In the News:

1. The Middle East:

Mideast in Turmoil: Two Key U.S. Allies in Danger

Uprisings in the Arab world escalated at a fever pitch Sunday and threatened two key US allies, Bahrain and Yemen, where a top Yemini general and two other commanders joined the anti-government rebellion against President Ali Abdullah Saleh
Saleh, who has held power in the terror-ridden country for 32 years, is a key ally with the United States whose fall from power could have immense ramifications in the American war against Al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists

.In Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, Sunni Muslim King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa said his forces have foiled a foreign plot against his rule.

Saudi Arabia, which like Bahrain is ruled by the Sunni Muslim despite a majority of Shi’ite Muslims, has sent 1,000 troops to help the government suppress the uprising on fears that the fall of Bahraini kingdom could spell trouble for the Saudi King, Abdullah.

Brotherhood the victor in Egyptian referendum

A referendum in Egypt on changes to the constitution brought a record turnout to the polls and a victory for both the Muslim Brotherhood and deposed president Hosni Mubarak's political party. The referendum carried by a 77-23 margin and will bring on quick elections for parliament in June and a presidential election in August.

The secularists were routed.

The Muslim Brotherhood and remnant elements of the National Democratic Party, which dominated Egyptian politics for decades, were the main supporters of the referendum.

Members of the liberal wing of Egyptian politics mostly opposed the measure, saying they lacked time to organize into effective political organizations. They said early elections will benefit the Brotherhood and the old ruling party, which they warned would seek to write a constitution that centralizes power much like the old one.

So far, everything has gone the Muslim Brotherhood's way. They successfully got requirements relaxed which allows them to run for elections, and they have pushed the elections up several months which effectively (as the article states) pushes out the more "liberal" groups as they will have no time to organize. The Muslim Brotherhood is already highly organized and this date for the elections gives them an enormous advantage.

2. World Governance

Is a new UN "principle" now guiding U.S. foreign policy and intervention?

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon also said on Thursday that the justification for the use of force was based on humanitarian grounds, and referred to the principle known as Responsibility to Protect (R2P), “a new international security and human rights norm to address the international community’s failure to prevent and stop genocides, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”

Remember that until Tuesday, the consensus around Washington DC was the US would not intervene in Libya.

Obviously UN SecGen Moon’s communication of this new “principle” (R2P) isn’t something that he thought up that morning. Apparently it was communicated (and one assumes, agreed upon) well before then and, it would seem, may have played an important part in the decision to participate in a place in which which we have no real national interest at stake.

Well, read the whole thing carefully, but you have to ask, what does agreeing with this “principle” mean in the future?

Do we intervene in Sudan or the Congo? Ivory Coast? And if not, why not? None of them, like Libya, put our core national interests at stake. But all certainly fit the new R2P principle. How about Bahrain and Yemen? Nepal?

Instead, what we see here is precisely what the left has decried for years – the US along with others who can afford it and are willing to do it –agreeing to police the world.

However, in this case, it would be at the behest of the UN.

We are agreeing that the UN can determine when and where we commit our military forces simply by invoking this principle. Invoke R2P and, by our precedent in Libya, we agree to respond.

This is a shocking development to say the least - and it is highly symbolic of what many of us have long feared.

This is a “principle” that Moon says is a “new international security and human rights norm” apparently is interpreted as a “right” to intervene with military force.

Funny – I don’t remember us agreeing to this “new norm”, do you? Did we negotiate and sign a treaty saying all of this? Or did we just hand over our power to make sovereign decisions concerning the use of our military to a world body?

Think about it – the new principle, this new “norm”, essentially gives the UN the ability to decide when we should deploy military force in support of this new “norm”.

The "New World Order" is progressing exactly as we would predict.

3. The Demise of America

Drowning in Debt

The truth is that the U.S. government is literally drowning in debt. Right now, the total debt of the U.S. government is $14,223,730,274,180.80.

It is a debt that is so large that it defies comprehension. It is also a debt that is absolutely impossible to pay off under our current financial system. Someday the weight of this debt will completely collapse our entire economy. The only thing that is keeping that from happening already is our ability to borrow even more money.

What amazes me is the fact that almost everyone is ignoring this. I have had meetings with accountants and bankers recently (hey, its tax time) and none of them seem to have a clue, and they are proceeding as if its just "business as normal". Its surreal.

All of this borrowing is enabling the U.S. economy to maintain a false level of prosperity at least for now. But we are working with borrowed time. The U.S. government will borrow about 43 percent of what it spends this year. That cannot continue indefinitely.

If we wanted to balance the federal budget today we would have to eliminate 43 percent of federal spending.

Doing that would absolutely collapse not only the U.S. economy, but the entire global economy as well.

But if we continue to add to our debt at this pace it will make our eventual collapse much worse.

We really are caught between a rock and a hard place.

The bottom line?

Our choices are massive economic pain now or even worse economic pain later

It appears that we have chosen the latter option.

The White House Office of Management and Budget is now projecting that mandatory federal spending (mostly for entitlements) will exceed the total of all federal revenues in this fiscal year. Back in 2008, the federal government warned us that this could happen 50 years from now. Instead, it is happening right now.

Do you understand what that means? It means that if we wiped out all discretionary federal spending (including the entire Department of Defense) we would still have a federal budget deficit.

Yes, the U.S. government really is drowning in debt.

Running a 1.65 trillion dollar budget deficit is national financial suicide.

Take a look at this fact:

Most Americans cannot even conceive of how much money a trillion dollars is.

If you were alive when Jesus was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since then, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.

Sadly, instead of attempting to grapple with the situation, our politicians have pushed the debt accelerator to the floor.

We were the wealthiest, most prosperous nation on the planet. We didn't have to go into debt. We didn't have to mortgage the future for the sake of the present.

But that is what we did. Now we are absolutely drowning in debt.

We are trapped in a debt black hole that is going to swallow up all of the wealth and prosperity that previous generations handed down to us.

Shame on you America. Things did not have to turn out this way.

And this:

IMF deputy chief fears a fiscal debt crisis in the West

In a blunt speech, John Lipsky, the IMF's first deputy managing director, said that advanced nations were running the risk of a "fiscal crisis" and that harsh measures would be needed to rein in debt.

He singled out the United States and Japan, saying that both countries needed to spell out "credible" plans to get their deficits under control.

Mr Lipsky said that leading countries had been "fortunate" to enjoy such low borrowing costs for so long, but this positive backdrop may not remain in place.

IMF analysis shows that advanced economies' fiscal deficits will average about 7 per cent of gross domestic product in 2011, and the average public debt ratio will exceed 100 per cent of GDP for the first time since the end of World War II.

"As is increasingly obvious, such afiscal trend simply is not sustainable," Mr Lipsky said

Financial armageddon is coming to America. This isn't a matter of "if", its a matter of "when". Denial won't make this process magically disappear.