ABOMINATION: USA National Cathedral Rings Bells to Cheer Gay Marriage

We have been saying it over and over again Mainstream Christianity fails to teach God's Word. Instead they teach the doctrines of man (Matthew 15:9). It should be abundantly clear to the Christian reader what times we are in. When the churches of America ring bells for homosexual marriage when God said it is a sin worthy of death you better watch out! God is not happy. Leviticus 20:13, Leviticus 18:22.

"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;" - 2 Timothy 4:3

(CBS) - The National Cathedral is pealing its church bells, along with some other Washington churches, to celebrate the Supreme Court’s decisions on gay marriage.

Cathedral spokesman Richard Weinberg said the bells rang at noon Wednesday for 45 minutes to an hour. Bells also rang at other Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Unitarian.

The cathedral scheduled a prayer service for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender families Wednesday at 7 p.m. to celebrate the ruling.

In a statement, the cathedral’s dean, the Rev. Gary Hall, says the church is ringing its bells “to celebrate the extension of federal marriage equality to all the same-sex couples modeling God’s love in lifelong covenants.”

Hall says the ruling should serve as a call for Christians to embrace religious marriage equality. - CBS: National Cathedral Rings Bells to Cheer Gay Marriage
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that backers of Proposition 8, California’s ban of same-sex marriage, had no right to appeal a federal court ruling that overturned it. As a result, same-sex marriage can resume in California and Gov. Jerry Brown quickly issued a directive to state and county clerks indicating so.

Exactly how soon same-sex marriage licenses would again be issued remained unclear though. Supreme Court rulings normally take effect after 25 days and Brown’s order, a copy of which was sent to CBS San Francisco, seemed to follow what would be a late July timetable. - Full Read: CBS: Calif. Same-Sex Marriage Gets A Supreme Court Win; SF Celebrates
Mark your calendar July 21 and wait for the wrath of GOD.....






World Events and the Bible

U.S. GDP In First Quarter Worse Than Previously Announced

WASHINGTON, June 26 (Reuters) - U.S. economic growth was more tepid than previously estimated in the first quarter, held back by a moderate pace of consumer spending, weak business investment and declining exports.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected first-quarter GDP growth would be left unrevised at 2.4 percent. When measured from the income side, the economy grew at a 2.5 percent rate, slower than the fourth-quarter's brisk 5.5 percent pace.

Details of the report, which showed downward revisions to almost all growth categories, with the exception of home construction and government, could cast a shadow over the Federal Reserve's fairly upbeat assessment of the economy last week.

Though the data is fairly backward looking, it comes as financial market conditions are tightening after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said last week the U.S. central bank would likely begin to slow the pace of its bond-buying stimulus later this year and stop the program in 2014.

Exports, previously reported to have grown, actually contracted at a 1.1 percent pace in the first quarter, cutting 0.15 percentage point from GDP growth. That likely reflects a slowdown in the global economy.

Business spending barely grew, with investment on nonresidential structures declining more sharply than previously reported. The drop in spending on nonresidential structures was the first in two years.




HuffingtonPost

Wars for water become reality today

While major powers continue to cross swords around Syria, a little further south, at a distance of a thousand kilometers, another conflict is flaming. The conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia may become the first struggle of a new type for natural resources, or water, to be more precise. Futurists are correct in their predictions as the 21st century will become the century of wars for survival.

Ethiopia, thanks to the support of the Soviet Union, was at the peak of its power during the 1970s. The country was a regional leader in East Africa. Since that time, the country has experienced several economic crises, multiple civil clashes and two wars - with Eritrea and Somali armed groups.

Leftist forces, led by the recently deceased Meles Zenawi, proposed a concept of national renaissance. The concept stipulated the construction of a large power plant on the Blue Nile that would be called "The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance." The height of the dam will be 170 meters, its length - almost 2 kilometers.

For Africa, it would be a fantastic project, just like the cost of it - nearly $ 5 billion. The design capacity of the plant is 6000 MW, and there are no other similar power plants on the black continent. As soon as the plant is launched, Ethiopia receives a powerful impetus for development, satisfies the needs of its own economy in energy and water, and also obtains a reliable channel of revenues from the export of electricity. This is a classic example of how a variety of economic and geopolitical problems could be solved in nearly one day.

However, these intentions of Addis Ababa turned out to be highly disturbing to Egypt, the territory of which lies upstream of the Nile. In case the hydropower plant is built in Ethiopia, Egypt loses more than 20 percent of water supplies and at least 40 percent of energy produced by hydroelectric power plants (mostly the Aswan one). This is a disaster for the economy and agriculture of Egypt. Egyptian President Mursi said that he was ready for anything, because the river Neil was the natural wealth of Egypt. "If Egypt is the Nile's gift, then the Nile is a gift to Egypt. The lives of the Egyptians are connected around it... as one great people. If it diminishes by one drop then our blood is the alternative, Mursi stated.

A mufti of Egyptian Islamist group Al-Gama'a al-Islamiya stated on Al Arabiya TV channel that he would declare Jihad to Ethiopia, should the country begin the construction of the power plant. The mufti also accused Israel of being a part of the project. According to him, the construction of the dam was a "conspiracy to put pressure on Egypt."

We would like to note here that the mufti is wrong. Israel learned how to put pressure on Egypt (and some other countries) a long time ago, by funding politicians of interest directly. Needless to say that this method is a lot less expensive.

In the beginning of June, Egypt urgently sent a delegation to the territory of former Somalia to assess the prospects for the revival of the Somali army that used to be at war with Ethiopia, and the creation of a military alliance with the unrecognized state of Somaliland. It is highly likely that Eritrea will take Egypt's side, taking into consideration the fact that Ethiopia defeated Eritrea in 2000. The governments of Sudan and South Sudan supported the Ethiopian government. Another developed country (by African standards) - Kenya - has not expressed its opinion on the matter. However, Kenya is interested in receiving cheap electricity from Ethiopia.

Six African countries, including Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia signed an agreement that replaced a number of documents of the colonial era. Egypt used to consume up to 70 percent of the Nile waters and could veto any decision on the construction of any type of hydro-technical facilities. Nowadays, restrictions and quotas have been lifted.

As for Egypt, if it were only about the military conflict, then the army of Egypt, which is 10-15 times superior to the armed forces of all signatories and their allies in terms of manpower and 20 times - in terms of tanks and combat aircraft, would crush the enemy in a few days. However, Egypt and Ethiopia have no common border, so the Egyptian military maneuver around semi-guerrilla forces, Somali groups and unprofessional Eritrean armed forces. In addition, the political situation in Egypt is far from being stable. A war could make matters even worse.

To crown it all, Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi has a very limited set of moves to resolve the crisis. Mursi is doomed to start combat actions. If he uses political methods, many would accuse him of betraying vital interests of the country, which would lead to a national revolution. Quite on the contrary, a successful military campaign against Ethiopia would retain the balance of the Egyptian economy and dramatically reduce the political weight of the opposition. In this case, Mursi would be able to take full control of the political situation and finish his reforms.

Should the conflict occur, it will go down in history as the first large-scale war for water.

Herbert Marcuse, the founder of the theory of overpopulation of the Earth, predicted that by the middle of the XXI century, wars for water, food and energy resources would completely replace class wars for geopolitical influence. In a nutshell, people will fight for misery that will help them survive. Will his predictions come true?

Yuri Skidanov

Pravda.Ru

The Trigger Has Been Pulled And The Slaughter Of The Bonds Has Begun

What does it look like when a 30 year bull market ends abruptly?  What happens when bond yields start doing things that they haven't done in 50 years?  If your answer to those questions involves the word "slaughter", you are probably on the right track.  Right now, bonds are being absolutely slaughtered, and this is only just the beginning.  Over the last several years, reckless bond buying by the Federal Reserve has forced yields down to absolutely ridiculous levels.  

For example, it simply is not rational to lend the U.S. government money at less than 3 percent when the real rate of inflation is somewhere up around 8 to 10 percent.  But when he originally announced the quantitative easing program, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that he intended to force interest rates to go down, and lots of bond investors made a lot of money riding the bubble that Bernanke created.  But now that Bernanke has indicated that the bond buying will be coming to an end, investors are going into panic mode and the bond bubble is starting to burst.  

One hedge fund executive toldCNBC that the "feeling you are getting out there is that people are selling first and asking questions later".  And the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries just keeps going up.  Today it closed at 2.59 percent, and many believe that it is going to go much higher unless the Fed intervenes.  If the Fed does not intervene and allows the bubble that it has created to burst, we are going to see unprecedented carnage.

Markets tend to fall faster than they rise.  And now that Bernanke has triggered a sell-off in bonds, things are moving much faster than just about anyone anticipated...

Wall Street never thought it would be this bad.

Over the last two months, and particularly over the last two weeks, investors have been exiting their bond investments with unexpected ferocity, moves that continued through Monday.

A bond sell-off has been anticipated for years, given the long run of popularity that corporate and government bonds have enjoyed. But most strategists expected that investors would slowly transfer out of bonds, allowing interest rates to slowly drift up.

Instead, since the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, recently suggested that the strength of the economic recovery might allow the Fed to slow down its bond-buying program, waves of selling have convulsed the markets.

In particular, junk bonds are getting absolutely hammered.  Money is flowing out of high risk corporate debt at an astounding pace...

The SPDR Barclays High Yield Bond exchange-traded fund has declined 5 percent over the past month, though it rose in Tuesday trading. The fund has seen $2.7 billion in outflows year to date, according to IndexUniverse.

Another popular junk ETF, the iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond, has seen nearly $2 billion in outflows this year and is off 3.4 percent over the past five days alone.

Investors pulled $333 million from high-yield funds last week, according to Lipper.

While correlating to the general trend in fixed income, the slowdown in the junk bond business bodes especially troubling signs for investment banks, which have relied on the debt markets for fully one-third of their business this year, the highest percentage in 10 years.

The chart posted below comes from the Federal Reserve, and it "represents the effective yield of the BofA Merrill Lynch US High Yield Master II Index, which tracks the performance of US dollar denominated below investment grade rated corporate debt publically issued in the US domestic market."  In other words, it is a measure of the yield on junk bonds.  As you can see, the yield on junk bonds sank to ridiculous lows in May, but since then it has been absolutely skyrocketing...

So why should the average American care about this?

Well, if the era of "cheap money" is over and businesses have to pay more to borrow, that is going to cause economic activity to slow down.

There won't be as many jobs, part-time workers will get less hours, and raises will become more infrequent.

Those are just some of the reasons why you should care about this stuff.

Municipal bonds are being absolutely crushed right now too.  You see, when yields on U.S. government debt rise, they also rise on state and local government debt.

In fact, things have been so bad that hundreds of millions of dollars of municipal bond sales have been postponed in recent days...

With yields on the U.S. municipal bond market rising, local issuers on Monday postponed another six bond sales, totaling $331 million, that were originally scheduled to price later this week.

Since mid-June, on the prospect that the Federal Reserve could change course on its easy monetary policy as the economy improves, the municipal bond market has seen a total of $2.6 billion in sales either canceled or delayed.

If borrowing costs for state and local governments rise, they won't be able to spend as much money, they won't be able to hire as many workers, they will need to find more revenue (tax increases), and more of them will go bankrupt.

And what we are witnessing right now is just the beginning.  Things are going to get MUCH worse.  The following is what Robert Wenzel recently had to say about the municipal bond market...

Thus, there is only one direction for rates: UP, with muni bonds leading the decline, given that the financial structures of many municipalities are teetering. There is absolutely no good reason to be in municipal bonds now. And muni ETFs will be a worse place to be, given this is relatively HOT money that will try to get out of the exit door all at once.

But, as I wrote about yesterday, the worst part of the slaughter is going to be when the 441 trillion dollar interest rate derivatives time bomb starts exploding.  If bond yields continue to soar, eventually it will take down some very large financial institutions.  The following is from a recent article by Bill Holter...

Please understand how many of these interest rate derivatives work.  When the rates go against you, “margin” must be posted.  By “margin” I mean collateral.  Collateral must be shifted from the losing institution to the one on the winning side.  When the loser “runs out” of collateral…that is when you get a situation similar to MF Global or Lehman Bros., they are forced to shut down and the vultures then come in and pick the bones clean…normally.  Now it is no longer “normal,” now a Lehman Bros will take the whole tent down.

Most people have no idea how vulnerable our financial system is.  It is a house of cards of risk, debt and leverage.  Wall Street has become the largest casino in the history of the planet, and the wheels could come off literally at any time.

And it certainly does not help that a whole host of cyclical trends appear to be working against us.  Posted below is an extended excerpt from a recent article by Taki Tsaklanos and GE Christenson...

**********

Charles Nenner Research (source)

Stocks should peak in mid-2013 and fall until about 2020.  Similarly, bonds should peak in the summer of 2013 and fall thereafter for 20 years.  He bases his conclusions entirely on cycle research.  He expects the Dow to fall to around 5,000 by 2018 – 2020.

Kress Cycles by Clif Droke (source)

The major 120 year cycle plus all minor cycles trend down into late 2014.  The stock market should decline hard into late 2014.

Elliott Wave Cycles by Robert Prechter (source)

He believes that the stock market has peaked and has entered a generational bear-market.  He anticipates a crash low in the market around 2016 – 2017.

Market Energy Wave (source)

He sees a 36 year cycle in stock markets that is peaking in mid-2013 and down 2013 – 2016.  “… the controlling energy wave is scheduled to flip back to negative on July 19 of this year.”  Equity markets should drop 25 – 50%.

Armstrong Economics (source)

His economic confidence model projects a peak in confidence in August 2013, a bottom in September 2014, and another peak in October 2015.  The decline into January 2020 should be severe.  He expects a world-wide crash and contraction in economies from 2015 – 2020.

Cycles per Charles Hugh Smith (source)

He discusses four long-term cycles that bottom roughly in the 2010 – 2020 period.  They are:  Credit expansion/contraction cycle;  Price inflation/wage cycle; Generational cycle;  and Peak oil extraction cycle.

Harry Dent – Demographics (source)

Stock prices should drop, on average for the balance of this decade.  Demographic cycles in the United States (and elsewhere) indicate a contraction in real terms for most of this decade.

**********

I was stunned when I originally read through that list.

Is it just a coincidence that so many researchers have come to such a similar conclusion?

The central banks of the world could attempt to "kick the can down the road" by buying up lots and lots of bonds, but it does not appear that is going to happen.

The Federal Reserve may not listen to the American people, but there is one institution that the Fed listens to very carefully - the Bank for International Settlements.  It is the central bank of central banks, and today 58 global central banks belong to the BIS.  Every two months, the central bankers of the world (including Bernanke) gather in Basel, Switzerland for a "Global Economy Meeting".  At those meetings, decisions are made which affect every man, woman and child on the planet.

And the BIS has just come out with its annual report.  In that annual report, the BIS says that central banks "cannot do more without compounding the risks they have already created", and that central banks should "encourage needed adjustments" in the financial markets.  In other words, the BIS is saying that it is time to end the bond buying...

The Basel-based BIS - known as the central bank of central banks - said in its annual report that using current monetary policy employed in the euro zone, the U.K., Japan and the U.S. will not bring about much-needed labor and product market reforms and is a recipe for failure.

"Central banks cannot do more without compounding the risks they have already created," it said in its latest annual report released on Sunday. "[They must] encourage needed adjustments rather than retard them with near-zero interest rates and purchases of ever-larger quantities of government securities."

So expect central banks to start scaling back their intervention in the marketplace.

Yes, this is probably going to cause interest rates to rise dramatically and cause all sorts of chaos as the bubble that they created implodes.

It could even potentially cause a worse financial crisis than we saw back in 2008.

If that happens, the central banks of the world can swoop in and try to save us with their bond buying once again.

Isn't our system wonderful?

Economic Collapse

America's Rejection of Almighty God and Our Founding Fathers

If George Washington, John Adams and Benjamin Rush etc... were to come back from the grave to testify against America, the majority of American’s would NOT hear them and would fully reject them. 

Americans would be enraged by their words of rebuke and seek to destroy and slander them 24/7 on the media news outlets and then have them stoned. We are too far gone morally to restore this nation and the majority of Americans do not have an ear to hear the moral and social conservatism which our founders stood for and believed. This is the sobering reality of our hour and one must ask himself, “Am I strong enough to look into the eyes of this horrific beast of reality and by faith put ALL my trust in Almighty God and in His Word, promises and ETERNAL saving solution (Mark 11:22, Heb. 11:6)."

We are too far gone morally to restore this nation and the majority of Americans do not have an ear to hear the moral and social conservatism which our founders stood for and believed.

Many TRUE conservatives are scared and truly frightened to death about what lies ahead for our once great nation. They are trapped in a subjective world view without any ETERNAL or Heavenly objective perspective, which is based on Almighty God and His infallible Word. My dear friend, fear not about what is at hand for our doomed nation and the current over whelming crises of this temporal fallen world, for all these things MUST come to pass as the Lord Jesus said (Matt. 24).

Put NOT your trust in any man or woman in these final hours.

Put NOT your trust in any man or woman in these final hours even in the conservative talk radio voices of the right for they are oblivious to the ETERNAL realities and only present a subjective world view for their listeners (Psalm 118:8, 146:3-5, Jer. 17:5, 1 John 2:17). May we always be doing our part for our nation, but never trusting in it in such days. May our focus and strength come ONLY from Almighty God and from His precious promises which are for us in His Holy Word (Rom. 8:28-39, 2 Cor. 1:20). From Heaven's ETERNAL perspective the future is always bright.

The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand my beloved! May your trust be in the Lord of hosts and this reality be seen ever clearer as we head forth to that very hour?

DJP I.F.

Theignorantfishermenblog

New Iran president thanks 'Mahdi' for victory

Iran’s newly elected president, Hassan Rohani, attributed his victory in the June 15 voting to the 12th Imam, Mahdi, a statement with ominous overtones in the Islamic regime’s quest for nuclear weapons.

The Shiites believe that at the end of times, the 12th Imam, a 9th-century prophet, will reappear with Jesus Christ at his side, kill all the infidels and raise the flag of Islam in all four corners of the world. Many analysts believe Iran is seeking nuclear capability to bring on that Armageddon.

“This political [election] was due to the kindness of the last Islamic messiah [Mahdi],” Rohani said Friday.

Kayhan newspaper, the main media outlet of the regime and the mouthpiece of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ran a centerpiece headline Saturday reporting Rohani’s statement:

“This victory and the epic saga is without a doubt due to the special kindness of the Imam Zaman (Mahdi) and the measures taken by the supreme leader, especially his guidance and words. … Without his management then it was not clear if the people of Iran would witness such a day filled with joy,” Rohani said.

“I am so happy that there is a feeling of joy in our society and that the election took place in the month of Shaban [the 8th Islamic month, representative of courage and blessings], which is the month of victory,” he said.

Much of the Western media in reporting on the election results proclaimed that Rohani is a “moderate and reformist” cleric.

An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times by David Horsey, for example, called Rohani’s election good for America and bad for the “neocons.” A piece in the Huffington Post by Flynt and Hillary Leverett, long-time supporters of dialogue with the Islamic regime, urged President Obama to approach Rohani as this represents a new opportunity, but the U.S. must accept the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic. A third op-ed, in the Christian Science Monitor by Scott Peterson, called Rohani a “diplomat sheikh” and claimed that he has shown flexibility and a willingness to compromise when he served as the regime’s nuclear negotiator.

An exclusive WND report on June 16, however, showed that Rohani has been a major player in the regime’s deceitful policies. He was put in charge of Iran’s nuclear team in 2003 by Khamenei and the so-called moderate president at that time, Mohammad Khatami. He succeeded in preventing further U.N. resolutions by agreeing to suspend parts of Iran’s nuclear activity, but, as the International Atomic Energy Agency indicated, Iran’s nuclear program never truly stopped.

In 2008, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, the former parliamentary speaker and secretary of the Iranian government during Khatami’s term, revealed that while Khatami was president and through Rohani’s efforts, “We had an agreement for the suspension of enrichment, but we were importing all the necessary parts for our nuclear activity. We were conducting our policies on two fronts: one to continue negotiations openly and keep the Americans away from such negotiations, and the other to continue our nuclear activities in secret.”

Previous statements by the president-elect clearly show his radical views. Rohani had called the 2009 Iranian protesters of corrupt elections “thugs” and said that, “If the regime had not acted, the revolutionary forces (plainclothes police) would have put the protesters in their place.”

In 2009, millions of Iranians protested against the election fraud that gave Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term. Thousands were arrested and many tortured, raped and executed.

Rohani made a similar statement about the 1999 student uprising: “These students are so despised and inferior that they could not be labeled as a movement to change the regime. If the officials had not prohibited (the students from rioting), our people would have cut them in pieces.”

A Revolutionary Guard intelligence analyst who has defected to a Scandinavian country predicted the selection of Rohani as the next president one week before the election and said the regime constantly creates an image of division within its political system between so-called conservatives and moderates. The aim of tapping the perceived moderate Rohani as the winner was to deceive the West yet again by creating new hope that there could be meaningful negotiations over Iran’s illicit nuclear program, he said, while buying even more time to develop nuclear weapons and thereby becoming untouchable by the West.

The fact that Rohani served as the representative of the supreme leader to the Supreme National Security Council since 1989, the defector said, shows that the supreme leader regards him as one of the regime’s most trusted figures. But more importantly, since all of the regime’s actions, from its nuclear activity to arming terrorists and its terrorist activities, are decided by that council, there is no doubt that Rohani participated in all of its terrorist decision-making.

Some of those decisions include the 1994 Jewish Community Center bombing in Buenos Aires, the 1996 Khobar Tower bombings in Saudi Arabia and the 2012 Burgas, Bulgaria, bus bombing.

Ayatollah Movahedi Kermani, in his Friday prayer speech last week congratulating Rohani for his election, stated that, “Before the reappearance of Imam Zaman [Mahdi], the struggle will reach its peak … in that fight there won’t even be mercy on the womb in the mother’s belly.”

WND

Pentagon celebrates gay troops

The Pentagon on Tuesday toasted gays in the military, with a top adviser to President Obama declaring the country is “safer” now that they may serve openly in the ranks.

“Because we repealed ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ our military … is stronger and our country is safer, more equal and more just,” said Valerie Jarrett, the keynote speaker at the Pentagon’s gay pride celebration.

It was the Defense Department second annual gay pride gathering since September 2011, when Mr. Obama signed the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a ban on gays serving openly in the military implemented during the Clinton administration.

This year’s 35-minute gathering in the Pentagon auditorium was more low-key and shorter than last year’s event, which featured a gay Marine officer, an Air Force lawyer and a lesbian West Point graduate.



Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/25/pentagon-celebrates-gay-troops/#ixzz2XKQe1q2z

Nearly 30% of Americans advocate for an armed rebellion

Nearly one-third of Americans say an armed revolution might need to occur in the next few years to prevent an escalating war against constitutional liberties, a new study finds.

Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind surveyed 863 US residents randomly in late April and found that 29 percent of those polled believe a revolution isn’t just imminent but imperative.

According to the study, 29 percent of Americans agree that “an armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect our liberties” during the next few years. Forty-seven percent said they disagreed with the statement entirely, with one-fifth of the sample saying they weren’t sure how to answer.

When quizzing only the most conservative of respondents, though, the call for revolution is supported by a much more significant chunk of the sample pool. PublicMind found that 44 percent of Republicans polled in the survey agree that an armed revolt is the answer to an apparent infringement of liberties. By comparison, 27 percent Independents agreed with the statement, as did only 18 percent of Democrats polled.

Pollsters say there is a reason for this inkling towards revolution, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it involves a constitutional right that has become increasingly more of a contested issue among members of Congress and regular citizens alike in recent month. At the heart of this issue, suggests PublicMind, is the gun control debate that has rekindled discussion of the Second Amendment since last year’s Aurora, Colorado and Sandy Hook, Connecticut shootings. According to the results of a second question asked during the study, 73 percent of Democrats say Congress needs new gun laws to protect Americans from gun violence, but 65 percent of Republicans are against any changes whatsoever to current legislation..

“If there was a bipartisan moment after Sandy Hook to pass gun control legislation, it’s past,” Fairleigh Dickinson professor of political science Dan Cassino writes in the report that accompanies the poll. “Partisan views have strongly re-asserted themselves, and there’s no sign that they’ll get any weaker.”

“The differences in views of gun legislation are really a function of differences in what people believe guns are for,” Cassino adds. “If you truly believe an armed revolution is possible in the near future, you need weapons and you’re going to be wary about government efforts to take them away.”

Earlier this week, RT covered a separate poll conducted recently by Fox News in which respondents were asked, “Would you be willing to give up some of your personal freedom in order to reduce the threat of terrorism?” The result of that survey when coupled with similar ones made during the last dozen years or so reveals that Americans are less willing now to part with personal freedoms in exchange for an added sense of security than they were after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

“Whether or not the government overreacted in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 (and, given the information available at the time, reasonable people can disagree), Americans then broadly supported a vigorous domestic counterterrorism policy,” Alan Rozenshtein wrote for Lawfare Blog. “This time around, a rights-restrictive approach might not garner the same public support — if indeed that’s the road the government intends to go down.”

RT

ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS SLIT CHRISTIAN PASTOR’S THROAT FOR REFUSING TO RENOUNCE HIS FAITH

LAGOS, Nigeria (TheBlaze/AP) — The pastor would not renounce his Christian faith so the Islamic extremists slit his throat.

High school students were taking exams in defiance of the militants of Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is forbidden.” So the gunmen mowed them down at their desks.

The group that Nigeria’s government has declared a prohibited terrorist organization “declared war” last week on vigilante youths who have been arresting suspects and handing them over to soldiers fighting to crush the insurgency in the northeast part of Africa’s most populous nation and the continent’s biggest oil producer.

Clearly, the situation is dire.

The radical group that once attacked only government institutions and security forces is increasingly targeting civilians. Some 155,000 square kilometers (60,000 square miles) of Nigeria are now under a state of emergency.


Nigerian soldiers patrol in the north of Borno state close to a Islamist extremist group Boko Haram former camp on June 5, 2013 near Maiduguri. Nigeria’s military yesterday disclosed details of its offensive against Islamist militants, describing a series of events that saw insurgents take control of a remote area before being pushed out by soldiers. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

“Today, there are no boundaries and they are targeting the civilian population in a way that shows Nigeria is at a dangerous turning point,” said Comfort Ero, Africa program director for the International Crisis Group.

A month-long military crackdown by a joint force of troops and police, including bombing raids with fighter jets and helicopter gunships, has broken up militant camps but succeeded only in chasing the fighters into scrubby mountains from which they launch attacks on cities and towns, under the noses of the soldiers.


The government has described the change in tactics as an “end-game strategy” of a movement near collapse. But recent attacks indicate otherwise.

The Blaze