While Donald Trump plays sycophant to Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader brags about his country's improved ability to wage war on America and NATO allies.

So what’s our defense? Thoughts and prayers?

Putin boasts military might with animation of Florida nuke strike @CNN https://t.co/RAoaYzOgje

— Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) March 1, 2018

Courtesy of CNN: 

Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted Thursday of new weaponry he claims will render NATO defenses "completely useless," delivering a warning to the world about Russia's resurgent military might. 

In an annual address to the Russian parliament, the Kremlin leader said Russia had developed a new, nuclear-capable cruise missile with "unlimited" range that is capable of eluding air-defense systems. 

He also said Russia had developed an "invincible" missile that can deliver a warhead at hypersonic speed. 

Putin is running for reelection in mid-March on a platform that emphasizes his strength as a leader. And Thursday's speech was an occasion for the Russian President to showcase his country's strides in military technology.

"Russia still has the greatest nuclear potential in the world, but nobody listened to us," he said. "Listen now."

Jesus Christ!

So while Trump lubes himself up to make Putin's intrusion into our political system friction free, Vlad slaps his dick in our faces as he brags about his ability to bomb the world back into the stone age and our inability to do a damn thing to stop him.

Of course America officially refutes these claims, but then again America also thought that our cyber security was top notch.

As long as Trump is in the White House we are sitting ducks for any Russian attacks, be they military or cyber. And that is becoming more obvious every day.

Donald Trump is demanding a strategic plan for a preemptive attack against North Korea. The Pentagon is worried that if they provide one, he will actually use it.

I want to blow something up.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

The White House has grown frustrated in recent weeks by what it considers the Pentagon’s reluctance to provide President Trump with options for a military strike against North Korea, according to officials, the latest sign of a deepening split in the administration over how to confront the nuclear-armed regime of Kim Jong-un. 

The national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, believes that for Mr. Trump’s warnings to North Korea to be credible, the United States must have well-developed military plans, according to those officials. 

But the Pentagon, they say, is worried that the White House is moving too hastily toward military action on the Korean Peninsula that could escalate catastrophically. Giving the president too many options, the officials said, could increase the odds that he will act. 

The tensions bubbled to the surface this week with the disclosure that the White House had abandoned plans to nominate a prominent Korea expert, Victor D. Cha, as ambassador to South Korea. Mr. Cha suggested that he was sidelined because he warned administration officials against a “preventive” military strike, which, he later wrote, could spiral “into a war that would likely kill tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Americans.”

Donald Trump is desperate to find something to change the narrative away from these Russian investigations. 

It is folly to believe that he would not allow the death of thousands in order to accomplish that goal.

Megalomaniacs do not see people as human beings, they see them as a means to an end.

The Doomsday Clock is now the closest it has been to midnight since the Cold War.

Courtesy of Science AF: 

On Wednesday, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced they have moved the Doomsday Clock forward so it now rests 2 minutes before midnight. 

The Doomsday Clock is a symbol which represents the likelihood of a man-made global catastrophe. Ever since 1998, when India and Pakistan started testing nuclear weapons, the Doomsday Clock has been just single digits away from midnight. 

But after the disaster that was 2017, when world leaders failed to respond effectively to looming threats of nuclear war and climate change, scientists have moved the minute hand forward by 30 seconds. 

The Clock is now closer than it has ever been to Doomsday since the height of the Cold War in 1953. 

"In 2017, we saw reckless language in the nuclear realm heat up already dangerous situations and relearned that minimizing evidence-based assessments regarding climate and other global challenges does not lead to better public policies," said Rachel Bronson, the Bulletin's president and CEO. 

According to the experts, last year's greatest threats came from the nuclear realm, leaving humanity on the "cusp of a new arms race." North Korea's nuclear weapons progress and the "hyperbolic rhetoric and provocative actions" from both the U.S. and North Korea have increased the possibility of nuclear war, they say.

People terrified around the world about the possibility of a nuclear war.

Somewhere you just know that Putin is sitting with a self satisfied grin on his face.

A population in fear, is a population easily manipulated.

Donald Trump suggests that passing his recent cognitive test means he is more capable of solving the North Korea problem than his predecessors.

According to Reuters Trump said this while being asked about dealing with Kim Jong Un: 

With North Korea persisting as the major global challenge facing Trump this year, the president cast doubt on whether talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would be useful. In the past he has not ruled out direct talks with Kim. 

“I’d sit down, but I‘m not sure that sitting down will solve the problem,” he said, noting that past negotiations with the North Koreans by his predecessors had failed to rein in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. 

He blamed his three immediate predecessors, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, for failing to resolve the crisis and, a day after his doctor gave him a perfect score on a cognitive test, suggested he had the mental acuity to solve it. 

“I guess they all realized they’re going to have to leave it to a president that scored the highest on tests,” he joked.

First off, he wasn't joking. The reporter from Reuters is just giving him the benefit of the doubt here.

And secondly Trump is ALWAYS bragging about his intellect, and I imagine truly believes he is more capable than Bill Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar, or Barack Obama, who became the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review, and may have the highest IQ of any president in modern history. 

Keep in mind that Trump's cognitive test consisted of remembering a sequence of numbers, simple subtraction, drawing a clock, and identifying animals by name.

It is a ten minute test that his doctor claimed took him thirty minutes to complete, and THIS suggests that he has good cognitive abilities?

Just the fact that he made the statement above, demonstrates the falsity of that claim.

It should also be mentioned that later in the Reuters article when asked Trump did not rule out a military solution to the North Korean problem.

Such sharp cognitive skills this one.

While we are all focused on the latest Donald Trump scandals, the military quietly prepares for war with North Korea.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

Across the military, officers and troops are quietly preparing for a war they hope will not come. 

At Fort Bragg in North Carolina last month, a mix of 48 Apache gunships and Chinook cargo helicopters took off in an exercise that practiced moving troops and equipment under live artillery fire to assault targets. Two days later, in the skies above Nevada, 119 soldiers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division parachuted out of C-17 military cargo planes under cover of darkness in an exercise that simulated a foreign invasion. 

Next month, at Army posts across the United States, more than 1,000 reserve soldiers will practice how to set up so-called mobilization centers that move military forces overseas in a hurry. And beginning next month with the Winter Olympics in the South Korean town of Pyeongchang, the Pentagon plans to send more Special Operations troops to the Korean Peninsula, an initial step toward what some officials said ultimately could be the formation of a Korea-based task force similar to the types that are fighting in Iraq and Syria. Others said the plan was strictly related to counterterrorism efforts. 

In the world of the American military, where contingency planning is a mantra drummed into the psyche of every officer, the moves are ostensibly part of standard Defense Department training and troop rotations. But the scope and timing of the exercises suggest a renewed focus on getting the country’s military prepared for what could be on the horizon with North Korea.

As I reported last month the Navy has deployed special radar hunting warplanes to South Korea, supposedly for military exercises, but that is probably just a thinly veiled excuse.

And of course the Trump Administration is trying to loosen those restrictions on the use of nukes.

All of this seems like it is headed for a disaster for which we are simply not prepared to deal.

No wonder I am drinking so much damn coffee.

So whose fault was Hawaii's false missile alert yesterday? Oh, I think we know.

Omg pic.twitter.com/ZbDTL1rcaF

— Michelle Broder Van Dyke (@michellebvd) January 13, 2018

Could you even imagine receiving that?

I grew up during the Cold War and I never had anything happen that was anywhere near as frightening as this.

And it even appeared on local Hawaiian television.

TV with the alert pic.twitter.com/VCZAtvyuzQ

— Michelle Broder Van Dyke (@michellebvd) January 13, 2018

Terrifying!

I went to college in Hawaii and I have say that back then at least there were just not that many places to go to for shelter.

The same must be essentially true today because residents were literally stuffing their children down storm drains in a frantic attempt to keep them safe.

BREAKING VIDEO: Footage shows children being placed into storm drains immediately after Emergency Ballistic Missile Warning was sent to residents in Hawaii.pic.twitter.com/GVDyVEARgR

— Jemisha (@JemiSHaaaZzz) January 13, 2018

It was almost forty minutes later that residents received this correction.

Just got this second alert, almost 40 minutes later. pic.twitter.com/q2uVL5cMDV

— Sonali Kohli 🙆🏾 (@Sonali_Kohli) January 13, 2018

Can you imagine being that terrified for more than half an hour, only to find out that it was all a mistake?

Speaking of mistakes Donald Trump just kept right on golfing while all of this was going on:

Critics are blasting President Donald Trump for continuing to golf Saturday while frantic Hawaii residents rushed for cover after a false cell phone alarm about an incoming ballistic missile. 

The president was on the course at his Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, after the alert was issued at 1:09 p.m. EST, according to press pool reports. His motorcade didn’t leave the club for Mar-a-Lago until 1:38 p.m.

As of Saturday evening, Trump had not issued any personal statement — or tweet — about the scare. He did tweet about “fake news” and again called journalist Michael Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, a “fake book.” He described Wolff as “mentally deranged.”

I guess he must consider Hawaii to be one of those "shitholes" that are beneath his notice.

Ultimately what we learned yesterday is that this White House is completely incapable of responding to an actual nuclear attack.

Courtesy of Politico:

A false warning of a missile threat in Hawaii sent White House aides scrambling Saturday, frantically phoning agencies to determine a response and triggering worries about their preparedness almost a year into the Trump administration. 

President Donald Trump's Cabinet has yet to test formal plans for how to respond to a domestic missile attack, according to a senior administration official. John Kelly, while serving as Secretary of Homeland Security through last July, planned to conduct the exercise. But he left his post to become White House chief of staff before it was conducted, and acting secretary Elaine Duke never carried it out. 

The administration ran the exercise on Dec. 19 at the deputies' level, at the behest of Kelly and newly sworn in Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen. But as of Saturday, when Hawaii residents were taking cover, the federal government had yet to play out the same scenario with Cabinet secretaries at what is known as the principals level. 

"The U.S. government hasn't tested these plans in 30 years,” said the senior administration official involved in the White House response. “All the fresh faces sitting around the table in the situation room have little idea what their roles would be in this scenario. The bottom line is that without a principals level exercise we shouldn’t have any confidence that the Cabinet would know what to do in an attack scenario." 

Can't say I am surprised by this.

I saw the poor man in charge of these alerts in Hawaii taking responsibility for his mistake, and I think there is a strong possibility he will lose his job over it.

However let's take a moment to remember that the ONLY reason that Hawaii was doing these kinds of drills in the first place is the now very real concern that North Korea might send a missile toward America, and that this fear took hold because of some childish exchanges between Kim Jong Un and the imbecile in the White House.

It took actress Jamie Lee Curtis to say what most of us are probably already thinking.

This Hawaii missle scare is on YOU Mr. Trump. The real FEAR that mothers & fathers & children felt is on YOU. It is on YOUR ARROGANCE. HUBRIS. NARCISSISM. RAGE. EGO. IMMATURITY and your UNSTABLE IDIOCY. Shame on your hate filled self. YOU DID THIS!

— Jamie Lee Curtis (@jamieleecurtis) January 13, 2018

Yes, exactly!

If Barack Obama had still been in charge, I seriously doubt that the people of Hawaii would have been quite so panicked in response to that alert.

After all they knew an adult was in charge and probably would have thought it was a mistake. Which it was.

But under Donald Trump, NOBODY feels safe.

And we know that not only is a nuclear war more likely, but that our government is completely unprepared for the first missile launches that would likely start one.

Welcome my friends, to Trump's America.

UN Secretary General puts world on "Red Alert."

As we begin 2018, I am issuing a red alert for our world. I call for unity – our future depends on it. pic.twitter.com/fWtTa1irM3

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) December 31, 2017

Courtesy of HuffPo:

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres issued a grim warning as 2017 drew to a close. 

In a somber video address posted to Twitter on New Year’s Eve, he cautioned that the globe was on “red alert” following a year marked by deepening conflicts and “new dangers.” 

“When I took office a year ago, I appealed for 2017 to be a year for peace,” Guterres said in the clip. “Unfortunately, in fundamental ways, the world has gone in reverse. ... Global anxieties over nuclear weapons are the highest since the Cold War, and climate change is moving faster than we are. Inequalities are growing, and we see horrific violations of human rights. Nationalism and xenophobia are on the rise.” 

Facing such challenges, Guterres said he was “not issuing an appeal” but a “red alert for our world.” Only international unity and cooperation, he stressed, could now help solve these many crises.

“I truly believe we can make our world more safe and secure. We can settle conflicts, overcome hatred and defend shared values but we can only do that together,” the U.N. chief said. “I urge leaders everywhere to make this New Year’s resolution: Narrow the gaps. Bridge the divides. Rebuild trust by bringing people together around common goals. Unity is the path. Our future depends on it.”

As you can read Guterres does not mention the Russian military buildup, and the back and forth between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un outright, but clearly that is the subtext. 

In decades past the United States was expected to be the voice of reason in working to make the world a safer place, but now that we have our own out of control oligarch in office, we are now seen as perhaps the number one threat to the people on this planet. 

When they coined the term "elections have consequences" I am not sure they ever envisioned consequences of this magnitude.

Donald Trump is now identified as the top nuclear threat in the world.

For the first time in 35 years of analysis, I must list the United States as the greatest nuclear threat in the world. https://t.co/lyhfXb2CfP

— Joe Cirincione (@Cirincione) December 28, 2017

Courtesy of Defense One: 

The greatest nuclear danger does not come from a foreign threat or a terrorist group but from our own president. The Washington Post, reporting on how intelligence briefings are shaped so as not to upset President Trump, concludes that “the personal insecurities of the president have impaired the government’s response to a national security threat.” Many fear that the president’s mental condition is itself a national security threat. This is, like so much of the past year, unprecedented. 

Concern over the president’s mental stability and his sole, unchecked authority to launch nuclear weapons caused the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this year to hold the first hearings on nuclear command and control in over 40 years. Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., fearing that Trump was leading the nation “on the path to World War III,” convened the hearing. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., voiced his deep fear at the session: “We are concerned that the president of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic that he might order a nuclear weapons strike that is wildly out of step with U.S. national security interests.” 

Once an order is given, no one could stop it. Mullen, when asked if a general could refuse Trump’s order, said, “Any senior military officer always approaches it from the standpoint of we’re not going to follow an illegal order. That said, the president is in a position to give a legal order to use those weapons. And the likelihood that given that order that it would be carried out I think would be pretty high.” 

Most experts agree. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper worries that if Trump, “in a fit of pique” decides to launch a nuclear strike, “there’s actually very little to stop him. The whole system is built to ensure rapid response if necessary. So there’s very little in the way of controls over exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary.” Senators and House Members have introduced legislation to change the decision process and policy. 

The fear of a mad, nuclear-armed president haunts those outside the United States as well. “While the global community may trust that no responsible head of state would ever order another nuclear attack, we have no guarantees that it will not happen,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, warned during the prize ceremony this month. “Despite international legal commitments, irresponsible leaders can come to power in any nuclear-armed state and become embroiled in serious military conflicts that veer out of control.” 

Great job there deplorables, great job. 

We are no longer the world's policeman.

We are the world's number one potential terrorist bomber.

Meanwhile in North Korea.....

Courtesy of the BBC:

US bombers have flown close to North Korea's east coast to demonstrate the military options available to defeat any threat, the Pentagon has said. 

It said the flight was the farthest north of the demilitarised zone between the Koreas that any US fighter jet or bomber had flown in the 21st Century. 

Tensions have risen recently over Pyongyang's nuclear programme. 

At the UN, North Korea's foreign minister said US President Donald Trump was on a "suicide mission". 

Ri Yong-ho's comments to the General Assembly mimicked Mr Trump's remarks at the UN on Tuesday, when he called North Korean leader Kim Jong-un a "rocket man on a suicide mission".

Mr Ri added that "insults" by Mr Trump - who was, he said, "mentally deranged and full of megalomania" - were an "irreversible mistake making it inevitable" that North Korean rockets would hit the US mainland.

Jesus Christ! Are we on an elementary school playground here?

So while we are all distracted by Trump's bizarre attacks against NFL and NBA players, he is busy starting World War 3.

Great.

In escalating war of words leader of North Korea calls Donald Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.”

Courtesy of New York Times:  

Responding directly for the first time to President Trump’s threat at the United Nations to destroy nuclear-armed North Korea, its leader called Mr. Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” on Friday and vowed the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history.” 

The rejoinder by the leader, Kim Jong-un, who is about half as old as Mr. Trump, 71, added to the lexicon of Mr. Kim’s choice of insults in the escalating bombast between the two. 

“A frightened dog barks louder,” Mr. Kim said in a statement, referring to Mr. Trump’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday in which he vowed to annihilate North Korea if the United States were forced to defend itself or its allies against it. 

“He is surely a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire, rather than a politician,” Mr. Kim said.

Damn I hate to agree with a deranged North Korean lunatic, but that is a fairly accurate description.

Of course the problem is that we expect this sort of name calling and childishness from the life size Weeble dominating the people of North Korea, but now we have our own man-child egging him on by flinging his own preschool level epithets, like Rocket man, in Jong-un's direction.

And all of this might simply be good theater, if it did not potentially devastating real life consequences.

Courtesy of US News: 

Hawaiian officials are reportedly preparing for the possibility of a nuclear attack, and they're doing it quietly. 

The Honolulu Civil Beat reported earlier this week that Hawaii lawmakers attended a closed-door briefing Tuesday by emergency officials on the topic of such an attack from North Korea. Officials reportedly viewed slides on the potential fallout from a nuclear attack that included information on where an attack might target and the fatalities that could result.

That's right we now have American citizens now terrified of being decimated by a nuclear bomb.

Only nine short months ago there was no such fear.

And there are no signs that the rhetoric will come to an end any time soon.

Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017

In actuality Trump is simply increasing sanctions: 

President Trump ordered a widening of American sanctions on North Korea on Thursday to further choke off its trade with the outside world, in what some experts described as perhaps the most sweeping set of punitive economic measures enacted by the United States in many years. 

A new executive order signed by Mr. Trump aimed to cut North Korea out of the international banking system while targeting its major industries and shipping. The move suggested that for now, at least, the president was still committed to applying economic pressure rather than military action, despite his vow this week to “totally destroy North Korea” if the United States were forced to defend itself or its allies.

That may have some effect if others were not trying to remove themselves from the line of fire if this thing escalates any further.

Courtesy of CNBC: 

South Korea on Thursday approved $8 million worth of humanitarian aid for Pyongyang in a move likely to muddle international efforts aimed at isolating the nuclear-armed state. 

The package will include $4.5 million in nutritional products for children and pregnant women through the World Food Program in addition to $3.5 million worth of vaccines and medicinal treatments via UNICEF. The timing of the delivery has yet to be confirmed.

The news indicates South Korean President Moon Jae-In isn't backing down from direct engagement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un even as other major players in the long-simmering crisis push for a tougher approach.

Yeah, that is because South Korea realizes that the minute somebody decides to call the other's bluff it is their asses which get fried first.

There is a reason that voters are supposed to choose the most sober, experienced, and mentally stable candidate to the President of the United States.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tries to calm fears about war with North Korea as Donald Trump continues to puff up his chest like a middle school bully.

Courtesy of CNN:

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has sought to allay fears of a military confrontation with North Korea after President Donald Trump warned he could unleash "fire and fury" on the pariah state. 

Tillerson defended Trump's comments but said there was no sign that the threat level from North Korea had changed and that Americans should "sleep well at night." 

His unscheduled remarks, on a flight out of the region early Wednesday, appeared designed to dial back the unprecedented rhetoric from Trump.

Trump's remarks about  "fire and fury" has caused concerns all across the world, and especially in South Korea, Japan, and of course Guam which North Korea has specifically threatened.

However while Tillerson is desperately trying to put out these fires, Trump his running around with his leaky gas can.

My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 9, 2017

...Hopefully we will never have to use this power, but there will never be a time that we are not the most powerful nation in the world!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 9, 2017

First off I don't think that seven months is really enough time to "renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal."

And secondly WTF?

You know if you do indeed have the biggest penis in the frat house, you do not have to go around whipping it out at every party. People know.

Donald Trump is sitting on perhaps the single most powerful nuclear arsenal on the planet, he does not need to flaunt that.

It is like his tiny little hands make him feel that he constantly has to prove he is a man.

Only in this case his insecurities can cost the lives of millions.

US Admiral says that he would launch a nuclear attack against China if Donald Trump commanded it. WTF?

Courtesy of NPR: 

At a security conference in Australia on Thursday, this scenario was posed to the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet: If ordered to do so by President Trump, would he would launch a nuclear attack on China next week? His response: Yes. 

An academic in the audience posed this question to Adm. Scott Swift: "At risk of being blunt ... If, when you return to your command next week, you were to receive an order from the commander in chief, the president of the United States, to make a nuclear attack on China, would you do it?"

As the audience tittered at the premise, the admiral smiled and said, "So far, these were yes and no answers." 

"The answer would be yes," Swift went on. "Every member of the U.S. military has sworn an oath to defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic and to obey the officers and the president of the United States as the commander in chief appointed over us."

"This is core to American democracy and any time you have a military that is moving away from a focus and an allegiance to civilian control, then we really have significant problems," Swift added.

Okay now I have never been a member of the armed services but isn't it the duty of the United States military to defy and order that they believe is dangerous to the country or that comes from a superior clearly suffering from an mental illness?

Attacking China would be suicide. This guy has to know that.

Right?

Jesus Christ, if anybody needs me I will be curled up in the fetal position under my bed.

So how's that war with North Korea coming along?

Go ahead make a move, I dare you.

Courtesy of ABC News:  

North Korea's deputy U.N. ambassador accused the United States on Monday of turning the Korean Peninsula into "the world's biggest hotspot" and creating "a dangerous situation in which a thermonuclear war may break out at any moment." 

Kim In Ryong told a news conference that "if the U.S. dares opt for a military action," North Korea "is ready to react to any mode of war desired by the U.S." 

He said the Trump administration's deployment of the Carl Vinson nuclear carrier task group to waters off the Korean Peninsula again "proves the U.S. reckless moves for invading the DPRK have reached a serious phase of its scenario." 

Kim stressed that U.S.-South Korean military exercises being staged now are the largest-ever "aggressive war drill" aimed at his country, formally the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. 

"The prevailing grave situation proves once again that the DPRK was entirely just when it increased in every way its military capabilities for self-defense and pre-emptive attack with a nuclear force as a pivot," he said.

Yep rising paranoia, highly agitated saber rattling, and the overwhelming fear of losing face in front of one's people, the very recipe for a disaster.

So has Trump's careless posturing had any positive impact in curbing North Korea's missile testing?

Courtesy of the BBC: 

North Korea will continue to test missiles, a senior official has told the BBC in Pyongyang, despite international condemnation and growing military tensions with the US. 

"We'll be conducting more missile tests on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis," Vice Foreign Minister Han Song-ryol told the BBC's John Sudworth. 

He said that an "all-out war" would result if the US took military action.

So that would be a "No" then.

And how are the Chinese and Russians handling all of this?

Courtesy of the Salt Lake Tribune:

China and Russia have dispatched intelligence-gathering vessels from their navies to chase the USS Carl Vinson nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which is heading toward waters near the Korean Peninsula, multiple sources of the Japanese government revealed to The Yomiuri Shimbun. 

It appears that both countries aim to probe the movements of the United States, which is showing a stance of not excluding military action against North Korea. The Self-Defense Forces are strengthening warning and surveillance activities in the waters and airspace around the area, according to the sources. 

Yes but surely the American people are feeling safer having such an aggressive commander-in-chief in charge of our security, right?

Courtesy of Fox News: 

As tensions with North Korea mount, Hawaii lawmakers anxiously are dusting off the state’s emergency plans in preparation for the possibility – however remote – of an attack on the islands. 

The plans were last revisited in the 1980s. But the Hawaii House Public Safety Committee on Thursday formally called for the state’s defense agency to repair their hundreds of Cold War-era fallout shelters and restock them with medical supplies, food and water. 

"They haven't been updated since 1985," Rep. Matt LoPresti, a Democrat who serves as vice chair of that committee, told Hawaii News Now. “I was 11 years old when they were last updated. Many of the buildings that are on the fallout shelter list don't exist anymore.”

So the North Koreans are agitated, the Chinese and Russians are on high alert, and the American citizens of Hawaii are in fear for their very lives.

Yep, we're fucked. 

Nuclear Doomsday clock moves the closest to midnight than it has since 1953.

Courtesy of Reuters: 

Atomic scientists reset their symbolic "Doomsday Clock" to its closest time to midnight in 64 years on Thursday, saying the world was closer to catastrophe due to threats such as nuclear weapons, climate change and Donald Trump's election as U.S. president.

Its hands were moved to two minutes and 30 seconds to midnight, from three minutes. 

"The Doomsday Clock is closer to midnight than it's ever been in the lifetime of almost everyone in this room," Lawrence Krauss, the bulletin's chair, told a news conference in Washington. 

The clock was last set this close to midnight in 1953, marking the start of the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Thursday's reset was the first since 2015.

Physicist Lawrence Krauss laid blame for this decision squarely at the feet pf Doanld Trump and his puppet master Vladimir Putin.

Just when you thought the news could not get any worse.

Dammit, after the upcoming nuclear holocaust the Republicans STILL win the national elections.

Here's what the electoral map would look like if only people who weren't burnt to a crisp in the nuclear holocaust voted. pic.twitter.com/MsrkuOjZWi

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 23, 2016

And people ask me why I choose to live way up here in the wilderness.

Because civilization is apparently trying to kill itself, that's why.

Holy Shit!

The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2016

You know I wanted to come up with a more creative title but...holy shit!

We have enough nuclear weapons to destroy this planet many times over, and this idiot wants us to make more?

To be clear EVERY President as far back as Jimmy Carter (And yes that includes Ronald Reagan) have been working to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world.

And then here comes Orange Hitler to suggest that what the world needs is MORE nuclear weapons not less.

Like I said, holy shit!

Ally of Vladimir Putin suggests that not voting for Donald Trump risks nuclear war with Russia.

Source

Courtesy of The Sydney Morning Herald: 

Moscow: Americans should vote for Donald Trump as president or risk being dragged into a nuclear war, according to a Russian ultra-nationalist ally of President Vladimir Putin who likes to compare himself to the US Republican candidate. 

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a flamboyant veteran lawmaker known for his fiery rhetoric, told Reuters Trump is the only person able to de-escalate dangerous tensions between Moscow and Washington. 

By contrast, Trump's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton could spark World War Three, said Zhirinovsky, who received a top state award from Putin after his pro-Kremlin Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) came third in Russia's parliamentary election last month. 

Many Russians regard Zhirinovsky as a clownish figure who makes outspoken statements to grab attention but he is also widely viewed as a faithful servant of Kremlin policy, sometimes used to float radical opinions to test public reaction.

Well it's certainly a good thing that Russia is not attempting to pick our next President or anything, right?

Every day I wake up thinking that this cannot get any more bizarre, and every day I am proven wrong.