Today’s News 4th August 2017

• Even Some Allies Fear America

  While Machiavellian disciples argue that for a leader it's better to be feared than loved, the United States often sees itself as a benign hegemon, holding its shielding hand over the world, ever since she won the Second World War.

  In fact, as Statista's Dyfed Loesche notes, many people around the world today fear that the United States isn't always a force for good in international politics.

  According to Pew Research Center, the United States' standing in the world has gone down overall.

  

  You will find more statistics at Statista

  Surprisingly, people in allied countries, such as NATO-member Turkey, or partner countries in East Asia, such as South Korea and Japan, feel threatened by American might.

  On the other end of the scale, people in India, Israel and Poland have a more positive outlook on America's role in the world.

  

  

• Vladimir Putin, At Wit's End With Washington, Opts For Poker Over Chess

  Authored by Robert Birdge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  Russian President Vladimir Putin has made a calculated bet that the embattled Trump administration will interpret his expulsion of hundreds of US diplomats from Russia as more of a friendly warning than an overtly hostile act.

  

  As US lawmakers on the weekend sent to President Trump's desk a bill that would make it virtually impossible for the US leader to revoke a new round of anti-Russia sanctions without congressional approval, Putin announced that 755 American diplomats «will have to leave Russia as a result of Washington's own policies».

  Speaking on Sunday, the Russian leader – clearly exasperated by the clinical bout of Russophobia that took possession of the American psyche long before a rich real estate developer named Donald Trump emerged on the scene – delivered a message loaded with both strength and regret when he said: «We've been waiting for quite a long time that maybe something would change for the better, we had hopes that the situation would change. But it looks like, it's not going to change in the near future … I decided that it is time for us to show that we will not leave anything unanswered».

  All things considered, Putin's response was exceptional for its balance and restraint. Although 755 diplomats may sound like a small army, slashing the US side by that number gives Moscow and Washington exactly 455 civil servants each. That sounds not only fair, but logical. 

  At the same time, Putin announced the seizure of two US properties in Moscow – a warehouse and a riverside retreat nestled in a wooded area along the shores of the Moscow River. Once again, this maneuver is merely tit-for-tat on the part of the Russians, and lacks enough punch to inflict any mortal wound on US-Russia relations. That is, unless the Americans – who have until Sept. 1 to comply with the expulsion order – wish for it to. 

  Importantly, Putin's expulsion order is not against the Trump administration. It is a well-timed response to a malicious move by ex-President Barack Obama, who, in the waning hours of his disastrous presidency, declared 35 Russian diplomats «persona non grata», while performing a land grab on Russian properties. He gave these officials and their families just 72 hours to leave the country – and right before New Year's, the most popular Russian holiday.

  At the time, Putin, confident that bilateral relations would improve under Trump, shrugged off Obama's desperate last act on the political stage. 

  «We will not create problems for American diplomats. We will not expel anyone,» he said. «Furthermore, I invite all children of US diplomats accredited in Russia to the Christmas and New Year tree in the Kremlin».

  Ironically, then-President-Elect Donald Trump called Putin «very smart» for not allowing Obama to cause him to react harshly to the expulsion, thereby delivering a long-term setback to US-Russia relations. What could not have been anticipated at the time, however, was to what extent the 'Deep State' – that disruptive and destructive shadow force that comprises the real power behind the Oval Office – would go to destroy the Trump presidency (It is worth mentioning that the very existence of the Deep State precludes the ludicrous notion that Russia somehow «hacked American democracy» since Moscow understands better than anyone that regardless of the US political party in power – Democrat or Republican, take your choice – the real decisions are made by a monolithic, supra-political structure that does not tolerate political freedom in any form, and least of all democratic. Any attempt to rig such a fixed system would be pure folly).

  The fact that Trump almost immediately declared his intent to sign the Russian sanctions bill indicates that he either caved in to the relentless pressure by the establishment, or he was never very sincere about restoring relations with Russia in the first place. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. However, judging by the unhinged anti-Russia comments by members of his staff (UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, for example, in March told NBC: «We cannot trust Russia … We should never trust Russia»), it seems Trump was the only one in Washington in favor of fixing the US-Russia relationship. 

  Indeed, after US lawmakers voted in favor of the anti-Russia bill, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson delivered a comment that was so stupid it had to be calculated. The House and Senate votes in favor of more Russian sanctions, Tillerson said, «represent the strong will of the American people to see Russia take steps to improve relations with the United States». 

  Huh?

  And then Tillerson signed off with the following statement that actually carried a thinly veiled threat: «We will work closely with our friends and allies to ensure our messages to Russia, Iran, and North Korea are clearly understood». 

  Tillerson, however, will now have to work extra hard to get the message across to America's European allies, especially the Germans, who are fuming mad about the latest anti-Russia sanctions. That's because the sanctions target any company that is involved in Russia’s energy export pipelines, like Nord Stream 2, a joint Russia-German project to carry Russian natural gas under the Baltic Sea, bypassing American client states, like Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic States. 

  In other words, what we have here is the American superpower attempting to deny the right of economic cooperation between two consenting states. In the event the US fails to get what it wants, which seems to be everything under the moon, its infantile will is enforced by the small yet lethal firearm known as 'sanctions.' Fortunately, such bumbling 'diplomacy' is transparent even to the most knee-jerk Russophobes for the very simple reason it places their own financial security at great risk.

  So what is the source of this latest anti-Russia mood coming out of Washington? Briefly, it began in earnest in September 2015 when Russia made the decision to enter the Syrian fray – legally, it should be added, with an expressed invitation by President Bashar Assad – to fight against the terrorists of Islamic State. Strangely, the more damage Russian forces inflicted upon this malevolent group, the more it was criticized by US politicians. 

  However, the anti-Russia witch hunt really hit its stride when it became clear that Hillary Clinton would lose the 2016 presidential election to the populist Donald Trump. The Deep State that backed her needed a scapegoat for the devastating loss, and Russia, as usual, provided a convenient suspect. To this day, seven months after Trump entered the White House, the world has not seen a single scrap of hard evidence to suggest Russian interference in the election. But that has not stopped the media from continuing its non-stop attacks on both Trump and Putin (We may eventually see Vice President Mike Pence, who espouses the world view of the US elite, take over the reins of the US presidency. This week, after meeting the trembling leaders of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Pence delivered this line of rubbish: «Russia seeks to redraw international borders by force, undermine democracies of sovereign nations and divide the free nations of Europe»). 

  Although we may hope that Donald Trump will see the writing on the wall as far as US-Russia relations go, and find ways to restore bilateral relations between the world's two nuclear powers, things are not so simple as that. Trump has been assailed by a mainstream media that can only be described as out of control and half-insane. Worse than the military industrial complex, it is truly hell-bent on war, which became clear after Trump bombed a Syrian airfield in April and became an overnight darling of the Neo-Liberal goon squad. When Trump eventually curbed his appetite for violence and bloodshed, he once again became a target for media-sponsored destruction.

  Clearly, either the media and its many powerful proponents will get their way and bring down Trump, or Trump – and in direct contradiction to history's tragic lessons (read Kennedy and Lincoln) – will somehow emerge victorious against the Deep State. The options for Russia, not to mention the American people themselves in such a dire and dangerous situation, are rather slim. A bit like leaving Las Vegas with more in your pocket than when you first arrived.

  In conclusion, Putin's move was a long time coming, yet this may have been exactly what the Deep State – anxious for any excuse to permanently wreck US-Russia relations – had been eagerly anticipating.

  

  

• PCR: "The Witch Hunt For Donald Trump Surpasses Salem"

  Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

  We should be scared to death that Sally Q. Yates served as a prosecutor in the Justice (sic) Department for 27 years. In the New York Times, Sally takes high umbrage to Trump’s criticism of his attorney general, Sessions, and blows Trump’s disappointment with Sessions into an attack by Trump on the rule of law.

  Sally has it backwards. The rule of law is being attacked by the appointment of a special prosecutor to find something on Trump in the absence of any evidence of a crime.

  In 1940 US attorney general Robert Jackson warned federal prosecutors against “picking the man and then putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him.

   

  It is in this realm – in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense – that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies.

   

  It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views or being personally obnoxious to, or in the way of, the prosecutor himself.”

  Robert Jackson has given a perfect description of what is happening to President Trump at the hands of special prosecutor Robert Mueller. Trump is vastly unpopular with the ruling establishment, with the Democrats, with the military/security complex and their bought and paid for Senators, and with the media for proving wrong all the smart people’s prediction that Hillary would win the election in a landslide.

  From day one this cabal has been out to get Trump, and they have given the task of framing up Trump to Mueller. An honest man would not have accepted the job of chief witch-hunter, which is what Mueller’s job is.

  The breathless hype of a nonexistent “Russian collusion” has been the lead news story for months despite the fact that no one, not the CIA, not the NSA, not the FBI, not the Director of National Intelligence, can find a scrap of evidence. In desperation, three of the seventeen US intelligence agencies picked a small handful of employees thought to lack integrity and produced an unverified report, absent of any evidence, that the hand-picked handful thought that there might have been a collusion. On the basis of what evidence they do not say.

  That nothing more substantial than this led to a special prosecutor shows how totally corrupt justice in America is.

  Furthermore the baseless charge itself is an absurdity. There is no law against an incoming administration conversing with other governments. Indeed, Trump, Flynn, and whomever should be given medals for quickly moving to smooth Russian feathers ruffled by the reckless Bush and Obama regimes. What good for anyone can come from ceaselessly provoking a nuclear Russian bear?

  The new Russian sanctions bill passed by Congress is an act of reckless idiocy. It was done without consulting Europe which will bear the cost of the bill and might reject it, thus sending shock waves through the fragile American empire.

  Congress’ thoughtless bill is a violation of the separation of powers. Foreign policy is the executive branch’s arena. The feckless Obama put the sanctions on. Obviously, if a president can put sanctions on, a president can take sanctions off.

  Trump should take his case to the American people, not via Twitter, but with a major speech. Fox News and Alex Jones, either of which has a larger audience than CNN and the New York Times, would broadcast Trump’s speech. Trump should make the case that Congress is over-reaching its constitutional authority and also preventing a reduction in dangerous tensions between nuclear powers. Trump should ask the American people forthright if they want to be driven into war with Russia by gratuitous provocation after provocation.

  Because of the powers that Bush and Obama thoughtlessly gave the presidency, Trump can declare a national emergency, cancel Congress, and arrest whomever he wishes. Of course, the presstitute media would do everything possible to sway the people and the US military against the state of emergency, but if there were a real “Russian collusion,” Trump would have Putin initiate a major crisis that would bring the people and the military to Trump’s side. That no such thing will happen is total proof that there is no “Russian collusion.”

  Even the Washington Post, an initiator and leader of the breathless “Russian collusion” lie has now published an article, “The quest to Prove Collusion is Crumbling,” that concludes that the entire orchestration is a hoax. 

  As the Washington Post article says, “the story that never was is not happening.”

  So the great “superpower America,” the “exceptional, indispensable country,” has wasted 7 months of a new presidency in a hoax when it could have been repairing the relations with Russia and China that were seriously damaged by the criminal Bush and Obama regimes. What are the utter fools that comprise the American Establishment thinking? Why do the morons want high tensions with the two powers that can remove the United States and its impotent European and British vassals from the face of the earth in a few minutes? Who gains from this? What is wrong with the American people that they cannot understand that they are being driven to their destruction? Insouciant America is clearly not a sufficiently strong term.

  To come back to the ridiculous Sally Q. Yates, clearly Sally is the embodiment of the Insouciant American. She says she spent 27 years as a Justice (sic) Department prosecutor. Yet, she is able to write this utter nonsense: “I know from first hand experience how seriously the career prosecutors and agents take their responsibility to make fair and impartial decisions based solely on the facts and the law and nothing else”

  Where was Sally Q. Yates when US attorney Rudy Giuliani used the presstitute media to frame up Michael Milken and Leona Helmsley? Giuliani never had any valid indictment against Milken but used the media and FBI harassment of Milken’s relatives to force Milken into a plea bargain and then had Milken double-crossed by the bimbo judge, who was denied her reward to the Supreme Court because it came to light that she illegally employed illegal aliens.

  Today, thanks to the corrupt American media, 99.9% of people who remember the Milken case think that Milken was convicted of insider trading, a charge for which no evidence was ever presented and which was totally absent from the coerced plea bargain that the media helped Giuliani secure.

  As best I remember my investigation of the Helmsley case, Rudy dropped charges against a corrupt accountant in exchange for false testimony against Helmsley. As I remember, both Judge Robert Bork and Alan Dershowitz, attorneys in the case, told me that the charge of tax evasion against Helmsley was preposterous. The Helmsley hotels were fully depreciated and were surviving by guest rentals alone. If the Helmsleys had wanted to reduce their income tax, all they needed to do was to sell their existing depreciated holdings and purchase other hotels in order to crank up the depreciation that reduces income tax.

  Whatever Justice (sic) Department case you look at, it stinks to high heaven. It is extremely difficult to find any justice in America.

  But Sally is certain that President Trump’s criticism of his weak AG means the end of the rule of law in the US.

  As many on the left would say, the US has never had a rule of law. It has a rule of power. How else do we explain the enormous war crimes of the Clinton, Bush, and Obama regimes, and the war crimes to come from the Trump or successor Pence regime, that never will be tried at Nuremberg?

  

  

• China Unveils Emergency Drill To "Shut Down Harmful Websites"

  China's 19th National Congress of the Communist Party – the quinquennial confab where the party selects new members of the Politburo, its ruling council – is expected to begin this fall (official dates have not yet been publicly announced). And in an effort to guarantee that the leadership reshuffle goes off without a hitch, President Xi Jinping is tightening the government’s grip on the internet to help protect the official narrative that Xi's "Chinese Dream" remains intact.

  According to Reuters, China held a drill on Thursday with internet service providers to practice taking down websites deemed harmful.

  “Internet data centers (IDC) and cloud companies – which host website servers – were ordered to participate in a three-hour drill to hone their "emergency response" skills, according to at least four participants that included the operator of Microsoft's cloud service in China.

   

  China's Ministry of Public Security called for the drill "in order to step up online security for the 19th Party Congress and tackle the problem of smaller websites illegally disseminating harmful information", according to a document circulating online attributed to a cyber police unit in Guangzhou.”

  The Communist Party “protects” China’s 1.4 billion citizens from the influence of subversive foreign using nationwide system of internet censorship known as the “Great Firewall.” But as the country’s financial regulators grow increasingly concerned about the country’s dangerously overleveraged economy, which is threatening to sink the country’s fragile stock market, it’s likely that the government sees local business media as a threat. Two years ago, following the spectacular runup and collapse of the Shanghai Composite, authorities arrested one of China’s most respected financial journalist and forced him to make an on air “apology” after the government blamed his reporting for triggering the crash.

  

  Earlier this year, authorities began a crackdown on VPNs like the Tor network which can allow mainland residents to circumvent the “great firewall.”

  “China has been tightening its grip on the internet, including a recent drive to crack down on the usage of VPNs to bypass internet censorship, enlisting the help of state-owned telecommunication service providers to upgrade the so-called Great Firewall.

  Apple last week removed VPN apps from its app store, while Amazon's China partner warned users not to use VPNs.”

  During the drill, the country’s internet data centers were asked to practice shutting down target web pages and report relevant details to the police, including the affected websites' contact details, IP address and server location, according to Reuters. With five of the seven Politburo members retiring, this year’s National Congress presents President Xi with his best opportunity yet to consolidate power. And as tensions escalate between China and several of its geopolitical rivals (notably the US, which is theatening a trade war, and India, which could instigate a real war), expect the crackdown to continue.

  

  

• Russia Sanctions And The Coming Crackdown On Americans

  Authored by Daniel McAdams via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

  Last week I wrote an article and did an interview explaining that in my reading of the new Russia sanctions bill just signed by President Trump, there is a measure opening the door to a US government crackdown on some of the non-mainstream media. In particular, Section 221 of the "Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act" would punish "persons" who are "engaging in transactions with the intelligence or defense sectors of the Government of the Russian Federation."

  At first one might think this is reading too much into the text, however as a twelve year Capitol Hill veteran bill-reader I can assure you that these bills are never written in a simple, expository manner. There is always a subtext, and in this case we must consider the numerous instances where the Director of Central Intelligence and other senior leadership in the US intelligence community have attempted to establish the idea that foreign news channels such as RT or Sputnik News are not First Amendment protected press, but rather tools of a foreign intelligence organization.

  You can see in the current atmosphere, where anti-Russia hysteria has spread like typhoid, how readily-accepted such a notion would be by many. The reds are under our beds and the Russkies have taken over our airwaves.

  I don't think the crackdown will stop at Russian government funded news organizations like RT and Sputnik, however. Once the initial strike is made at the lowest hanging fruit, the second wave will target Russia-focused organizations not funded by governments but that challenge the official US government line that Russia is our number one enemy and its government must be overthrown. Popular private alternative websites like The Duran and Russia Insider will likely be next on the list for prosecution.

  Sound farfetched? Think of it this way (I can assure you the neocons do): if the Russian government and RT are opposed to sanctions and you operate a website that also takes a line in opposition to Russia sanctions are you not doing the work of Russian intelligence? Are you not seeking to influence your readers in a manner that Russian intelligence would want? Are you not "engaging in transactions" even over the airwaves?

  And after this second wave you can be sure there will be a push to move on other alternative media that has nothing to do with Russia but that opposes US interventionist foreign policy: ZeroHedge, Lew Rockwell, Ron Paul Institute, ConsortiumNews, etc.

  Crazy, you say? Don't forget: this war against us already started last year when the Washington Post ran a front page article accusing all of the above of being Russian agents!

  What would be next? Do you read any of these alternative news sites? Do you pass along articles that oppose US sanctions policy toward Russia? You are engaging in transactions. You will be subject to "sanctions" as described in the "Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act," which is now the law of the land.

  This would never happen, you might say. The government would never compile, analyze, and target private news outlets just because they deviate from the official neocon Washington line.

  Perhaps not yet. But some US government funded "non-governmental" organizations are already doing just that.

  The German Marshall Fund has less to do with Germany these days than it did when founded after WWII as a show of appreciation for the US Marshall Fund. These days it's mostly funded by the US government, allied governments (especially in the Russia-hating Baltics), neocon grant-making foundations, and the military-industrial complex. Through its strangely Soviet-sounding "Alliance for Securing Democracy" project it has launched something called "Hamilton 68: A New Tool to Track Russian Disinformation on Twitter."

  This project monitors 600 Twitter accounts that the German Marshall Fund claims are "accounts that are involved in promoting Russian influence and disinformation goals." Which accounts does this monitor? It won't tell us. How does it choose which ones to monitor? It won't tell us. To what end? Frighteningly, it won't tell us.

  How ironic that something called the German Marshall Fund is bringing Stasi-like tactics to silence alternative media and opinions in the United States!

  So what does the "Hamilton 68" project do? In its own words it firstly "shows tweets from official Russian propaganda outlets in English, and a short post discussing the themes of the day. This is Russia’s overt messaging."

  But it goes further than that. It tracks and stores information about others who have no connection to Russia but who "on their own initiative reliably repeat and amplify Russian themes." This is what the German Marshall Fund calls a "network" of second tier disinformation distributors.

  What does this "network" of people with no connection to Russia but who amplify Russian "themes" do?

  It "reflects Russian messaging priorities, but that does not mean every name or link you see on the dashboard is pro-Russian. The network sometimes amplifies stories that Russia likes, or people with like-minded views but no formal connection to Russia."

  So, according to the self-proclaimed alliance for securing democracy you might not even know it when you are pushing Russian state propaganda!

  Do you see what they are doing here? They are using US and other government money in an effort to eliminate any news organization or individual who deviates from the official neocon foreign policy line on Russia, Syria, Ukraine, etc. They are trying to eliminate any information that challenges the neocon line. To criminalize it.

  In fact they admit that they are seeking to silence alternative viewpoints:

  Our objective in providing this dashboard is to help ordinary people, journalists, and other analysts identify Russian messaging themes and detect active disinformation or attack campaigns as soon as they begin. Exposing these messages will make information consumers more resilient and reduce the effectiveness of Russia’s attempts to influence Americans’ thinking, and deter this activity in the future by making it less effective.

  The very Soviet-sounding "Alliance for Securing Democracy" project description ends with a suitably authoritarian warning, ripped from the pages of 1984, Darkness at Noon, or Erich Honecker's "how-to" guide:

  We are not telling you what to think, but we believe you should know when someone is trying to manipulate you. What you do with that information is up to you.

  Chilling, no? And much of it is being done with your money by your government and in your name.

  That is why the neocons and their myriad think tanks (government-funded in many cases) would like nothing more than to shut down our upcoming Peace and Prosperity 2017 Conference, to be held right at their front door! They cannot stand an open debate about Washington's hyper-interventionist foreign policy. They don't want to talk about all their failed wars — and they really don't want to talk about the wars they have planned and are pushing.

  We are not the anti-Americans. They are. They hate the First Amendment. They hate debate. They hate us.

  

  

• These Are The Cities Where Rent Hikes Leave The Most People Homeless

  The idea that rising rents beget increases in a city’s homeless population is nothing new. But in a recent study, Zillow, the online real-estate database company, used a mix of government and proprietary data to examine how much influence an increase in the first variable has on the second.

  The result was surprising.

  Using a mix of government data and its own proprietary databases, the company found that the magnitude of rising rents’ impact on local homeless population varies widely between cities, even when two of those cities both have worsening homelessness problems.

  

  For example, when the rent rises 5 percent in Atlanta, another 83 people become homeless. In New York, about 3,000 do, according to a Bloomberg analysis of the data.

  “That 5 percent rent hike in Atlanta can be expected to boost the homeless population by 1.5 percent—in New York, by 3.9 percent. Cities such as Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, and Detroit may have smaller homeless populations, but theirs are also sensitive to rising rents."

  The key variable here, as Skylar Olsen, a senior economist at Zillow, explains is the amount of slack, or rental vacancy rate, in a given market.

  “Rent hikes are likelier to force more people into homelessness in housing markets with less slack, said Skylar Olsen, a senior economist at Zillow. Cities such as Houston and Tampa, she added, have been more successful in preventing rising rents from forcing people out of their homes. The study used the geographic definitions that HUD uses to count homeless populations, she said.

   

  The U.S. is short more than 7 million housing units that extremely low-income households can afford, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which defines such households as earning less than 30 percent of area median income. Such low-income renters may not be living in homes with the area’s median rent, but a median rent hike can boost prices for even the cheapest market-rate units.

   

  ‘There’s an overarching supply of units that’s becoming a real problem,’ Olsen said. ‘People move down the ladder, and it pushes everyone else down, and eventually the bottom rung falls off.’”

  Of course, rent isn’t the only factor affecting rates of homelessness; government-assistance programs funded by Housing and Urban Development keep hundreds of thousands of borderline Americans in their own homes.

  

  Now, the White House is proposing legislation that would strip $7.4 billion from HUD’s 2018 budget. Those cuts would eliminate 250,000 rental-assistance vouchers from the Section 8 housing program, according to Bloomberg. The cuts mean that the local housing officials who distribute the vouchers will need to reduce, or in some cases remove, their assistance.

  Some of those cuts will be cushioned by regular turnover, since some voucher recipients move out of the program every year, for one reason or another. But the level of proposed cuts means many local housing authorities will have to reduce how much assistance they supply to voucher holders—or, in some cases, take it away entirely. According to data from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, the US economy is already short 7 million affordable homes. A policy change like this one would likely cause that number to rise.
   

  

  

• Geopolitical Tensions Are Designed To Distract The Public From Economic Decline

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

  

  Tracking geopolitical and fiscal developments over the past several years is a bit like watching a slow motion train wreck; you know exactly what the consequences of the events will be, you try to warn people as much as possible, but, ultimately, you cannot reverse the disaster. The disaster has for all intents and purposes already happened. What we are witnessing is the aftermath as a forgone conclusion.

  This is why whenever someone asks me as an economic and political analyst "when the collapse is going to happen," I have to shake my head in bewilderment. The "collapse" is here now. It is done. It is a historical fact. It's just that not many people have the eyes to see it yet, primarily because they are hyper-focused on all the wrong things.

  For many centuries now, elitists in power have understood the value of geopolitical distraction as a tool for controlling the masses. If you examine the underlying motivations behind the majority of wars between nations regardless of the era, you will in most cases discover that the power brokers on both sides tend to be rather friendly with each other. In fact, monarchies and oligarchies are historically notorious for fabricating diplomatic tensions and conflicts in order to force populations back under their control.  That is to say, wars and other man-made conflicts give the citizenry something to react to, instead of hunting down the establishment cabal like they should.

  One of the greatest illusions of human progress is the notion that most conflicts happen at random; that there are two sides and that those sides are fighting over ideological differences. In truth, most conflicts have nothing to do with ideological differences between governments and financial oligarchs. The REAL target of these conflicts is the people — or, to be more precise, the psychology of the people. Conflicts are often engineered in order to affect a particular change within the minds of the masses or to distract them from other dangers or solutions.

  These scenarios are taken at face value by many because, unfortunately, most people have short attention spans. If an observer in 2007 was to be transported 10 years into the future, in 2017 they would find a world in dramatic and horrifying decline. The shock would be overwhelming. Ask an observer today what they think of the state of the world and they might not see much to be concerned about. The human mind becomes easily acclimated to crisis over time. We are resilient in this way, but also weak, because we forget the way things should be in order to deal with the way things are.

  We only seem to take drastic actions to improve our situation after we have already hit rock bottom. The year of 2017 has so far been host to some extreme accelerations in crisis and collapse, and rock bottom is not looking too far away anymore.

  Four trigger points around the globe concern me greatly, not because I think they will necessarily lead to a disaster any greater than the one we are already living in, but because they have the potential to effectively distract the public from more serious concerns. I am of course talking about the powder keg issues of Syria, North Korea, China vs. India, as well as Russia.

  First, let's be clear, the ongoing destabilization of our economy should be the primary concern of every person on the planet, most particularly those in the West. We are living within the husk of a dead fiscal system, reanimated with the voodoo of central bank stimulus, but only for a limited time. Economic decline is the greatest threat to cultural longevity as well as to human freedom. Even nuclear war could not hold a candle to the terror of financial disaster, because at least in a nuclear war the slate is wiped clean for establishment elites as well as the normal population. At least, in the event of nuclear war, the elites face anarchy just like we do.

  In an economic crisis, the establishment maintains a certain level of control and thus its arsenal of toys – Including biometric surveillance grids, standing military support in the form of martial law, as well as the delusion among the populace that things "might go back to the way they were before" given enough time and patience.

  There will be no nuclear war.  Perhaps a limited nuclear event, but not a global exchange. There will be no moment of apocalypse as it is commonly displayed in Hollywood films. However, we WILL witness lesser conflicts as a means to turn our gaze away from the economy itself.

  To give a quick summary of the economy so far from an American perspective, I must first remind readers of the constant misinformation that is often used by government institutions and central banks in order to hide negative data.

  For example, recovery proponents will sometimes cite the supposed "decline" in the number of people registered for food stamp (SNAP) benefits from the 47 million peak in 2013 to 42 million recipients today. Yet, they rarely mention the fact that much of this decline is directly attributed to states now enforcing work requirements instead of simply handing out SNAP cards like Mardi Gras beads.

  They also still, for some reason, like to cite the decline in the unemployment rate to 4.4 percent while continuing to ignore the fact that 95 million working age Americans are no longer counted as unemployed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They argue that this is an entirely acceptable condition, even though it is unprecedented, because "home surveys" from the BLS claim that most of these people "do not really want to work." These utterly ambiguous surveys leave open ended data to be interpreted essentially however the BLS wants to interpret it. Meaning, if they want to label millions of people as "disinterested" in employment, they can and will regardless of whether this is true or not.

  Retail store closures have tripled so far this year, with 8,600 stores projected to close in total in 2017. This far surpasses the previous record of 6,163 stores in 2008 at the onset of the credit crisis.

  This incredible implosion in brick and mortar business is often blamed on the rise of internet retail, or the "Amazon effect." This is yet another lie. Total e-commerce sales only accounted for 8.5 percent of total U.S. retail sales in the first quarter of 2017 according to the commerce department. This means that internet retail is nowhere near large enough to account for the considerable loss in standard retail business. Thus, we must look to the stagnation in consumer spending to explain the situation.

  Auto sales continue their steady decline in 2017 as the short lived boom now faces death as ARM-style loans turn over and new buyers become scarce.

  U.S. home ownership rates have collapsed since 2007. More households are renting than at any time in the past 50 years.

  U.S. household debt has now hit levels not seen since 2008, just before the credit crisis.

  Those looking for government spending to save the day should probably look elsewhere. Nearly 75 percent of every tax dollar goes towards non-productive spending on the part of government.

  I could go on and on — it is simply undeniable that nearly every sector of the U.S. economy is in steady decline compared to pre-2008 levels. This instability in the fundamentals will eventually weigh down and crash stock markets, bond markets, currency markets, etc. Such markets are the last vestige of the U.S. economy still giving the appearance of health.

  So, there will come a time, probably sooner rather than later, when the piper will have to be paid and someone will have to take the blame for our fiscal non-recovery. The international banks and central banks are certainly not going to volunteer for this even though they are the real perpetrators behind our incessant financial rot. But how do they avoid accepting responsibility?

  First, by setting the stage for another scapegoat. As I warned for months before the 2016 election, Donald Trump is the perfect target for a redirection of blame for a market crash. He has even been avidly attempting to take credit for the current market bubble, making it easier for the banks to lay blame in his lap when the entire edifice crumbles.

  Second, by warping public focus away from the economic collapse altogether and presenting them with a seemingly more dire threat.

  In Syria, this has developed into potential conflict with the Syrian government, Iran and Russia. The establishment could at any moment initiate an attempt at regime change. Not necessarily with the intent to actually unseat Bashar al-Assad, but with the intent to create as much chaos as is necessary to terrify the unwitting citizenry.  While Donald Trump has been recently credited with "ending the regime change program" in Syria by ending the CIA training and funding pipeline to "moderate rebels", this by no means equals an end to the plan to unseat Assad.  ISIS has moved west into Europe, and now direct action against Assad by western governments is more probable.  The Turkish government recently leaked the locations of multiple US bases within Syria, indicating that troops will remain on the ground and that the fractured country will continue on the same path of instability.

  The next and most likely scenario for distraction is North Korea. With North Korea's latest ICBM missile test, the perceived threat to the U.S. is now complete. The idea of North Korea striking the heart of America with a nuclear weapon is enough for many people to rationalize U.S. strike operations. That said, an invasion on the part of the U.S. makes little sense. Any strike by North Korea would be met with immediate nuclear annihilation; meaning a ground invasion to "prevent" an attack is unnecessary and might actually provoke a nuclear response rather than defuse one. Of course, it is likely that the goal in North Korea is not to prevent a nuclear event, but to once again catalyze chaos and confusion while the global economy and more importantly the U.S. economy sinks further into oblivion.

  The US government has just issued a travel ban to North Korea starting September 1st.  They have asked all Americans already visiting the country to leave immediately.

  Next, Russian tensions are reaching a new level, as the U.S. Senate has passed new sanctions based on nothing but fabricated hearsay, and Donald Trump proves me right once again with his signature on the same sanctions, calling the legislation "flawed" while at the same time displaying overt cooperation with the establishment agenda. The Russian response has so far been to expel hundreds of U.S. diplomats from their country, and warn that the sanctions constitute the beginning of a "trade war".

  My readers know well that according to the evidence I view the East/West conflict to be farcical and theatrical, but this does not mean there will not be real-world consequences to the "little people" caught in the engineered crossfire. I believe this will culminate not in a shooting war, but in an economic war. While the international financiers constructed our bubble economy and will benefit from its failure, it will be eastern nations (and Trump) that receive much of the blame for the destruction of these bubbles.

  Finally, an uncomfortable level of discord has been sparked the past month between India and China, both nuclear powers, over a border dispute in a remote valley connecting India to its ally, Bhutan.  My feeling is that this is leading to diplomatic breakdown, but not necessarily an open war.  Unfortunately, the trigger point stands ready to be exploited by globalists any time they need greater distraction.  And, to be sure, a war between two of the world's largest economies would wreak absolute havoc and provide an excellent diversion for a fiscal crash already set in motion by international banks.

  I do not see the timing of heightened geopolitical tensions in 2017 as coincidental. It appears to me that these events are perfectly organized with maximum distraction in mind as we hit the top of perhaps the most massive stock and bond bubbles in modern history. The effectiveness of the smoke and mirrors will depend on the ability of liberty proponents to keep our analytical teeth sunk into the jugular of the establishment elite, as well as our ability to remind the public that these conspirators are the true criminals behind our national and international pain. The more extreme the geopolitical disaster, the more frightened people will become and the harder it will be for us to do our job. Knowing the level of difficulty involved in preventing the terror and madness of the mob, it is not a struggle I look forward to in the slightest.

  

  

• July Payrolls Preview: Smooth Sailing But Watch Out For Cars

  At 8:30am on Friday, the BLS is expected to announce that in July the US created 180K jobs, down from 222K in June though still in line with the 6-month average of 180K, with the biggest downside risk a slowdown in durable manufacturing payrolls as auto production slumped.

  Sellside expectations:

  • UBS: 175K
  • Barclays: 175K
  • HSBC: 175K
  • SocGen: 180K
  • TD Securities: 190K
  • Goldman Sachs: 190K
  • Oxford Economics: 195K
  • Fathom Consulting: 210K
  • RBC: 220K

  The unemployment rate is expected to decline to cycle lows of 4.3% from 4.4%, although the main focus will be on average hourly earnings which are forecast to slow to 2.4% Y/Y from 2.5% last month, up 0.3% sequentially, for an indication whether wage growth is finally picking up (which judging by yesterday’s Amazon job fair which showed tens of thousands of people lining up desperate for minium wage jobs, is not happening).

  

  As RanSquawk notes, overall job growth has remained solid, despite a number of Fed officials forecasting a bigger slowdown as the US is very close to full employment. Most Fed officials have stated that the Fed is pretty much there in regards to their employment mandate, but Kashkari and Brainard have both been more cautious with Brainard saying that she is not confident that the Phillips curve can be counted on to return inflation to target and that there remains a question about whether an unemployment rate of 4.4% still meant there was slack left in the labour market.

  As mentioned above, average hourly earnings will be one of the key data points to watch as wage growth has been subdued and shown no signs of surging above 3% recently, a level consistently seen pre-crisis. However, even if earnings come in softer than expected, it’s not expected to alter the course of the Fed anytime soon: the US central bank has signalled that an announcement on the beginning of balance sheet reduction will likely come in September, with one more rate hike pencilled in for December. With at least one more payrolls report before that meeting, plus more data on inflation, this report could be one that doesn’t alter the outlook a great deal. In other words, any traders waiting for tomorrow to start their vacations, can do so one day early.

  Sectoral employment and wages:

  

  Labor Supply:

  The participation rate has been inching up. Slow wage growth also hints at less labor market tightness than the low unemployment rate would seem to suggest. The past year’s slower outflows from the labor force are consistent with that increasing supply. Through the end of last year, re-employment rates for the longterm unemployed were rising fairly rapidly—a renewed source of supply—but that improvement appears to have stalled.

  

  Possible Reporting Quirks:

  The July pay period ended on the 15th and the month also had two fewer workdays relative to June, both of which should boost seasonally-adjusted wage growth at the margin. On the negative side, Goldman notes the possibility of mean-reversion in the construction and information industries following above-trend wage growth in recent months. While wage growth has disappointed this year across multiple measures, it is likely that much of this weakness has been concentrated at the high-end, whereas wage growth in the bottom-half of the income distribution appears relatively high due to minimum wage increases and appears to be accelerating. To the extent that wage growth is more persistent in the lower and middle tiers of the income distribution, this would suggest scope for resilience in aggregate wage growth going forward.

  Recent Labor Market Indicators:

  Jobless claims continue to remain near a 44-year low with the four-week average at just 241,750. The headline figure has remained below 300K – a traditional indicator of an improving labour market – for over 2 years, the longest streak since the early 1970s. The most recent employment components of the dual ISM reports have shown employment growth continuing in July, albeit at a slower pace than June. The manufacturing survey showed employment dropping to 55.2 from 57.2 with the non-manufacturing survey dropping to 53.6 from 55.8. Nevertheless, both were still over the 50.0 threshold, indicating expansion.
  The July ADP employment report was slightly weaker than expected but still strong at 178K. The figure bodes well from Friday’s official release but the correlation between the two reports is not one to usually write home about, RBC notes that it does a better job of predicting the official figure in July, “especially since the methodology shift back in 2012”.

  Factors for a stronger report:

  • Service sector surveys. Service-sector employment surveys were mixed in July but remained at generally high levels. While the ISM non-manufacturing employment component fell 2.2pt to 53.6, our overall non-manufacturing employment tracker edged up 0.1pt to 54.8, a two-year high. This reflected gains in the Markit, New York Fed, and Richmond Fed employment subindices that were partially offset by a drop in the Dallas Fed and ISM Non-Manufacturing measures. Encouragingly, the Conference Board labor market differential – the difference between the percent of respondents saying jobs are plentiful and those saying jobs are hard to get –strengthened 2.5pt to 16.1, a 16-year high.
  • Evolving July seasonality. July nonfarm payrolls have risen by over 200k in each of the last three years (in both the first and final vintages), and growth has exceeded the 6-month average in both of the last two years. While one cannot rule out coincidence, there is a possibility that payrolls seasonality is evolving towards increased net hiring in July. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, nonfarm employment typically declines by one million jobs or more in July, reflecting the departure of public and private education employees at the end of the school-year. Continued sharp seasonal declines in these categories each July have masked what appears to be a pickup in net hiring in private payrolls ex-education services (see left panel of Exhibit 1). So far, the nonfarm payrolls seasonal adjustment factors have appeared to lag this evolution, suggesting scope for solid seasonally adjusted job growth in tomorrow’s report.

  

  Factors for a weaker report:

  • In its modestly negative preview, UBS – which expects a payroll number of 165K – notes that in June local government and healthcare payrolls rose unusually quickly, and retail jobs swung from falling to rising. The Swiss bank doubts those gains were repeated, and allows for some slowing in durable manufacturing payrolls as auto production declined. It also expects that with softer factory employment, average hourly earnings probably rose only 0.1%m/m, slowing 0.2pt to 2.3%. Furthermore, UBS notes that among the indicators of labor supply: —participation, labor market flows, and slow wage growth—hint that the jobs market is not as tight as the unemployment rate suggests. In turn, the pace of payrolls, faster or slower, is more likely an indication of changes in labor demand than supply.
  • initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits edged modestly higher, averaging 244k during the four weeks between the June and July payroll survey periods, up from 243k during the June payroll month and the cycle low of 241k in the May period. Additionally, continuing claims rose by 20k from survey week to survey week, similar to the 21k increase in the weeks leading up to the June payroll period.
  • Job availability. The Conference Board’s Help Wanted Online (HWOL) report showed a 3.3% pullback in July online job postings – its largest drop in five months. We place limited weight on this indicator at the moment, in light of research by Fed economists that suggests the HWOL ad count has been depressed by higher prices for online job ads. However, we note the possibility that the drop reflects a legitimate pull-back in labor demand.
  • Sharp slowdown in the auto sector: The manufacturing softness probably extended into July, and auto production cuts are an ongoing risk. Production cutbacks in auto manufacturing in July probably resulted in temporary layoffs as well as some drag on average hourly earnings.

  Neutral factors:

  • Manufacturing sector surveys. While headline manufacturing sector surveys softened on net in July, the employment components generally held up well. The ISM manufacturing employment component pulled back 2pt from elevated levels (-2.0pt to 55.2), and other survey data were mixed, with sequential increases in Markit, Richmond Fed, and Dallas Fed employment subindices, but declines in the Chicago PMI, Philly Fed, and Empire Fed employment measures. Our overall manufacturing employment tracker edged down 0.3pt to 55.7, the lowest since February but still well above the 2016 average of 49.4. Manufacturing payroll employment edged up 1k in July and has increased 9k on average over the last six months.
  • ADP. The payroll processing firm ADP reported a 178k increase in private payroll employment in July. While this was 12k below consensus expectations, the pace of June growth was revised up by 33k, providing mixed signals for tomorrow’s employment report. While large surprises in the ADP report have tended to predict the subsequent nonfarm payroll surprise, a 12k miss is probably not large enough to qualify. Moreover, this relationship may have deteriorated since ADP’s methodological revamp last October as shown in Exhibit 2, which plots each ADP surprise (vs. consensus based on first-reported ADP) against the subsequent nonfarm payrolls surprise.

  

  Market Reaction

  As is often the case with the employment report, a knee-jerk reaction is often observed following the headline figure. If a miss is seen then initial USD weakness could be observed with treasuries picking up and vice-versa on a stronger-than-expected headline. However, as the market digests the report, you often see a retracement depending on the other components of the report

  What the Banks Are Saying

  • BARCLAYS (EXP. 175K): We expect nonfarm payrolls to rise 175k, with a 170k increase in private payrolls. July will be the first “clean” reading on labor markets since April, as the timing of the May survey week and the return of college-aged workers to the labor force, in our view, distorted May and June payrolls. The average gain in payrolls in 2017 has been 179k, and our forecast assumes this trend rate of hiring continued in July. Elsewhere in the report, we expect the unemployment rate to decline one-tenth, to 4.3%, and average hourly earnings to rise 0.3% m/m and 2.4% y/y. Finally, we expect no change in average weekly hours at 34.5.
  • CAPITAL ECONOMICS (EXP. 222K): We estimate that overall non-farm payrolls followed the 222,000 gain in June with another healthy 200,000 increase in July. The downward trend in initial jobless claims shows little signs of abating, while the recent strength of temporary help employment is also a positive sign. In addition, the employment index of the Markit Composite PMI rose to a seven-month high in July. Another strong month of employment growth should have been enough to push the unemployment rate back down to 4.3% in July, and the surveys suggest it will fall even lower. Meanwhile, although we have pencilled in a stronger 0.3% m/m gain in average hourly earnings, base effects probably dragged the annual growth rate back down to 2.4%. But if the unemployment rate does continue to fall, wage growth should come under some renewed upward pressure before long.
  • FATHOM CONSULTING (EXP. 210K): We expect next Friday’s employment report to show that 210,000 net new nonfarm payrolls were added in July. This is slightly higher than the consensus estimate of a gain of 180,000. We forecast a 0.3% increase in average hourly earnings in July, but given the 0.4% gain in average hourly earnings in July last year, this would be consistent with the annual rate of earnings growth slipping from 2.5% to 2.4%. Such meagre earnings growth is linked to low productivity growth: with employees’ output per hour growing very slowly, workers are finding it hard to negotiate higher wages, despite the low unemployment rate.
  • GOLDMAN SACHS (EXP. 190K): We have argued that the US economy will soon move past full employment, and that the funds rate needs to rise in order to prevent an overheating that would be difficult to reverse without a recession. But the recent weakness in the inflation and wage data poses a challenge to our view. After all, full employment is typically defined as the level of resource utilization that generates wage and price pressures consistent with the Fed’s target. So the shortfall could mean that current estimates of a near-zero output and employment gap will prove wrong. Nevertheless, our conviction that we are at full employment is relatively high. First, other labor market indicators—including job openings, quits, reported skill shortages, and household assessments of job availability—are if anything indicative of an even stronger labor market than the official unemployment rate. Several of these indicators also cast doubt on the notion that labor force participation remains cyclically depressed, as does the fact that the participation rate is now slightly higher than the projection from a remarkably prescient 2006 Fed staff study. Second, we do not view the recent price and wage data as a “red flag” indicating additional slack. Core price inflation is only loosely related to labor market slack as the “price Phillips curve” is quite flat. The “wage Phillips curve” is steeper, making it in principle more suitable for backing out slack. But the recent slowdown has come mostly in areas where wage growth is statistically somewhat less sensitive to labor market slack. Moreover, surveys of wage growth have continued to accelerate and now imply a 3% pace, close to the maximum rate that we think is sustainable in the longer term. Based on this, we expect wage growth to rebound before long. In the near term, Fed officials will not need to take a strong view on these issues. Balance sheet runoff in September/October seems very likely barring a major market shock, while a September rate hike is very unlikely. So the next big date is the December meeting, when the committee needs to decide whether to resume the hikes. At least based on our analysis of the labor market, the answer is likely to be yes.
  • HSBC (EXP. 175K): The average monthly increase in nonfarm payrolls in the first half of 2017 was 180,000. Retail employment growth has slowed this year, but many other key industries continue to create jobs at a steady pace. We forecast nonfarm payrolls increased by 175,000 in July. Wage growth has picked up only modestly in recent years, even as the unemployment rate has continued to fall. We forecast a 0.3% m-o-m rise in average hourly earnings in July. The year-on-year rate could slip to 2.4%, down from 2.5% in June. We forecast the unemployment rate fell to 4.3% in July from 4.4% in June.
  • OXFORD ECONOMICS (EXP. 195K): We have July Payroll rising 195,000 on the heels of a 222,000 gain in June. Our July forecast is just above average monthly payroll growth in the 6-months ending June (+180,000). We have the July unemployment rate dipping back down to 4.3% after rising to 4.4% in June. We also see average hourly earnings in July rising 0.3% after rising by 0.2% in June.
  • RBC (EXP. 220K): Following a relatively weak start to the year (which, again, was inconsistent with nearly every other labor market metric), we expect payroll growth to remain on the firm side near-term. Accordingly, we look for headline and private NFP prints of 220K and 205K for July, respectively. This pace of payroll growth would be more than enough to elicit a sharp decline in the unemployment rate (assuming we got commensurate gains in the Household survey), but we are cognizant that with sentiment on the labor backdrop at 16-year highs (look at the Conference Board’s labor differential sitting at +16.1%), we could see some firming in the labor force beyond normal population growth (i.e., from folks coming back in from the sidelines). So we are penciling in just a modest downturn in unemployment, to 4.3% from 4.4% prior.
  • TD SECURITIES (EXP. 190K): We expect a solid 190k print, taking into account risk for a sharp pullback in government jobs as labor market indicators on balance point to a 200k+ gain. A lower unemployment rate (4.3% vs 4.4%) and solid 0.3% gain on avg hourly earnings should garner a hawkish market reaction, though due to base effects in the latter, the y/y pace on wage growth should be little changed to lower.
  • UBS (EXP. 175K): We continue to forecast headline payrolls up 175k in Friday’s employment report (consensus 180k) and private payrolls up 165k (consensus 180k). We project slightly softer average hourly earnings growth (+0.1%m/m vs consensus 0.3%), and the unemployment rate falling 0.1pt to 4.3% (consensus 4.3%). ADP reported private payrolls up 178k in July, little different from the consensus forecast for private payrolls in Friday’s employment report (180k) or our own forecast (165k). Services payrolls continued to rise on trend, but payrolls for goods-producing industries decelerated sharply, with some slowing in construction and natural resources and a decline in factory payrolls. In our forecast for BLS payrolls, we have incorporated a drag from the auto sector, where summer shutdowns appear more extensive than usual. At the margin, the ADP report supports that drag. ADP manufacturing payrolls fell 4k in July versus +17k per month on average in H1. That said, it’s hard to take too much from the ADP report. On average, ADP’s initial estimate of private payrolls has overstated the BLS estimate by 50k per month this year, but in June it instead understated by 29k. The large errors, and the low probability of guessing when they switch from positive to negative, make ADP fairly unreliable as an indicator for the BLS measure.

  

  

• 'Inconvenient' – Al Gore's Home Devours 34 Times More Electricity Than Average U.S. Household

  Authored by Drew Johnson via The Daily Caller,

  On Friday, Al Gore’s sequel to “An Inconvenient Truth” – “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” – arrives in movie theaters across the country. But there’s another inconvenient sequel worth noting and, like most sequels, this one is even worse than the original.

  Gore’s hypocritical home energy use and “do as I say not as I do” lifestyle has plunged to embarrassing new depths.

  

  In just this past year, Gore burned through enough energy to power the typical American household for more than 21 years, according to a new report by the National Center for Public Policy Research.

  The former vice president consumed 230,889 kilowatt hours (kWh) at his Nashville residence, which includes his home, pool and driveway entry gate electricity meters.

   

  A typical family uses an average of 10,812 kWh of electricity per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

  It gets worse.

  Last September alone, Gore devoured 30,993 kWh of electricity. That’s enough to power 34 average American homes for a month. Over the last 12 months, Gore used more electricity just heating his outdoor swimming pool than six typical homes use in a year.

  The National Center for Public Policy Research obtained the environmentalist’s energy-usage information from individuals at the Nashville Electric Service, the utility that provides electricity to Gore’s home and much of Middle Tennessee.

  In 2007, the day after Gore won an Academy Award for “An Inconvenient Truth,” I revealed Gore’s hypocritically high electric bills. In some months, I discovered, his residence gobbled up to 20 times more electricity than the average American household.

  When Gore’s inconvenient truth became public knowledge, he promised to change his ways and gave his property a green makeover. Gore added 33 solar panels at a princely price tag of approximately $60,000. He also upgraded the home’s windows and ductwork, replaced the insulation, put in a driveway rainwater collection system, and installed a geothermal heating system.

  The Nobel laureate also heroically went to the trouble of replacing his incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent ones.

  In total, the renovations are estimated to cost well over $250,000.

  But the home’s green facelift wasn’t enough to offset Gore’s colossal energy consumption.

  Despite spending more than a quarter-million dollars on making his home more environmentally friendly, his energy consumption is higher than ever.

  Those 33 solar panels generate about 12,000 kWh of electricity a year – way more than enough energy to power a typical American household. Gore is such an enormous energy hog, however, that his gigantic rooftop solar array produces just 5.7 percent of the electricity he uses in his home, or enough to power his home for a measly 21 days a year.

  Gore also claims that his environmental sins are washed clean because he contributes to Green Power Switch, a scheme in which customers can donate extra money beyond the cost of their power bill to support green energy efforts. The money goes to the Tennessee Velley Authority (TVA), the source of NES’ electricity, to fund renewable energy projects.

  Gore even told the “TODAY Show” that his home uses 100 percent renewable energy, but that is an outright lie.

  Just because Gore donates to the Green Power Switch program doesn’t mean he receives green energy at his home. Gore gets the same electricity every other Nashville resident receives – 87 percent of which comes from nuclear, coal and natural gas power plants. About 10 percent of Gore’s electricity comes from the TVA’s environmentally devastating dams. Only a puny 3 percent comes from renewable sources such as solar and wind.

  Not counting the $432 a month Gore spends on his Green Power Switch indulgences, the green extremist shells out about $22,000 a year to pay his electric bills.

  Spending more than $1,800 a month on an energy bill would sink most Americans, but it’s pocket change to Gore. He has manipulated environmental concerns into a big business. When his term as vice president ended in 2001, Gore’s net worth was less than $2 million. Today, Gore is worth an estimated $300 million.

  Gore apologists argue that his large home is the reason for his massive energy consumption. That’s not true, either.

  According to Energy Vanguard, a company devoted to making homes more energy efficient, a residence that uses less than 10 kWh of electricity per square foot each year is considered “efficient.”  Homes that gulp down more than 20 kWh of electricity per square foot each year are labeled “energy hogs.” Gore’s house consumed 22.9 kWh per square foot in the past 12 months making him a huge energy hog by any measure.

  Astonishingly, Gore also owns at least two other homes – a penthouse in San Francisco and a farmhouse in Carthage, Tennessee – so his carbon footprint is even larger than it appears.

  The former veep has become a prophet of environmentalism, a religion he helped create. But he is a false prophet. He appears to exploit his followers for recognition and money, and it’s unclear whether he actually believes a word he says.

  Al Gore is happy to talk the talk, but has proven completely unwilling to walk the walk when it comes to living a green lifestyle – and that should make every person question the messenger as well as the message.

  

  

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