Pundits are abuzz with the news that North Korea has tested a nuclear bomb that approaches the one dropped on Hiroshima, and is developing missiles to deliver it.

Some people think there could be a nuclear war in this 4T. The most obvious chance of this happening is if North Korea launches one against South Korea during a mutual dispute between them. Or, the USA and its allies South Korea and Japan may decide that the Dear Leader has developed nuclear weapons to a level that can't be tolerated, and the USA launches a preventive strike to take them out.

So the questions come up. Can China stop North Korea's program? If not, are their cyber attacks or some other way for the USA and its allies to disable them without bombing them?

If not, should there be a preventive strike? Could it take out all of NK's weapons before they can launch any against the USA and its allies?

If NK nukes our ally the South in response to our preventive strike, should we then fully conquer and defeat NK in response?

If North Korea strikes South Korea or Japan, the USA must retaliate. Our allies must be assured of this, or they will build nuclear weapons of their own to deter NK and its Dear Leader. NK must know that if its makes any such strike, regardless of any non-nuclear alleged provocations by the USA, South Korea or Japan, that it will cease to exist as a country. The retaliation must include conquest, regime change and reunification of Korea under the southern government. NK must know that this is the price of any nuclear strike it contemplates against the USA or its allies.

China is NK's ally. What would it do in that case? Could they be assured that if NK is conquered after a nuclear strike by NK, that the new unified Korea will be non-nuclear and not a threat to China? That in fact, a prosperous northern Korea might be an economic boon, even though it would be the end of their ally? That the USA and its allies have no designs on invading China or stationing troops there permanently? That elimination of NK would allow the US to decrease its armed and nuclear presence in the Pacific, and pursue disarmament with China?

Or would China attack to defend its ally? Would it launch nukes, and/or invade Korea to respond to our conquest, much as they did in 1950-51 when MacArthur crossed the Yalu River? Could the USA send enough troops to defeat invading Chinese forces plus any residual North Korean forces left after our attack? Would Taiwan come into the picture too, if China attacks Korea?

Would this be World War Three? Would other powers join in this conflagration? Would Russia back China? Would NATO/Europe then back the USA, Japan and Korea? Would the war then spread to the eastern European theater?

I guess we can't ignore the WW3 scenario for this 4T any longer. 

But besides the saeculum, I of course also look at the astrological timing. Things actually look promising for 2016-2017, as I have said. Progress on Syria was reported tonight, and this is likely to continue into 2017. The next Mars stations in Summer 2018 do not look too dangerous from a US war perspective. Some kind of accident, lone-wolf attack or rebellious uprising is more likely; or even some kind of crisis or financial decision on energy. The war danger is very high in late 2020, but the cycles do not indicate a USA war is likely until 2025. On the other hand, the Korean War itself did not fit into that cycle exactly. It fit closely a Mars station in conjunction with Saturn in Virgo in Spring 1950, which was a similar figure to the escalation of the war in Vietnam in Feb-May 1965 (which also fit the Jupiter cycle, of course). So the Jupiter 11-12 year war cycle is no guarantee of no war when it's not due; it just makes US war much less likely. But late 2020 does not look like a US war to me. In 2025-26 though, if whatever happens in 2020 is not settled, things could get ugly for the USA.

This has gone way too far.

Here we have an undeclared foreign agent, who still has not released his likely incriminating tax returns (e.g. showing foreign sourced funding). He's repeatedly shown himself to be a promoter of the USA's most substantial current foreign rival.

Beyond that, he's violated secrecy in revealing content from the security briefing.

And now, he's revealed a diabolical plan to overthrow the US government from within, by enlisting some cabal of military leaders or would be leaders who would be directly loyal to him in a personal arrangement outwith the actual chain of command and civilian oversight mechanisms. This last bit is reminiscent of Stalin, Hitler, Franco and Pinochet.

Let's face it. He's a traitor. Why wait for him to do further damage? Even if he loses the election, look at all the evil seeds he's sown. That crop will sprout for years if not decades, resulting in unavoidable violent domestic engagements and outright warfare.

HUAC 2.0! Start with Trump, go on from there.

Stop. The. Madness.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/...p=cur&_r=0

Quote:A chart has been making the rounds among the wonky corners of the internet. Nicknamed the elephant chart because of its peculiar shape, it has a big hump showing rising incomes for the world’s middle class, leading into a deep trough for the world’s upper middle class, then rising into another peak for the world’s wealthiest. To make the shape more obvious, some people on the internet have even drawn feet and ears on the graph.

But it isn’t meant to provoke laughs. Made by Branko Milanovic, an economics professor at the City University of New York, the chart forcefully shows how incomes for the middle class have risen in emerging economies like China and fallen for the lower middle class in advanced economies like the United States...



http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/...p=cur&_r=0

http://www.wsj.com/articles/jewish-baby-...1468499825

To get around the WSJ's paywall google the thread/article title 

Quote:Israel’s peace camp and its international backers have long used one crude but powerful argument: Arabs make more babies than Jews and unless a separate Palestinian state is created, a demographic time bomb will turn Jews into a dwindling minority akin to white South Africans.

That prospect certainly seemed real when the Oslo peace process began in the 1990s. Fertility among Israeli Jews stood at an average of 2.6 children per woman, compared with 4.7 among Muslims in Israel and East Jerusalem and 6.0 among Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Yasser Arafat at the time famously declared that the womb of the Palestinian woman was his people’s most potent weapon...



http://www.wsj.com/articles/jewish-baby-...1468499825

That was always the going theory on the old forum. How do we compare? Any obvious analogues to Charles II, James I, Cromwell, and other key players of the period?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk...aged-kids/

Quote:Smoking weed is often seen as an indulgence reserved for the young and the reckless: kids get high, in the popular imagination, but by and large their parents don't.

But new federal data show a stunning reversal of that age-old stereotype. Middle-aged Americans are now slightly more likely to use marijuana than their teenage children...



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk...aged-kids/

In the years leading up to the Civil War there was a progressive movement called the Wide Awakes. Chas mentioned them a few times on the old boards. It struck me today that the same imagery of being "awakened" is being used today by social progressives in the wake of the police shootings of black men. People are talking of "getting woke".

Here’s an article from March on a realignment theory.

 
What I’m most interested in is this chart:





While I have some quibbles with the terminology and the dates I think the chart is and theory is on to something.  The dividing line in American politics rotates 90 ° per saeculum or 45 ° per social moment I would argue that the line the chart labels is 1960 is more like the 1950 line and by 1960 the line had moved somewhat clockwise. I think that the subsequent lines are basically accurate. Furthermore if you were to go back to 1896 the line would be about 45 ° of what the author labeled as the 1960 divide.  If the pattern holds the dividing line will be horizontal at the end of the 4T and move clockwise from there, by the next 2T Republicans will start to resemble progressive era Democrats.

I see we have a new user - "peshuv."

Verrrrrrry interesting!

I found an article that should be interesting. Here is the URL: http://www.politicususa.com/2016/09/01/a...-show.html

Here is the article:

Quote:Donald Trump’s entire presidential candidacy is built upon the idea that America needs to be saved from undocumented immigrants that are “flooding” into the country.

It started when he kicked off his presidential campaign with a speech that denigrated Mexican immigrants as “criminals” and “rapists” and promised to build a wall on the southern border of the United States.

For those “illegals” already in the country, Trump has repeatedly said they need to be deported – no questions asked.

After several weeks of pretending to soften his tone on the issue, his fear-mongering ramble speech on Wednesday in Arizona only reaffirmed all the anti-immigrant sentiment Trump has spewed since the launch of his candidacy.

“For those here today illegally who are seeking legal status, they will have one route and only one route: to return home and apply for re-entry under the rules of the new legal immigration system,” the Republican nominee said, suggesting once again that he is in favor of deporting 11 million people.

After spending more than a year campaigning as the candidate of immigration, you’d think Trump would at least poll well on this issue.

Wrong.

According to a recent Monmouth University poll, a whopping 69 percent of voters don’t feel threatened by undocumented immigrants from Mexico, despite Trump’s constant warnings that there is a violent, undocumented immigrant hiding under the bed of every American.

A recent poll from Pew Research Center showed that a clear majority – 61 percent – are not in favor of his most notable proposal: a wall along the southern border. Trump may repeatedly propose the idea in front of angry mobs that applaud it, but most Americans don’t want it.

Even in head-to-head matchups with Hillary Clinton on this specific issue, Trump still loses.

By a margin of 13 points (53 to 40 percent), voters say that they trust the Democratic nominee more to handle immigration issues, an ABC News/Washington Post survey from last month showed.

On dealing with the specific subject of undocumented immigrants from Mexico, Clinton is favored over Trump by an even larger margin (58 to 36 percent), according to an August McClatchy/Marist poll.

If Trump wants to continue making this issue the center of his campaign, he is free to do so. I’m sure Democrats would be delighted, in fact.

But it’s very clear that the vast majority of Americans aren’t embracing the signature plank in Trump’s platform.