The Dark-Side Psychology Behind Holiday Madness

Posted on December 4, 2013 by DRenegade

by Brandon Smith

“Men (people) are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions.” — Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928

The winter holidays are traditionally supposed to embody a certain ideal of that which is best in the hearts of human beings. As the world around us retreats into ice and snow and the Earth’s northern cycle returns to death once again, the holidays represent a time of contemplation, as well as an opportunity to shine a light in an otherwise dark and dreary period. This heritage is as old as history, dating back to an era in which agriculture was paramount and men garnered far more respect for the tides of nature. The parallel relationship between social “renewal” and seasonal renewal has served the collective psyche of Western society, in my view, for the better. Unfortunately, this process has all but vanished today, twisted and mutilated into something sinister and poisonous.

Those of us who pay attention are well aware of a trend of cultural decline within our nation, and this problem is disturbingly visible from Thanksgiving to Christmas. It’s not just the highly publicized Black Friday (now Black Thursday) riots over semi-cheap Chinese-made garbage. Those are certainly vile examples:

More…

Posted in Editorial, Education, Financial | Tagged | Comments Off on The Dark-Side Psychology Behind Holiday Madness

This Is How The NSA Is Tracking You This Instant

Posted on December 4, 2013 by DRenegade

Source

Posted in Domestic Enemies, Editorial | Tagged | 1 Comment

Obama Lied: Congressmen Can Spend $11K in Tax Dollars for Obamacare Plans Covering Abortion

Posted on December 4, 2013 by DRenegade

Barack Obama

Under a regulation issued by the Office of Personnel Management, members of Congress and their staff will be able to use federal subsidies worth up to $11,378 per year to purchase any of the 103 different health insurance plans that expressly cover elective abortions that are now being offered on the Washington, D.C. Obamacare exchange.

Members of Congress and their staff currently face a Dec. 9 deadline for purchasing their 2014 tax-subsidized health insurance plans on that exchange.

The federal subsidy members of Congress and their staff can now use to buy health-insurance plans that cover elective abortions contradicts a vow Obama made in a nationally televised speech to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 9, 2009.

It also contradicts the express purpose of the executive order on abortion funding that Obama promised to issue in March 2010 when the House of Representatives was preparing to take its final vote on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

More…

Posted in Editorial, Health Care | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Virginia Sets Record Gun Sales on Black Friday

Posted on December 4, 2013 by DRenegade

AP

Virginia gun sales reached a new record for number of firearms sold on Black Friday, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.

Gun transactions in Virginia totaled 3,902 on Black Friday, a 1.2 percent increase over the previous record of 3,856 transactions on the same day in 2012, according to the latest Virginia State Police figures of mandatory criminal-background checks of gun buyers.

The Black Friday numbers helped boost Virginia’s overall gun transactions to 429,154 through the end of November, or 17.5 percent more than during the same period last year, Virginia Firearms Transaction Center data show.

More…

Posted in 2nd Amendment, Editorial | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Virginia Sets Record Gun Sales on Black Friday

Administration Finalizes Obamacare Tax Over Holiday Weekend

Posted on December 4, 2013 by DRenegade

New Obamacare tax will raise premiums for families and hurt small businesses

The Obama administration quietly finalized the Health Insurance Tax (HIT) over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, a provision in Obamacare that will cost nearly $60 billion over the next five years and raise health care premiums by 3 percent.

The final rule, published on Nov. 27, imposes a fee beginning in 2014 for health insurers with premium revenues over $25 million per year. The annual tax is levied for “United States health risks,” and is hidden from consumers since it is directly assessed on health insurance companies.

David R. Burton, a senior fellow in economic policy at the Heritage Foundation, said the tax will disproportionally impact small businesses.

“Most large corporations self-insure,” Burton told the Washington Free Beacon. “They may or may not have stop-loss insurance. Medium-sized businesses will self-insure but then have what’s called stop-loss insurance so that if their claims exceed a certain amount the insurance company will compensate them. The largest corporations are self-insured, period.”

More…

Posted in Editorial, Health Care | Tagged | Comments Off on Administration Finalizes Obamacare Tax Over Holiday Weekend

Inconceivable.

Posted on December 4, 2013 by DRenegade

120413.jpg

Day by day cartoon

Posted in Editorial, Health Care | Comments Off on Inconceivable.

Constitutional Limitations of the pResidency?

Posted on December 4, 2013 by LT

httpv://youtu.be/0Zu259QqqJY

Posted in Editorial | 2 Comments

Drone Nation

Posted on December 4, 2013 by DRenegade

Drone Nation
Source: Homeland-Security-Degree.org

Posted in Domestic Enemies, Editorial | Tagged | Comments Off on Drone Nation

When the Banks Collapse…

Posted on December 4, 2013 by DRenegade

One consequence of the Obama administration is the takeover of our economy by the banking industry. Six banks have accomplished the mission initially planned on Jekyll Island. These banks cannot be allowed to fail without our economy collapsing. But as outlined below, their exposure to high risk derivatives by four of these banks is over $216 trillion. Goldman Sachs only has 0.0025% of assets to cover their “fair share” of $43 trillion. Who do you think will get stuck with debt?

Our financial experts quickly dismiss this issue by stating that most of these derivatives are solid: they will not fail. So let’s assume that only 5% of this credit derivative exposure goes into default. That means that the following banks are “bankrupt” and that the government will make the people pay approximately $6.5 trillion. At that point, what do you think will happen to the remaining 95% of credit derivatives owned by an insolvent bank? At 10 cents on the dollar, that will leave us a debt of approximately $185 trillion. But that is only the exposure of the four banks below. Then true exposure is over $450 trillion.

I guarantee that the people responsible for this collapse have already planned to have their assets covered. So we can divide people into two classes: those who understand and those who hide their heads in the sand.

David DeGerolamo

Too Big To Fail Banks Are Taking Over As Number Of U.S. Banks Falls To All-Time Record Low

Posted below are the figures for the four banks that I am talking about.  I have written about this in the past, but in this article I have included the very latest updated numbers from the U.S. government.  I think that you will agree that these numbers are absolutely staggering…

JPMorgan Chase

Total Assets: $1,947,794,000,000 (nearly 1.95 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $71,289,673,000,000 (more than 71 trillion dollars)

Citibank

Total Assets: $1,319,359,000,000 (a bit more than 1.3 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $60,398,289,000,000 (more than 60 trillion dollars)

Bank Of America

Total Assets: $1,429,737,000,000 (a bit more than 1.4 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $42,670,269,000,000 (more than 42 trillion dollars)

Goldman Sachs

Total Assets: $113,064,000,000 (just a shade over 113 billion dollars – yes, you read that correctly)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $43,135,021,000,000 (more than 43 trillion dollars)

Please don’t just gloss over those huge numbers.

Let them sink in for a moment.

More…

Posted in Editorial | Comments Off on When the Banks Collapse…

Too Big To Fail Banks Are Taking Over As Number Of U.S. Banks Falls To All-Time Record Low

Posted on December 4, 2013 by DRenegade

Lower East Manhattan - Photo by Eric Kilby

By Michael Snyder

The too big to fail banks have a larger share of the U.S. banking industry than they have ever had before.  So if having banks that were too big to fail was a “problem” back in 2008, what is it today?  As you will read about below, the total number of banks in the United States has fallen to a brand new all-time record low and that means that the health of the too big to fail banks is now more critical to our economy than ever.  In 1985, there were more than 18,000 banks in the United States.  Today, there are only 6,891 left, and that number continues to drop every single year.  That means that more than 10,000 U.S. banks have gone out of existence since 1985.  Meanwhile, the too big to fail banks just keep on getting even bigger.  In fact, 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.  If even one of those banks collapses, it would be absolutely crippling to the U.S. economy.  If several of them were to collapse at the same time, it could potentially plunge us into an economic depression unlike anything that this nation has ever seen before.

Incredibly, there were actually more banks in existence back during the days of the Great Depression than there is today.  According to the Wall Street Journal, the federal government has been keeping track of the number of banks since 1934 and this year is the very first time that the number has fallen below 7,000:

More…

Posted in Editorial, Financial | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Too Big To Fail Banks Are Taking Over As Number Of U.S. Banks Falls To All-Time Record Low

Slaying Hizballah commander ratchets up Saudi covert war on Iran and Lebanese proxy

Posted on December 4, 2013 by DRenegade
Hizballah's Hajj Hassan Hollo al-Laqqis, slain in Beirut

Hizballah’s Hajj Hassan Hollo al-Laqqis, slain in Beirut

The gunning down of Hajj Hassan Hollo al-Laqqis, a high-ranking Hizballah commander and close crony of Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, raised the stakes of the clandestine war running between Saudi Arabia and Iran, two weeks after two suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the Iranian embassy in Beirut.

The Hizballah officer was killed by five shots to the head and throat in the underground parking lot of his home in the Hadath neighborhood southwest of Beirut, when he returned home from work after midnight Tuesday, Dec. 3. The Hizballah statement, which said: “Israel is automatically held responsible for the crime,” described al Laqqis as an elite member of the organization’s military wing who for many years served as its technology and arms chief.

A photo published by the Lebanese state news agency shows a man in his mid-40s in military clothing.

DEBKAfile’s counterterrorism sources report: It seems obvious that the al-Laqqis hit was timed to take place shortly after the Hizballah leader went on the air for an extraordinarily arrogant television interview, during which he made a point of sneering after every reference to the US, Saudi Arabia or Israel. He also appeared to glorify in the big power status conferred on the Islamic Republic (and himself) by the Obama administration after the signing of the Geneva nuclear accord.

Nasrallah praised that accord as signaling “the end of the US monopoly on power” and preventing war in the region. He said Israel couldn’t bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities without a green light from the US. But, he said, America is tired of war. The Saudi war against Iran, he said, has never stopped. He accused a “Saudi-backed group” of being behind the Iranian embassy bombing in Beirut.

More…

Posted in Editorial, Radical Islam | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Slaying Hizballah commander ratchets up Saudi covert war on Iran and Lebanese proxy

It’s Time to Talk About Guns and the Supreme Court, Read more: Bateman On Guns

Posted on December 4, 2013 by DRenegade

In his opinion on District of Columbia v. Heller, Justice Antonin Scalia spent nearly 4,000 words denying that the Second Amendment included the words, “A Well Regulated Militia, Being Necessary To The Security Of A Free State…”

Lt. Col. Robert Bateman

We crossed the line some time ago, it has just taken me a while to get around to the topic. Sadly, that topic is now so brutally evident that I feel shame. Shame that I have not spoken out about before now — shame for my country, shame that we have come to this point. One story tripped me.

A woman charged with killing a fellow Alabama fan after the end of last weekend’s Iron Bowl football game was angry that the victim and others didn’t seem upset over the Crimson Tide’s loss to archrival Auburn, said the sister of the slain woman.
People, it is time to talk about guns.

My entire adult life has been dedicated to the deliberate management of violence. There are no two ways around that fact. My job, at the end of the day, is about killing. I orchestrate violence.

I am not proud of that fact. Indeed, I am often torn-up by the realization that not only is this my job, but that I am really good at my job. But my profession is about directed violence on behalf of the nation. What is happening inside our country is random and disgusting, and living here in England I am at a complete loss as to how to explain this at all. In 2011 the number of gun deaths in the United States was 10.3 per 100,000 citizens. In 2010 that statistic in the UK was 0.25. And do not even try to tell me that the British are not as inclined to violence or that their culture is so different from ours that this difference makes sense. I can say nothing when my British officers ask me about these things, because it is the law.

And for that, frankly speaking, I am embarrassed by our Supreme Court.

More…

h/t Matt Bracken

Posted in Editorial | Tagged | 4 Comments

Big Brother Jumps Air Gap Using Inaudible Sound To Access Computers That Have No Network Connection

Posted on December 4, 2013 by DRenegade

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCXwUmb13Lo

Posted in Editorial | Tagged | Comments Off on Big Brother Jumps Air Gap Using Inaudible Sound To Access Computers That Have No Network Connection

Illinois OKs pension cuts in landmark reform

Posted on December 4, 2013 by DRenegade

illinois pension cuts

Illinois lawmakers approved a landmark pension reform package Tuesday that would cut retirement benefits for teachers, nurses and other retired and current state workers.

The legislation comes after years of debate on how to fix the state’s ailing retirement system — considered the most troubled in the country.

The plan will reduce annual cost-of-living increases for retirees, raise the retirement age for workers 45 and under, and impose a limit on pensions for the highest-paid workers.

Employees will contribute 1% less out of their paychecks under the reform, while some will be given the option to contribute to a 401(k)-style plan.

Legislative leaders of both parties crafted the deal, which they say will save $160 billion over the next three decades — savings desperately needed to help fill the state’s $100 billion pension shortfall.

More…

Posted in Editorial, Financial | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Illinois OKs pension cuts in landmark reform

We Should All Be Like the Hippies in this One Way

Posted on December 4, 2013 by DRenegade

hippies

The hippies are little understood these days. One particular version of them – the later, pot-smoking, political protester – is what remains in popular culture. But the actual hippies, especially the early hippies, were a much different group. They were interesting and brave people: people very much worth remembering.

Who Were the Hippies?

The hippies were preceded by the Beat movement, a group of young people who rejected the conformity of the 1950s – a very “corporate” time. To get a feeling for their mentality, here is a quote from William S. Burroughs, one of their inspirations:

In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.

The Beats were, as one writer put it, “a whole bunch of people, of all different nationalities, who came to the conclusion that society sucked.”

The hippies, on the other hand, believed that they could make life better. And that was the great difference between the hippies and most other movements – the hippies acted. They changed their lives, painted their cars, and wore strange clothing. Rather than cowering at the thought of being different, they went out of their way to show their difference, and there’s something deeply transformative about that.

I’ll forgo a history of the movement and get right into the wisdom of the hippies. Let’s begin with the thoughts of two early hippies. First, some thoughts direct from the early days, care of Bob Stubbs:

We have a private revolution going on. A revolution of individuality and diversity that can only be private. Upon becoming a group movement, such a revolution ends up with imitators rather than participants.

Another, from Dr. Debra Jan Bibel: Continue reading →

Posted in Editorial | Tagged | 2 Comments