Loose Tweets Sink Ships

Secret Service Sets up hotline for ‘suspicious’ Web Posts

RT.com
October 25, 2012
With less than two weeks to go before the US presidential election, the Secret Service is ramping up its intelligence-gathering efforts and asking Twitter users to report threatening tweets against politicians to a local field office.
Debates over the November 6 election are already raging on social media: Users exchanged around 6.5 million tweets during the third presidential debate on Monday, and a few of the messages contained death threats against President Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney.
Another 21 million tweets were made during the previous vice presidential and two presidential debates.
The US Secret Service, which is tasked with protecting the president and top government officials, recently issued a statement on their Twitter account asking users to report threatening tweets: “To report a tweet that concerns you, call the nearest field office in your state.”
The Secret Service opened their twitter account over a year ago. The organization maintains no other social media accounts, which hints at Twitter’s importance and usefulness in intelligence-gathering.

Image from US Secret Service Twitter feeds

Politics, hate and death threats
The recent presidential debates ignited heated arguments on Twitter from supporters of both presidential candidates, with some making death threats against Obama and Romney:
“Don’t worry guys if Romney is elected as President I’ll take the fall for you all and assassinate him“, tweeted @kay_dizzle94.
“I would love to shoot romney with a shotgun [sic],” tweeted @jasg30.
“I have a 1 step plan: Kill Romney,” declared @KeshiaCheesman.
“Someone needs to assassinate Obama … like ASAP“, tweeted Alyssa Douglas.
“Ima hit president Obama with that Lee Harvey Oswald swag,” wrote Donte Jamar Sims.

Image from users’ Twitter feeds
Some of these threats are currently being investigated by the Secret Service.
Although Twitter cannot disclose users’ locations, the agency has “the means at [its] disposal” to locate Twitter users, Secret Service spokesperson Ed Donovan told the Los Angeles Times. The organization could, for example, issue a court-approved subpoena to an Internet service provider.
Sims, 21, from North Carolina was arrested in September and is accused of threatening to kill President Barack Obama in a series of Twitter messages, including one reading, “the Secret Service is gonna be defenseless once I aim the Assault Rifle at Barack’s Forehead.” He is currently in police custody.
And 25-year-old Jarvis Britton of Alabama was also arrested last month and charged with death threats against the president after an anonymous caller reported a tweet that said, “free speech? Really? Let’s test this! Let’s kill the president!”
Secret Service took action and interviewed Britton after they noticed other tweets on his feed referring to cyanide poisoning. Britton later sent out another tweet that read, “Let’s kill the president. F.E.A.R.” He was arrested shortly afterward.
He pleaded not guilty on October 16, but threats against the president are considered a felony in US, punishable by a fine and up to five years in prison. His fate remains unclear.
Intelligence agencies’ interest in social media is not a new phenomenon. The FBI and local police have for years regularly monitored and collected information on US citizens on Facebook and Twitter.
The FBI is reportedly attempting to create a system that would automatically monitor social media users. The bureau is attempting to build a network where ‘suspicious’ posts would be flagged and instantly reveal the user’s location to authorities.

US ‘Secret’ Drone Base and Ron Paul’s Foreign Policy

Daniel McAdams
Lew Rockwell Blog
Oct 28, 2012
The Washington Post yesterday detailed a secret — and not-so-secret — US base of operations in the Horn of Africa. It is from this massive, 500 acre base run by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), that virtually all the non-Afghan war drones are launched. It is the center of the US drone war against al-Qaeda (except for those al-Qaeda elements in Libya and Syria with which the US administration is allied — think of those as Eastasia).
Appropriately, the base, called Camp Lemonnier, is located on grounds used earlier by the French Foreign Legion — the non-French arm of the French military used to keep the French colonial empire in line. Apparently irony is completely lost on the US administration.
The entire article is well worth reading, chilling as it is. In it the teeth of the US empire are laid bare. And they are ugly. If one considers a recent study of the US drone wars by Stanford University and NYU, which demonstrates a catastrophic failure rate of the drones to hit intended targets (which means that most of the time they kill innocent civilians), one could conclude, using a non-loaded definition of the term, that Lemonnier is the largest terrorist base in the world.
As the Stanford University drone study (PDF) found:

“Drones hover twenty-four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning. Their presence terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves… from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562–3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474-881 were civilians, including 176 children.”

Perhaps most fascinating about this excellent Washington Post investigative report, however, is the following paragraph:

“Other counterterrorism work at Lemonnier is more overt. All told, about 3,200 U.S. troops, civilians and contractors are assigned to the camp, where they train foreign militaries, gather intelligence and dole out humanitarian aid across East Africa as part of a campaign to prevent extremists from taking root.” (emphasis added)

Here we see the Ron Paul critique of US foreign policy plainly demonstrated: The US government does not just send in drones to kill people from Lemonnier — it also “doles out…aid” to those who obey!
Here is Ron Paul from three years ago (not that it matters, as he has been making this point for decades):

“I have often made the point that the way we treat our fellow countries around the world is we tell them what to do, and if they do it we give them money. If they don’t do it, we bomb them… If you want to promote our good values and our democratic process, you can’t antagonize the people by literally killing people over there, because if bombs were falling on this country, we wouldn’t be all that happy with that.”

Perhaps it is due to efficiency efforts, but in Lemonnier we see both under one roof: cash to those who do what they are told and drones for those who do not. But the answer, as Ron Paul repeatedly reminds us, is no aid and no drones. Period.

Obama Urged Governors to Celebrate UN Day

Alex Newman
New American
Oct 28, 2012
President Obama issued a presidential proclamation for “United Nations Day” on October 24 praising the controversial global body while urging governors and officials in all 50 states to celebrate the occasion with “appropriate ceremonies.” The statement drew swift criticism from UN opponents and conservative activists, who argue that the U.S. government should instead withdraw from the scandal-plagued international outfit.
Despite of a series of recent set-backs and major controversies surrounding the institution, President Obama, an unabashed fan of the planetary body that critics refer to as the “dictators club,” praised the UN and the “ideals” it purportedly represents. On the 67th anniversary of the UN founding, Obama called on Americans and the world to continue working toward carrying the institution’s “vision” forward.
“Today, we commemorate United Nations Day by celebrating the founding ideals laid down in its Charter and reaffirming the commitments to peace building, human rights, and social progress that will guide us in the years to come,” he said in the proclamation, sounding oblivious to the UN’s well-documented true intentions. “Throughout its history, the United Nations Charter has reflected the belief that the world is more secure when the global community acts collectively.”
The president also painted the organization as a defender of “children,” the sick, and of course, global “peace,” claiming the UN “played an essential role” in making the planet a better place. “In today’s world, this mission remains as vital as it has ever been,” Obama alleged in the proclamation, adding that the U.S. government would continue working with its “global partners” to promote and realize the supposed aspirations of unspecified “people.”
But it was not enough for the president and other top federal officials to express unquestioning allegiance to the widely criticized global entity. “I urge the Governors of the 50 States, and the officials of all other areas under the flag of the United States, to observe United Nations Day with appropriate ceremonies and activities,” the presidential proclamation declared. It remains unclear whether any governors paid attention to the decree.
The Department of State, meanwhile, was busy urging regular citizens to get involved in the festivities, too. “Join us in commemorating UN Day by finding an event hosted by your local United Nations Association,” wrote State Department “Public Affairs Specialist” Ashli Ferguson Savoy, touting “robust U.S. support” for the UN while claiming that the institution somehow advanced American national interests.
Obama’s disgraced Ambassador the UN, Susan Rice, released a statement, too. Ironically, she praised the global body’s “mandate” purporting to authorize the administration’s lawless war that devastated Libya, as well as the brutal UN-led military operation to overthrow the Christian President of the Ivory Coast and install a Muslim central banker in his place.
“On this United Nations Day, we recognize the many benefits Americans derive every day from the United Nations,” claimed Rice, who is under growing pressure to resign after peddling a blatantly false narrative about the now-infamous attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Libya. “Sixty-seven years after ratification of the UN Charter, the United States under President Obama remains firmly committed to preserving and strengthening this important institution and the U.S.-UN relationship.”
Despite all of the platitudes about peace and “human rights,” strengthening the UN into what would eventually become a world government has actually been the plan all along. In fact, one of the key architects of the planetary body, Council on Foreign Relations luminary and former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, publicly admitted as much just five years after it was founded.
“The United Nations represents not a final stage in the development of world order, but only a primitive stage. Therefore its primary task is to create the conditions which will make possible a more highly developed organization,” he wrote in his 1950 book War or Peace. “I have never seen any proposal made for collective security with ‘teeth’ in it, or for ‘world government’ or for ‘world federation,’ which could not be carried out either by the United Nations or under the United Nations Charter.”
Last month, meanwhile, alarming leaked documents from a Justice Department program to train state and local law enforcement revealed that the federal government has been teaching police to equate bumper stickers opposing U.S. government membership in the UN with “terrorism.” However, despite Washington’s slavish adoration of the global institution, the most recent credible polls show that less than a third of Americans hold a favorable view of the UN.
Indeed, despite the incessant prodding by the executive branch on UN Day, not everybody was celebrating the occasion, which has long been the subject of intense controversy. “It has also been labeled ‘Alger Hiss Day,’ in recognition of the Soviet spy and State Department official who played a major role in founding the world body,” noted Cliff Kincaid with the non-profit group Accuracy In Media (AIM). “Don’t expect the major media to remind us of that fact.”
Other analysts ridiculed the proclamation, UN Day, and even the controversial institution itself. “Well, shoot,” wrote commentator Erika Johnsen with the conservative blog Hot Air in a sarcastic post about Obama’s proclamation. “I must’ve missed this newfound auspicious occasion in all of the election hullabaloo, and a darn shame it is, too — I do so regret not having taken a moment to observe the worldwide contributions of the marred-by-corruption, unfailingly progressive, global-carbon-tax-pushing, Israel-hatin’, moral-relativist international body.”
News of the pro-UN Day proclamation came on the heels of a growing national scandal over “elections monitors” affiliated with the international entity being deployed to observe U.S. voting and keep tabs on conservatives. Critics slammed the controversial scheme, with Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott even threatening to prosecute any monitors who go within 100 feet of a polling place.
Meanwhile, the UN itself is currently embroiled in countless recent scandals. Among the most shocking: helping the barbaric communist dictatorship on mainland China perform forced abortions; handing sensitive U.S. technology to the regimes ruling North Korea and Iran; considering the mass-murdering genocidal tyrant in charge of Sudan for a seat on the so-called “Human Rights Council”; allowing UN troops to rape and murder innocent civilians around the world; and much more.
UN boss Ban Ki-moon, though, conveniently glossed over all of that in his own UN Day celebrations. He urged world citizens to help the institution expand its role as “a peacekeeper disarming fighters, a health worker distributing medicine, a relief team aiding refugees, a human rights expert helping deliver justice.”
After touting dubious UN “achievements” of questionable veracity, the Secretary General again emphasized that the global body needs more power. “We are living through a period of profound turmoil, transition and transformation,” he said. “Global and national institutions are being put to the test. With so much at stake, the United Nations must keep pace across the spectrum of its activities — peace, development, human rights, the rule of law, the empowerment of the world’s women and youth.”
While Democrats and especially Obama have been busy lavishing praise and U.S. taxpayer funds on the institution, the GOP has taken a much harsher tone — at least in its official party platform. The most recently adopted one blasts proposed UN taxes,Agenda 21, and even the “scandal-ridden” global entity itself.
In Congress, meanwhile, the would-be planetary regime has become increasingly controversial, and the movement to “Get U.S. Out” of the UN is slowly gaining steam with every passing election. If enough concerned citizens speak out, next October 24 could be a day just like any other.

Two Black Teens Kill 12 Year old White Girl for Her Bike

• By BETH DEFALCO and TIM PERONE
• Last Updated: 8:17 AM, October 24, 2012
• Posted: 2:03 AM, October 24, 2012

A New Jersey mom ratted out her teen sons for the murder of a 12-year-old girl after reading a Facebook posting hinting that one of them wanted to go on the lam, law-enforcement sources told The Post.
Justin Davidson’s mom saw his message “Might be moving :(” on Sunday and became suspicious.
She tipped cops that he might have been involved in the disappearance of their neighbor, Autumn Pasquale, in Clayton, NJ, the sources said.
Autumn was allegedly lured to meet Justin, 15, and his brother Dante Robinson, 17, at their home Saturday because they wanted parts from her beloved BMX bike.

HORROR IN NJ: Cops say Autumn Pasquale (above) was killed by Dante Robinson and his brother Justin Davidson. They were given up by their mom, suspicious over a Facebook message.

Dante Robinson

Justin Davidson

The massive search for Autumn came to a tragic end Monday night when her body was found stuffed in a recycling bin at a vacant property near the boys’ house.
An autopsy found she had been strangled.
As family and friends held out hope that Autumn would be found alive, Justin communicated with her brother on Facebook to say he was glad police were using dogs in the search, NBC Philadelphia reported.
The two brothers were charged with murder, body disposal and tampering with evidence. Justin was also charged with luring.
When detectives searched the Robinson home, they found some of Autumn’s belongings and her bike, Gloucester County Prosecutor Sean Dalton said.
The boys’ father, Alonzo Robinson, told the Star-Ledger of Newark that his sons had been charged with bike theft before.
“I think someone wanted the girl’s bicycle,” Robinson said. “Maybe she wanted her bike and resisted, and one of them snatched her off a bike.”
The girl loved BMX bikes and famous riders, her Facebook page said.

Russia: Syria rebels have US-made weapons

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20055271

A senior Russian general has said Syrian rebels now have anti-aircraft weapons, including US-made Stingers.

Gen Nikolai Makarov was quoted by the Interfax news service as saying the origin of the surface-to-air missiles should be "cleared up".
Russia is the biggest supplier of arms to its Syrian government ally.
Aerial bombardment of rebel-held towns continued on Wednesday, as the UN's Syria envoy prepared to brief the Security Council on ceasefire efforts.
Lakhdar Brahimi has been trying to arrange a ceasefire between rebels and government forces over the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, which begins on Friday.
Weapon supplies
"We have reliable information that Syrian militants have foreign portable anti-aircraft missile systems, including those made in the USA... it should be cleared up who delivered them," Gen Makarov told journalists in Russia.
There have been earlier unconfirmed reports of the Syrian opposition having shoulder-mounted missiles, but the West has been reluctant to openly arm the rebels.
In August, Syrian rebels said they had shot down a fighter jet near the border with Iraq.
Syrian warplanes have stepped up their bombardments of rebel-dominated areas in recent months, particularly in the north of the country. Deadly air raids are now daily events in towns around the city of Aleppo.
Recent footage has emerged of Syrian opposition fighters using old Soviet SA-7 heat-seeking missiles, which can destroy a plane flying at up to 14,000ft.
US-made Stinger missiles are shoulder-mounted anti-aircraft weapons designed to target low-flying planes and helicopters.
A US decision to supply them to the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Russians proved to be a turning point in the war.
The UN says that more than 18,000 people have died so far in the uprising against Bashar al-Assad's government, which began in March 2011, but activists and opposition groups put the figure closer to 30,000.

White House told of militant claim two hours after Libya attack: emails

By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 9:11pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show.The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.
The brief emails also show how U.S. diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.
U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Benghazi assault, which President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials ultimately acknowledged was a "terrorist" attack carried out by militants with suspected links to al Qaeda affiliates or sympathizers.
Administration spokesmen, including White House spokesman Jay Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film.
While officials did mention the possible involvement of "extremists," they did not lay blame on any specific militant groups or possible links to al Qaeda or its affiliates until intelligence officials publicly alleged that on September 28.
There were indications that extremists with possible al Qaeda connections were involved, but also evidence that the attacks could have erupted spontaneously, they said, adding that government experts wanted to be cautious about pointing fingers prematurely.
U.S. intelligence officials have emphasized since shortly after the attack that early intelligence reporting about the attack was mixed.
Spokesmen for the White House and State Department had no immediate response to requests for comments on the emails.
MISSIVES FROM LIBYA
The records obtained by Reuters consist of three emails dispatched by the State Department's Operations Center to multiple government offices, including addresses at the White House, Pentagon, intelligence community and FBI, on the afternoon of September 11.
The first email, timed at 4:05 p.m. Washington time - or 10:05 p.m. Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission allegedly began - carried the subject line "U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack" and the notation "SBU", meaning "Sensitive But Unclassified."
The text said the State Department's regional security office had reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was "under attack. Embassy in Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well."
The message continued: "Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four ... personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support."
A second email, headed "Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi" and timed 4:54 p.m. Washington time, said that the Embassy in Tripoli had reported that "the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi had stopped and the compound had been cleared." It said a "response team" was at the site attempting to locate missing personnel.
A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07 p.m. Washington time, carried the subject line: "Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack."
The message reported: "Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli."
While some information identifying recipients of this message was redacted from copies of the messages obtained by Reuters, a government source said that one of the addresses to which the message was sent was the White House Situation Room, the president's secure command post.
Other addressees included intelligence and military units as well as one used by the FBI command center, the source said.
It was not known what other messages were received by agencies in Washington from Libya that day about who might have been behind the attacks.
Intelligence experts caution that initial reports from the scene of any attack or disaster are often inaccurate.
By the morning of September 12, the day after the Benghazi attack, Reuters reported that there were indications that members of both Ansar al-Sharia, a militia based in the Benghazi area, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of al Qaeda's faltering central command, may have been involved in organizing the attacks.
One U.S. intelligence official said that during the first classified briefing about Benghazi given to members of Congress, officials "carefully laid out the full range of sparsely available information, relying on the best analysis available at the time."
The official added, however, that the initial analysis of the attack that was presented to legislators was mixed.
"Briefers said extremists were involved in attacks that appeared spontaneous, there may have been a variety of motivating factors, and possible links to groups such as (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar al-Sharia) were being looked at closely," the official said.

Mom Found ‘Guilty’ By Court After Refusing TSA Pat Down On Daughter

Woman put on probation for standing up to security theater procedures
Steve Watson
Infowars.com
Oct 24, 2012

A woman who stood up to TSA screeners and refused to allow them to grope her or her 14 year old daughter has been found guilty of “disorderly conduct” and sentenced to one year of probation by a court in Tennessee.

Back in July 2011, Andrea Fornella Abbott of Clarksville, was arrested by Nashville airport authorities for expressing outrage at the TSA procedures.
A police report stated that Abbott would not allow her daughter to be “touched inappropriately” or have her “crotch grabbed”. Abbott also refused to submit to a full body scan, saying that she did not want her or her daughters’ naked bodies revealed by the scanner.
The report noted that she attempted to take cell phone video of the incident but was prevented from doing so by the TSA screeners.
When police were called to the scene, Abbott reportedly cursed at them and referred to the TSA screeners as pedophiles, leading to her arrest.
The Associated Press reports that the prosecution argued that Abbott’s behavior “prevented others from carrying out their lawful activities,” and held up two security lines for thirty minutes.
“You can speak your mind, but you can’t do it in an illegal manner,’ said Assistant District Attorney Megan King, adding “What the defendant did was a crime.”
The defense argued that Abbot was exercising her right to free speech. “Telling a police officer your opinion, even in strong language, to me that’s a First Amendment right,” Abbot’s attorney Brent Horst told reporters.
Abbott herself admitted that she may have cursed at police officers, but considered the exchange to be a “normal conversation” regarding the inappropriate nature of pat-downs on children.
Horst presented surveillance video of the incident, and claimed that Abbot was the one being yelled at by police. Although the video had no audio, it showed that other passengers were walking around Abbot and the police officers, and that security lines were still moving.

“It’s clear from the video … she wasn’t preventing anything,” Horst said. In closing arguments the attorney stated “Since 9/11, we’re losing a lot of freedom, and we have to draw the line somewhere,” before praising Abbot for standing on principle.
As we have documented, people who opt out of body scanners or those who simply fail to display the proper level of obedience to TSA screeners are routinely subjected to punishment by means of invasive grope downs or other forms of retaliation.
Journalists who are critical of the TSA have also been singled out for retribution.
The TSA is also operating bizarre obedience training programs, including the ridiculous “all stop” policy where travelers are ordered to freeze on the spot for no reason whatsoever. Again, the TSA has admitted that travelers are not mandated to comply with these bizarre displays of security theater.
The TSA has characterized people who do not fully comply with airport screening procedures, no matter how bizarre or invasive, as “domestic extremists.”
The verdict in Andrea Fornella Abbott’s case sets a dangerous precedent along the lines of First amendment rights not being applicable at security checkpoints. The verdict essentially paves the way for criminally punishing anyone who questions TSA procedures, no matter how bizarre they are.

37 Facts About How Cruel This Economy Has Been To Millions Of Desperate American Families

Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse
Oct 24, 2012
Have you ever laid in bed awake at night with a knot in your stomach because you didn’t know how your family was possibly going to make it through the next month financially?  Have you ever felt the desperation of not being able to provide the basic necessities for your family even though you tried as hard as you could?  All over America tonight, there are millions of desperate families that are being ripped apart by this economy.  There aren’t nearly enough jobs, and millions of Americans that actually do have jobs aren’t making enough to even provide the basics for their families.  When you have tried everything that you can think of and nothing works, it can be absolutely soul crushing.  Today, one of my regular readers explained that he was not going to be online for a while because his power had been turned off.  He has been out of work for quite a while, and eventually the money runs out.  Have you ever been there?  If you have ever experienced that moment, you know that it stays with you for the rest of your life.  If you are single that is bad enough, but when you have to look into the eyes of your children and explain to them why there won’t be any dinner tonight or why they have to move into a homeless shelter it can feel like someone has driven a stake into your heart.  In this article you will find a lot of very shocking economic statistics.  But please remember that behind each statistic are the tragic stories of millions of desperately hurting American families.
Over the past decade, things have steadily gotten worse for American families no matter what our politicians have tried.  Poverty and government dependence continue to rise.  The cost of living continues to go up and incomes continue to go down.  It is truly frightening to think about what this country is going to look like if current trends continue.
The following are 37 facts that show how cruel this economy has been to millions of desperate American families…
1. One recent survey discovered that 40 percent of all Americans have $500 or less in savings.
2. A different recent survey found that 28 percent of all Americans do not have a single penny saved for emergencies.
3. In the United States today, there are close to 10 million households that do not have a single bank account.  That number has increased by about a million since 2009.
4. Family homelessness in the Washington D.C. region (one of the wealthiest regions in the entire country) has risen 23 percent since the last recession began.
5. The number of Americans living in poverty has increased by about 6 million over the past four years.
6. Median household income has fallen for four years in a row.  Overall, it has declined by more than $4000 over the past four years.
7. 62 percent of middle class Americans say that they have had to reduce household spending over the past year.
8. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 85 percent of middle class Americans say that it is more difficult to maintain a middle class standard of living today than it was 10 years ago.
9. In the United States today, 77 percent of all Americans are living to paycheck to paycheck at least some of the time.
10. In the United States today, more than 41 percent of all working age Americans are not working.
11. Since January 2009, the “labor force” in the United States has increased by 827,000, but “those not in the labor force” has increased by 8,208,000.  This is how they have gotten the unemployment numbers to “come down”.
12. Sadly, 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs.
13. Today, about one out of every four workers in the United States brings home wages that are at or below the federal poverty level.
14. Right now, the United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.
15. At this point, less than 25 percent of all jobs in the United States are “good jobs”, and that number continues to shrink.
16. There are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing.  That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.
17. According to USA Today, many Americans have actually seen their water bills triple over the past 12 years.
18. Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
19. In 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance.  Today, only 55.1 percent are covered by employment-based health insurance.
20. Health insurance premiums rose faster than the overall rate of inflation in 2011 and that is happening once againin 2012.  In fact, it has been happening for a very long time.
21. According to one recent survey, approximately 10 percent of all employers in the United States plan to drop health coverage when key provisions of the new health care law kick in less than two years from now.
22. Back in 1983, the bottom 95 percent of all income earners had 62 cents of debt for every dollar that they earned.  By 2007, that figure had soared to $1.48.
23. Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.
24. Total consumer debt in the United States has risen by 1700 percent since 1971.
25. Recently it was announced that total student loan debt in the United States has passed the one trillion dollar mark.
26. According to one recent survey, approximately one-third of all Americans are not paying their bills on time at this point.
27. Right now, approximately 25 million American adults are living at home with their parents.
28. The percentage of Americans that find that they are able to retire when they reach retirement age continues to decline.  According to one new survey, 70 percent of middle class Americans plan to work during retirement and 30 percent plan to work until they are at least 80 years old.
29. The U.S. economy lost more than 220,000 small businesses during the recent recession.
30. In 2010, the number of jobs created at new businesses in the United States was less than half of what it was back in the year 2000.
31. Back in 2007, 19.2 percent of all American families had a net worth of zero or less than zero.  By 2010, that figure had soared to 32.5 percent.
32. Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.
33. In the United States today, somewhere around 100 million Americans are considered to be either “poor” or “near poor”.
34. In October 2008, 30.8 million Americans were on food stamps.  Today, 46.7 million Americans are on food stamps.
35. Approximately one-fourth of all children in the United States are enrolled in the food stamp program.
36. Right now, more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government.  And that does not even count Social Security or Medicare.
37. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, an all-time record 49 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives financial assistance from the federal government.  Back in 1983, that number was less than 30 percent.
What makes all of this even more frightening is that many homeless shelters and food banks around the nation are so overloaded at this point that they are already over capacity.  Just consider this example…

When Janice Coe, a homeless advocate in Loudoun County, learned through her prayer group that a young woman was sleeping in the New Carrollton Metro station with a toddler and a 2-month-old, she sprang into action.
Coe contacted the young woman and arranged for her to take the train to Virginia, where she put the little family up in a Comfort Suites hotel. Then Coe began calling shelters to see who could take them.
Despite several phone calls, she came up empty. Coe was shocked to learn that many of the local shelters that cater to families were full, including Good Shepherd Alliance, where Coe was once director of social services.
“I don’t know why nobody will take this girl in,” Coe said. “The baby still had a hospital bracelet on her wrist.”

Keep in mind that Loudoun Country is smack dab in the middle of one of the wealthiest areas of Virginia.
So if things are that bad in the wealthy areas, exactly how bad are things getting in many of the poorer areas?
Unfortunately, things continue to get worse for this economy.  DuPont has just announced plans to eliminate 1,500 jobs.  There are more major layoff announcements almost every single day.  So how bad will things get when ourcrumbling economic system finally collapses?  When kind of chaos will be unleashed all over the nation when millions upon millions of Americans finally lose all hope?
In the introduction to this article, I mentioned that one of my regular readers has had his lights turned off.  The following is how he described his situation…

No gas, no water, no electricity at my house. Couldn’t pay the bills. I’m broke. Desperately searching for any means of income, or at least enough cash to get the juice (electricity) restored.
Typing this missive in a dark house using the battery on my laptop. Feels like I’m camping out at home. Hope to get this situation fixed tomorrow… somehow. Needless to say, I *…. hate this.
I was ready for this, but it is still a major league inconvenience. For those of you who DO have power, etc. – and are not ready… oh brother. You need to get ready. Seriously, you do. Because what I’m going through is just an inconvenience. It may someday be a normal occurence. Ugh. (expletives deleted)

Hopefully a way can be found to get his situation turned around, but the truth is that there are tens of millions of other similar stories out there in America today.
What about you?  What are things like in your neck of the woods?  Please feel free to share your thoughts below…

Tweets Reveal Obama Supporters Fueled by ‘Racial Hatred’

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
October 23, 2012
Not content with making violent death threats and promising riots if Obama loses, Obama voters have flooded Twitter with racist slurs targeting Mitt Romney and his supporters, an irony given the fact that those who have drawn attention to the death threats being made against Romney have been accused of “race-baiting”.

Chris Matthews followed up last night’s debate by claiming that Romney supporters were fueled by “racial hatred,”yet even a cursory scan of Twitter shows the opposite to be true – Obama supporters are driven by racial hatred, and they’re not afraid of showing it.

When Infowars first highlighted the deluge of violent comments being made by Obama supporters last week, Obama front group Think Progress responded by accusing Infowars and the Drudge Report of “race-baiting” merely for reposting the comments because the majority of Twitter users who made them were black.

Think Progress has been noticeably silent on the issue since the Secret Service confirmed that it was aware of the threats. As we highlighted in two separate articles earlier today, the calls for violence and rioting by Obama supporters continue to pour in.

While Infowars has attempted to steer clear of the race issue, a cursory search of Twitter shows that Obama supporters have been less restrained. Both black and white Obama supporters are spewing racial hatred targeting Mitt Romney and his supporters.

In the aftermath of last night’s foreign policy debate, Twitter users flooded the social network with derogatory ethnic slurs against Romney labeling him a “cracker” or “cracka,” which is a pejorative term to describe a white person, as well as a “honky.”

A black Twitter user actually tried to discourage other users from making racist slurs against Romney when he wrote, “How y’all call Romney a racist, but y’all call him a white cracker all day? Another black Twitter user echoed the sentiment when he tweeted, “Romney is getting called “white” this & “cracker” that left & right by black twitter but let a white person say “black” anything about Obama.” Another user remarked, “The same ppl that are upset the President is referred to as a “n” are the same ppl that are the first in line to call Romney a cracker.”

However, that did little to stop the deluge of racist and often violent taunts aimed at Romney and his supporters.

These tweets clearly illustrate that the likes of Chris Matthews and Think Progress are siding with the real racists – Obama supporters who are openly spouting racial slurs to express their disdain for Mitt Romney and his supporters.

We are non-partisan and support neither candidate, but when Matthews is allowed to go on air and demonize virtually half the population of the country as being racists simply because they don’t support Obama, we will not hesitate to call him out on it.