What do you do when you cannot charge your debt from one credit card to another card any more?

“Robbing Peter to pay Paul” is a slogan that perhaps most Americans know from experience. It might happen once in our lifetime or it may be the way of life for some. We all know what this means, borrow from one obligation to pay another.

For some time the government has pointed to those that are under water in debt and take out bankruptcy as irresponsible, making them “more responsible” by changing the bankruptcy laws.

How is it that the federal and state governments are the greatest perpetrator of all?

For years, we have been propping up our economy by printing more paper. We don’t have anything to back it up! We have already robbed the gold from our coffers. And so when we cannot pay our debt, we borrow more….and more…..and more.

For a very long time, China was a significant investor in our debt as the result of buying our promissory notes called Treasuries, T-Bills, Notes, etc. But what happens if the people who have, for so long, bought your funny money are no longer interested in attending the sell-off?

Before the end of March 2012, the Treasury must redeem all of the $1.7 trillion in Treasury bills that were extant as of March 2011 and find new or old buyers who will continue to invest in U.S. debt. The price is higher interest on this already out of control situation. And this $1.7 trillion is only a blip on the radar screen compared to the total amount of notes outstanding for our federal government. An eye-opening report that provides much more of the facts can be found at:

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/china-has-divested-97-percent-its-holdin

 

Your Tax Money at Waste

It might be that  in a flourishing economy, you would go along with the project I am about to tell you about. You might think it is a bit silly or you may be in favor of this, but considering we are so deeply in debt and cannot survive without massive labor cuts for needed services, one might wonder how this could happen.

“In a recent press release, the City of San Antonio, Texas, proudly announced a $1.2 million dollar project the federal government has just completed to digitally photograph food that is purchased in one school cafeteria. It works like this: The student buys their meal and at the point of sale, the tray is captured. Then, when the tray is returned after the student finishes their meal, it is captured again. The system is said to be capable of determining if only one half of a piece of fruit was eaten. The system develops a profile of consumption. Devised by our Dept. of Agriculture, I suppose this new use of high-tech will somehow make us more conscious of the foods we eat and how much.

Gee, it might just be too complicated to stop selling foods that are not nourishing, ya think? I must ask the readers, after announcing huge layoffs of teachers by the School District in San Antonio due to a $2 mil. shortfall, does it make sense to drop $1.2 million by the feds for this?

 

Half of New Hirings from McDonalds!

As a prelude to the assault O’bama is planning on American voters to get him re-elected, his team is already standing in front of assemblies, telling everyone how wonderful the O’bama administration is doing.

All the while, they demand you mortgage your grandchildren with more debt. This recent report says it all:

“According to the unemployment data released this morning, the economy added only 54,000 jobs, pushing the unemployment rate up to 9.1 percent. However, this report from MarketWatch suggests the data is much worse than that:

McDonald’s ran a big hiring day on April 19 — after the Labor Department’s April survey for the payrolls report was conducted — in which 62,000 jobs were added. That’s not a net number, of course, and seasonal adjustment will reduce the Hamburglar impact on payrolls. (In simpler terms — restaurants always staff up for the summer; the Labor Department makes allowance for this effect.) Morgan Stanley estimates McDonald’s hiring will boost the overall number by 25,000 to 30,000. The Labor Department won’t detail an exact McDonald’s figure — they won’t identify any company they survey — but there will be data in the report to give a rough estimate.

If Morgan Stanley is correct, about half of last month’s job growth came from the venerable fast-food chain. That is hardly the sign of a healthy economy.”

Post Continues on www.weeklystandard.com

The Coming Collapse of Farming

If you’ve been to the grocery store lately, then you know just how much food prices are skyrocketing. In fact, the money that got you four bags of groceries last year will get you only three bags this year. And now that gas prices are going up almost daily, food prices will shoot up even more.

But now there’s another, far more ominous reason to home garden. There’s a threat emerging that is so potentially catastrophic, it could literally mean the collapse of commercial agriculture.

The honeybees are disappearing. In the past few years, we’ve been hearing more and more about something called Colony Collapse Disorder – it’s a fancy way of saying that the honeybees are dying, and we don’t know why. But if the decline isn’t reversed, the honeybee could well go the way of the dinosaur.

Some commercial beekeepers are losing as much as 90% of their bee population each season. Bees are essential to the pollination of over 90 different commercial crops.

If that happens, our industrial farming system will completely collapse.

Commercial farming depends on healthy honeybees. Bees pollinate over 90 different commercial crops. Without bees, we would not be able to enjoy things like grilled summer squash, crisp cold cucumbers, or sweet, delicious melon. Many people take good food like this for granted … and now those foods are at grave risk.

Giant farm conglomerates rent bees from commercial beekeepers to pollinate their hives. The hives are trucked to one region, released from the hive to pollinate the crops, and are packed up again and taken to the next region. But since 2003, more and more often, farmers have been opening up their hives to find dead bees or, more often, bees that just don’t return to the hive. That means there are fewer bees to do more work … which stresses the bee population even more.

For a long time, despite numerous theories, nobody knew what the real cause was.

But now we know.

“Highly toxic” pesticide causing mass extermination of honeybees

Late last year, a brave whistleblower leaked a memo from secret files at the Environmental Protection Agency. That memo was a smoking gun. For years, the EPA has known the true cause of the honeybee extinctions. The culprit is a chemical pesticide, clothianidin. Here’s what the EPA’s own internal memo said:

“Clothianidin’s major risk concern is to non-target insects (that is, honey bees). Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid insecticide that is both persistent and systemic. Acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis. … Information from standard tests and field studies … suggest the potential for long-term risk to honey bees and other beneficial insects.”

This pesticide was approved by the EPA, despite warnings from some of its own best and brightest scientists. And today, it’s used just as much as ever.

If clothianidin were outlawed tomorrow, could the damage be reversed? We don’t know. But we do know this: if the honeybee population isn’t restored to healthy levels – and quickly – our nation, not to mention the world, could lose over 90 different crop varieties, because they could no longer be pollinated on a large scale.

Look, you already know all the great reasons to grow your own food:

You save hundreds of dollars a year on groceries
The food you grow yourself with heirloom seeds is more nutrient dense than anything you can buy at the store
Home-grown food is free of all the toxic pesticides and insecticides found on grocery store produce
You can freeze, can, or dehydrate your surplus to provide a year-round supply of food for your family.

But of all the reasons to plant a home garden, the risk to commercial agriculture is probably number one. And here’s the thing about a home garden:

Even if the bees completely disappear, you can still grow the same wide variety of crops you’ve always grown.

Here’s why. The areas hardest hit by the bee epidemic are those vast tracts of land devoted to industrial monoculture. And that makes perfect sense because that’s where the toxic pesticide clothianidin is mostly heavily used. The bees that buzz around home gardens don’t seem to be as affected … at least not yet.

But what if they were? What if your local neighborhood hive were hit by Colony Collapse Disorder? You’d still be okay, and here’s why. There’s a little known secret about pollination that most home gardeners don’t know.

Produce like this, including tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, and more, could disappear from grocery store shelves within the next few years.

You can actually hand pollinate anything a bee can pollinate!

Giant corporate farms with millions of acres can’t pollinate by hand, of course. It would take an impossible amount of manpower. But home gardens? They’re small and manageable and can easily be hand pollinated.

Imagine this. A few short years from now, you go to the store, and the colorful produce that once filled the shelves is no longer there. No beets … no cabbage … no cucumbers, onions, or carrots. No melons, no chard, no tomatoes, or peppers. No squash or eggplant. They’ve become a rare and valuable commodity. (Beans and peas would be in short supply, too, because although they’re self-pollinating, bees help them produce even more.)

But when it comes to vegetables, you’re the richest man in town. Thanks to non-commercial bees that thrive nearby, or help from the kids with manual pollination, you’ve grown a bumper crop of these vanishing vegetables in your backyard using the heirloom seeds from your Survival Seed Bank. Can you imagine how valuable the produce from your own back yard would be? (In fact, with the heirloom crops you’ll produce in your home garden, you’ll have yourself the makings of a nice little home business.)

That’s what makes the Survival Seed Bank such a wise investment. Click on the link for more information!

Obama Skirts Rule of Law to Reward Pals, Punish Foes

Question: What do the following have in common? Eckert Cold Storage Co., Kerly Homes of Yuma, Classic Party Rentals, West Coast Turf Inc., Ellenbecker Investment Group Inc., Only in San Francisco, Hotel Nikko, International Pacific Halibut Commission, City of Puyallup, Local 485 Health and Welfare Fund, Chicago Plastering Institute Health & Welfare Fund, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, Teamsters Local 522 Fund Welfare Fund Roofers Division, StayWell Saipan Basic Plan, CIGNA, Caribbean Workers’ Voluntary Employees’ Beneficiary Health and Welfare Plan.

Answer: They are all among the 1,372 businesses, state and local governments, labor unions and insurers, covering 3,095,593 individuals or families, that have been granted a waiver from Obamacare by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

All of which raises another question: If Obamacare is so great, why do so many people want to get out from under it?

More specifically, why are more than half of those 3,095,593 in plans run by labor unions, which were among Obamacare’s biggest political supporters? Union members are only 12 percent of all employees but have gotten 50.3 percent of Obamacare waivers.

Post Continues on washingtonexaminer.com

Tax Dollars Fund Shrimp on Treadmills, Jell-O Wrestling in Antarctica

The Senate’s top watchdog on government waste, in a new report Thursday, said taxpayer money has gone to fund such programs as Jell-O wrestling at the South Pole, testing shrimp’s exercise ability on a treadmill and a laundry-folding robot, all funded by the National Science Foundation.The Senate’s top watchdog on government waste, in a new report Thursday, said taxpayer money has gone to fund such programs as Jell-O wrestling at the South Pole, testing shrimp’s exercise ability on a treadmill and a laundry-folding robot, all funded by the National Science Foundation.

Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, said he identified more than $3 billion in mismanagement at NSF, ranging from questionable studies to exorbitant operating costs, and in some cases duplication by the science agency of operations performed by other agencies.

At a time when the federal government is struggling with record deficits and bumping up against its borrowing limit, Mr. Coburn said the agency is a prime example of the kinds of spending taxpayers should no longer tolerate.

“There is little, if any, obvious scientific benefit to some NSF projects, such as a YouTube rap video, a review of event ticket prices on stubhub.com, a ‘robot hoedown and rodeo,’ or a virtual recreation of the 1964/65 New York World’s Fair,” Mr. Coburn said in a letter to taxpayers he wrote introducing the 73-page report, documented by more than 350 footnotes.
Post Continues on www.washingtontimes.com

High Gas Prices Cause Massive Food Shortages‏

Have you ever wondered what would happen if your local grocery store shut down? What would you do? Would you be able to feed your family? We as Americans have become so dependent on purchasing our food that we very rarely give any attention to the fact that our stores are fallible. Though most of us have given some thought to our futures, we often leave one of our most basic necessities (EATING!) in the hands of others. Why are we still depending on grocery stores to supply our food when recent events have proven that they are simply not reliable?

Right now, America is facing the highest spike in food prices ever seen. Recently I read an AOL News article that listed many popular products whose quantities are being reduced in packaging due to a rise in the price, or a lack in availability, of essential ingredients. Companies faced with the rise in the price of food are passing it right along to us, the consumer. We’re getting less but paying more.

And according to the UN, world food prices are also at a record high; after the announcement from the UN regarding the upward rise of prices in food, the USDA also came out with a report revising their outlook on the harvest of world crops. The article even went so far as to state, “The world is treading on dangerous ground.  Market forces are in place for another global food crisis, and, as the wheels keep turning, it will become harder for these to be put in reverse.”

Fox News has also reported on massive food shortages in corn, rice, coffee, flour, wheat. These are basic staples to our diet! Look at the ingredients label on your packaged food and see how many of the ingredients above are included.

And let’s not even get started on the price of fresh produce. Have you looked, really looked, at the chain store prices lately? If you’ve ever grown squash or tomatoes, you know just how prolific a single plant can be. Spend a few bucks on purchasing some seeds, grow a plant or two, and you’ll be drowning in your own produce! So how is it that we’re being charged upwards of $2.00 a pound for either?  Even if it wasn’t a commentary on our current food crisis situation, it is most certainly a waste of our hard earned money.

In addition oil is also constantly on the rise, making the cost of shipping, plastic production, etc. rise right along with it. Oil prices are going through the roof, and many economists are predicting $6 to $10 a gallon fuel within a year or two. This ALSO gets transferred to the consumer in the form of price hikes. With all of this in mind, it is easy to see how our grocery stores are extremely vulnerable. If there is ever a situation that shuts down our grocery stores (say, a massive worldwide failing of major crops, a truckers strike, or a halt in America’s oil intake–hmmmm, these all sound REALLY familiar…), are you prepared to feed your family? Right now, grocery stores only hold enough food supplies to last their area for three days. That’s right, just THREE DAYS! So don’t plan on making a mad dash to the grocery store if and when a crisis happens. Not only will you be waiting in a long line of scared and unprepared people, you’ll also find out very quickly that there simply isn’t enough of ANYTHING to go around.

These are just a few examples of the imminent threat of food shortage. Do a quick Internet search and you’ll find that there is plenty of information out there regarding the current food crisis. With all of these factors in mind, you must ready yourself now so that you can provide for your family in the case of a catastrophe.

The world crops might be failing, but that doesn’t mean that you and your family have to go hungry. Picture a lush acre of beautiful and delectable fruits and vegetables; picture bountiful harvests, harvests that not only feed you during the current season but also provide the seeds capable for reproducing more harvests in the years to come; picture a family well fed despite any sort of food crisis. In the face of food shortage, you can eat like a king: corn, beans, carrots, cucumbers, peppers, melons, tomatoes, cabbage, squash, radishes, eggplant…not only will you NOT go hungry, but you’ll also be able to enjoy diverse and delicious varieties of foods, some you might not have ever even tried before! You’ll be able to freeze or can your bounty and have winter stores. You’ll be prepared for what could possibly become a very dangerous, worldwide food crisis event.

All of this can be made possible with the Survival Seed Bank from Solutions from Science! This seed bank contains enough seeds to plant an entire acre with non-GMO, open pollinated, high quality, high germination seeds. These seeds do NOT contain the terminator gene – this means that you not only get the seeds with which to grow a bountiful crop that will feed your family, but you can also harvest seeds from that crop with full confidence in the fact that those seeds will reproduce next season! You are NOT guaranteed this with other seeds.

Each Survival Seed Bank contains 22 varieties of seeds, all of which are packaged to last for maximum shelf life. They are then placed into a waterproof container, along with “Nitro Seed Starter Solution,” a solution that jump starts your seeds for quicker growing time. Also included is the e-book Survival Gardening With Heirlooms which includes instructions in planting, cultivating, harvesting, and storing your crops.

And as part of a special, limited time offer, when you purchase the Survival Seed Bank from Solutions From Science, you will also receive 50% off your purchase when you enter the coupon code SAVE50 into the order form. But you’ll have to hurry because this coupon is only good for 36 hours. This sale is over on Friday, at noon Central Time.

With shortages in the world food supply, with transportation costs expected to rise astronomically over the summer, do you really want to risk you and your family not being able to purchase the food you need? The Survival Seed Bank from Solutions From Science includes everything you need to grow your own crisis garden. With troubled times looming overhead, the Survival Seed Bank not only offers you the opportunity to grow a bountiful crop, but it also offers peace of mind for you and your family.

APOCALYPSE NOT Rapture-happy preacher to be probed for fraud?

WND Exclusive APOCALYPSE NOT
Rapture-happy preacher to be probed for fraud?
Christians urge Camping to quit, atheists want Congress to investigate
Posted: May 25, 2011
8:09 pm Eastern

By Joe Kovacs
© 2011 WND

Seattle Atheists are calling for Congress to probe Harold Camping and Family Radio for fraud after another failed prediction for the return of Jesus to Earth.

The failed prediction of Jesus to return to Earth over the weekend is prompting calls for the ouster of the Doomsday preacher and a congressional probe of his broadcasting network.

Harold Camping, 89, of Oakland-Calif.-based Family Radio made worldwide headlines in recent months for his prediction that Judgment Day was guaranteed to be May 21, 2011, prompting many believers to quit their regular jobs to help spread the warning.

It was not the first time Camping got the forecast wrong, having prognosticated the return of Jesus numerous times, including 1994.

“This guy is something else,” Richard Myers, the administrator of abibleanswer.org told WND. “We are calling for the Family Radio board to remove him.”

No matter when Jesus returns, learn the spectacular, ultimate destiny of mankind, something far more glorious than floating around on clouds in heaven. Read the best-selling “Shocked by the Bible: The Most Astonishing Facts You’ve Never Been Told,” personally autographed by the author.

Order Your Copy of “Shocked by the Bible: The Most Astonishing Facts You’ve Never Been Told” by Clicking HERE

In a new posting on Myers’ website, he says the board of directors of Family Radio is just as culpable as Camping in the spreading of erroneous information:

He is not able to spread these false doctrines without their direct involvement. There is a great responsibility resting on them to do what is right. By allowing Camping to continue on the air and on the board, they are guilty of all that Harold Camping is guilty of. That guilt increases daily.

Family Radio has made a point of teaching that they follow the Bible, but they are not following the Bible. They are following a man, a man who rejects much Bible truth. They have been given evidence that all may clearly see. A false prophet once is enough, but twice is too much.

On Monday, Camping adjusted his prediction for the end of the world to Oct. 21 of this year.

Myers’ group is continuing to offer $1 million to purchase Camping’s network of dozens of stations, saying it would take possession Oct. 22 since the broadcaster wouldn’t need them after God returns.

“After taking the money of his supporters, let Harold give up all he has to show he believes what he is preaching. He does not, or else he would sell,” Myers said.

Meanwhile, a group of atheists is calling for a congressional investigation into fraud allegedly perpetrated by Camping and Family Radio.

“We support free speech, but this is shouting ‘Rapture!’ in a crowded theater,” said John Keiser of Seattle Atheists.

Another atheist with the group, Bob Seidensticker, said, “There must be consequences. For this radio network to be financially healthy when they have caused many of their listeners to be destitute or distraught – that’s wrong. We want a way for those injured by this prediction to come forward so they can be compensated by Family Radio.”

The atheists are lamenting that religious organizations are exempted from disclosure requirements by the Internal Revenue Service, precluding the public from finding out how much money Camping and his network have collected from the Judgment Day campaign.

“Has this whole episode been a financial windfall for Family Radio?” Seidensticker said. “We can’t know. So that the public can understand this and thousands of other questionable religious organizations, we call on Congress to make the rules consistent for all nonprofits. If a ministry is comfortable with God knowing how it spends its money, surely it can’t have anything to hide from the public.”

When asked if he’d take responsibility for such incidents, Camping said no.

“I don’t have any responsibility. I can’t be responsible for anybody’s lives,” he explained. “I am only teaching the Bible. I am not teaching what I believe, as if I am the authority. I am just simply teaching what the Bible says. And I don’t have spiritual rule over anybody.”

The gravel-voiced preacher indicated he would not sell his possessions, explaining he needed a place to live and had to pay bills until five months from now when he expects the end to finally arrive.