Predictions for 2009

I predict 2009 will be very interesting. I hate interesting.

10. TEOTWAKI,

She left out a "W" - i.e., TEOTWAWKI, "The End Of The World As We Know It."

On that note, I expect a nuclear attack/explosion somewhere in the world before 1/1/2010, whether by terrorists or as a result of something in the Middle East. The good news is, I'm usually wrong in my predictions. The bad news is, I've been feeling compelled lately to watch my DVD of The Day After.

To ruin your day along these lines, read this:

Every day I would take my bowl of rice and beans into the noonday sun and sit on the tailgate of my '87 Ranger, which commanded a billion-dollar view. Armed with the painfully earnest idealism of a new college graduate, I had scored a job at a nonprofit organization located in a house-cum-office just off the southern foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. I'd sit there in the parking lot, humming Otis Redding, literally at the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away. As I ate, I'd take in the bridge, the Marin headlands, Alcatraz and the East Bay, and the stunning Mediterranean sweep of the San Francisco skyline.

And every day the scenery was swept clean, in my mind's horrified eye, by the merciless white flash of a nuclear airburst.

I was then an irreligious religion major, raised in a secular home and employed straight out of college by Alan Cranston, a four-term warhorse of the U.S. Senate who dedicated his retirement to advancing the global abolition of nuclear weapons. The crash course in nuclear policy I received my first two weeks on the job was nothing short of traumatic. My imagination had become a bit zingy from eating only rice, beans, and lettuce, and sleeping every night under my desk. (It was the height of the dot-com boom; rentals, especially for impoverished, nonprofit employees like me, were impossible to find.)

As just one example of the things that kept me awake at night: We had in 1999, and inexplicably still have today, thousands of nuclear-tipped warheads on hair-trigger alert. This is a holdover from the Cold War, when policy wonks were afraid that a preemptive nuclear attack by the Reds would destroy our ability to strike back. So we, like the Soviets, developed launch-on-warning procedures to have thousands of intercontinental ballistic missiles airborne in 15 minutes—i.e., before missiles from the other side would hit our silos. In the event of a suspected attack, we would fire back instantly, and in a half-hour, the urban centers of two continents would be burning ruins, with hundreds of millions dead.

There's not a lot of time for double-checking analysis in 15 minutes. On the multiple recorded occasions when American and Soviet early-warning radars confused a flock of arctic geese, a weather satellite, and the rising moon for a nuclear attack, it was only the sheer disbelief of each side's nuclear commanders that kept us all alive.

It's this sort of thing, along with the less apocalyptic but far more probable prospect of a terrorist bomb, that haunted me. It's this sort of thing that turns a spoonful of rice and beans to dust and ashes on the tongue.

Here's what was behind the white flash I saw each day from my perch on the dock of the bay:

A one-megaton nuclear explosion releases an unfathomable, unstoppable amount of energy. What happens in the time it takes you to read the next word—a millisecond— is that from that core explosion, a fireball as hot as the core of the sun envelops 19 square miles of one of the most densely populated cities in America. Instantly, more than 300,000 sons and daughters die—and maybe double that, given all the people who have commuted in to work.

In the next seconds, a blast wave roars outward from the explosion's center at the speed of sound, accompanied by radioactive heat that causes second-degree burns at a distance of 6 miles. Fifty percent of people within 2.5 to 4 miles of the explosion die then; 10 percent of those in the 4- to 6.5-mile ring. Given the circumstances, 10 percent somehow starts to sound pathetically, perversely hopeful, until you realize that's 10 percent of everyone in a ring covering more than 80 square miles, or the entire northern section of the San Francisco peninsula. The view from the heavens would look like the Devil's cigar had been stubbed out on the earth.

All in all, a minimum of 700,000 lucky souls die in the first moments, more than all the combatants killed on both sides of the American Civil War, the costliest in U.S. history. I say lucky, because nearly twice that number are desperately injured, but all the hospitals are destroyed—as are the ambulances, paramedics to drive them, and roads to drive them on. Hundreds of thousands more die from burns as firestorms spring up everywhere, and the firefighters are already dead. Many who survive being burned die of asphyxiation as all the oxygen is consumed. Radiation, a patient killer, will claim its share as well over the coming weeks and years: for decades, the death toll will be recorded in pencil, not ink. And the psychological and spiritual impact is unimaginable. We will never be over this. Never.

From: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/april/14.54.html

EricW --

The prevailing wisdom is that nuclear weapons per se are hard to make, so it's unlikely that we'll ever see a terrorist organization using a suitcase bomb.

The basis of the argument is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/science/09bomb.html?_r=2&ref=science&pagewanted=all

Which summarizes The Nuclear Express, by Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman, and The Bomb: A New History by Stephen M. Younger.

This doesn't answer questions about e.g. dirty bombs, but to my mind it takes the high gloss off Cold-War-era nuclear fears. After all, conventional car bombs are probably adequate for your garden variety terrorist's needs.

MDSF - thanks. On the other hand, something I saw/heard the other day had a quote from Oppenheimer at the time of the Manhattan Project about how "easy" it would be to make an atomic bomb.

EricW --

The Times article starts with that quote. That's been widely believed for a long time, but it appears that the opposite is true: no country since the Manhattan Project built a bomb without benefiting from some sort of direct technological transfer.

Commutes will get faster (and shorter), prices on things you want but don't need will go down, prices on things you do need will go up, and the sole industry showing growth will be private security firms.

I am hoping against hope that my gamble to go back to graduate school to become a librarian will pay off-- at a time when so many soon-to-retire librarians decide to keep working because they can't afford to retire just yet.
Also I predict that, should it come to pass that you lose your current paying gig, Rod, you will have the opportunity to write in all sorts of other ways that will support your family. I pray so, anyway.
'09 will be a helluva ride, that's for sure. And hey, maybe the Cubs will finally get to the World Series!

Rod, I hope that somehow, some day, your blog can allow you to be self-employed, or at least give you an extra income.

Just FYI, being a state government attorney is not safe either. I lost my job last month. The budget is being tightened all around. If I could make a living with a blog, I would do so in a heartbeat.

Insane Kitten, best of luck to you. Out of curiousity I looked into working at the city library. They had just filled one opening, after receiving hundreds of resumes.

And in the death
As the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare
The shutters lifted in inches in temperance building high on poachers hill
And red mutant eyes gazed down on hunger city
No more big wheels

Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats
And ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes
Coveting the highest of the sterile skyscrapers
Like packs of dogs assaulting the glass fronts of Love-me Avenue
Ripping and rewrapping mink and shiny silver fox, now legwarmers
Family badge of sapphire and cracked emerald

Any day now
The year of the diamond dogs

This ain't rock and roll. This is ... GENOCIDE!

Ah-oooooooooooooooo

("As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent, you asked for the latest party ...")

In 2009, the economy will get so bad, we'll need to eat recipes from Weight Watchers cards from the 1970's.

I can't wait for my second helping of Frankfurter Spectacular.

Also, I'm bullish on morbid humor.

For most people, nothing much will happen.

Even in the Great Depression there was a 25% unemployment rate, which means that there was a 75% employment rate, a clear majority. There was an enormous amount of anxiety, but most people were working, and deflation made a lot of things affordable.

We've been living under the threat of nuclear holocaust for a couple of generations - are you-all just finding out about it now? Our chances of seeing the Bomb go off in 2009 are quite a bit less than they were in, say, 1969. That doesn't mean it can't happen, of course, but I'm continually surprised that we've all gotten this far.

The economy will bottom out in 2009, or at the latest, in 2010. It will sit near the bottom for a bit, then start recovering.

Markets go up and down. That is the nature of a market economy, and has been so as long as there have been market economies. The market and the economy will go up again regardless of what we do or don't do about it. It's a law of nature. The only question is, how long will it take to get there.

Friend --

I might gently suggest that there was more to the Great Depression than the unemployment rate.

MI --

Thanks for the pointer; I guess I'm more curious as to why these two books are appearing now than what their conclusions are. My best guess is that they're a byproduct of people (official or otherwise) asking whether nukes a) matter or b) are more important than other threats in a way that can sensibly be measured in megatons: a device with a blast radius 10x bigger than another device isn't necessarily 10x more dangerous.

One thing that struck me hard when looking at the discussion of nuclear proliferation was that just three or so individuals played a huge role in that history: Klaus Fuchs, Isidor Rabi, and A. Q. Khan. So the question of whether a device is easy or hard to design and make is really a small matter compared to the question of what the impact of a rogue here and a rogue there will be a generation later.

Well, that and the fact that the Rosenbergs didn't seem to figure, etc.

The economy will see a massive swing up about six months from now as the collosal amounts of money being spent and injected really kick in. Consumer culture and economic growth will go 'back to normal' and all this 'Great Depression' talk will be a faint memory, just like $4 gas and 'peak oil' were. We'll all have to start talking about the 2010 elections and if anyone can beat the Democrats given the amazing economy.

Friend, during the Depression the 75% of people who were working saw their incomes decline dramatically - deflation isn't just about consumer prices, unfortunately, it is about pay. So, for example, in Ohio (a fairly representative state, and one for which there are good records)in 1929, the average annual income was $1499 - by 1932, it was $960. Think about a proportionate loss in your salary - deflation might be helpful, but probably not enough. In comparison to ability to buy, prices were not low in the Depression. According to _The History of Labor in the United States_,

"The widespread and drastic wage cuts of 1931-33, the prevalence of but part-time work for those who had jobs at all, and the extremely low living standards of millions of families who subsisted on relief during the depression period, combined to accustome American wage earners from 1931 onwards to much lower standards of living than they had enjoyed from 1900 onwards."

Those standards of living did not fully rebound until after WWII. This is not a prediction ;-), but it does mean that an analysis of the Depression can't be limited to unemployment.

Rod, I'm glad you made it home safely, and thanks for the link!

Rod --

My condolences on your job anxiety.

I spent a chunk of Saturday watching the Frontline series News War, and one part dealt with the convulsions at the Tribune and Los Angeles Times in 2006. One of the heads stated bluntly that people between 20 and 30 don't get their news from a newspaper; they get their news online.

Then if I understood correctly, Frontline suggested that all the useful content was being read at Google and Yahoo! and spoke to representatives from those two companies saying that their content came from (you guessed it) newspaper writers.

What do people inside the industry think? Do they think papers are dying because of media concentration? Because the children of Baby Boomers don't read papers? Because of changes in technology? Because of incursions of non-English-speakers? Declining literacy rates?

How hard is it for a journalist to make the jump to long-form book-length Big Story reporting?

Since “Predictions” is a game anyone can play, I might as well put my own in. This and 75 cents will almost certainly get you a copy of Our Nation’s Journal of Scholarly Excellence, USA TODAY.:

National/Political:

1) The Obama regime will be rocked by scandals connected to the soon-to-be-former-and-unlamented Illinois Governor. Obama will get a pass, but at least two of his close aides will be implicated in unsavory and possibly criminal behavior.

2) The economy will not recover to any appreciable degree. Unemployment will hit at least 9 percent, possibly higher towards the end of next year. (The stated level of unemployment, that is: add in part-timers looking for full-time work and the discouraged to the numbers, and the unemployment rate will come closer to 15 percent.) The housing market will not recover; instead it will drop another 15 % and not begin to recover until mid-2010 at the earliest. (All that debt out there still has to be worked through, you see.) The central government will launch an effort to bail out the Three Automakers, but it will not work at all well. At least one of them will file for bankruptcy.

3) The slowdown will be worldwide; look for China to miss a “hard landing” by a gnat’s whisker.

4) The rising unemployment rate will accelerate the level of foreclosures through the end of 2009, and there will be a 50-50 chance of a new round of bank failures. If that happens, Great Depression II becomes a real prospect. Personal bankruptcies will hit a new record high.

5) Bankruptcy lawyers will do land-office business.

Personal:

1) I’ll probably keep on keeping on as an assigned-counsel practitioner. New York State may try to implement a statewide public-defender system, but it will take time to put into place and probably not work all that well.

2) If I get re-admitted to the Federal Bar, I’ll probably have as many bankruptcies to do as I can handle.

3) My sons will still wrestle and tussle with each other (after all, that is what small boys do), and my girls will still stand back and snidely observe how silly they all are.

4) There will be an announced sequel to the movie “Twilight”. This will delight one of my daughters, and send the other one to her room muttering about vampires that are not really vampires. (“Real Vampires Don’t Sparkle”.)

Your servant,

Lord Karth

P.S. Our Rod-friend will keep his job, as his employers will realize the continued value to their organization of a journalist of his talents. 48 hours later, Rod will mail me the money order he promised. ;-)

"Pyrrho
December 15, 2008 2:00 PM
Predictions? How about going for the low-hanging fruit?"

Hey, this isn't the "gay marriage" thread!

2009 Prediction?

Many people will die; women, children, and minorities hardest hit.

Good God! Let's be depressing why don't we...

Here's my predictions:

1. Obama will do something, like bomb the tribal areas of Pakistan, that makes the rest of the world angry. The Europeans will whine about how they no longer like Obama and the Arab street will protest, thus revealing how anti-Americanism does not start and end with Bush.

2. The economy will begin to recover at the end of 2009, but employment will remain soft until the end fo 2010. Obama's supporters will get upset when he doesn't magically pay their mortgages and fill up their cars. The Republicans will benefit from this disillusionment in the mid-terms.

3. Emanuel will be forced to resign when it becomes clear that he heard about the pay-to-play scheme and didn't say anything to Fitzgerald. Republicans will win the special election for Obama's Senate seat.

4. Oil and commodities prices will stay low because the U.S. economy, while weak, will remain stronger than the EU and the U.S. dollar will be therefore seen as a better investment.

5. Obama's ridiculous infrastructure investment plan will go down in flames after Congress starts ladening it with pork. Republicans will also point out that most of the job losses are in white collar fields (like banking) so creating dig ditching jobs really won't have the desired effect on unemployment.

Enjoyed Pyrrho's comment. About all CNBC can talk about today is the Madoff Fund situation. There will be long-term ramifications to the stock market. My prediction: There will be a retooling of NAFTA in the next year. Based on Obama's campaign posture and promises, there seems no doubt that recalibration of the trade agreement will be made. If it happens, negative economic impact will occur to Mexico. This will be the first overt act by our nation in decoupling and reversing the "globalization process" that has occurred over the last fifteen years.

My prediction: Nothing will change, systematically; as it hasn't since Isaac Newton convinced a bunch of diluted pasty white-boys that the earth really isn't flat.

We Americans will continue to act against our own self interest, since by making one large mistake we are now forced into making ten more.

The President elect will not relinquish the war-time powers provided by the former administration; but will rather solidify them in a time of uncertainty, further deteriorating our civil liberties.

Someone might actually give a shit about the polar bears, but probably to the detriment of everyone else.

I'll take a few classes, because knowledge is the only one thing that can't be taken from me.

Some will realize that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and that equations must be balanced in order for history to continue to unfold. The failures of the next generation will be built on their backs.

Lots and lots of people will go to jail, but they'll go to banker jail - which is like daycare for over-privileged retards. No one will learn anything.

The ability to test century-old scientific theory will finally provide new insights into the nature of our being; but ultimately, we are all too self-absorbed to notice.

Rod will pay the bills.

That's enough. Speculation will get me nowhere.

Re: On that note, I expect a nuclear attack/explosion somewhere in the world before 1/1/2010, whether by terrorists or as a result of something in the Middle East.

I wouldn't specify a date, but I do expect, sometime in my life, that someone will use a nuke. I think the chances of it being a terrorist are exceedingly small, but I think there's a good chance we'll see India and/or Pakistan lob The Bomb at each other someday.

Re: A one-megaton nuclear explosion releases an unfathomable, unstoppable amount of energy.

There are VERY few one megaton nukes-- and all of them are thermonuclear (H-Bomb) weapons. Even most of these pack less than a megaton of power nowadays. The arsenal has been downsized in megatonnage due to increasingly accurate targeting. The US, Russia, China, the UK and France have these weapons; Israel may. Neither India nor Pakistan do. If atomic bombs are difficult to put together (and they are) then a H-Bomb is vastly more difficult. The possibility that terrorists, or some banana republic on a shoestring budget, could craft an H-Bomb are about equal to my chances of becoming pope.

If a terrorist nuke is ever used, you can pretty much count on it being a small weapon, about like the Hiroshima bomb, both because that's what most likley to be acquired and what would be easiest to transport and conceal.

Re: Radiation, a patient killer, will claim its share as well over the coming weeks and years

Depends very crucially on where the bomb exploded, and then on the wind direction. There is little or no fallout from an airburst; but a bomb on or near the ground leaves a very dirty footprint downwind.

Re: You give them that money and tell them to build truck bombs and put them in crippling locations, you get dozen cities panicked and staving to death.

Huh? Most cities have numerous roads leading in and out of them. The effort to choke off all those routes would be impossible. And of course many cities also have water access. And air access-- see: Berlin airlift. Manhattan would be the easiest American city to choke off, but even there I doubt you could block off all the tunnels and bridges to the point where some of them could not be made passable within a couple of days. And how would you prevent boats from accessing the city?

of course...
it only takes a few weeks for most people to die of starvation...
so...
in 2009, I predict the death of 90+ percent of all humans...

there!
now THAT is a Doomer prediction...

if I survive...
man, will I miss chocolate...

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst...

ya'll have 6+ month food storage yet?

I predict there will be much more talk on this blog about the "Benedict Option", but despite the gloomy state of the present economy, Rod and most participants in this blog (including myself) will be too fearful to actually give it a try.

Hattio, sorry you are right, I should have been clearer. No, that is only average wages of fully employed - which, of course makes it more serious.

Gill, whether you agree with me or not, I live in the same universe. I farm as well as writing, and I live in a low income rural area where WalMart is a major employer and making a living isn't that easy. It isn't "throw up your hands" so much as "if you have some sense of what's coming down the pike, you can do something about it" - my community is small and poor, but my neighbors are growing more food every year, putting some by, bartering and sharing more and getting along with less. Insulating your self from hard times is about needing the formal economy less and one another more.

Sharon

Sharon wrote: Insulating your self from hard times is about needing the formal economy less and one another more.

That is the sanest and most accurate summation of reality I have yet to see. The "formal economy" (nice turn of phrase) is about isolating us from each other (what else would you call competition?); it can be as simple as abandoning that mindset and reconnecting with each other, and it can work regardless of the specific mechanics of the geography involved. Rural, suburban, or urban, it really is about community... real community, not the propaganda of identity.

Did I lose my comment? Merely mentioned that at least the Army will have less trouble with recruiting and retention. Even reservists have very decent health insurance available to them. And they'll take folks up to their 42nd birthday now. So my prediction is that the enlistment bonus budget will contract. That'll save a tax dollar or two, though it will likely merely be sucked back into refurbishing a very depleted fleet of up-armored trucks and helicopters.

Re: the bleak reality of the 50+ trillion boomer-retirement tsunami that David Walker's been harping on will start to dawn on even average Americans.

None of that will be exigent in the next few years, and Healthacre (not just Medicare, but healthcare in general) will demand our attention long before Social security does. We have a generation (more or less) before Social Security is short money. I expect that problem to be resolved (possibly in a second Obama term when the current mess is well behind us) with a combination of tax hikes (removing the income cap), jiggering of the COLA and upping the retirement age a bit-- the latter probably apired with some very stiff anti-age discrimination laws so that laying off older workers will become much more difficult than now.
It'healthcare-- everyone's not just retirees'-- that is threatening to eat the whole economy alive. That's where the fix needs to be ASAP.

Re: Health care is a big part of the boomer retirement tsunami, and as the real depth of our current crisis becomes apparent, the overwhelming obligations coming due in a few years will only worsen as we print, borrow and 'stimulate' ourselves into oblivion.

Translation: "The sky is falling, Henny-penny! The sky is falling!"

If anyone wonders why the GOP is in the political wilderness nowadays, and why conservatism has become irrelevant, it's on display right here. In my lifetime we've gone from the no-nonsense, hard-edged, but can-do WILL-do spirit of Ronald Reagan to the cracked invocations of the old geezer in horror flicks who wanders about proclaiming "You're all doomed".

The enemy within the christian conservative movement may be doing far more damage than the liberal media to our cause. We have learned that several million Christians failed to vote in this last election. I have also learned that the end times doomsday theology has a great influence into the mindset of many Christians today. A christian church having nearly a million members is claiming that December 14th will be the beginning of the tribulation period, and the trump will sound. I tried hard to influence a such people to vote this year! Why would they not want to vote? It was a contradiction to their religious convictions when according to them, America has already been judged by God. Why not vote?
What was their hang up? Why vote if Christian’s are caught up in a rapture to heaven, and when the anti Christ will dominate the world anyway according to prophecy? The most frightening thing coming is the popular 2012 date set for the rapture spreading anticipation like wild fire! It may draw many more Christians into a doomsday mentality, potentially hurting the next election much more so.
The conservative balance of power may be determined by such critical voters who may yet determine America's future. We need all christians to stay loyal to America, not the Rapture! What is wrong with this anti-christ beast theory? Look at Waco Texas, and David Koresh, and Jim Jones, and others. What happens when normal human beings are drawn into abnormal behavior by strong religious convictions coming from a doomsday theology! This hidden enemy exists within our conservative center, and it may already be doing far more harm than the liberal media has done to conservative causes.
Revelation 15:2 clearly states that the mark of the beast is something Christians must personally overcome to gain the victory through the blood of the lamb? This description and obvious wording in the Bible seem to identify mans fallen nature, not some computer implant which many wrongly speculate. Did Christ die for our sins, or did he die for computer implants? Is this not a ridiculous theology which millions of Christians have fallen for?.Lets list some rational truth's concerning this subject taken directly from the Bible.
The mark originated with Cain, in the Old Testament. Cain killed his brother Abel and sought to cover his sin by hiding his murderous crime. God asked Cain,where is thy brother? Cain said, I know not, am I my brothers keeper? Cain was marked after becoming the the example of satanic behavior God detests.
God then cursed the works of Cain’s hand’s, the ground he tilled no longer brought forth her strength. In other word’s, a bad economy then followed the mark. Can we not identify this mark as Gods curse upon Cain’s right handed works? Why? Cain had yielded himself to Satan’s power by failing to bring forth good fruits, breaking Gods commandments.
It was Satan who was symbolized in the Bible as being the cursed beast (the Serpent) in the Garden of Eden. A type of snake bite, a beastly mark identifying the sin nature which Satan injected into mans heart, was being depicted as the mark of sin.
Later we learn in the New Testament that people who follow Cain like nature are also called beasts. “Jude 1.
The Bible gives us an even clearer example of this mark, when Joseph’s brothers sought to kill Joseph and sell him as a slave into Egypt. The brothers hid this sin from Jacob, their father. How? By killing a wild beast and placing an animal’s blood upon Joseph’s coat of many colors. How? By using an actual beasts bloodstain as if it belong to Joseph.. The brothers then lied to Jacob, by showing Jacob Joseph’s coat with a marked bloodstain. They told Jacob that Joseph was killed by a wild beast. This false evidence convinced Jacob that his only birthright son was dead. This was the secret plan Jacob did not know. It was a mark upon Joseph’s coat which was actually "the mark of the beast” and not coming from Josephs torn body .
The mark of the beast becomes a deception which hides and removes Gods will by replacing it with Satan’s deception and plan. It was Gods will that Joseph become the birthright son. Suddenly, Joseph is removed from sight by the hidden cover up, The mark of a wild beast literally hid the lie, and removed true authority.
The brothers had sold Joseph to the Egyptians for money. Thus, buying and selling the lie behind beastly mark through deception for worldly gain. The interpretation of an anti Christ is to remove Christ’s will, and then replace it with the mark of the beast, or Satan’s power. Gods will was being sold out through the lie, coming from a secret combination.
When Nebuchadnezzar forced the world to worship his golden God in Babylon, he used the power of the state to replace Gods true authority by using a calculated and manufactured lie.

King Nebuchadnezzar also used Gold (money) to build his God, selling out the value of worshiping the true God. Again, replacing Christ’s will with Satan’s deceptive mark. Babylon today represents any government or spiritual system which rewards selfishness by removing the true God.

After Nebuchadnezzar imposed his sin of pride using his political authority, God cursed Nebuchadnezzar by transforming him into the nature of a wild beast. (Read Daniel chapter four.) Nebuchadnezzar was marked like unto Cain, removed from men, acting inhuman like a wild beast.
In other word’s, Babylon is a state of mind which destroys our humanity!
Nebuchadnezzar finally repented after going through a terrible withdrawal process for 7 years, removing him from his evil addiction for power. The 666 number in scripture clearly identifies Nebuchadnezzar’s golden statue by its dimensions and exact size. The statue was gold, which represents Nebuchadnezzar himself who became the image of the golden statue, as recorded by Daniel. “Daniel 2.” King Nebuchadnezzar was literally the 600 BC man.
The entire ancient world represented his power given to one single man marking 600 B. C. in history.
His giant golden image was carefully measured and recorded by Daniel as being 60 cubits high and 6 cubits wide. “Daniel 3:1″. This biblical event marked the Babylonian attempt to replace God with a six hundred and three score, and six man. The 600 BC man was Nebuchadnezzar himself, being enlarged into a huge statue almost a hundred feet tall. Babylon is about a little man trying to become a great big man using earthly political means.

The world did not have the modern media in Nebuchadnezzar’s day to make him self larger than life. This huge golden image represents a man seeking to reach notoriety and Godly status by becoming larger, more visible to the world. This explains why John would instructs believers to count the number of the beast, to find the hidden man.
Is the true measure of a man not measured by his inflated image to be seen by men, revealing his beastly pride? Or, is that not the measure of the beastly side which hides his true image!
The true measure of the man is being obscured from view Nebuchadnezzar’s false image was 666. “Daniel: 3-1″.
The true man was hidden from our view by sin until he became humble. “Daniel 4" "Revelation 13:18." In other words, you can find the answer to the world’s greatest Bible mystery 666, directly recorded inside your very own family Bible. The search is now over...
God actually frees the beast of Babylon from his evil mark after Nebuchadnezzar repents. Evil men today are seeking to remove our God given freedoms by replacing “one nation under God” with state supported socialism. why? In order to make slaves of free Americans. It is not the same spirit of Babylon returning to us again today. Fallen man is still seeking to make his worldly image large in order to remove God, replacing God with a god of gold, purchased with our own money by state decree. The new god becomes mans exalted authority being granted through the state and not God.. Remember Moses and the golden calf image represented a beast God in Moses day! The golden beast was created by collecting the people’s own wealth.

Once again, they are setting up another God of gold using our money to pay for it. Why? Is it not to going to force Americans to worship this golden God of the state? Or become fired, exiled, or destroyed through the power of political correctness? No man or women will be able to buy nor sell, or hold a job, unless they contribute to this god of Babylon being forced through higher taxation, personal loyalty and sacrifice. We now witness a state, growing within a state, within our nation.
Look at the bailouts and the national debt being the taken from us to create Babylon’s God. No one is calling for legal hearings to place Kriss Dodd and Barney Frank in prison after they created this world economic crisis. Instead, They with their friends have been placed in charge of this bail out money and our economy…Every man, every women, and every child born today, including the unborn, must pay for an out of control national debt bringing America into a modern Babylonian bondage. Untold billions of our money must transfer directly into these social democrats hands transforming America into a predatory beast. The secret plan must hide their goal to change America into a new nation under their god. This god of money now becomes the new savior of America through a government bail out as our salvation. This is the true anti Christ that no one yet is looking for already happening directly in front of us..
It is another god of gold, like unto the 666 god in 600 BC! This god is now being constructed for the salvation of Americans who are being forced to worship its image, and make huge sacrifices unto it.
"All small and great, rich and poor," must sacrifice for the god of this new change… Remember Obama, declaring that all Americans must sacrifice for his image for change? The change is a lie, it is a beast which seeks to make us into its slave.! We are now changing America into the modern beast of Babylon, being robbed of our own right hand works, our own money as its sacrifice. This has been made possible through calculated lies planted within our own foreheads or our deceived minds.
What kind of evil beast has entered into over half of America’s foreheads, or intellects, causing them to vote for the institution of their own slavery? Millions of votes were cast against a free America? It was surely an evil beast which deceived their minds by calculated lies orchestrated from the politically correct media.
The mark of America's power comes directly from which votes are being marked on ballets, the peoples right handed works represent their spiritual mindset going on inside their thoughts or in their foreheads. A mark represents a goal, or end destination like a map. There are two marks from the Bibles beginning, the tree of life, and the tree of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. God’s true followers were marked with Gods name in their foreheads, and right hands, according to John. Revelation 22:4. Was Jesus ever going to use computer implants to mark his followers? The mark of God, and the mark of Satan clearly represent a spiritual identification being witnessed through the person’s spiritual mindset, and also by our outward behavior manifesting through our right handed works. Who do we serve? Babylon represents Satan’s government of slavery, and Zion represents Christ’s free form of government.

Which of the mindsets are we being marked into, becomes the final question?
We must awaken Christians to this lie about computer implants being spread by Left behind books. Why? These popular books focus Christians on doomsday instead of helping God unite his servants to labor the final harvest. We can now understand why the harvest is great, but the workers are few!There is a spiritual distraction going on about a the rapture. There is a reason Christ never wanted us to know the day, nor the hour of his coming. Look at Waco Texas and David Koresh? Look at our last two elections when 4 to 5 million Christians stayed home. Look at the bad fruits coming from the teachings being spread from the most popular Christian book sold today called "Left behind! " The left behind books teach that the ancient city of rebuilt Babylon located in Iraq, must become the future seat of the anti christ!
In otherwords, our troops really not fighting for anyones freedom, but are being sacrificed to provide the anti christs with his future home located in Soddam's restored Babylon. The left behind books also teach that the U.N. will be located in Babylon next to Baghdad. Christians are left with no choice but to beleive than Obama's anti war views are more rightious than both Sarah Palin, or George Bush because Obama apposes the Iraq war and therefore apposes anti christ! These teachings help Satan by neutralizing Christian’s spiritual resolve! This self inflicted distraction is causing more damage than anything the liberal media has yet accomplished.
I need your help to challenge this doomsday theology before it becomes a bigger monster in 2012. In the next four years this anticipation about the end of the world may destroy our conservative and Christian unity. People blindly follow an out of context interpretation not coming from God nor the Bible.

Please help us get a new biblical understanding to as many Christians as possible. Why? Millions have become deceived by thousands of money grabbing preachers who have downloaded the wrong understanding of the mark of the beast into their foreheads! These deceived Christians are still waiting for a computer chip implant to bring in the rapture. This is happening when the mark of slavery is already coming upon them.
It is always important to provide another alternative view for people in order to challenge something like this, rather than let it just run wild. We need every christian to vote in future elections, and not allow such apocolyptic distractions to dominate their hearts in 2012. Watch the online video from start to finish, and understand the basis behind Babylon’s mark for today.. Click
http://www.eternaltruth.net

There's no hand-wringing or going on here, Jon. It's easy to have Reagan's optimism when it's based on unrestricted government borrowing. And no one's advocating inaction either. It's all about the economic policy. If the solution proposed for our economic crisis is more "growth," then we should be suspicious. Perpetual growth got us where we are today.

And just because the boomer retirement iceberg is not that close, that doesn't mean we can't start now to navigate that $75 trillion dollar iceberg.