More This & That & Whatever.... The Best Of Intellectual Froglegs

[Warph]

President Obie

Posted by Daniel Greenfield

In 1967, folk singer Arlo Guthrie played a song on a left-wing New York City radio station that was supposed to sum up the cultural difference between the culture and the counterculture.

On one side of the moral equation in Alice's Restaurant you had Officer Obie and the nameless army officers who were rulebound fascists and on the other side you had the easygoing hippies who believed in community, hanging out and letting things slide. Culture would drag you into court for littering with twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs as evidence while counterculture would shrug and invite you to dinner.

Culture was bureaucratically and violently absurd. Counterculture was humanely lovingly absurd.

That's still the image that the left likes to wear like an old pair of jeans. It's still just a bunch of easygoing fellows out to build community and take on Officer Obie's senseless repressive rules. But then the counterculture became the culture and the left became Officer Obie.

Or President Obie.

If there's anyone who's going to drag you into court with twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs as proof; it's going to be the Officer Obies of the EPA. Except that a straightforward thing like littering would be much too sensible for environmental enforcement groups to bother with.  They're more likely to arrest you for collecting rainwater on your own property, making a guitar out of unfinished wood or cleaning up trash from your own property.

EPA Administrator Al Armendariaz, whose fiefdom included five states, told staffers that his philosophy of enforcement was borrowed from the Romans."They'd go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they'd find the first five guys they saw and they'd crucify them."

Compared to the Officer Obies of the ruling counterculture, the original model seems like a humanitarian and the soul of reason. If you ran afoul of Officer Armendariz, or Caesar Armendariz as he liked to be called, you would be very lucky to come away with nothing more than a twenty-five dollar fine and a few hours in jail.

A mere two decades after Arlo Guthrie began singing about being arrested on Thanksgiving for littering by Officer Obie, John Pozsgai was sentenced to three years in jail for "discharging pollutants into waters of the United States" for the crime of adding topsoil to his land.

And you can be sure that the evidence for the legal case which went on in varying forms for twenty years consisted of a lot more than a mere twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with a paragraph of text on the back.

There's a folk song in there alright, but it's not one that a liberal would listen to because every  progressive who grins when hearing Arlo joke about a federal case being made out of throwing some garbage off a cliff would want to hang him in real life.

Bill Ellen, a Vietnam veteran and conservationist who ran a shelter for injured wildlife, spent six months in jail for making duck ponds based on a 1989 reinterpretation of environmental law which stated that land which had water on it for seven days was considered Federally protected wetlands.

"That's as close as you can come to restitution for them, the ducks," the judge in the case declared. The judge has since retired to a more fitting post as a member of the Governor's Advisory Panel on License Plate Reader technology. There's probably a folk song in that, but no one would ever air it.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jane F. Barrett called it "a premeditated environmental crime" and declared victory even though Ellen was only sentenced to six months in jail instead of three years.

"It might be true that five years ago Ellen wouldn't have to go to jail. But we're living in a different world now," she admitted.

And that different world is the world that progressives have made. They have made America into a nightmarish place that would horrify even Officer Obie. A place where you don't just go to jail for trashing public property, but for cleaning up your own.

Ellen's own Officer Obie has moved on to be the Director of the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Maryland. Despite donating a few thousand dollars to Obama, she has yet to get the US Attorney gig that she had her eye on.

Doubtlessly though President Obie is sure to find a place for any legal eagle who can try to send a Marine Corps vet with two young children to jail for three years over a duck pond. 

But the final Officer Obie touch was yet to come.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reviewed the case and declared; "That Ellen believes that an offense of this magnitude is trivial or unimportant ironically exemplifies the need not to foreclose punishment by imprisonment."

The need to sentence a man to prison for a trivial offense because he believes rightly that it is a trivial offense is the definition of irony only behind the Iron Curtain. But in a more fitting definition of irony, the judge responsible for writing that decision lost his shot at a Supreme Court spot because he couldn't stop talking to the New York Times about being considered for the Supreme Court.

The justice of the Officer Obies, Judge Obies and President Obies may be blind, deaf and dumb; but sometimes a higher court than the Supreme Court intervenes with its own judgement.

The different world that U.S. Attorney Jane F. Barrett gleefully inhabits where a man may be sent to jail for a duck pond wasn't made by Officer Obie and the culture, but by the counterculture. If the laws of the culture made sense but were guilty of overreach, the laws of the counterculture are all overreach with no sense. The laws of the counterculture are every bit as addled as its art and its literature.

Seven years after Gibson Guitars worked with Arlo Guthrie to reconstruct Woody Guthrie's guitar and sell reproductions of it, a gang of Officer Obies burst into its Nashville factory with guns drawn looking for wood. And they did it again two years later accusing Gibson of making guitars out of wood that was not finished by Indian workers.

Both times the raids happened under the regime of President Obie who is the living culmination of everything that the counterculture hoped for. And what they hoped for was Officer Obie writ large with a teleprompter in one hand and an infinite rule book in the other.

The laws of the culture were rational. The laws of the counterculture are emotional. They exist because someone demanded them vehemently enough.

The pursuit of that humane and caring system instead gave us a system that sends men to jail for the unrepentant manufacture of duck ponds. It turned every Federal employee into Officer Obie and made Officer Obie in his various guises as environmental crusader, financial regulator and political activist with revolving door roles in government agencies into a progressive superhero.

The counterculture heroes aren't rebels anymore. They are the protectors of the values of the counterculture who suppress opposition by dissenters who don't want to buy health insurance, uppity photographers who don't want to take pictures at gay weddings and free spirits who build duck ponds without the proper permits.

In the culture, laws were made by men and carried out by professionals who understood the laws they were executing. In the counterculture, laws were made by activists and then modified by regulators and bureaucrats so many times that both the aforementioned trials involved extensive debates over what law was broken, whether it was broken and whether the law that may have been broken even existed.

In the counterculture the sheer morass of laws, regulations and interpretations of both means that there really is no law, only whim. No one ever knows what the law is. They only know whom they want punished and why.

Ridicule a law enough and it stops applying. Demonize a defendant enough and he is guilty. Truth is nothing. Emotion is everything. The humanitarian creativity of the counterculture was egotism dressed up in philosophy. It wanted what it wanted. And what it wanted, it got.

ObamaCare or ObieCare is based on a million regulations that no one understands holding up an oppressive system based on wishful thinking that can't work. President Obie is the perfect leader for an ideology that wants its fascist overreaches and abuses of power cloaked in cheerful grins and empty talk about sharing and community whose practical implications are defined in implementable legalese on Page 2809, subparagraph 81b, footnote 311 which no one has read.

Under the liberal Officer Obies, you can't get what you want at Alice's Restaurant. Not unless it meets State and Federal regulations, has listed calorie counts and doesn't contain any transfats. You can't get the health plan you want under ObieCare and you can't get much of anything else either except a lecture, a reeducation program or a prison term.

[Warph]

Is Barack Obuma Actually Trying To Help ISIS Take Over Syria?

By Michael Snyder, on January 20th, 2015

Coalition For A Democratic SyriaThat headline sounds crazy, right?  It must be untrue, right?  Well, read on, because you might be absolutely shocked by what you learn.  As you will read about below, the Obama administration has used al-Qaeda fighters and other radical Islamic groups in the past to topple governments.  And without a doubt, Barack Obama is absolutely determined to oust Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.  In fact, he came dangerously close to taking us to war with Syria earlier in his presidency before backing down in the face of overwhelming public pressure.  But what Obama wants to do in Syria has not changed, and he is using the same playbook that he used in Libya and elsewhere to get it done.

Of course on the surface Obama has "declared war" on ISIS.  He says that we must defeat them in Iraq and in Syria so that the group does not spread.  But when it comes to airstrikes, the Obama administration has had an "Iraq first" policy.  This has put ISIS on a defensive posture in Iraq, but this has actually encouraged expansion of ISIS in Syria.

ISIS is just following the path of least resistance. 

Is Obama trying to discourage ISIS from committing troops and resources in Iraq because he actually wants them to focus on taking down the Assad regime in Syria?  Is Obama attempting to "herd" ISIS forces toward Damascus?  Those are some very important questions. 

What we do know is that the size of the territory that ISIS controls in Syria has doubled since airstrikes began last summer...

ISIS has almost doubled the land it controls in Syria since the US-led coalition began airstrikes against the extremist group in the summer, a new map has revealed.

The extremist group has continued to expand its 'caliphate', despite more than 800 airstrikes hitting targets in ISIS-controlled areas since last summer.

The map, created by the Coalition for a Democratic Syria (CDS), shows just how much land has fallen to ISIS – which now has a third of the country under its control.

Before the summer, the militants controlled just half that.

The following is the map that was created by the Coalition for a Democratic Syria.  As you can see, ISIS is now much closer to Damascus than when U.S. airstrikes first began...

And it is funny how the U.S. military keeps making "mistakes" by air-dropping weapons right into the hands of ISIS.  The following is just one example of this phenomenon...

An ISIS-associated YouTube account posted a new video online Tuesday entitled, "Weapons and munitions dropped by American planes and landed in the areas controlled by the Islamic State in Kobani." The video was also posted on the Twitter account of "a3maq news," which acts as an unofficial media arm of ISIS. The outfit has previously posted videos of ISIS fighters firing American made Howitzer cannons and seizing marijuana fields in Syria.

ISIS had broadly advertised its acquisition of a broad range of U.S.-made weapons during its rampage across Iraq. ISIS videos have showed its fighters driving U.S. tanks, MRAPs, Humvees.

We have the most sophisticated military on the entire planet and yet we drop weapons into the hands of the enemy by mistake?

Come on.

Meanwhile, Obama and many members of Congress continue to insist that we need to give lots more weapons to the "moderate rebels" in Syria.

But do these "moderate rebels" actually exist?

Ayad Jamal Al-din, a former member of the Iraqi parliament, is skeptical to say the least...


The pressure on the Syrian regime, which is fighting ISIS, must be lifted. They should not try to strengthen the feeble Free Syrian Army [FSA]. There is no FSA. There is ISIS in Syria and Iraq. You cannot fight ISIS in Iraq, yet support it in Syria. There is one war and one enemy.

The U.S. should give up its hypocrisy. People are not brainless. How can it be that a State Department spokesperson talks about Iraq, and then a White House spokesman says: "We must pressure the [Syrian] regime so that it surrenders"? Surrenders to whom? To ISIS. Where is the FSA? There is no such thing. The war is one and the same.

And what the American people are not being told is that these "Free Syrian Army fighters" are continually defecting and joining forces with ISIS...


Up to 3,000 Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters have defected from the organization and given ba'yah (religious payment; servitude) to the self-proclaimed Caliph of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS), Sheikh Ibrahim Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, in the Qalamoun Mountains of the Rif Dimashq Governorate – these fighters belonged to multiple brigades that formed the conglomeration of the FSA.

As ISIS continues to spread their presence on the border of Lebanon and Syria, many rebel groups have found this organization more appealing than their predecessors due to their success in eastern and northern Syria. The Al-Qaeda linked Al-Nusra Front (Jabhat Al-Nusra) – who fought ISIS in Deir Ezzor – has seemingly repaired relations in eastern Lebanon and western Syria. The 2 militant groups have been spotted working together during armed engagements with loyalist forces in 'Assal Al-Ward and Rankous.

So when we train "moderate rebels" in Syria, there is a very good chance that they will use that training and the weapons that we give to them to help ISIS take over that nation.

But Obama knows all of this.

He just wants to take down Assad.

And he has used this playbook before.  In fact, the Citizens Commission on Benghazi has released an interim report that claims that Obama "changed sides in the war on terror" in 2011 by arming al-Qaeda fighters and helping them take down Moammar Gadhafi...


The Obama White House and the State Department under the management of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "changed sides in the war on terror" in 2011 by implementing a policy of facilitating the delivery of weapons to the al-Qaida-dominated rebel militias in Libya attempting to oust Moammar Gadhafi from power, the Citizens Commission on Benghazi concluded in its interim report.

In WND interviews, several members of the commission have disclosed their finding that the mission of Christopher Stevens, prior to the fall of Gadhafi and during Stevens' time as U.S. ambassador, was the management of a secret gun-running program operated out of the Benghazi compound.

This is what our government does.

They are not even afraid to use al-Qaeda to achieve their twisted foreign policy goals.

So is Barack Obama actually trying to help ISIS take over Syria?

The evidence is mounting that this is indeed the case, and history tells us that he has done this kind of thing before.

[Warph]

Barack Insane Obuma Says That What America Really Needs Is Lots More Debt

By Michael Snyder, on February 2nd, 2015

When it comes to taking a chainsaw to the future of America, nobody seems more eager than Barack Obama.  Despite the fact that the U.S. national debt is on pace to approximately double during his eight years in the White House, he has just proposed a budget that would take government spending to crazy new heights.  When Barack Obama took the oath of office, the U.S. national debt was 10.6 trillion dollars.  Today, it has surpassed the 18 trillion dollar mark.  And even though we are being told that "deficits are going down", the truth is that the U.S. national debt increased by more than a trillion dollars in fiscal 2014.  But that isn't good enough for Obama.  He says that we need to come out of this period of "mindless austerity" and steal money from our children and our grandchildren even faster.  In addition, Obama wants to raise taxes again.  His budget calls for 2 trillion dollars in tax increases over the next decade.  He always touts these tax increases as "tax hikes on the rich", but somehow they almost always seem to end up hitting the middle class too.  But whether or not Congress ever adopts Obama's new budget is not really the issue.  The reality of the matter is that the "tax and spend Democrats" and the "tax and spend Republicans" are both responsible for getting us into this mess.  Future generations of Americans are already facing the largest mountain of debt in the history of the planet, and both parties want to make this mountain of debt even higher.  The only disagreement is about how fast it should happen.  It is a national disgrace, but most Americans have come to accept this as "normal".  If our children and our grandchildren get the opportunity, they will curse us for what we have done to them.

All debt destroys.

All debt enslaves.

And when you are talking about an 18 trillion dollar debt, you are talking about an amount of money that is almost unimaginable.

If our national debt was reduced to a stack of one dollar bills, it would circle our planet at the equator 45 times.

How could we have done such a thing?

Thomas Jefferson once said that "the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."  He correctly understood that government debt is stealing.  We are financially raping our children, our grandchildren and all future generations of Americans.  It is an incredibly wicked thing to do.

But instead of men like Thomas Jefferson running our country, we have men like Barack Obama running it.

And to Barack Hussein Obama, running up a trillion dollars of debt a year is "mindless austerity"...



"I want to work with Congress to replace mindless austerity with smart investments that strengthen America," Obama said in a speech at the Department of Homeland Security. "I'm not going to accept a budget that locks in sequestration going forward. It would be bad for our security, and bad for our growth."

Yes, if we steal money from future generations it will artificially inflate our current standard of living and make our economy look temporarily better than it should be.

But it is morally wrong to do this, and our current crop of politicians have no intentions of ever bringing the debt party to an end.

Even with the ridiculously optimistic economic assumptions that are used in Obama's new budget, the federal budget is never projected to balance within the next decade.  Instead, Obama's budget projects that the national debt will rise from 18.1 trillion dollars right now to 26.2 trillion dollars in 2025.

Of course it would greatly help if the federal government actually spent our money wisely.  But instead, the feds often waste our hard-earned tax dollars in some of the most bizarre ways imaginable. The following is just one example...



The U.S. federal government has prompted controversy after spending over $33,000 on a study to find out whether same-sex couples live closer to tobacco shops than heterosexuals.

The large sum was spent on a study by the National Institutes of Health entitled, 'Relationship Between Tobacco Retailer Density and Sexual Minority Couples.'

Thanks to this kind of insane spending, our debt is completely and totally out of control.

While Barack Obama has been in the White House, the U.S. national debt has increased by $84,266 per full-time private sector worker.  Anyone that believes that this kind of debt accumulation is sustainable is absolutely delusional.

The only reason why our house of cards has not completely collapsed already is because the rest of the world has been willing to lend us gigantic piles of money at artificially low interest rates.

In December, the average rate of interest on the government's marketable debt was 2.013 percent.  But in the past, interest rates have been much higher than that.  For example, in January 2000 the average rate of interest on the government's marketable debt was 6.620 percent.  If we returned to that level today, we would be paying well over a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt.

And the issue isn't just the more than one trillion dollars in new debt that we are accumulating every 12 months.



As I have discussed previously, the U.S. government has more than seven trillion dollars of debt that must be "rolled over" each year.  In other words, the federal government must issue more than seven trillion dollars of new debt just to pay off old debts that are coming due.

If something were to happen which would cause the rest of the planet to either be unwilling or unable to lend us trillions of dollars at ridiculously low interest rates all of a sudden, the game would be over.

We were handed the keys to the greatest and most prosperous economy in the history of the planet, and our greed has totally wrecked it.

We were wealthy beyond imagination, but that was never good enough for us.  We always had to have more.

And now we are hurtling toward financial oblivion, and we have a man in the White House that wants us to go into debt even faster.[/size]

And then we have this:

[Warph]

The Next War In The Middle East Has Begun And Israel Vows 'To Act Powerfully On All Fronts'

Israel and Hezbollah are at war.  On top of everything else that is going on in the world, now we have a new war in the Middle East, and nobody is quite certain what is going to happen next.  Israel has been preparing for this moment for more than 8 years.  So has Hezbollah.  According to some reports, Hezbollah has amassed an arsenal of 50,000 rockets since the end of the Hezbollah-Israel war in 2006.  If all-out warfare does erupt, we could potentially see tens of thousands of missiles rain down into an area not too much larger than the state of New Jersey.  And of course the Israeli military is also much more sophisticated and much more powerful than it was back in 2006.  If cooler heads do not prevail, we could be on the verge of witnessing a very bloody war.  But right now nobody seems to be in the mood to back down.  Hezbollah is absolutely fuming over an airstrike earlier this month that killed six fighters and a prominent Iranian general.  And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that Israel is "prepared to act powerfully on all fronts" in response to a Hezbollah ambush that killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded seven.  Just such an incident is what sparked the war between the two sides back in 2006.  But this time, a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah could spark a full-blown regional war.

Earlier this month, Israel launched a surprise assault against a group of Hezbollah fighters that Israel believed was planning to conduct terror attacks inside their borders.

But in addition to killing six Hezbollah fighters, a very important Iranian general was also killed.  Needless to say, Iran is furious...


Iran has told the United States that Israel should expect consequences for an attack on the Syrian-controlled Golan Heights that killed an Iranian general, a senior official said on Tuesday.

Revolutionary Guards General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi died alongside six fighters from Lebanon's Hezbollah group in the January 18 attack on forces supporting President Bashar al-Assad in Syria's civil war.

And we didn't have to wait too long for a response.  An IDF convoy was hit by anti-tank missiles near the Lebanon border.  Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven were wounded.  The following is how the Jerusalem Post described the attack.

The terrorists launched five or six anti-tank missiles from a distance of at least four kilometers from their targets, striking the vehicles as they drove two kilometers from the international border.

In the heavy Hezbollah ambush, a military D-Max vehicle containing a company commander and his driver from the Givati Brigade was the first vehicle hit.

This prompted all of those inside an IDF jeep behind it to quickly evacuate their vehicle before it, too, was hit and destroyed with missiles.

Just over an hour after that attack, mortar rounds struck an Israeli military position on Mt. Hermon.

In response to those strikes, the Israeli military hit back at Hezbollah positions on the other side of the Lebanese border...

Israel struck back with combined aerial and ground strikes on Hezbollah operational positions along the border, the military said.

At least 50 artillery shells were fired at the villages of Majidiyeh, Abbasiyeh and Kfar Chouba, according to Lebanese officials.

But Israel is probably not done.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is promising a "disproportionate" response to the Hezbollah attacks, and he says that Hezbollah should consider what Israel recently did to Hamas before taking any more aggressive action...


"To all those trying to challenge us on the northern border, I suggest looking at what happened here, not far from the city of Sderot, in the Gaza strip.  Hamas absorbed the hardest blow since it was founded last summer, and the IDF is ready to act with force on any front."

If things continue to escalate, we might not just be talking about another Hezbollah-Israel war.

In the south, tensions between Israel and Hamas remain near all-time highs.  In the event of a full-blown war, Hamas probably could be easily convinced to join the fray.  And if Hamas jumps in, the rest of the Palestinians might not be far behind.

In addition, ISIS now has territory near the border with Israel...

Because of the strategic importance of the terrain, Iran and Hezbollah have been building infrastructure there for some time.  But their interest in the Golan skyrocketed in December.

The reason: ISIS gained a foothold there when the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade of the Free Syrian Army "defected" from the de facto alliance with the U.S.-Arab coalition against Assad, and declared its allegiance to ISIS.  The Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade had been one of the most active rebel factions holding territory directly adjacent to the "area of separation" between Syria and Israel administered (in theory) by the UN.  In particular, it has held the southern line of confrontation with Syrian regime forces, in the transit corridor leading to the Quneitra border crossing.

Needless to say, ISIS would be extremely interested in any conflict with Israel.

And of course there are all of the other surrounding Islamic nations that are not too fond of Israel either.

The truth is that the Middle East is a perpetual tinderbox.  One spark could set the entire region on fire.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama continues to do all that he can to undermine Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The animosity between the two is well known, and now an "Obama army" of political operatives has been sent to Israel to help defeat Netanyahu in the upcoming elections.

The "leader" of this "Obama army" is Jeremy Bird, who was the national field director for Barack Obama's 2012 presidential campaign.  But he has plenty of company.  Just check out the following list that was compiled by WND...

Besides Bird, the 270 Strategies team includes the following former Obama staffers:

•Mitch Steward, a 270 Strategies founding partner who helped the Obama campaign build what the U.K. Guardian called "a historic ground operation that will provide the model for political campaigns in America and around the world for years to come."

•Mark Beatty, a founding partner who served as deputy battleground states director for the Obama campaign. He had primary responsibility for Obama's election plans for the battleground states.

•Marlon Marshall, a founding partner at 270 Strategies who joins the team after holding several key positions in national Democratic politics, most recently as deputy national field director for the 2012 Obama campaign.

•Betsy Hoover, a founding partner who served as director of digital organizing on the Obama campaign.

•Meg Ansara, who served as national regional director for Obama for America where she was responsible for overseeing the 2012 programs in the Midwest and southern states.

•Bridget Halligan, who served as the engagement program manager on the digital team of the 2012 Obama campaign.

•Kate Catherall, who served as Florida deputy field director for Obama's re-election campaign.

•Alex Lofton, who most recently served as the GOTV director of Cleveland, Ohio, for the 2012 Obama campaign.

•Martha Patzer, the firm's vice president who served as deputy email director at Obama for America.

•Jesse Boateng, who served as the Florida voter registration director for Obama's re-election campaign.

•Ashley Bryant, who served most recently as the Ohio digital director for the 2012 Obama campaign.

•Max Clermont, who formerly served as a regional field director in Florida for Obama's re-election campaign.

•Max Wood, who served as a deputy data director in Florida for the 2012 Obama campaign.


As the first month of 2015 wraps up, our world is becoming increasingly unstable.

In addition to the oil crash, the collapse of the euro, looming stock market troubles, civil war in Ukraine, tensions with Russia, an economic slowdown in China and imploding economies all over South America, now we have more war in the Middle East.

And if lots of missiles start flying back and forth between Israel and Hezbollah, it could potentially spark the bloodiest war in that region that any of us have ever seen.

[Warph]

Janet Yellen Is Freaking Out About 'Audit The Fed' –
Here Are 100 Reasons Why She Should Be

By Michael Snyder

Janet Yellen is very alarmed that some members of Congress want to conduct a comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve for the first time since it was created.  If the Fed is doing everything correctly, why should Yellen be alarmed?  What does she have to hide?  During testimony before Congress on Tuesday, she made "central bank independence" sound like it was the holy grail.  Even though every other government function is debated politically in this country, Yellen insists that what the Federal Reserve does is "too important" to be influenced by the American people.  Does any other government agency ever dare to make that claim?  But of course the Federal Reserve is not a government agency.  It is a private banking cartel that has far more power over our money and our economy than anyone else does.  And later on in this article I am going to share with you dozens of reasons why Congress should shut it down.

The immense power wielded by the Federal Reserve is clearly demonstrated whenever Janet Yellen speaks publicly.  On Tuesday, her comments about interest rates sent stocks to brand new record highs...
Yellen, in her semi-annual testimony before the Senate banking committee, used a word familiar to investors when she reiterated that the central bank will be "patient" on raising interest rates for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis. Traders took that as a sign that interest rates would remain unchanged until autumn.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 92.35 points (0.5%) to 18,209.19, while the Standard & Poors 500 gained 5.82 points (0.3%) to 2,115.48, both eclipsing Friday's record closes.

But Yellen was also unusually defensive on Tuesday.  The "Audit the Fed" bill that is being sponsored by Rand Paul (among others) has her really freaked out.  The following comes from the Hill...
Appearing before the Senate Banking Committee, Yellen was on the defensive, as Republicans questioned how the Fed conducts monetary policy and Democrats put forward ideas for getting tougher on Wall Street.

In the midst of all of it, Yellen generally argued the Fed was designed as an independent entity for a reason — and it would be best not to change it.

"Central bank independence in conducting monetary policy is considered a best practice for central banks around the world," she said. "Academic studies, I think, establish beyond the shadow of a doubt that independent central banks perform better."

In fact, she went so far as to mention the "Audit the Fed" bill by name...
A GOP-controlled Congress has given the bill its best chances yet of passage, and that renewed interest led Yellen to deliver her most spirited opposition yet.

"I want to be completely clear," she said. "I strongly oppose Audit the Fed."

Yellen argued the audit measure would allow politicians to second-guess the Fed's decisions, which, in turn, would weaken the central bank. And the ultimate victim of that process, she said, would be the U.S. economy.

So what is she so concerned about?

We are all accountable to someone.

What is so wrong about the Federal Reserve being accountable to Congress?

Why can't we find out what is really going on inside the Fed?

And of course it isn't just Yellen that is freaking out.  Just consider these comments from Richard Fisher, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas...
"It is always politically convenient to make something sound mysterious, if not malevolent, by claiming it is opaque," Fisher said in a speech to the Economic Club of New York that is part of an effort by Fed officials to fight the legislation.

"My suspicion is that many of those in Congress calling for 'auditing' the Fed are really sheep in wolves' clothing," he said. "Having proven themselves unable to cobble together with colleagues a working fiscal policy or to construct a regulatory regime that incentivizes rather than discourages investment and job creation — in other words, failed at their own job — they simply find it convenient to create a bogeyman out of an entity that does its job efficiently."

Obviously this is a very, very touchy subject over at the Fed.

It is quite clear that they do not want the rest of us to be able to see what they are really up to.

And the truth is that if the American people really did know how the Federal Reserve works and what it has been doing behind closed doors, most Americans would want it shut down tomorrow.

At the end of the day, the reality of the matter is that we don't even need a Federal Reserve.  I really like how David Stockman made this point the other day...

At the end of the day, American capitalism does not need recycled political hacks like Jerome H. Powell or clueless school marms like Janet Yellen to thrive. If we need a Fed at all, it is the one designed by Carter Glass 100 years ago. That is, a "bankers bank" that was intended to provide standby liquidity at a penalty spread above the free market interest rate in consideration for good collateral originating from inventory and receivables in the real economy.

Under that arrangement, there would be no monetary central planning or pointless attempts to manage the level of GDP, the number of new jobs, the rate of housing starts, the fluctuations of the CPI or the amplitudes of the business cycle. There would also be no pegging of the money market rate, no helping hand for Wall Street gamblers, no cheap debt to enable profligate politicians to kick-the-can down the road indefinitely.

In short, what the nation really needs is not an "independent" Fed, but one that is shackled to a narrow and market-driven liquidity function. The rest of its current remit is nothing more than the self-serving aggrandizement of the apparatchiks who run it; and who have now managed to turn the nation's vital money and capital markets into dangerous, unstable casinos, and the nations savers into indentured servants of a bloated and wasteful banking system.

The Federal Reserve has been around for just over a hundred years, and it has done an absolutely abysmal job for the American people.

I want to share with you some facts and figures that I have shared before, but they bear repeating.  Please share this list of 100 reasons why the Federal Reserve should be shut down with everyone that you know...

#1 We like to think that we have a government "of the people, by the people, for the people", but the truth is that an unelected, unaccountable group of central planners has far more power over our economy than anyone else in our society does.

#2 The Federal Reserve is actually "independent" of the government.  In fact, the Federal Reserve has argued vehemently in federal court that it is "not an agency" of the federal government and therefore not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

#3 The Federal Reserve openly admits that the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks are organized "much like private corporations".

#4 The regional Federal Reserve banks issue shares of stock to the "member banks" that own them.

#5 100% of the shareholders of the Federal Reserve are private banks.  The U.S. government owns zero shares.

#6 The Federal Reserve is not an agency of the federal government, but it has been given power to regulate our banks and financial institutions.  This should not be happening.

#7 According to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Congress is the one that is supposed to have the authority to "coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures".  So why is the Federal Reserve doing it?

#8 If you look at a "U.S. dollar", it actually says "Federal Reserve note" at the top.  In the financial world, a "note" is an instrument of debt.

#9 In 1963, President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 11110 which authorized the U.S. Treasury to issue "United States notes" which were created by the U.S. government directly and not by the Federal Reserve.  He was assassinated shortly thereafter.

#10 Many of the debt-free United States notes issued under President Kennedy are still in circulation today.

#11 The Federal Reserve determines what levels some of the most important interest rates in our system are going to be set at.  In a free market system, the free market would determine those interest rates.

#12 The Federal Reserve has become so powerful that it is now known as "the fourth branch of government".

#13 The greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was when there was no central bank.

#14 The Federal Reserve was designed to be a perpetual debt machine.  The bankers that designed it intended to trap the U.S. government in a perpetual debt spiral from which it could never possibly escape.  Since the Federal Reserve was established 100 years ago, the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.

#15 A permanent federal income tax was established the exact same year that the Federal Reserve was created.  This was not a coincidence.  In order to pay for all of the government debt that the Federal Reserve would create, a federal income tax was necessary.  The whole idea was to transfer wealth from our pockets to the federal government and from the federal government to the bankers.

#16 The period prior to 1913 (when there was no income tax) was the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history.

#17 Today, the U.S. tax code is about 13 miles long.

#18 From the time that the Federal Reserve was created until now, the U.S. dollar has lost 98 percent of its value.

#19 From the time that President Nixon took us off the gold standard until now, the U.S. dollar has lost 83 percent of its value.

#20 During the 100 years before the Federal Reserve was created, the U.S. economy rarely had any problems with inflation.  But since the Federal Reserve was established, the U.S. economy has experienced constant and never ending inflation.

#21 In the century before the Federal Reserve was created, the average annual rate of inflation was about half a percent.  In the century since the Federal Reserve was created, the average annual rate of inflation has been about 3.5 percent.

#22 The Federal Reserve has stripped the middle class of trillions of dollars of wealth through the hidden tax of inflation.

#23 The size of M1 has nearly doubled since 2008 thanks to the reckless money printing that the Federal Reserve has been doing.

#24 The Federal Reserve has been starting to behave like the Weimar Republic, and we all remember how that ended.

#25 The Federal Reserve has been consistently lying to us about the level of inflation in our economy.  If the inflation rate was still calculated the same way that it was back when Jimmy Carter was president, the official rate of inflation would be somewhere between 8 and 10 percent today.

#26 Since the Federal Reserve was created, there have been 18 distinct recessions or depressions: 1918, 1920, 1923, 1926, 1929, 1937, 1945, 1949, 1953, 1958, 1960, 1969, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1990, 2001, 2008.

#27 Within 20 years of the creation of the Federal Reserve, the U.S. economy was plunged into the Great Depression.

#28 The Federal Reserve created the conditions that caused the stock market crash of 1929, and even Ben Bernanke admits that the response by the Fed to that crisis made the Great Depression even worse than it should have been.

#29 The "easy money" policies of former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan set the stage for the great financial crisis of 2008.

#30 Without the Federal Reserve, the "subprime mortgage meltdown" would probably never have happened.

#31 If you can believe it, there have been 10 different economic recessions since 1950.  The Federal Reserve created the "dotcom bubble", the Federal Reserve created the "housing bubble" and now it has created the largest bond bubble in the history of the planet.

#32 According to an official government report, the Federal Reserve made 16.1 trillion dollars in secret loans to the big banks during the last financial crisis.  The following is a list of loan recipients that was taken directly from page 131 of the report...

Citigroup – $2.513 trillion
Morgan Stanley – $2.041 trillion
Merrill Lynch – $1.949 trillion
Bank of America – $1.344 trillion
Barclays PLC – $868 billion
Bear Sterns – $853 billion
Goldman Sachs – $814 billion
Royal Bank of Scotland – $541 billion
JP Morgan Chase – $391 billion
Deutsche Bank – $354 billion
UBS – $287 billion
Credit Suisse – $262 billion
Lehman Brothers – $183 billion
Bank of Scotland – $181 billion
BNP Paribas – $175 billion
Wells Fargo – $159 billion
Dexia – $159 billion
Wachovia – $142 billion
Dresdner Bank – $135 billion
Societe Generale – $124 billion
"All Other Borrowers" – $2.639 trillion

#33 The Federal Reserve also paid those big banks $659.4 million in "fees" to help "administer" those secret loans.

#34 During the last financial crisis, big European banks were allowed to borrow an "unlimited" amount of money from the Federal Reserve at ultra-low interest rates.

#35 The "easy money" policies of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have created the largest financial bubble this nation has ever seen, and this has set the stage for the great financial crisis that we are rapidly approaching.

#36 Since late 2008, the size of the Federal Reserve balance sheet has grown from less than a trillion dollars to more than 4 trillion dollars.  This is complete and utter insanity.

#37 During the quantitative easing era, the value of the financial securities that the Fed has accumulated is greater than the total amount of publicly held debt that the U.S. government accumulated from the presidency of George Washington through the end of the presidency of Bill Clinton.

#38 Overall, the Federal Reserve now holds more than 32 percent of all 10 year equivalents.

#39 Quantitative easing creates financial bubbles, and when quantitative easing ends those bubbles tend to deflate rapidly.

#40 Most of the new money created by quantitative easing has ended up in the hands of the very wealthy.

#41 According to a prominent Federal Reserve insider, quantitative easing has been one giant "subsidy" for Wall Street banks.

#42 As one CNBC article stated, we are seeing absolutely rampant inflation in "stocks and bonds and art and Ferraris".

#43 Donald Trump once made the following statement about quantitative easing: "People like me will benefit from this."

#44 Most people have never heard about this, but a very interesting study conducted for the Bank of England shows that quantitative easing actually increases the gap between the wealthy and the poor.

#45 The gap between the top one percent and the rest of the country is now the greatest that it has been since the 1920s.

#46 The mainstream media has sold quantitative easing to the American public as an "economic stimulus program", but the truth is that the percentage of Americans that have a job has actually gone down since quantitative easing first began.

#47 The Federal Reserve is supposed to be able to guide the nation toward "full employment", but the reality of the matter is that an all-time record 102 million working age Americans do not have a job right now.  That number has risen by about 27 million since the year 2000.

#48 For years, the projections of economic growth by the Federal Reserve have consistently overstated the strength of the U.S. economy.  But every single time, the mainstream media continues to report that these numbers are "reliable" even though all they actually represent is wishful thinking.

#49 The Federal Reserve system fuels the growth of government, and the growth of government fuels the growth of the Federal Reserve system.  Since 1970, federal spending has grown nearly 12 times as rapidly as median household income has.

#50 The Federal Reserve is supposed to look out for the health of all U.S. banks, but the truth is that they only seem to be concerned about the big ones.  In 1985, there were more than 18,000 banks in the United States.  Today, there are only 6,891 left.

#51 The six largest banks in the United States (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) have collectively gotten 37 percent larger over the past five years.

#52 The U.S. banking system has 14.4 trillion dollars in total assets.  The six largest banks now account for 67 percent of those assets and all of the other banks account for only 33 percent of those assets.

#53 The five largest banks now account for 42 percent of all loans in the United States.

#54 We were told that the purpose of quantitative easing is to help "stimulate the economy", but today the Federal Reserve is actually paying the big banks not to lend out 1.8 trillion dollars in "excess reserves" that they have parked at the Fed.

#55 The Federal Reserve has allowed an absolutely gigantic derivatives bubble to inflate which could destroy our financial system at any moment.  Right now, four of the "too big to fail" banks each have total exposure to derivatives that is well in excess of 40 trillion dollars.

#56 The total exposure that Goldman Sachs has to derivatives contracts is more than 381 times greater than their total assets.

#57 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has a track record of failure that would make the Chicago Cubs look good.

#58 The secret November 1910 gathering at Jekyll Island, Georgia during which the plan for the Federal Reserve was hatched was attended by U.S. Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department A.P. Andrews and a whole host of representatives from the upper crust of the Wall Street banking establishment.

#59 The Federal Reserve was created by the big Wall Street banks and for the benefit of the big Wall Street banks.

#60 In 1913, Congress was promised that if the Federal Reserve Act was passed that it would eliminate the business cycle.

#61 There has never been a true comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve since it was created back in 1913.

#62 The Federal Reserve system has been described as "the biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of the world".

#63 The following comes directly from the Fed's official mission statement: "To provide the nation with a safer, more flexible, and more stable monetary and financial system."  Without a doubt, the Federal Reserve has failed in those tasks dramatically.

#64 The Fed decides what the target rate of inflation should be, what the target rate of unemployment should be and what the size of the money supply is going to be.  This is quite similar to the "central planning" that goes on in communist nations, but very few people in our government seem upset by this.

#65 A couple of years ago, Federal Reserve officials walked into one bank in Oklahoma and demanded that they take down all the Bible verses and all the Christmas buttons that the bank had been displaying.

#66 The Federal Reserve has taken some other very frightening steps in recent years.  For example, back in 2011 the Federal Reserve announced plans to identify "key bloggers" and to monitor "billions of conversations" about the Fed on Facebook, Twitter, forums and blogs.  Someone at the Fed will almost certainly end up reading this article.

#67 Thanks to this endless debt spiral that we are trapped in, a massive amount of money is transferred out of our pockets and into the pockets of the ultra-wealthy each year.  Incredibly, the U.S. government spent more than 415 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt in 2013.

#68 In January 2000, the average rate of interest on the government's marketable debt was 6.620 percent.  If we got back to that level today, we would be paying more than a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt and it would collapse our entire financial system.

#69 The American people are being killed by compound interest but most of them don't even understand what it is.  Albert Einstein once made the following statement about compound interest...


"Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it ... he who doesn't ... pays it."

#70 Most Americans have absolutely no idea where money comes from.  The truth is that the Federal Reserve just creates it out of thin air.  The following is how I have previously described how money is normally created by the Fed in our system...


When the U.S. government decides that it wants to spend another billion dollars that it does not have, it does not print up a billion dollars.

Rather, the U.S. government creates a bunch of U.S. Treasury bonds (debt) and takes them over to the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve creates a billion dollars out of thin air and exchanges them for the U.S. Treasury bonds.

#71 What does the Federal Reserve do with those U.S. Treasury bonds?  They end up getting auctioned off to the highest bidder.  But this entire process actually creates more debt than it does money...
The U.S. Treasury bonds that the Federal Reserve receives in exchange for the money it has created out of nothing are auctioned off through the Federal Reserve system.

But wait.

There is a problem.

Because the U.S. government must pay interest on the Treasury bonds, the amount of debt that has been created by this transaction is greater than the amount of money that has been created.

So where will the U.S. government get the money to pay that debt?

Well, the theory is that we can get money to circulate through the economy really, really fast and tax it at a high enough rate that the government will be able to collect enough taxes to pay the debt.

But that never actually happens, does it?

And the creators of the Federal Reserve understood this as well.  They understood that the U.S. government would not have enough money to both run the government and service the national debt.  They knew that the U.S. government would have to keep borrowing even more money in an attempt to keep up with the game.

#72 Of course the U.S. government could actually create money and spend it directly into the economy without the Federal Reserve being involved at all.  But then we wouldn't be 17 trillion dollars in debt and that wouldn't serve the interests of the bankers at all.

#73 The following is what Thomas Edison once had to say about our absolutely insane debt-based financial system...
That is to say, under the old way any time we wish to add to the national wealth we are compelled to add to the national debt.

Now, that is what Henry Ford wants to prevent. He thinks it is stupid, and so do I, that for the loan of $30,000,000 of their own money the people of the United States should be compelled to pay $66,000,000 — that is what it amounts to, with interest. People who will not turn a shovelful of dirt nor contribute a pound of material will collect more money from the United States than will the people who supply the material and do the work. That is the terrible thing about interest. In all our great bond issues the interest is always greater than the principal. All of the great public works cost more than twice the actual cost, on that account. Under the present system of doing business we simply add 120 to 150 per cent, to the stated cost.

But here is the point: If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good.

#74 The United States now has the largest national debt in the history of the world, and we are stealing roughly 100 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day in a desperate attempt to keep the debt spiral going.

#75 Thomas Jefferson once stated that if he could add just one more amendment to the U.S. Constitution it would be a ban on all government borrowing...
I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.

#76 At this moment, the U.S. national debt is sitting at $18,141,409,083,212.36.  If we had followed the advice of Thomas Jefferson, it would be sitting at zero.

#77 When the Federal Reserve was first established, the U.S. national debt was sitting at about 2.9 billion dollars.  On average, we have been adding more than that to the national debt every single day since Obama has been in the White House.

#78 We are on pace to accumulate more new debt under the 8 years of the Obama administration than we did under all of the other presidents in all of U.S. history combined.

#79 If all of the new debt that has been accumulated since John Boehner became Speaker of the House had been given directly to the American people instead, every household in America would have been able to buy a new truck.

#80 Between 2008 and 2012, U.S. government debt grew by 60.7 percent, but U.S. GDP only grew by a total of about 8.5 percent during that entire time period.

#81 Since 2007, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio has increased from 66.6 percent to 101.6 percent.

#82 According to the U.S. Treasury, foreigners hold approximately 5.6 trillion dollars of our debt.

#83 The amount of U.S. government debt held by foreigners is about 5 times larger than it was just a decade ago.

#84 As I have written about previously, if the U.S. national debt was reduced to a stack of one dollar bills it would circle the earth at the equator 45 times.

#85 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his entire fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.

#86 Sometimes we forget just how much money a trillion dollars is.  If you were alive when Jesus Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.

#87 If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.

#88 In addition to all of our debt, the U.S. government has also accumulated more than 200 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities.  So where in the world will all of that money come from?

#89 The greatest damage that quantitative easing has been causing to our economy is the fact that it is destroying worldwide faith in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. debt.  If the rest of the world stops using our dollars and stops buying our debt, we are going to be in a massive amount of trouble.

#90 Over the past several years, the Federal Reserve has been monetizing a staggering amount of U.S. government debt even though Ben Bernanke once promised that he would never do this.

#91 China recently announced that they are going to quit stockpiling more U.S. dollars.  If the Federal Reserve was not recklessly printing money, this would probably not have happened.

#92 Most Americans have no idea that one of our most famous presidents was absolutely obsessed with getting rid of central banking in the United States.  The following is a February 1834 quote by President Andrew Jackson about the evils of central banking...

I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the Bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the Bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out and, by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out.

#93 There are plenty of possible alternative financial systems, but at this point all 187 nations that belong to the IMF have a central bank.  Are we supposed to believe that this is just some sort of a bizarre coincidence?

#94 The capstone of the global central banking system is an organization known as the Bank for International Settlements.  The following is how I described this organization in a previous article...
An immensely powerful international organization that most people have never even heard of secretly controls the money supply of the entire globe.  It is called the Bank for International Settlements, and it is the central bank of central banks.  It is located in Basel, Switzerland, but it also has branches in Hong Kong and Mexico City.  It is essentially an unelected, unaccountable central bank of the world that has complete immunity from taxation and from national laws.  Even Wikipedia admits that "it is not accountable to any single national government."  The Bank for International Settlements was used to launder money for the Nazis during World War II, but these days the main purpose of the BIS is to guide and direct the centrally-planned global financial system.  Today, 58 global central banks belong to the BIS, and it has far more power over how the U.S. economy (or any other economy for that matter) will perform over the course of the next year than any politician does.  Every two months, the central bankers of the world gather in Basel for another "Global Economy Meeting".  During those meetings, decisions are made which affect every man, woman and child on the planet, and yet none of us have any say in what goes on.  The Bank for International Settlements is an organization that was founded by the global elite and it operates for the benefit of the global elite, and it is intended to be one of the key cornerstones of the emerging one world economic system.

#95 The borrower is the servant of the lender, and the Federal Reserve has turned all of us into debt slaves.

#96 Debt is a form of social control, and the global elite use all of this debt to dominate all the rest of us.  40 years ago, the total amount of debt in our system (all government debt, all business debt, all consumer debt, etc.) was sitting at about 2 trillion dollars.  Today, the grand total exceeds 56 trillion dollars.

#97 Unless something dramatic is done, our children and our grandchildren will be debt slaves for their entire lives as they service our debts and pay for our mistakes.

#98 Now that you know this information, you are responsible for doing something about it.

#99 Congress has the power to shut down the Federal Reserve any time that it would like.  But right now most of our politicians fully endorse the current system, and nothing is ever going to happen until the American people start demanding change.

#100 The design of the Federal Reserve system was flawed from the very beginning.  If something is not done very rapidly, it is inevitable that our entire financial system is going to suffer an absolutely nightmarish collapse.

[Warph]

President Barack Obama's Complete List of Historic Firsts [Updated]

Law and Justice

• First President to Violate the War Powers Act (Unilaterally Executing American Military Operations in Libya Without Informing Congress In the Required Time Period - Source: Huffington Post)

• First President to Triple the Number of Warrantless Wiretaps of U.S. Citizens (Source: ACLU)

• First President to Sign into Law a Bill That Permits the Government to "Hold Anyone Suspected of Being Associated With Terrorism Indefinitely, Without Any Form of Due Process. No Indictment. No Judge or Jury. No Evidence. No Trial. Just an Indefinite Jail Sentence" (NDAA Bill - Source: Business Insider)

• First President to Refuse to Tell the Public What He Did For Eight [8] Hours After Being Informed That a U.S. Ambassador Was Facing Imminent Death During a Terror Attack (Source: Mediate)

• First President to Lie About the Reason For an Ambassador's Death, Blaming it on an Internet Video Rather Than What He Knew to be the Case: the Al Qaeda-linked Terror Group Ansar al-Sharia (Source: House Oversight Committee, et. al.)

• First President to Have an Innocent Filmmaker Thrown in Jail After Lying About the Cause for a Deadly Attack on U.S. Diplomats, Using the Filmmaker as a Scapegoat (Source: CNN)

• First President to Use the IRS to "Unfairly Target Political Enemies" as Well as pro-Catholic and pro-Jewish Groups (Source: Sen. Ted Cruz)

• First President to Unlawfully Seize Telephone Records of More than 100 Reporters to Intimidate and/or Bully Them (Source: Associated Press)

• First President to Witness a Single Cabinet Secretary Commit Multiple Hatch Act Violations Without Acting, Speaking Out, Disciplining or Firing That Person (Source: New York Times)

••• First President to Systematically Release Detained Illegal Aliens Charged With Homicide Into the U.S. Population (Source: USA Today)

••• First President to Release 40,000 Illegal Aliens with Serious and/or Violent Criminal Records Inside the U.S. (Source: Judicial Watch)

••• First President to Create Secret Police Units Inside Government Agencies to Block Lawful Investigations by Inspectors General (Source: Associated Press)

• First President to Personally Lobby Senators to Violate Senate Rules and Destroy the Filibuster Through "The Nuclear Option" to Consolidate More Executive Power (Source: Wall Street Journal)

• First President to create his own propaganda news network and "bypass journalists ... [having] developed [his] own network of websites, social media and even created an online newscast to dispense favorable information and images" (Source: Associated Press)

• First President to Barricade Open-Air Government Monuments During a Partial Government Shutdown (Source: Rep. Steve Stockman)

• First President to Have His Attorney General Held in Criminal Contempt of Congress For His Efforts to Cover Up Operation Fast and Furious, That Killed Over 300 Individuals (Source: Politico)

• First President to claim Executive Privilege to shield a sitting Attorney General from a Contempt of Congress finding for perjury and withholding evidence from lawful subpoenas (Source: Business Insider)

• First President to Issue Unlawful "Recess-Appointments" Over a Long Weekend -- While the U.S. Senate Remained in Session (against the advice of his own Justice Department - Source: United States Court of Appeals)

• First President to Fire an Inspector General of Americorps for Catching One of His Friends in a Corruption Case (Source: Gawker)

• First President to "Order a Secret Amnesty Program that Stopped the Deportations of Illegal Immigrants Across the U.S., Including Those With Criminal Convictions" (Source: DHS documents uncovered by Judicial Watch)

• First President to Sue States for Enforcing Voter ID Requirements, Which Were Previously Ruled Legal by the U.S. Supreme Court (Source: CNN)

• First President to Encourage Racial Discrimination and Intimidation at Polling Places (the New Black Panthers voter intimidation case, Source: Investors Business Daily)

• First President to Refuse to Comply With a House Oversight Committee Subpoena (Source: Heritage Foundation)

• First President to Arbitrarily Declare an Existing Law Unconstitutional and Refuse to Enforce It (Defense of Marriage Act - Source: ABC News)

• First President to Increase Surveillance of American Citizen Under the Patriot Act by 1,000 Percent in Four Years (Source: NBC News)

••• First president to appoint a convicted cop killer's advocate to the Department of Justice (Source: Investor's Business Daily)

••• First Administration to Be Ruled by a Federal Judge as Aiding and Abetting Human Trafficking (Source: Federal District Court Judge Andrew S. Hanen)

• First President to Demand a Company Hand Over $20 Billion to One of His Political Appointees (BP Oil Spill Relief Fund - Source: Fox News)

• First President to Have a Law Signed By an 'Auto-pen' Without Being "Present" (Source: The New York Times)



Scandals

• First President to publicly announce an enemies list (consisting of his opponents campaign contributors; and to use the instrumentalities of government to punish those on the list - Source: Heritage Foundation)

• First President to Attempt to Block Legally-Required 60-Day Layoff Notices by Government Contractors Due to His Own Cuts to Defense Spending -- Because The Notices Would Occur Before the Election. (Source: National Journal)

• First President to Intentionally Disable Credit Card Security Measures (in order to allow over-the-limit donations, foreign contributions and other illegal fundraising measures - Source: Power Line)

• First President to send 80 percent of a $16 billion program (green energy) to his campaign bundlers and contributors, leaving only 20% to those who did not contribute. (Source: Washington Examiner)

• First President to Propose an Executive Order Demanding Companies Disclose Their Political Contributions to Bid on Government Contracts (Source: Wall Street Journal)

• First President to issue an Executive Order implementing a "Racial Justice System", a system that tries to achieve "racially equivalent outcomes" for crimes (Source: Daily Caller)

• First President to Leak Confidential IRS Tax Records to Groups Aligned Politically With Him for Partisan Advantage (Source: The Hill Newspaper)

• First President to Use the EPA to Punish Political Enemies and Reward Political Allies (Source: Competitive Enterprise Institute)

• First President to Send Millions in Taxpayer Dollars to His Wife's Former Employer (Source: White House Dossier)

• First President to Openly Use the Department of Justice to Intimidate Political Opponents and Threaten Companies to Donate to His Campaign (Source: Peter Schweizer, Extortion)

• First President to Direct His Census Dept. to Make Up Favorable Employment Data In Run-Up to His Reelection Campaign (Source: New York Post)

• First President to Have His Administration Fund an Organization Tied to the Cop-Killing Terrorist Group, the Weather Underground (Source: National Review)

••• First President to have the EPA conduct hazardous experiments on the ill, infirm and elederly to push a radical environmental agenda, in a manner not dissimilar to the Third Reich's inhuman medical experiments (Source: The EPA Office of the Inspector General).
••• First President to be Accused by His Own Party of Ordering the CIA to Spy on Congress (Source: Washington Post)

••• First President to allow deadly Ebola disease-ridden patients to enter the U.S., refusing to restrict travel from infected countries like other Western allies (Source: New York Daily News)

••• First president to order his EPA to unilaterally overturn a Federal Statute (changing the borders of Wyoming established by an act of Congress, Source: Casper Star-Tribune).

••• First president to systematically delay enacting a wide variety of controversial rules until after a presidential election (Source: Washington Post)

••• First president to have Politifact designate one of his statements "Lie of the Year" (Source: Politifact)



Economy

• First President to Preside Over a Cut to the Credit Rating of the United States Government (Source: Reuters)

• First President to Bypass Congress and Implement the DREAM Act Through Executive Fiat (Source: Christian Science Monitor)

• First President to Move America Past the Dependency Tipping Point, In Which 51% of Households Now Pay No Income Taxes (Source: Center for Individual Freedom)

• First President to Increase Food Stamp Spending By More Than 100% in Less Than Four Years (Source: Sen. Jeff Sessions)

• First President to Spend a Trillion Dollars on 'Shovel-Ready' Jobs -- and Later Admit There Was No Such Thing as Shovel-Ready Jobs (Source: President Obama during an early meeting of his 'Jobs Council')

• First President to Threaten Insurance Companies After They Publicly Spoke out on How Obamacare Helped Cause their Rate Increases (Source: The Hill)

• First President to Abrogate Bankruptcy Law to Turn Over Control of Companies to His Union Supporters (Source: Wall Street Journal)

• First President to Propose Budgets So Unreasonable That Not a Single Representative From Either Party Would Cast a Vote in Favor (Sources: The Hill, Open Market)

• First President Whose Economic Policies Have the Number of Americans on Disability Exceed the Population of New York (Source: CNS News)

• First President to Sign a Law Requiring All Americans to Purchase a Product From a Third Party (Source: Wall Street Journal)

• First President to Sue States For Enforcing Immigration Laws Passed by Congress (Source: The Arizona Republic newspaper)

• First President to See America Lose Its Status as the World's Largest Economy (Source: Peterson Institute)

• First President to redistribute $26.5 billion of the taxpayers' funds to his union supporters in the UAW (Source: Heritage Foundation)

• First President to Threaten an Auto Company (Ford) After It Publicly Mocked Bailouts of GM and Chrysler (Source: Detroit News)

• First President to Run a Record 5 Straight Years of Deficits for the Disability Trust Fund (Source: CNS News)

• First President to Attempt to Bully a Major Manufacturing Company Into Not Opening a Factory in a Right-to-Work State (Boeing's facility in South Carolina - Source: Wall Street Journal)

••• First President Since 1872 to See the U.S. Economy Sink From 1st to 2nd Largest in the World (Source: Financial Times).

••• First President to Conceal Food Stamp Data From Public Scrutiny (Source: Judicial Watch: "8th Circuit Says USDA Can't Keep Hiding Food Stamp Data")

••• First President to Leave the American Middle Class No Longer the World's Richest (Source: The New York Times)

••• First President to Retaliate Against a Rating Agency for Downgrading the United States Debt (Source: Investor's Business Daily)

••• First President to Expand the Regulatory State to an Unprecedented Degree ("New record: Feds issued 56 regs for every new law, 3,659 in 2013", Source: Washington Examiner)



Energy Policy

• First President to Endanger the Stability of the Electric Grid by Shutting Down Hundreds of Coal-Fired Plants Without Adequate Replacement Technologies (Source: National Electric Reliability Corporation - PDF)

• First President to Have His EPA Repudiated by a Federal Judge for "Overstepping Its Powers" When They Attempted to Shut Down Coal Operations in Appalachia (Source: Huffington Post)

• First President to be Held in Contempt of Court for Illegally Obstructing Oil Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico (Source: Politico)



National Security and World Affairs

• First President to Lie Repeatedly to the American People About the Murder of a U.S. Ambassador and Three Other Diplomatic Personnel for Purely Political Reasons, Rewriting a "Talking Points" Memo No Fewer Than a Dozen Times to Avoid Referencing a Pre-Planned Terror Attack (Source: ABC News)

• First President to Openly Defy a Congressional Order Not To Share Sensitive Nuclear Defense Secrets With the Russian Government (Sources: ABC News, Rep. Michael Turner)

• First President to Leak Highly Classified Military and Intelligence Secrets to Hollywood In Order to Promote a Movie That Could Help His Reelection Campaign (Source: Judicial Watch)

• First President to Renounce the Monroe Doctrine of National Security in the Western Hemisphere (Source: Wall Street Journal)
• First Nobel Peace Prize Winner to State "I'm Really Good At Killing People" (Regarding His Drone Strikes) (Source: Business Insider)

• First President to Snub the Vatican by Closing U.S. Embassy (Source: Washington Times, "Obama's call to close Vatican embassy is 'slap in the face' to Roman Catholics")

••• First President to Directly Violate the Law Regarding Prisoner Swaps with the Taliban, Bypassing Congressional Review (Source: The New York Times)

••• First President to Invite a Leader of the Terrorist Group the Muslim Brotherhood to a Meeting in the White House (Source: Washington Free Beacon)

••• First President to Out a CIA Station Chief in an Active Military Zone (Source: CBS News)

• First President to Terminate America's Ability to Put a Man into Space (Sources: USA Today, ABC News)

• First President to press for a "treaty giving a U.N. body veto power over the use of our territorial waters and rights to half of all offshore oil revenue" (The Law Of The Sea Treaty, Source: Investors Business Daily)

• First President to send $200 million to a terrorist organization (Hamas) after Congress had explicitly frozen the money for fear it would fund attacks against civilians (Sources: American Thinker, The Independent [UK])



Miscellania

• First President to Insert Himself into White House Biographies of Past Presidents (Source: The New York Times).

••• First President to Secretly Party With Known Domestic Terrorists (Source: Gawker)


••• First President to Complete 210 Rounds of Golf in Less Than Six Years in Office (Source: CBS News)

But remember: he will not rest until all Americans have jobs, affordable homes, green-energy vehicles, and the environment is repaired, etc., etc., etc.

[Warph]

The Bin Laden Raid Was A Work Of Fiction,
And Barack Obama Should Immediately Resign

By Michael Snyder, on May 11th, 2015 

Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has uncovered one of the biggest lies in modern American history.  It turns out that much of what the American public was told about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden was a blatant lie.  According to Hersh, Osama bin Laden had been captured by Pakistan all the way back in 2006, and he was being held by the ISI as a prisoner at the Abbottabad compound that the Seals ultimately raided in 2011.  In addition, Hersh says that the ISI and Pakistan's military knew about the Seal raid in advance.  Arrangements were made so that the Black Hawk helicopters could travel through Pakistani airspace safely, and the ISI guards at Osama bin Laden's compound were pulled away before the Seals got there.  And by that time, Osama bin Laden was reportedly in such bad health that he was essentially a cripple.  There was no "firefight" at all – only a turkey shoot.  Afterwards, Osama bin Laden's body never made it to the USS Carl Vinson for a "burial at sea".  That was all just part of the cover story according to Hersh.  Of course the White House and Obama's lackeys at CNN are strongly denying all of this, and they will continue to deny the truth for as long as they possibly can.  But there are individuals in the U.S. military and in the U.S. intelligence community that can come forward and tell us what really happened.  Let us hope that at least some of those individuals still care enough about this country to do that.
According to Hersh, one of the biggest lies that Obama told was that Pakistani leadership had no idea that the Seals were coming in.  Actually, the truth is that the head of the army, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and the director general of the ISI, General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, were both heavily involved in the planning of the operation.  The following is an excerpt from Hersh's article for the London Review of Books...
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden

Pasha and Kayani were responsible for ensuring that Pakistan's army and air defence command would not track or engage with the US helicopters used on the mission. The American cell at Tarbela Ghazi was charged with co-ordinating communications between the ISI, the senior US officers at their command post in Afghanistan, and the two Black Hawk helicopters; the goal was to ensure that no stray Pakistani fighter plane on border patrol spotted the intruders and took action to stop them. The initial plan said that news of the raid shouldn't be announced straightaway. All units in the Joint Special Operations Command operate under stringent secrecy and the JSOC leadership believed, as did Kayani and Pasha, that the killing of bin Laden would not be made public for as long as seven days, maybe longer. Then a carefully constructed cover story would be issued: Obama would announce that DNA analysis confirmed that bin Laden had been killed in a drone raid in the Hindu Kush, on Afghanistan's side of the border. The Americans who planned the mission assured Kayani and Pasha that their co-operation would never be made public. It was understood by all that if the Pakistani role became known, there would be violent protests – bin Laden was considered a hero by many Pakistanis – and Pasha and Kayani and their families would be in danger, and the Pakistani army publicly disgraced.

When the Seals got to the compound in Abbottabad, bin Laden and his family were completely unguarded.  That is because the ISI guards had already been pulled back.  Here is more from Hersh...
At the Abbottabad compound ISI guards were posted around the clock to keep watch over bin Laden and his wives and children. They were under orders to leave as soon as they heard the rotors of the US helicopters. The town was dark: the electricity supply had been cut off on the orders of the ISI hours before the raid began. One of the Black Hawks crashed inside the walls of the compound, injuring many on board. 'The guys knew the TOT [time on target] had to be tight because they would wake up the whole town going in,' the retired official said. The cockpit of the crashed Black Hawk, with its communication and navigational gear, had to be destroyed by concussion grenades, and this would create a series of explosions and a fire visible for miles. Two Chinook helicopters had flown from Afghanistan to a nearby Pakistani intelligence base to provide logistical support, and one of them was immediately dispatched to Abbottabad. But because the helicopter had been equipped with a bladder loaded with extra fuel for the two Black Hawks, it first had to be reconfigured as a troop carrier. The crash of the Black Hawk and the need to fly in a replacement were nerve-wracking and time-consuming setbacks, but the Seals continued with their mission. There was no firefight as they moved into the compound; the ISI guards had gone. 'Everyone in Pakistan has a gun and high-profile, wealthy folks like those who live in Abbottabad have armed bodyguards, and yet there were no weapons in the compound,' the retired official pointed out. Had there been any opposition, the team would have been highly vulnerable. Instead, the retired official said, an ISI liaison officer flying with the Seals guided them into the darkened house and up a staircase to bin Laden's quarters. The Seals had been warned by the Pakistanis that heavy steel doors blocked the stairwell on the first and second-floor landings; bin Laden's rooms were on the third floor. The Seal squad used explosives to blow the doors open, without injuring anyone. One of bin Laden's wives was screaming hysterically and a bullet – perhaps a stray round – struck her knee. Aside from those that hit bin Laden, no other shots were fired. (The Obama administration's account would hold otherwise.)

After the raid, Obama was never supposed to go public with what had happened.  Instead, about a week later a cover story about how bin Laden had been killed in a drone strike was supposed to be released to the public.  Obama betrayed the Pakistanis for his own political gain.  And the highly touted "burial at sea" of bin Laden never took place either...
Within weeks of the raid, I had been told by two longtime consultants to Special Operations Command, who have access to current intelligence, that the funeral aboard the Carl Vinson didn't take place. One consultant told me that bin Laden's remains were photographed and identified after being flown back to Afghanistan. The consultant added: 'At that point, the CIA took control of the body. The cover story was that it had been flown to the Carl Vinson.' The second consultant agreed that there had been 'no burial at sea'. He added that 'the killing of bin Laden was political theatre designed to burnish Obama's military credentials ... The Seals should have expected the political grandstanding. It's irresistible to a politician. Bin Laden became a working asset.' Early this year, speaking again to the second consultant, I returned to the burial at sea. The consultant laughed and said: 'You mean, he didn't make it to the water?'

The retired official said there had been another complication: some members of the Seal team had bragged to colleagues and others that they had torn bin Laden's body to pieces with rifle fire. The remains, including his head, which had only a few bullet holes in it, were thrown into a body bag and, during the helicopter flight back to Jalalabad, some body parts were tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains – or so the Seals claimed. At the time, the retired official said, the Seals did not think their mission would be made public by Obama within a few hours: 'If the president had gone ahead with the cover story, there would have been no need to have a funeral within hours of the killing. Once the cover story was blown, and the death was made public, the White House had a serious "Where's the body?" problem.

Obviously the Seals could blow up the whole story by coming back and talking to the media.  That is why the Obama administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to silence them...
The White House's solution was to silence the Seals. On 5 May, every member of the Seal hit team – they had returned to their base in southern Virginia – and some members of the Joint Special Operations Command leadership were presented with a nondisclosure form drafted by the White House's legal office; it promised civil penalties and a lawsuit for anyone who discussed the mission, in public or private. 'The Seals were not happy,' the retired official said. But most of them kept quiet, as did Admiral William McRaven, who was then in charge of JSOC. 'McRaven was apoplectic. He knew he was ****** by the White House, but he's a dyed-in-the-wool Seal, and not then a political operator, and he knew there's no glory in blowing the whistle on the president. When Obama went public with bin Laden's death, everyone had to scramble around for a new story that made sense, and the planners were stuck holding the bag.'

There is so much more in Hersh's article, and you can read the rest of it right here.  The following is how Business Insider summarized some of the main points...
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden

•The White House's "most blatant" lie was that Pakistan's two most senior military officials were never informed of the mission, Hersh says.

•While US officials say they found bin Laden by tracking his trusted courier, Hersh says they discovered his whereabouts from a former Pakistani intelligence officer who wanted the $25 million reward the US was offering.

•The government claimed bin Laden was hiding out, but Hersh says the Pakistani intelligence agency had actually been holding him captive since 2006 to use him as leverage against Taliban and Al Qaeda activities in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

•While the White House has said it would have taken bin Laden alive if it could have and that he was killed in a firefight, Hersh says that wasn't the case. "There was no firefight as they moved into the compound; the ISI guards had gone," Hersh wrote.

•The article also takes issue with the White House's claim that bin Laden was buried at sea in a service that followed Islamic practices. "The remains, including his head, which had only a few bullet holes in it, were thrown into a body bag and, during the helicopter flight back to Jalalabad, some body parts were tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains — or so the Seals claimed," Hersh reported, citing his senior US intelligence official.


If these things are true, Barack Obama and much of his inner circle should immediately resign.  They purposely and maliciously lied to the American people over and over for their own political gain. 

But of course so far they are choosing to deny everything...

"There are too many inaccuracies and baseless assertions in this piece to fact check each one," White House National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said in a statement shared with The Hill.

"Every sentence I was reading was wrong," former acting CIA Director Michael Morell added Monday on "CBS This Morning."

"The source that Hersh talked to has no idea what he's talking about. The person obviously was not close to what happened," he added. "The Pakistanis did not know. The president made a decision not to tell the Pakistanis. The Pakistanis were furious with us. The president sent me to Pakistan after the raids to start smoothing things over."

So what we need are people that know what really happened to step forward and tell the American people the truth.

Without a doubt, there are individuals in the U.S. military and in the U.S. intelligence community that can expose the lies of the Obama administration if they have the courage to act.

If you are one of those individuals and you choose to remain silent, you are betraying this country just like the Obama administration has.  The time has come to tell the truth, and it is your duty as an American to do so.

[Warph]

What Is Causing The Strange Trumpet Sounds In The Sky All Over The World?

By Michael Snyder, on May 21st, 2015

TRUMPETS, EXPLOSIONS, STRANGE SOUNDS, COMING FROM THE HEAVENS!

VIDEO:

All over the globe, people are recording extremely loud sounds coming from the sky.  In many instances, these ominous noises sound like someone is blowing a trumpet.  So what are we supposed to make of these "apocalyptic" sounds?  Should we be concerned?  Well, what we do know is that this is truly a global phenomenon.  In addition to being heard at locations all over the United States and Canada, these sounds have also been recorded in Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Sweden, England, Costa Rica, Ukraine and France.  If you go to YouTube and type in "strange sounds", you will literally get hundreds of results from all over the planet.  Of course there are many scientists that insist that there must be a "rational explanation" for these strange sounds.  Some theories have suggested fracking, "rock bursts", venting of high-pressure gas, atmospheric pressure or the natural "background noise" of our planet as the causes of these sounds, but so far none of those theories have been proven.  But two things seem certain – these noises sure are creepy, and they just keep on happening.

And this phenomenon is now really starting to get a whole lot of attention.  Just within the last month, there have been headlines about it in major new sources all over the planet. 

For instance, the following is a brief excerpt about this phenomenon from an article in the New York Post...http://nypost.com/2015/05/19/eerie-trumpet-sounds-are-coming-from-the-sky/

Video clips from around the world have captured an evil-sounding 'trumpet' noise coming from the sky — but no one can explain exactly what it is.

A number of people have filmed the bizarre sound over the past 10 years with the latest coming from Germany.

Video of this most recent incident that happened in Germany is posted below.  What do you think could possibly be making this noise?...

VIDEO:

As I discussed above, similar sounds have been recorded all over the globe in recent years.  Very quickly, let me share four examples with you that were recently included in an article by Melissa Dykes.
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/planetary-mystery-eerie-trumpet-sounds-from-the-sky-heard-all-over-the-world_052015

This first one comes from British Columbia, Canada...

VIDEO:

Similar sounds have also been heard all the way on the other side of the planet.  This example comes from Queensland, Australia (Below)...

VIDEO:

VIDEO:

Lastly, this next remarkable video (Above) comes from Melbourne, Australia...

Personally, I have no idea what is causing these sounds.  But so many people around the world are experiencing them that it seems to rule out a hoax.

So how can we explain them?

The following theories were put forward by the Daily Mail...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3084260/What-strange-sound-sky-Noise-heard-globe-nearly-DECADE-explanation.html

Tectonic plates grinding – Tectonic plates are pieces of the Earth's crust and uppermost mantle, together referred to as the lithosphere. The plates are around 100 km (62 mi) thick and consist of two principal types of material: oceanic crust (also called sima from silicon and magnesium) and continental crust (sial from silicon and aluminium).

Atmospheric pressure – Atmospheric pressure is defined as the force per unit area exerted against a surface by the weight of the air above that surface.

Trains shunting – Self explanatory – noise comes from trains in reaction to the track and overhead wires.

Construction – Building works, especially if going on at the same time across a specific area, can led to similar sounds.

Aliens – Can this be an alien lifeform in the sky, perhaps scouring out Earth?

HAARP weapon – Rumors persist that the U.S. government uses secret weapons in the sky for defence and weather modifying, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP).

This wouldn't explain the sounds in other countries however...

The Apocalypse and the Seven Trumpets of Heaven – Seven trumpets are sounded, one at a time, to cue apocalyptic events that were seen in the vision of the Revelation of Christ Jesus, by John of Patmos. Somewhat more worrying as it would signal the end of the world...

The scientists at NASA have a different explanation.  What they think is being heard is simply the natural background noise that our planet is constantly producing...

According to NASA, it could be the earth's 'background noise'.

A statement from the agency said: 'If humans had radio antennas instead of ears, we would hear a remarkable symphony of strange noises coming from our own planet. Scientists call them "tweeks," "whistlers" and "sferics."

'They sound like background music from a flamboyant science fiction film, but this is not science fiction. Earth's natural radio emissions are real and, although we're mostly unaware of them, they are around us all the time.'

To me, that explanation by NASA doesn't really ring true, but I don't have a really good explanation either.

So what do you think?

[Warph]

The Mystery Of September 23: Why Does 9/23 Keep Popping Up All Over the Place?

By Michael Snyder, on August 16th, 2015

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-mystery-of-september-23-why-does-923-keep-popping-up-all-over-the-place

What is going to happen on September 23rd, 2015?  For months, there has been an incredible amount of buzz on the Internet about the month of September, and in particular there has been a tremendous amount of speculation about the date of September 23rd.  For a long time I didn't pay much attention to all of this chatter, because I like to stick to things that I can prove.  In law school, I was trained to be very analytical and to greatly value hard evidence.  If you follow my articles regularly, you have probably noticed those traits reflected in my writing.  Well, today I am going to discuss some things that I cannot prove.  I am going to share with you some things that other people are reporting, and I humbly submit them for your consideration.  Personally, I do not know what is going to happen on September 23rd, but I have come to the conclusion that there are just way too many "coincidences" to ignore.   Ultimately, you need to do your own research and come to your own conclusions.

There are a couple of things about September 23 that we can say that we know for sure.  First of all, Yom Kippur falls on that day.  It is the most solemn of all of the holy days in the Bible, and it is commonly connected with the judgment of God.

Secondly, we know that Pope Francis will be arriving at the White House to meet with Barack Obama on September 23.

But both of those events are not that unusual.  Yom Kippur happens every year, and U.S. presidents have met with popes quite often in the past.

So why is everyone getting so excited?

Well, when you couple the amazing confluence of events that we are going to witness in September 2015 with the unprecedented warnings and cryptic messages about the three day period of September 22nd to September 24th that seem to be popping up all over the place, it is enough to cause any rational person to stop and reflect on what might happen.

If you are not familiar with what I am talking about, I encourage you to watch the three YouTube videos that I have posted below.

I want to make it clear that I do not agree with everything in these videos.

Again, I do not agree with everything in these videos.

But all three of them do contain some incredible "coincidences" that I cannot explain away.

In this first video, we see that the numbers "9/23″ just keep occurring over and over again during recent global catastrophes...

"September 23, 2015 - WARNING: The Beginning of Judgment"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1&v=zgCyxh-USyY

In this next video, we see that the date of "9/23″ has been repeatedly embedded in popular movies and television shows...

"September 23, 2015 .. end times?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=2&v=WxII-hiJ1Mk

Lastly, I want to share with you an extraordinary message by Jim Staley entitled "September 23rd, 2015 – The Convergence" in which he discusses all of the things that are going to happen on and around this date...


"September 23 "The Convergence" - Passion for Truth Ministries"


Did watching those three videos change your perspective on this?

I have to admit that they shook me up.  And when you combine all of this information with dreams and visions that people have been having about September, it starts to become difficult to ignore this phenomenon.

Just yesterday, I was alerted to the following message that Dr. Patricia Green just recently released...

This is a message from the LORD given to Patricia Green on July 29, 2015...

"September 23rd is the day Obama makes a pact with the devil. It was not by chance that the Pope and Obama are meeting on the Day of Atonement. (September 23, 2015) They will make a pact that will seal the fate of the United States of America. My vengeance will be poured out from this point forward. (September 23rd) There is no turning back.

Tell My people to draw close to Me in these last days. Tell them to purify their hearts by the washing of the water of My Word. Tell them to ask My Spirit to expose any wickedness within themselves, so they can repent and be clean.

I am returning for My Bride without spot or wrinkle. I am coming for a pure Bride. Only those who are purified by My Spirit and My Word are My Bride. There will be no pretending when I return. Many will say, "LORD, LORD, did I not prophesy in Your Name, heal the sick, cast out demons, and bring people into Your kingdom?" And I will say to those who had impure hearts, "Get from Me, I never knew you."

This is the time for self-reflection. If you judge yourself in this season and repent of your hidden sin, your sin will not be exposed to your shame.

Now is the time to purify your own hearts. Now is the time before My vengeance is poured out."

Once again, I do not personally know what will happen on September 23rd.

If I did, I would tell you.

I am just reporting what others are saying.  Use discernment and decide for yourself if there is anything to all of this.

But without a doubt, the month of September does appear to be extremely significant.  In a recent article, I detailed some of the things that will be happening next month...

September 14th – Rosh Hashanah

September 15th – The Jade Helm military exercises are scheduled to end.

September 15th – The 70th session of the UN General Assembly begins on this date.  It has been widely reported that France plans to introduce a resolution which will give formal UN Security Council recognition to a Palestinian state shortly after the new session begins.  Up until now, the U.S. has always been the one blocking such a resolution, but Barack Obama has already indicated that things may be different this time around.  If alarm bells are going off in your head as you read this, then you probably already understand how significant this event could potentially be.

September 20th to September 26th – The "World Week For Peace in Palestine Israel" sponsored by the World Council of Churches.

September 21st – The UN International Day Of Peace.  Could this be the day when the UN Security Council resolution establishing a Palestinian state is actually adopted?

September 23rd – Yom Kippur

September 23rd – Pope Francis arrives at the White House to meet with Barack Obama.  Some have suggested that the timing of this event is highly unusual...

Francis is the 266th pope who will be meeting with President Obama on the 266th day of the year, leading one Internet preacher to wonder if "something is being birthed" on that day, since 266 days is the typical human gestation period from conception to birth.

September 24th – The Pope addresses a joint session of the U.S. Congress.

September 25th to September 27th – The United Nations is going to launch a brand new sustainable development agenda called "The 2030 Agenda".  The following is an excerpt from an article that I just wrote about this insidious new plan...

If you didn't like "Agenda 21″, then you really are not going to like "The 2030 Agenda".  Next month, the United Nations is going to launch "The 2030 Agenda" at a major conference that will be held from September 25th to September 27th in New York City.  The Pope is actually traveling to New York to deliver an address which will kick off this conference.  Unlike Agenda 21, which primarily focused on the environment, the 2030 Agenda is truly a template for governing the entire planet.  In addition to addressing climate change, it also sets ambitious goals for areas such as economics, health, energy, education, agriculture, gender equality and a whole host of other issues.  As you will see below, this global initiative is being billed as a "new universal Agenda" for humanity.  If you are anything like me, alarm bells are going off in your head right about now.

September 28th – This is the date when the Feast of Tabernacles begins.  It is also the date for the last of the four blood moons that fall on Biblical festival dates during 2014 and 2015.  This blood moon falls on the very first day of the Feast of Tabernacles, it will be a "supermoon", and it will be clearly visible from the city of Jerusalem.  There are many that dismiss the blood moon phenomenon, but we have seen similar patterns before.  For example, a similar pattern of eclipses happened just before and just after the destruction of the Jewish temple by the Romans in 70 AD.

I want to make it clear that I am not claiming that anything specific will happen on any particular date.

But I am not claiming that nothing will happen on any of these days either.

I do believe that September will be an extremely significant month, and without a doubt I do believe that we are currently living in the last days of normal life in America.

[Warph]

Is it just me, or does our world seem to be getting stranger with each passing day?  But lately, a whole lot of things have been happening that I don't have any rational explanation for.  Just look at what happened on Thursday.  On the eve of the 14th anniversary of 9/11, a double rainbow appeared over the site where the World Trade Center towers once stood:

http://satyavijayi.com/rainbow-shines-over-world-trade-center-on-eve-of-911/

On Friday, a massive bolt of lightning caused a crane to collapse at the Grand Mosque in Mecca in Saudi Arabia.  At least 107 people were killed and at least 238 others were injured.  It turns out that this crane was owned by "the Saudi Binladin Group".  If that is a coincidence, it is an awfully bizarre one.
....Warph

At least 107 people were killed and 238 injured when a crane crashed through the ceiling of the Grand Mosque of Mecca amid high winds and thunderstorms today.

Dramatic footage shows the moment the crane toppled in heavy rain, with another video capturing the chaos and confusion inside the building as people ran for cover after the devastating impact.

Photos posted on social media sees the polished tiled floor of the mosque covered in rubble, bodies and pools of blood, and people fleeing the area bleeding and covered in soot.

The tragic incident in Saudi Arabia occurred shortly before the 6:30pm Friday evening prayer session - one of the busiest times of the week - causing devastation to what is the largest mosque in the world.

Gaping hole: The collapsed crane has caused a huge crater in the floor of the Great Mosque, which was undergoing an expansion

The crane fell into the east side of the mosque, with its boom crashing through the roof, killing at least 107 people - with nine Indian citizens, 16 Pakistanis and 15 Iranians reportedly among the dead.

The governor of Mecca region, Prince Khaled al-Faisal, has ordered an investigation into the incident and was seen talking with police at the mosque a few hours after the tragedy.

Online activists created a hashtag on Twitter urging Mecca residents to donate blood at hospitals in the area.

The crane belongs to a German crane company operated by the Bin Laden family's consortium, who are heading the expansion of the Holy Mosque.

Saudi BinLaden Group was founded by Osama's Bin Laden's billionaire father Mohammed and the sprawling construction conglomerate runs a large amount of major building contracts in the Sunni kingdom.

Disaster: The Grand Mosque is usually at its most crowded on Fridays, the Muslim weekly day of prayer

Heavy death toll: At least 107 people were killed and more than 150 were injured in today's accident in Saudi Arabia's holy city

Struck before evening prayers: Pictures emerging on social media show the scale of casualties with bodies strewn across the mosque floor

Trail of blood: A man soaked in blood sits on a stool in the mosque waiting for emergency workers to treat him

Horror: Rescue workers, locals and pilgrims who have journeyed to Mecca watch in horror as victims of the crane accident are laid out

Bloodied: Two men try to stem the flow of blood after being caught up in the crane collapse at Mecca yesterday

The crane fell into the east side of the mosque, with the top section of the structure crashing through the roof an on to the third floor

Vast construction work: A view of Mecca shows hundreds of cranes operating on building sites sprawled across the holy city

Largest mosque in the world: Last year, the kingdom reduced the numbers permitted to perform haj for safety reasons because of construction work to enlarge the Grand Mosque

More pictures and videos continued at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3231117/At-62-people-dead-crane-collapses-Grand-Mosque-Mecca.html