“It’s very clear that consumers are running out of money. They’re increasingly stressed by inflation and the exhaustion of their pandemic-era savings. When you take a look over the last several years, what you see month after month, everyone talks about, the consumer’s still spending. They might be, but they’re spending less than the growth of inflation,” Storch Advisors CEO Gerald Storch told Fox Bussiness’ Maria Bartiromo on Thursday during an interview.

This chart sums up the consumer’s dire state.

We noted earlier this week that the National Retail Federation’s annual Prosper Insights & Analytics survey showed lower forecasted spending trends for Halloween among consumers nationwide. The last time this happened was just before the Covid crash. All eyes should be on upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday to gauge holiday shopping trends.

One last thing: perhaps mounting economic hardships are some of the drivers as to why US drinking rates have surged to the highest levels since the 1970s inflation storm.

Millions of Americans feel stressed in this disastrous Bidenomics era—it’s only a matter of time before something gives.

As everyday wrongs pile up high, though, human antennae — even ones that have gone unused for too long — begin to twitch uncontrollably.  Why are so many people today afflicted by sadness?  Because sins are a heavy burden to carry.  The mountains of evil rising in our world torment every soul.  And only by actively fighting the resulting chaos can we hope to one day find salvation.

That idea — that the struggle against evil is worth any cost — is easier said than done.  How can the actions of any one person make any meaningful difference?  As Christians all over the world celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, it seems more logical to ask: how can any person dedicated to making a difference ultimately not succeed?  Christ came to Earth to seed a message of hope and redemption and died for our sins.  His disciples spread that message across the world, suffering torture and death, so that we might live.  Christians have been persecuted, imprisoned, and slaughtered ever since, so that we might be saved.  Next to their sacrifices, our hardships pale.

I admit that there is a rebellious streak in me.  I am fond of rule-breakers who stand unafraid against evil.  Rebellion for rebellion’s sake can be just as detrimental as injustice.  Yet rebellion against injustice so that one may remain obedient to God is surely righteous.  And when you say it out loud in that way — will you choose man’s laws or God’s? — the answer is obvious.  So, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for God’s devout and indefatigable troublemakers.

As evidence that any one of us can make a difference in the fight against evil, I want to recognize the efforts of Bible smugglers around the world.  Did you know that men and women routinely risk imprisonment and execution by secretly delivering God’s Word to populations forbidden from receiving Christ’s message?

Just as the apostles did two thousand years ago, followers of Christ still risk life and limb to spread His message today.  In fact, the last century has been a busy one for God’s smugglers.  They have navigated the Soviet Union’s Iron Curtain, the Chinese Communist Party, and Islamic supremacists intent on Christianity’s eradication.  Yet God’s smugglers have persevered.

For decades, two Finnish men named Antti and Esko smuggled Bibles into the Soviet Union and throughout the Eastern Bloc.  They moved through Finnish forests in the dead of night, hid Bibles in secret compartments within their vehicles’ gas tanks, and eventually began manufacturing prefabricated housing components that allowed them to move tens of thousands of Bibles through Leningrad, Moscow, Tula, Oryol, Kiev, Kishinev, Romania, and Bulgaria.  They survived many security checks and many “impossible situations,” and several of their collaborators were imprisoned.  Through all those years of danger, though, Antti and Esko found strength through Scripture: The Lord will protect your going and your coming, now and forevermore.

In an ongoing operation today, there are Christians printing and smuggling Bibles into Middle Eastern countries that torture followers of Jesus Christ.  “[T]hey tried to kill me five times,” one smuggler recounted, who shared the story of a Believer so thankful for their covert operations that the man embraced his new Bible as the “most important book on Earth.”  A supporter of these perilous missions takes inspiration from the Book of Joshua: Be strong and courageous.  Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

Perhaps the most well-known Bible smuggler was Andrew van der Bijl (known by most as Brother Andrew, he died just last year), a fearless Christian from the Netherlands who risked his life on innumerable occasions to bring light into the darkness of totalitarian regimes.  As he operated a kind of Christian spy ring with clandestine missions to deliver God’s Word, he developed a prayer: “Lord, in my luggage I have Scripture I want to take to your children.  When you were on earth, You made blind eyes see.  Now, I pray, make seeing eyes blind.  Do not let the guards see those things You do not want them to see.”

That prayer saw him through nerve-racking encounters with Cold War border guards, Chinese communists, and Islamic security services.  In an operation codenamed Project Pearl, he helped coordinate the delivery of a million Bibles for a Chinese Christian woman known as Mama Kwang and her small team of rebels to unload from a barge off the Southern coast in a single night.  That “night of miracles” forty years ago has been credited with the explosion of Christian fellowship in China today.

As Brother Andrew was fond of noting, “The Bible is full of ordinary people who went to impossible places and did wondrous things simply because they decided to follow Jesus.”  Inspiring others with his courage, he “was always on the hunt for new rebels and radicals willing to go to the darkest places on earth, at the risk of death, to change the world.”

You do not have to become an international spy in order to be one of Brother Andrew’s “rebels and radicals” for Christ.  God blessed us each with special talents, and with these talents, we each have special obligations.  It is up to each one of us to do what we can when we can with steadfast determination.  Rebelling against the evils of this world requires no additional invitation.

Among his many sermons on the importance of sacrifice and hard work, English greengrocer and lay preacher Alfred Roberts attested: “There is no promise of ease for the faithful servant of the Cross, and there is no bypass round Calvary.  You will have to be a man of humble heart and paradoxically also a man of authority.  God wants no faint hearts for his ambassadors.  He wants man, who having communed with heaven, can never be intimidated by the world.”

That’s invaluable advice.  No matter how small we may feel, when we act with God in our hearts, we have nothing to fear.  We become the rock around which those with no resolve must move.  Roberts knew that humanity’s salvation depends on humanity’s character and, therefore, he spent a great deal of time forging in others indestructible souls filled with virtue, tenacity, and perseverance.  By many measures, he was successful, but he is remembered most for the moral strength of his daughter — known all over the world simply as the Iron Lady.

You never know when your seemingly mundane words or actions might light a flame of courage in someone else.  You do not know how your good example might affect another’s future.  So speak bravely and live your life as if curious eyes are constantly watching.  Be a person of both gentleness and authority.  Be one of God’s valiant ambassadors.  Be fearless, while others quiver.  Be rebellious against injustice and defiant against evil.  And remember this: no matter what tyrant rises or what iniquity spreads, God’s faithful children have nothing to dread.

Merry Christmas, friends.

Before discussing the latest effort, it’s worth noting new laws aren’t even needed to fix about 80% of the border crisis. President Joe Biden could with a phone call restore policies that kept the border controlled under previous presidents, including Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.

But unlike them, he has allowed his administration’s policy to be dictated by a leftist hard core that rejects borders and law enforcement. He has also diverted billions of tax dollars to the non-governmental organization mass immigration support industry. After nearly three years, we know that the Biden administration officials will not only fail to enforce immigration law, but that they also will continue to subvert and defy it.

So, where are we on border security deal negotiations?

It looks like senators won’t reach agreement before leaving Washington this Friday until the New Year. Even if they did, the deal would need to pass the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has shown a spine when it comes to fighting for real border security.

In backroom negotiations, the Washington Post reports Senate “Democrats have made major concessions … and advocacy groups on the left are furious.” Nonsense.

The embryonic Senate deal would reportedly make it easier for the Department of Homeland Security to deport illegal aliens whose asylum claims fail in court. But with the current backlogs, it takes five or more years for even a patently bogus case to conclude. DHS already has all the authority to deport it needs, yet their annual targets are to remove fewer than 30,000 criminal convict illegal aliens a year, never mind the millions of illegal aliens without such convictions who the administration has released into the country. They have no intention of deporting anyone else here illegally, including failed asylum seekers. The expensive and lengthy asylum process is just Kabuki theater for this administration.

The Senate proposal would also give Biden a new legal authority to expel illegal migrants before they can enter and claim asylum. This power would be simlar to Title 42, which allowed summary expulsions because of COVID-19 until May of this year. Pro-illegal immigration activists describe this as a massive concession, but it isn’t. The president already has the authority—and duty—to deter or detain illegal aliens instead of processing and releasing them as he does. If the cap to trigger the new expulsion authority is at the discretion of Biden’s DHS secretary, then it would never be reached.

Hence, the new, improved Title 42 would be triggered by some acceptable number of illegal border crossers. Obama’s DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson once said that 1,000 of these a day was a “bad day.” We’re now experiencing over 10,000 a day. If the cap is, say 3,000 a day, then you can expect Biden’s DHS to divert all their energies into expanding their bogus and illegal immigration parole programs. These  bypass the required visa process to fly illegal aliens directly to U.S. ports, thus  avoiding high numbers between ports of entry. The open borders activists in charge of the nation’s immigration policy have done everything in their power to subvert Congress and the law, and they won’t stop now.

Most importantly, “the White House has not expressed any willingness to limit Biden’s power to parole certain categories of immigrants,” a demand that “could throw the negotiations into a tailspin,” according to the Post.

Immigration parole is the administration’s favorite open border tool. Disregarding the clear language of the law and the expressed congressional intent behind it, Biden uses parole as an infinite method to bring in illegal aliens. If parole is untouched, the Biden administration can ramp it up  exponentially, moving the traffic from the border to  interior U.S. airports, and allowing in unlimited illegal migrants under the guise that they will claim asylum. This has not solved the problem; it has just hidden it better in Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ shell game. Using parole, DHS will continue to pour in hundreds of thousands of aliens for whom they have no proven identification, let alone criminal records or background checks.

Senators have to resist a “border security” trap and not sign on to a fig-leaf deal that hands the Biden administration more tools and money to bring in more illegal aliens.

Only serious reforms, like those the House passed in May, will restore the rule of law to our borders. What’s needed includes a substantial change to the current asylum process to weed out the bulk of fraudulent or spurious claims before they clog the pipeline, and a hard numerical cap on the use of true “humanitarian” parole —say 1,000 a year, among other policy and defunding changes. The Senate should not agree to a bad deal that would further harm America.

After endless months of being mired in political gloom and doom, we could all use a little Christmas cheer right now.

Unfortunately, Christmas has become embattled in recent years, co-opted by rampant commercialism, straight-jacketed by political correctness, and denuded of so much of its loveliness, holiness, and mystery.

Indeed, the season for giving has turned into the season for getting…and for getting offended. To a nation of snowflakes, Christmas has become yet another trigger word.

When I was a child in the 1950s, the magic of Christmas was promoted in the schools. We sang Christmas carols in the classroom. There were cutouts of the Nativity scene on the bulletin board, along with the smiling, chubby face of Santa and Rudolph. We were all acutely aware that Christmas was magic.

Fast forward to the present day, and Christmas has become fodder for the politically correct culture wars.

Over the years, Christmas casualties in the campaign to create one large national safe space have ranged from the beloved animated classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (denounced for promoting bullying and homophobia) to the Oscar-winning tune “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” (accused of being a date rape anthem) crooned by everyone from Dean Martin to Will Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel in the movie Elf.

Also on the endangered species Christmas list are such songs as “Deck the Halls,” “Santa Baby,” and “White Christmas.”

One publishing company even re-issued their own redacted version of Clement Clarke Moore’s famous poem “Twas the night before Christmas” in order to be more health conscious: the company edited out Moore’s mention of Santa smoking a pipe (“The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, / And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath.”)

In the politically correct quest to avoid causing offense, Christmas keeps getting axed. Examples abound.

Schools across the country now avoid anything that alludes to the true meaning of Christmas such as angels, the baby Jesus, stables, and shepherds.

In many of the nation’s schools, Christmas carols, Christmas trees, wreaths, and candy canes have also been banned as part of the effort to avoid any reference to Christmas, Christ or God. One school even outlawed the colors red and green, saying they were Christmas colors and, thus, illegal.
Students asked to send seasonal cards to military troops have been told to make them “holiday cards” and instructed not to use the words “Merry Christmas” on their cards.

Many schools have redubbed their Christmas concerts as “winter holiday programs” and refer to Christmas as a “winter festival.” Some schools have canceled holiday celebrations altogether to avoid offending those who do not celebrate the various holidays.

In Minnesota, a charter school banned the display of a poster prepared to promote the school’s yearbook as a holiday gift because the poster included Jack Skellington from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas and other secular Christmas icons, not to mention the word “Christmas.”

In New Jersey, one school district banned traditional Christmas songs such as “Joy to the World” and “Silent Night” from its holiday concerts.  A New Jersey middle school canceled a field trip to attend a performance of a play based on Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” because some might have found it “offensive.”

In Texas, a teacher in Texas who decorated her door with a scene from “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” including a scrawny tree and Linus, was forced to take it down lest students be offended or feel uncomfortable.

In Connecticut, teachers were instructed to change the wording of the classic poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas” to “Twas the Night Before a Holiday.”

In Virginia, a high school principal debated about whether he could mention Santa or distribute candy canes given that they were symbols of Christmas.

In Massachusetts, a fourth-grade class was asked to list 25 things that reminded them of Christmas. When one young student asked if she could include “Jesus,” her teacher replied that she could get fired if Christmas’ namesake appeared on the list.

Things have not been much better outside the schools, muddled by those who subscribe to the misguided notion that the Constitution requires that anything religious in nature be banned from public places.

In one West Virginia town, although the manger scene (one of 350 light exhibits in the town’s annual Festival of Lights) included shepherds, camels and a guiding star, the main attractions—Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—were nowhere to be found due to concerns about the separation of church and state.

In Chicago, organizers of a German Christkindlmarket were informed that the public Christmas festival was no place for the Christmas story. Officials were concerned that clips of the film “The Nativity Story,” which were to be played at the festival, might cause offense.

In Delaware, a Girl Scout troop was prohibited from carrying signs reading “Merry Christmas” in their town’s annual holiday parade.

Clearly, Christmas has become one of many casualties in the misguided dispute over the so-called “separation of church and state,” a controversy that has given rise to a disconcerting and unconstitutional attempt to sanitize public places of any reference to God or religion.

Yet there’s a really simple solution to this annual angst of whether students and teachers can display Christmas-related posters, wear Christmas colors of red and green or sing Christmas songs, and that is for government officials to stop being such Humbugs and create a vibrant, open environment where all expression can flourish.

While the First Amendment prohibits the government from forcing religion on people or endorsing one particular religion over another, there is no legitimate legal reason why people should not be able to celebrate the season freely or wish each other a Merry Christmas or even mention the word Christmas.

After all, the First Amendment affirms the right to freedom for religion, not freedom from religion.

Hoping to clear up the legal misunderstanding over the do’s and don’ts of celebrating Christmas, The Rutherford Institute’s Constitutional Q&A on “Twelve Rules of Christmas” provides basic guidelines for lawfully celebrating Christmas in schools, workplaces, and elsewhere.

Yet while Christmas may be the “trigger” for purging Christmas from public places, government forums and speech—except when it profits Corporate America—it is part and parcel of the greater trend in recent years to whittle away at free speech and trample the First Amendment underfoot.

Anything that might raise the specter of controversy is avoided at all costs.

We are witnessing the emergence of an unstated yet court-sanctioned right, one that makes no appearance in the Constitution and yet seems to trump the First Amendment at every turn: the right to not be offended.

In this way, emboldened by phrases such as “hate crimes,” “bullying,” “extremism” and “microaggressions,” free speech has been confined to carefully constructed “free speech zones,” criminalized when it skates too close to challenging the status quo, shamed when it butts up against politically correct ideals and muzzled when it appears dangerous.

At the slightest hint of trouble, government officials (and corporations) are inclined to chuck anything that might be objectionable.

Yet when all is said and done, what the police state really wants is a nation of snowflakes, snitches, and book burners: a legalistic, intolerant, elitist, squealing bystander nation willing to turn on each other and turn each other in for the slightest offense, while being incapable of presenting a united front against the threats posed by the government and its cabal of Constitution-destroying agencies and corporate partners.

You want to know why this country is in the state it’s in?

The answer is the same no matter what the problem might be, whether it’s the economy, government corruption, police brutality, endless wars, censorship, falling literacy rates, etc.: every one of these problems can be sourced back to the fact that “we the people” have stopped thinking for ourselves and relinquished responsibility for our lives and well-being to a government entity that sees us only as useful idiots.

The Greek philosopher Socrates believed in teaching people to think for themselves and in the free exchange of ideas. For his efforts, he was accused of corrupting the youth and was put to death. However, his legacy lived on in the Socratic method of teaching: posing questions that help young and old discover the answers by learning to think for themselves.

Now even the ability to think for oneself is in danger of extinction.

As Rod Serling, creator of the classic sci-fi series Twilight Zone and one of the most insightful commentators on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

We face an immense threat in our society from this drive to obliterate our history and traditions in order to erect a saccharine view of reality. In the process, we are creating a schizophrenic world for our children to grow up in, and it is neither healthy nor will it produce the kind of people who will be able to face the challenges of a future ruled by a totalitarian regime.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, you can’t sanitize reality. You can’t scrub out of existence every unpleasant thought or idea. You can’t legislate tolerance. You can’t create enough safe spaces to avoid the ugliness that lurks in the hearts of men and women. You can’t fight ignorance with the weapons of a police state.

What you can do, however, is step up your game.

Opt for kindness over curtness, and civility over censorship. Choose peace over politics, and freedom over fascism. Find common ground with those whose politics or opinions or lifestyles may not jive with your own.

Do your part to make the world a little brighter and a little lighter, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll have a chance of digging our way out of this hole.

About the Author

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected]. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

Target Corp., the popular American department store chain, may be in for another round of lessons in the consequences of annoying its consumers with “Pride” merchandising. With the Christmas season approaching quickly, Target has a special gift for Americans: a woke Christmas.

Shoppers can expect to see “gay Santas and LGBTQ-themed nutcrackers” on Target’s shelves of this season, the Washington Examiner reported.

Erik Thompson, identified as a “Senior LGBTQIA+ Segmentation Strategist & Pride Lead,” announced he would be joining Target in an Instagram post earlier this week. His post appears to have been deleted.

In the post, which decried the devastating consumer boycott over the summer after Target sold creepy LGBTQ-themed merchandise marketed to minors, Thompson promised “Glitter & Hellfire” to “rip that old world to shreds.”

Quite frankly, I’m almost awestruck at the doubling-down amid what has been, unequivocally, the most powerful year for boycotters of absurdly liberal business promotions.

Lest we forget, the conservative backlash against Anheuser-Busch for partnering transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney with its Bud Light brand cost the company at least $15.7 billion. It also resulted in lots of Bud Light sitting unpurchased on thousands of pallets around the country.

Benoit Garbe, Anheuser-Busch’s former U.S. chief marketing officer, was removed Nov. 16 after Bud Light sales refused to bounce back.

Target suffered similarly, with stock losses of nearly $14 billion and sales slumps of 5.4% in stores and 10.5% online in the second quarter. Target’s CFO blamed the losses on the “reaction to our Pride assortment.”

The Walt Disney Co.’s woke strategies met similar reactions, with streaming subscriptions slumping, park attendance abysmal, and movie releases failing box office expectations. Releases of the live-action “The Little Mermaid” and Disney-owned Marvel’s “The Marvels” lost hundreds of millions apiece for the megacorporation.

In September, Disney CEO Bob Iger told investors that he would endeavor to “quiet the noise” of Disney’s previous political posturing, and since has delayed release of the live-action version of “Snow White” by a full year, following leaks that revealed a serious departure from Disney’s original animated movie from 1937.

Despite crystal-clear indicators that this is the perfect time for companies to quit political posturing and pushing liberal propagandistic efforts, it looks like Target will take the same lessons yet again—and stubbornly so.

The reaction to Luke Gentile’s reporting in the Washington Examiner already looks bad for Target.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., calls it an insult to his constituents and warns of legislative consequences.

“When companies like Target that insult conservatives seek Republicans’ help on Capitol Hill,” Cotton said, “our response will be: ‘I’m sorry that’s happening to you. Best of luck.’”

In a market where traditionally brick-and-mortar stores face increasingly threatening competition from online retailers, Target can’t afford to play so loosely during the holiday season. Anheuser-Busch’s decision to double down after the Mulvaney fiasco cost the beermaker far more than profit margins; such arrogance cost many of its employees their jobs because of the brewery company’s unwillingness to appease the market.

The answer to such inflammatory shenanigans is deceptively simple: Apologize and get back to doing what you do best.

Heckler & Koch, a German arms manufacturer I’m quite fond of, previously employed a social media manager who had begun to use her platform at the brand to lecture H&K fans about sexism.

The backlash began to build following a Twitchy article, with boycotts almost certain. But Heckler & Koch then broke the mold. It fired the woke social media manager and issued a statement on X, formerly Twitter: “H&K does not engage in identity politics. A policy was violated. Changes were made.”

Since that post, H&K sales have risen comfortably. No boycotts, no drop in sales, no problem.

If Target wants a merry Christmas and a happy new year, it only has to stop with the identity politics that have fatigued millions of Americans. We don’t need to hear about Santa’s sex life or which gender the nutcracker is pretending to be.

As one consumer posted on X: “This is so annoying, I just want to shop.”

How executives can miss the forest for the trees in such a monumental blunder is truly beyond me. If Target wants to learn the same lesson again, then by all means we will deliver until the corporation’s leaders get the message.

One such story that has always stuck with me is that of Fritz Vincken, who was twelve years old and living with his mother, Elisabeth, in a small hunting cabin in the Ardennes Forest during the worst fighting of the Battle of the Bulge.  His father had hidden them in the secluded mountain hut across the Belgian border after the family’s bakery and home were destroyed during allied bombing in Aachen, Germany.  While Fritz’s dad baked bread for German soldiers at the front line, Fritz and his mother had little food, except for what they could forage.

On a freezing Christmas Eve night, as they struggled to ignore distant gunfire and prepared a meager meal made from a scrawny rooster and some potatoes, there was a loud knock on the door.  Fritz’s heart leapt, believing that it was his father finally returning.  Instead, it was three Americans from the 121st Infantry, 8th Division — all suffering from frostbite and one seriously injured.

“My mother knew the penalty for harboring the enemy,” Fritz recalled, “but when she looked into the young Americans’ eyes and saw that one was badly hurt, she opened the door and let them in.”  They added some potatoes to the stew for their tired, hungry guests and attended to the American’s gunshot wound the best they could, and because the soldiers spoke no German and the Vinckens spoke no English, they relied on hand signals and broken French for communication.

Then came more pounding from outside.  When Elisabeth cautiously opened the hut’s door, she found four freezing Wehrmacht soldiers looking for shelter.  “I was almost paralyzed with fear,” Fritz recounted, “for though I was a child, I knew that harsh law of war: Anyone giving aid and comfort to the enemy would be shot.”  Had any other person opened the door on that frigid Christmas Eve night in 1944, the killing fields of the Ardennes would almost certainly have claimed more victims.

Instead, Elisabeth took control of the situation, wishing the young Germans a “Fröhliche Weihnachten” and inviting them in for food and rest upon two conditions: (1) that they leave their weapons outside and (2) respect her Christmas guests.  “She reminded them that it was Christmas Eve and told them sternly there would be no shooting around here.”  While Fritz “stood and stared in disbelief,” the Wehrmacht soldiers complied.  She then ran back to the Americans; who had grown nervous, spoke gently in a language they could not understand; and grabbed their weapons, too.

At first the tiny cabin was uncomfortably tense.  Then one of the Germans, who had been a medical student, offered to assist the wounded American, noticeably weak from blood loss.  The Americans pulled out some coffee grounds and cigarettes from a tattered pack, and one of the other Germans offered some scraps of bread.  Fritz added what few ingredients they had to the stew, and his “mother read from the Bible and declared that there would be at least one night of peace in this war.”

“Komm, Herr Jesus,” she prayed, “and be our guest.”  “There were tears in her eyes,” Fritz remembered, “and as I looked around the table, I saw that the battle-weary soldiers were filled with emotion.”  After dinner the seven soldiers, who had been bitter enemies just hours before, fell into a deep sleep, side by side.  When they woke the next morning, they exchanged Christmas greetings and set to work building a makeshift stretcher from tree branches for the wounded American.  The Germans advised the Americans to avoid a town that had been taken over by Nazi forces and gave them a map and compass that would get them back to their friends.  Elisabeth returned their weapons and prayed, “May God bless and watch over you.”  Then the soldiers shook hands and went their separate ways.

For Fritz, his mother had been nothing short of a hero.  “The inner strength of a single woman, who, by her wits and intuition, prevented potential bloodshed, taught me the practical meaning of the words: ‘Good Will Toward Mankind.'”

Fritz and his parents survived the war, and because the young boy saw those Americans in his shack as “liberators,” he eventually immigrated to the United States, became an American citizen, and opened up a German bakery of his own in Honolulu, Hawaii.  After telling his story to his new countrymen for years, he eventually submitted details of the miraculous Christmas Eve during the Battle of the Bulge to Readers Digest, and a much larger audience learned of the rare peace shared for a few hours amid the cold, bloody landscape of the Ardennes.  In retelling Fritz’s experience during a trip to Germany in 1985, President Reagan urged others to do the same, “because none of us can ever hear too much about building peace and reconciliation.”

Amazingly, after Unsolved Mysteries produced an episode in the mid-’90s seeking more details about the little known tale, Fritz eventually reunited with two of the American soldiers before they all passed away.  They, too, had always told others of their miraculous Christmas Eve in the middle of battle and wondered what had happened to the boy alone with his mother in the woods.  Sergeant Ralph Blank told Fritz, “Your mother saved my life,” and with that comfort, the young boy turned old man said, “Now I can die in peace.  My mother’s courage won’t be forgotten, and it shows what good will will do.”

His mother, Elisabeth, often said over the years until her own passing that “God was at our table” during that freezing night in the forest.  And Fritz said that the event so altered his understanding of life that he never stopped thinking of “those seven young soldiers, who met as enemies and parted as friends, right in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge.”

Whenever I think of Fritz’s story, I am struck by a remarkable truth: it is always the smallest of acts that end up creating ripples large enough to produce meaningful change.  At any point on that Christmas Eve in ’44 during some of the worst atrocities of the war, any one of those seven soldiers could have acted belligerently out of exhaustion, pain, or haste.  A mother and her young son speaking unfamiliar words to foreign soldiers could have inadvertently provoked tragedy.  A trio of Wehrmacht soldiers, irate at the sight of their enemies taking refuge far from home, could have chosen the same violence and bloodshed that soaked the earth beyond the cabin’s door.

Instead, an unarmed woman brought God into her house and invited those who might have done her harm to share the blessings of Jesus’s birth.  Through her resolve and faith, she secured peace.  That heroic act not only convinced combatant soldiers to lay down their weapons, but also inspired her son for the rest of his life.  He then told of his mother’s courage to countless others who visited his bakery over the next half-century of his life, who, in turn, retold the story and its lesson to countless more.  Even the president of the United States in the middle of the Cold War seized upon its importance and shared it with millions of strangers in a quest to transform former enemies into friends.

Faith and small acts of courage do change the world.  That is what Christmas reminds us all.

Normally, U.S. consumers have an insatiable appetite for cheap plastic goods from China.

But now something has changed.

According to CNBC, manufacturing orders from China have fallen by a whopping 40 percent, and as a result many Chinese factories will be closing much earlier in January than usual…

U.S. manufacturing orders in China are down 40 percent, according to the latest CNBC Supply Chain Heat Map data. As a result of the decrease in orders, Worldwide Logistics tells CNBC it is expecting Chinese factories to shut down two weeks earlier than usual for the Chinese Lunar New Year — Chinese New Year’s Eve falls on Jan. 21 next year. The seven days after the holiday are considered a national holiday.

“Many of the manufacturers will be closed in early January for the holiday, which is much earlier than last year,” Monaghan said.

As with so many other numbers that we have been getting lately, there is no way to possibly spin this to make it look good.

What we are facing is truly “a collapse in demand”, and as a result container freight rates are absolutely plummeting…

Carriers have been executing on an active capacity management strategy by announcing more blank sailings and suspending services to balance supply with demand. “The unrelenting decline in container freight rates from Asia, caused by a collapse in demand, is compelling ocean carriers to blank more sailings than ever before as vessel utilization hits new lows,” said Joe Monaghan, CEO of Worldwide Logistics Group.

The bottom line is that U.S. consumers are simply not buying as much stuff as retailers originally anticipated.

And survey after survey has shown that Americans plan to spend less during the holiday season this year.  Here is just one recent example…

Inflation is weighing heavily on the holidays this year.

Roughly half of shoppers will buy fewer things due to higher prices, and more than one-third said they will rely on coupons to cut down on the cost, according to a recent survey of more than 1,000 adults by RetailMeNot.

Of course consumers over in western Europe are suffering right now as well.

In fact, economic conditions are deteriorating even faster over there.

If you can believe it, one recent survey found that approximately two-thirds of all adults in the UK “are worried that they will not be able to afford Christmas dinner”…

Two-thirds of adults are worried that they will not be able to afford Christmas dinner, according to a survey.

The survey, commissioned by the Salvation Army, calculated the cost of Christmas dinner at £7.50 per head but – as the price of food is continuing to rise – the cost has increased since the survey was carried out on 22 October.

All over the western world, we are facing an unprecedented cost of living crisis.

Inflation has been rising much faster than our paychecks have, and that is causing a tremendous amount of financial pain.

Meanwhile, a lot of people have seen the value of their investments go down substantially over the past 12 months.

I really feel badly for those that were heavily invested in crypto.  There are many tokens that have “lost more than 70% of their value”, and the collapse of FTX has raised questions “about whether crypto has a future”…

Already reeling from the so-called crypto winter, investors were dealt a major blow with the high-profile collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange in early November, which sent Bitcoin tumbling. To top it off, BlackRock Chief Executive Larry Fink said this week that he expects most crypto companies will fold after FTX’s demise. A Schwab index tracking crypto-linked stocks is coming off its worst month since June, and is down 63% this year.

“Questions about whether crypto has a future have become prevalent after a year during which many tokens lost more than 70% of their value and the collapse of FTX has exacerbated a crisis of confidence that had started in the spring,” said Mark Palmer, an analyst at BTIG LLC.

At the same time, home values have been falling and falling.

As I have covered in previous articles, U.S. homeowners lost a record high 1.3 trillion dollars in home equity during the third quarter alone.

But at least the latest employment number that the government gave us was good, right?

Actually, it wasn’t so good.  It turns out that the Household and Establishment surveys are telling two completely different stories.  Zero Hedge has posted an absolutely outstanding article that breaks this down in great detail…

Recall that back in August, September, and October we showed that a stark divergence had opened between the Household and Establishment surveys that comprise the monthly jobs report, and since March the former has been stagnant while the latter has been rising every single month. In addition to that, full-time jobs were plunging while part-time jobs were surging and the number of multiple-jobholders soared.

Fast forward to today when the inconsistencies not only continue to grow, but have become  downright grotesque.

I would encourage you to read the entire article.  Since March, the gap between the Household and Establishment surveys has ballooned to nearly 2.7 million workers, and some are suggesting that this is being done for political purposes…

What is even more perplexing, is that despite the continued rise in nonfarm payrolls, the Household survey continues to telegraph growing weakness, and as of Nov 30, the gap that opened in March has since grown to a whopping 2.7 million “workers” which may or may not exist anywhere besides the spreadsheet model of some BLS (or is that BLM) political activist.

Of course the truth is that the employment market is not in good shape.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of layoffs in November 2022 was 417 percent higher than it was in November 2021.

A tsunami of layoffs has begun, and I expect to see a whole lot more in the months ahead.

So it is quite likely that this will be a really gloomy month, but I expect that 2023 will be even gloomier.

Editor’s Note: For years, I ignored calls for people to buy precious metals. I took it so far as to deny precious metals sponsors because I didn’t believe in them. After all, during the Trump years the stock market was soaring and precious metals, while performing well, didn’t seem like a prudent choice for investments. Things have clearly changed.

I am now sounding the alarm bells. Every American with wealth or retirement to protect MUST consider moving large portions of it them to precious metals while that’s still doable. To do so, they should work with companies who are not working against America’s best interests. Of the many precious metals companies that I vetted out, I found that the vast majority are working with and donating to the Democrat Party. Many are working with proxies of the Chinese Communist Party. Some are even working with globalists like George Soros and Klaus Schwab. It truly shocked me to find that many “conservative” show hosts and websites were promoting companies who are using their profits to take down our nation.

I have selected three companies who truly qualify as America First. These companies are all listed on my Gold page. Unintentionally, it turned out that one is small, one is medium, and one is large. That’s just how it worked out, but I appreciate that it did because I believe it gives Americans the choices they need to work with companies who can send them physical precious metals and/or help them open self-directed IRAs backed by physical precious metals. There are other options, but those two are the ones I recommend, not as a financial advisor but as someone concerned about the direction of our nation and the course our economy is heading.

Check them out.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “End Times” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book I have written six other books that are available on Amazon.com including “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending copies as gifts to family and friends.  Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible.

I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.

I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is definitely a great help.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

Article cross-posted from The Economic Collapse Blog.

This year is a bit different. For the first time since the middle of the Obama regime, leftists are starting to wake up. It’s subtle for many, but we’re seeing trends in the polls that those who were adamantly opposed to conservative principles before have suddenly embraced a desire to preserve freedoms, push back against groomers, and pump oil to bring down gas prices, among other “unwoke” ideas. The polls showed this, and while the stolen 2022 election may have reaffirmed the false leftist narratives for many, it’s likely that some progressives may quietly be questioning whether there really are shenanigans happening in the elections.

If you’re willing to talk about political topics for Thanksgiving — and I wouldn’t hold it against you if you aren’t — then there’s something important to keep in mind. This is not the time to try to win arguments. This is a time to plant seeds and answer questions. We aren’t trying to drive people away. We’re trying to wake them up to the fact that they’re being lied to on a daily basis by government, corporate media, and their favorite leftist social media influencers. They’re being lied to by Big Pharma and their own doctors. They’re being lied to by their leftist friends and relatives.

Here are five topics that are ripe for red-pilling, as I discussed on today’s episode of The JD Rucker Show. I selected these five topics because I believe they’re the ones that offer the greatest chance of a successful red-pilling. You don’t have to convince them that you’re right or that they’re wrong. You have to introduce doubt in their worldview and be there to help them come to a better understanding of what’s happening around us.

5 – Climate Change Cultists

There are two areas of attack on the topic of the climate change cult. First and foremost, the actions of the deranged wing of the cult that has radicals gluing themselves to cars and ruining priceless and irreplaceable works of art highlights the highest degree of cognitive dissonance permeating through their group. Just because Aunt Sally isn’t pouring tomato soup on a Monet doesn’t mean her support for climate action isn’t encouraging the behavior.

The second area of attack is to inform them about nuclear energy. If the climate change agenda was really about saving the planet, the green movement would be pushing for inexpensive and highly efficient nuclear power to be the primary source of electricity for the world. The fact that they’re pushing for expensive and inefficient solar, wind, and other “green” energy capture methods tells us that Saikat Chakrabarti, the architect of the Green New Deal, wasn’t lying.

“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing,” he said.

The true believers which account for the bulk of the climate change cult have been brainwashed into thinking nuclear power is bad because it could solve the problems they believe are real while not destroying the economy in the process. As for the powers-that-be who are really driving the cult, they know this has nothing to do with climate change. It’s all about control through The Great Reset, or any of the various names it’s had since the 1970s.

4 – Growing Authoritarianism

This may be the toughest of the five to red-pill your relatives on because they either see it or they don’t. The good news is it doesn’t have to be a political discussion of left-vs-right. DC in general and most state governments, whether Republican or Democrat, are taking more and more power while introducing increased attacks against our freedoms on a seemingly daily basis.

A good way to test the waters on this one is to talk about the Colorado residents whose smart meters prevented them from turning on their air conditioning. If your relative sees nothing wrong with that, perhaps it’s better to move on from the topic. They’re too far gone.

3 – State of the Economy Under Democrats

Money comes up at every sufficiently large enough Thanksgiving gathering. Whether it starts with questions about how the new job is going or someone asks about Uncle Jack’s new Audi, the financial hierarchy within families tends to be a topic that comes up at least once.

Food prices are a great way to introduce the topic if nobody else is taking the bait. Family members will chime in about how shocked they were to find out tomatoes were up to $6 a pound. And here’s the funny part. Chances are decent that a leftist family member will do a preemptive strike and blame Republicans, Donald Trump, Russia, Covid, or a combination of the four. You can argue if you’d like, but depending on the wording I probably wouldn’t even verbalize a response. I’d smile and shake my head. If they ask your thoughts tell them if they really think Democrats aren’t responsible then there’s no logical argument you could possibly make to convince them otherwise since they’re clearly blinded by partisanship.

2 – Another Stolen Election

This is a dangerous one because they can tune you out quickly if you don’t handle it right. Democrats believe abortion was the thing that swung the election and RINOs are reiterating this concept. But as I’ve said many times since the election, that makes absolutely zero sense because of the polls. If abortion was the driving factor that stopped the predicted red tsunami, then it would have been clearly seen in the weeks or even days prior to the election. Overturning Roe v Wade was a known issue for months and did NOT prompt a shift in the electorate at any point beyond the first week or two.

To say it manifested suddenly on election day is ludicrous.

Then, you point to the stark difference between states that had voter integrity laws in place and those that didn’t. Florida versus Arizona is the obvious comparison. In Florida where ubiquitous mail-in ballots and ballot harvesting weren’t allowed, where an investigative team was formed to punish election thieves, the red wave was bigger than most expect. In Arizona with everyone getting mail-in ballots and laws against ballot harvesting not enforced at all, the polls that favored Republicans were allegedly wrong by a large margin. That has NEVER happened. Polls always favor Democrats.

Perhaps the best piece of evidence that might wake up your family members is to highlight this article from The Gateway Pundit. How did down-ballot Republicans get more cumulative votes than those who were targeted by Democrats and RINOs? The answer is they couldn’t have. It’s simply not possible.

1 – “Safe and Effective” Vaccines

Yes, this will be a sore subject for many in your family. Those who have been vaccinated are increasingly feeling conned. But instead of touting how brilliant you were for not falling for the scam, some will actually BLAME YOU for it. That’s just human nature. Just as socialists blame successful people for their own shortcomings, many of the current or former vaxx-nannies will blame antivaxxers for… whatever reason they can manufacture.

Now is not the time to gloat or to try to make them feel dumber than they already do. Now is also not the time to try to convince those who refuse to see the truth that they’re continuing to make a bigger mistake with every subsequent booster. It’s a time to answer questions. This is why it’s good to be as properly versed as possible about it all.

Sometimes, you give people the truth in the form of something easy to digest like a Flintstones Vitamin and sometimes you stick a hypodermic needle of reality in their arm (odd analogy considering the topic, but you get the idea). I’m a fan of telling the blatant truth, but it might be a good idea to start off on this topic with the Flintstones Vitamin version. Instead of jumping to the globalist elite cabal’s depopulation and control agenda, perhaps start off with Big Pharma greed. “Normies” can understand that.

We need as much positive energy as possible in America so I don’t want readers or listeners to be starting arguments at family gatherings. On the other hand, our time appears to be short so there’s really no time to waste on pleasantries.