TiLTNews Network: Earth Watch - Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference, not by safety. It is easy to clamor for government security when terrible things happen; but liberty is given true meaning when we support it without exception, and we will be safer for it ~ Dr. Ron Paul
Alex Jones - MARCH 23, 2016 538 Comments
The globalists are exacerbating radical Islam to fuel exploitable hysteria.
Special Forces operative and MMA competitor Tim Kennedy also joined Alex Jones recently in studio to discuss the latest attack in Brussels.
Top Army War Fighter Speaks Out Against Tyranny
http://www.infowars.com/trump-is-a-direct-threat-to-establishment-power/
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/24/2016 09:02 -0400
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
If the four structural trends highlighted below don't reverse, the middle class is heading for extinction.
Everyone knows the middle class is fading fast. I've covered this issue in depth for years, for example: Honey, I Shrunk the Middle Class: Perhaps 1/3 of Households Qualify(December 28, 2015) and What Does It Take To Be Middle Class? (December 5, 2013)
This raises an obvious question: what killed the middle class? While many commentators try to identify one killer cause (for example, the U.S. going off the gold standard in 1971), the die-off of the middle class is more akin to the die-off in honey bees, which is the result of the interaction of multiple causes (factors that increase the toxic load dumped on bees and other pollinators by modern agriculture).
Longtime collaborator Gordon T. Long and I discuss the decline of the middle class and other key topics in a new 29-minute video How did that work out for you?
So where do we begin this detective story? With the engine of all real prosperity, productivity. This chart reveals that wages stopped rising with productivity around 1980.
Here's another look at the same phenomenon:
Productivity has been slipping since around 2003: Alan Greenspan:"Productivity is Dead”
Cause #1: declining productivity, which means the pie of real wealth is no longer expanding.
Exhibit #2: middle class wage earners have not received any of the gains. Wages as a percentage of GDP have been falling for decades, with occasional blips up in tech/housing bubbles:
Inflation-adjusted household income has dropped back to levels first reached in the 1980s:
More recently, wages have actually declined, regardless of educational attainment:
Income gains have all flowed to the top 10%, with most of the gains being concentrated in the top 5% and top 1%:
If the middle class didn't receive any of the gains, who did? Corporate profits have soared to unprecedented levels:
Cause #2: all the gains in the economy have flowed to corporations and the top 10% of financiers, managers and technocrats.
But wait a minute--hasn't the rising stock market enriched the middle class?Short answer: no. Middle class household wealth has absolutely cratered since the top of the housing bubble in 2007, and hasn't recovered.
Why? Middle class wealth is based not in stocks but in the family home. The middle class does not own enough financial assets to have participated in the latest stock market bubble, while the majority did not recover the wealth lost in the housing bubble bust. This is the cost of allowing the financial sector to financialize housing and mortgages in the 2000s.
Cause #3: the middle class doesn't own the "right" assets to benefit from systemic financialization and financial speculation.
How about rising costs? The federal agencies tasked with measuring inflation assure us inflation is near-zero. But these measures underweight big-ticket costs like healthcare and higher education, where costs have exploded higher, greatly increasing the burden on the middle class:
Cause #4: soaring costs of big-ticket expenses such as higher education and healthcare. Saving $10 on cheap jeans imported from Asia does not make up for 135% jumps in tuition and college fees, and $100 decline in the cost of a laptop computer does not make up for healthcare insurance and out-of-pocket expenses in the tens of thousands of dollars per household.
Correspondent Kevin K. submitted this article and accompanying note: Colleges with the biggest tuition hikes (my ala mater University of Hawaii-Manoa clocked in with an increase of 137% since 2004.)
"It looks like the article linked above didn't do much research since:
University of California Davis
2004 in-state tuition $5,684
2015 in state tuition $13,951
Percentage increase 145.44 percent"
There is no way middle class households with declining real incomes can pay soaring costs imposed by state-enforced cartels and gain ground financially. If the four structural trends highlighted above don't reverse, the middle class is heading for extinction, the victim of financialization, the glorification of financial speculation via central bank-central state policies, the decline of productivity and rising costs imposed by state-enforced cartels.
Gordon T. Long and I discuss the decline of the middle class and other key topics:
Average:
Mischaël Modrikamen is leader of the People’s Party in Belgium.
He published this video on Facebook on March 11, eleven days before the ISIS Brussels bombings on March 22, 2016.
Mischaël warns America not to become Brussels. He says Brussels is now a third world city after years of the Islamist invasion of Europe.
Modrikamen urges Donald Trump, “Make America Great Again! You are an example for many of us here in Europe.”
BY AMY NAY SATURDAY, MARCH 19TH 2016
"People don't see the real Donald Trump," son tells 2News
(KUTV) Donald Trump, Junior, in town to help his father campaign ahead of the Tuesday caucus in Utah, sat down with 2News this weekend to talk about what he says are misconceptions about his dad.
"People don't see the real Donald Trump. They see the guy that's being brash, but they don't see the guy around the dinner table with his family. They don't see the guy swinging a golf club with his 20 month old granddaughter. They don't see that guy - that's just family first. They don't see the guy that cares deeply about this country.. the great human being."
Sitting down Saturday with 2News the morning after what he says was an awesome rally in Salt Lake, he says he was thrilled to be able to bring the campaign to Utah - a state he says he loves and visits often.
"I was just here last month with my whole family, my kids, for their vacation. I was like, guys, we've got to bring the campaign here. We've got to show some love to Utah."
Despite lagging in recent polls, including a new survey out Saturday which show Trump behind Senator Ted Cruz and even Governor John Kasich, he says Utahns have a lot in common with the Trumps, namely a strong work ethic.
"All the guys I know that are Utahns - either LDS or just from the state - there's a work ethic here. It's a work ethic that my father brought us up with."
His father he described as a 'blue collar billionaire'. He says he is giving a voice to the working class, a class he says is the only unprotected class in America.
"My father is giving these people a voice. The people who built America, these people are finally getting a voice and that's why they're so passionate."
But Donald Trump, Junior blamed many of the recent clashes, including Friday night in Salt Lake outside Trump's rally where police came in clad with riot gear, on the loud left.
"He's not the one throwing stones. He's not the one, you know, they're bringing out the riot gear. It's not for our people. It's for the people who are trying to stop him!"
He says those same people are now attacking Trump's family, including a recent incident this week with his brother Eric who was sent a letter with a white powdery substance inside. Donald Trump, Jr. said he, too, was the recipient of multiple personal attacks, citing an instance when he posted a picture of he and his daughter.
"They said horrible things like I hope she gets cancer or she or your whole family dies... things I wouldn't say to my worst enemy! Say what you want to me. I'm a big boy, I can take it. But to say those things, to direct them at an 8 year old girl, a 20 month old girl... it's disgraceful."
Trump refuted claims that much of the fury comes in response to his father's often heated statements made to supporters.
"There comes a time in your life, in your country, when you have to put your fist down and be loud. To make a point and you have to do that. That's what he's doing."
He said his father has brought to light many issues that had previously been taboo, including immigration. But he insisted his father is not a racist.
"It's been difficult for me as a son to watch people try to say that stuff about my father because it couldn't be further from the truth, because I've seen who he is, who he hangs out with, who he employs. Really, there's nothing further from the truth, and it does a real disservice because I think that's still a real issue in this country."
On Mitt Romney's attacks and the back and forth between the former GOP presidential candidate and his father, Trump, Jr. said it was sad.
"Honestly, It's a shame. I was there not that long ago, when Mitt was in my father's office, begging for money... from him, from me, from my brother, from my sister. I was there at a press conference when he was saying I've been a very good businessman, but I haven't been the businessman that Donald Trump is. It's a shame that he's had to take this establishment party line... because what my father is doing that's unique is giving a voice to the people. So for him to say that he's for the people, I think it's sad and I think it's really disingenuous."
http://kutv.com/news/local/people-dont-see-the-real-donald-trump-son-tells-2news
After all sorts of hand-wringing over the placement of our primary at the useless end of the presidential election cycle, California — the state with the most delegates to give and one of the final six states to award them on June 7 — may very well decide whether Donald Trump is the Republican nominee. That’s a lot of power and responsibility, for Trump and for California.
The New York Times projected Wednesday that if Trump maintains his current level of support in the remaining races, he “would almost certainly secure the nomination.” Not only that, but the projection shows him securing it in California — with this caveat, “If Mr. Trump loses California, he could narrowly miss the delegate cutoff.” Brace yourselves.
Trump is already saying that if he just misses closing the deal and an open convention goes against him there would be “riots” and “problems like you’ve never seen before” and “I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.” So much for him asking supporters to act peacefully as we urged candidates on both sides of the aisle to do this week.
Even as Hillary Clinton solidified her hold on the Democratic nomination Tuesday, Trump remained the clear GOP frontrunner. So will he win the nomination outright by claiming 1,237 of the 2,472 Republican delegates before the party’s Cleveland convention in mid-July?
Trump is more than halfway to the magic number now. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is about a third of the way there but faces near impossible odds of hitting the necessary target. And Ohio Gov. John Kasich sounds resurgent after winning all of Ohio’s 66 delegates Tuesday.
Where does that leave us? That leaves the establishment candidate, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, bowing out of the race after Trump trounced him in his home state and Kasich “getting ready to rent a covered wagon” and head west “to California,” despite needing a mathematically impossible 112 percent of the remaining delegates to win the nomination on a first ballot at the Republican convention.
That leaves Trump, Cruz and Kasich thinking about how they might corral sufficient delegates on a potential second or third or — as was needed in 1880 — 36th vote at the GOP convention.
That leaves House Speaker Paul Ryan, 2012 Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s vice presidential pick, denying he’d accept the 2016 GOP nomination, if it were offered to him at the convention. (Ryan, also previously said, of course, that he wouldn’t run for speaker last year.)
And that leaves Ron Nehring, California chairman and national spokesman for the Cruz campaign, crowing. In a post Wednesday on FlashReport, he wrote that 14 of the remaining 22 contests are closed primaries like California’s, meaning only registered Republicans can vote. Four other contests allow independents to vote in the Republican primary and four others allow Democrats to vote for a Republican, if they so choose.
Trump, Nehring notes, has won just six of 16 closed primaries so far and does better when Democrats can vote in GOP primaries.
Will enough California Republicans want a contested convention? Or will they rally around Trump to prevent one? Will any candidate run the table in California, or will results be mixed? The state awards 159 of its 172 GOP delegates by congressional district — three delegates per winner in each of the 53 districts — and 13 to whoever wins the state.
All this is a wonky way of saying you decide. You.
Next News: Trump picks up seventh lawmaker endorsement
By Patrick Buchanan
“If his poll numbers hold, Trump will be there six months from now when the Sweet 16 is cut to the Final Four, and he will likely be in the finals.”
My prediction, in July of 2015, looks pretty good right now.
Herewith, a second prediction. Republican wailing over his prospective nomination aside, Donald Trump could beat Hillary Clinton like a drum in November.
Indeed, only the fear that Trump can win explains the hysteria in this city.
Here is The Washington Post of March 18: “As a moral question it is straightforward. The mission of any responsible Republican should be to block a Trump nomination and election.”
The Orwellian headline over that editorial: “To defend our democracy, the GOP must aim for a brokered convention.”
Beautiful. Defending democracy requires Republicans to cancel the democratic decision of the largest voter turnout of any primaries in American history. And this is now a moral imperative for Republicans.
Like the Third World leaders it lectures, the Post celebrates democracy — so long as the voters get it right.
Whatever one may think of the Donald, he has exposed not only how far out of touch our political elites are, but how insular is the audience that listens to our media elite.
Understandably, Trump’s rivals were hesitant to take him on, seeing the number he did on “little Marco,” “low energy” Jeb and “Lyin’ Ted.”
But the Big Media — the Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times — have been relentless and ruthless.
Yet Trump’s strength with voters seemed to grow, pari passu, with the savagery of their attacks. As for National Review, The Weekly Standard and the accredited conservative columnists of the big op-ed pages, their hostility to Trump seems to rise, commensurate with Trump’s rising polls.
As the Wizard of Oz was exposed as a little man behind a curtain with a big megaphone, our media establishment is unlikely ever again to be seen as formidable as it once was.
And the GOP?
Those Republicans who assert that a Trump nomination would be a moral stain, a scarlet letter, the death of the party, they are most likely describing what a Trump nomination would mean to their own ideologies and interests.
Barry Goldwater lost 44 states in 1964, and the GOP fell to less than a third of Congress. “The Republican Party is dead,” wailed the Rockefeller wing. Actually, it wasn’t. Only the Rockefeller wing was dead.
After the great Yellowstone fire in the summer of ’88, the spring of ’89 produced astonishing green growth everywhere. 1964 was the Yellowstone fire of the GOP, burning up a million acres of dead wood, preparing the path for party renewal. Renewal often follows rebellion.
Republican strength today, on Capitol Hill and in state offices, is at levels unseen since Calvin Coolidge. Turnout in the GOP primaries has been running at levels unseen in American history, while turnout in the Democratic primaries is below what it was in the Obama-Clinton race of 2008.
This opportunity for Republicans should be a cause for rejoicing, not all this weeping and gnashing of teeth. If the party in Cleveland can bring together the Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich forces, the White House, Supreme Court and Congress are all within reach.
Consider. Clinton was beaten by Bernie Sanders in Michigan, and pressed in Ohio and Illinois, on her support for NAFTA and the trade deals of the Clinton-Bush-Obama era that eviscerated American manufacturing and led to the loss of millions of factory jobs and the stagnation of wages.
Sanders’ issues are Trump’s issues.
A Trump campaign across the industrial Midwest, Pennsylvania and New Jersey featuring attacks on Hillary Clinton’s support for NAFTA, the WTO, MFN for China — and her backing of amnesty and citizenship for illegal immigrants, and for the Iraq and Libyan debacles — is a winning hand.
Lately, 116 architects and subcontractors of the Bush I and II foreign policy took their own version of the Oxford Oath. They will not vote for, nor serve in a Trump administration.
Talking heads are bobbing up on cable TV to declare that if Trump is nominee, they will not vote for him and may vote for Clinton.
This is not unwelcome news. Let them go.
Their departure testifies that Trump is offering something new and different from the foreign policy failures this crowd did so much to produce.
The worst mistake Trump could make would be to tailor his winning positions on trade, immigration and intervention — to court such losers.
While Trump should reach out to the defeated establishment of the party, he cannot compromise the issues that brought him where he is, or embrace the failed policies that establishment produced. This would be throwing away his aces.
The Trump campaign is not a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. It is a rebellion of shareholders who are voting to throw out the corporate officers and board of directors that ran the company into the ground.
Only the company here is our country.
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BEN STEIN: People talk about Trump as if he's some sort of lunatic. What he's saying makes a lot of sense.
NEIL CAVUTO (HOST): But it bothers a lot of folks who say -- even in the Republican Party, Ben, that he might be alienating Latino voters who he seems to be targeting. He says no, he's just talking about illegals. It's very clear in his statements and press releases that's exactly what he is saying, but it's sort of been morphed together, as sort of an anti-Hispanic rant. What do you say?
STEIN: [INAUDIBLE] Morphed together by the Democratic establishment. There's so much talk about the Republican establishment, and I don't even know who is in the Republican establishment. I would think I would be, by virtue of age and the fact that both my father and grandfather were fairly prominent Republicans. But, what I'm looking at here is the Democratic establishment, is the one trying to cut off debate, trying to keep Mr. Trump from speaking. I don't think there's ever been a case before where a major political party in the US has had, on a systematic basis, an attempt to silence the other party's leading presidential candidate. That is an outrage. That is the real anti-Democratic thing that is going on here. It's not Trump, who is the anti-democratic here, it is the other side. My old childhood next door neighbor, dear friend Carl Bernstein, obviously on very different sides of the fence politically, says Mr. Trump is a neo-fascist. He's the exact opposite of a neo-fascist. He wants government of, by, and for the people. It's the other side trying to shout him down, and have government by a screaming, un-elected elite.
[...]
CAVUTO: Do you know, or see right now, Ben, any dangers for Donald Trump? I mean, you know, If he has a good night tonight, wins five out of the six, you know, big events here, he could be well on his way. And you hear the establishment trying to make overtures to him, kind of, Donald Trump trying to make overtures to him, kind of. Can they all get along and hug, when all is said and done?
STEIN: I think they can get along and hug, and I think Mr. Trump is a rising star. I think he has caught on to the national mood, I think Mrs. Clinton is a falling star, trying to play race based, identity based politics. Mr. Trump is saying let's all stand together as Americans. I have not heard a racist word out of that man's mouth. He wants a peaceful, calm America, he wants a strong military. How's he going to pay for it with his tax plan, god only knows, and I certainly don't know. But I think people should be listening to him. He's not a ranting, blubbering fool. He's making a lot of sense, and I don't see what's anti-democratic about him.
http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/03/15/ben-stein-i-have-not-heard-a-racist-word-out-of/209278
Previously:
Ben Stein: "It's A Ridiculous Thing" To Call Donald Trump Racist
Ben Stein On Fox: Obama Is "The Most Racist President There Has Ever Been In America"
Ben Stein: Obama's "Hatred Of America" May Be "Because He's Part Black"
