COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Monday, November 06, 2017

Social Destruction: Only 4 percent of homes with a married mother and father are on food stamps at any given time. But 21 percent of cohabiting and 28 percent of single-mother homes require such public assistance.

The Research Proves The No. 1 Social Justice Imperative Is Marriage

For the last 20 years, marital status has increasingly become the central factor in whether our neighbors rise above, remain, or descend into poverty. The research is astounding.

A foundational value in our nation is the opportunity for all its citizens to be able to compete for a fair and meaningful shot at the American dream. This begins with access to citizenship, educational opportunity, and securing meaningful work that leads to greater life opportunities via commitment, diligence, and self-sacrifice. But an important contributor to putting and keeping men, women, and children on the escalator toward the American dream is little-known and widely ignored.

Just 70 years ago, social mobility and protection from poverty were largely a factor of employment. Those who had full-time work of any kind were seldom poor. Fifty years ago, education marked the gulf separating the haves from the have-nots. For the last 20 years or more, though, marital status has increasingly become the central factor in whether our neighbors and their children rise above, remain, or descend into poverty. The research is astounding.

Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute explains in his important book “Coming Apart: The State of White America” that in 1960, the poorly and moderately educated were only 10 percent less likely to be married than the college educated, with both numbers quite high: 84 and 94 respectively. That parity largely held until the late 1970s.

Today, these two groups are separated by a 35 percent margin and the gap continues to expand. All the movement is on one side. Marriage is sinking dramatically among lower- and middle-class Americans, down to a minority of 48 percent today. No indicators hint at any slowing. It’s remained generally constant among the well-to-do. This stark trend line led Murray to lament, “Marriage has become the fault line dividing America’s classes.” He has company in this conclusion.

Marriage Matters Lots More than Income and Race

Jonathan Rauch writing in the National Journal, certainly no conservative, notes that “marriage is displacing both income and race as the great class divide of the new century.” Isabel Sawhill, a senior scholar at the center-left Brookings Institute, boldly and correctly proclaimed some years ago that “the proliferation of single-parent households accounts for virtually all of the increase in child poverty since the early 1970s.” Virtually all of the increase!

Professor Bill Galston, President Clinton’s domestic policy advisor and now a senior fellow at Brookings, explained in the early 1990s that an American need only do three things to avoid living in poverty: graduate from high school, marry before having a child, and have that child after age twenty. Only 8 percent of people who do so, he reported, will be poor, while 79 percent who fail to do all three will.

Sociologists have referred to keeping these things in proper order as the “success sequence.” It remains true, according to a new research investigation from the Brookings and the American Enterprise institutes. It takes a deeper look at this “first comes love, then comes marriage” sequence by class and generation.

The increase of baby carriages coming before marriage is terribly alarming among the working poor. Working-class women are nearly three times more likely to have babies out of wedlock than upper-class women. Poor women are about five times more likely. These two groups are far less likely to be married overall and twice as likely to be cohabiting, suffering further from inherent instability of living together without marriage.
These troubling family-path trends leading to decreased life success are unfortunately true for millennials, as well.
recent report on this topic focusing on millennials reports that 97 percent of those who follow the success sequence—earn at least a high-school diploma, work, and marry before having children—will not be poor as they enter their 30s. This is largely true for ethnic minorities and those who grew up in poor families. But sadly, fewer millennials are keeping these things in order, compared to their Boomer and Xer forbearers.
The success sequence of “first comes love” is so much more than moral choice or romantic idealism. These are deeply pragmatic, economic decisions powerfully affecting class mobility, where people live on the social scale, and the opportunities they will be able to provide for their children. This is because of the extraordinary economic power of marriage.

Marriage Boosts Every Measure Of Human Well-Being

A consistent and irrefutable mountain of research has shown, reaching back to the 1970s and beyond, that marriage strongly boosts every important measure of well-being for children, women, and men. Pick any measure you can imagine: overall physical and mental health, income, savings, employment, educational success, general life contentment and happiness, sexual satisfaction, even recovery from serious disease, healthy diet and exercise. Married people rate markedly and consistently better in each of these, and so many more, compared to their single, divorced, and cohabiting peers. Thus, marriage is an essential active ingredient in improving one’s overall life prospects, regardless of class, race, or educational status.

This is why it’s not merely one-parent versus two-parent families that makes the difference. The U.S. Census Bureau finds the poverty rate for children living with two unmarried cohabiting parents is similar to that of single-mother homes than to those living with their married mother and father. Married people, regardless of how much they have, tend to manage their money differently than divorced, single, and cohabiting people.

Only 4 percent of homes with a married mother and father are on food stamps at any given time. But 21 percent of cohabiting and 28 percent of single-mother homes require such public assistance. Likewise, 78 percent of married people own their own home—a central goal in achieving the American Dream—while only 41 percent of cohabiting adults and 44 percent of singles do. Data indicates that marital status boosts home ownership more than home ownership increases marital opportunities.

Shotgun Marriages Also Confer Big Benefits

Robert Lerman, an economist at the Urban Institute, reports the marriage benefit holds for even the most poor, and to a lesser degree but still consequentially for those who marry between conception and the birth of their first child. Despite “academic ability, school completion, family background, race, and age at pregnancy, women who are married between pregnancy and the birth of their first child averaged a 30 percent higher income-to-needs ratio and a 15 percent lower degree of [financial volatility].”

These numbers are not insignificant. Such marriages were associated with reducing the number of years the mother, father, and children spent in poverty by half, compared with those who did not marry before the birth of their first child. Remarkably, this difference was even greater—by substantial margins—for black mothers and those with low educational test scores. Lerman concludes, “Even among the mothers with the least qualifications and highest risk of poverty, marriage effects are consistently large and statistically significant.”

Even women entering marriage between the conception and birth of their first child, regardless of class, education, and race, benefit from a greater standard of living by the following percentages.
  • 65 percent over a single mother with no other live-in adult
  • 50 percent over a single mother living with a non-romantic adult
  • 20 percent over a single mother living with a man
Shotgun weddings are not just a moral action. Even among households with similar incomes, and comparable demographic and educational characteristics, the following statistics demonstrate that, over the past year, married households are at least half as likely to have difficulty meeting their basic monthly living expenses and bills. This was most pronounced for black families.
A major 2014 report from the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies at the University of Virginia reports that:
  • Adjusting for family size, family income is 73 percent higher for married women compared to that of their unmarried peers.
  • Married men benefit from an average annual economic “marriage premium” of at least $15,900 per year compared to their unmarried peers.
  • This investigation also finds that the marriage premium is even more substantial for the most disadvantaged.

Marriage Is Good for People of Every Race

The advantages of growing up in an intact family and being married extend across the population. They apply as much to blacks and Hispanics as they do to whites. For instance, black men enjoy a marriage premium of at least $12,500 in their individual income compared to their single peers. The advantages also apply, for the most part, to men and women who are less educated. For instance, men with a high-school degree or less enjoy a marriage premium of at least $17,000 compared to their single peers.
This is not simply because the well-to-do are more likely to marry, but that marriage itself is ‘a wealth-generating institution.’
So marriage is far more than just a personal, sentimental institution, giving folks something to feel-good about at each year’s anniversary. It produces profoundly practical and essential value. The scholars at the National Marriage Project working from the University of Virginia explain this is not simply because the well-to-do are more likely to marry, but that marriage itself is “a wealth-generating institution.” The sociological evidence on this fact is dramatic.

Marriage generates wealth largely because marriage molds men into producers, providers, and savers. Singleness and cohabiting don’t. Nobel-winning economist George Akerlof, in a prominent lecture more than a decade ago, explained the pro-social and market influence of marriage upon men and fathers: “Married men are more attached to the labor force, they have less substance abuse, they commit less crime, are less likely to become the victims of crime, have better health, and are less accident prone.”

Akerlof explains this is because “men settle down when they get married and if they fail to get married, they fail to settle down.” This is precisely why every insurance company offers lower premiums on health and auto insurance to married men. Settled-down men also work more, earn more, save more, and spend more money on their families than on themselves. They boost the well-being of women and children in every important way.

If You Really Care About Inequality, You Support Marriage

The evidence is impossible to ignore or explain away. Even The New York Timesnoted its importance in a major story some years ago entitled “Two Classes, Divided by ‘I Do.’” Marriage drives well-being and upward mobility. The absence of marriage diminishes it. Thus, the growing class divide. Any smart and compassionate effort to alleviate poverty and increase the well-being of our communities and its citizens cannot ignore this fact.

Today, many unfortunately believe that to be concerned about what kinds of families adults create and raise children in should be no one’s business. It’s a personal matter. Such people have no idea what a family is or does anthropologically. Each family is as much a public institution as it is private, if not more so. Its strength and weaknesses are felt throughout each community in countless ways. Government expands as marriage declines.

Working for healthy, well-formed, enduring marriages is one of the most effective ways we can do the work of social justice. That the effort is not hip and trendy has no bearing on its ability to change lives for the better. Decades of research and the lives of real people make the case over and again every day, for good or for bad. Let’s resolve as a nation to choose and work for the good and halt the ever widening chasm of class.

Glenn T. Stanton writes and speaks about family, gender, and art, is the director of family formation studies at Focus on the Family, and is the author of eight books including "The Ring Makes All the Difference" (Moody, 2011) and "Loving My LGBT Neighbor" (Moody, 2014). He blogs at glenntstanton.com.

57 comments:

  1. Government expands as marriage declines.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Aid For Mothers With Dependent Children started out as money granted to mothers who had lost their husbands to our wars, IIRC. It has grown from there exponentially.

      Delete
  2. Shooter of Sutherland Springs Baptist Church: Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, picture

    http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/11/06/03/460F7AB100000578-5053013-image-a-2_1509939521879.jpg

    "Never give a rifle to a melancholy bore"

    Auden

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Definitely got that stare eyed blank dumb heavy breathing expression that shouts 'mental' at you.

      Delete
    2. Former classmates have described him as an 'outcast', 'creepy' and 'weird'

      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5053013/Devin-Kelley-outcast-preached-atheism.html

      Delete
    3. Yet b00bie argues he has a right to an AR 15

      Delete
    4. And watching the b00b try to parse the significance of mass shootings in Protestant churches vs Catholic quite revealing as to his intellectual acumen.

      Delete

    5. His what ???

      There is no intellect there

      Delete
    6. And then we have Deuce peddling old eugenics theories as if it were ground breaking and new. Deuce, riddle me this, why are the overwelming number of these mass shootings done by white males?

      Delete
    7. It’s their haunting meditation melodies that may be their most enduring legacy.

      https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/komuso-flute-monk-japan-basket-head-zen-buddhism

      Delete
    8. I don't know what the significance of the mismatch between the number of mass shooting between Catholic and Protestant Churches might be, Asharoo. In fact I'm not certain if there is one, but did wonder about it if there is.

      Asharoo, I argued he DIDN'T have a right to a gun, having been dishonorably discharged from the Air Force and with three violent domestic attacks to his record.

      I had read somewhere, and please tell me if it is wrong, that one dishonorably discharged from our Armed Services loses the right to have firearms.

      You've been smokin' hash and drinking from the water pipe right along Jack, it seems.

      Delete
    9. To be clear, Asharoo, I do not think the Sutherland shooter should have been legally allowed a gun, and my hunch is he lost his gun rights when he was dishonorably discharged from the Air Force for domestic violence. He spent a year in the can over that.

      My Fox News is down this morning and reading I haven't seen any mention of that yet.

      Delete
    10. Here ya go, Ashilins -

      CHURCH KILLER 'PREACHED ATHEISM'...
      TRIED BRIBING UNDERAGE GIRLS TO DATE HIM...
      Fractured Infant Stepson's Skull...
      Arrested for Animal Cruelty...
      SECURITY GUARD AT RESORT...
      AIR FORCE REJECT...
      TARGETED EX-IN-LAWS CHURCH...
      Grandmother-In-Law Murdered...
      COURT-MARTIALED FOR ASSAULT ON SPOUSE, CHILD...
      SICK FACEBOOK RANTS...
      Wore White Skull Face Mask...
      8 members of ONE family dead...
      Youngest Victim 18 Months....DRUDGE


      This melancholy bore has no business with any type of gun.

      I have not read yet that he had been denied a gun, but I did read that is normal when one is dishonorably discharged from our Armed Services.

      I'm sure the position of the NRA would be the same.

      Delete
    11. Who woulda thought - bob is in favor of gun control

      Delete
    12. Governor of Texas is saying he would have been barred from buying a gun in Texas, but somehow he was able to arm up anyway.

      Delete
    13. My position has not changed, Ash.

      People with criminal records, dishonorable discharges, domestic violence, psychological problems certified by the medical community, etc.....

      This is all pretty much standard NRA doctrine.

      Delete

  3. Reuters) - {A campaign of mass arrests of Saudi Arabian royals, ministers and businessmen expanded on Monday after a top entrepreneur was reportedly detained in the biggest anti-corruption purge of the kingdom’s affluent elite in its modern history.


    The reported arrest of Nasser bin Aqeel al-Tayyar followed the detention of dozens of top Saudis including billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in a crackdown that the attorney general described as “phase one”.

    The purge is the latest in a series of dramatic steps by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to assert Saudi influence internationally and amass more power for himself at home.


    ReplyDelete
  4. This has interesting insights to the goings on in Lebanon and the Saudi influences, there.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-41893694

    Well worth the time


    ReplyDelete
  5. Hope springs eternal:

    http://nypost.com/2017/11/06/hope-hicks-wears-a-tuxedo-to-japan-state-dinner/

    ReplyDelete
  6. Always fair and balanced MSM:

    https://www.infowars.com/triggered-media-goes-into-meltdown-over-trump-feeding-fish-in-japan/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. .

      It probably wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't the remains of his Burger King Whopper and fries.

      .

      Delete
    2. 2 men with machetes try to rob McDonald's on Oahu

      Police say they are searching for two men who tried to rob a McDonald's fast-food restaurant ...

      http://www.kitv.com/story/36776452/police-2-men-with-machetes-try-to-rob-mcdonalds-on-oahu

      Delete
  7. DES MOINES, Iowa — An Iowa mother accused of leaving her four children home alone while she traveled to Europe has pleaded not guilty.

    Court records say Erin Macke filed a written plea last week to four counts of child endangerment and one of transferring a firearm to a person under 21. Police said the latter charge was filed because a firearm was left at home within the children’s reach. Records don’t show a trial date.

    Police have said Macke, of suburban Des Moines, tried but failed to make child care arrangements for her children — two age 12, one 7, one 6 — before leaving Sept. 20 for a vacation in Germany. Police say the father of one of the children was called by his child the next day, and he called police.

    http://nypost.com/2017/11/06/mom-accused-of-leaving-kids-home-alone-for-europe-trip-pleads-not-guilty/

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hariri cited an assassination plot against him in the statement announcing his resignation, and launched a scathing attack against Iran and Hezbollah for sowing strife in the Arab world.

    ...

    Earlier on Monday, President Michel Aoun, a political ally of Hezbollah, appealed for national unity following Hariri’s resignation which toppled a coalition government that included Hezbollah and plunged Lebanon into political crisis.

    Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, another political ally of Hezbollah, said in a televised statement after meeting Aoun it was too early to talk about forming a new government.

    ReplyDelete
  9. The Secret

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=9&v=W2MOwZLDRqE

    ReplyDelete
  10. RIP Rhendieh

    ...she climbed a curb and collided with a tree.

    Buckle up.

    http://mauinow.com/2017/11/06/kihei-woman-suffers-fatal-injuries-in-wailea-crash/


    https://twitter.com/rhendieh


    https://www.google.com/search?q=Rhendie+M.+Hepa&rlz=1CAACAO_enUS720US720&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiqlrL6h6vXAhVDyGMKHT8-AVcQ_AUICygC&biw=1200&bih=536#imgrc=wicpKnTUm7kFYM:

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rhendie Hepa‏ @RhendieH 14 Jul 2013

      Your words will manifest in your life. What you think, you become. So stfu and be positive.

      Delete
    2. Rhendie Hepa‏ @RhendieH 14 Jul 2013

      Fuckady fuckady fuck fuck fuck

      Delete
    3. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BOcdRNMCEAAkHM_.jpg

      Delete
  11. Tensions between Saudi Arabia, the leading Sunni Muslim power in the region, and Iran, its main Shiite rival, have risen in recent days. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a close Saudi ally, resigned Saturday, blaming Iran for destabilizing the region and saying his life was under threat.

    Saudi Arabia has more aggressively confronted Iran under 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who orchestrated Saudi involvement in Yemen.

    Prince Mohammed, named next in line to the throne in June, has sought to consolidate power in recent days, arresting numerous high-ranking officials and businessmen on corruption charges. He is widely thought to be preparing to take over from his 81-year-old father, King Salman.

    ReplyDelete
  12. READ ALONG WITH ME, ASH -

    "The purpose of the 2nd Amendment is not so we can shoot deer, but so we can shoot tyrants"

    Judge Napolitano

    Always keep that in mind, Ash.

    Say it to yourself five times when you get up in the morning and five times before you go to sleep at night.

    ReplyDelete
  13. We live in interesting times -

    SAUDIS ON BRINK OF WAR
    ROUND UP OF ROYALS CONTINUES
    TRUMP VOICES 'GREAT CONFIDENCE'....DRUDGE BANNER HEADLINE

    ReplyDelete
  14. AIR FORCE FILING ERROR ALLOWED TEXAS GUNMAN TO BUY WEAPONS

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/06/us/texas-shooting-church.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There is the answer to your concerns, Ash.

      This crazy ass gentlemen was not supposed to be allowed to possess guns.

      The lawyers for the deceased my now turn to the deep pockets of Uncle Sam and the USAF.

      Delete
  15. Daily Caller News Foundation
    POLITICS

    Brazile Challenged Clinton’s Top Male Staffers To A Dick Measuring Contest

    Photo of Jack Crowe
    JACK CROWE
    Political Reporter

    12:59 PM 11/06/2017



    Former Democratic National Committee (DNC) interim chair Donna Brazile levied sexism allegations against top male staffers on the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign in a newly obtained excerpt of her upcoming book, in which she claims to have responded to their behavior by challenging the men to expose their genitals.

    “Gentlemen, let’s just put our dicks out on the table and see who’s got the bigger one, because I know mine is bigger than all of yours,” Brazile writes in the sixth chapter of her tell all book “Hacks,” obtained by the Huffington Post.....


    http://dailycaller.com/2017/11/06/brazile-challenged-clintons-top-male-staffers-to-a-dick-measuring-contest/

    Sounds like typical DNC behavior.


    Quirk, judging by his hands, should join the Democrat Party as a proud Hillary 'staffer'.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. At least she referred to the Dicks as Gentlemen.

      Delete
    2. Brassier identifies as a Dick.

      Delete
    3. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    4. That left me scratching my head.

      You don't possibly think.......?

      No, it couldn't be, could it ?

      Delete
  16. Politics
    One Year Out: The 10 Most Vulnerable Senators in 2018
    Taking heat from both sides, Nevada’s Dean Heller leads the list

    http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/vulnerable-senators-2018

    Of the 10, 9 are Democrats, Heller is the only Republican.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They're all Dicks, including those who don't identify as cis gender.

      Delete
    2. Brassiere stands tall as proof.

      Delete
  17. Replies
    1. I will certainly take your word for it, as you have not been wrong yet on such things.

      Your record is much better than, say, Quirk's, who only bats about 50%, if even that.

      Delete
  18. Early Draft Of Comey’s Statement On Hillary’s Email Server Said She Was ‘Grossly Negligent’
    JOHN SEXTONPosted at 5:01 pm on November 6, 2017

    This is pretty amazing even if it does come a year too late. An early draft of the statement FBI Director James Comey wrote to announce the end of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server said she was “grossly negligent” in her handling of classified information. That phrase was later crossed out and replaced with the less legally significant phrase “extremely careless.” From the Hill:

    The draft, written weeks before the announcement of no charges, was described by multiple sources who saw the document both before and after it was sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee this past weekend.

    “There is evidence to support a conclusion that Secretary Clinton, and others, used the email server in a manner that was grossly negligent with respect to the handling of classified information,” reads the statement, one of Comey’s earliest drafts.

    Those sources said the draft statement was subsequently changed in red-line edits to conclude that the handling of 110 emails containing classified information that were transmitted by Clinton and her aides over her insecure personal email server was “extremely careless.”

    The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said the memos show that at least three top FBI officials were involved in helping Comey fashion and edit the statement, including Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, General Counsel James Baker and chief of staff Jim Rybicki.

    The story goes on to say that it’s not clear which one of the FBI officials involved edited this particular phrase out of the document. If you’ve been following this story for more than a year, you probably already know why the change of language is so significant. “Gross negligence” is the phrase that appears in one subsection of 18 USC 793, the law which many people believed applied in this case. Here’s what the law itself says [emphasis added]:

    (f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—

    Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
    The focus on this aspect of 18 USC 793 wasn’t just speculation. Fox News reported in October 2015 that the FBI was focusing on this particular subsection of the law as it investigated Clinton:

    Three months after Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email address and server while secretary of state was referred to the FBI, an intelligence source familiar with the investigation tells Fox News that the team is now focused on whether there were violations of an Espionage Act subsection pertaining to “gross negligence” in the safekeeping of national defense information.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Under 18 USC 793 subsection F, the information does not have to be classified to count as a violation. The intelligence source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity citing the sensitivity of the ongoing probe, said the subsection requires the “lawful possession” of national defense information by a security clearance holder who “through gross negligence,” such as the use of an unsecure computer network, permits the material to be removed or abstracted from its proper, secure location.

      And in April 2016, former DOJ lawyer Ronald Sievert argued this same subsection applied to Hillary’s handling of email on her private server. Now it seems that, at least at one point, James Comey agreed. As one unnamed source tells the Hill, “The red-line history clearly shows the original statement was designed to allege Clinton committed gross negligence and then someone changed it to extreme carelessness.”

      If nothing else, what this early memo demonstrates is that this really was a judgment call, one that could have gone a different way and perhaps almost did. Congress should seek to find out who made the change and why. What discussion went into this?

      During subsequent congressional testimony defending his decision not to go after Clinton for gross negligence, Comey argued that “no reasonable prosecutor” would charge someone under 18 USC 793 without proof that the party in question was aware they were breaking the law.



      The alternative to that view was probably best presented by Trey Gowdy, who pointed out that criminal intent is often established through circumstantial evidence, i.e. a series of carefully crafted lies attempting to deny culpability like the ones Hillary told about her email server.

      https://hotair.com/archives/2017/11/06/early-draft-comeys-statement-hillarys-email-server-said-grossly-negligent/

      Delete
  19. Rear Admiral John Fuller, Commander of Carrier Strike Group 1, will lead the Vinson, its ferocious armament of planes, and its escort of Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers and a guided missile cruiser.

    ...

    He said: 'The most awesome thing we have is some of the best people in America who volunteered to help protect and promote prosperity for our American citizens and then with those great people we have fantastic equipment and systems that allow us to project power from the sea for sustained periods of time in ways no other country can.'

    Soon the Vinson will be in Kim's waters - and those people and equipment could be tested as never before.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Saudi Arabia is really on the brink.

    Let us all bang our heads on the floor towards Mecca and pray the reforming muzzies win.

    ReplyDelete
  21. President Donald Trump departed Tokyo on Tuesday morning for a two-day visit to South Korea, bringing him near North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on a stop that will also feature talks on a trade deal he says hurts U.S. workers.

    ...

    Former U.S. ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow told Bloomberg TV that Trump will have a lot more heavy lifting to do with than he did with Abe, who has backed the U.S. president’s hard line on Pyongyang.

    ...

    South Korea is the U.S.’s seventh-largest trading partner, while the U.S. is South Korea’s second-biggest partner after China. U.S. figures indicate its goods deficit with South Korea was $27.7 billion last year.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Revolution of November 4, 2017 Ends In Farce

    November 6, 2017
    The left's failed civil war
    By Lowell Ponte

    Saturday, November 4 was supposed to be the beginning of mass protests against President Donald Trump that every day would put "tens of thousands of people" into the streets and create "a political crisis in the country" to remove the president from office, a spokesman for the Marxist group Refuse Fascism told the Washington Post.

    What promised to launch an "Antifa apocalypse" for America proved instead to be not a bang, but a whimper. Only a handful of the usual radicals showed up in a few liberal cities to carry signs supplied by the Revolutionary Communist Party, which idolizes the Marxist totalitarianism of Mao Zedong....




    http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/11/the_lefts_failed_civil_war.html#ixzz4xid67exZ

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The whole 4 Nov buhaha ...

      FAKE NEWS

      From the Alt-Right

      Delete
  23. And, this past March, Lockheed Martin completed the design, development and demonstration of a radical 60 kW laser weapon for the U.S. Army.

    In testing earlier that month, the Lockheed Martin laser produced a single beam of 58 kW, representing a world record for a laser of this type.
    Army bosses hope the radical weapon will give protection against threats such as swarms of drones or large numbers of rockets and mortars.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL9_Tldmrhs


      https://www.google.com/search?q=0+kW+laser+weapon&rlz=1CAACAO_enUS720US720&oq=0+kW+laser+weapon&aqs=chrome..69i57&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

      Delete
  24. November 7, 2017
    The Revolution has been Postponed
    By J.R. Dunn


    http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/11/the_revolution_has_been_postponed.html#ixzz4xjhbOqd2

    ReplyDelete