Attribution: Putin’s Wish List For Santa Trump by R.J. Matson, Portland, ME
57 thoughts on “A Peace or Appease”
Attribution: Appeasing Putin by Bill Day, FloridaPolitics.com
Jamie, thanks for Randy’s latest, worth reposting given the news of the day.
Jack and pog, the following digs a bit into what you were discussing yesterday about personal info mining.
Journalist, internet activist, and author Cory Doctorow talks to Ronny Chieng about the concept behind his latest book, “Enshittification,” which breaks down how tech giants like Facebook, Amazon, and Google have made the internet worse for everybody by locking in users only to turn on them. He also stresses how the blame for the “enshittification” of the internet shouldn’t be placed on consumers, but on policy makers, and points to anti-trust enforcement, tech worker unions, and interoperability as the keys to remaking an internet that benefits users instead of billionaires.
Pope Leo XIV has insisted Europe must have a role in any Ukraine peace deal and criticised what he said was the Trump administration’s effort to “break apart” the US-European alliance. Leo spoke after meeting with Ukraine’s visiting president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Seeking a peace agreement without including Europe in the talks is unrealistic, given the war is in Europe,” said the pope. “Guarantees are also being sought for security today and in the future. Europe must be part of this, and unfortunately not everyone understands this, but I think there is a great opportunity for European leaders to unite and seek a solution together.”
The Trump administration has released a US national security strategy that aggressively deprecates the US-European alliance. Leo said what he had read would “make a huge change in what was for many, many years a true alliance between Europe and the United States.” Additionally, some comments by Donald Trump suggest an effort “trying to break apart what I think needs to be an alliance today and in the future”. While some people in the US may agree with that effort, “I think many others would see things in a different way”, he said.
It’s the same ole dilemma. Do we ignore another racist Trump rally speech because we hate listening to him, thus normalizing his hate speech.
Trump’s speech on combating inflation turns to grievances about immigrants
— NPR
Trump tried to emphasize his focus on combating inflation, yet the issue that has damaged his popularity couldn’t quite command his full attention.
scanning the Pennsylvania headlines
Who says he has no economic policy:
Trump: “You can give up certain products. You could give up pencils. Because under the China policy, every child can get 37 pencils. They only need 1 or 2. They don’t need that many. You always need steel. You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter. 2 or 3 is nice. So we’re doing things right.”
Dec 10, 2025 #BBCNews
Ukraine is “ready for elections”, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said, after US President Donald Trump repeated claims Kyiv was “using war” to avoid holding them.
Zelensky’s five-year term as president was due to end in May 2024, but elections have been suspended in Ukraine since martial law was declared after Russia’s invasion.
Speaking to reporters following Trump’s comments in a wide-raging Politico interview, Zelensky said he would ask for proposals to be drawn up which could change the law.
Elections could be held in the next 60 to 90 days if security for the vote was guaranteed with the help of the US and other allies, he said.
one example in comments to above:
Zelensky has brilliantly snookered both Trump & Putin. France, the United Kingdom, Germany & Poland can now aid Zelensky in calling the bluff of both Trump & Putin. To their mutual destruction. Zelensky offers an election in Ukraine. Zelensky needs 2 months of no more air attacks. Ukrainians need the freedom to attend rallies & speeches. The freedom to assemble in public without threat of a Putin air strike. The freedom to vote without threat of air strikes. Neither Trump nor Putin will make that happen. So others must.
my questions: how secure will they be? can the election be protected from Russian interference? putin is known to have diddled with US & EU elections in the recent past, also the one in Crimea ro justify his takeover.
News Brief dated December 10, 2025
• Fed’s final 2025 rate debate looms as policymakers split — Reuters
• Ukraine orders retreat from Pokrovsk as Russia masses 150k+ troops — Al Jazeera
• Judge moves to unseal new Epstein-Maxwell documents, political fallout expected — Guardian
• Trump vows to intervene in Thailand–Cambodia border clashes — Reuters
• Australia becomes first nation to ban social media for kids under 16 — Financial Times
• Zelensky says no breakthrough after new talks with U.S. officials — Reuters
• Oil prices stay elevated ahead of Fed meeting, global uncertainty — Reuters
• U.S. lawmakers hash out $901B defense bill, key disputes unresolved — Reuters
• Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado confirmed safe but will miss ceremony — Guardian
• Barcelona’s Koundé scores twice in Champions League comeback win — Barça Blaugranes
These are the stories U.S. audiences are actually clicking, watching, and searching for — not a value judgment, just a snapshot of consumer attention.
Craig – something in his addled speeches are the numbers he spouts. Although we know which orifice those are pulled from, but due to his dementia and genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s he most likely was trained for responses to certain questions or stimuli.
In his latest rant fest he came up with the number thirty-seven. That is a strange number I immediately thought, where would that have come from? What background brief would that number have been included? His use of twenty-seven obviously comes from the number of countries in the European Union. There are fifty-four countries in Africa. It could be thirty-seven is the room number of the West Wing rest room, or the number of crayons in his desk drawer.
No matter where it came from it is just some number he came across just before he went on stage. If anyone knows where thirty-seven came from I would find that very interesting.
Do we ignore another racist Trump rally speech because we hate listening to him, thus normalizing his hate speech.
it’s already normalized
we need new ways because that genie doesn’t go back in the bottle
If anyone knows where thirty-seven came from I would find that very interesting.
he said “37” the first time he used that remark months and months, ago (during his absurd campaign that the electorate validated, iirc); he reuses material that he thinks gets a laugh
Once again, Trump forces the same question: are we really going to shrug off this level of bigotry and pretend it’s normal? Watch his rally moment we ought to talk about ➡️
Happy Holidays … All of them!
37…..that’s a toughie…..old Berman figured out where he got “$1.99 a gallon for gas” but 37?
I’m going to ponder that one.
You may have heard this song a time or two, but here it is by the lady who wrote it.
Sounds like Floyd Cramer and Chet Atkins all up in there.
today’s meme…
Sturge
I just did a quick search on youtube for that song. Talk about cross over appeal. Ray Charles, Elvis and Eddie Arnold. That is only in the first 5 years after it was written,
It is a classic even down to the piano playing.
Jack
meme #2…
Jack ….and also played by every single bar band in the western world. So to speak.
Now that Trump recommends austerity for parents buying gifts let’s find out what our billionaire president’s grandchildren are getting for Christmas.
patd,
I watched Ronnie and Doctorow last night – glad you posted that. Let’s go back and recall the conversations we had following the passage of the USA Patriot Act, shall we? It predated Trailmix, but I’m betting you guys were having vigorous discussions about the unconstitutional breadth of it. And that’s the government’s direct intrusion, but don’t forget the SSA, the VA, etc. and the data breaches they have suffered. And never mind Amazon, Ebay, Temu, your bank, Google, Safari, your insurers and on and on and on. Everything about you is sitting in servers waiting for enterprising hackers to harvest it and sell it to people you don’t want having it. Not exactly what they were talking about, but lots of overlap.
And from Trump Country.
On December 9, 2025, the Garrett County Health Department (GCHD) in Oakland, Maryland, confirmed a case of pertussis, also known as whooping cough, in an 18-year-old resident. Health officials are investigating the case and working to notify people who may have been in close contact with the patient. Their goal is to prevent further spread of the illness.
Pertussis is caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis. It spreads through droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes. The disease is often less severe in vaccinated adolescents and adults. However, it can be more serious for infants and young children who are not fully vaccinated. The incubation period is usually 7 to 10 days, but symptoms can appear between 4 and 21 days after exposure.
Jessica Carey, Director of Personal Health at GCHD, said that pertussis often starts with cold-like symptoms, such as a runny nose, mild fever, and slight cough. After one or two weeks, the cough can become worse and hard to control. This may lead to vomiting, tiredness, or a ‘whoop’ sound when breathing in. The illness can last for several weeks.
GCHD is asking residents, especially those around infants or young children, to check their vaccination status. Vaccination is the main way to prevent pertussis. Children should complete the DTaP vaccine series and get a Tdap booster at age 11 or 12. Adults should get a Tdap booster every ten years. Pregnant people are advised to get the Tdap vaccine during the early third trimester of each pregnancy.
Residents should review their vaccination records, watch for symptoms, and see a doctor if they have a severe or ongoing cough. People diagnosed with pertussis should stay home until they have taken antibiotics for at least five days. The GCHD Personal Health Unit provides pertussis vaccination and testing. Residents with questions can contact the department for more information.
Brought to you by Fat Donnie and his toy idiot RFK Jr.
And the idiots in Garrett County think Trump is just fine.
Folks in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have socialized healthcare, parental care, fully-subsidized college, etc.
Employers report wages and folks in those countries don’t have to fill out anything, just verify no changes and sign off on it.
The idiots at the Pennsylvania chapter of the Nazi movement have learned nothing. If they are educated, their hated has obscured any decent information they may actually hold.
Norway’s lesson for Europe on wealth taxes: let some millionaires go
With a wealth tax dating back to 1892 and a culture of openness that allows citizens to view the tax returns of others, Norway has more experience than most in squeezing the rich. Its model offers lessons for countries debating similar moves, from Britain to France and Italy, or even a city like New York.
The takeaway: a wealth tax will scare off some millionaires, but if set broadly enough, revenues can still be worth it.
Individuals pay 1% on net wealth between 1.76 million and 20.7 million crowns ($174,000–$2 million) and, since 2022, 1.1% above that. Exactly 671,639 people – about 12% of the population – paid in 2023.
Main homes enjoy a 75% discount on assessed value; shares and commercial property get 20%. Assets abroad are included, but debt is deductible.
Leaving Norway triggers an exit tax of 37.8% on unrealised capital gains above 3 million crowns – such as notional gains on shares that have gone up in value but are yet to be sold. Loopholes that allowed emigrants to defer payment indefinitely were closed in 2024.
The changes turned a trickle into a stream. Data from conservative think-tank Civita shows 261 residents with assets above 10 million crowns ($973,000) left in 2022 and 254 in 2023 – more than double the typical rate before the hike.
Business magazine Kapital’s, opens new tab ranking of Norway’s 400 richest people shows 105 now live abroad or have transferred wealth to relatives who do. Some of their pictures hang on a “wall of shame” in the offices of the small, opposition Socialist Left party.
Supporters argue the tax acts as a redistributive backstop in a country that scrapped inheritance tax in 2014 and ranks among the world’s wealthiest thanks to oil, shipping and fisheries.
Norway funnels all proceeds from its oil and gas industry into a sovereign wealth fund and caps annual withdrawals at 3% of the fund’s value under a self-imposed fiscal rule.
This means it needs to find other sources of revenue.
Revenue from it has climbed despite the exodus and now sits at 0.6% of GDP — not a trivial sum.
Research by Norway’s statistics office shows entrepreneurs have enough liquidity to pay, opens new tab, and that the burden falls overwhelmingly on the richest, opens new tab. Another study suggests the tax may spur investment in human capital, opens new tab.
Norway remains among the world’s most equal countries and ranks high for ease of doing business, opens new tab.
“These findings suggest that the wealth tax does not straightforwardly hinder firm-level investment or employment,” said Roberto Iacono, professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
A poll by the Response agency for the daily Aftenposten taken just before September’s election showed 39% of Norwegians wanted the wealth tax maintained or raised, while 23% wanted to see a reduction and 28% called for abolition.
Norway’s Labour government wants a grand bargain on tax reform over the next two years, inviting all parties to the table. The catch? The wealth tax stays — in some shape or form.
Norway has one of Europe’s lowest levels of venture capital as a share of GDP – at half that of Sweden’s and far behind the U.S., OECD data shows. Heirs often leave before taking control of shares.
So far, no new country is going down the Norwegian route.
French lawmakers binned a headline-grabbing 2% levy on fortunes above 100 million euros, settling instead for a narrower charge on personal assets parked in holding companies – a measure forecast to raise barely 1 billion euros.
Across the Channel, Britain’s Labour government has ruled out a formal wealth tax but insists it will keep leaning on those “with the broadest shoulders”.
Italy, for its part, remains allergic to inheritance hikes yet is quietly tightening its flat regime for wealthy foreigners.
Norway’s social cohesion and oil wealth may make its model hard to copy. But economists say it shows that any such levy involves a trade-off with economic and political dimensions.
“Not having a wealth tax leads to greater inequality, having one means less capital for startups,” NTNU’s professor Iacono said. “Politics needs to strike a balance.”
Sturge
Guilty, that song helped polish a few belt buckles in my more rowdy redneck bar days.
It kinda leads to the mornings when you look across the bed and go. “Who are you?”
Jack
Apparently…..you didn’t know her.
I’ve been fiddling with video display formats today. Let me know if anything breaks or looks really weird, especially on phones.
I’ve become a major fan of the term “Commonwealth”. If applied correctly, the public purse goes to benefit the needs of the public. Obviously, up front, that would mean health, education, housing, transportation, and protection/defense.
A wealth tax of some sort would be required for it to work, but the overall benefits would be so great that even the gazillionaires probably wouldn’t mind.
The Nordic countries and in some part all the other developed nations do this without sinking into Godless Communism. I would think the US could manage if our politicians weren’t bought and paid for.
Marco Rubio Removes State Department’s Official Typeface, Says It ‘Lacks Decorum’ — It’s One of the Most Common Fonts
Rubio issued a memo on Tuesday, Dec. 9, saying that the department would not be using the sans-serif font Calibri. Instead, it would be returning to Times New Roman “as its standard typeface,” according to The New York Times.
Rubio stated in the Dec. 9 memo that the previous switch to Calibri has “achieved nothing except the degradation of the department’s official correspondence.” He said that serif fonts are used by the White House, Supreme Court and other state and federal government entities, and are “generally perceived to connote tradition, formality and ceremony,” according to NYT.
Former President Joe Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, decided to use Calibri in 2023 to improve accessibility for readers with disabilities, per the NYT.
It is a sans-serif font, and those have been recognized as easier to read, according to a 2022 National Institutes of Health study.
*Weird hill to die on when his boss demolished the East Wing of the WH, and has plans to demolish other federal buildings. Marco is very, very Lil’
It Just Doesn’t Go Away… Another National Guard Deployment Ruling
Yet another judge blocks Trump’s National Guard deployment, this time in Los Angeles — CNN
Overall, Trump is losing the battles in the lower courts, but the war will likely be settled by the Supreme Court.
At least 5 judges (four federal, one state) have explicitly ruled against these deployments or declared them unlawful in recent months:
Judge Charles Breyer (Los Angeles)
Judge Jia M. Cobb (Washington, D.C.)
Judge Karin Immergut (Portland)
Judge April Perry (Chicago)
Chancellor Patricia Head Moskal (Memphis)
Status: Appeals courts have largely paused these bans to allow time for arguments, but final rulings on the core legal issues are still pending. The Chicago case is already at the Supreme Court.
Norway can do what it does because it supplies 40% of Europe’s petroleum and natural gas needs. With a population that is 60% of the population of New York City. It is a very small place with a lot of energy production.
Jack
From my morning reads:
Basically, by the time you get involved in the political process big money has screened your choices.
So if money doesn’t persuade voters and only modestly mobilizes them, where does its real power lie?
Before a single vote is cast, candidates must survive what insiders call the “money primary.” This invisible, high-stakes contest demonstrates the ability to raise substantial funds. Because of partisan sorting and gerrymandering, the winner of the general election in most districts is a foregone conclusion. This makes the primary election the place where money truly matters, and as former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel famously put it, that contest is about “money, money, money.”
Candidates without early financial backing from wealthy networks struggle to hire staff, gain media attention, and establish credibility. Many promising candidates drop out due to lack of funds before voters ever get a chance to evaluate them.
This financial gauntlet fundamentally skews who can realistically compete for office, resulting in a political class that looks nothing like America.
U.S. plans to ask visitors to disclose 5 years of social media history
The proposal would affect travelers from countries on the visa waiver program, including Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Israel, Japan and South Korea.
The United States could begin requiring visitors from countries on the visa waiver program to provide up to five years of their social media history, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection proposal posted to the Federal Register to be officially published Wednesday.
There are dozens of countries on the visa waiver program list, including many European nations, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, Brunei, Singapore, Qatar, Israel and Chile.
The proposal suggests adding social media as a “mandatory data element” for an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) application.
Applicants would also have to provide additional information “when feasible,” according to the proposal. The list includes telephone numbers used in the past five years; email addresses used in the past 10 years; IP addresses and metadata from electronically submitted photos; and biometrics, including facial, fingerprint, DNA and iris data.
It would also require applicants to provide information about their family members, including names, telephone numbers, dates of birth, places of birth and residences.
According to CBP, the proposal is open for a 60-day public comment period.
More at link
Here is a graphical look at the status of National Guard cases.
“The future of American warfare is here, and it’s spelled AI,” Hegseth said in an announcement posted to X on Tuesday. “And that’s why today we are unleashing genAI.mil. This platform puts the world’s most powerful frontier AI models, starting with Google Gemini, directly into the hands of every American warrior.”
“We will continue to aggressively field the world’s best technology to make our fighting force more lethal than ever before,” he added.
*Eesh, “more lethal.” The man seems to be a homicidal sociopath.
“Couldn’t even handle the general population we broke it in under an hour and u wanna pretend this is gonna stand up against state actors,” another commenter pointed out.
Pentagon officials later told Daily Mail reporter Jon Michael Raasch that the website was working as intended.
“The link only works for military personnel with the use of a key card, the DoW says. Odd they would post the military-only portal publicly,” Raasch reported.
*Broken or not, that’s what AI is for; surveillance, control, war.
Gemini for Government will use “intelligent agentic workflows,” or AI processes where autonomous programming makes decisions and takes actions with minimal human involvement, and will allow defense personnel to experiment more with these capabilities, the department said.
“There is no prize for second place in the global race for AI dominance,” Emil Michael, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said in a statement. “We are moving rapidly to deploy powerful AI capabilities like Gemini for Government directly to our workforce. AI is America’s next Manifest Destiny, and we’re ensuring that we dominate this new frontier.”
Elon Musk’s xAI, Anthropic and OpenAI are some of the other AI programs the department has considered to help with national security missions. Intelligence analysis, logistics and data collection are some of the duties that the department hopes could be improved by using AI.
The department stressed the need for security when using this program, and said all tools on the GenAI website will be considered controlled unclassified information, or CUI, and secured well enough to be used operationally.
Gemini for Government is web-grounded against Google Search to keep the information it produces accurate and dramatically reduce “the risk of AI hallucinations.”
jamie, the ‘Lacks Decorum’ removal standard should be applied to the guy in the oval office
jack & sturge, in re “you don’t know me”
dangerous to dance to that one…. a mighty powerful aphrodisiac
Pat…..ah, yes……I remember it well.
this platform puts the world’s most powerful frontier AI models, starting with Google Gemini, directly into the hands of every American warrior.”
Sigh,
We have the most powerful military in the world and we got our butts kicked by a bunch of 12th century tribes armed with wore out rifles and IED’s made from our unexploded ordinance.
Jack
Pat
Honest, all we were doing was dancing, just dancing. How did I know she was married?
Honduras president alleges ‘electoral coup’ under way amid Trump ‘interference’
Xiomara Castro alleges US manipulation and blackmail as preliminary count shows two rightwing candidates closely tied
Honduras’s president, Xiomara Castro, has alleged that an “electoral coup” is under way in the country’s presidential election, which she says has been marked by “interference from the president of the United States, Donald Trump”.
The leftist president also said that “the Honduran people must never accept elections marked by interference, manipulation and blackmail … Sovereignty is not negotiable, democracy is not surrendered.”
A construction magnate and former mayor of the capital, Tegucigalpa, Asfura received open backing from Trump, who said the US would support the next government only if he won.
On the eve of the vote, the US president also announced a pardon for the former president and Asfura ally Juan Orlando Hernández, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison for allegedly creating “a cocaine superhighway to the United States”. He was released last week.
On Monday, the Honduran attorney general, Johel Zelaya – an ally of Castro’s government – ordered the immediate execution of an international arrest warrant for Hernández, whose whereabouts have been unknown since his release from a federal prison in West Virginia last week.
Before the vote, Trump had claimed Moncada was a communist and that her victory would hand the country to the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro – the target of an escalating US military buildup – “and his narco-terrorists”.
Moncada is in third place in the preliminary count, with 19.29%.
President Castro said that Trump’s statements “violated the most sacred principle of our constitution. Sovereignty resides in the people, exclusively in the Honduran people.”
She also referred to Hernández’s release: “Conservatives in Washington have decided to ally themselves with drug trafficking and organised crime.”
Still speaking about the current elections, Honduras’s president said on Tuesday that the vote had been marked by “threats, coercion, manipulation of the TREP [the results transmission system] and the adulteration of the popular will”, although she presented no evidence.
She added: “These actions constitute an ongoing electoral coup that we will denounce before the United Nations, the European Union, CELAC [Community of Latin American and Caribbean States], the OAS [Organisation of American States] and other international bodies.”
The runner-up, Nasralla, claimed a “monumental fraud” was under way and demanded a recount “tally sheet by tally sheet”.
Shortly afterwards, the president of the electoral council, Ana Paola Hall, said: “I cannot tamper with the results, neither to help nor to harm anyone – and you know something, even if I could, I still wouldn’t.”
Despite Asfura’s lead in the preliminary count, roughly 14.5% of the tally sheets, containing thousands of votes, showed “inconsistencies” and must be reviewed. The electoral council has until 30 December to announce the official result.
President Donald Trump’s administration wants the International Criminal Court to amend its founding document to ensure it does not investigate the Republican president and his top officials, a Trump administration official said, threatening new U.S. sanctions on the court if it did not.
If the court does not act on this U.S. demand and two others – dropping investigations of Israeli leaders over the Gaza war and formally ending an earlier probe of U.S. troops over their actions in Afghanistan – Washington may penalize more ICC officials and could sanction the court itself, the official said.
*tRUMPsky and his administration are criminals, and some are war criminals. The world should sanction the US. Just cut us off until we rid ourselves of the fascists.
My time in the U.S. federal government, military civilian and contractor, type face was dictated as Times New Roman or one of two others. TNR was preferred for the ease of reading due to the serif. This was even before we had a lot of electronic type faces, IBM Selectric had multiple fonts on the interchangeable balls.
Time to put the champagne in the refrigerator while counting down to a celebration. The question of “is he still alive” is becoming popular.
Trump’s National Guard Obsession The Scorecard is 5-0. Here is the full story.
With another judge blocking deployment in LA today, the legal scorecard is 5 rulings against the administration. But the troops are still there. Why? 📉
If you’ve missed any of our updates on this constitutional crisis (or just want to see Professor Vance explain the Ninth Amendment again), we’ve compiled every episode into one master list.
📺 Watch today’s short plus “The National Guard Files” (Autoplay):
The U.S. has seized a large oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, President Trump said Wednesday, escalating tensions between the two countries. The president said he assumes the U.S. will keep the oil.
“As you probably know, we’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large,” he said. “Largest one ever seized, actually. And other things are happening, so you’ll be seeing that later and you’ll be talking about that later with some other people.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi shared video of the seizure on social media, writing that the tanker was “used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran” and had been seized by the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Coast Guard, “with support from the Department of War.”
ICE is using smartwatches to track pregnant women, even during labor: ‘She was so afraid they would take her baby’
Pregnant immigrants in ICE monitoring programs are avoiding care, fearing detention during labour and delivery
The device was not an ordinary smart watch made by Apple or Samsung, but a special type that US Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) had mandated the woman wear at all times, allowing the agency to track her. The device was beeping when she entered the hospital, indicating she needed to charge it, and she worried that if the battery died, ICE agents would think she was trying to disappear, the hospital workers recalled. She told them that, just days earlier, she had been put on a deportation flight to Mexico, but the pilot refused to let her fly because she was so close to giving birth.
Her delivery wasn’t progressing the way the care team hoped, and she needed a C-section, a procedure that requires doctors to use a cauterizing tool to minimize bleeding. To prevent possible burning and electrocution, patients are instructed to take off all jewelry or metals before the surgery. The mandatory watch had no way to be easily removed, nor was information about whether it would be safe to wear during the procedure readily available. Hospital staff didn’t know how to contact ICE to ask what to do. When hospital staff told the woman they might have to cut the smart watch off, she panicked, the workers said.
Staff eventually did remove the device, and ICE agents did not show up at the hospital during the delivery. The nurses said they do not know what happened to the woman after she left the hospital with her baby.
Tourists to the United States would have to reveal their social media activity from the last five years, under new Trump administration plans.
The mandatory new disclosures would apply to the 42 countries whose nationals are currently permitted to enter the US without a visa, including longtime US allies Britain, France, Australia, Germany and Japan.
In a notice published on Tuesday, the US Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) said it would also require any telephone numbers used by visitors over the same period, and any email addresses used in the last decade, as well as face, fingerprint, DNA and iris biometrics. It would also ask for the names, addresses, birthdates and birthplaces of family members, including children.
CBP said the new changes to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (Esta) application were required in order to comply with an executive order issued by Donald Trump on the first day of his new term. In it, the US president called for restrictions to ensure visitors to the US “do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles”.
The US has already started squeezing foreign tourism in other ways, slapping an additional $100 fee per foreign visitor per day to visit national parks, such as the Grand Canyon and Yosemite, on top of the regular admission fees.
Nor will national parks have free admission on Martin Luther King Jr Day any longer: but they will now be free for US residents to visit on Trump’s birthday.
As recently as last week, the administration told consular officials to deny visas to anyone who might have worked in factchecking or content moderation – for example, at a social media company – accusing them in blanket terms of being “responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the US”.
It has suggested reducing visa lengths for foreign journalists from five years to eight months, and has started demanding any visitors who are not from the 42 visa-exempt countries pay a new $250 fee.
*Hope FIFA can find enough folks from the US who want to pay too much to watch soccer. Empty-seats-r-us!
In the eyes of some pundits and politicos, the Dallas Democrat’s nomination would spell doom for her party’s chances of winning a statewide race for the first time in over three decades.
To others, she is a fighter and gifted communicator whose expand-the-electorate strategy is worth trying in a state where Democrats of all stripes and styles have failed.
On Monday, the last day for candidates to file for the 2026 ballot, she officially joined the U.S. Senate primary setting up a marquee battle March 3 against state Rep. James Talarico, an Austin Democrat and progressive aspiring Presbyterian minister who, like Crockett, has assembled an impressive social media following and fundraising apparatus of his own.
At stake is not just the U.S. Senate race, but competitive seats further down the ballot for the U.S. House and the state Legislature.
Already, Republicans — who have made no secret that they would prefer to face her over Talarico — are tying her to down-ballot Democrats running in some of the most competitive seats in the country. Sen. John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who would face Crockett in November if he survives his primary, told Semafor her bid is a “gift.” One Republican operative told The Texas Tribune that the mood yesterday in the GOP was on par with “Christmas morning.”
the new world cup trophy at the 1:21:54 mark of this 1973 serial of Doctor Who
The Doctor is battling an biologic AI supercomputer (owned by an oligarch bent on world domination)
lol born with that look
“Jon [Pertwee] recalled his schooldays, saying ‘Not that I disliked school – I loathed it! Passionately!’, adding that his only achievement at the four schools he attended was that he was ‘beaten more often and more thoroughly than any of my fellow pupils, simply because I firmly, if painfully, refused to conform to the norm; and in my day, conformity was the rule…’”
Attribution: Appeasing Putin by Bill Day, FloridaPolitics.com
Jamie, thanks for Randy’s latest, worth reposting given the news of the day.
Jack and pog, the following digs a bit into what you were discussing yesterday about personal info mining.
Journalist, internet activist, and author Cory Doctorow talks to Ronny Chieng about the concept behind his latest book, “Enshittification,” which breaks down how tech giants like Facebook, Amazon, and Google have made the internet worse for everybody by locking in users only to turn on them. He also stresses how the blame for the “enshittification” of the internet shouldn’t be placed on consumers, but on policy makers, and points to anti-trust enforcement, tech worker unions, and interoperability as the keys to remaking an internet that benefits users instead of billionaires.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/10/ukraine-war-briefing-pope-defends-europe-and-its-role-in-peace-talks-from-trump
It’s the same ole dilemma. Do we ignore another racist Trump rally speech because we hate listening to him, thus normalizing his hate speech.
Trump’s speech on combating inflation turns to grievances about immigrants
— NPR
scanning the Pennsylvania headlines
Who says he has no economic policy:
Trump: “You can give up certain products. You could give up pencils. Because under the China policy, every child can get 37 pencils. They only need 1 or 2. They don’t need that many. You always need steel. You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter. 2 or 3 is nice. So we’re doing things right.”
Dec 10, 2025 #BBCNews
Ukraine is “ready for elections”, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said, after US President Donald Trump repeated claims Kyiv was “using war” to avoid holding them.
Zelensky’s five-year term as president was due to end in May 2024, but elections have been suspended in Ukraine since martial law was declared after Russia’s invasion.
Speaking to reporters following Trump’s comments in a wide-raging Politico interview, Zelensky said he would ask for proposals to be drawn up which could change the law.
Elections could be held in the next 60 to 90 days if security for the vote was guaranteed with the help of the US and other allies, he said.
one example in comments to above:
my questions: how secure will they be? can the election be protected from Russian interference? putin is known to have diddled with US & EU elections in the recent past, also the one in Crimea ro justify his takeover.
News Brief dated December 10, 2025
• Fed’s final 2025 rate debate looms as policymakers split — Reuters
• Ukraine orders retreat from Pokrovsk as Russia masses 150k+ troops — Al Jazeera
• Judge moves to unseal new Epstein-Maxwell documents, political fallout expected — Guardian
• Trump vows to intervene in Thailand–Cambodia border clashes — Reuters
• Australia becomes first nation to ban social media for kids under 16 — Financial Times
• Zelensky says no breakthrough after new talks with U.S. officials — Reuters
• Oil prices stay elevated ahead of Fed meeting, global uncertainty — Reuters
• U.S. lawmakers hash out $901B defense bill, key disputes unresolved — Reuters
• Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado confirmed safe but will miss ceremony — Guardian
• Barcelona’s Koundé scores twice in Champions League comeback win — Barça Blaugranes
These are the stories U.S. audiences are actually clicking, watching, and searching for — not a value judgment, just a snapshot of consumer attention.
Craig – something in his addled speeches are the numbers he spouts. Although we know which orifice those are pulled from, but due to his dementia and genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s he most likely was trained for responses to certain questions or stimuli.
In his latest rant fest he came up with the number thirty-seven. That is a strange number I immediately thought, where would that have come from? What background brief would that number have been included? His use of twenty-seven obviously comes from the number of countries in the European Union. There are fifty-four countries in Africa. It could be thirty-seven is the room number of the West Wing rest room, or the number of crayons in his desk drawer.
No matter where it came from it is just some number he came across just before he went on stage. If anyone knows where thirty-seven came from I would find that very interesting.
it’s already normalized
we need new ways because that genie doesn’t go back in the bottle
he said “37” the first time he used that remark months and months, ago (during his absurd campaign that the electorate validated, iirc); he reuses material that he thinks gets a laugh
Once again, Trump forces the same question: are we really going to shrug off this level of bigotry and pretend it’s normal? Watch his rally moment we ought to talk about ➡️
Happy Holidays … All of them!
37…..that’s a toughie…..old Berman figured out where he got “$1.99 a gallon for gas” but 37?
I’m going to ponder that one.
You may have heard this song a time or two, but here it is by the lady who wrote it.
Sounds like Floyd Cramer and Chet Atkins all up in there.
today’s meme…
Sturge
I just did a quick search on youtube for that song. Talk about cross over appeal. Ray Charles, Elvis and Eddie Arnold. That is only in the first 5 years after it was written,
It is a classic even down to the piano playing.
Jack
meme #2…
Jack ….and also played by every single bar band in the western world. So to speak.
Now that Trump recommends austerity for parents buying gifts let’s find out what our billionaire president’s grandchildren are getting for Christmas.
patd,
I watched Ronnie and Doctorow last night – glad you posted that. Let’s go back and recall the conversations we had following the passage of the USA Patriot Act, shall we? It predated Trailmix, but I’m betting you guys were having vigorous discussions about the unconstitutional breadth of it. And that’s the government’s direct intrusion, but don’t forget the SSA, the VA, etc. and the data breaches they have suffered. And never mind Amazon, Ebay, Temu, your bank, Google, Safari, your insurers and on and on and on. Everything about you is sitting in servers waiting for enterprising hackers to harvest it and sell it to people you don’t want having it. Not exactly what they were talking about, but lots of overlap.
And from Trump Country.
Brought to you by Fat Donnie and his toy idiot RFK Jr.
And the idiots in Garrett County think Trump is just fine.
Folks in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have socialized healthcare, parental care, fully-subsidized college, etc.
Employers report wages and folks in those countries don’t have to fill out anything, just verify no changes and sign off on it.
The idiots at the Pennsylvania chapter of the Nazi movement have learned nothing. If they are educated, their hated has obscured any decent information they may actually hold.
https://www.reuters.com/business/norways-wealth-tax-trades-millionaires-equality-2025-11-24/
Norway’s lesson for Europe on wealth taxes: let some millionaires go
With a wealth tax dating back to 1892 and a culture of openness that allows citizens to view the tax returns of others, Norway has more experience than most in squeezing the rich. Its model offers lessons for countries debating similar moves, from Britain to France and Italy, or even a city like New York.
The takeaway: a wealth tax will scare off some millionaires, but if set broadly enough, revenues can still be worth it.
Individuals pay 1% on net wealth between 1.76 million and 20.7 million crowns ($174,000–$2 million) and, since 2022, 1.1% above that. Exactly 671,639 people – about 12% of the population – paid in 2023.
Main homes enjoy a 75% discount on assessed value; shares and commercial property get 20%. Assets abroad are included, but debt is deductible.
Leaving Norway triggers an exit tax of 37.8% on unrealised capital gains above 3 million crowns – such as notional gains on shares that have gone up in value but are yet to be sold. Loopholes that allowed emigrants to defer payment indefinitely were closed in 2024.
The changes turned a trickle into a stream. Data from conservative think-tank Civita shows 261 residents with assets above 10 million crowns ($973,000) left in 2022 and 254 in 2023 – more than double the typical rate before the hike.
Business magazine Kapital’s, opens new tab ranking of Norway’s 400 richest people shows 105 now live abroad or have transferred wealth to relatives who do. Some of their pictures hang on a “wall of shame” in the offices of the small, opposition Socialist Left party.
Supporters argue the tax acts as a redistributive backstop in a country that scrapped inheritance tax in 2014 and ranks among the world’s wealthiest thanks to oil, shipping and fisheries.
Norway funnels all proceeds from its oil and gas industry into a sovereign wealth fund and caps annual withdrawals at 3% of the fund’s value under a self-imposed fiscal rule.
This means it needs to find other sources of revenue.
Revenue from it has climbed despite the exodus and now sits at 0.6% of GDP — not a trivial sum.
Research by Norway’s statistics office shows entrepreneurs have enough liquidity to pay, opens new tab, and that the burden falls overwhelmingly on the richest, opens new tab. Another study suggests the tax may spur investment in human capital, opens new tab.
Norway remains among the world’s most equal countries and ranks high for ease of doing business, opens new tab.
“These findings suggest that the wealth tax does not straightforwardly hinder firm-level investment or employment,” said Roberto Iacono, professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
A poll by the Response agency for the daily Aftenposten taken just before September’s election showed 39% of Norwegians wanted the wealth tax maintained or raised, while 23% wanted to see a reduction and 28% called for abolition.
Norway’s Labour government wants a grand bargain on tax reform over the next two years, inviting all parties to the table. The catch? The wealth tax stays — in some shape or form.
Norway has one of Europe’s lowest levels of venture capital as a share of GDP – at half that of Sweden’s and far behind the U.S., OECD data shows. Heirs often leave before taking control of shares.
So far, no new country is going down the Norwegian route.
French lawmakers binned a headline-grabbing 2% levy on fortunes above 100 million euros, settling instead for a narrower charge on personal assets parked in holding companies – a measure forecast to raise barely 1 billion euros.
Across the Channel, Britain’s Labour government has ruled out a formal wealth tax but insists it will keep leaning on those “with the broadest shoulders”.
Italy, for its part, remains allergic to inheritance hikes yet is quietly tightening its flat regime for wealthy foreigners.
Norway’s social cohesion and oil wealth may make its model hard to copy. But economists say it shows that any such levy involves a trade-off with economic and political dimensions.
“Not having a wealth tax leads to greater inequality, having one means less capital for startups,” NTNU’s professor Iacono said. “Politics needs to strike a balance.”
Sturge
Guilty, that song helped polish a few belt buckles in my more rowdy redneck bar days.
It kinda leads to the mornings when you look across the bed and go. “Who are you?”
Jack
Apparently…..you didn’t know her.
I’ve been fiddling with video display formats today. Let me know if anything breaks or looks really weird, especially on phones.
I’ve become a major fan of the term “Commonwealth”. If applied correctly, the public purse goes to benefit the needs of the public. Obviously, up front, that would mean health, education, housing, transportation, and protection/defense.
A wealth tax of some sort would be required for it to work, but the overall benefits would be so great that even the gazillionaires probably wouldn’t mind.
The Nordic countries and in some part all the other developed nations do this without sinking into Godless Communism. I would think the US could manage if our politicians weren’t bought and paid for.
https://people.com/marco-rubio-removes-state-department-official-typeface-says-it-lacks-decorum-11865723
Marco Rubio Removes State Department’s Official Typeface, Says It ‘Lacks Decorum’ — It’s One of the Most Common Fonts
Rubio issued a memo on Tuesday, Dec. 9, saying that the department would not be using the sans-serif font Calibri. Instead, it would be returning to Times New Roman “as its standard typeface,” according to The New York Times.
Rubio stated in the Dec. 9 memo that the previous switch to Calibri has “achieved nothing except the degradation of the department’s official correspondence.” He said that serif fonts are used by the White House, Supreme Court and other state and federal government entities, and are “generally perceived to connote tradition, formality and ceremony,” according to NYT.
Former President Joe Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, decided to use Calibri in 2023 to improve accessibility for readers with disabilities, per the NYT.
It is a sans-serif font, and those have been recognized as easier to read, according to a 2022 National Institutes of Health study.
*Weird hill to die on when his boss demolished the East Wing of the WH, and has plans to demolish other federal buildings. Marco is very, very Lil’
It Just Doesn’t Go Away…
Another National Guard Deployment Ruling
Yet another judge blocks Trump’s National Guard deployment, this time in Los Angeles — CNN
Overall, Trump is losing the battles in the lower courts, but the war will likely be settled by the Supreme Court.
At least 5 judges (four federal, one state) have explicitly ruled against these deployments or declared them unlawful in recent months:
Judge Charles Breyer (Los Angeles)
Judge Jia M. Cobb (Washington, D.C.)
Judge Karin Immergut (Portland)
Judge April Perry (Chicago)
Chancellor Patricia Head Moskal (Memphis)
Status: Appeals courts have largely paused these bans to allow time for arguments, but final rulings on the core legal issues are still pending. The Chicago case is already at the Supreme Court.
Get the full Trail Mix Brief:
Norway can do what it does because it supplies 40% of Europe’s petroleum and natural gas needs. With a population that is 60% of the population of New York City. It is a very small place with a lot of energy production.
Jack
From my morning reads:
Basically, by the time you get involved in the political process big money has screened your choices.
To read more:
Jack
This strikes me as a great way to kill business and tourism from other countries.
More at link
Here is a graphical look at the status of National Guard cases.
https://www.rawstory.com/pete-hegseth-ai/
“The future of American warfare is here, and it’s spelled AI,” Hegseth said in an announcement posted to X on Tuesday. “And that’s why today we are unleashing genAI.mil. This platform puts the world’s most powerful frontier AI models, starting with Google Gemini, directly into the hands of every American warrior.”
“We will continue to aggressively field the world’s best technology to make our fighting force more lethal than ever before,” he added.
*Eesh, “more lethal.” The man seems to be a homicidal sociopath.
“Couldn’t even handle the general population we broke it in under an hour and u wanna pretend this is gonna stand up against state actors,” another commenter pointed out.
Pentagon officials later told Daily Mail reporter Jon Michael Raasch that the website was working as intended.
“The link only works for military personnel with the use of a key card, the DoW says. Odd they would post the military-only portal publicly,” Raasch reported.
*Broken or not, that’s what AI is for; surveillance, control, war.
HA!
https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2025/12/09/pentagon-taps-google-gemini-launches-new-site-to-boost-ai-use/
Gemini for Government will use “intelligent agentic workflows,” or AI processes where autonomous programming makes decisions and takes actions with minimal human involvement, and will allow defense personnel to experiment more with these capabilities, the department said.
“There is no prize for second place in the global race for AI dominance,” Emil Michael, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said in a statement. “We are moving rapidly to deploy powerful AI capabilities like Gemini for Government directly to our workforce. AI is America’s next Manifest Destiny, and we’re ensuring that we dominate this new frontier.”
Elon Musk’s xAI, Anthropic and OpenAI are some of the other AI programs the department has considered to help with national security missions. Intelligence analysis, logistics and data collection are some of the duties that the department hopes could be improved by using AI.
The department stressed the need for security when using this program, and said all tools on the GenAI website will be considered controlled unclassified information, or CUI, and secured well enough to be used operationally.
Gemini for Government is web-grounded against Google Search to keep the information it produces accurate and dramatically reduce “the risk of AI hallucinations.”
jamie, the ‘Lacks Decorum’ removal standard should be applied to the guy in the oval office
jack & sturge, in re “you don’t know me”
dangerous to dance to that one…. a mighty powerful aphrodisiac
Pat…..ah, yes……I remember it well.
Sigh,
We have the most powerful military in the world and we got our butts kicked by a bunch of 12th century tribes armed with wore out rifles and IED’s made from our unexploded ordinance.
Jack
Pat
Honest, all we were doing was dancing, just dancing. How did I know she was married?
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
Jack
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/09/honduras-president-alleges-electoral-coup-under-way-amid-trump-interference
Honduras president alleges ‘electoral coup’ under way amid Trump ‘interference’
Xiomara Castro alleges US manipulation and blackmail as preliminary count shows two rightwing candidates closely tied
Honduras’s president, Xiomara Castro, has alleged that an “electoral coup” is under way in the country’s presidential election, which she says has been marked by “interference from the president of the United States, Donald Trump”.
The leftist president also said that “the Honduran people must never accept elections marked by interference, manipulation and blackmail … Sovereignty is not negotiable, democracy is not surrendered.”
A construction magnate and former mayor of the capital, Tegucigalpa, Asfura received open backing from Trump, who said the US would support the next government only if he won.
On the eve of the vote, the US president also announced a pardon for the former president and Asfura ally Juan Orlando Hernández, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison for allegedly creating “a cocaine superhighway to the United States”. He was released last week.
On Monday, the Honduran attorney general, Johel Zelaya – an ally of Castro’s government – ordered the immediate execution of an international arrest warrant for Hernández, whose whereabouts have been unknown since his release from a federal prison in West Virginia last week.
Before the vote, Trump had claimed Moncada was a communist and that her victory would hand the country to the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro – the target of an escalating US military buildup – “and his narco-terrorists”.
Moncada is in third place in the preliminary count, with 19.29%.
President Castro said that Trump’s statements “violated the most sacred principle of our constitution. Sovereignty resides in the people, exclusively in the Honduran people.”
She also referred to Hernández’s release: “Conservatives in Washington have decided to ally themselves with drug trafficking and organised crime.”
Still speaking about the current elections, Honduras’s president said on Tuesday that the vote had been marked by “threats, coercion, manipulation of the TREP [the results transmission system] and the adulteration of the popular will”, although she presented no evidence.
She added: “These actions constitute an ongoing electoral coup that we will denounce before the United Nations, the European Union, CELAC [Community of Latin American and Caribbean States], the OAS [Organisation of American States] and other international bodies.”
The runner-up, Nasralla, claimed a “monumental fraud” was under way and demanded a recount “tally sheet by tally sheet”.
Shortly afterwards, the president of the electoral council, Ana Paola Hall, said: “I cannot tamper with the results, neither to help nor to harm anyone – and you know something, even if I could, I still wouldn’t.”
Despite Asfura’s lead in the preliminary count, roughly 14.5% of the tally sheets, containing thousands of votes, showed “inconsistencies” and must be reviewed. The electoral council has until 30 December to announce the official result.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-threatens-new-icc-sanctions-unless-court-pledges-not-prosecute-trump-2025-12-10/
President Donald Trump’s administration wants the International Criminal Court to amend its founding document to ensure it does not investigate the Republican president and his top officials, a Trump administration official said, threatening new U.S. sanctions on the court if it did not.
If the court does not act on this U.S. demand and two others – dropping investigations of Israeli leaders over the Gaza war and formally ending an earlier probe of U.S. troops over their actions in Afghanistan – Washington may penalize more ICC officials and could sanction the court itself, the official said.
*tRUMPsky and his administration are criminals, and some are war criminals. The world should sanction the US. Just cut us off until we rid ourselves of the fascists.
My time in the U.S. federal government, military civilian and contractor, type face was dictated as Times New Roman or one of two others. TNR was preferred for the ease of reading due to the serif. This was even before we had a lot of electronic type faces, IBM Selectric had multiple fonts on the interchangeable balls.
Time to put the champagne in the refrigerator while counting down to a celebration. The question of “is he still alive” is becoming popular.
Trump’s National Guard Obsession
The Scorecard is 5-0. Here is the full story.
With another judge blocking deployment in LA today, the legal scorecard is 5 rulings against the administration. But the troops are still there. Why? 📉
If you’ve missed any of our updates on this constitutional crisis (or just want to see Professor Vance explain the Ninth Amendment again), we’ve compiled every episode into one master list.
📺 Watch today’s short plus “The National Guard Files” (Autoplay):
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-seized-oil-tanker-off-the-coast-of-venezuela-trump-says/
The U.S. has seized a large oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, President Trump said Wednesday, escalating tensions between the two countries. The president said he assumes the U.S. will keep the oil.
“As you probably know, we’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large,” he said. “Largest one ever seized, actually. And other things are happening, so you’ll be seeing that later and you’ll be talking about that later with some other people.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi shared video of the seizure on social media, writing that the tanker was “used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran” and had been seized by the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Coast Guard, “with support from the Department of War.”
*Aaaaaarg, the US be pirates!
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/10/ice-tracking-pregnant-women
ICE is using smartwatches to track pregnant women, even during labor: ‘She was so afraid they would take her baby’
Pregnant immigrants in ICE monitoring programs are avoiding care, fearing detention during labour and delivery
The device was not an ordinary smart watch made by Apple or Samsung, but a special type that US Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) had mandated the woman wear at all times, allowing the agency to track her. The device was beeping when she entered the hospital, indicating she needed to charge it, and she worried that if the battery died, ICE agents would think she was trying to disappear, the hospital workers recalled. She told them that, just days earlier, she had been put on a deportation flight to Mexico, but the pilot refused to let her fly because she was so close to giving birth.
Her delivery wasn’t progressing the way the care team hoped, and she needed a C-section, a procedure that requires doctors to use a cauterizing tool to minimize bleeding. To prevent possible burning and electrocution, patients are instructed to take off all jewelry or metals before the surgery. The mandatory watch had no way to be easily removed, nor was information about whether it would be safe to wear during the procedure readily available. Hospital staff didn’t know how to contact ICE to ask what to do. When hospital staff told the woman they might have to cut the smart watch off, she panicked, the workers said.
Staff eventually did remove the device, and ICE agents did not show up at the hospital during the delivery. The nurses said they do not know what happened to the woman after she left the hospital with her baby.
welcome to ai-powered hell
this is fun, though:
streaming Bob Ross
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/10/tourists-social-media-trump
Tourists to the United States would have to reveal their social media activity from the last five years, under new Trump administration plans.
The mandatory new disclosures would apply to the 42 countries whose nationals are currently permitted to enter the US without a visa, including longtime US allies Britain, France, Australia, Germany and Japan.
In a notice published on Tuesday, the US Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) said it would also require any telephone numbers used by visitors over the same period, and any email addresses used in the last decade, as well as face, fingerprint, DNA and iris biometrics. It would also ask for the names, addresses, birthdates and birthplaces of family members, including children.
CBP said the new changes to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (Esta) application were required in order to comply with an executive order issued by Donald Trump on the first day of his new term. In it, the US president called for restrictions to ensure visitors to the US “do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles”.
The US has already started squeezing foreign tourism in other ways, slapping an additional $100 fee per foreign visitor per day to visit national parks, such as the Grand Canyon and Yosemite, on top of the regular admission fees.
Nor will national parks have free admission on Martin Luther King Jr Day any longer: but they will now be free for US residents to visit on Trump’s birthday.
As recently as last week, the administration told consular officials to deny visas to anyone who might have worked in factchecking or content moderation – for example, at a social media company – accusing them in blanket terms of being “responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the US”.
It has suggested reducing visa lengths for foreign journalists from five years to eight months, and has started demanding any visitors who are not from the 42 visa-exempt countries pay a new $250 fee.
*Hope FIFA can find enough folks from the US who want to pay too much to watch soccer. Empty-seats-r-us!
In the eyes of some pundits and politicos, the Dallas Democrat’s nomination would spell doom for her party’s chances of winning a statewide race for the first time in over three decades.
To others, she is a fighter and gifted communicator whose expand-the-electorate strategy is worth trying in a state where Democrats of all stripes and styles have failed.
On Monday, the last day for candidates to file for the 2026 ballot, she officially joined the U.S. Senate primary setting up a marquee battle March 3 against state Rep. James Talarico, an Austin Democrat and progressive aspiring Presbyterian minister who, like Crockett, has assembled an impressive social media following and fundraising apparatus of his own.
At stake is not just the U.S. Senate race, but competitive seats further down the ballot for the U.S. House and the state Legislature.
Already, Republicans — who have made no secret that they would prefer to face her over Talarico — are tying her to down-ballot Democrats running in some of the most competitive seats in the country. Sen. John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who would face Crockett in November if he survives his primary, told Semafor her bid is a “gift.” One Republican operative told The Texas Tribune that the mood yesterday in the GOP was on par with “Christmas morning.”
the new world cup trophy at the 1:21:54 mark of this 1973 serial of Doctor Who
The Doctor is battling an biologic AI supercomputer (owned by an oligarch bent on world domination)
lol born with that look
“Jon [Pertwee] recalled his schooldays, saying ‘Not that I disliked school – I loathed it! Passionately!’, adding that his only achievement at the four schools he attended was that he was ‘beaten more often and more thoroughly than any of my fellow pupils, simply because I firmly, if painfully, refused to conform to the norm; and in my day, conformity was the rule…’”
🫡
https://apnews.com/article/trump-tanker-seized-venezuela-maduro-0a148ba01684fc6ce1a228dd276732c0
“Trump did not offer additional details. When asked what would happen to the oil aboard the tanker, Trump said, “Well, we keep it, I guess.”
cool, we are an international menace now
thanks trump voters
obviously, we are in no position to defend Taiwan
NEW THREAD