All over America, the middle class is dying and poverty is on the rise.  One of the primary reasons for this is the rapidly rising cost of living in the United States.  The cost of just about everything that average families shell out money for on a regular basis – food, rent, health insurance, etc. – is rising much faster than wages are.  In a previous article I noted that the federal poverty level for a family of five is $28,410, but 51 percent of all American workers are making less than $30,000 a year at this point.  We have seen an explosion in the number of people in this country that are considered to be “the working poor” and it gets worse with each passing year.

One of the most frustrating things for me personally is the rising cost of health insurance.  Barack Obama promised that his program would result in a decline in health insurance premiums by as much as $2,500 per family, but in reality average family premiums have increased by a total of $4,865 since 2008.

Just recently, I got a letter informing me that my health insurance premiums would be going up by close to 20 percent in 2016.  That is on top of an increase of more than 30 percent in 2015.  Sadly, the exact same thing is happening to millions of other families all over the nation.  The following comes from TruNews…

The Obamacare increases for 2016 have been released. Premiums will increase 3 times faster than officials claim.

Every state is different. Every insurer is different. New Mexico residents, for instance, can expect increases of 8 to 40 percent for the second-lowest cost silver plan. But for people in other states, including Arkansas the cost will increase less than 4 percent. Overall the average increase is 20.3 percent, according to analysis by The Daily Caller News Foundation, instead of the 7.5 percent originally asserted.

And of course it isn’t just health insurance.  Every time I go to the grocery store I am stunned by the prices.

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Russia has announced that it will go ahead with the delivery of an advanced missile defense system to Iran following the removal of international sanctions on the Islamic Republic as a result of the recently inked nuclear agreement, according to reports.

While the United States, Israel, and other Western countries have opposed the sale, Russia has ignored these concerns, announcing on Tuesday that it could deliver the system, known as the S-300, within the next 18 months, the BBC reported.

The S-300 system is capable of striking enemy jets or incoming missiles and is viewed as a critical defense weapon for the Iranians.

The contract for the system is worth around $800 million and was signed in 2007. The sale had been held up over concerns about how Iran would use the defense system and sanctions preventing the sale of such weapons to Tehran.

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by Brandon Smith

In any examination of historical precedence, it is easy to see that the sheer number of collectivist and tyrannical systems have far outweighed any experiments in individual liberty. I have explored the reasons for this in numerous articles, including recent pieces such as “How To Stamp Out Cultural Marxism In A Single Generation” and “The Tools Collectivists Use To Gain Power.” To summarize, there is a driving desire among weaker-minded people to seek control over other people in the name of arbitrary standards of safety as well as arbitrary standards of “civil” conformity. While such people proclaim publicly that they do what they do for the “greater good,” in reality they seek only to satiate a private lust for power.

In the darkest corners of their souls, many people have personal aspirations to attain godhood in their own little worlds. And if they cannot achieve such godhood outright on their own, then they will join a mob with similar aspirations so that they can at least feel omnipotent through vicarious tyranny.

This is why collectivism and individualism are mutually exclusive. A collectivist uses force or manipulation to compel the masses to accept a society that follows his personal ideology. An individualist adheres only to the tenets of natural law and the non-aggression principle. He believes force is justified only when the personal liberties of an individual are threatened by others. And he demands that if he participates in any society, it be voluntary. Collectivism is society through coercion. Individualism promotes society through voluntary cooperation. The two philosophies cannot coexist.

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Keep in mind, though, that it is not enough to merely purchase a firearm or shoot at the range. Team tactics and training are essential for free people, which is why they are so admonished by collectivist elements in our society. Train with friends and family or with your Community Preparedness Team, as I do through Oath Keepers; but learn tactical methodologies and how to fight with others. Present a viable danger to collectivists, or be subsumed by them.

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Parallels?

David DeGerolamo

Following racial protests which forced the resignation of Missouri University President Tim Wolfe and Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin, both of whom were just dripping with evil, irredeemable white privilege, the University Police are taking bold steps to restore order, get the black members of the football team to suit up again (really), and save the life of a valiant black grad student who went on a hunger strike for almost a week. Which, technically, is more of a diet than hunger strike.

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Monday’s meeting between Barack Obama and Bibi Netanyahu reminded us of the old joke about the tragedy associated with a performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater: “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show?”

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Thanks to this, what began as protests against systemic racism at the school has morphed into another prime example of how college campuses have devolved into ignorant, pro-censorship intellectual wastelands.

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The phenomenon of self-destruction of the United States continues apace, but this is not normal, it is not the same as societal upheaval. Societal upheaval is fairly common; it is always accompanied by technological advancements. From Greece and Egypt to the United States, whatever technology advances a society ultimately rips it apart. It is somewhat of a maturation.

Societal upheaval is inevitable. It has happened several times in the United States as technology progressed. A good example of this exists in the transformation of farming. Technology turned farming from a labor-intensive occupation to an equipment-intensive industry. This development was accompanied by the societal upheaval of the abolition of slavery, the repercussions of which continue today.

A farm big enough to be successful in the pre-industrial revolution required manual labor at the lowest cost to production. This is not a statement of conscience, it is a simple economic fact that enabled slavery. To abolish slavery was to destroy the South’s primary source of economic strength, farming plantations, and it is why this was not a decision of conscience for most of those who engaged in slavery, it was a system necessary to their survival.

Unlike the societal upheaval of the abolition of slavery, the current phenomenon of self-destruction is, to a large degree, schizophrenic.

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FREEMANSPERSPECTIVE

There has been a lot of commotion in the Bitcoin world lately. A few of the core developers (an informal group that maintain the program) made a big splash by saying that the “block size” (a technical issue) had to be increased or else horrible problems would ensue. They’re calling their plan “Bitcoin XT.”

What I Learned

At first, I simply didn’t want to be bothered with this. Just about everything that passes across a plasma screen these days is sold as a major, life-threatening crisis. I ignore as much of it as I can.

But after hearing a bit more about this issue from several friends, I decided to look into it a bit further.

The first thing that caught my attention was that this idea was being sold with fear. That, to me, is a huge red flag. If you want to sucker humans – if you want make intelligent people act stupidly – fear is your tool; every serious manipulator of humans knows this. So, this fact turned me off from the Bitcoin XT idea right away.

Next, I learned that one of the two guys driving this has been speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations about Bitcoin going mainstream. Seriously? Bitcoin is cypherpunk technology; it is inherently outside the mainstream. (Does Sid Vicious take tea with the queen?) Bitcoin was created by radicals and bears their nature. To make Bitcoin acceptable to the powers that be is to kill it. Period.

So, the fact that this idea comes from people who want to turn Bitcoin into a guv-friendly payment system – to neuter it and kill it – drove me even farther away. If I had wanted status-quo tech, I’d never have looked at Bitcoin in the first place.

Thirdly, someone told me that the guys driving this wanted to make themselves “benevolent dictators.” Hearing that, I immediately started laughing. Then I checked and found out that it was true and that they were saying so overtly. You can find the comment, “[W]e will be benevolent dictators,” here. That cemented it for me. In addition to everything else, these guys want to run a technocratic dictatorship. And not only that, but they had the arrogance to say so in public. Wow.

Be afraid, surrender your values, and accept dictatorship… that always ends well, doesn’t it?

So…

So, to all of this, I reply: Fork off.

Yes, I know that sounds like I’m playing cute word games, but I really mean it. I want them to pull their hard fork. I want them to break off and go away.

Continue reading →

After the Islamic State succeeded in downing a Russian airliner that took off from Sharm El-Sheikh on October 31, causing the deaths of all 224 passengers and crew, the terrorist organization Monday, Nov. 9, put a US military target in its crosshairs. A captain in the Jordanian police opened fire in the cafeteria of the Special Operations Training Center outside the Jordanian capital, Amman, where American instructors train Iraqi troops to fight ISIS. Two trainers from the US, one from South Africa and two Jordanians were killed and another six wounded, including two more Americans and four Jordanians.

The gunman was killed by Jordanian troops.

The modus operandi resembled the “green on blue” insider attacks committed in Afghanistan by al Qaeda and Taliban “insiders” against American and British troops serving at the same base.
Jordan’s Al-Rai newspaper identified the shooter as Anwar Abu Ubayd, but other news outlets said his name was Anwar Abu Zaid.

If the downing of the Russian plane rocked the regime of Egyptian President Fattah El-Sisi, there is no doubt that Monday’s attack will shake King Abdullah’s Hashemite throne.

The attack, furthermore, demonstrated that ISIS is rapidly approaching Israel’s borders with Syria in the north, Egypt in the south and Jordan in the east. The assault gained particular attention as it was carried out just hours before the summit Monday between Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama at the White House in Washington.

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Jonathan Butler, the hunger-striker in the center, is helped onto a stage to address a crowd following the announcement that University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe would resign Monday, Nov. 9, 2015, at the university in Columbia, Mo. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Racial tensions that have flared during the Obama presidency show no sign of abating; in fact, the Obama White House expects more colleges and universities to follow the University of Missouri in having “high-profile debate” about “unity and equality and justice,” as White House spokesman Josh Earnest put it on Monday.

At the regular White House news briefing, Earnest, a Missouri native, said he had not spoken to President Obama about a student protest that forced the university’s president and chancellor to step down earlier that day.

Earnest also did not know if Obama plans to issue a public statement on a situation where angry students, with help from the big-money football team, forced a change in the university’s leadership.

But Earnest did note that “this debate is not just occurring at the University of Missouri.”

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Down is Up

Why is this funny, you ask?  Because, the Jewish community of Sweden has specifically NOT been invited.  The organizers, seeing radical Islamic elements and Leftist Jew Haters protesting at prior years’ commemorations, decided that having Jews at a Krystallnacht commemoration is too provocative… a “security risk” (?!)

Gee, if the Nazi’s had been just a little more efficient (not for lack of trying) in their “solution”, just think how civil Europe’s commemoration of their slaughter could be.  Nice… and… civil.

To paraphrase the French Foreign Minister recent musings; “We gave Europe’s Jews to the Nazi’s, and in exchange, we are getting Muslims.  Millions of them.”

Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor?

Originally published on The Zelman Partisans