unprecedented and they will burn large areas of some U.S. cities to the ground.  So who am I talking about?  I am talking about the rapidly growing gangs that are terrorizing cities all over the nation.  The FBI tells us that there are now 1.4 million gang members involved in the 33,000 different gangs that are active inside the United States.  The number of gang members in the U.S. has increased by 40 percent since 2009.  Just think about that.  That is absolutely astounding.  Just since 2009, the number of gang members has increased by 40 percent.  The FBI says that 48 percent of all violent crime in this country can be directly traced to gangs and that this is a national crisis that is progressively getting worse.  Unfortunately, the federal government refuses to secure our borders and is allowing new waves of illegal immigrants to enter the United States every single day.  A substantial number of those illegal immigrants end up involved in these gangs.  Yet the federal government just stands by and allows it to keep happening.  One day, the foolishness of this policy will be evident to all.

In many areas of America today, families live behind windows that have bars on them and they won't ever go out at night because it is just too dangerous.  There are some communities that have pretty much been entirely taken over by the gangs, but instead of addressing the problem the federal government continues to spend a massive amount of resources checking out what might be in our underwear at U.S. airports.

Meanwhile, criminal gangs are thriving.  They are becoming incredibly powerful and increasingly sophisticated.  The following is from an FBI press release....

Gangs are increasingly engaging in non-traditional gang-related crime such as alien smuggling, human trafficking, and prostitution. Gangs are also engaging in white-collar crime such as counterfeiting, identity theft, and mortgage fraud.

You can find much more background information about gang activity in the United States from the FBI right here.

You have probably heard of some of the largest of these gangs.

For example, the 18th Street Gang is the largest gang in the state of California.  It is said that they have 15,000 members in California alone, and that on average they are responsible for at least one major crime in Los Angeles County every single day.

It has been reported that police in Los Angeles are extremely hesitant to ever venture into the areas most heavily controlled by the 18th Street gang.  They are absolutely brutal and they do not back down to anyone.  The following is what Wikipedia has to say about the 18th Street Gang....

A US Justice Department report from 2009 estimates that the 18th Street gang has a membership of some 30,000 to 50,000 with 80% of them being illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America and is active in 44 cities in 20 states. Its main source of income is street-level distribution of cocaine and marijuana and, to a lesser extent, heroin and methamphetamine. Gang members also commit assault, auto theft, carjacking, drive-by shootings, extortion, homicide, identification fraud, and robbery.

Another very prominent gang that you may have heard of is the Latin Kings.  It is reported that they have 18,000 members in the city of Chicago alone.  They are believed to be the largest Hispanic gang in the entire nation.

One of the gangs that has law enforcement authorities the most concerned is MS-13.  There are chapters of MS-13 in 42 states now, and if you cross a member of MS-13 there is a good chance that you will lose a limb or be hacked to death with a machete.

This tough economic environment has made it even easier for these gangs to recruit new members.  Today, there are way too many young people sitting around with nothing to do.

Back in the year 2000, more than 50 percent of all Americans teens had a job.  This past summer, only 29.6% of all American teens had a job.

When you have lots of teens and young adults sitting around with nothing but time on their hands, bad things are prone to happen.

As the family unit continues to decline in America, young people are looking for a sense of belonging.  For many youths, a gang becomes a new "family" for them.

But unfortunately, these new "families" do not exactly teach "family values".  Instead, they teach our young people about how to be brutal and violent.

And we are seeing evidence of this out on the streets every single day.  For example, a group of 6 young thugs recently attacked a 64-year-old Vietnam veteran in Philadelphia and beat him up so badly that he almost died....

Kate Schaefer, the victim’s wife, told Eyewitness News, 'They just smashed every bone in his face. I can’t tell you the words. I guess I was just happy that he was alive.'

During 2011, we saw a large increase in "group crime" behavior.  Some of the incidents have been absolutely horrific.  For example, the following is how one local ABC News affiliate described the "flash mob" attacks that took place at the Wisconsin state fair earlier this year....

Milwaukee police said that around 11:10 p.m., squads were sent to the area for reports of battery, fighting and property damage being caused by an unruly crowd of "hundreds" of people. One officer described it as a "mob beating."

Police said the group of young people attacked fair goers who were leaving the fair grounds. Police said that some victims were attacked while walking. They said others were pulled out of cars and off of motorcycles before being beaten.

Can you imagine taking your kids to the state fair and having them witness that?

But this is just the beginning.

These gangs are becoming very organized and they are becoming very heavily armed.

The FBI says that rifles, machine guns, grenades and even artillery rounds are being found in the possession of gangs more frequently than ever.

Some examples of this were recently posted on military.com.  These gangs seem to have a particular affection for AK-47s....

In late July, 27 AK-47s were stolen from a Fort Irwin warehouse, officials said. Those close to the case, who would speak only under the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the subject, said investigators believe gang members were involved in the theft.

Sadly, that same article noted that members of the U.S. military have even been arrested for trying to sell weapons to these gangs....

In November 2010, three former Marines were arrested in Los Angeles for selling assault weapons to members of the violent street gang, Florencia 13, according to the NGIC report. That same month, a Navy Seal from San Diego and two others were arrested in Colorado for smuggling about 18 military-issued machine guns from Iraq and Afghanistan to be sold and shipped to buyers in Mexico.

Those that want to steal guns are becoming increasingly bold.  For example, 21 machine guns were stolen a while back right out of an LAPD training facility.

Down in Miami, thieves have become so bold that they have actually been breaking into parked police cruisers and stealing guns and ammo out of them.

When people are stealing guns directly from the police, that is a sign that it is very late in the game.

Our politicians spend so much time talking about the violence in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the truth is that the area right along the U.S./Mexico border is far more dangerous.

Just check out the following information from CNSNews.com....

According to the Mexican government, from January through September 2011 2,276 deaths were recorded in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, which borders Texas and New Mexico.

A Nov. 2011 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report states that over nearly the same period – January through October 2011 – 2,177 civilians were killed in Afghanistan, where a U.S.-led war against the Taliban is underway. It did not provide a breakdown of responsibility for that period, but said that in 2010, 75 percent of civilian deaths were attributed to the Taliban and other “anti-government elements.”

Per capita, a person was at least nine times more likely to be murdered in Chihuahua last year than in Afghanistan.

Many of the areas along our border with Mexico are open war zones.

But do we hear about this much in the mainstream media?

Of course not.

Just across the U.S. border lies the city of Juarez, Mexico.  Juarez is considered to be one of the most dangerous cities on the entire planet because of the brutal drug war being waged there. In fact, Juarez is the murder capital of the western hemisphere.

But most Americans have never even heard of Juarez.

Complete and total chaos reigns in vast areas of northern Mexico, and yet most Americans don't even realize that there is a problem.

Overall, more than 35,000 people have been killed since the Mexican government declared war on the drug cartels back in 2006.

You would think that would warrant some significant news coverage.

But no, the mainstream media can't talk much about that because then the people might actually start demanding that we secure our borders.

Amazingly, instead of securing our borders the Obama administration has been busy sending guns down to the drug cartels in Mexico.

That is what this whole "Fast and Furious" scandal is all about.  As I have written about previously, ATF agents purposely allowed thousands of guns to be sold to individuals that they believed would get them into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

But so far, nobody in the Obama administration has been held accountable for this.

During 2009 and 2010, 70 percent of the 30,000 guns that were recovered by authorities in Mexico were determined to have come from inside the United States.

That is a major problem.

These Mexican drug cartels and the gangs that work with them have become very heavily armed and they have become very bold.

It has been reported that Mexican drug cartels are now openly conducting military operations inside the United States. Scouts for the cartels maintain strategic lookout bases in the hills of southern Arizona, and the federal government has even put up signs that warn tourists to say out of certain areas.  The cartels very much try to avoid any confrontations with our border patrol or with our local police, but once they are approached they are not afraid to open fire.

One very frustrated border patrol agent told Fox News the following about what is going on in his area....

"To say that this area is out of control is an understatement."

So how in the world can the federal government allow this to go on?

Well, a big part of it is that Barack Obama does not want to do anything that could scare away his Hispanic voters.

In fact, he is doing just about everything that he can to portray himself as "Hispanic-friendly".

A few months ago, I wrote about how the Obama administration has announced that there will now be a case-by-case review of all deportation cases involving illegal immigrants.  Those involving "criminals" will be prioritized and almost all the rest will be thrown out.

Yes, you read that correctly.

If you are an illegal immigrant and you have not been convicted of a crime that means that you almost certainly get to stay in this country.

So that is basically a big green light for even larger waves of illegal immigrants to enter this country.

That means that the ranks of the gangs will swell even more.

The chaotic drug war that is going on in northern Mexico has spread into many areas of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.  With each passing day, the gangs that are embedded in all of our major cities are getting stronger.  They are a ticking time bomb that eventually will go off.

One day, when mass civil unrest erupts in the United States, the gangs will have a field day.  Given the opportunity, most gangs will gleefully indulge in brutal violence, looting, arson, rape and mindless property destruction.

Sadly, this all could have been avoided.

Instead of strip-searching old women at airports, this is what we should have been dedicating our law enforcement resources to.

Instead of spending billions of dollars spying on the American people, the federal government should have spent billions of dollars on securing our borders.

Unfortunately, we made the wrong choices as a nation and so now we are going to pay the price.