[This speech]… will do exactly nothing other than drive even more people to Trump. Romney’s focus on “tax returns” is particularly insane. First, there is not only no obligation to do so excerpts, which is all that anyone ever releases, prove exactly nothing. What does prove something? That the required disclosures that not only are more comprehensive, they’re made under penalty of law. So-called released “tax returns” are not.

Those could in fact be lies and there is nothing you can do about it because there is nothing illegal about lying as a political statement, only when you lie to the government. If you lie in a required campaign disclosure to the FEC you can go to prison.

If you lie in a campaign there is no penalty. You could literally make up a “tax return”, and I suspect others have and probably have in this election cycle because there is no legal penalty that applies to campaign lies.

Here’s what I know: Romney ripped off every person in Massachusetts to benefit medical and pharmaceutical monopolies that ought to be prosecuted under 15 USC and backed the same theft from everyone via Obamacare, turning it from a scam you could at least try to evade into a legal duty to pay enforced by government.

Further Trump’s domestic and trade policies would, contrary to Mitt Romney and how he has made his money, bring jobs back home. Romney, let us remember, made his money by thieving your jobs and sending them to China while loading up the companies he “acquired” with debt that subsequently sank them, destroying said jobs.

Despite the nice talking points, when it comes to acts, Romney and the rest of the Establishment have done exactly zero to do anything other than further the scams that are robbing you blind, taking their cut from same, destroying American industry, pensions and jobs.

“Let me put it plainly, if we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished,” Romney said in an extraordinary broadside, delivered in Salt Lake City, Utah, designed to halt Trump's march to the nomination.

Romney, the chairman of Lexington, Massachusetts-based Solamere Capital, described Trump as vulgar, sexually debased, and out of step with America. “Dishonesty is Donald Trump's hallmark,” he said.

Hours later, at a campaign rally in Maine, Trump blasted Romney with his own flurry of insults, calling him a "failed candidate" who "let us down" after running a "horrible campaign," and also recalled meeting with the former Massachusetts governor during the 2012 campaign when Romney sought and received his endorsement. “I could’ve said, 'Mitt, drop to your knees,' he would have dropped to his knees," Trump said, adding that, "If somebody hits me, I'm going to hit them back harder."

The spectacle of the party's former standard-bearer and the man who hopes to fill that role trading insults was unlike anything in recent memory in American politics, and sent Republicans scrambling to choose sides in the skirmish.

Such calls for violence are a direct violation of Twitter’s terms of service, however at press time all of these accounts are still active. This is troubling given Twitter’s recent history of what appears to be a war on conservative media, including their unexplained de-verification of Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos’s account.

The media has once again made it its business to play up racial tensions, reducing Trump’s stances against illegal immigration and Muslim terrorism to “racism.”

Speaking of the European Commission's Five Presidents Report - which lays out plans to shore up the foundations of the euro - Mr Issing said it was a step towards creating a fiscal union "without democratic legitimacy". "Those who have read [the Five Presidents] report know that. Without political union all transfers will lack democratic legitimacy. And nobody can be as stupid as to think political union is around the corner," he told a parliamentary committee at the House of Lords.

Professor Issing - who has been a fierce critic of attempts to pool budgetary powers in the euro - said EU elites were afraid to "confront" voters, delaying their plans for integration until after 2017, the year France and Germany hold national elections. "The thrust of all these ideas is going through a back door towards fiscal union," he said.

"Voters in the end will understand what is going on. They will know they are being exploited." His comments come after prominent voices such as former Bank of England governor Lord King predicted the euro would collapse under the weight of popular disillusion in its weakest economies.

Moving to negative rates reflects a measure of desperation on the part of central banks. Their traditional tools have been largely exhausted, as most countries’ interest rates have been pushed to almost nothing. Bloomberg previously noted of the initiation of negative rates in the EU: Negative interest rates are a sign of desperation, a signal that traditional policy options have proved ineffective and new limits need to be explored.

They punish banks that hoard cash instead of extending loans to businesses or to weaker lenders. And negative rates will eventually come to America. Central bankers are implementing negative interest rates to force savers to buy assets … so as to artificially stimulate the economy.

Specifically:

A negative interest rate means the central bank and perhaps private banks will charge negative interest: instead of receiving money on deposits, depositors must pay regularly to keep their money with the bank. This is intended to incentivize banks to lend money more freely and businesses and individuals to invest, lend, and spend money rather than pay a fee to keep it safe.

Francis, known for his concern for the poor and his harsh anti-capitalist rhetoric, made his comments on ill-gotten gains during a weekly address to crowds gathered in St Peter`s Square in the Vatican. "Some donors come to the Church offering profits from the blood of people who have been exploited, mistreated, enslaved with badly paid work," said Francis, adding the Church would not accept such contributions as the “People of God don’t need their dirty money.”

Francis is known as a vocal critic of the flaws of capitalism. Last year, the Pope delivered a passionate speech on poverty during his visit to Chile, in which he denounced the existing socioeconomic system as “intolerable,” and urged his followers to create an economy that would be at the “service of people” rather than at the “service of money.”

The Pope argued that once people began to focus only on gaining profits, it becomes an “idol” and the “greed for money” undermines society. He also repeatedly warned of the perils of “new imperialism” imposed by big corporations and agencies that enforce austerity programs. Francis advocated the necessity of fairer redistribution of wealth. These kinds of remarks have earned him the reputation of being a leftist. However, the pontiff insists he only preaches the social doctrine of the Church.

But our politicians (especially the liberal ones) rarely use the term “Islamic terrorists” anymore. Instead, they tend to use the term “religious extremists”, and that has a much, much broader connotation. In fact, if you are a Bible-believing Christian, you are probably included in that category.

Most Bible-believing Christians would never think of themselves as being similar to radical jihadists in the Middle East, but that is precisely how many of their fellow Americans view them. The Barna Group has just released a shocking new study which found that 45 percent of all “non-religious” Americans believe that “Christianity is extremist”…

Even more troubling is what the study discovered about how the general population views specific religious activities. There has been a tremendous shift in society, and behaviors that were considered to be completely mainstream a few decades ago are now considered to be “extremism”.

Are you ready to take a test? Have you ever participated in any of these “extremist activities”?

• Refuse standard medical care for their children

• Teaching their children that sexual relationships between people of the same sex are morally wrong

• Protest government policies that conflict with religion

• Adhere to special dietary restrictions for religious reasons

• Fast or refrain from food for a period of time

• Wait until marriage to have sex

• Regularly donate money to a religious community (tithing)

• Attend Church on a weekly basis…

There is a systematic attempt by the radical leftists that dominate our society to demonize Bible-believing Christians. They want to portray us as “religious extremists” that are just as dangerous as ISIS is. Given enough time, they would not just come after us with words.

Throughout history, we have seen the same thing happen with so many other groups. First they were marginalized, then they were demonized, then they were criminalized, and then ultimately they were marked for elimination. If you are a Bible-believing Christian, you need to get ready for intense persecution, because it is most definitely heading our way.

As Kelsey Harkness reports, “It all started with a book: My Princess Boy.” Quite obviously, the title gives the book away. Administrators of the Nova Classical Academy, a charter school in St Paul, Minnesota, told parents that the book would be read in support of a “gender non-conforming” boy. Harkness reports that parents were urged by the school to talk about “gender identity” with their 5-year-olds.

Ten students transferred to another school. One mom told the Daily Signal that the little boy in a dress was having a “traumatic” effect on her daughter. Kids started asking their parents if they could choose their sex. Some kids informed their parents that this could be done. The boy in question was impressed as a 2-year-old when his parents allowed him to watch the 2012 Super Bowl halftime show that starred Beyoncé. The boy started dancing like Beyoncé and said he wanted to be a girl. So, the parents let him.

The boy’s father told a local radio show that the boy, often dressed in a “jumper” with ribbons in his hair, faced bullying in class, but that the real problem was “from parents who objected to the school’s handling of the problem.” He said the objecting parents exhibited “fear and ignorance.”

In a research note titled "Close to the edge", economists at Swiss bank Credit Suisse warned the fate of monetary union hangs in the balance if Europe's policymakers are unable to ward off another global slump and quell anti-euro populism. "The viability of the euro is contingent on the current recovery," said Peter Foley at Credit Suisse. "If the euro area were to relapse back into recession, it is not clear it would endure."

Although the bloc's nascent recovery was likely to persist in the coming months, Credit Suisse said there were worrying signs of deterioration emanating from Europe's economies. These included an industrial slowdown, heightened credit stress in the banking sector and market volatility. "The near-term outlook for economic activity, as well as the risks around it, has shifted materially downwards," said the seven-page report.

Financial markets all over the planet gyrate wildly at the smallest comment from Fed officials, and virtually every boom and bust cycle over the past 100 years can be traced directly back to specific decisions made by the Federal Reserve. We get all excited about what various presidential candidates say that they “will do for the economy”, but in the end it is the Fed that is holding all of the cards.

The funny thing is that the Federal Reserve is not even part of the federal government. It is an independent private central bank that was designed by very powerful Wall Street interests a little over 100 years ago. It is at the heart of the debt-based financial system which is eating away at America like cancer, and it has no direct accountability to the American people whatsoever.

The Fed has been around for so long that most people assume that we need it. But the truth is that we don’t actually need the Federal Reserve. In fact, the greatest period of economic growth in United States history happened during the decades before the Federal Reserve was created. A little over 100 years ago, very powerful forces on Wall Street successfully pushed for the creation of an immensely powerful central bank, and since that time the value of the US dollar has fallen by about 98 percent and our national debt has gotten more than 5,000 times larger.

The Federal Reserve does whatever it feels like doing, and Fed officials insist that the institution must remain “independent” and “above politics” because monetary policy is too important to entrust to the American people. To me, this is absolutely ridiculous. Everything else, including our national defense, is subject to the normal political process, and yet the decisions made by the Fed are so “important” that the American people can’t have a voice?

It is high time that the American people begin to learn what the Federal Reserve is really all about, and that can start with a full, comprehensive audit of all of the Federal Reserve’s activities. Yesterday, Donald Trump came out in favor of such an audit…

He had scraped together his last $325 for the flight to Iraq — a small fraction of the money he had paid to smugglers last summer to get to Germany by foot, bus and boat through Turkey, Greece, the Balkans and Austria.

But now, after more than 1.1 million refugees from troubled lands such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have trekked into Germany over the last 13 months, a small but growing number are heading home. The reasons are myriad, but include overcrowded refugee centers, exasperating bureaucracy, unfamiliar German food, a lack of jobs and a spreading sense of resentment from Germans who fear their country is being overrun by Muslims.

Many refugees say they are now happy to trade a cold, heartless and lonely life in one of Europe's richest countries for the violence, insecurity and poverty back home. And they say they have realized, rather belatedly, that smugglers had sold them a pack of lies about big houses, well-paying jobs and the life of luxury they would find in Germany.

Since when does the self-proclaimed righteous defender of the elite, founded by John Rockefeller, lower themselves to such blatant and childish mudslinging? They don’t, and this behavior is representative of a departure of tactics employed by the elite. And the fact that elite are approaching such a state of desperation, near-panic, if you will, all options are on the table. Again, I say, the elite are proclaiming that all options are on the table when it comes to the fate of Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is their choice and has always been their choice to follow Obama into the White House, with her criminal behavior notwithstanding. As an average American, anytime the CFR, or its first cousin, the Trilateral Commission endorses a candidate, no matter how subtle the endorsement, I assume it is opposite day and move in the other direction.