We have millions upon millions of strong young men just sitting around doing nothing. They aren’t employed and they aren’t considered to be looking for employment either, and so they don’t show up in the official unemployment numbers. But they don’t have jobs, and nothing the Obama administration does can eliminate that fact.

According to NPR, “nearly 100 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 worked” in the 1960s. In those days, just about any dependable, hard working American man could get hired almost immediately. The economy was growing and the demand for labor was seemingly insatiable. But today, one out of every six men in their prime working years does not have a job…

We do have the largest prison population in the entire world by far, and without a doubt that does play a role in these numbers. However, a far bigger factor is the millions of men that have become content being dependents of the federal government. More than 100 million Americans receive money from the government each month, and a lot of people (both men and women) have found that it is just easier to sit back and collect government checks than it is to go out and try to work hard for a living.

But of course the number one factor is the lack of jobs available. I personally know people that have been looking for work in their fields for years and have not been able to get hired. We have a major employment crisis in this nation, and it is only going to get worse in the years ahead as we continue to lose jobs to technology and millions more good jobs get shipped overseas.

More than three years into this bizarre pontificate, one thing has become clear to the informed objective observer: “Father Bergoglio,” as he is wont to call himself when undermining Catholic doctrine by telephone, is abusing the papal office like no other Pope before him in an attempt to pass off his own ideas as binding on the Church.

On and on he goes, telling us whatever he thinks as if he actually expects any believing Catholic to accept his notions as authentic Church teaching, including these:

• the admission to Holy Communion of people living in adultery in “certain cases”;

• the embrace of environmentalism, “global warming” hysteria and the United Nations “sustained development goals”;

• the absurd whitewash of Islam, the demand for unrestricted Muslim immigration and the outrageous claim of a moral equivalence between Islamic terrorists and Catholic “fundamentalists”;

and so on and so forth — endlessly, day in and day out.

Evidently, Francis considers failure to adopt “green” practices a mortal sin requiring absolution and an amendment of life. This is in stark contrast to his view of people who, as even the new Catechism teaches, are living “in a situation of permanent and public adultery” in purported “second marriages” following divorce. Francis has been laboring incessantly to admit these wayward Catholics to Confession and Holy Communion without any firm purpose of amendment. Catholics who fail to care adequately for “our common home,” however, apparently cannot receive absolution, according to Francis, unless they amend their lives by “going green.”

In the same vein, Jeff Mirus, citing Lawler’s piece, has posted one of his own, mordantly entitled “Why care for the environment shouldn’t make the ‘works of mercy’ list.” A work of mercy, he notes, is always directed to the good of a particular soul whose neediness is before us. Francis’s novelty, however, “inescapably shifts our attention from the person to the environment itself [his emphasis].”

The final caption of Mirus’s piece could not be more telling: “That way madness lies.” We need not confine ourselves here to that veiled suggestion. We can say openly what any honest observer with a sensus catholicus is now thinking: this pontificate is insane. Only God knows how it will all turn out. Meanwhile, we can only hope and pray for our deliverance from this growing madness.

The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, which enforces the state’s anti-discrimination laws, recently published a “Gender identity guidance” that lays out what will be legally required of employers and “agents of places of public accommodation.” The guidance was published September 1 but has gone unreported by the media until now. The commission confirmed that the version of the guidance online is the “final edition.”

Beginning October 1, the guidance notes, “All persons, regardless of gender identity, shall have the right to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of any place of public accommodation.” The guidance notes that Massachusetts law defines “public accommodation” as “any place, whether licensed or unlicensed, which is open to and accepts or solicits the patronage of the general public.” (Restaurants and hotels, for example, are generally considered public accommodations.) Violators of the law face up to one year in jail.

Then, around the time Obama was exiting through the emergency staircase, a Chinese official attempted to block national security adviser Susan Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes after they lifted a blue rope holding back press and walked to the other side of it, closer to Obama.

A member of the Chinese delegation began shouting at White House staff, demanding the pool leave the arrival scene. A White House official said Obama was our president and Air Force One was our plane and that the press was not going to move from the designated area. The Chinese official angrily responded "This is our country. This is our airport."

The scandals continued later, with members of the Chinese and US delegations coming close to throwing punches at each other: as we previously reported, two Chinese officials - one working to assist the American delegation - had to be physically separated after trying to hit each other outside an event.

As the WSJ adds, "the Chinese barred Mr Obama from including his traveling press contingent in his motorcade. The hosts also have refused a White House request for a joint press conference with Mr Xi, and they plan to block Mr Obama’s solo press briefing from airing live on Chinese television." In short, the fate of the G-20 meeting was fixed: no matter what was decided, it would forever be remembered as the event where China snubbed the US president in an unprecedented fashion one final time.

Banks and governments around the world are cracking down on the use of paper money, and in turn, eliminating any anonymity left in the current system. Through strict rules on cash transactions and civil asset forfeiture laws, for example, the system has already instituted penalties for using cash. But as payments evolve into a purely digital network, the consequences of this new paradigm are being brought into the spotlight.

The ability to track, record, and mediate transactions of all individuals is a power that dictators throughout history could have only dreamed of. Those who value privacy are turning to alternatives like cash, cryptocurrencies, and precious metals, but these directly threaten central bank dominance. This ongoing tug-of-war in financial innovation will determine whether we enter an age of individual empowerment or centralized enslavement.

As mundane as it may seem, the main reason for this push to go cashless is directly tied to what the world central banks are doing to prop up their economies. The manipulation of interest rates to zero or even negative has left central banks no ammunition to fight off the next recession. Without the ability to cut interest rates even further, stimulating economic growth is nearly impossible.

The government’s crusade to restrict financial freedom is just beginning; as always, fear and propaganda will be used to condition the masses into submission. The personal responsibility needed to protect yourself from the inevitable changes in the system can be overwhelming, but without taking the proper steps, the current ruling class will make the decisions for you.

Delinquency rates are up by double digit percentages, and major auto lenders are bracing for hundreds of millions of dollars of losses. We are a nation that is absolutely drowning in debt, and we are most definitely going to reap what we have sown. The size of this market is larger than you may imagine. Earlier this year, the auto loan bubble surpassed the one trillion dollar mark for the first time ever…

Americans are borrowing more than ever for new and used vehicles, and 30- and 60-day delinquency rates rose in the second quarter, according to the automotive arm of one of the nation’s largest credit bureaus. The total balance of all outstanding auto loans reached $1.027 trillion between April 1 and June 30, the second consecutive quarter that it surpassed the $1-trillion mark, reports Experian Automotive.

And it is undeniable that the stage is set for a crisis that will absolutely dwarf 2008. Our national debt has nearly doubled since the beginning of the last crisis, corporate debt has doubled, student loan debt has crossed the trillion dollar mark, auto loan debt has crossed the trillion dollar mark, and total household debt has crossed the 12 trillion dollar mark. We are living in the greatest debt bubble in world history, and there are signs that this giant bubble is now starting to burst. And when it does, the pain is going to be greater than most people would dare to imagine.

That's a little awkward given President Obama's meeting with, and comments on, The Fed in April… but hey, when did hypocrisy ever lose an election? Trump, who has previously accused the Federal Reserve of keeping interest rates low to help President Barack Obama, said on Monday that the US central bank has created a "false economy" and that interest rates should change.

"They're keeping the rates down so that everything else doesn't go down," Trump said in response to a reporter's request to address a potential rate hike by the Federal Reserve in September. "We have a very false economy," he said. "At some point the rates are going to have to change," Trump, who was campaigning in Ohio on Monday, added. "The only thing that is strong is the artificial stock market”, he said.

Nigerian Ambassador Usman Sarki told a meeting of national representatives, “We wish to remind the UN to limit itself strictly to activities mandated by member states and especially to promote issues that are beneficial to mankind rather than lend itself as a tool to promote aberrant behaviour under the guise of promoting human rights.”

Sarki was responding to the UN’s issuance last week of six postage stamps tied to the UN human rights office’s Free and Equal campaign advancing the status of homosexual, transgender and bisexual people. In Nigeria, with a population of 182 million people, homosexual relations can bring the death penalty in the Muslim north and 14 years in jail in the Christian south.

Sarki said the UN secretariat should not be promoting causes when many and even a majority of states oppose it. “What is clear to many is that the UN has now decided without any reservation or hesitation to side with a minority of member states and practitioners of this lifestyle, in complete disregard of the wishes and concerns of the majority of its member States and the populations that they represent,” he declared.

According to the worldwide survey of attitudes towards homosexuality conducted in 2013 by the Pew Foundation, Sarki’s views are very close to those of most Nigerians, which turn out to be the least accepting of all 40 countries surveyed: with 98 percent answering “No” to the question: “Should society accept homosexuality” and only 1 percent answering “yes.”

British economist Simon Evenett said: “Globalisation, which flourished in the 2000s, has slowed down for a few years now. Hardly a day has passed without a country adopting a measure to protect domestic enterprises and to complicate foreign business. We see that politicians and business leaders of these countries indeed speak of an open trade, but the reality is very different."

The expected failure of the TTIP negotiations has particularly been highlighted as a move towards inward-looking economies, with US economist Jagdish Bhagwati blaming “second-rate negotiations” for the break-down in talks. He said: “TTIP was bound to fail. These were the first negotiations of this kind, in which not even I knew what it actually was.”

TTIP is a series of proposed trade negotiations between America and the EU which aimed to reduce the barriers in place for trans-Atlantic trade. However, following a series of protests and objections, the talks are expected to fail - paving the way for more international trade barriers and a new focus on internal trade.

Regardless of any downturn in international trade, Britain has been quick to work towards establishing new links in the wake of this summer's European Union referendum. China is leading a line up of major nations asking for trade deals with a liberated Britain. New Prime Minister Theresa May's overtures to other nations have also been eagerly accepted by Australia, Mexico, Singapore, India and South Korea.

The EU has developed an internal single market through a standardised system of laws that apply in all member states. EU policies aim to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services and capital within the internal market, enact legislation in justice and home affairs, and maintain common policies on trade and regional development.

For the corrupt – this type of geopolitcal arrangement, still in its infancy, operating across the borders of so many nation states on a single continent is a godsend. It provides an opportunity to harmonise and standardise practices in order to reduce risk and ensure even greater success of criminality paying off.

It wasn’t until February 2014 that the EU published its very first report on corruption and calculated that corruption was affecting all 28 nations within the bloc amounting to €120 billion.

It said in a statement Netanyahu, at a meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, "presented Israel's position whereby he is always ready to meet (Abbas) without preconditions and is therefore considering the Russian president's proposal and the timing for a possible meeting". A spokesman for Abbas, who is on a visit to Europe, declined immediate comment.

The last Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2014. With his eye on shifting big-power influence in the Middle East, Netanyahu has visited Russia for talks with Putin three times in the last year, and the two also speak on occasion by phone to discuss regional issues.

The letter in support of Mr Trump, signed by 88 retired military figures, will come as the campaign prepares for a week focused on national security, with a forum hosted by NBC and MSNBC on Wednesday evening alongside Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee. “The 2016 election affords the American people an urgently needed opportunity to make a long overdue course correction in our national security posture and policy,” the letter states.

“As retired senior leaders of America’s military, we believe that such a change can only be made by someone who has not been deeply involved with, and substantially responsible for, the hollowing out of our military and the burgeoning threats facing our country around the world,” the generals and admirals write. “For this reason, we support Donald Trump’s candidacy to be our next commander in chief.”

However, the potential for large-scale attacks have made the use of German military assets "conceivable, even probable," according to Lieutenant General Martin Schelleis, the Bundeswehr's chief of joint support services. Plans to involve soldiers in counterterrorism operations — and the suggestion troops could also be used to beef up security in public places — have proved controversial in a country only seven decades removed from totalitarian rule that's still grappling with guilt from the Nazi era.

A 2012 constitutional court ruling paved the way for the deployment of the Bundeswehr on German streets in the aftermath of an attack. Until then, Germany's constitution had allowed for domestic military missions only under special circumstances — such as natural disaster relief.

The restrictive legal framework was instituted as a result of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's abuse of state powers. Schelleis suggested that a terrorist attack could qualify as "such a grave disaster" to allow the armed forces to support the police. The joint exercises are due to take place in February in four German states.