With Passover Approaching, a Plague of Locusts Descends Upon Egypt
Mar 4th
Just like in the bible, imagine that
“And the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt: very grievous were they; before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such.” Exodus 10:14
As if we hadn’t already seen enough Biblical events this year, a plague of over 30 million locusts swarmed over Egypt’s cities and farms just three weeks before Passover begins.
A plague of locusts hit Egypt March 2013
But put your apocalyptic fears to rest. This happens every year as part of the locusts’ natural migration pattern, though this year’s swarm is especially large.
That doesn’t mean Egyptians aren’t freaked the heck out by millions of nasty bugs buzzing through the air at all hours of day and night, possibly descending upon the agriculture fields where they’re known to destroy entire crops, just like in the actual Passover story.
The crops are so far safe, Egyptian officials assured the public. As the plague made its way from the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia at the end of last week and this weekend, though, Egyptian Agricultural Minister Salah Abdel Moamen explained the situation to the country in a calmly worded statement.
“The current inspection teams at areas targeted by locusts did not witness swarms damaging a single inch of crop,” said Moamen. He added that the locusts are “sexually immature and do not depend on plants for energy since they mainly rely on fat stores.”
That said, these plages can be unpredictable. Egyptian officials didn’t expect the plague to pass by the country’s capital, until Sunday when the locusts unexpectedly arrived in Cairo. The government denied reports that the locusts had started devastating crops as well as a report from United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) that the Ministry of Agriculture cleared 11,000 hectares of land in an attempt to save the harvest. When they get hungry, a one-ton hoard of locusts can eat the same amount of food in one day as 2,500 humans, according to the UN. Egypt knows this too. Less than a decade ago, a plague of locusts nearly 40 miles wide swept over Egypt damaging crops at the majority of the country’s farms. That’s a picture of it, to the right.
Conflicting reports aside, Moamen insists that the government has everything under control. “Egyptian armed forces and the border guards are attempting to fight the swarm with the means at their disposal,” the agriculture minister said. “I ask the families living in the locust-plagued areas not to burn tires. This does not chase away the locusts, but only causes damage and could ignite large scale fires that would cost in lives.” Also, that smoke isn’t doing Egypt’s grandchildren any favors. Scientists anticipate that, as global warming worsens, plagues like this will also get worse. source – The Atlantic Wire
Obama’s DHS Buys 2,700 Light-Armored Tanks To Go With 1.6B Bullets
Mar 4th
This is getting a little creepy.
According to one estimate, since last year the Department of Homeland Security has stockpiled more than 1.6 billion bullets, mainly .40 caliber and 9mm.
DHS also purchased 2,700 Mine Resistant Armor Protected Vehicles (MRAP).
Modern Survival Blog reported:
The Department of Homeland Security (through the U.S. Army Forces Command) recently retrofitted 2,717 of these ‘Mine Resistant Protected’ vehicles for service on the streets of the United States.
Although I’ve seen and read several online blurbs about this vehicle of late, I decided to dig slightly deeper and discover more about the vehicle itself.
The new DHS sanctioned ‘Street Sweeper’ (my own slang due to the gun ports) is built by Navistar Defense (NavistarDefense.com), a division within the Navistar organization. Under the Navistar umbrella are several other companies including International Trucks, IC Bus (they make school buses), Monaco RV (recreational vehicles), WorkHorse (they make chassis), MaxxForce (diesel engines), and Navistar Financial (the money arm of the company). source – Gateway Pundit
Obama Gives $250 Million To Muslim Brotherhood
Mar 3rd
CAIRO (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday rewarded Egypt for President Mohammed Morsi’s pledges of political and economic reforms by releasing $250 million in American aid to support the country’s “future as a democracy.”
After meeting Morsi and his defense and intelligence chiefs on Sunday, Kerry flew to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and planned later stops in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, where his focus is expected to be the crisis in Syria and Iran. source – AP
Beyonce Admits To Demon Possession While Embracing Satanic Imagery
Mar 2nd
Do you allow your child to be influenced by her demonic music?
“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” Ephesians 5:11
In these last days that we are living in, the powers of darkness and evil and beginning to openly emerge into our everyday lives. Take Beyonce’s performance at this year’s Super Bowl. It was filled to overflowing with satanic symbols and imagery, Illuminati hand signs, and sinister images created by her light show. But that was not the worst of it…
As you will see in this video, Beyonce freely admits being possessed by a spirit she calls Sasha Fierce, and mentions her time and again in interviews over the span of multiple years. Producers of this video, Good Fight Ministries have this to say about her:
“Beyonce is one of the hottest artists on the scene today. But as we’ll see, there is something sinister behind her success, as Beyonce even admits, and millions of fans are clueless as to who they are actually “worshiping.”
RELATED STORY: Beyonce Flashes Illuminati Triangle Sign At Super Bowl XLVII
“I have someone else that takes over when it’s time for me to work and when I’m on stage, this alter ego that I’ve created that kind of protects me and who I really am,” – Beyonce is pictured here wearing the classic goat’s head symbol used exclusively in Satan worship.
Parents, pay close attention to what your kids are listening to. Beyonce’s music will corrupt them and fill their heads with negative, sinister and confusing imagery. Beyonce freely admits to being possessed by her spirit guide, Sasha Fierce. So lets take her at her word, assume that she is possessed with a demon and working for Satan, and don’t let her and her music within 500 miles of your children.
ISN’T THAT THEFT? Obama And DNC Refuse To Pay Back $10 MILLION Loan
Mar 1st
Last summer, with organizers struggling to raise enough money for the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., party planners turned to Duke Energy, headquartered in Charlotte, for help. Duke, the nation’s largest utility company, stepped up with a $10 million line of credit for the convention. Organizers insisted Duke would be repaid after the convention.
Or…not
A Duke Energy official told the Charlotte Observer on Thursday that Democratic officials would not repay the $10 million they owe the company. Instead, Duke Energy will write off the loan as a business expense. Shareholders are expected to absorb $6 million of the cost of the loan.
Steal from the rich….and keep it.
In effect, Duke Energy’s “loan” has turned out to be a $10 million contribution to the Democratic convention. Duke CEO Jim Rogers hinted at this possibility in an interview with the Observer last month, when it was becoming clear the Democrats might not repay the company.
“At the end of the day, we’ll do our best to get our money back,” he said. “But if we don’t, it’s just a contribution we’re making I think for the greater good of our community.”
The decision by Democratic organizers not to repay the loan smacks of hypocrisy. In the run-up to the convention, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the chair of the Democratic National Committee, vowed that convention organizers would not accept corporate money. “We will make this the first convention in history that does not accept any funds from lobbyists, corporations, or political action committees,” she said.
Yet even before the Duke loan became a straight-up donation, various convention committees revealed that they accepted corporate money. One committee took in at least $5 million in corporate money to rent Charlotte’s Time Warner Cable area and a million more in in-kind contributions from AT&T, Bank of America, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and Costco.
Asked about this hypocrisy, Democratic officials have responded by noting that their anti-corporate-cash pledge was self-imposed. Legally, they could use corporate money to fund their convention. Which, in the end, is precisely what they did. source – Mother Jones
CLOWARD-PIVEN 101: Did Obama Purposely Allow Sequester Talks To Fail?
Mar 1st
Nineteen months after it was put into place, the sequester has arrived
Question: What is the CLOWARD-PIVEN Strategy?
Answer: The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward (1926–2001) and Frances Fox Piven (b. 1932) that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with a national system of “a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty”. source – Wiki
We have long maintained that Obama seeks to collapse the American economy through massive debt, excessive welfare entitlements, and anything else he can get his hands on to wreak havoc. The damage and confusion that will be caused by the Sequester will advance those goals very nicely.
America, you have fulfilled Abraham Lincoln’s prophecy that only through an “attack from within” could we be destroyed. Enjoy your ringside seat.
From The Hill: Barring unexpected developments, President Obama will issue an order at some point on Friday — perhaps as late as 11:59 p.m. — cancelling some $85 billion in spending across the federal government.
It’s an outcome that no one in Washington wanted. When the across-the-board cuts were devised in the summer of 2011, they were intended to be so destructive, so appallingly arbitrary, that the parties would have no choice but to swallow a “grand bargain” on cutting the deficit.
But that breakthrough never came, and it’s unclear if one ever will.
Obama is scheduled to host congressional leaders at the White House on Friday, but few expect that meeting to spark progress on undoing the cuts that both sides have bemoaned as foolish.
“I think it’s probably going to take awhile before there’s a real meeting,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said on Thursday. “I would look at tomorrow as a photo op — I really would. And I don’t know of anybody who’s viewing it differently at this point.”
In the unlikely event that the White House talk produced a deal, both the House and the Senate have already jetted out of town, making the beginning of sequestration a foregone conclusion.
“The Republicans want the sequester to go forward,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said at a Thursday news conference. “They’ve said so. And any efforts to get a reasonable approach to this, they won’t let us do it.”
The only legislative action on the cuts this week occurred in the Senate, where lawmakers on Thursday voted down a pair of sequester replacement measures along mostly partisan lines.
On the House side, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) reiterated that his chamber would wait for the Senate to act. House Republicans pushed through two measures to replace the spending cuts last year, both of which expired at the start of the new Congress.
“Listen, we’ve laid out cards on the table,” said Boehner, who earlier this week told senators to “get off their ass.” “We’ve shown that we can pass bills to replace the sequester. It’s why we did it twice. It’s time for the Senate to act.”
With negotiations at a standstill, the Obama administration released a memo to give executive branch agencies guidance on how to implement cuts that will slice 9 percent off non-defense discretionary spending and 13 percent on the defense side.
Lawmakers doubt that the two parties will coalesce around a sequester replacement any time soon, even as they hope to deal with the cuts in a measure to fund the government past March 27.
“I think bad things are going to happen as far as national defense is concerned,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a defense hawk who voted against both Senate sequester bills. “I think the ramifications for the military are very severe. I hope that is a forcing mechanism to bring us back together.”
Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said the GOP’s refusal to replace part of the sequester with new tax revenues was to blame for the impasse.
Senate Democrats won 51 votes — short of the 60 necessary — on Thursday for their plan to replace the sequester with roughly a 50-50 split of revenues and spending cuts.
A GOP plan, which fell 62 to 38, would have given Obama more freedom to manage the $85 billion in cuts, which are to be implemented over a seven-month span.
Hundreds of thousands of federal employees are facing furloughs and lost pay if the sequester is kept in place. Because of notice requirements, those furloughs would likely not start until at least April, and even later in the month for civilian Pentagon employees.
The pain from the cuts, Carney said, would be “significant,” though not immediate. “They don’t all happen on Saturday,” he said. “It’s a gradual process.” he Thursday memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) advised agencies to limit hiring, employee bonuses and travel to help cope with reduced funding levels.
OMB added that agencies needed to work with employee unions to help cope with the impact on workers. The National Treasury Employees Union, for instance, said Thursday that it was ready to bargain with the IRS over the potential five to seven furlough days that would hit employees this summer.
Carney said the sequester cuts have already exacted their toll on the operations of government, including the crafting of the White House budget, which is weeks late and now expected in March.
“The series of manufactured crises around budget issues, certainly has resulted at least in part in those experts in the administration who work on those issues having to spend a lot of time dealing with those crises rather than on that,” he said. “But that’s part of the job, and they’re working on the budget.”
With the sequester deadline passed, lawmakers are turning their attention to the expiration of government funding later this month. The House is expected to vote next week on a measure to fund the final six months of the fiscal year, a measure that is expected to keep funding at sequester levels.
“We believe that the spending reductions that were agreed to we need to adhere to,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). “And the question is: Can we figure out a way to do it more sensibly?”
“I think the answer is yes, if they’d be willing to work with us. But I’m not holding my breath on that.”
Reid said Thursday that he hoped lawmakers could come together and negotiate a replacement for the sequester in the bill funding the government. But with both sides dug in, that could lead to yet another set of protracted fiscal negotiations — and the possibility that the sequester will never end.
“Now is the time to get this done, and not let it go beyond March” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.). “Get not only the budget done for this year — we can get sequestration off the table. We can get some predictability for the private sector.” source – The Hill
America’s Top Catholic Blogger Says Pope Benedict Is GAY
Feb 28th
Men living with men
Pope Benedict XVI will officially retire at 8 p.m. tomorrow, but his retirement package is raising a few eyebrows — and resurrecting rumors about his sexuality. Rather than decamp to some monastery in Germany as many expected, Benedict will instead stay living in the Vatican.
Are they partners for life…or Life Partners?
CNN reports he will be living in the Mater Ecclesiae (Mother of the Church) building, which formerly housed a cloistered convent in the Vatican gardens. He will be referred to as the “emeritus pope” and keep wearing the white — though he will lose his trademark red shoes, perhaps wearing a pair of “handcrafted brown loafers” instead, the WSJ reports.
One detail that has caused particular scrutiny is that the Pope will continue to live with his trusted secretary Archbishop Georg Ganswein, who will also be head of the new Pope’s household — from the sounds of it, working two jobs.
The Vatican denies that Ganswein working for both the old Pope and the new Pope will cause any conflict of interest. But there’s a more scandalous question as well, as put forward by Andrew Sullivan, perhaps the best-known Catholic blogger in America, today:
So Benedict’s handsome male companion will continue to live with him, while working for the other Pope during the day. Are we supposed to think that’s, well, a normal arrangement?
Sulivan, a gay man himself, has raised the question of the Pope’s sexuality before (he doesn’t suggest that the Pope has acted upon his sexual urges, we should note).
In 2010 he wrote that “it seems pretty obvious to me … that the current Pope is a gay man,” and went on to describe his reasoning:
When you look at the Pope’s mental architecture (I’ve read a great deal of his writing over the last two decades) you do see that strong internal repression does make sense of his life and beliefs. At times, it seems to me, his gayness is almost wince-inducing. The prissy fastidiousness, the effeminate voice, the fixation on liturgy and ritual, and the over-the-top clothing accessories are one thing. But what resonates with me the most is a theology that seems crafted from solitary introspection into a perfect, abstract unity of belief. It is so perfect it reflects a life of withdrawal from the world of human relationship, rather than an interaction with it. Of course, this kind of work is not inherently homosexual; but I have known so many repressed gay men who can only live without severe pain in the world if they create a perfect abstraction of what it is, and what their role is in it.
Sullivan isn’t exactly alone in his suspicions. He points towards a book by Angelo Quattrocchi (playfully titled “The Pope is Not Gay”) that he felt reached similar conclusions. In addition,former Benedictine monk-priest and author Richard Sipe claims to have spoken to a number of Roman clerics and members of the Roman press corps who were “convinced” that Benedict XVI was gay.
Of course, it doesn’t help the rumors that Ganswein has become something of a star in his own right. He’s been dubbed the “The George Clooney of the Vatican,” and appeared on the cover of the Italian Vanity Fair under the headline “It’s no sin to be good looking.” Donatella Versace has even dedicated a menswear collection to him. source – Yahoo
