Snap Out Of It

Losing the White House, Senate, House sounds bad because it is, BUT this was NOT a landslide blowout.

It was one of the smallest popular vote margins of victory in history (& under 50%). Harris got nearly half the vote in a 100-day campaign despite the administration’s record unpopularity. Shifting just 237K votes across 3 states would have changed the outcome. GOP lost 4 of 5 battleground Senate races, no big House gain.

So this was NOT shameful! And certainly not permanent.

I was in the traveling press corps for Michael Dukakis 1988. Similarities abound (he was 17 points up in July, until Willie Horton landed). There was lots of post-defeat despair among Dems then too — but just four years later Bill Clinton showed up.

There’s always another election! And this dictator wannabe is already outrunning his mandate.

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Author: craigcrawford

Trail Mix Host. Lapsed journalist, author & retired pundit happily promoting nothing but the truth for Social Security checks.

54 thoughts on “Snap Out Of It”

  1. civics test to be given in 2026 and 2028

    “There’s always another election!”

    True ___  False___ ROFLOL___

  4. news from another front(s) and other fights for democracy
    1st from Ukraine

    The “Dove of Peace” Sent Us Yet Another Barrage of “Kinzhal” and “Kalibr” Missiles; That’s His Diplomacy – Address by the President — Official website of the President of Ukraine

    Dear Ukrainians!
    Today marked one of the largest and most dangerous Russian attacks in the entire war. Two hundred and ten drones and missiles launched simultaneously – including hypersonic and aeroballistic ones. Fortunately, most of the targets were intercepted. Russia aimed for energy and critical infrastructure. And this is the answer to all those who wanted to achieve something with Putin through conversations, phone calls, hugs – appeasement. Today, this “dove of peace” sent us yet another barrage of “Kinzhal” and “Kalibr” missiles. That’s his diplomacy. His language is treachery. For nearly a thousand days now, Russia has been doing the same thing. And we must defend ourselves against it. We need to be strong. Time should be invested not in talking to someone in Moscow, but in really forcing Russia to end the war. I am grateful to all our air defense forces, the Air Force, mobile fire groups, and everyone who makes it possible for Ukraine to shoot down all this Russian evil. Once again, Patriot systems performed brilliantly today. The F16s also showed their worth intercepting missiles. Special thanks to all our partners who help us with air defense systems and missiles. This is truly a global effort. Every time such Russian strikes take place, we see how important it is that our partners do not leave Patriots and other systems in warehouses somewhere, but transfer them to exactly those people who can protect lives and need them. We still haven’t received all the systems we need from our partners. But we’re continuing to work on that. Once we have what’s needed, repelling these attacks will be even more comprehensive. Restoration work is underway in four regions. This morning, over a million households were without electricity. That number is now significantly lower. Thank you to all the repair crews. The work will continue around the clock. Unfortunately, today’s Russian attack caused injuries in the Lviv region, in Kyiv, in the Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, and Zaporizhzhia regions. Everyone has received the necessary assistance. Tragically, there are also fatalities. My condolences to all the families and loved ones.
    We will definitely respond to the occupier. And we must withstand the pressure now. Any pressure. Any strikes. So that next year, we can achieve our goal. So that we achieve peace.
    And one more thing.
    The plan to strengthen Ukraine is the Victory Plan, which I presented to our partners. One of its key points is long-range capabilities for our army. Today, there’s a lot of talk in the media about us receiving permission for respective actions. But strikes are not carried out with words. Such things are not announced. Missiles will speak for themselves. They certainly will.
    Glory to Ukraine!

    Ukraine-Russia war: Kremlin says Biden throwing ‘oil on fire’ by allowing Ukraine to use US missiles inside Russia – BBC News

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/18/world/europe/ukraine-russia-missiles.html Freed From Restraints, Ukraine Is Poised to Strike Into Russia

  5. 2nd in re the war in Mideast

    ‘The Bibi Files’ Review: A Powerful Exposé of How Benjamin Netanyahu Has Prolonged the War in Gaza to Escape His Own Corruption Scandal

    “The Bibi Files,” directed by Alexis Bloom, is an extraordinary and essential documentary. It follows the corruption scandal that has engulfed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu like a toxic cloud. More than that, though, it’s about how the accusations he’s been trying to squirm out from under since 2019, when he was first indicted on charges of bribery and fraud, have changed his identity as a politician.
    […]
    His persona during the interrogations is one of calculated self-righteousness. His strategy is to deny, deny, deny, and to not remember anything. There’s a montage of him saying “I don’t remember,” which according to the film is his response to 95 percent of the questions. But it’s not merely denial. Netanyahu’s technique, and it’s formidable, is to gaslight the police interviewers by attacking them in tones of overheated self-righteousness. “That’s preposterous!” he bellows. “You’re delusional!” He is played tape recordings of witnesses detailing his transgressions, the illegal deals he has made (like when he facilitated bank loans of $250 million for the Israeli cell-phone tycoon Shaul Elovitch and, in exchange, gained editorial control of the popular youth political website Walla). And he greets each and every one of them by shouting, “Lies! All lies!” He almost convinces you that he believes it. He will sit there fuming, then slap his hand on the table, declaring his mockery of the police, of the injustice he is suffering, letting out his cry of aggrieved innocence. It’s all theater. But Netanyahu is as great an actor as Trump or maybe Al Pacino. He’s mesmerizing in his shamelessness.
    By precedent, he should have resigned in 2019, when he was first brought up on charges; his own lawyer advised him to do so, and to declare his political career over. But Bibi rebelled. According to former Prime Minister Olmert, “He was challenging the system. He said, ‘No, I’m above, I’m beyond. No one can touch me.'” What happened then was that the center-left parties in the Knesset decided to ban him, and that made Netanyahu – out of the sheer need to survive – gravitate to the far right, allying himself with figures like Bezalel Smotrich, an active supporter of anti-Palestinian terrorism, and Itmar Ben-Gvit, who openly celebrated the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Joining up with jokers like these, who he refused to even be photographed with a few years before, Netanyahu formed the most far-right government in the history of Israeli politics.
    And it was all to save his own skin.
    When Netanyahu vows to continue the war in Gaza until every last vestige of Hamas has been rooted out and destroyed, and even those critics of his who are sympathetic to Israel say things like, “That makes no sense. It’s impossible to completely destroy Hamas,” the film forcefully suggests that Netanyahu, even as he triples down on this “militant” stance, is in some essential way lying. He knows that Hamas can’t be fully destroyed. He just wants an excuse to keep it all going. In a sense, only his corruption charges can explain the insanity of this vengeful war with no end, and the way that it has decimated Israel’s credibility around the world. Depending on how much influence you think the war in Gaza had on the U.S. presidential election (there’s no question that it lost Kamala Harris votes from Arab-Americans and from young voters around the country), you could even draw a perverse line from Bibi’s fondness for Cohiba cigars to the election of Trump.
    […]
    Netanyahu is not the first ruler to use war to sustain his power. And the film suggests that he will probably end up in prison anyway. (He has now been accused of forging phone records.) “The Bibi Files” is an important documentary, because it takes in the big picture of how Benjamin Netanyahu became so entrenched that he remade Israel in his own image, in much the same way that Trump has done in the U.S. and will now try to do even more. These leaders don’t care who or what they take down with them. And in Bibi’s case, the collateral damage is starting to include not just the victims of the war in Gaza but Israel itself.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/vatican-pope-gaza_n_673b1821e4b067175c392b27

    Pope Calls For Investigation Into Whether Israel’s Attacks In Gaza Constitute ‘Genocide’
    It’s the first time that Pope Francis has openly urged for an investigation of genocide allegations over Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip.

  6. SNAP OUT OF IT:  My opinion; everyone has one.  President Trump did not win; VP Harris lost.  She lost because she did not have a plan.  If she did have a plan, she did not tell me.  

    Basically, she hid in the basement and when asked questions, however few, she mumbled, fumbled, pivoted, and avoided.  

    Her only plan was rooted in “joy,” a term she used more than a few times.  I missed the point of joy because I find nothing joyful in the price of groceries and other national problems.  

    I will give her this, as told to do so by someone, she stopped the giggling, well some of it.  “Interview and Interrogation 101;” laughing and giggling during serious questioning may be a sign of stress and fear.  It is one of the many ways we behave to distract ourselves and others from our own fear of the subject matter.

    Basically, what I’m saying is that she was afraid of her own competence to become president and that’s why I say “Harris lost” (intentionally).

    Having taught the subject, I know a thing or two about interview and interrogation.
    Hi Craig and David.

  7. The problem was the alternative, Pilar. Character counts. Having a president who is a good role model for kids counts. Competence counts too, and there was no reason to believe Harris wouldn’t have gotten there. Pulling together a campaign in just 100 days and getting nearly half the vote shows that.

  8. Some more history to consider.

    52 years ago today: President Nixon was re-elected in a historic landslide, winning 49 out of 50 states. Twenty-one months later, Nixon was driven from office paving the way to Jimmy Carter’s 1976 election.

    In 1964, LBJ crushed Goldwater with a record 61% of the popular vote. 4 years later he was driven from his own primary.

    There’s always another election.

    —  Nixon Library
    https://x.com/JoeNBC/status/1855237591437570471https://x.com/JoeNBC/status/1855237591437570471

  10. Autocrat scholars call this Anticipatory Obedience.
     
    Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski Reveal ‘Personal’ Visit With Trump in a bid to “restart communications” and set a “new approach” to their coverage..
    https://www.mediaite.com/tv/time-for-a-new-approach-joe-scarborough-and-mika-brzezinski-reveal-personal-visit-with-trump-to-restart-communications/
     
    See AP: “How Hungary’s Orbán uses control of the media to escape scrutiny and keep the public in the dark”..
    https://apnews.com/article/hungary-media-democracy-orban-magyar-european-parliament-f6315d7cc252f210c360863de403054e

     

  11. NEW THREAD by our earless leader Craig

    Pat, Craig is a good listener, always has his ear to the ground! 😆

  12. Couple Craig’s article with Muslim community leaders saying they are unhappy that Orange Adolf sold them a bill of goods for their support/not voting for Harris or at all, and there’s a big chunk of that 237K, and a lot of it in Michigan.

    Now, US veterans are hearing about a massive cut in benefits, and the revenge that was foretold taking form in threats to General Milley.

    Farmers will soon know what happens when they lose both cheap labor and farm subsidies.

    I’m not sure there will be another election, though. And, I would expect MAGAts aka white supremacists around the country to be working to suppress the vote in multiple ways over the next four years.

    Will there be a J6 shakeup? Will the People’s March in the 18th of January be too late?

  13. I do miss Bink and Sturg.  Don’t know why Sturg left….  we are all just giving our opinions.  And I always respected his even if I disagreed.
     
    I’ve never been on X.  I signed up for Instagram… don’t use it.  I am on FB because I get lots of information on a private page for the craftsmen guild to which I belong.
     
    I agree with your premise, Craig.  I am not one of those who think there will be no more elections.  For those of you who still have a WaPo account…  EJ Dionne did an interesting column about how SFB is already being thought of as a “lame duck”.

  14. https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-repeal-20th-century-campaign-promises-rcna177280

    “A stable government, immigration and democracy are what made America stronger than its rivals.”

    “Immigrants, who contribute an estimated $2.2 trillion to the economy each year, are more likely to have an advanced degree, get a patent and start a businessthan native-born Americans. Just under half of the companies on the Fortune 500 in 2023 were founded by immigrants or their children, including Apple, Amazon, Google and Costco.”
     
     “He has promised to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, end birthright citizenship, reinstate a travel ban on majority Muslim countries, implement “strong ideological screening” for immigrants, revoke Temporary Protected Status for some legal migrants and reduce refugee resettlement programs, among other things.”

    “His allies dream about bringing back the Comstock Act of 1873 to block access to abortion.”

    *Which is why I think they’ll target all birth control available to females.

    “He’s pledged to take advantage of the Insurrection Act of 1807ed  to send the military into American cities.

    *No more marches after January 18th.

    “And he’s talked about reviving the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to speed up deportations.”

    *White supremacists are sad, sick bastards, and they will have the reigns next year..and possibly forever.  
     
     

  16. Time to rethink where we can get honestly brokered news. I am now regularly going to The Guardian (donated $15), BBC, Reuters, AP, AFP, Australian 60 minutes, still looking.

    Scarborough bends knee at Mar-A-Lago, Bezos loops Trump daughter-in-law into Washington Post forum on women, Los Angeles Times publisher repopulates editorial board with Trump fans. Just the beginning of self censorship in advance.

  17. Yeah, not sure why Sturg left.  Hope he’s OK.

    Hope Bink will come back when he’s ready.  

    This election room has taken a toll on us all.

    ps – I still want to know what Putin’s aide, Patrushev, meant by “certain forces” helping tRUMPsky to win, for which now had “obligations” to carry out.

  19. https://www.democracynow.org/2024/11/18/headlines/trump_taps_fccs_brendan_carr_one_of_project_2025s_authors_to_chair_communications_agency

    “…Trump has picked Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr to chair the agency. Carr wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC for the Heritage Foundation. He is a critic of Big Tech who is expected to roll back many Biden-era policies, including net neutrality protections.”

    “House GOP Working to Push Through Bill That Would Let Trump Shut Down Nonprofits – Oxfam criticized the bill, saying Trump could use it to silence and censor critics, curb free speech and target political opponents.”

    “Donald Trump has picked fracking executive Chris Wright to be energy secretary. Wright is CEO of Liberty Energy and serves on the board of Oklo, a nuclear power startup. Wright is a vocal supporter of oil and gas development who has denied climate change is a crisis.”

  20. Renee, I miss them too. I hope they come back.

    Bink seemed concerned an incoming ministry of speech will hunt us down electronically and make our lives miserable. TBH, the same thought had crossed my mind at one point.

    support group. resistance is futile. you know how TX has bounties for private citizens to report women seeking reproductive care? They’ll do that for criticizing the regime. We know how autocratic regimes operate. AI is already capable of doxxing people, that technology is only improving, just so y’all are aware. And i’m not trying to chill speech i’m trying to protect you. i’ll stay out of it. Best wishes, all

     
    Sturge, it seemed, was feeling old. Another thought that crosses my mind. 

    I grow old … I grow old …
    I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

  22. A dose of sanity from Dr. Heather…

    On November 18, no one quite knew what the dramatic wrench into the future might mean. 

    I often say that 1883 is my favorite year in history because of all that happened in that pivotal year, and one of those things is the way modernity swept across the United States of America in a way that was shocking at the time but that is now so much a part of our world we rarely even think of it….
    Until November 18, 1883, railroads across the United States operated under 53 different time schedules, differentiated on railroad maps by a complicated system of colors. For travelers, time shifts meant constant confusion and, frequently, missed trains. And then, at noon on Sunday, November 18, 1883, railroads across the North American continent shifted their schedules to conform to a new standard time. Under the new system, North America would have just five time zones. 
    Fifteen minutes before the time of the shift, the telegraph company Western Union shut down all telegraph lines for anything but the declaration of the new time. It identified the moment the new time went into effect in telegraph messages to local railroad offices and to the jewelers known in cities for keeping time. In offices that got the message, men had their timepieces in their hands and ready to reset when the chief operator shouted “twelve o’clock!” 
    In Boston the change meant that the clocks would move forward about 16 minutes; in New York City, clocks were set back about four minutes. For Baltimore the time would move forward six minutes and twenty-eight seconds; in Atlanta it went back 22 minutes. 
    The system was a dramatic wrench for the rural United States, bringing it into the modern world. Uniform time zones had been proposed by pioneering meteorologist Cleveland Abbe, who developed the U.S. system of weather forecasting. Having joined the United States Weather Bureau as chief meteorologist in 1871, he recognized that predicting the weather required a nationally coordinated team and worked with Western Union to collect information about temperature, wind direction, precipitation, and sunset times from across the country. 
    Coordinating that information required keeping time across all the stations he had set up. To do so, Abbe divided the United States into four time zones, each one hour apart, and in 1879 he suggested those zones might smooth out the chaos of the railroad systems, each trying to coordinate schedules across a patchwork of local times. Railroad executives, who were concerned that if they didn’t do something, the government would, listened to Abbe, and by 1883 they had concluded to put his new system in place.
    Members of the new professional class who traveled by train from city to city were on board because they thought the need to regularize train schedules was imperative. But standard time was controversial. In the United States, people had operated entirely by the rhythms of the sun until the establishment of factories in New England in the 1830s, and most people still lived by those rhythms, their local time adjusting to solar time according to their geographical location. 
    Telling the time by sundial and history not only was custom, but also was understood as following God’s time. The idea of overriding traditional timekeeping because of the needs of the modern world seemed positively sacrilegious. “People…must eat, sleep and work…by railroad time,” wrote a contributor to the Indianapolis Daily Sentinel. “People will have to marry by railroad time…. Ministers will be required to preach by railroad time…. Banks will open and close by railroad time; notes will be paid or protested by railroad time.” 
    The mayor of Bangor, Maine, vetoed an ordinance in favor of standard time, saying it was unconstitutional, that it changed the immutable law of God, that the people didn’t want it, and that it was hard on the working men because it changed day into night. Those planning for a switch to standard time tried to ease fears by providing that Americans would operate on both local time and standard time, with both times represented on clocks. What did it mean to gain or lose time? Many people expected “a sensation, a stoppage of business, and some sort of a disaster, the nature of which could not be exactly ascertained,” a New York Times reporter recorded. As the great moment approached, people crowded the streets in front of jewelers to see the “great transformation.” 
    They were disappointed when, after all the buildup, the future arrived quietly.
    -Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American

  25. Ivy – So, ‘the trains are going to run on time’ sounds ominous.  

    Agencies will be shut down.  They may be bloated, but they still do work that needs to be done.   

    Anything that needs to be done will be given to Adolf’s cronies.  Tax money from the middle on down will go to them.  The top won’t pay any taxes.  

    Then comes the land grab. Who owns the land of deported families?

    It’s a massive grift and they are going to bankrupt the country…and as Americans start to feel the pain, it will roll to other countries as they lose government support, contracts, and tourists from the US.

    It will be global, and the crypto creeps who did this will own a burned-out dumpster of a world…and they will get old and die, too.

  27. https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/18/style/vladimir-shklyarov-ballet-death-scli-intl/index.html

    “Vladimir Shklyarov, a world-renowned Russian ballet star, has died after falling from the fifth floor of a building on Saturday.
     
    In the days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Shklyarov was quoted as speaking out in support of peace.
     
    “I am against the war in Ukraine! I am for the people, for a peaceful sky above our heads!” he was quoted as saying in a Facebook post by Alexei Ratmansky, a Russian-Ukrainian former ballet dancer.

    Shklyarov was married to Maria Shirinkina, a fellow dancer at the Mariinsky. The couple had two children, a son and a daughter.
     
    Shklyarov died two days before he was due to undergo complex spinal surgery and had been taking “serious painkillers” for some time, Russian media reported.”

    Ah, yes. The Russian media ~news and truth~
    As the saying goes in Russia, there’s no news in the truth and no truth in the news. 
     
     

  28. BiD “bloated government work force” is 1980’s Reagan talk. For the last 30 years there has been no growth in the Federal work force, (cite here).   However, reduced work force hasn’t stopped the need for the work to get done, In some case we are doing more with less in other cases the work has been privatized with outside contractors doing the work. 
    Jack    
     

  29. 52 years ago I was in the military and I did not vote for nixon.
     
    I am so happy that I no longer have cable.  The last few years I kept it only for MSNBC.   Then I no longer watched that as it moved right and spent more time with RWNJ than progressive causes. As more progressive hosts were removed I stopped watching completely. Each year for the last three I tried to kill it. It took a router dying and a technician offering what no prior would, an internet only plan at a cheap price.  Mika and Joe go to Florida is just a single story of many of why there nothing solid about where people on air have beliefs.

  31. Orange Adolf probably saw Mika & hubby’s trip to FL, as a pilgrimage to the Pope/Mecca/a mob boss. 

    Talking “about” Don-Old v talking “with” him will get the same result.   

    Some country, somewhere needs to do us a solid, and it’s bigger than Adolf.  It’s all of the white supremacists at the Heritage Foundation, and the same who have infected Congress.  

    I’m glad I am old enough that the years ahead are fewer than those behind me, and if there is anything on the other side, my purpose will be to haunt MAGAts.

  33. https://apnews.com/article/trump-defense-department-pentagon-hegseth-fox-news-8cd9f065e54a7cbbaceeec8bae9261a6

    “Pete Hegseth, the Army National Guard veteran and Fox News host nominated by Donald Trump to lead the Department of Defense, was flagged as a possible “Insider Threat” by a fellow service member due to a tattoo on his bicep that’s associated with white supremacist groups.

    He’s said he was unfairly identified as an extremist due to a cross tattoo on his chest.

    This week, however, a fellow Guard member who was the unit’s security manager and on an anti-terrorism team at the time, shared with The Associated Press an email he sent to the unit’s leadership flagging a different tattoo reading “Deus Vult” that’s been used by white supremacists, concerned it was an indication of an “Insider Threat.”

    He’s also shown support for members of the military accused of war crimes and criticized the military’s justice system.”

  34. oops! apologies to our Fearless leader. early morning typo.

    Ivy, bink may be right about the surveillance. heard this morning DOTUS-elect has set up a special group to review the communications of all senior exec level (SES) folks in federal civil service to cull out those who (the reviewers think) would not loyally follow orders of the new regime.  they will be scouring email, blogs, social media etc. probably already have voter registration lists and other handy info on background.   

    there go a lot of attorneys working in fed govt.

    no wonder the Trail has so many “just looking” non-commentators.  particularly any those in reserve status who now are vulnerable.   

  36. Attribution: Stupid Is As Stupid Does by Terry Mosher, The Montreal Gazette

     

    fitting ‘toon for what’s left of a functioning govt when the expertise of the experienced pros is gone;

    also can say the same as to tanking the economy when they boot out the immigrant field and food process workers, both of whom legal and illegal will be caught up in the massive deportation movement.

  37. POTUS Joe can issue general, preemptive pardons to military leaders current and retired, who were acting on orders from a higher up including CIC. 

    Actually, could Biden pardon anyone who entered without documentation a pardon?  DACA pardoned?  

    It’s gonna be a long list.  

    Quicker:  Pardon  everyone in the country except Adolf and his family, including Kuchner, and his enablers like Matt Gaetz, Tulsi, and Elon, etc.

  38. Craig:  Thank you for responding to my post; your thoughts are not without merit.  I was surprised that you were the only one to respond.  Maybe others think I am just some very old dumb ass hick; and I might well be.
     
    I will stand by my observations of body language, facial expression, eye movement, and words. I know many think reading behavior is nonsense.  I don’t; I’ve seen it up close hundreds of times.  Did I misjudge some people, yes.  Did some fool me, yes.  Effective interviewing is not a science, it is an art based on experience(s).
     
    The Democrats were a shoe-in, all they needed was for Harris to tell the people her plan.
     
    Frankly, I was certain Harris had a plan that she was going to expose within a week or two of the election.  I remain stunned that she had none.
     
    Maybe this will get a response.
     

     
    I know bullshit and I stand by my comment that she was very afraid of the “office.”  She did have 3.5 years to observe, learn, and develop her own ideas.  She had 3.5 years, 100 days should have been a “cake-walk.”

  39. Other nations should prohibit the orange felon, Gaetz, Hegseth, etc., from entering their country, as they would do with other sex offenders.  

    Doubtful that Germany wants someone with those nasty, white supremacist tattoos to show up on their doorstep, either.

  40. Craig – Twenty years ago I was actively telling people to get news from various places around the world.  Not just the U.S. media.  The most important reason was I had been reading a Yahoo news site in UK and it had information about Cheney and Rumsfeld putting censorship on news and media coverage of how things were going in Iraq. It applied to coverage that was going to the U.S. only.  I switched back to Yahoo news in the States and there was nothing.  I compared similar war reports and found much lacking between world coverage and U.S. coverage.  The fix was working.
     
    At the time the intertubes were still very young and newspapers, television and general reporting was still trying to figure out how to produce content.  Yahoo News was a big deal then, and a small deal today, but still kicking well.  My usual advice was to pick several countries and find the English versions if you did not read the local language.  One from UK, one from France, one from Germany, one from India, one from Australia . . . one from Korea.  You get the idea.  It takes time, but back then I was still recovering from HCV and not able to do much so I had the time.

  41. Maybe others think I am just some very old dumb ass hick

    Not at all, Pilar, but old, dumb, ass, and hick are actually prized attributes on the trail. Don’t be dissuaded and don’t give up on us. The more you share, the more responses you will get. We are long past the days when some people tried to run other people down or out.

  42. It’s been two weeks… Why Kamala, Doug, and Tim still asking me for money… 😒

     
    Uh oh, some irritation creeping in on my friends’ feeds. 

  43. His megalomania is in overdrive. No person or institution is sacred or safe from his progressive rageaholism. What Mitch, apparently, was afraid of. 

    Trump on Sunday described the poll as “possible ELECTION FRAUD by Ann Selzer and the now discredited ‘newspaper’ for which she works,” adding, “An investigation is fully called for!”

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/11/17/trump-investigation-ann-selzer-iowa-poll-kamala-harris/76389559007/
     

  44. BB – Someone dating a person from China was told that, per their news source(s) in China, the US wanted the war between Ukraine & Russia.

    I’m calling BS, since Russia attacked Ukraine, unprovoked, and Putin & Xi are working together to weaken the US.   

    So, the person from China (who has been here over a decade) and the person in my sphere choose to believe Chinese media.

  45. Is it too early to impeach and remove SFB? 

    Congress will be completely impotent if Adolf has his way. The only way.

    They are going to get an earful from constituents who lose farm subsidies, veterans benefits, education funding for special needs students, teachers, etc.

    Then, maybe it will also occur to them that they (Congress) won’t need to exist at all in MAGAtLand. There goes their cushy lifestyle and Cadillac insurance benefits.

    Get it together, folks. Clock’s a tickin’.

  46. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-news-cabinet-picks-live-updates-b2649022.html
     
    “As final votes are tallied from the November 5 election, Trump’s share of the popular vote has fallen below 50 percent and his mandate does not appear as sweeping as was first thought.”
     
     
    Donald Trump has confirmed he is prepared to declare a national emergency and use military assets to carry out his mass deportation campaign pledge.”
     
     

    Hmmm, “declare a national emergency.” And MAGAts thought Civid lockdown was bad. Wait until we’re under Marcos-style martial law. Years.

  47. https://spacenews.com/nelson-says-reports-of-musk-putin-conversations-concerning/
    “NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said he is concerned about reports that Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX, has had discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin.”

    https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/trending/article/logan-act-iran-elon-musk-19918739.php
     
    “The Iranians said the meeting between Mr. Musk and Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani lasted more than an hour and was held at a secret location,” the New York Times article reads. “The Iranians, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss policy publicly, described the meeting as “positive” and “good news.”
    Billionaire Elon Musk found himself at the center of controversy once again after the New York Times reported he met with the U.N. ambassador for Iran. On Friday, critics brought attention to the Logan Act, claiming Musk may have violated federal law if the meeting did occur.”
     
     

  48. bId – Two places I don’t get information from, China and russia.  Not that it is unreliable, nah, it is phony.  The sad thing is much of what the magats produce is from russia.

  49. https://apnews.com/article/judge-blocks-overtime-pay-biden-rule-8469c6980f9305c60f1670ed1d8362e2
    “Judge blocks Biden administration’s rule to expand overtime pay for millions”
    “A federal judge in Texas has blocked a new rule from the Biden administration that would have expanded access to overtime pay to millions more salaried workers across the U.S.”
     
    Guess who made Sean Jordan a Federal judge?  The orange guy who said he hated to pay overtime/never paid it. 
     

  50. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/18/trump-medicaid-food-stamps-welfare

    “Donald Trump’s economic advisers and congressional Republicans are discussing possible cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and other government welfare programmes to cover the costs of extending the president-elect’s multitrillion-dollar 2017 tax cut.

    Extending the tax cuts – most of which are due to expire next year – could add $4tn to the national debt, which already stands at $36tn.

    The GOP has warned that the costs of Medicaid – whose claimants can include low-income people, newborns, people who are blind or disabled, and those suffering from certain illnesses – has ballooned with the expansion of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

    Alterations to food stamps – officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – could take the form of limiting which items recipients can purchase with benefits or broadening work requirements. The latter proposal was floated in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint for radically overhauling US government.

    In addition to safety net programme cuts, some Republicans are considering re-purposing clean energy funds passed by Democrats.”
     
    *Tax the damned billionaires until they are millionaires…or, eat them. 
     

  51. https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/18/europe/nato-sweden-finland-wartime-guidance-intl/index.html
    “Stockpile diapers, medication, baby food: NATO members Sweden and Finland advise citizens on how to survive war
     
    “The state of the world has worsened drastically in recent years. War is being waged in our vicinity. Extreme weather events are becoming increasingly common. Terror threats, cyberattacks, and disinformation campaigns are being used to undermine and influence us,”…
    “To resist these threats, we must stand united and take responsibility for our country. If we are attacked, everyone must help defend Sweden’s independence and our democracy. We build resilience every day – together.”
    Earlier this year, Norway and Denmark – two other members of the 32-party bloc – distributed updated wartime guidance on how people should prepare for potential crises.“
     
    They know tRUMPsky will aid and abet Putin, letting him do “whatever the hell he wants.” He’s the devil and those who help him are just as evil.

  52. https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/18/business/brazil-first-lady-elon-musk-g20-intl/index.html
    “Brazil’s first lady swears at Elon Musk at G20 event
    Brazil’s first lady, Janja Lula da Silva, swore while addressing billionaire Elon Musk during a G20 event on the weekend, at which she spoke about the need to regulate social media to rein in misinformation.
     
    A ship’s horn sounded as she spoke Saturday and she joked, “I think it’s Elon Musk,” before adding, “I’m not afraid of you, f**k you, Elon Musk.”
     
     
    Brazil’s president also weighed in earlier this year, saying that people with businesses in Brazil must follow local laws and the world was “not obliged to put up with Musk’s far-right ideology just because he is rich.”
     

  53. https://www.wired.com/story/ice-paragon-contract-white-house-review/

    “ICE’s $2 Million Contract With a Spyware Vendor Is Under White House Review
    A $2 MILLION contract that United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement signed with Israeli commercial spyware vendor Paragon Solutions has been paused and placed under compliance review, WIRED has learned.

    The White House’s scrutiny of the contract marks the first test of the Biden administration’s executive order restricting the government’s use of spyware.
    DHS did not confirm whether the contract, which says it covers a “fully configured proprietary solution including license, hardware, warranty, maintenance, and training,” includes the deployment of Paragon’s flagship product, Graphite, a powerful spyware tool that reportedly extracts data primarily from cloud backups.

    We know the dangers mercenary spyware poses when sold to dictatorships, but there is also plenty of evidence of harms in democracies,” says John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab who has been instrumental in exposing spyware-related abuses.”
     

    Maybe this is what Bink was thinking about last week. Sure, it’s ICE now, but it can be used on anyone.

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