America

Authored by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

While the news waves groan with stories about “America’s Opioid Epidemic” you may discern that there is little effort to actually understand what’s behind it, namely, the fact that life in the United States has become unspeakably depressing, empty, and purposeless for a large class of citizens. I mean unspeakably literally. If you want evidence of our inability to construct a coherent story about what’s happening in this country, there it is.

Despite yesterday's whopping beats by Amazon and Google which sent the Nasdaq to new record highs after hours, and brought Jeff Bezos "this close" to overtaking Bill Gates as the world's richest man, this morning futures S&P futures are little changed ahead of the closely watched Q1 GDP report, European stocks and Asian equities are slightly lower, oil is higher after Russia's energy minister Novak said Russia had reached the 300kbpd oil cut per the OPEC pact, and the dollar was modestly in the red.

The US Is Now The Ultimate Police State

The US is without any doubt now the worst police state, not only in reality exceeding Gestapo Nazi Germany, but exceeding the human imagination of George Orwell and other authors of dystopias.

And this utterly corrupt criminal police state gets away with pretending to be the “defender of democracy and freedom.” The insouciant American population has no clue.

Freedom of speech is dead in America as are all other freedoms.

https://sputniknews.com/military/201704271053085139-us-detains-journalist-free-speech/

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Reporters without Borders just published its annual World Press Freedom Index rankings, and the results for both the U.S. and UK are not impressive. Both countries declined two spots from last year, with the UK at 41, and the greatest and most free nation on earth, America, down to 43.

Here’s The Guardian reporting on the UK’s decline:

Back in the summer of 2016, as Obamacare rates were being set for the 2017 plan year, we repeatedly argued that the entire system was on the "verge of collapse" as premiums were soaring, risk pools were deteriorating and insurers were pulling out of exchanges all around the country leaving many Americans with just a single 'option' for health insurance (see "Obamacare On "Verge Of Collapse" As Premiums Set To Soar Again In 2017").