The Prime Minister and other Israeli officials are sick and tired of rockets being constantly fired into Israel, and they have come to the conclusion that a peaceful resolution with Hamas is simply not possible. Here in the United States many on the left will criticize Israel for taking military action, but how long would any US president wait before taking military action against a terror group that was firing missiles at us? The truth is that Israel has been exceedingly patient with the situation in Gaza, but now the time for patience has run out.

Of course this could potentially spark a much wider regional war. Israel and Hezbollah have literally been on the brink of war for months, and so if a major conflict erupts it is easy to envision Hezbollah jumping in to aid their allies in the south. Right now, Hezbollah has approximately 150,000 missiles pointed at Israel, and their troops are battle-hardened after fighting for many years in Syria. And if Israel and Hezbollah go to war, there is a very strong possibility that Iran could get involved as well.

Basically we are just a hop, skip and jump away from a cataclysmic war in the Middle East, and this is one of the reasons why Israel has shown so much restraint. But at some point action must be taken. No nation is going to allow terrorist organizations to keep firing rockets at their citizens indefinitely, and the Israeli government has had enough.

And let us also hope that it can be postponed until after the upcoming Jewish holidays. But it is coming, and once Israeli tanks roll into Gaza everything will change. Global events are about to accelerate significantly, and so many of the things that we have been watching for are about to happen. Both sides have been preparing for this war for a very long time, and the death and destruction will be immense.

Trump Wins

Those on the left will not allow a Trump victory, even should he win the popular vote and the Electoral College. They are used to getting what they want and like spoiled brats, have learned that tantrums work.

It will start in the cities -- the Democrat-run cities, of course -- where the political leadership will provide them a measure of protection against identification and arrest. Seattle, Portland, LA, San Francisco, NYC, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, and Baltimore, among others, will become flashpoints of unrest.

The riots will be portrayed by the media and the Democrats as a groundswell of support for deposing a racist president.  They will bemoan the necessity of the violence, destruction, and loss of life, but remind Americans that “the people have spoken.” Blood will be spilled.

Trump Loses

The right will never believe the Democrats didn’t cheat their way to victory; in addition to understanding that a Democratic President will undemocratically implement policies by executive order that are inimical to their interests and desires. Tone-deaf to this silent majority and emboldened by victory, the new president will borrow Barry’s “pen and phone” and start issuing executive orders throwing open our borders, banning fossil fuels, and of course, implementing “common sense” gun control.  Buoyed by media, the new president will start with universal background checks and a gun registry. 

Eventually, the president will overreach, signing an order for gun confiscation, euphemistically called, “mandatory buybacks.”  Antifa and their ilk will flood the streets in support of seizing these “weapons of war.”  Media will declare, “It’s the will of the people.” And for the right, that will be the last straw (plastic or paper).

The president will call for mobilizing the National Guard.  Some governors will refuse, and army units now overseas will be sent home to deal with the growing unrest.  Mistakes will be made and there will be gunfire in the streets; people will die on both sides.  The  president will desperately call for martial law. Many Army, National Guard, and police will defect, or desert, or simply refuse orders. What will happen after that is anybody's guess. 

Some of the most woke — socially informed and engaged — people I know are woke from the right. I know conservatives who watch the news 24/7 and don’t let a single current event slip their notice. I know people who utilize grassroots efforts to engage with their community to raise awareness for an issue that is of the utmost importance to them: anti-abortion legislation. Conservatism is not about being misinformed and being woke is not about liberalism. There are educated, impassioned individuals on all sides of an issue.

I do acknowledge that the origins of the word "woke" stem from the black community and its fight for equality. I understand that, historically, racial equality has been primarily driven by liberals, and hence the historical connection between the word and partisanship is natural. However, woke is spreading. It is taking on new meaning and new reach. Woke is starting to become an umbrella term for all that is just, thus making justice synonymous with Democratic political platforms.

Such a usage of language is merely one example of rampant political polarization in the United States. We would rather assume that people on the other side are misinformed or downright idiotic than acknowledge the viability of different opinions or priorities.

So, I don’t want to be woke. I don’t want to restrict my definition of activism and intelligence to only include those who agree with me politically. I want to be open-minded and engaged. I want to be informed and passionate. I want to be an advocate and a human being beyond political issues. Maybe we can broaden the definition of “woke” to include these characteristics from both sides of the political spectrum, but until then I remain contently un-woke.

We can pretend that the Constitution, which was written to hold the government accountable, is still our governing document, but the reality of life in the American police state tells a different story. “We the people” have been terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a government that cares nothing for our lives or our liberties.

The bogeyman’s names and faces have changed over time (terrorism, the war on drugs, illegal immigration, etc), but the end result remains the same: in the so-called named of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded to such an extent that what we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago.

Most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights. A recitation of the Bill of Rights — set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches (all sanctioned by Congress, the White House, the courts and the like) — would understandably sound more like a eulogy to freedoms lost than an affirmation of rights we truly possess.

His maxim, however, can equally be applied to policymakers in the eurozone’s creditor states. Former German chancellor Helmut Kohl backed the single currency as both a fair price for reunification and as a mechanism to fix the new Germany into Europe. The euro would mark the route to a European Germany and provide a roadblock against a German Europe.

Mr Kohl’s offence — the original sin, I would say, at the launch of the single currency — was to shy away from spelling out to German voters the inescapable meaning of the bargain. It still goes unsaid. In short, Germany is the biggest beneficiary of European integration. The EU supplies the democratic stability and economic certainty on which its prosperity has been built. No country has more to lose from a break-up.

“Your average conservative consumer of information is very, very familiar with the name George Soros, but I think they’re less familiar with the interaction and the infrastructure between George Soros, the Vatican, the Catholic Church, and every one of its sub-organizations — the Conference on Catholic Bishops, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, Catholic Charities, Catholic Relief Services,” Malkin said.

“People need think very carefully if they sit in Catholic Church pews on whether they are going to donate to the annual Thanksgiving fund, because that is multiple, multiple millions of dollars that’s going to go straight into amnesty shills that operate as a compassion network when really what they are is a smuggling network,” Malkin said.

“And you’ve got all these Bishops every day attacking our president and our country … you had [Pope Francis] bragging just the other day about how he loved the criticism from the faction, the small faction of us — I’m a Catholic as well — who are defending American sovereignty,” Malkin said. “He relishes that fight.”

The Catholic Church has deep economic incentives to promote mass illegal and legal immigration to the US, as the vast majority of new arrivals to the country derive from Mexico and Central America, which are heavily Catholic, as Breitbart News has chronicled.

Over the years I have reported the findings of scientists, engineers, and architects that indicate that the official story is false. I had an open mind for two reasons. One is that having been an engineering student, I could tell the difference from a building falling down from asymmetrical structural damage and a building blowing up.

The other is that having been involved in policy issues in Washington for a quarter century I knew that such a humiliating defeat suffered by the world’s only superpower at the hands of a few Muslim terrorists would have brought instant demands from the White House, Congress, and media for investigation into how every aspect of the American national security state failed simultaneously on one morning. Instead the White House resisted the 9/11 families demands for an investigation for one year and never delivered a forensic investigation.

Instead, the country was given a 9/11 Commission Report that was merely the government’s official story of what happened. No heads rolled. No one was fired or even reprimanded. To hold no one accountable for such a massive failure and humiliating defeat is not a believable response if the official 9/11 story is true.

It is much easier for government to deceive people in a democracy where people assume everything is above board than in a dictatorship where they know it is not.

The major factors outside of Germany’s control – US trade wars and tariffs – are unlikely to change anytime soon. Demand across the continent, which could improve German exports, is also likely to remain weak.

What Europe, and especially Germany, needs is a state-funded investment programme to spur innovation and domestic demand. So far, this kind of programme has proven extremely difficult. Most European states are fiscally conservative, with the narrative of austerity (not spending beyond your means) dominating the eurozone and Germany in particular.

But there are signs this could be changing. Reports are surfacing that Germany – in recognition of this looming downturn – is looking for ways to take on new debt to invest in economic growth and take advantage of the fact that borrowing levels are at an historic low. Hopefully this investment will not come too late to avoid a prolonged recession.