In the turbulent landscape of international affairs, a desperate bid to rescue 53 American hostages from Tehran unfolded tragically on April 24, 1980, culminating in the loss of eight brave servicemen and no hostages freed. Special Operations Warrior Foundation traces its roots to that tragic night.
More.
In a stunning move, Trump's chief of staff
Susie Wiles told those who will become his top lieutenants to get
anything they put on X, or other networks, cleared first. ...
'While this instruction has been delivered previously, I am reiterating that no member of the incoming administration or Transition speaks for the United States or the President-elect himself,' Wiles wrote in a memo reported by the New York Post.
'Accordingly, all intended nominees should refrain from any public social media posts without prior approval of the incoming White House counsel.'
More.
Same-sex-marriage enthusiast (((Roger Simon))) says our young people are more backward than the young people of foreign countries, which is exactly the same sort of sneering condescension displayed by federal hog trough feeder Elon Musk and big pharma swindler Vivek Ramaswamy.
People like Roger, who is also a Freudian, worship at the altar of immigrants, "who have built much of this country":
Our educational system is too slow for the pace of tech, students finally learning what they need to know in graduate school when young people in other countries are already utilizing the latest ever-changing tech developments as teenagers.
Apparently our educational system has also failed Roger. He spells it H1-B throughout.
Trump was NEVER all-in about his immigration positions, which went back and forth from the beginning.
People forget that he and Ann Coulter had a knock-down drag-out fight in the Oval Office about immigration sometime in late 2017, early 2018. The newly elected president had done NOTHING about the border wall, deportations, and the Dreamers. He had used her book about immigration to distinguish himself from the numerous other GOP candidates and get himself elected, and promptly tossed her aside like all the other women he has cheated on.
Trump is nothing if he's not a user.
People also forget the blow up in August 2016 before he was even president, when Trump toyed publicly with the idea of a DACA amnesty. NeverTrump noticed:
Donald Trump ... is suddenly embracing the idea of working out a way to give legal status to undocumented immigrants who have been here a long time and have kept out of trouble. ... Trump's latest comments that it makes no sense to deport millions of people who have lived in the U.S. for a decade or more -- which constitutes two-thirds of the undocumented immigrants here now -- are a far cry from what he had been saying for the previous 14 months.
MAGA ignored this. Conservatives like Coulter were demoralized, months before they were actually betrayed. Trump only narrowly defeated Hillary.
And few remember how he blew himself up in the 2018 elections, losing the House, in part because he used DACA as a bargaining chip in early 2018 in a failed attempt to get his wall funded, shutting down the government in the process. His lone achievements in his first two years were a modest and temporary tax cut package, and a massive defense spending bill to restore what Obama had gutted.
The legions of disaffected young men hoping Trump-Vance would bring a new era of opportunity for native born Americans over cheaper foreign workers are sadly experiencing buyer's remorse because of Trump's capitulation to the Tech Bros, discovering anew that Trump is the snake in the parable he always used to talk about on the campaign trail.
Welcome to hell part deux.
Donald J. Frankenstein is the GOP's version of Boltneck, who was for the use of force in Iraq and Afghanistan before he was against paying for it.
Elon Musk has that effect on people lol.
Don't get the Neuralink from the mad scientist or it could happen to you, too!
Second one for him, third for her.
He'll be 63. She's 48.
"The idea of choking off the amazing flow of immigrants makes me sick to my stomach".
A MAGA ‘Civil War’ on X between Musk and the far right over H-1B visas
The online rift over the H-1B skilled-worker visa program signifies a potential wedge between Trump’s core base and his new Silicon Valley supporters.
Far-right activists clashed online with billionaire Elon Musk and other supporters of President-elect Donald Trump over the need for a skilled-worker immigration program that has long been a lifeblood for Silicon Valley — signifying a potential rift between Trump’s core nationalist base and technology executives who have come to support him.
The fight that spilled into public view over the holiday week could preview a wedge within Trump’s coalition over how to execute immigration policy, an issue that animated Trump’s White House campaign.
The controversy spread across X after far-right activist Laura Loomer on Monday criticized Trump’s choice to name Sriram Krishnan, a technology entrepreneur and investor who was born in India, as his senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence. She pointed to Krishnan’s previous support for removing some caps on H-1B visas, a program allowing foreigners with technical skills to work in the United States. The policy is “in direct opposition” to Trump’s agenda, Loomer wrote.
The critique ran headlong into tension with some of Trump’s closest advisers, notably Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk; David Sacks who will be the president-elect’s AI and crypto czar; and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will co-lead a commission to cut government spending. “‘Normalcy’ doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent,” Ramaswamy said. “And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our a--es handed to us by China.”
The
online fight sparked a slew of racist posts from Loomer falsely
describing Indians as “third world invaders" with low IQs, while saying
it is fueling a “civil war” between Trump’s far-right base and the “tech
bros” that have come to support his upcoming administration. ...
1.61 votes for Nixon for every vote for McGovern, the real reason Democrats hated him so much.
The smallest popular mandate belonged to JFK over Nixon in 1960 at 1.0033. Democrats stole that election but Nixon let it pass for the good of the country.
There were smaller mandates, if you count Bush 2000 at 0.98 (Gore 1.01), or Trump 2016 at 0.95 (Hillary 1.04), lol, but those aren't really popular vote mandates now are they?
LBJ was second in 1964 with 1.58, because JFK had been assassinated in 1963. I don't think Jesus himself could have won it for the GOP in 1964.
Third overall was Reagan in 1984 with 1.44, followed by IKE at fourth and fifth with 1.36 and 1.24 respectively in 1956 and 1952.
If back-to-back terms is your yardstick, Reagan was tops with a combined mandate of 1.335, followed by Nixon at 1.31, IKE at 1.30, Bill Clinton at 1.17, and Obama at 1.115. Bush 43 brings up the rear at a distant 1.015.
People who think Trump is a repudiation of Bush 43 Republicanism should consider that Trump's not-back-to-back combined score is now 0.99.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Trump is a transitional figure for the GOP, and certainly not a nationally transformational one like Reagan who destroyed the bipolar world, IKE who re-moralized a victorious but demoralized nation, and Nixon who fatefully opened the door to China.
Unfortunately for the GOP, Trump is mostly just a wrecking ball who is wrecking his own HDQ, and the Democrat threat remains just decimal points away.
Even Hillary's mandate was bigger than that in 2016 lol: 1.04.
The attacks, where drivers mow down people on foot or knife-wielding assailants stab multiple victims, are not new in China. But the latest surge drew attention. ...
In November alone, three took place: A man struck people at an elementary school in Hunan province, wounding 30, after suffering investment losses. A student who failed his examination stabbed and killed eight at a vocational school in the city of Yixing. The most victims, 35 people, resulted from a man mowing down a crowd in the southern city of Zhuhai, supposedly upset over his divorce. ...
In eastern Anhui province, a ruling Communist Party leader ... said they must “thoroughly and meticulously investigate and resolve conflicts and disputes,” including in families, marriages and neighborhoods. ...
The Ministry of Justice promised to curtail conflicts by looking into squabbles over inheritance, housing, land and unpaid wages.
Ha ha ha, good luck with that.
More.
The House Speaker election is January 3, 2025.
You've got 34 Republicans pissed off at passage of the American Relief Act on December 20th by Mike Johnson and 170 Republicans.
Hakeem Jeffries has already told everyone Democrats will not help elect Mike Johnson speaker again because he stiffed them on the continuing spending resolution. Democrats are pissed off, too, although 196 did vote Yea on the bill.
So Republicans absolutely need those 34 to re-elect Johnson to speaker on Jan 3rd.
But let's say they don't, and the process drags out like it did with Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
The 2024 election results go to Congress in joint session for casting of the electoral college votes on January 6th, but that wouldn't happen without a speaker to swear-in the new House.
Jan 6, 2025 could be disrupted for Trump.
Very amusing.
Discussed here.
Elon Musk has had 12 children with three women, six of whom were with a Canadian.
Our democracy is a constant state of revolution, overthrowing incumbents in favor of successors who also will soon face revolution.
Here.
Revolution, in the form of periodic mass elections fought by all available means of money, brains, and even - after the Gracchan method - physical violence, is exalted into a constitutional process.
-- Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision, 1934
The real conservative cannot stand it that eternal truths, laws, and morals are subjected to a referendum every few years. A country which does this is perverse. And no real Lutheran would abide it, let alone a true Roman Catholic.
The House Ethics Committee gathered evidence that former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida paid multiple women for sex, including a 17-year-old high school junior, used illegal drugs like cocaine and ecstasy and obstructed efforts by Congress to investigate his conduct, according to a draft of its findings obtained by Just the News.
“The Committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress," stated the draft of the report slated to be released this week.
The draft report also said it did not find evidence that Gaetz had
engaged in sex trafficking as some had alleged, concluding that all the
women who traveled with Gaetz out of their home states did so
voluntarily even if they accepted payments for sex. ...
More.
"Tens of thousands of dollars" were involved 2017-2020.
President Biden used his clemency authority Monday to commute the sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row to life without parole, in one of the most significant moves taken against capital punishment in recent presidential history. ...
Biden's actions come shortly after he pardoned 39 individuals who were convicted of nonviolent crimes, and commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 others who were placed on home confinement during the COVID pandemic.
Monday's announcement also follows controversy over Biden's pardon of his own son, Hunter Biden, for gun and tax charges.
More.
DAVID MARCUS: De facto President Trump's handling of shutdown threat was a masterclass
Maybe James Braid, new Director of the Office of Legislative Affairs, knows lol.
 |
| Is this James Braid? |
When detectives reached out to accused CEO killer Luigi Mangione’s mother after the first photos of the suspect emerged, she said she wasn’t certain it was him – but told investigators the shooting “might be something that she could see him doing,” a New York Police Department official said Tuesday.
Here.
The House roll call vote (366-34-1-29nv) is here. 34 Republicans voted Nay.
The Senate roll call vote (85-11-4nv) is here. 10 Republicans voted Nay, as did pinko commie Bernie Sanders.
The continuing spending resolution includes NO extension of the suspended debt ceiling time limit demanded by president-elect Trump, who now gets to waste his precious time trying to primary all 170 Republicans in 2026 who just voted for this
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL,
something he had threatened on Wednesday.
170 House GOP just told Donald J. Trump Nay Nay by voting Yea, proving once again that he is just a paper tiger.
Meanwhile the debt ceiling and the income tax remain chief among the failed gimmicks of the Progressive Era, dating to 1917 and 1913. The one hasn't stopped the debt from exploding to $36 trillion, and the other hasn't paid that bill.
The continued existence of these gimmicks serves to remind us, but only periodically, of the lies we tell ourselves, which is why we have to keep them.
Dow bounces 800 points Friday on encouraging inflation data after rough week: Live updates
Key Fed inflation measure shows 2.4% rate in November, lower than expected
These people are incorrigible liars.
Headline pce inflation ticked up from 2.30% year over year in October to 2.44% in November.
Core pce inflation ticked up from 2.79% year over year in October to 2.81% in November.
"We expected worse! Buy stonks!"
And so they did.
Both stocks and fixed income down at the same time is a real bummer, you know, like in 2022.
UST yields in the aggregate tonight are at 4.45 vs 4.356 at the end of November.
UST yields have risen 375 basis points net in the aggregate in the three months since the Fed started cutting the Fed Funds Rate on September 18. That's +6.93%, which is hilarious.
