Our Politicians Did This to Us

Well, it looks like we're going off the fiscal cliff since it's been announced that there will be no vote tonight.  Obama is getting exactly what he had hoped for:  massive tax increases on most Americans and severe cuts to the military.  For a Marxist like himself, it's like a dream come true, and he even gets to blame the GOP.

The truth of the matter is that most Americans are clueless as to what this even means.  Check out the video and read this article from New Zeal:

The Truth About The Fiscal Cliff In Simple Terms

NoisyRoom
By: AJ

FISCAL CLIFF, OH NOES!!

Many either don’t know what the “fiscal cliff” is, or believe this problem is something that it’s not.

Although America ’s economic crisis is not rocket science, the media and politicians have done a good job of keeping the truth hidden so that our focus isn’t on the real problem. After all, if we, the people, understood the real problem, we would demand that they fix it and we are smart enough to know the real fix that’s needed.

To prevent this from happening, politicians and media conjured up this catchy phrase called “the fiscal cliff.” Then they established a narrative that gave us a false target to blame – the so-called “rich.”

In other words, keeping the people’s attention on class warfare directs our anger and rhetoric onto the false target they’ve fed us and off of ‘what’ and ‘who’ created the problem in the first place. This distracts us from formulating and voicing the real solution to the true problem.

So, what is the real problem that created this crisis?

In a nut shell, our elected politicians have continued to spend trillions more in the past four years than taxpayers have given them. Thus, they have brought America ’s economy to the point of near collapse. It’s that simple.

Three of the broader consequences of what they’ve done are:

• For the first time in the history of our nation, America ’s credit rating has been downgraded – twice.
• Our national debt now exceeds its yearly gross domestic product (GDP).
• The value of the dollar continues to decline, which makes prices rise on the things we need and want (i.e. inflation).

Right now on Capitol Hill, politicians claim to have a deal in the works whereby they will:

“…raise the tax rates on family income over $450,000 and individual income over $400,000 from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, the same level as under former President Bill Clinton. Also, estates would be taxed at 40 percent after the first $5 million for an individual and $10 million for a couple, up from 35 percent to 40 percent. Unemployment benefits would be extended for one year.”

While politicians and media are in lock-step focusing everyone’s attention on whom the government can take more money from, who realizes that this simply allows the politicians to continue to spend trillions more at our expense?

Taking more money from the people will result in less growth of the economy, which leads to greater loss of jobs, which leads to increasing the number of people plunged into poverty.

For those buying into the class warfare narrative, know that you are supporting your own demise. How so? The trickle down effect most people don’t realize is that, whether you’re a car mechanic, a retailer, a construction worker, a car dealership, a waiter, a grocery store cashier, etc., these businesses are negatively impacted when customers have less money to spend; therefore, employers will have less income with which to pay employees. Jobs will be eliminated and some businesses will have to shut down altogether.

It’s not rocket science, it is economic reality.

So let’s cut through the political spin, false narratives and diversions and give you the simple truth about the economic crisis and the real solution, which can be found in a “real world” example of what people have to do when they’ve created this same kind of financial mess for themselves.

This might be a helpful way to explain it to family and friends who aren’t aware.

We already know that when a person, family or business continues to spend a lot more than they take in, eventually they find themselves in pretty serious financial trouble. Why? Because they’ve amassed an unsustainable amount of debt that they cannot realistically repay. (Same goes for a country, and that’s exactly what our politicians have done.)

Think of a family that takes home $50,000 a year. If they spend 25% more than they take in each year (say they’re spending $62,500 each year even though they only bring home $50,000 a year), after four years, they’ve accumulated $50,000 in new debt, plus interest, which they owe to creditors.

What happens to this family? Interest on the debt continues to accrue, their FICO score (credit rating) declines and their creditors warn that action will be taken against them to recover what is owed.

The family now has to solve the financial mess they created for themselves.

If they’re serious about solving the problem, what’s one of the first things they have to do? Cut spending.

In addition to cutting their spending down to what they take in ($50K/year), they’ll cut even more spending so they can begin to pay off the debt and interest they racked up.

In most cases, when creditors start receiving regular monthly payments on the debt, things will stabilize as long as the family continues to pay. It becomes apparent to creditors that the family has created a budget that reduces spending and frees up money to start paying down their debt.

When we look at the typical things this family will cut, first to go are luxury purchases, trips, gifts, costly entertainment/hobbies, sending money overseas… basically, non-essentials that they couldn’t afford to be spending on in the first place. Next might be things like having meals at home instead of eating out at restaurants, sack lunches for the kids instead of the daily school cafeteria expense, trading in the fancier car for one that’s half the cost, driving less, using less in utilities, etc.

If that’s not enough, they may start selling non-essential possessions/assets to raise more cash to pay toward their debt. Taking on another job would be good, but in this Obama-economy it’s probably not a realistic possibility. Some families may even need to downsize their residence; move to a two-bedroom apartment instead of maintaining the cost of the four-bedroom home they’ve been renting.

Bottom line is the family has to cut their spending “with a chainsaw,” as Jim Roger’s said when referring to what the government needs to do to solve the financial mess they created for our country.

But politicians refuse to cut spending. They want to continue spending trillions more than they take from us each year.

What is their solution?

• Create a faux fight over how much MORE they will take from us so they can keep over-spending.
• Keep spinning it as class warfare to give us a false ‘target’ to blame.
• Keep us fighting among ourselves as we get behind one of the political party’s ‘plans’ (so that we’re actually rooting for their solutions to take MORE from hard-working taxpayers).
• Divert our attention away from the real problem and the politicians who actually created the problem.
• Remain blind to the fact that politicians want to perpetuate the problem, not solve it.

Insidiously brilliant, isn’t it? It is masterful propaganda and it’s what they always do.

Investopedia explains what will happen if politicians don’t act, but don’t forget that all the ‘expirations,’ sequestration and triggers were put in place/enacted by them.

“If Congress and President Obama do not act to avert this perfect storm of legislative changes, America will, in the media’s terms, “fall over the cliff.” Among other things, it will mean a tax increase the size of which has not been seen by Americans in 60 years.”

So you see, it is our elected politicians who set the stage for this crisis in order to dupe the American people and carry out the political theater now on display so they can get away with taking more from taxpayers, continue the massive over-spending and avert the possibility of torches and pitchforks outside the Capitol.

When these politicians conclude this round of theater, American’s will unwittingly breathe a sigh of relief that they reached a ‘deal’ and saved us.

In reality, the cold hard truth is that we, the taxpayers, continue to serve at the feet of these politicians. As long as they can take more from us – and they surely can – that’s exactly what they’ll continue to do until we have no more for them to take.

The truth about the fiscal cliff, in simple terms, is that the President and Congress deliberately created the economic crisis our country faces. Their massive spending is intentional and, clearly, it hasn’t helped us; it has hurt us. Their intention all along was to continue to take more and more from the people, thereby increasing their power and wealth – and extinguishing ours. How better to expand the ranks of the poor, further de-industrialize America and destroy, from within, a once-great and prosperous nation?

After all, isn’t that what the Progressives’ hundred-year journey to institute “social justice” in America, from both sides of the aisle, has been all about? Of course it has.

Tyranny comes when the people of a nation can no longer do what they did when they were free. Are we there yet?

A Disaster Unlike Anything We Have Ever Seen

Since I've been on the subject of the dangers of an electromagnetic pulse which will send us back to the 1800s and kill many Americans, we might as well get more specifics as to what would take place under such an attack.

I sure am glad I have my faith in Christ to carry me through when I read about the dangers we face in this nation from a whole host of enemies.  My security doesn't come from the government and its ability to protect me.  Instead, I look to the Lord who has promised to provide my every need and to never leave me nor forsake me.  Now, that's security.  I hope and pray that you share that same safety net.

Read from the Economic Collapse:

A Massive Electromagnetic Pulse Could Collapse The Economy In A Single Moment

What would you do if all the lights went out and they never came back on?  That is a question that the new NBC series "Revolution" asks, but most people have no idea that a similar thing could happen in real life at any moment.  A single gigantic electromagnetic pulse over the central United States could potentially fry most of the electronics from coast to coast if it was powerful enough.  This could occur in a couple of different ways.  If a powerful nuclear weapon was exploded at a high enough altitude, it could produce an electromagnetic pulse powerful enough to knock out electronics all over the country.  Alternatively, a massive solar storm could potentially cause a similar phenomenon to happen just about anywhere on the planet without much warning.  Of course not all EMP events are created equal.  An electromagnetic pulse can range from a minor inconvenience to a civilization-killing event.  It just depends on how powerful it is.  But in the worst case scenario, we could be facing a situation where our electrical grids have been fried, there is no heat for our homes, our computers don't work, the Internet does not work, our cell phones do not work, there are no more banking records, nobody can use credit cards anymore, hospitals are unable to function, nobody can pump gas, and supermarkets cannot operate because there is no power and no refrigeration.  Basically, we would witness the complete and total collapse of the economy.  According to a government commission that looked into these things, approximately two-thirds of the U.S. population would die from starvation, disease and societal chaos within one year of a massive EMP attack.  It would be a disaster unlike anything we have ever seen before in U.S. history.

Most Americans are totally clueless about what an EMP attack could do to this nation, but the threat is very real.  There was even a congressional commission that studied the potential effects of an EMP attack on the United States for eight years...

The US Congress in 2000 established the Congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack. In 2004, the committee produced a 70-page executive summary on the EMP threat, and it issued a final report on the matter in 2008. According to the report, “several potential adversaries have or can acquire the capability to attack the United States with a high-altitude nuclear weapon-generated electromagnetic pulse (EMP). A determined adversary can achieve an EMP attack capability without having a high level of sophistication; 

Dr. William Graham was the chairman of that commission, and he says that an EMP attack could knock the United States back into the 1800s in just a single moment...

An EMP attack “could not only take down power grids, which are fragile anyway in this country, and telecommunications networks, and financial networks, and traffic controls and many other things, but in addition, there is a very close interrelationship among those national infrastructure capabilities,” Graham says.

“So, for example, we need telecommunications to re-establish the power network, and we need the power network to keep telecommunications going for more than a few hours. And we need the financial network to continue to operate to maintain the economy, we need the transportation system, roads, street lights, control systems, to operate just to get people to the failed power, telecommunication and other systems,” he adds. 

Life after an EMP attack “would probably be something that you might imagine life to be like around the late 1800s but with several times the population we had in those days, and without the ability of the country to support and sustain all those people,” Graham says. “They wouldn’t have power. Food supplies would be greatly taken out by the lack of transportation, telecommunication, power for refrigeration and so on.”

Unfortunately, very few of us are equipped to survive in such an environment.  We have become incredibly dependent on technology, and most Americans would have no idea how to do something as simple as growing their own food.  Most people would be in a very serious amount of trouble in a very short period of time.

An article by Mac Slavo detailed some of the things that we could expect in the aftermath of a massive electromagnetic pulse...

The first 24 – 48 hours after such an occurrence will lead to confusion among the general population as traditional news acquisition sources like television, radio and cell phone networks will be non-functional.

Within a matter of days, once people realize the power might not be coming back on and grocery store shelves start emptying, the entire system will begin to delve into chaos.

Within 30 days a mass die off will have begun as food supplies dwindle, looters and gangs turn to violent extremes, medicine can’t be restocked and water pump stations fail.

Are you prepared for such an event?

If not, why not?

And actually, high altitude nuclear explosions and solar storms are not the only things that could produce sizable EMP bursts.

For example, the U.S. military has developed "a directed electromagnetic pulse gun" that can take out all electronics within a limited area.  This kind of weapon can be fired from a plane, a cruise missile or even a drone.  The following is from a recent WND article...

A pre-programmed cruise missile not too different from a drone has been proven to be capable of blasting out an EMP-type microwave that was able to destroy personal computers and electrical systems inside a building over which it was flying.

The U.S. Air Force and its contractor Boeing have created the High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project, or CHAMP, which was just tested over a Utah desert.

Other nations such as Russia and China are busy developing similar weapons.  The ability to instantly take out the electronics of the enemy would be a very powerful advantage.

Even North Korea has been working on this kind of technology.  According to Newsmax, it is believed that they may have tested a "Super-EMP" weapon back in 2009…

North Korea’s last round of tests, conducted in May 2009, appear to have included a “super-EMP” weapon, capable of emitting enough gamma rays to disable the electric power grid across most of the lower 48 states

As this technology becomes more widespread, it will soon be accessible to just about everyone.  You don't actually need a nuclear weapon to set off a massive electromagnetic pulse.  A non-nuclear pulse generator can do the same thing.  If you set one off next to a power station you could potentially take out the electrical grid for an entire region.

Terrorist groups and lone wolf crazies could even use portable radio frequency weapons to do a tremendous amount of electromagnetic damage over a more limited area.  The following is from a recent article by F. Michael Maloof...

Such an individual with a penchant for electronics can pull together components from a Radio Shack or electronic store – even order the components off of selected Internet websites – and fashion a radio frequency, or RF, weapon.

As microprocessors become smaller but more sophisticated, they are even more susceptible to an RF pulse. The high power microwave from an RF weapon produces a short, very high power pulse, said to be billions of watts in a nanosecond, or billionths of a second.

This so-called burst of electromagnetic waves in the gigahertz microwave frequency band can melt electrical circuitry and damage integrated circuits, causing them to fail.

Constructing a radio frequency weapon is not that difficult.  In fact, you can find instructions for how to build them on the Internet.

People need to realize that we live in a world where technology is absolutely exploding and we are dealing with threats that previous generations never even dreamed of.  As the world becomes increasingly unstable, it is inevitable that these kinds of weapons will be used.

It is only a matter of time.

What will life look like after an EMP weapon is used?

That is something to think about.

And we also need to keep watching the sun.  It could produce a massive electromagnetic pulse at literally any moment.  As I have written about previously, scientists tell us that it is only a matter of time before we are hit with a technology-crippling solar super storm.

Most people don't even realize that the massive solar storm of 1859 fried telegraph machines all over Europe and North America.  If such a storm hit us today, the damage would potentially be in the trillions of dollars.  The following is from a recent New York Times article…

A powerful solar (or “geomagnetic”) storm has the potential to simultaneously damage multiple transformers in the electricity grid and perhaps even bring down large sections of it, affecting upwards of a hundred million people in the United States for many months, if not years.

These huge transformers are expensive and difficult to replace, and not many are stockpiled in the United States for an emergency. In the worst case, the impact would be devastating: An outage could cost a few trillion dollars, with full recovery taking years. Not only would parts of the grid be compromised, but telephone networks, undersea cables, satellites and railroads also would be affected.

A 2008 National Academy of Sciences study warned that “because of the interconnectedness of critical infrastructures in modern society,” the “collateral effects of a longer-term outage” would likely include “disruption of the transportation, communication, banking and finance systems, and government services; the breakdown of the distribution of potable water owing to pump failure; and the loss of perishable foods and medications because of lack of refrigeration.”

By the way, 2013 is the peak of the current solar cycle.  So we are moving into a time period when conditions will be very favorable for solar storms.

Let us hope that we are never hit with a massive electromagnetic pulse that is strong enough to take out all of our electronics.

But if it did happen, and all the lights went out for good, what would you do?

The Danger That Nobody Discusses

Why aren't our politicians or the American Pravda addressing the possibility of an electromagnetic pulse directed against America?  As corrupt as they all are, they aren't completely stupid, but they must think we are.

Read from New Zeal:

When the Lights Go Out in America

NoisyRoom
By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

As America prepares to celebrate the ringing in of 2013 and the reelection of a Marxist as President, I think we should also review the EMP threat before America’s lights go out. Notice, I did not say “if.” It’s a matter of “when.” I’ve had many on both sides of the aisle ridicule my statements on the threats from Russia and China. Well, the despots may have the last laugh. Add to those two, Iran and North Korea, as well as a string of smaller despotic countries and you have a threat unparalleled in history just waiting to bring America down once and for all.

The Progressives are not stupid, they know the threat is real. As they poo-poo the possibility of an EMP, please realize that these elitists feel they are prepared with their money and retreats. They may even be stealth preppers, but trust me… no one is fully prepared for an EMP attack. Aside from the obvious lack of electricity after such an attack, few realize that millions would die and rather quickly – and death will come for the poor and rich, the middle class and the elite – death is not picky, just opportunistic.

• No food delivery would cause starvation to become the norm. Cannibalism will become a reality, not just a nightmare.
• The lack of medicine and medical care would cause death for many even over what we consider to be minor ills.
• Thousands would have withdrawals from medication running out, which would cause even more death and mayhem. Depression, insanity and desperation will set in.
• The strong and evil would go on foraging treks and kill anyone who got in their way or just for the heck of it.
• Government and authority would quickly break down and only those who have prepared for security and protection have a chance of surviving.
• Without heat in the winter, many, many will freeze to death.
• Lack of sanitation will cause disease to run rampant, as will the lack of medicine and medical care.
• Increasingly scarce clean water will become a matter of life and death.

Those are just a few of the challenges we will need to meet when the lights go out. Think about it.

Before you scream that I am being melodramatic, consider North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to the United States, as demonstrated by their successful launch and orbiting of a satellite on Dec. 12. The Left claims we are years from this being a threat, but that just isn’t so. Along with Russia, China and Iran, North Korea is a mortal threat to us right now. Why do you think we still have troops in South Korea? It’s not just to protect them – it’s because the United States knows we are on the short dance list with the North Koreans and an EMP. And the NoKos are sharing information back and forth with the Iranians. Once again, there are those lefties out there screaming, “Well, they haven’t used one yet, so there is no danger!” Really? I am not a military person, but it does not take a battlefield genius to know that unlike impatient Americans, you plan your attack and strike at the optimum time when your opponent is weakest and you have the greatest chance of defeating them. You wait until you are at your strongest, so you only have to strike the killing blow once. A moron could see what is going on here, but smart people evidently have trouble with it.

Iran, China, Russia and North Korea all have nuclear capability and I would argue all (including Iran) have nuclear weapons. Do you really think they all woke up one day not hating the US any more? Nope, they are biding their time. Risk is a global game, but it would seem America cannot get herself out of a localized Monopoly board game. We are on the verge of losing and it will be sudden, bloody and violent. An EMP would do most of the hard work for our enemies – then they would just come in and clean up.

Don’t take it from me, listen to Peter Vincent Pry of the Washington Times, who is an executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. He also served on the Congressional EMP Commission, the House Armed Services Committee and the CIA:

In summer 2004, a delegation of Russian generals warned the Congressional Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Commission that secrets had leaked to North Korea for a decisive new nuclear weapon — a Super-EMP warhead.

Any nuclear weapon detonated above an altitude of 30 kilometers will generate an electromagnetic pulse that will destroy electronics and could collapse the electric power grid and other critical infrastructures — communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water — that sustain modern civilization and the lives of 300 million Americans. All could be destroyed by a single nuclear weapon making an EMP attack.

A Super-EMP attack on the United States would cause much more and much deeper damage than a primitive nuclear weapon, and so would increase confidence that the catastrophic consequences will be irreversible. Such an attack would inflict maximum damage and be optimum for realizing a world without America.

Both North Korean nuclear tests look suspiciously like a Super-EMP weapon. A Super-EMP warhead would have a low yield, like the North Korean device, because it is not designed to create a big explosion, but to convert its energy into gamma rays, that generate the EMP effect. Reportedly South Korean military intelligence concluded, independent of the EMP Commission, that Russian scientists are in North Korea helping develop a Super-EMP warhead. In 2012, a military commentator for the People’s Republic of China stated that North Korea has Super-EMP nuclear warheads.

A Super-EMP warhead would not weigh much, and could probably be delivered by North Korea’s ICBM. The missile does not have to be accurate, as the EMP field is so large that detonating anywhere over the United States would have catastrophic consequences. The warhead does not even need a re-entry vehicle, as an EMP attack entails detonating the warhead at high-altitude, above the atmosphere.

Do yourself a life-saving favor and read all of the above article. The Congressional EMP Commission estimates that within one year of an EMP detonation, two-thirds of Americans will die – that’s over 200 million people. You read that right – over 200 million Americans will perish and fast. The only saving grace will then be you won’t have to worry about martial law – there won’t be any law and it will be every person for themselves and their families. It will make the Greek riots look like play time.

I know that this potential crises can be exploited by the powers that be. They probably will use it to further abridge the Constitution. But, I have seen no real intent to protect and strengthen our national power grid. Instead, many facets are on the Internet, which make them even less secure. And Obama has curtailed our ballistic missile program which leaves us further unprotected. I contend, this is on purpose. Obama and Panetta are gutting our nuclear stores and our military program and budget. They are getting ready in 2013 to send out troops to 35 areas in Africa, further weakening our military front. America will be all but defenseless if this keeps up, leaving us a prime target for the insane Mullahs and dictators of the world. It is the ultimate anti-colonialist, pro-Islam military move on Obama’s part.

I want to leave you with some quotes from Kyle Bass, one of the world’s leading hedge fund managers:

“This Ends In War”

“We sit today at the world’s largest peacetime accumulation of debt in world history… you know how this ends right? This ends through war…

I don’t know who’s going to fight who, but I’m fairly certain in the next few years you will see wars erupt, and not just small ones…”

“More Social Unrest”

“You’re going to see more social unrest. You saw HUGE riots in Greece, and you’re seeing HUGE riots in other parts of the world over food (and lack of food) and those are actually derivatives of the financial problems that we’re seeing. We’re exporting inflation to some other nations. Going forward it’s going to be a problem.”

“They’re Not Going To Tell You”

“They’re not going to tell you [that a collapse is coming]. You’re going to have to see it for yourself. [During the Tequila crisis], the Mexican government affirmed they would not default, that they would not devalue, almost daily. The day after they said “we wont devalue,” they devalued by 60%. The government’s never going to tell you that it’s going to happen.

“Greece’s Yunker said recently, ‘When is becomes serious—you have to lie’. These guys are never going to tell you the truth, because they can’t tell you the truth. Their job is to promote confidence, not to tell you the truth.”

“Dinner With The Bank of Japan”

We recently had dinner with the deputy governor of the bank of japan, he just finished a speech denouncing money printing, or quantitative easing. We said ‘Wait a minute, when you expand your balance sheet to buy bonds, we call that money printing, what do you call it?’ He conferred with his advisers, came back and said, ‘When the market tells us it’s money printing, it’ll be money printing. When the rates go up and not down when we buy bonds, THEN it’s monetizing the deficit.”

“Where Do We Stand On Gold?”

“We just look at Gold as another currency that you can’t print… Limitless credit creation is probably a bad idea.”

I predict the next major conflict will include an EMP or EMPs and the financial crisis will be a primary fuse that will set it off. Our leaders will lie to us up until the point of no return. Any sane person can see where all this leads if they think about it and have the nerve to confront evil. When the lights go out in America, it should come as no surprise.

The Heartland of America's Gun Culture

If America wants to solve its murder problem, we need to look first and foremost at our inner cities -- the home of Obama voters.  We've got a major problem with violent gangs.  As you will soon read, almost one-fourth of  all murders in the U.S. take place in twelve cities alone.  Solve the gang problem, and we'll see a drastic decrease in murders.

We also need to discuss why we have the gang problem?  The majority of gang members come from a single-parent or a no-parent household -- 50 to 85%.  And guess when the destruction of the black family began?  Under LBJ's welfare program, when the federal government took the place of fathers in the home.  This primarily affected blacks, and now with the big increase in Hispanics, it's affecting them as well.  The majority of violent gangs consist of blacks and Hispanics.  In 2008, 50% of gang members were Hispanic, and 32% were black.  Young men grow up without a father figure and are in search of acceptance, recognition, respect, and a sense of belonging.  When they can't get these needs met at home, they often  turn to gangs.   We owe all this crime problem to liberal policies.

Read from Front Page:

America Doesn’t Have a Gun Problem, It Has a Gang Problem

Chicago’s murder rate has hit that magic 500 number. Baltimore’s murder rate has passed 200. In Philly, it’s up to 324, the highest since 2007. In Detroit, it’s approaching 400, another record. In New Orleans, it’s almost at 200. New York City is down to 414 from 508. In Los Angeles, it’s over 500. In St. Louis it’s 113 and 130 in Oakland.  It’s 121 in Memphis and 76 in Birmingham.

Washington, D.C., home of the boys and girls who can solve it all, is nearing its own big 100.

Those 12 cities alone account for nearly 3,200 dead and nearly a quarter of all murders in the United States. And we haven’t even visited sunny Atlanta or chilly Cleveland.

These cities are the heartland of America’s real gun culture. It isn’t the bitter gun-and-bible clingers in McCain and Romney territory who are racking up a more horrifying annual kill rate than Al Qaeda; it’s Obama’s own voting base.

Chicago, where Obama delivered his victory speech, matches the murder rate for Japan and is higher than the murder rates for Spain, Poland and pre-war Syria. If Chicago gets any worse, it will find itself passing the homicide rate for the entire country of Canada.

Chicago’s murder rate of 15.65 per 100,000 people looks nothing like the American 4.2 rate, the Midwestern 4.5 or the Illinois’ 5.6 rates, but it does look like the murder rates in failed countries like Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe. To achieve Chicago’s murder rate, African countries usually have to experience a bloody genocidal civil war or decades of tyranny.

But Chicago isn’t even all that unique. Or the worst case scenario. That would be New Orleans which at an incredible 72.8 murder rate is ten times higher than the national average. If New Orleans were a country, it would have the 2^nd highest murder rate in the world, beating out El Salvador.

Louisiana went red for Romney 58 to 40, but Orleans Parish went blue for Obama 80 to 17.

St. Louis has a murder rate just a little lower than Belize. Baltimore has a worse murder rate than South Africa and Detroit has a worse murder rate than Colombia. Obama won both St. Louis and Baltimore by comfortable margins. He won Detroit’s Wayne County 73 to 26.

Homicide rates like these show that something is broken, but it isn’t broken among the Romney voters rushing to stock up on assault rifles every time Obama begins threatening their right to buy them; it’s broken among Obama’s base.

Any serious conversation about gun violence and gun culture has to begin at home; in Chicago, in Baltimore, in New York City, in Los Angeles and in Washington, D.C.

Voting for Obama does not make people innately homicidal. Just look at Seattle which is agonizing over its 26 murders. That’s about the same number of murders as East St. Louis which has only 27,000 people to Seattle’s 620,000.

So what is happening in Chicago to drive it to the gates of hell ahead of Zimbabwe and Rwanda?

A breakdown of the Chicago killing fields shows that 83% of those murdered in Chicago last year had criminal records. In Philly, it’s 75%. In Milwaukee it’s 77% percent. In New Orleans, it’s 64%. In Baltimore, it’s 91%. Many were felons who had served time. And as many as 80% of the homicides were gang related.

Chicago’s problem isn’t guns; it’s gangs. Gun control efforts in Chicago or any other major city are doomed because gangs represent organized crime networks which stretch down to Mexico, and trying to cut off their gun supply will be as effective as trying to cut off their drug supply.

America’s murder rate isn’t the work of the suburban and rural homeowners who shop for guns at sporting goods stores and at gun shows, and whom news shows profile after every shooting, but by the gangs embedded in the urban areas controlled by the Democratic machine. The gangs who drive up America’s murder rate look nothing like the occasional mentally ill suburban white kid who goes off his medication and decides to shoot up a school. Lanza, like most serial killers, is a media aberration, not the norm.

National murder statistics show that blacks are far more likely to be killers than whites and they are also far more likely to be killed. The single largest cause of homicides is the argument. 4^th on the list is juvenile gang activity with 676 murders, which combined with various flavors of gangland killings takes us nearly to the 1,000 mark. America has more gangland murders than Sierra Leone, Eritrea and Puerto Rico have murders.

Our national murder rate is not some incomprehensible mystery that can only be attributed to the inanimate tools, the steel, brass and wood that do the work. It is largely the work of adult males from age 18 to 39 with criminal records killing other males of that same age and criminal past.

If this were going on in Rwanda, El Salvador or Sierra Leone, we would have no trouble knowing what to make of it, and silly pearl-clutching nonsense about gun control would never even come up. But this is Chicago, it’s Baltimore, it’s Philly and NOLA; and so we refuse to see that our major cities are in the same boat as some of the worst trouble spots in the world.

Lanza and Newtown are comforting aberrations. They allow us to take refuge in the fantasy that homicides in America are the work of the occasional serial killer practicing his dark art in one of those perfect small towns that always show up in murder mysteries or Stephen King novels. They fool us into thinking that there is something American about our murder rate that can be traced to hunting season, patriotism and bad mothers.

But go to Chicago or Baltimore. Go where the killings really happen and the illusion comes apart.

There is a war going on in America between gangs of young men who bear an uncanny resemblance to their counterparts in Sierra Leone or El Salvador. They live like them, they fight for control of the streets like them and they kill like them.

America’s horrific murder rate is a result of the transformation of major American cities into Sierra Leone, Somalia, Rwanda and El Salvador. Our murder rate now largely consists of criminals killing criminals.

As David Kennedy, the head of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control, put it, “The majority of homicide victims have extensive criminal histories. This is simply the way that the world of criminal homicide works. It’s a fact.”

America is, on a county by county basis, not a violent country, just as it, on a county by county basis, did not vote for Obama. It is being dragged down by broken cities full of broken families whose mayors would like to trash the Bill of Rights for the entire country in the vain hope that national gun control will save their cities, even though gun control is likely to be as much help to Chicago or New Orleans as the War on Drugs.

Obama’s pretense that there needs to be a national conversation about rural American gun owners is a dishonest and cynical ploy that distracts attention from the real problem that he and politicians like him have sat on for generations.

We do not need to have a conversation about the NRA. We need to have a conversation about Chicago.

Obama's Top Five Mistakes

Wow!  Barack Obama has been an absolute failure in every area of his presidency.  His policies have been disastrous to economic growth and solving the high unemployment problem.  Obama's love of anything Islamic has further endangered our nation as well as the entire Arab world.  Then, there's ObamaCare, high energy prices, illegal aliens, massive uncontrollable spending, etc.  The list could go on and on.....

However, The Telegraph has narrowed down Obama's disastrous decisions to the top five:

The 5 worst things that Barack Obama did in 2012 (besides winning that election)

It's been a great year for Obama, which means it's been a bad year for someone else

Twenty twelve sure was Obama’s year. Not only did he make the cover of Time Magazine (an honour he shares with Deng Xiaoping and Newt Gingrich) but he also got re-elected president. It helped that he ran against a man who never really wanted to win, but that shouldn't distract from Obama’s personal victory. Despite being hampered by high unemployment and a sex-obsessed Democratic Party that oh-so wants to be invited to the Playboy Mansion, he managed to become something that in post-war history is relatively rare: a two term Democrat. Well done, sir.

While Obama sits in the White House watching video mash ups of election night to the tune of The Only Way Is Up, for the losers the end of the year is an opportunity to remember the bad times. Here are a few of the things the Prez did, or didn’t do, in 2012.

1. His administration messed up in Benghazi. How or why, it's taking a long time to figure out – because the White House isn't super keen to talk about it. Only on Sunday did the President admit there had been some “sloppiness” in the handling of this terrorist attack, which is a slight upgrade from his earlier verdict of “not optimal.” The three things we do know for certain are: a) four Americans were killed, b) the cause of their deaths was misrepresented by the administration, and c) the President went fundraising in Las Vegas just one day later. No, it's not very “optimal” at all.

2. He failed to provide leadership on the economy. Dogged by poor jobs numbers throughout the election, Obama tried to shift the nation’s attention on to the culture war. As a result, the USA looked over the fiscal cliff without any sense of what the President wanted to do for the long term health of the nation’s finances. We know that he wants to raise taxes on the wealthy, but what about entitlement reform? And what is he willing to offer the Republicans that they know he will deliver on? Obama has never given a major speech on debt and has largely ignored the advice of his own task force on the subject.

3. He took a bold stand against freedom of conscience.Obamacare should have just been about expanding access to healthcare. But Obama also used it as an opportunity to compel religious employers to provide contraception coverage to their employees. This is a big philosophical departure for US liberalism, which hitherto tended to disagree with but respect Catholic moral theology. By contrast, the President made challenging the Vatican’s position on free love a big part of his re-election drive. This included an alliance with a female student, Sandra Fluke, who wanted her Catholic college to provide contraception coverage worth $1,000 a year – a figure that works out to 6 acts of contra-celibacy per day. Time Magazine considered making her a person of the year, too.

4. He stepped up his war on civil liberties. Obama has increased random searches, indefinite detention, and the power of the state to take control of civil society in the event on an emergency (this list might read like it was compiled by Ron Paul on a liquid liberty high, but even the bit about martial law is horribly true). This year we even discovered that he’s writing a kill list, which may include the names of American citizens. Then there are the drone strikes – essentially war without risk, implicitly targeted at civilian populations. Obama is starting to look like George W Bush, minus the roguish charm.

5. His ego grew another thousand feet. When Americans gathered in December to honour the memory of Hawaii’s Senator Daniel Inouye, they probably expected the President to use his eulogy to talk about the late Democrat's service to America. Instead, he described how Inouye had done the world a big favour by inspiring a young Barack Obama to shoot for the presidency. This was illustrated with a looooong description of a vacation the Obamas took across America, during which Barack saw Inouye on TV and decided that he too – glory be! – might run for office some day. Even the usually sympathetic Slate wrote, “Someone needs to tell Barack Obama … that his own birth is not Year One, the date around which all other events are understood.”

Well, this is the end of Year 4 of the Obama revolution and we have another 4 more years to look forward to. So let us raise a large glass to a second term! After all, some disappointments are best absorbed drunk – a bitter consolation that the Mormon Mitt Romney will never share.