Usually one thinks of cases where one proposed a plan that got laughed out of the room, when using the expression "eating crow."

So maybe "eating crow" is not the correct turn of phrase.

In any case, I want to formally apologize for some past sins.

Back when I was still in my 30s I was a serious, blood curdling, firebrand. To me, at the time, George W. Bush was a complete globalist, limp wristed, nothing. I cried out for a strong man. I wanted to see everyone fired from the State Department. I wanted to see us at least plan for a war of our choosing against, initially, all of the "states who harbor them" followed by the SCO. This last wrinkle is probably the sole area where certain contemporaries are no longer aligned. I digress.

Naturally some of this was a reaction against 9/11. But some of it was also the meme set of the virtual tribes I was hanging with. Many of the members of those tribes went on to become the Alt-Right. Now some of them have their hands on the levers of power.

Be careful what you wish for people. You might actually get it.

Quote:I just returned from a briefing for Communication Directors where the following information was provided. These restrictions are effective immediately and will remain in place until further direction is received from the new Administration’s Beach Team. Please review this material and share with all appropriate individuals in your organization. If anyone on your staff receives a press inquiry of any kind, it must be referred to me so I can coordinate with the appropriate individuals in OPA.

• No press releases will be going out to external audiences.
  
• No social media will be going out. A Digital Strategist will be coming on board to oversee social media. Existing, individually controlled, social media accounts may become more centrally controlled.
  
• No blog messages.
  
• The Beach Team will review the list of upcoming webinars and decide which ones will go forward.
  
• Please send me a list of any external speaking engagements that are currently scheduled among any of your staff from today through February.
  
• Incoming media requests will be carefully screened.
  
• No new content can be placed on any website. Only do clean up where essential.
  
• List servers will be reviewed. Only send out critical messages, as messages can be shared broadly and end up in the press.
  

I will provide updates to this information as soon as I receive it.

It is time to take stock of the Obozo presidency and I think that Stefan Molyneux basically has it right.  As usual the sources for the material are in the YouTube description.

The people may have been shut out of the White House for now, courtesy of 18th century slaveholders who gave us the electoral college, but we are still here, and we will continue to organize and mobilize.

The "women's march" today was huge. As Steve Allen might say, this could be the start of something big. It was huge in DC, but huge all across the country too. I went to the one in San Jose, and I've never seen a bigger march and rally in this sleepy tech town. It seemed like half the city was there, although it wasn't that big; but lots of people squeezed into the entire march route downtown so that people were still standing at the start point when people were arriving at the end point. There were similar rallies all over the country in every state, even a dozen or so in Alaska! The mayor was one of the speakers, along with a minister of my New Thought persuasion. There was a lot of pride today in our city that we turned out so well. Usually events like this barely fill up the space in front of City Hall, if even that.

It might not have pleased some folks here like Rags and David who say the Left is too focused on social justice issues. This one was, for sure. It's certainly the result of the focus by the two candidates: the winner and new "president" being outspokenly against social justice, and the loser outspokenly in favor. But I wouldn't call it identity politics, because every conceivable identity was there together, standing up against Trump and for inclusion, diversity and love. One sign mentioned not only all the ethnic and religious groups, but the three main generations as we know them here as well.

It was the peaceful side of the movement, but yesterday a more militant variety was visible, stirred up by groups such as "DisruptJ20" which apparently were anti-capitalist anarchists. There were over 200 arrests in DC when a few of them starting breaking windows, battling police and such. And we had one of those gatherings too in San Jose, and I went to that one too. There were only about a hundred mostly young people, and none of them had any rocks or broke any windows. But they did storm onto the street and took it over for a while, shouting "Whose street? Our street!". A helicopter was shining its light down on us even before we started, and 2 cops pulled up and followed us onto the street right away. I myself didn't go into the street though, or insult the police, as some of them did; I didn't think that was the issue. But those who are victims of police brutality, or otherwise turned off by the state and authority, might think differently. Once we marched down into a street with no traffic, though, a dozen police cars and motorcycles suddenly cornered us. Maybe because police behavior would be safely out of view? As I returned to the sidewalk, I saw a few young people in the street make gestures of pushing back against their motorcycles. 3 were arrested, and gradually they forced the marchers to stay off the street and soon to disperse. One college cop said they had "information" that it was the same group behind this march that was behind the violent one in DC. I don't know if there were any other violent events, but there were other such Disrupt rallies around the country on Jan.20. Since there was no violence or any threat of it here, I thought the San Jose Police were overdoing it. And yet the next day the mayor himself speaks at the larger rally. So I'm not sure what to think about whether my blue city is going to participate in Trump's promised crackdown. It seemed like both sides intended for there to be some civil unrest, although I was not part of that intention.

It's only the beginning, the speakers said today. I hope so. There will need to be a lot of organizing, election work, protest and speaking out to do to turn back the tide that put Trump in office.

Hundreds of people are still dying in the Mediterranean.

Syrians have fled their country in droves. Libyans still face civil war. Throughout the Middle East, fires are raging left over from the Arab Spring uprisings of people against their dictators. Results of this Revolution that was felt around the world starting in 2011 are mixed.

I predicted both the revolutions and the refugees.
https://youtu.be/oKmyB1q3H68

My prayers are with the refugees and freedom fighters in these lands, especially Syria.

Mayor Leaves Golf Club As Members Don’t Want Obama Welcomed Over Take On Israel

He is just making it that much harder for the Democrats to ever regain the hardhat vote.

I'm more hopeful than I've been for awhile



‘I’m more hopeful than I’ve been for awhile’



Holly Bailey
National Correspondent
Yahoo NewsJanuary 15, 2017




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Gary Webster and Lynn Jackson at the Schultzen Club in Mingo Junction, Ohio. (Photo: Eric Thayer for Yahoo News)

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A closed steel mill in Mingo Junction, Ohio. (Photo: Eric Thayer for Yahoo News)

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Mingo Junction, Ohio. (Photo: Eric Thayer for Yahoo News)

But down the block, at an old bar called the Parkview Inn, there was one Trump supporter willing to own up to his vote. Joe Mannarino, a 57-year-old steelworker who had bounced from plant to plant after losing his job at the mill out back years before, was a registered Democrat who crossed party lines to back Trump. It wasn’t that he believed everything Trump said, he explained, but he saw him as a change candidate who would be more likely to help working-class people like him and towns like this.

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The Schultzen Club in Mingo Junction, Ohio. (Photo: Eric Thayer for Yahoo News)

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr66/nvsr66_01.pdf

latest report shows the birth rate remained low into 2015. Teenage pregnancy has been on going decline since 2007. Dropping by close to 10 percent annually. By comparison, in 2004-2007, the teen birth rate went up slightly. The birth rate among women aged 20-24 has also been declining steadily since 2007 with no signs of slowing down. The birth rate among the 20-24 age bracket was relatively stable between the mid 1970s up until 2007. 

Fertility rates among women in their 30s, 40s and 50s has gone up significantly in the last 5 years. Millennials are sharply increasing their birth rate as the enter their 30s. Overall the birth rate has dropped from 2.1 babies in 2007 to only 1.85 in 2015. That is the lowest since the early 1980s.

Back in 1957, during the peak of the baby boom, almost one in ten teenage girl was pregnant. For women in their early 20s, that figure was over 1/4 and as high as almost 1/3 in some states.

So far the Homelanders have really showed to be a baby bust generation, though not on the caparison of the x generation of course. The Silents were like wise born during a birth trough.

I think the birth rate will start to rise in the 2020s as the core and late Millennials enter their 30s.

One of the propositions of generational theory is that the Fourth Turning is a time when a new values regime is instituted in the civic order. As the 2016 elections unfolded, I got the impression from the successes of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump that the country was indeed ready to move on from the Culture Wars and focus on building government. This was because both of those candidates were galvanizing voters with offers of Big Government solutions - whether enhancing the social welfare state with a better healthcare program and free college tuition, or investing money in infrastructure and job creation. There was even the promise of a giant wall to protect us from illegal migrants - simultaneously creating construction jobs and protecting the jobs that the migrants are stealing!

But now that Donald Trump has been elected and has appointed an alt-right cabinet, it appears that the true Trump domestic agenda will be the annihilation of the New Deal order - which has lately earned the derisive moniker of the 'Deep State' - and the undoing of recent advancements in instituting progressive values. Is he just a con artist, or is he too stupid to see what his own advisors are up to - who knows? There has been an upswelling of resistance against his agenda, with the same energy that charged the election - suggesting that the Culture Wars rage on.

Or perhaps the Culture Wars are in their denouement, with a final push back from the right, after which the lines will be drawn and the values regime will be established for the next couple of phases of the secular cycle. Here is where I see some of those values lining up, based on recent trends and my impression of the broad consensus, if such a thing exists:

* Pro-gun rights. 

* Marijuana becomes legalized.

* Equal rights for gays, but not so much for the transgendered.

* Abortion remains legal, but heavily restricted.

* Gambling and pornography mainstreamed. And tattoos.

* Entertainment, in the form of music, TV and movies - gets darker for awhile as all those mid-life Xers brood.

* We remain essentially a multi-cultural society with religious freedom.

Less clear to me are where the lines will be drawn on these issues:

  * Are we abandoning the old welfare nation-state model and settling on a corporatist oligarchy, with little to no protections for the lower economic classes - the 99 per cent left to fend for themselves?
  
  * Are we willing to sacrifice the environment to keep the fossil-fuel industry strong, in the name of jobs for some of those 99 per cent?
  
  * Will we reform our justice system, or continue to have a huge prison population and intractable tension between law enforcement and racial minorities?  
  
It seems that if the New Deal Deep State does implode, we could be stuck with a world of corporate mastery - ruled by banks, energy companies, and a privately operated police state. Or maybe progressives will rally and rebuild a New New Deal on the ashes of the old. My feeling is that resolving these conflicts is where we are at now in this Fourth Turning.

I would love to know what others think about this!