During The Trump Era, Will Men Finally Start Acting Like Men Again?

Men Silhouette - Public DomainOne of the primary reasons why Donald Trump is in the White House today is because he didn’t act like a typical wimpy politician during the campaign.  The American people were hungry for someone who is strong, someone who is a fighter and someone who will stand up for what he believes.  In other words, they wanted a man and not a wimp.  Yes, Donald Trump has done and said some things that are very regrettable over the years, but many Americans were willing to overlook those imperfections because at least he was willing to go to battle.  Now that he is president, will he inspire millions of other men to finally start acting like men again?

Too many men today would rather go to the spa than pick up a shovel.

Too many men today speak of the need for “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings”.

Too many men today are living in a state of suspended adolescence and are putting off marriage and family indefinitely.

Too many men today are more likely to be called a “snowflake” rather than a “warrior”.

In an absolutely remarkable article that was published earlier this week, author Todd Starnes made some keen observations about modern “men”.  The following is a short excerpt…

In today’s reengineered version of manhood, guys no longer have friends – they have bromances and they settle disputes by hugging it out.

Men’s magazines are now filled with articles like, “Should a Man Show Nipple?” and “What Men Know about Wearing Eyeliner.”

In America today, boys generally don’t do as well as girls in school.  And young women are far more likely to go to college than young men.  In fact, we have almost gotten to the point where 60 percent of the students in our colleges are women.

And when they leave school, young men are far more likely to move back in with their parents than young women are.  In a previous article, I noted that the percentage of Americans in the 18 to 34-year-old age bracket that are living with their parents is now the highest that it has been in 75 years.  If young men were living independently at the same rate that young women are, this crisis wouldn’t even exist.

And the truth is that young women are looking for young men that are willing to be independent.  A few years ago, Todd Starnes “conducted an unscientific poll to determine what the average American woman looks for in a man”, and this is what he discovered

1. Has a job;

2. Drives a pickup truck;

3. Uses the bathroom standing up;

4. Eats meat;

5. And is willing to carry them out of a burning building.

In other words — they want the kind of man made in God’s image — not the image of some effeminate intellectual stuffed in skinny jeans sipping chai tea with his pinky finger extended.

And a more scientific survey that was conducted a few years ago found that 75 percent of all American women do not have any interest in dating unemployed men.

Women want men that will love them, protect them and provide for them.

Unfortunately, those kinds of men are being systematically demonized in our society today.  To the liberal mind, the “traditional man” has come to represent “male oppression” that must be eradicated at all cost.

This may sound strange to you, but this is the kind of philosophy that is being pounded into the minds of impressionable young adults at colleges and universities all across the nation.  And some of these impressionable young adults buy into this philosophy to a frightening degree.

For example, one very prominent feminist blogger has actually called for the eradication of all men

A controversial video blogger has suffered a social media backlash after a video of her suggesting that the male species be wiped out – including babies – re-surfaced.

US vlogger Jenny McDermott, 33, made the bizarre ‘kill all men’ content in July last year and posted it on her YouTube channel.

The 33-year-old, who’s Twitter bio describes her as a secular humanist and trans loving feminist, rants in the short video that she’s ‘sick of being a baby factory that produces more men, that in the future will subjugate me.’

Someone might want to tell her that the human race would cease to exist without men, because apparently she hasn’t thought that far ahead.

But while McDermott may be on the outer fringe, the truth is that she is just a very small part of a very powerful “anti-male” movement in this country.

If you can believe it, at this point even some divinity schools are telling their professors not to use male pronouns for God

Two prominent divinity schools have instructed their professors to use gender-neutral language when referring to God.

According to National Review, the divinity schools at Duke and Vanderbilt Universities have told their faculty to give “consistent attention to the use of inclusive language, especially in relation to the Divine,” in an effort to be more “inclusive” and to “mitigate sexism.”

Of course if men want to be respected, they need to start acting like gentlemen instead of like deranged animals.

I often quote from two different surveys when I talk about the state of men in our country.  One of those surveys found that 64 percent of all Christian men in America watch pornography at least once a month, and another survey found that 68 percent of all Christian men in America look at it “on a regular basis”.

That is not how men are supposed to behave.

A gentleman is self-controlled, patient, strong, temperate and willing to make sacrifices for others.

But how many men could be described that way today?

In the old days, men dedicated themselves to God, family and country, but today many men appear to be self-obsessed narcissists that are constantly chasing whatever they think will make them feel good in the moment.

If we want to make America great again, then men (and women) need to start dedicating themselves to becoming great again on an individual level.

So ultimately the fate of this nation is not going to be determined by any politician.

Rather, the fate of this nation is going to be decided by what goes on inside our own hearts.

Like Clinton’s Campaign, Will The Much-Hyped Inauguration Protests End Up Being A Giant Failure For The Left?

Inauguration Day Dawn - Photo by BgwwlmOver the past couple of months, the radical left has been endlessly hyping the protests against Donald Trump on January 20th and January 21st.  We have been told that half the population absolutely hates Donald Trump and that Washington D.C. will be filled with angry protesters that are ready to take their country back.  So where are they?  The radical left tends to talk a good game, but when it comes time for action they often come up way short.  At this point, it appears that the much-hyped “war in the streets” that they were promising is going to be a giant dud.

Reports from those on the scene in D.C. indicate that there are very few protesters running around.  Yes, a few hundred LGBT activists danced in front of Mike Pence’s home on Wednesday night.  And yes, police fired pepper spray at protesters at one point on Thursday night

Police and anti-Donald Trump protesters are clashing in a rally that began outside the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C.

The protest started at the hotel, and then marched through D.C. to the National Press Club several blocks away. Once there … pepper spray was fired into the crowd, and protesters started trying to break through police lines.

One protester got a little bloody during the pepper spray incident, but so far that has been it.

So where are the “Ferguson-style protests” that we were promised?

Of course the truth is that these radical leftists never stood much of a chance in the first place.  Law enforcement authorities have been watching them like a hawk, and the heart of Washington D.C. has been turned into a “fortress” for the inaugural festivities.

According to Reuters, permits have been granted for at least 30 anti-Trump rallies in D.C., but so far it appears that the “army of protesters” that many were dreaming of has failed to materialize.

And the authorities in D.C. appear quite ready to handle whatever is thrown their way.  Numerous media reports today used the term “fortress” to describe the level of security immediately surrounding the U.S. Capitol…

About 28,000 security personnel, miles of fencing, roadblocks, street barricades and dump trucks laden with sand are part of the security cordon around 3 square miles (almost 8 square km) of central Washington.

But even at this late hour, the mainstream media continues to hype the possibility of chaos and violence.  For example, the National Press Photographers Association is warning of Ferguson-style rioting on Friday

The National Press Photographers Association has issued guidelines to journalists that virtually mirror those sent out during the Ferguson riots in 2014.

Reporters are advised to “maintain situational awareness” and have “an exit plan in case the situation becomes hostile”.

The group also emphasizes that journalists should “move toward the nearest police officer under the assumption that they could protect you from hostile or violent protesters.”

Other mainstream media outlets have been openly discussing the possibility of some sort of catastrophic terror attack during the Inauguration.  If you can believe it, the Today Show actually spent time talking about the possibility that a drone bombing could happen while Trump is being inaugurated…

The media is raising concerns about a drone bombing at the 58th Presidential Inauguration on Friday.

On Thursday’s “Today” show, a report indicated that U.S. Secret Service has put in place several anti-drone efforts out of concern that an I-inspired “flying IED” will smash into the crowd, or worse.

The report quoted an official from DroneShield, a drone countermeasure firm, saying that the Inauguration “is not something I would feel safe at.”

Did you ever hear these sorts of reports just prior to Obama’s inaugurations?

Of course not.

It is almost as if some in the mainstream media are actually trying to incite violence.  For instance, CNN is being loudly criticized for running a Wolf Blitzer report that suggested that someone from the Obama administration could become president if Donald Trump and Mike Pence were both “wiped out” at the Inauguration.  The following comes from Breitbart

Blitzer introduced the segment, saying, “What if an incoming president and his immediate successors were wiped out on day one?” and from there, CNN contributor Brian Todd took over to outline the line of succession if an attack blew up the inaugural dais, killing both Trump and Pence.

The upshot was that in the case of both heads of state being killed, the Secretary of State would take over. Currently that man is Secretary of State John Kerry, But in case some objected because his office would also end as of noon on Inauguration Day, then it would be the Speaker of the House — Republican Paul Ryan — or even Obama’s Under Secretary for Political Affairs Tom Shannon.

Why talk about such a thing?

By airing this on national television just before the Inauguration, CNN is potentially giving sick and twisted people ideas that they would not have otherwise considered.  If you have not seen this deeply disturbing report yet, you can view it on YouTube right here

And the international media is openly talking about the possibility of something happening to Trump as well.  The following example comes from Egypt

“The really scary confrontation will come after Trump launches a campaign to purge the U.S. government ministries, including the Department of Defense, [i.e.,] the Pentagon, [and to eliminate] the gangs that hide within the intelligence and security agencies that are the hub of global conspiracies, in order to remove Democrats and replace them with Republicans he trusts,” writes Hani ‘Asl, a columnist for the Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram.

“In these [circles] there may be someone who will try to eliminate the problem [called Trump] with a single bullet in order to protect their interests and gladden Obama and Hillary, [perhaps] even under the slogan of defending democracy and the U.S.”

Without a doubt, there are many among the elite that absolutely hate Trump.  So let us pray for his safety and for the safety of everyone that will be attending the Inauguration.

January 20th is the start of a new day for America, and it should be a time of great celebration for the entire country.  Unfortunately, there are some people out there that would very much like to rain on our parade, and let us hope that all of their efforts are completely foiled.

Will There Be War On The Streets Of Washington D.C. During The Inauguration On Friday?

Anti-Trump Protest - Photo by Ted EytanThe stage is set for a potentially very ugly confrontation between radical leftist protesters on one side and law enforcement authorities and Trump supporters on the other side.  It is being estimated that hundreds of thousands of supporters will be arriving in D.C. to celebrate the inauguration of Donald Trump, but it is also being estimated that hundreds of thousands of people will be coming to D.C. to specifically protest the inauguration of Trump.  These protesters plan to set up blockades, disrupt inaugural balls and generally cause as much chaos as they possibly can.  In fact, a spokesperson for #DisruptJ20 says that the goal of his organization is for Trump to be inaugurated “amid complete chaos”

“We would like the headline the next day to be Donald Trump inaugurated amid complete chaos, not Donald Trump, inaugurated amid applause,” said Legba Carrefour, who is an organizer with #DisruptJ20.

Needless to say, causing “complete chaos” is going to bring many of these protesters into direct confrontation with law enforcement.  If these anarchists do what they say they are going to do, law enforcement personnel with be forced to physically intervene.  The following comes from #DisruptJ20’s official “call to action”

Trump’s success confirms the bankruptcy of representative democracy. Rather than using the democratic process as an alibi for inaction, we must show that no election could legitimize his agenda. Neither the Democrats nor any other political party or politician will save us—they just offer a weaker version of the same thing. If there is going to be a positive change in this society, we have to make it ourselves, together, through direct action.

From day one, the Trump presidency will be a disaster. #DisruptJ20 will be the start of the resistance. We must take to the streets and protest, blockade, disrupt, intervene, sit in, walk out, rise up, and make more noise and good trouble than the establishment can bear. The parade must be stopped. We must delegitimize Trump and all he represents. It’s time to defend ourselves, our loved ones, and the world that sustains us as if our lives depend on it—because they do.

In addition to law enforcement, many Trump supporters have made it quite clear that they are not going to put up with physical obstruction or intimidation by radical leftists.  “Bikers for Trump” is one such group, and they are anticipating that 5,000 of their members will be attending the inauguration.  According to Bikers for Trump founder Chris Cox, his organization is “prepared to form a wall of meat” if necessary…

“The bikers are certainly used to being outnumbered and we are prepared to form a wall of meat.  We’re anticipating a celebration here. We don’t anticipate any problems. We have a strict code of conduct where we don’t condone violence. But again in the event that we’re needed, you can certainly count on the Bikers for Trump.”

“We’ll be shoulder-to-shoulder with our brothers and we’ll be toe-to-toe with anyone that is going to break through any police barriers, that’s going to be assaulting women, spitting on them, throwing things at them.  We are anticipating a peaceful transition of power.”

“The backbone of the biker community is the veteran.  So these are guys that aren’t really used to backing down. You certainly won’t see bikers out there screaming, calling for destruction of private property or the death of police officers.”

Tensions will be running extremely high in D.C. over the next week, and it isn’t going to take much to spark a major incident.

On Monday, an incredibly shocking undercover video was released that shows three members of the Anti-Fascist Coalition talking about how they could potentially use butyric acid to disrupt an inaugural ball that is scheduled for Thursday evening.  The following is from a Lifezette article about this undercover video…

“I was thinking of things that … that would ruin the evening, ruin their outfits or otherwise make it impossible to continue with their plans. Make sure they get nothing accomplished,” Green says in the video.

“If you had … a pint of butyric acid, I don’t care how big the building is, it’s closing,” says Kuhn. “And this stuff is very efficient, it’s very very smelly, lasts a long time and a little of it goes a long way,” Green chimes in eagerly.

If you have not seen this video yet, you can view it right here.  These radicals clearly do not have any problem harming people in order to make a political statement.  If you are not familiar with butyric acid, it is often used to create “stink bombs”, but in higher concentrations it can actually be quite dangerous

“Inhalation of butyric acid may result in soreness of throat, coughing, a burning sensation, and laboured breathing. Ingestion of the acid may result in abdominal pain, shock, and collapse. Physical exposure to the acid may result in pain, blistering and skin burns, while exposure to the eyes may result in pain, severe deep burns and loss of vision.”

Just like Islamic terrorists, these radical leftists want to create fear and they want to get as much attention as possible.

One of the attention grabbing stunts that they have planned is to literally block people from getting to the inauguration.  If protesters are able to successfully block a few of the main roads and a couple metro lines, they literally will be able to paralyze transportation throughout the entire city.  And according to one of the main organizers, this is precisely what they plan to do

“Early in the morning, we’re going to be doing blockades. We’re going to be blocking checkpoints into the security zones. We’re also going to be blocking roads and other modes of transit into the event.”

“We are going to do everything we can from trying to stop people from being able to access the Inauguration.”

The good news is that tens of millions of dollars is being spent on security, and officials are closely monitoring what these radical leftist groups are trying to do.  So it is unlikely that the protesters will be able to completely disrupt the inaugural celebrations.  The following comes from the Washington Post

By week’s end, the nation’s capital will have transformed into a virtual fortress of roadblocks, fences and armed police. Streets will be barricaded with trucks filled with sand. Five Metro stations will close Friday. Crossing Pennsylvania Avenue will be next to impossible.

The peaceful transfer of power is made possible by overlaying a tight security grid using 28,000 security officials over 100 square blocks of prime downtown real estate — from the White House to the Capitol and beyond, with a price tag in the tens of millions of dollars.

Let’s hope that law enforcement personnel are able to keep the protests relatively bottled up over the course of this week, because the potential exists for things to spiral out of control very rapidly.  Sometimes there is a temptation to allow protesters a little space so that they “can blow off steam”, but if scenes of chaos and violence start appearing on television there is a very real possibility that the streets of Washington D.C. could quickly come to resemble a war zone.

Why Is Obama Moving Troops Into Poland And Provoking A War With Russia Right Before The Inauguration?

Barack Obama Addresses The Troops - Public DomainJanuary 20th cannot come soon enough.  Instead of stepping back and trying to ensure a smooth transition for Donald Trump, Barack Obama has decided to go hog wild and use every ounce of presidential power still available to him.  He has been establishing a bunch of new national monuments, he just stabbed Israel in the back at the United Nations, and on Thursday he even took time to give Joe Biden a Presidential Medal of Freedom.  But one of the things that has people the most concerned is his endless provoking of Russia.  Every few days it seems like Obama is doing something else to aggravate Russia, and if he wasn’t leaving office in about a week I am sure that the mainstream media would be full of speculation about a possible war.

Lame duck presidents are not supposed to make risky moves like this once a new president has been elected.  On Thursday, we learned that U.S. troops have been permanently deployed to Poland for the very first time

American soldiers rolled into Poland on Thursday, fulfilling a dream some Poles have had since the fall of communism in 1989 to have U.S. troops on their soil as a deterrent against Russia.

Some people waved and held up American flags as U.S. troops in tanks and other vehicles crossed into southwestern Poland from Germany and headed toward the town of Zagan, where they will be based. Poland’s prime minister and defense minister will welcome them in an official ceremony Saturday.

Poland was once a key member of the Warsaw Pact alliance, and the Russians are quite alarmed that U.S. troops will now be stationed so close to the Russian heartland.  The following comes from ABC News

“These actions threaten our interests, our security,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday. “Especially as it concerns a third party building up its military presence near our borders. It’s not even a European state.”

And it has also been announced that NATO troops will arrive in Lithuania in late January.  If you will remember, Lithuania was actually part of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

All of a sudden, Russia has become enemy number one.  Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton say that Russia is to blame for Clinton’s election loss, and so at the end of December Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the country.

That is the sort of thing that you do before a war starts.

Over in Europe, they are so freaked out about potential Russian interference in their elections that they are “erecting defenses to counter possible Russian cyber attacks”

Nations in Europe, where Germany and France this year hold elections, are erecting defenses to counter possible Russian cyber attacks and disinformation to sway Western politics, but intelligence experts say this might be too little and too late.

The issue of Russian “influence operations” has taken on new urgency after U.S. intelligence agencies released a non-classified assessment that President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign to move the U.S. election in favor of Donald Trump.

European nations and NATO are setting up centers to identify “fake news”, bolstering cyber defenses and tracking use of social media which target Russian-speaking communities, far-right groups, political parties, voters and decision-makers.

Back in 2012, Barack Obama mocked Mitt Romney for saying that Russia was a serious threat to our national security.  He even joked that the 1980s were calling Romney because they wanted their foreign policy back.

At that time, Barack Obama boldly declared that the Cold War had been over for 20 years.  But now here we are just four years later and Barack Obama has gotten us into a new Cold War.  The crisis in Ukraine, the civil war in Syria, the price of oil, cyber-espionage and a whole host of other issues have brought tensions between the United States and Russia to a boiling point.

Many are hoping that relations with Russia will improve during the Trump administration, but the truth is that things could go either way.

It is important to remember that Trump will be surrounded by military people that are virulently anti-Russia.  For example, retired Marine General James Mattis has been nominated to be Defense Secretary, and this week he told Congress that Russia is the “principal threat” to U.S. security…

While much of the hearing has so far been without controveries, in the most striking moment so far, Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Russia stands as the “principal threat” to the United States’s security. He said this is because of its actions and efforts to “intimidate” other countries.

Senator John McCain questioned Mattis to get his opinion on how much of a threat Russia represents. Mattis response was that the world order is “under biggest attacks since WW2, from Russia, terrorist groups, and China’s actions in the South China Sea”, agreeing with the neocon senator that Russia is trying to break up NATO.

“I’m all for engagement” with Russia, “but we also have to recognize the reality of what Russia is up to,” Mattis told Senator Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island).

There is a great deal of concern that Trump’s view of Russia could be significantly shaped by strong military men such as Mattis.  Both Democrats and Republicans want Trump to become much more anti-Russia, and let us hope that he does not give in to the pressure.

Over in Russia, they view us very negatively as well.  A Gallup survey taken in mid-2016 found that current U.S. leadership (the Obama administration) only had a one percent approval rating in Russia.

Yes, you read that correctly.

You can’t get much lower than one percent.

The Russians consider themselves to be the great force for good in the world, and they consider the United States to be the great force for evil.  They openly talk about the possibility of nuclear war on their news broadcasts, and on one recent broadcast people were actually encouraged to locate the closest nuclear bomb shelter to their homes.

And in response to U.S. troops being deployed to Poland, the Russian government has deployed advanced anti-aircraft missile systems around Moscow

Russia has deployed anti-aircraft missile systems around Moscow to protect the capital from attack in the latest sign Vladimir Putin is preparing for war.

The s-400 Triumph air defence system has been providing air cover for Russian forces in Syria since November, and is now being deployed on home soil.

It is capable of hitting moving airborne targets including planes and incoming missiles and has a range of 400km.

We should be very thankful that Barack Obama is leaving office, because right now we are on a path that leads to war with Russia.

Every American should be hoping that Donald Trump will work to greatly improve relations with the Russians, but all it would take is one wrong move for things to start deteriorating once again.

A new Cold War has begun, and the stakes are incredibly high…

Why Are Wal-Mart And Boeing Laying Off Workers If The U.S. Economy Is In Good Shape?

wal-mart-photo-by-mikemozartjeepersmediaThe stock market has been on quite a roll in recent weeks, but signs of trouble continue to plague the real economy.  Earlier this week, I talked about the “retail apocalypse” that is sweeping America.  Major retail chains such as Sears and Macy’s are closing stores and laying off workers, but I didn’t think that Wal-Mart would be feeling the pain as well.  Unfortunately, that is precisely what is happening.  USA Today is reporting that approximately 1,000 jobs will be cut at Wal-Mart’s corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas by the end of this month…

Walmart’s plan to lay off of hundreds of employees is the latest ripple in a wave of job cuts and store closures that are roiling the retail industry.

The world’s largest retailer is cutting roughly 1,000 jobs at its corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., later this month, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak about it.

The company is saying that these cuts are necessary because Wal-Mart is always “looking for ways to operate more efficiently and effectively“.  But something doesn’t smell right here.  You don’t get rid of 1,000 employees at your corporate headquarters if everything is just fine.

I have driven past Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville a number of times, and it is in a beautiful part of the country.  Bentonville and the surrounding areas had been booming, but it looks like times may be changing.

Meanwhile, there are signs of trouble out on the west coast as well.  The Los Angeles Times is reporting that there is going to be a new round of engineering job cuts at Boeing…

Boeing Co. has internally announced a new round of employee buyouts for engineers companywide, including in Southern California, and warned that layoff notices will follow later this month to engineers in Washington state, where the company has a large presence.

Management did not cite a target for the number of projected job cuts.

The news comes after company Vice Chairman Ray Conner and the new chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, or BCA, Kevin McAllister, warned in December of the need to aim for further cuts in 2017.

And according to Boeing spokesperson Doug Alder, similar job cut announcements are coming for other classes of workers as well.

So why is Boeing getting rid of so many employees?

Well, the truth is that Boeing’s business is way down.  The following comes from Wolf Richter

Business has been tough. In 2016, deliveries fell by 14 jets from a year ago, to 748. Net orders dropped 13% from an already rotten level in 2015, to just 668, down 53% from 2014. And the lowest level since 2010!

When the economy is doing well, air traffic tends to rise, and when the economy is doing poorly it tends to go down.

Needless to say, the fact that Boeing is doing so poorly does not bode well for the future.

In addition to Wal-Mart, another major retailer that is letting people go is Petco

Petco is cutting 180 positions with about 50 at its San Diego headquarters, the pet supply retailer confirmed Wednesday.

The company made the cuts across its workforce and include both existing and open positions.

Petco has about 650 workers at its headquarters in Rancho Bernardo. It employs 27,000 in the U.S.

My wife and I have three cats, and even though Petco tends to be a bit overpriced we have always appreciated the work that they do.

Unfortunately, when the economy gets tough spending on pets tends to be one of the first things to get cut back, and this current trouble at Petco could be a sign that rough sledding is ahead for the entire economy.

Of course your personal perspective on these things is likely to be very heavily influenced by your immediate surroundings.  Those that live in wealthy enclaves of major cities such as San Francisco, New York City or Washington D.C. may be wondering how anyone could possibly be talking about economic trouble right now.

But if you live in economically depressed areas of Appalachia or the upper Midwest, it may seem like the last economic recession never even ended.

There have been pockets of economic prosperity in recent years, and this has resulted in some people becoming exceedingly wealthy.  Meanwhile, things have just continued to become even tougher for millions of other families as the cost of living always seems to grow faster than their paychecks do.

If you are in the top one percent of all income earners, maybe to you it seems like things have never been better.  But most of the country is living paycheck to paycheck and is just struggling to survive from month to month.  The following comes from CNN

The rich are money-making machines. Today, the top mega wealthy — the top 1% — earn an average of $1.3 million a year. It’s more than three times as much as the 1980s, when the rich “only” made $428,000, on average, according to economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.

Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of the American population earned an average of $16,000 in pre-tax income in 1980. That hasn’t changed in over three decades.

The workers being laid off at the companies discussed above are real people with real hopes and real dreams.  Perhaps many of them will be able to land other employment fairly soon, but the truth is that the job market is really tough in many areas of the country right now.

Finding a good job that will allow you to pay the bills and support your family is not easy.  You may find that out the hard way if you end up losing your current job during the economic troubles that will come in 2017.

Earlier today, I came across an excellent article by Gail Tverberg that detailed a whole bunch of reasons why a significant economic downturn appears to be imminent in 2017.  If you would like to read it, you can find it here.  She points to many of the same things that I have been pointing to for a very long time.

Even though economic conditions were fairly stable throughout 2016, our long-term problems just continued to get even worse.  So the truth is that we are more primed for a major crisis today than we have been at any point since the last recession.

My hope is that things will not be nearly as bad in 2017 as Gail Tverberg and others are projecting that they could be, but the warning signs are definitely there, and it isn’t going to take much to push the U.S. economy off the rails.

Trump’s Approval Rating Is Supposedly Only 37 Percent, But Small Business Optimism Just Hit The Highest Level In 12 Years

donald-trump-and-mike-pence-public-domainA Quinnipiac University Poll that was released on Tuesday says that Donald Trump only has an approval rating of 37 percent.  Meanwhile, that same survey found that Barack Obama currently has an approval rating of 55 percent.  Of course considering the fact that Quinnipiac polls showed Hillary Clinton winning the election in November easily, perhaps we should not put too much stock in these results.  But other polling organizations have come up with similar results.  In fact, an average of nine recent polls indicates that Trump’s approval rating is somewhere around 42 percent.  So without a doubt there are a whole lot of people out there that do not like Donald Trump.

But the business community sure seems thrilled with him.  We just witnessed one of the greatest post-election stock market rallies in American history, numerous corporations have already announced that they will be bringing jobs back to the United States, and Bloomberg is reporting that small business optimism has hit the highest level that we have seen since the end of 2004…

Optimism among America’s small businesses soared in December by the most since 1980 as expectations about the economy’s prospects improved dramatically in the aftermath of the presidential election.

The National Federation of Independent Business’s index jumped 7.4 points last month to 105.8, the highest since the end of 2004, from 98.4. While seven of the 10 components increased in December, 73 percent of the monthly advance was due to more upbeat views about the outlook for sales and the economy, the Washington-based group said.

On the surface, all of these numbers appear to be contradictory.  If the American people are not feeling good about our new president, then it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that the small business community would be so optimistic.

But of course the American people are not a single monolithic entity in 2017.  We are a deeply, deeply divided nation, and Donald Trump is the single most polarizing political figure to come along in generations.

Those that love Trump tend to really love Trump, and most of those people are quite optimistic about the future.

And those that hate Trump tend to really hate Trump.  Yesterday, I explained that the radical left wants to transform Inauguration Day into an epic riot, and many of his opponents are planning to spend the next four years doing whatever they can to destroy him.

Just look at what happened today.  The top story on CNN was about how the Russians supposedly have “compromising personal and financial information” on Donald Trump that they can use to blackmail him…

Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.

The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump.

If you want to read the full 35 page report, you can do so right here.  Some of the things in the report are so absolutely laughable that I don’t know how anyone could possibly take them seriously.  And one particularly absurd section of the report was reportedly originally fabricated by some pranksters on the Internet, but you probably won’t hear that in the mainstream media.  CNN is standing by the legitimacy of these documents, and apparently U.S. Senator John McCain thought so much of them that he handed copies of them over to FBI Director James Comey on December 9th

CNN has also learned that on December 9, Senator John McCain gave a full copy of the memos — dated from June through December, 2016 — to FBI Director James Comey. McCain became aware of the memos from a former British diplomat who had been posted in Moscow. But the FBI had already been given a set of the memos compiled up to August 2016, when the former MI6 agent presented them to an FBI official in Rome, according to national security officials.

The raw memos on which the synopsis is based were prepared by the former MI6 agent, who was posted in Russia in the 1990s and now runs a private intelligence gathering firm. His investigations related to Mr. Trump were initially funded by groups and donors supporting Republican opponents of Mr. Trump during the GOP primaries, multiple sources confirmed to CNN. Those sources also said that once Mr. Trump became the nominee, further investigation was funded by groups and donors supporting Hillary Clinton.

According to this report, the Russian government has been “cultivating, supporting and assisting” Donald Trump “for at least five years”.

So has Donald Trump really been a super secret Russian agent all this time?

Of course not.  The mainstream media has decided to peddle Internet hoaxes, rampant speculation and fake news as legitimate journalism, and it is absolutely disgraceful.

But we are going to see much more of this.  The goal is to destroy Donald Trump, and this is a game that will be played daily now for the next four years.

We are a nation that is bitterly divided, and after everything that has already been said and done I don’t know if Donald Trump could bring us back together even if he wanted to do so.

The protests against Trump in Washington D.C. start in just four days.  I think that the period of time immediately surrounding Inauguration Day is going to set the tone for how Trump’s first year is going to play out.

I am definitely hoping for the best, but I also know that there is a large portion of the population that considers him to be the personification of everything that is wrong with America, and they have absolutely no intention of following his leadership.

It has been said that a house divided against itself will surely fall, and America is a deeply, deeply divided nation in early 2017.

Perhaps Trump can prove the naysayers wrong and bring us all together in unity, but at this point I am not optimistic that any president will be able to do this ever again.

Activists Are Hoping To Turn Donald Trump’s Inauguration On January 20th Into One Of The Biggest Riots In U.S. History

inauguration-white-house-photo-by-chuck-kennedyRadical leftists are planning to make January 20th the most chaotic Inauguration Day in American history.  Their stated goal is to “disrupt” the Inauguration festivities as much as possible, and they are planning a wide range of “actions” to achieve that stated goal.  Some of the more moderate groups are using terms such as “civil resistance” and “civil disobedience”, but others are openly talking about “blockades”, jumping barricades, throwing projectiles and “citywide paralysis”.  My hope is that all of their efforts will turn out to be a big flop, but it is important to understand that these groups are well funded, highly organized and extremely motivated.  The election of Donald Trump has been perhaps the single most galvanizing moment for the radical left in modern American history, and they are working very hard to turn January 20th into a major political statement.

In fact, just recently one activist group took out a full page ad in the New York Times

Thousands of activists, journalists, scientists, entertainers, and other prominent voices took out a full-page call to action in the New York Times on Wednesday making clear their rejection of President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence with the simple message: “No!”

“Stop the Trump/Pence regime before it starts! In the name of humanity we refuse to accept a fascist America!” the ad states, followed by a list of signatories that includes scholar Cornel West; author Alice Walker; Chase Iron Eyes of the Standing Rock Sioux; educator Bill Ayers; poet Saul Williams; CNN‘s Marc Lamont Hill; Carl Dix of the Communist Party USA; and numerous others.

The ad pointed people to refusefascism.org, and it asserted that Trump must be stopped whether he was legitimately elected or not

Trump promises to inflict repression and suffering on people in this country, to deport millions, to increase violence up to the use of nuclear weapons on people across the globe, and to inflict catastrophes upon the planet itself. He has assembled a cabinet of Christian fundamentalist fanatics, war mongers, racists, science deniers. NO! His regime must not be allowed to consolidate. We REFUSE to accept a Fascist America!

If you go to refusefascism.org, you will discover that the protests that they are organizing in Washington D.C. will begin on January 14th.  They say that they want to “stop the Trump-Pence regime before it starts”, and they hope to have protests going “every day and every night” without interruption through at least January 20th.

Another group that plans to kick things off on January 14th is DisruptJ20.  Of course that is short for “Disrupt January 20th”.  If you go to their official website, you will find a long slate of events that have already been scheduled.

According to Legba Carrefour, a spokesperson for DisruptJ20, one of the goals of the group is to block major transportation routes into and throughout our nation’s capital.  And he is not shy about the fact that they literally want to “shut down the Inauguration”

“We are planning to shut down the inauguration, that’s the short of it,” he says. “We’re pretty literal about that, we are trying to create citywide paralysis on a level that I don’t think has been seen in D.C. before. We’re trying to shut down pretty much every ingress into the city as well as every checkpoint around the actual inauguration parade route.”

If Carrefour and his fellow conspirators are able to actually accomplish that, it truly would be unprecedented.

And while DisruptJ20 is not publicly advocating violence, they are not exactly discouraging it either…

Carrefour says DisruptJ20 has no publicly announced plans to jump barricades along the inauguration parade route or throw projectiles at the new president, but that autonomous direct actions are encouraged.

“I can’t comment on specific stuff we’re doing like that, mostly because that would be illegal. But, yeah, it will get pretty crazy, I expect,” he says. “‘Have fun!’ I say.”

After the rioting that we have seen in Baltimore, Ferguson, Charlotte and many other communities around the nation in recent years, I hope that authorities are taking these threats quite seriously.

Once Donald Trump won the election, many conservatives seemed to think that the war was won.  But the truth of the matter is that many on the left were completely blindsided by Trump’s surprise victory, and now that they are fully awake they are gearing up for battle like never before.

And these protests are not going to end on January 20th.  In fact, abortion advocates are hoping to get close to a million women into Washington D.C. on the day following the Inauguration to protest for abortion rights.  Filmmaker Michael Moore is hoping that this march will be the beginning of “100 days of resistance” against Trump’s presidency…

Filmmaker and liberal icon Michael Moore has announced his plans to attend the Women’s March on Washington to protest Donald Trump’s inauguration later this month and has called for sore loser liberals to go further — by staging protests acts of resistance through the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency.

In an appearance, this weekend on MSNBC’s The Last Word, the 62-year-old Trumpland and Fahrenheit 9/11 director made a “call to arms” to those opposed to Trump’s presidency to join the Women’s March on Washington scheduled for January 21, the day after the presidential inauguration.

“It’s important that everybody go there,” Moore told MSNBC’s Ari Melber.

Of course it is easy to imagine how all of this could spiral wildly out of control.  If Trump cracks down on these protests really hard in an attempt to restore law and order, that could end up sparking a dramatic backlash against his “police state tactics”.  And if the protests become even bigger and more violent, Trump could respond by cracking down even more harshly.

Let us hope for some really cold weather in D.C. at the end of January so that as many troublemakers as possible get discouraged and stay home.  Violent protests, blockades and riots aren’t going to solve anything, and they could easily open fresh wounds in a nation that is becoming more divided with each passing day.

About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and The Most Important News. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

10 Ways That Donald Trump Could Try To Reverse The Curse That Obama Has Put On America

trump-wallWhen Barack Obama betrayed Israel at the United Nations, that put a curse on our nation.  But that doesn’t mean that we have to stay cursed.  In the coming days, the new Trump administration should immediately start taking steps to reverse the curse that we are under as a result of what Obama has done.  Perhaps if Donald Trump takes strong enough steps to try to undo what Obama has done, instead of being cursed we can once again return to being blessed.

One thing that Trump will not be able to undo is UN Security Council Resolution 2334.  It would take another UN Security Council resolution to undo it, and the votes simply wouldn’t be there.  UN Security Council Resolution 2334 passed by a vote of 14 to zero with the U.S. abstaining.  And even if Trump could miraculously pull together enough votes, one of the other permanent members of the Security Council (Russia, China, the UK or France) could just veto it.

So it looks like we are stuck with UN Security Council Resolution 2334, but that doesn’t mean that Trump can’t do anything to try to address this matter.

Recently, a Breitbart article suggested five steps that Trump should take regarding Israel once he becomes president, and I would like to add another five to the list.

The following are 10 things that should immediately be done once Trump becomes president to try to reverse the curse that Obama has put on America…

#1 Donald Trump should clearly disavow UN Security Council Resolution 2334 during his Inaugural address.  This would send a clear signal to the rest of the world that this new administration does not stand behind Obama’s betrayal of Israel.

#2 Sanctions should be imposed on every nation that voted in favor of the resolution.  I know that this would be politically tricky and would greatly upset the other permanent members of the Security Council, but it should still be done.

#3 There should be a congressional declaration clearly disavowing UN Security Council Resolution 2334, and Donald Trump should endorse this declaration.

#4 The Trump administration should immediately introduce another UN Security Council resolution that would include language that completely overturns the previous resolution.  Of course that resolution would almost certainly fail, but the point would be to show that the Trump administration is horrified by what has been done, and it would force the rest of the Security Council into a very uncomfortable position.

#5 Trump should immediately move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.  By law this was already supposed to have happened anyway, but past presidents have always put the move off.  Of course this would cause the Palestinians to riot, but Trump needs to show the world that U.S. policy is not going to be dictated by threats of violence.

#6 Trump should cut off all funding to the Palestinian authority.  Considering how much debt we are in, I don’t know why we are giving them money in the first place.

#7 Trump should publicly announce that his administration will never recognize a Palestinian state.  The rest of the world would get very upset by this, but it is the right thing to do.

#8 Trump should publicly announce that it is the policy of the United States government that every inch of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza strip and the Golan Heights belongs to Israel.  I don’t think that Trump would ever do this, but it would be the single most important step that he could take.

#9 The United Nations could be defunded in whole or in part.  But we don’t want to leave the United Nations entirely as some are suggesting.  Now that Trump is going to be president, we want him to use the power that we have on the Security Council to protect Israel.  Because without the U.S. standing in the way, the rest of the world would gang up on Israel in a major way.

#10 Trump should make an immediate presidential visit to Israel during the very first week of his presidency.  This would largely be symbolic, but it would show the rest of the planet that we stand solidly with the Netanyahu government.

And if Barack Obama takes additional action against Israel during the remaining days of his presidency, steps such as I have just outlined above will become even more important.

There are still rumblings that we could see another UN Security Council resolution that would officially establish a Palestinian state before Obama leaves office.  The following comes from an article by Bob Eschliman

The official said the U.N. action could come in the form of declarations by U.N. bodies, including the General Assembly; U.N. sessions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; or even another United Nations Security Council resolution. He said any further UNSC resolution would depend on the support of the U.S. and European countries after the upcoming Paris Mideast summit slated for Jan. 15.

He said the U.N. action would seek to set the parameters of a future Palestinian state with a clear timeline for negotiations. If the action comes in the form of a resolution at a U.N. body, it could call for an infrastructure to establish mechanisms to enforce last week’s UNSC resolution, which demanded a complete halt to Israeli construction in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem and declared those territories occupied Palestinian lands.

If the UN Security Council does vote to formally recognize a Palestinian state, all hell will break loose in America.

Let us hope that does not happen, and let us hope that Donald Trump works very hard to repair the damage that has already been done once he gets into office.