Marriage rate is at lowest point in more than a century

The marriage rate is at its lowest point in more than a century, and the number of marriages across the USA fell more than 5% during the recession. But a new analysis projects that pent-up demand and the large population of marriage-eligible Millennials, ages 18-34, means more will be headed to the altar over the next two years.

Cultural changes about whether and when to marry, the fact that two-thirds of first marriages are preceded by cohabitation and the recession's financial fallout — including unemployment and underemployment — fueled the wedding decline. Projections from the private company Demographic Intelligence of Charlottesville, Va., says the signs are right for a temporary boost in weddings.

The company projects a 4% increase in the number of weddings since 2009, reaching 2.168 million this year; 2.189 million in 2014. Depending on the economic recovery, the report projects a continuing increase to 2.208 million in 2015. Although it finds marriage numbers are stagnant or declining among those with a high school education or less, younger Americans, and the less affluent, numbers are rising among women ages 25-34, the college-educated and the affluent, which is where "short-term increases in weddings will be concentrated," says this analysis. Read more >>

Obama is flat-out lying about the employment figures

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James Howard Kunstler
In The Long Emergency (2005, Atlantic Monthly Press), I said that we ought to expect the federal government to become increasingly impotent and ineffectual - that this would be a hallmark of the times. In fact, I said that any enterprise organized at the colossal scale would function poorly in years ahead, whether it was a government, a state university, a national chain retail company, or a giant midwestern farm. It is characteristic of the compressive contraction our society faces that giant hypercomplex systems will wobble and fail. We should expect this.

It's tragic that the avatar of hopefulness himself, Barack Obama, stepped into his role at exactly the moment when this set of conditions was getting traction. It is sure to get worse, and there are going to be a lot of disappointed people out there who will be suffering terrible losses and real pain in daily life. Societies don't do well when the public falls into the broad despair that is the opposite of hope. That's when the long knives and the tribal animosities come out and things get smashed.

Within the context of conventional party politics - the kind that has been baseline "normal" in the USA for a long time - we see this playing out in two factions that are increasingly out-of-touch with reality. The Obama government has made itself hostage to a toxic form of pretense and lying. In order to sustain the wish for "hope" - if not hope itself - the President and his White House advisors along with his cabinet appointments, are pretending that the historical forces of compressive contraction are not underway. They're flat-out lying about the employment figures issued in the government's name. They're willfully ignoring the comprehensive bankruptcy gripping government at all levels. They refuse to bring the law to bear against "the malefactors of great wealth." They appear to not understand the epochal energy scarcity problem the whole world faces, or its implications for industrial economies. Most of all, they persist in promoting the lie that this economy can return to the prior state of reckless debt accumulation (a.k.a "consumerism") that has made us so ridiculous and unhealthy.

The trouble with self-delusion, either in a person or a society, is that reality doesn't care what anybody believes, or what story they put out. Reality doesn't "spin." Reality does not have a self-image problem. Reality does not yield its workings to self-esteem management. These days, Americans don't like reality very much because it won't let them push it around. Reality is an implacable force and the only question for human beings in the face of it is: what will you do? In other words, it's not really possible to manage reality, but you can certainly choose to manage your affairs within reality. We won't do that because it's too difficult. This harsh situation leaves the public increasingly with little more than bad feelings of discouragement and persecution. It's astonishing that all the smart people around the president don't get this.

Reality unfolds emergently, and this ought to interest us. For instance, I have maintained for many years that we are approaching the twilight of the automobile age - and the implications of this for daily life in the USA are pretty large. For a long time, I had assumed that this change of circumstances would proceed from our problems with the oil supply. But reality is sly. It has thrown two new plot twists into the story lately. America's romance with cars may not founder just on the fuel supply question. It now appears that our problems with capital are so severe that far fewer people will be able to borrow money from banks to buy cars at the rate, and in the way, that the system has been organized to depend on. Our problems with capital are also depriving us of the ability to pay to fix the hypercomplex system of county roads, interstate highways, and even city streets that make motoring possible. What will we do?

For now, a cashless government gives out cash-for-clunkers, which is basically a self-esteem building program designed to make the government feel better about itself because it is ostensibly taking 11-miles-per-gallon cars off the road and replacing them with 27-miles-per-gallon cars, thus forestalling scary problems with climate change. It's dumb of course, but the failure of leadership is comprehensive. Even the elite environmentalists at the Aspen Institute are preoccupied with finding new "green" ways to keep all the cars running. They put zero effort into the idea of walkable communities, or restoring the railroad system, which will be the reality-based remedies for the car-dependency problem.

The Republican right wing is, if anything, even more childishly delusional. For Glen Beck and Sarah Palin it comes down to "drill, baby, drill." They know nothing about the geology of oil - they don't even believe that the earth is more than six-thousand years old, meaning they don't believe in geology, period - but they are inflamed with the faith of eight-year-old children that we must have a lot more oil in the ground because this is America and God loves us more than people in other parts of the planet so it must be there. As their disappointment mounts, their childish ideas will turn cruel and sadistic. They'll seek to punish anybody who believes that the earth is more than six thousand years old. The catch is, If they get into power in the election cycles ahead, they'll be impotent and ineffectual even at persecuting their enemies.

In the meantime, American life will just wind down, no matter what we believe. It won't wind down to a complete stop. Its near-term destination is to lower levels of complexity and scale than what we've been used to for a long time. People will be able to drive fewer cars fewer miles. The roads will get worse. They'll be worse in some places than others. There will be fewer jobs to go to and fewer things sold. People who live in communities scaled to the energy and capital realities of the years ahead are liable to be more comfortable. We're surely going to have trouble with money. Households will drown in debt and lose all their savings. Money could be scarce or worthless. Credit will be scarcer.

Both factions of American political life indulge in the fiction of control. History is reality's big brother. It is taking us someplace that we don't want to go, so it will probably have to drag us there kicking and screaming. For starters, both reality and history will probably take us out to some woodshed of the national soul and beat the crap out of us. That could be a salutary thing, since the crap consists of all the lies we tell ourselves. Once we're rid of all that, we may rediscover a few things left inside our collective identity that are worth regarding with real self-respect.

The Third World War is Taking Shape

After reading Sose's report I can't help but wonder if Iran doesn't see the writing on the wall. The CIA has been successful in destabilizing Iran for an Israeli attack which is mutually beneficial to Israel and the U.S.

After all, the US invasion of Iraq was designed to neutralize Iran -- Iran was always the ultimate US/Israeli objective. But what became clear after reading this report is Russia's objective -- I see now that in the end Russia will betray Iran and share the spoils with the US and Israel.

Iran is weak and dependent on Russia's support against Iranian sanctions by the west as well as protection from the threat of a combined US/Israeli attack. From a geopolitical perspective, it seems logical for Russia to exploit Iran's weakness and ultimately double cross her. The Iranians must know they cannot trust Russia, but they really have no choice because of Iran's scathing world isolation. Iran's only faint hope for survival is China, and since the east/west flow of oil would be controlled by both Russia and the US, it's in China's interest to protect Iran's sovereignty. If and when Iran is defeated, alliances will form and a battle will ensue for control of what's left of the region.

The following report is by Keyser Soze:
Next Crisis

Faith in the U.S. was sold by Congress to J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller

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An excellent perspective by James Leroy Wilson:

The Coming Anarchy

Is secession ever justified?

Mainstream conservatives and progressives often encourage it in other countries - remember Kosovo - even as they deify Abraham Lincoln for preventing it in the U.S.

But consider what the federal government has done to us over the past century:

1. Fractional-reserve banking backed up by the Federal Reserve Board - creating a culture based on credit rather than saving
2. Relentless meddling in other countries - through war or coercion (forced "cooperation") - in order to expand markets for American corporations.
3. Prohibition or regulation of inexpensive or superior alternatives to corporate products - resulting in everything from the War on Drugs to the War on Hemp to the decline of small farms and small business.

More could be added to this list. My point is that, for anyone not blinded by nationalism, any of the three provide solid grounds for peaceful secession of the states from the Union. Together, they make a compelling case.

It could be asked if things would not be even worse after a formal break-up. The answer is that no one knows for sure. But some things are likely:

• The Federal Reserve would be put to an end. States that want to attract business and create jobs would have to figure out a better financial system for themselves.
• The wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq would end, as well as all of the overseas occupations, and no state would have the ability to wage non-defensive war. There'd be as much reason for terrorists to target American states as they do Norway or Luxembourg.
• There would be no more federal medical marijuana raids or BATFE sieges.
• Special interests and corporations would find it more difficult to bribe 50 state legislatures than just one Congress.

But nationalism makes neither peaceful nor violent secession likely. Over the past century the nationalists have effectively instilled their propaganda through public schools and in more subtle ways, such as placing the Flag of the United States in church sanctuaries. They have also effectively persuaded the people that a pro-secession argument is a pro-slavery argument. This is completely illogical, but it sticks. In any case, anyone who loses their faith in Washington DC is certainly not going to place it in Sacramento or Springfield or Albany.

But it is quite possible they'll lose their faith in DC. The American Empire is falling apart. Recall that in the last year of his Administration, Bush was unable to make war on Iran or stand up to Russia, as he desperately wanted to do. The country was simply too weak. And it is weaker now, diverting resources from the failed Iraq experiment into Afghanistan. Just as the USSR's empire imploded shortly after it ended its failed incursion in Afghanistan, the same might happen to the USA.

The USA is also weak financially. It doesn't have the money to pay for Medicare and Social Security. If Obama's domestic plans like Cap & Trade and Health Care "Reform" pass Congress, we will likely see a deepening recession alongside rampant inflation.

If the increasing numbers of jobless see the price of food and fuel soar, we could see civil unrest. If and when U.S. military troops are called in to suppress rioters - whether by this President or the next, whether in the inner city or at Tea Party-like protests - the end of the USA will be all but official.

There probably won't be any secession even at that time. Hard-line progressives and conservatives will still hold out hope that if the "right people" are in charge, things can get fixed.

But the foundation of the political system will be shaken forever. This foundation is the faith which the majority of the people have in the system. Their faith was actually sold by Congress to J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller in 1913 when the Federal Reserve was created. More and more of the people are realizing it now, but they're still in the minority.

If the unemployment rate and/or the inflation rate soars, and if the government becomes heavy-handed in controlling unrest, more and more Americans will lose their faith at an increasingly rapid rate.

When people lose their faith in a system they can not control, their only viable option is to drop out of it when possible and game it when necessary. They will seek allies with which to barter goods or services. They will reject Federal Reserve dollars when they can, or accept payments only in cash without reporting the income. A system of bribery based on special favors of "friends of friends" who work for the government will flourish. It might not be as brazen as in third-world countries, but could become equally rampant.

The "cheaters" and tax evaders would be so numerous that the government couldn't possibly catch them all.

Soon, people will form their own schools, as funding from DC will dry up. No longer will the USA threaten and coerce other countries. As soon as state and local police lose federal funding, they will stop providing SWAT back-ups of federal raids.

This future will be anarchy, not because there won't be a nominal government, but because the people will have lost faith in politics and thereby lose whatever trust they had in government. The people will treat it as an obstacle in their lives, to be worked around when possible and dealt with when necessary. But they'll stop voting and stop volunteering to put their lives at risk for the Flag.

This coming anarchy actually exists today. The world is the product of our beliefs, upon which we act. We let ourselves be governed only because we believe the government is more right than wrong, more good than bad. There is no "authority," there is only people with uniforms and guns, and you obey them either because you believe in what they do, or because you fear them. Either way, it's just your beliefs. But the less we admire or sacrifice for the government, and the more we comply out of fear and self-interest, the less the effective the State will be. Sooner or later, alternative institutions will spring up to provide security, legal adjudication, even money.

Even if the U.S. never faces a Berlin Wall moment, the people, by their beliefs and actions, can make the government increasingly irrelevant to their lives. And that doesn't have to begin at some future turning point, it can begin today.

About the Author:

James Leroy Wilson is author of Ron Paul Is A Nut (And So Am I). (Click here to get an autographed copy.) He blogs at Independent Country and writes for DownsizeDC.org. Opinions expressed here do not represent the views of DownsizeDC.org.