Civilization Unwinding

[MRM]

But I wonder how much of the gas prices are part of the oil companies playing politics. If you'll remember before Obama took office, gas prices dropped to prices we hadn't seen in a long time. I remember them being around $1.25 or so a gallon. Since then, it's been a steady rise. Is it being done that way to make Obama look bad? If it is, the media isn't running with the story.

[Charleston]

Intresting point regarding the media boys, C. Remember back in the last Administration when gas got up to $3.15/gallon? The media boys were inflamed with stories that it was all a backdoor way to make Texas Oilmen Billions as a way of POTUS Bush saying thanks for the campaign money. Well I paid $3.45/gallon today filling up the Mercury in Hamilton county Tennessee this week. Nobody, and I mean nobody in the media  culture is discussing the explosion in fuel prices under this present Administration. $3.45/gall and you tell us things are all back to normal. Normal for what? A Euro- Socialist hades?

When the POTUS stops a pipeline the would increase the supply of non-Arab oil coming into the US and has done nothing to completely stop Iran's nuclear ambitions, the recipe for high gas prices starts cooking and it makes it too easy for the speculators to manipulate the future price.

[Jeremy Roenick]

Civilization unwinding update....  I find it highly ironic that our current President ran on a platform of "hope and change" back in 2008.  Some almost 4 years later we got change, but very little hope.

The latest evidence of civilization (as we know it) unraveling....   Laundry detergent becomes the new, preferred medium of exchange on the underground market.  You can get your drugs, liquor and other carnal pleasures with a few boxes or bottles of Tide or Gain.   

Thieves stealing Tide Detergent to make a profit

And the next big crime wave getting underway....  Cell phone snatch/grab/assaults.  Next time you're walking down the street zoned out with your face in the iPhone, you had better be looking over your shoulder...

Cell Phone Theft Crackdown

(External Embedding Disabled)

[MRM]

It appears the percentage of people willing to huff, smoke, snort, drink, or screw anything is on the rise.

I've heard about the cell phone thefts, hadn't heard about the laundry detergent thefts. Guess they'll have to put them under lock and key like the cigarettes.

[Dementia_Madness]

There is one common thread to all this, any one know what it is?

[Jeremy Roenick]

Desperation brought on by lack of opportunity/poverty/joblessness...

Or if you want to go even deeper...  A society that has turned it's back on God and morality standards.

[Dementia_Madness]

That's close...in the end it's the depravity of mankind... we can blame "civilization" or "society" but in the end it's mankind as whole, even to some extent the "church" who has turned from preaching God's word...and in many cases walk hand in hand with depravity ignoring it or even worse excusing it.

[Just Win]

That's close...in the end it's the depravity of mankind... we can blame "civilization" or "society" but in the end it's mankind as whole, even to some extent the "church" who has turned from preaching God's word...and in many cases walk hand in hand with depravity ignoring it or even worse excusing it.

Good call DM. It all gets back to the doctrine of original sin. Man is a fallen creature that is desperately wicked and saturated with pride in dire need of a transcendent ethic from above for reformation from within (present company included). The last century is replete with evidence to prove this point beyond the shadow of a doubt. From the genocides in places like the Ukraine and Siberia under the Soviets, the Nazi Germany Concentration Camps, the Cultural Revolution in China, and the killing Fields in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam the evil within man is on vivid display for all to see if they take the time to look and read.  Man CANNOT be perfected simply by improving his environment. How many times must this humanist dogma be refuted with historical examples before truth sets in? Man's wickedness goes not only to the bone but to the DNA as well and is passed on from generation to generation. The ONLY hope Man has is from above and he must be changed from the inside outward and not vice versa. I know many on the Board get weary of hearing this but the veneer of civilized behavior is razor thin and just beneath the surface is a smoldering cauldron of dissent, covetousness, and resentment that is ready to erupt thanks to contemporary political liberalism and the rejection of all things spiritual the last 50 years. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"

 I will end with this depressing yet cogent observation made by Malcolm Muggeridge, one of the finest minds of the last century, who started out in life as an atheist/journalist but became a Christian in the ladder years of his life after he had time to reconnoiter post World War II on the hopelessness of Man within himself to effect meaningful change and discover meaning and Truth.  

"...it has become abundantly clear in the second half of the twentieth century that Western Man has decided to abolish himself. Having wearied of the struggle to be himself, he has created his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, his own vulnerability out of his own strength; himself blowing the trumpet that brings the walls of his own city tumbling down, and, in a process of auto-genocide, convincing himself that he is too numerous, and labouring accordingly with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer in order to be an easier prey for his enemies; until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keels over a weary, battered old brontosaurus and becomes extinct.”

If it does unwind (and I pray earnestly every day that our great constitutional representative Republic does not fall at the hands of barbarian liberals from within scaling the walls of our cities as we type and read this) will we have a community organizer Robespierre type in power stirring up class warfare and civil unrest in the streets and on various college campi in a devilish attempt to take "advantage" of the chaos and expand his or her political power; or will we have a benevolent statesman like General Washington in charge of things during such a crisis? Sometimes if we take the time to look back, we can learn much from history.



The extreme left libertine hero of yesteryear and the best
community organizer of his time. The self-aggrandizing and
excessively arrogant Robespierre


General George Washington, Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, dismounts  
and bows humbly in prayer midst the harsh winter snow at Valley Forge

[Jeremy Roenick]

Speaking of desperation and a lack of morality.  How about the complete lack of respect for life???

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2131352/Kayla-Marie-Goldens-3-DAY-OLD-infant-Keegan-Schuchardt-snatched-gunned-down.html

Kayla Marie Golden, 28, shot dead by woman in Houston suburb of Spring.  Man snatched her baby boy Keegan Schuchardt and put him in blue Lexus

A young woman was shot dead outside a doctor's office as she took her three-day-old baby for a check-up - her killer then snatching the boy, sparking a frantic police search.

In dramatic scenes in the quiet Houston suburb of Spring, 28-year-old Kayla Marie Golden was gunned down by a woman who fired up to seven shots at close range at 2pm yesterday.

A man then grabbed her child, threw him in a light blue Lexus, which struck her as it made its escape. She screamed out 'My baby! My baby!' and died soon after.

Used to, baby snatchers sneaked into hospital nurseries and didn't confront the mothers/parents with guns.  Now we have what amounts to an armed baby-jacking that resulted in the mother's death.  Brilliant. 

Given that this child was obviously kidnapped to be sold on the black market for profit, this would be a really disturbing crime if it becomes a trend.

[MRM]

With so much security in hospitals, it's very difficult to snatch a baby from the hospital. Sadly, too many people don't watch their surroundings when out in public especially when carrying a baby or their purses.

[NCVol]

Given that this child was obviously kidnapped to be sold on the black market for profit, this would be a really disturbing crime if it becomes a trend.

The story indicates the kidnapper/killer had told friends she was adopting a child. 

[Dementia_Madness]

We are sick and we are becoming sicker.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-afghan-photos-20120418,0,5032601.story

U.S. troops posed with body parts of Afghan bombers
An American soldier says he released the photos to the Los Angeles Times to draw attention to the safety risk of a breakdown in leadership and discipline. The Army has started a criminal investigation.