FBI

While overall retail sales disappointed following President Obama's impassioned plea to Americans that the world is in grave danger from terrorists but they should go about their usual business of spend-spend-spend-ing on Black Friday, it appears they did buy one thing. As USA Today reports, more Americans had their backgrounds checked purchasing guns on Black Friday than any day on record, according to data released by the FBI this week.

So what do you do when you’re a barbaric monarchy with a justice system remarkably similar to ISIS, but at the same time want to remain very close ally of the U.S. government? You create a sophisticated propaganda network, naturally.

“These special operators will over time be able to conduct raids, free hostages, gather intelligence, and capture ISIL leaders."

For all intents and purposes, the National Security Agency has supposedly ceased its bulk collection of metadata from Americans’ phone calls, but read the fine print: nothing is going to change.

After East Chicago re-elected an accused drug dealer and murderer as councilman, we thought the bar had dropped as low as it gets for the ignorance of an electorate. But, no! Bridgeport, Connecticut residents just took the proverbial biscuit by re-electing Mayor Joseph P. Ganim - who during his last 'reign' was convicted of 16 felonies including racketeering, extortion, and bribery.

They are among us, appears to the message being delivered to America this Thanksgiving holiday. As Fox News reports, elite FBI teams are tracking at least 48 "high-risk" ISIS suspects within the U.S., as Republican Senator Dan Coats, who is on the Select Committee on Intelligence, said "there is a very significant number of people that are on suspicious watch lists, under surveillance... it's almost overwhelming."

The world is changing in so many ways which is ignored by markets and commentators. The Paris event is yet another wake up call for the markets on geopolitical risk, for the under-investment in education and basic research, but most importantly for how we continue to ignore facts. First it will get worse... we are simply not prepared for geopolitical risk to matter for markets neither are we yet willing.

These are abuses that no American should tolerate from its government, and yet not only do we tolerate them, but we help to advance them by supporting meaningless elections, allowing ourselves to be divided by partisan politics, and failing to hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution. Mark these words: if we do not push back against the menace of the police state now, if we fail to hold onto the Constitution and our constitutional republic, and if we allow the government to remain the greatest threat to our freedoms, then future Thanksgivings will find us paying the price with tyranny at home and anarchy throughout the world.

There exists a common theme amidst these signs of societal decay: The super-rich keep taking from the middle class as the middle class becomes a massive lower class. Yet the myth persists that we should all look up with admiration at the “self-made” takers who are ripping our society apart.

The American people have been forced to pay untold millions for a ten-year CIA and Pentagon program to undermine and overthrow the Syrian government, and now we are supposed to pay millions more to provide welfare for the refugees Obama created. If Obama wants to take in refugees from the chaos in Syria, there are probably plenty of vacant rooms in the White House.

Many campus activists have lashed out in frustration at “free speech purism,” which they regard as misplaced in the context of institutionalized oppression. But it is extremely short-sighted to sacrifice universal principle on the altar of identity politics for the sake of marginalized groups.

The Western world consists of a tyranny in which brainwashed nonentities live in a constructed reality. Can enough of these people be rescued to make a difference? That is the question.

Between 1989 and 2010, U.S. attorneys seized an estimated $12.6 billion in asset forfeiture cases. The growth rate during that time averaged +19.4% annually. By 2014, that number had ballooned to roughly $4.5 billion for the year. Now, according to the FBI, the total amount of goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses. This means that the police are now taking more assets than the criminals.