Deep State Panic

Who is Deep State – Search Videos ….Deep state in the United States – Wikipedia

Be careful…. Nothing has changed.

They will steal the election again, while everyone is too concentrated on the victory and lacks focus on stealing the election. Don’t let your guard down; that’s what I want to warn you about. They still print and count the ballots in Atlanta Detroit Philadelphia Milwaukee Las Vegas and Phoenix.

New York Times story in April chronicled the chaos within the Trump White House as it initially responded to the coronavirus pandemic. One of the throwaway revelations in that piece was that the president’s delayed reaction to the crisis was partially due to his fears about the “deep state.”

“Mr. Trump’s response,” the authors write, “was colored by his suspicion of and disdain for what he viewed as the ‘deep state,’ the very people in his government whose expertise and long experience might have guided him more quickly toward steps that would slow the virus, and likely save lives.”

Under normal circumstances, this would be bad; in a pandemic, it’s terrifying. Now, more than ever, expertise is needed, and Trump isn’t especially interested. That a lot of his supporters think the virus itself is a deep state coup isn’t helping matters.

And Trump’s deep state obsession isn’t a new thing. He’s been pumping up this theory since special counsel Robert Mueller launched the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. It has always been a diversion, whether it was coming from Trump or Fox News.

But here’s the thing: The deep state isn’t exactly a phantasm. There are parts of the US government that wield real power outside the conventional checks and balances of the system. It’s not a conspiracy against Trump, but the term does refer to something that exists.

The “deep state” is real.

But it’s not what Trump thinks it is.

Author David Rohde on what the “deep state” is and why Trump is obsessed with it | Vox

The “Deep State” Theory, Explained:

The seed for many tantalizing conspiracy theories, the term “deep state” in the United States implies the existence of a premeditated effort by certain federal government employees or other persons to secretly manipulate or control the government without regard for the policies of Congress or the President of the United States.

Origin and History of the Deep State

The concept of a deep state — also called a “state within a state” or a “shadow government” – was first used in reference to political conditions in countries like Turkey and post-Soviet Russia.

During the 1950s, an influential anti-democratic coalition within the Turkish political system called the “derin devlet” – literally the “deep state” — allegedly dedicated itself to ousting communists from the new Turkish Republic founded by Mustafa Ataturk after World War I.

Made up of elements within the Turkish military, security, and judiciary branches, the derin devlet worked to turn the Turkish people against its enemies by staging “false flag” attacks and planned riots. Ultimately, the derin devlet was blamed for the deaths of thousands of people.

The Man Who Popularized The ‘Deep State’ Doesn’t Like The Way It’s Used : NPR

In the 1970s, former high-ranking officials of the Soviet Union, after defecting to the West, publically stated that the Soviet political police – the KGB – had operated as a deep state secretly attempting to control the Communist Party and ultimately, the Soviet government.

In a 2006 symposium, Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former general in the Communist Romania secret police who defected to the United States in 1978, stated, “In the Soviet Union, the KGB was a state within a state.”

Pacepa went on to claim, “Now former KGB officers are running the state. They have custody of the country’s 6,000 nuclear weapons, entrusted to the KGB in the 1950s, and they now also manage the strategic oil industry renationalized by Putin.”

The Deep State Theory in the United States

In 2014, former congressional aide Mike Lofgren alleged the existence of a different type of deep state operating within the United States government in his essay titled “Anatomy of the Deep State.”

Instead of a group comprised exclusively of government entities, Lofgren calls the deep state in the United States “a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process.”

The Deep State, wrote Lofgren, is not “a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. It is not a tight-knit group and has no clear objective. Rather, it is a sprawling network, stretching across the government and into the private sector.”

In some ways, Lofgren’s description of a deep state in the United States echoes parts of President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address, in which he warned future presidents to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

Bogus Theory Claims Supercomputer Switched Votes in Election – FactCheck.org

President Trump Alleges a Deep State Opposes Him

Following the tumultuous 2016 presidential election, President Donald Trump and his supporters suggested that certain unnamed executive branch officials and intelligence officers were secretly operating as a deep state to block his policies and legislative agenda by leaking information considered critical of him.

President Trump, White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, along with ultra-conservative news outlets like Breitbart News claimed that Former President Obama was orchestrating a deep state attack against the Trump administration. The allegation apparently grew out of Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that Obama had ordered the wiretapping of his telephone during the 2016 election campaign.

Current and former intelligence officials remain divided on the question of the existence of a deep state secretly working to derail the Trump administration. 

In a June 5, 2017 article published in The Hill Magazine, retired veteran CIA field operations agent Gene Coyle stated that while he doubted the existence of “hordes of government officials” operating as an anti-Trump deep state, he did believe the Trump administration was justified in complaining about the number of leaks being reported by news organizations.

“If you are that appalled at the actions of an administration, you should quit, hold a press conference and publicly state your objections,” said Coyle. “You can’t run an executive branch if more and more people think, ‘I don’t like the policies of this president, therefore I will leak information to make him look bad.’”

Other intelligence experts argued that individuals or small groups of individuals leaking information critical of a presidential administration lack the organizational coordination and depth of deep states such as those that existed in Turkey or the former Soviet Union.

The Arrest of Reality Winner 

On June 3, 2017, a third-party contractor working for the National Security Agency (NSA) was arrested on charges of violating the Espionage Act by leaking a top-secret document related to the possible involvement of the Russian government in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to an unnamed news organization.

When questioned by the FBI on June 10, 2017, the woman, 25-year-old Reality Leigh Winner, “admitted intentionally identifying and printing the classified intelligence reporting at issue despite not having a ‘need to know,’ and with the knowledge that the intelligence report was classified,” according to the FBI affidavit.

According to the Justice Department, Winner “further acknowledged that she was aware of the contents of the intelligence reporting and that she knew the contents of the reporting could be used to the injury of the United States and to the advantage of a foreign nation.”

The arrest of Winner represented the first confirmed case of an attempt by a current government employee to discredit the Trump administration. As a result, many conservatives have been quick to use the case to bolster their arguments of a so-called “deep state” within the United States government. While it’s true that Winner had publicly expressed anti-Trump sentiments both to co-workers and on social media, her actions in no way prove the existence of an organized deep state effort to discredit the Trump administration.

Top 10 Obama Scandals | The Daily Show

In the U.S., the idea of a deep state cabal of unelected officials secretly pulling the strings of the American government, is widely believed. One 2018 poll even claimed a majority of American voter’s place credence in the theory. This is no fringe phenomenon

America’s democratic political institutions and public opinion are driven by anxieties that have been given voice in the pronouncements of Donald Trump:

 “Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state,” he told a rally in Waco, Texas, in March 2023. This was nothing new. As president he frequently deployed the term, often to denounce whistleblowers and leakers from the U.S. intelligence community.

I Don’t Believe This for a Second that many of the January 6 Capitol rioters were inspired by QAnon conspiracy theories that claimed a deep state was also working to undermine President Trump and betray the electorate. If he wins this November, Trump has promised to “dismantle the deep state” by stripping thousands of federal employees of their civil service protections, allowing them to be fired at will.

Nancy Pelosi Setup January 6 – Search

The intricate apophenia of today’s QAnon-laced cynicism toward the federal government as deep state finds its origins in legitimate public concern about cold war CIA covert operations. Knowing this history offers some answers for today’s conspiracy culture questions.

Before the CIA’s disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, the American media consciously avoided discussing U.S. covert action: “[W]e left out a great deal of what we knew about U.S. intervention in Guatemala and in a variety of other cases,” noted the New York Times’ Washington bureau chief, James Reston, in 1954. As a result, many of the CIA’s most significant operations escaped popular accountability.

In learning about these covert interventions in the 1960s and 1970s, the public became acutely aware of the gap between the official narrative of a purely defensive foreign policy and the reality of these previously secret offensive operations. That awareness caused many to ask who oversaw American foreign policy. Was it their elected public representatives or secretive intelligence officer?

One of the most influential books of this era to raise this question was The Invisible Government, written in 1964 by journalists David Wise and Thomas Ross. They opened their account with a stark declaration: “There are two governments in the United States today. One is visible. The other is invisible.”

They then set out their thesis that the CIA had occasionally acted outside the authority of elected officials, and that such covert operations were not merely an instrument of U.S. foreign policy, but had actively shaped it. Though their thesis was more nuanced and narrowly focused than that of many contemporary purveyors of deep state conspiracy theories, their book provided the language and narrative apparatus that would eventually metastasize into the widespread skepticism in American society toward officialdom, and in particular toward the U.S. intelligence community.

The very use of the term conspiracy theory, however, risks both unfairly mischaracterizing Wise and Ross’s original argument, and trivializing the powerful hold that the “deep state” has upon the American political imagination today. Early attempts to understand what historian Richard Hofstadter famously described as the “paranoid style” in American political life deployed the term pejoratively. They pathologized political paranoia as an irrational and dangerous aberration from the usual politics of compromise and consensus that they believed characterized America’s democratic institutions.  

But today the paranoid style has gone mainstream, and it has infiltrated the very organs of democratic politics that Hofstadter sought to defend. So how did public concern about CIA covert operations mutate into the all-encompassing cynicism toward government officials that characterizes belief in a deep state today? 

The Invisible Government was published at the beginning of an era of revelations about secret state activity and government deception. In 1967 Ramparts magazine revealed that the CIA had covertly sponsored the National Student Association to try to influence the emerging international student movement in a liberal and anticommunist direction. 

In 1971 Daniel Ellsberg provided the press with a secret Pentagon history of the Vietnam War, which revealed that four successive administrations had deceived the American people about the U.S. role in that conflict and the likelihood of victory.

In December 1974, just a few months after President Nixon resigned over Watergate, itself a scandal about government secrecy and duplicity, New York Times journalist Seymour Hersh published the first of a series of articles about some of the most controversial CIA operations, leading to three separate official inquiries into the activities of the CIA and FBI.

Filtered through this steady drumbeat of revelations,

The Deep State Is Real – POLITICO Magazine

 The Invisible Government took on new meaning, with many coming to believe that the secret state was eroding the very foundations of American democracy.

A 1967 Herblock cartoon about the scandal revealed by Ramparts magazine features Alice in Wonderland’s White Rabbit with “CIA” tattooed on its thigh, burrowing in a hole beneath the twin pillars of “U.S. Credibility” and “Integrity of Schools and Foundations,” with Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole of “undercover activities.”

These revelations of state secrecy and deception coupled with the narrative of an “invisible government” also lent credence to conspiracy theories about President Kennedy’s death, in particular the popular idea that the CIA played a role. The Invisible Government was here directly influential.

In the late 1960s New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison prosecuted Clay Shaw for Kennedy’s murder, alleging CIA involvement. Garrison drew at length from The Invisible Government when researching his prosecution. His case was flimsy, and the jury took less than an hour to deliver a “not guilty” verdict. But the trial was later popularized by Hollywood director Oliver Stone in his 1991 blockbuster JFK. 

In the film’s denouement a teary-eyed Garrison, played by Kevin Costner, delivers his closing argument to the jury: “What ‘national security,’” he asks them, “permits the removal of fundamental power from the hands of the American people and validates the ascendancy of the invisible government in the United States?” (Emphasis added.) The film was incredibly damaging for the CIA and helped persuade the agency to become much more proactive in its public relations.

Today the deployment of the “deep state” by populist politicians like Trump taps into a rich vein of popular suspicion in American society that partly resulted from excessive state secrecy and official deception. Since Hofstadter, we have tended to understand belief in conspiracy theories as a kind of psychosis. In doing so we have focused our gaze pejoratively on the “basket of deplorables” who tend to believe such theories, and ignored the official sources and government policies that first produced these widespread anxieties.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

Possible paths to a win in the 2024 presidential election | Watch

12 Odd Habits That Usually Indicate A Person Has A High IQ

Did Deep State Kill John F Kennedy – Search

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Deutsche Bank Research

Stocks usually see double-digit gains under U.S. presidents — with two exceptions since 1933. Deutsche Bank Research recently analyzed the S&P 500’s annualized total returns under each U.S. president since Theodore Roosevelt in 1901.

 They found that the S&P 500 has generally experienced double-digit annualized returns under most presidents, with a few notable exceptions1.

For instance, the S&P 500 saw declines during the presidencies of Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush. These periods were marked by significant economic challenges, such as the Great Depression, the 1973 oil shock, and the early stages of the global financial crisis1.

On the other hand, some presidents, like Calvin Coolidge, oversaw periods of exceptionally high returns1. The overall trend suggests that while presidential policies can influence market performance, broader economic events often play a more significant role.

Is there a specific president or period you’re particularly interested in?

Learn more: 1morningstar.com 2morningstar.com 3slickcharts.com

4macrotrends.net 5advisor.morganstanley.com 6macrotrends.net

With the U.S. presidential election just two weeks away:

Deutsche Bank Research found the S&P 500 has seen a long stretch of annualized double-digit returns under different White House administrations — with two exceptions since 1933.

“As we approach the big day, markets are bracing themselves for a vote that will likely lead to very different policies, depending who wins and with what congressional configuration,” said Jim Reid, global head of macro and thematic research at Deutsche Bank Research, in a note emailed Tuesday. 

Yet it may be “better to be lucky than good,” said Reid, explaining that events might be more likely “to dictate big-picture market performance under the next president, with policy probably playing a smaller role.”

How the Stock Market Performed Under Each President

Deutsche Bank Research broke out the S&P 500’s annualized total return under each U.S. president dating back to Theodore Roosevelt in 1901. The link above shows the S&P 500 fell on an annualized basis under Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon — declines that stood out against an otherwise long period of double-digit total returns no matter who was in the White House. The S&P 500 also fell on an annualized basis under President George W. Bush’s administration, the chart shows.

“From 1933 onwards, most presidents have benefited from a long period of U.S. exceptionalism and double-digit annual equity returns with just two very unlucky exceptions,” said Reid.

“The problem is these exceptions have tended to be pretty savage relative to the norm.”

▶️  Related video: Can the Dow Predict the Next President? It Has, 22 of the Last 24 Presidential Elections (Money Talks News) – Search

But in Reid’s view, “the big outliers were driven by events that were arguably mostly outside of the control of the sitting president.” 

Those events include “the [Great] Depression, the 1973 oil shock, and the double whammy of the post-2000 bubble unwind,” as well as the early global financial crisis seen under President George W. Bush, according to the note.

“Academics have argued that Hoover’s policies exacerbated the Depression,” said Reid, referring to the president who served from 1929 to 1933. “But you only have to look at the returns under” the preceding Calvin Coolidge “to see that he likely presided over a bubble that contributed to the subsequent 1929 crash, even if he had left office earlier that year.” 

The S&P 500 had its highest annualized returns under President Coolidge and its worst performance during Hoover’s administration, the Deutsche Bank chart shows. “Hoover had a challenging legacy to deal with,” said Reid.

Thirteen of the last 15 U.S. presidents have presided over annualized total returns of between 10% and 17% for the S&P 500, he added. The S&P 500 performed in an “even tighter” range of 14% to 17% returns under seven of the last nine presidents, according to his note.

Deutsche Bank Research found that under President Joe Biden, the S&P 500 has so far seen an annualized total return of 14%. That compares with an annualized 16% total return under former President Donald Trump, whose administration spanned 2017 to 2021.

Election Day will be held Nov. 5, when Americans will vote on whether to send Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, or Trump, her Republican rival, to the Oval Office as the next president.

U.S. stocks are in a bull market that earlier this month marked its two-year anniversary

The S&P 500 has jumped more than 22% so far this year based on its Tuesday afternoon level of around 5,854 That’s slightly below its record closing high of 5,864.67 notched Oct. 18. 

The U.S. stock market was trading mostly higher Tuesday afternoon, with the S&P 500 about flat, the Nasdaq Composite rising 0.2% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average adding 0.1%, according to FactSet data, at last check. 

Check out: Betting markets put chance of Trump win at 3-month high, but analysts express some skepticism

The stock market is a constellation of marketplaces where securities like stocks and bonds are bought and sold. Stock markets provide you with easy, transparent access to investment assets, and they help professional investors determine fair prices for public companies.

What Is the Stock Market?

Think of the stock market as the main financial venue where investing happens. It’s a collection of all the places where matches are made between buyers and sellers trading shares of public companies.

“The stock market” and “Wall Street” can refer to the entire world of securities trading—including stock exchanges where the shares of public companies are listed for sale and markets where other securities are traded. The New York Stock Exchange is the biggest stock market on earth.

Market indexes like the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average aggregate the prices of groups of stocks, which indicate the day-to-day performance of the stock market as a whole.

How Does the Stock Market Work?

The stock market helps companies raise money to fund operations by selling shares of stock, and it creates and sustains wealth for individual investors.

Companies raise money on the stock market by selling ownership stakes to investors. These equity stakes are known as shares of stock. By listing shares for sale on the stock exchanges that make up the stock market, companies get access to the capital they need to operate and expand their businesses without having to take on debt. In exchange for the privilege of selling stock to the public, companies are required to disclose information and give shareholders a say in how their businesses are run.

Investors benefit by exchanging their money for shares on the stock market. As companies put that money to work growing and expanding their businesses, investors reap the benefits as their shares of stock become more valuable over time, leading to capital gains. In addition, companies pay dividends to their shareholders as their profits grow.

The performances of individual stocks vary widely over time, but taken as a whole the stock market has historically rewarded investors with average annual returns of around 10%, making it one of the most reliable ways of growing your money.

Who Regulates the Stock Market?

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulates the stock market in the U.S. The SEC was created after the passing of the Securities Act of 1933, following the stock market crash of October 1929. SEC regulations cover four main areas:

  • Stock exchanges
  • Brokers and dealers
  • Financial advisors
  • Mutual funds

The SEC’s mission is to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation. Thanks to SEC rules, companies that publicly trade on the stock market must tell the truth about their business, and those who sell and trade securities must treat investors fairly and with honesty.

Stock Market vs Stock Exchange

Although the terms are used interchangeably, the stock market is not the same as a stock exchange. Think of a stock exchange as a part of a whole—the stock market comprises many stock exchanges, such as the Nasdaq or New York Stock Exchange in the U.S.

When people talk about how the stock market is performing, they mean the thousands of public companies listed on multiple stock exchanges. And more generally, the stock market can be thought of as encompassing a very broad universe of bonds, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and other securities beyond just stocks.

What Is a Stock Market Index?

A stock market index tracks the performance of a group of stocks that represents a particular industry or segment of the stock market, like the technology, energy and transportation sectors.

Often, one of three large indexes is used as shorthand to describe the performance of the U.S. stock market as a whole:

  • Dow Jones Industrial Average. The DJIA is made up of 30 blue-chip stocks of U.S. industrial companies.
  • S&P 500. The S&P 500 represents 500 of the largest companies in the U.S. economy.
  • The Nasdaq Composite. The Nasdaq Composite tracks the performance of more than 3,000 stocks listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

Other Types of Markets

The stock market generally refers to markets and exchanges where equity shares and related securities are traded. Other types of financial assets have their own markets.

  • Over-the-Counter Markets. OTC markets provide a venue for trading that takes place outside of major exchanges. OTC trades are primarily made directly between sellers and buyers, and prices may or may not be publicly available. Most bonds are traded OTC, and many stocks—including penny stocks—are also traded over-the-counter.
  • Commodities Markets. Raw materials like steel, coal and oil are traded on commodities markets. There are around 50 major commodity markets worldwide that facilitate trade in a wide range of commodities.
  • Derivatives. Derivatives are financial contracts like options whose value is tied to an underlying asset. These are essentially contractual bets about whether individual securities’ values will rise or fall. For experienced investors, derivatives can be extremely lucrative ways to hedge their bets when investing, and they can be incredibly risky for beginners.
  • Foreign Exchange Markets. Forex trading is a borderless, international market for exchanging currencies. Forex traders take advantage of the constantly fluctuating value of different currencies to make profits, and help provide liquidity for international trade.
  • CryptocurrencyBitcoinEthereum and other cryptocurrencies are traded on specialized crypto exchanges.

How to Invest in the Stock Market

If you want to invest in the stock market, the process to get started is easier than you think:

  1. Decide what kind of account you want to open. From retirement savings to college savings, from short-term goals to long, there really is an investment account for everything.
  2. Open a brokerage account. Once you’ve decided what kind of account you want, you’re ready to open an account at a provider called a brokerage. When choosing a company, consider their fees and available investment options.
  3. Deposit money. To get started, you need to make an initial deposit. You can also set up recurring deposits to automate your investments going forward.
  4. Choose your investments. Once your account is open, you can buy and sell securities. You can opt for individual stocks and bonds or mutual fundsindex funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that contain hundreds of individual securities. Many experts recommend a diversified, fund-based approach to minimize the risk any one bad investment loses you money.
  5. Purchase your investments. Once you’ve settled on what you want to buy, simply enter the ticker symbol in the buy field and indicate how many shares you want to buy.

Who or what controls the stock market – Search Videos

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is the primary regulator of the stock market in the U.S. 1 2 3 4

The stock exchanges are governed by their own organizations, under the direction of the SEC 1 4

Stock brokers and brokerage firms are regulated by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) 1 5.

 FINRA is an independent organization that creates and enforces rules that apply to brokers, broker-dealer firms, and funding portals 5.

Harris Vs. Trump: What The U.S. Election Results Could Mean For The Economy

Fareed’s CNN documentary Sunday night. It put America into a deep recession!

Election 2024 live updates: Trump, Harris polls with 2 weeks until Election Day

The US National Debt Is Surging – but Where Exactly Is That Money Going?

Trump says there is a Way to Eliminate Federal Income Taxes

What a  Harris Win Would Mean for the Economy – Search

What a Trump Win Would Mean for the Economy – Search

CNN Profiles – Fareed Zakaria – Host | CNN

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Political World 2024

Racism is not dead, but it is on life support – kept alive by politicians who know how to game the system, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as “racists”. ― Thomas Sowell

Personally … Any real Native American should be pissed about  @Lizwarren lying about being Native to get jobs and scholarships. Because my culture was stolen by someone so undeserving, I’m pissed for every black person out there because @KamalaHarris is also stealing the valor of their heritage for votes and a job she doesn’t deserve.

Laura Powell on X: “Kamala Harris was admitted to law school under a program for students “who have experienced major life hurdles, such as educational disadvantage, economic hardship, or disability.” Kamala Harris’s mother came from the highest caste in India, but by moving to the U.S. and Canada, https://t.co/tqnx8OPnx4” / X

Kamala Harris was admitted to law school under a program for students “who have experienced major life hurdles, such as educational disadvantage, economic hardship, or disability.” She struggled with having to learn two different languages…French Canadian and English. 

Kamala Harris’s mother came from the highest caste in India, but by moving to the U.S. and Canada, obtaining a prestigious degree, marrying a future Stanford professor, having a successful career as a cancer researcher, and sending her daughter to private schools, her daughter became unusually disadvantaged?

In 1992, three years after Kamala graduated from Hastings Law School (a public university), there was a controversy after the dean of the law school realized the extent of student group involvement in admissions to the program for disadvantaged students (called LEOP). 

That’s pretty bad: 

Kamala took a spot that could’ve opened doors for someone truly disadvantaged. Students who claimed to be eligible for the LEOP because of some special hardship they suffered would have their claims of being disadvantaged verified via a phone call by members of the student organization associated with the applicant’s race. The phone interviews were used by some students to screen out conservative candidates—to avoid future “Clarence Thomases,” as one student explained. 

This would have been the process in place when Kamala Harris applied to law school in 1986. According to her resume, she also served as President of the “Black Law Students [sic] Association,” so she likely participated in the process of selecting admittees to the LEOP program while she was a law student as well.

image.png

Comma La 2024 Pin Buttons – Liberal Swag

Several people have mentioned: 

Kamala Harris failed the bar exam the first time she took it. I couldn’t find statistics for 1989, the year she graduated, but a letter to the law school paper in early 1992 says while the overall passage rate for Hastings graduates was 80.2%, only 55% of LEOP students passed. This was a big improvement over the earlier years—in 1977, only 16% of diversity admittees passed on the first try.

End the Simpsons @EndTheSimpsons

My wife graduated law school pregnant and passed the bar with a 3 month old.

To find out that Kamala got all of this undeserved help and still failed the bar is beyond infuriating. Everyone knew that she was LEOP at Hastings but that was mostly because her grades at Howard were not good. Harris has taken advantage of every single DEI program and she’s white. I knew they pulled strings. Any question Willie Brown made sure she finally “ passed” the Bar exam?

Kamala’s family owes reparations, not mine!

So, one less student who would be legitimately qualified was left out?

Kamala grew up in a Quebec mansion in affluent Westmount, Quebec, Canada. – Search

Did Kamala Harris work at McDonald’s? Here are the facts | US News | Metro News

Yes, we all know the hardship of having two parents who each hold a PhD, and having to grow up in one of the more affluent parts of [checks notes] Westmount, Quebec, Canada. 

They think being brown is a disadvantage because they’re racists. 

This explains so much.

Nobody has no idea how this woman was capable of getting into law school.
If Kamala gets “more all of a sudden” electoral votes on Nov. 5 … with all the great Pro-Trump noise out there now… it’s time to get our OWN Justice Department ! – Search

Judge Joe Brown X Candace Owens | Candace Ep 87

Judge Brown talks with @RealCandaceO about: ⁃Kamala’s Hindu/Irish Marxi$t father (he’s not black & Kamala is lying about her ethnic background), ⁃with the FBI being responsible for the assass^nation of MLK, Jr., ⁃the Black caucus real motive in DC, 

⁃ How George HW Bush and Barack’s grandfather are first cousins, – Search

George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama’s grandfather, Stanley Armour Dunham, are not first cousins. However, they are distantly related. Both George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama share common ancestors, making them distant cousins. Specifically, they are related through Samuel Hinckley and Sarah Soole, who were early settlers in Massachusetts in the 17th century12.

Stanley Armour Dunham, Obama’s maternal grandfather, is also distantly related to several U.S. presidents, including George H.W. Bush34. This makes Obama and Bush distant cousins, but not first cousins.

⁃ George H Bush, Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin & Barack Obama are all cousins, and ⁃other issues of interest in history, such as people who grew up on and around weird sexual fetishes have become leaders. Please watch, it is very educational.

It’s fascinating how interconnected some public figures are! While they aren’t all closely related, there are some distant connections. For example, Barack Obama and George W. Bush are 11th cousins1Obama is also distantly related to Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney2.

George H Bush, and Mike Pence are cousins – Search

There doesn’t seem to be any verified information indicating that George H. W. Bush and Mike Pence are cousins. While many U.S. political figures have distant familial connections, there is no evidence to support a direct familial relationship between these two12.

Misty Dawn @MiztDawnCO

Please, God, let @realDonaldTrump become POTUS again. I owe the IRS $11k for this year and $14k for last year, due to helping my young adult kids out. #EndtheFed, too!
🇺🇲 OMG Please let this happen 🇺🇲

Trump is asked if we can find a way to ELIMINATE Federal Taxes once America is back on its Feet

Trump says there is a Way to Eliminate Federal Income Taxes 

“There is a way….  In the old days when we were smart, in the 1890’s, this is when the country was relatively the richest it ever was.

  💓🤍💙 Merica, we’re taking it back. 

We had tariffs; we didn’t have income tax….”

WHAT has Trump been talking a lot about lately?

——— TARIFFS! ✍️💵💰💲

The original intent was for any Federal government to be entirely funded by tariff revenue.

Exactly! With tariffs… Congress will need to do their job of running the country on a budget, not a money printer machine that crushes the citizens more & more & more. They would be forced to bring America back to self-reliance of manufacturing our own products and creating more jobs.

The US received so much money in tariffs during the 19th century, there were no taxes. There was no need for taxes. But after WW1, America stopped the tariffs. But the Federal government needed money, so taxation on Americans began, replacing the tariff revenue. We need to return to the 19th century scenario.

Yaroslav the Wise @callsign_ratrod

The middle class would get killed it’s the same thing as a VAT tax on everything you buy i have lived in Europe it would end up costing you more, you people are clueless the price of everything goes up esp gas and the economy would collapse, gas would be mine 8 dollars a gallon, If a person making 30k a year and a person making 300k a year both need to buy at item that costs $5 but tariff adds $2 it’s worse for the person making 30K

image.png

As Gov. Waltz around his tax increases, Minnesota’s economy struggled. 

Did Tim Walz ‘let Minneapolis burn’ in 2020? Here’s what happened. – Search

The claim that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz “let Minneapolis burn” during the 2020 protests following George Floyd’s death is a bit of an oversimplification.

Here’s a breakdown of what happened:

  1. Protests and Riots: After George Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020, protests erupted in Minneapolis. Some of these protests turned violent, leading to significant property damage, including the burning of the 3rd Precinct police station1.
  2. National Guard Activation: Critics argue that Walz was slow to respond, particularly in activating the National Guard. He activated the Guard about three days after the initial unrest began2This delay has been a focal point of criticism, with some saying it contributed to the extent of the damage2.
  3. Response and Criticism: Walz has defended his actions, stating that the initial request from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey lacked the necessary details for a swift deployment. He emphasized the need for a clear plan before deploying the National Guard2.
  4. Tim Walz: Anatomy of a Fudd: Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz likes to talk about his bona fides when it comes to firearms, using that to push his liberal gun control agenda. This sort of behavior and focus on hunting specifically has led many in the gun community to refer to him as a “Fudd.” But what does it mean to be a Fudd – and does Governor Walz fit the bill?

In summary, while there was significant damage during the protests, the narrative that Walz “let Minneapolis burn” simplifies a complex situation involving coordination and response challenges during a rapidly evolving crisis.

Since the COVID-19 economic recovery began in the second quarter of 2020, Minnesota’s growth has lagged the national average by 5.5 percentage points. Taxes have been imposed for many Centuries, even before the US was even a country. You want to be responsible for the road in front of you? No military…because no one can work for free and feed a family? 

You think there are homeless and starving people now? 

How Ilhan Omar Won Over Hearts in Minnesota’s Fifth | The New Yorker

@SuzieQ_2023 on X: “@MJTruthUltra Uninstalling for all…in process https://t.co/uhZI1O5MUr” / X

Taxes are nothing more but a control mechanism.

This is why he will be fought and this has been fought for a long time. Still though, this must happen. Now is the time.

He didn’t pause either! Do you hear the enthusiasm in Trump’s voice when he says “There is a way, there is a way”. Almost like he’s been dying for someone to ask that particular question! Read his tone, body language, eyes.

Trump also said that he would pay off the debt in 8 years. he had 4 years and what happened? 

Every year his deficit was higher than the last, and literally a quarter of the entire US debt happened on his watch.

A tariff is a type of tax levied by a country on an imported good at the border.

Tariffs have historically been a tool for governments to collect revenues, but they are also a way for governments to try to protect domestic producers. Can you imagine how our economy would EXPLODE if this happened !?

if by “economy,” you mean “the current system where the bankers constantly steal from us,” then yes

It would infuse the economy with a ton of money, and demand would go through the roof.

Exactly. Just like the 1929 Great Depression.

I don’t think people realize what it was like for most workers before FDR addressed everything. Now to undo it all. Reagan allowed the rich to get richer while ignoring the workers once again. Clinton allowed Banks broader rein, etc. Chipping away. Personally, I don’t want 1890

You should have watched Fareeds’s CNN documentary Sunday night. It put America into a deep recession!It sounds like Fareed Zakaria’s documentary made quite an impact! Fareed Zakaria often tackles significant and complex issues in his specials. However, it’s important to note that a single documentary wouldn’t directly cause a recession. Economic downturns are typically the result of a combination of factors, including policy decisions, market conditions, and global events.

Learn more: 1cnn.com 2edition.cnn.com 3cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com

4cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com 5cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com

If Canada decided to put tariffs on US fruits and vegetables, what would happen? Most Canadians would stop buying American fruits and vegetables and would consume whatever is grown in Canada. You’d have a surplus and would need to FIRE workers … Trump’s favorite pastime …Quick History Lesson = Our government’s best revenue source, prior to Income Taxes, was sales taxes on liquor. 

When the Suffragettes wanted to abolish liquor & gain voting rights for women, the government told them, “You help us get the Income Tax Amendment passed & we will pass a law making liquor illegal.” So Prohibition brought Income Taxes along with the prohibition of alcohol. Then, in 1933, when they repealed Prohibition, the government continued collecting income taxes & started collecting sales taxes on alcohol again getting two huge revenue streams.

I think cutting taxes won’t be the sole factor to the attainable future, as it might just drive more demands and raise prices up even further. Getting rid of unnecessary regulations and wasteful spending are two key steps to lower costs of living, as it opens up more supplies of housing and other goods, along with the reduction of Gov debts caused by parasitic agencies and fail “projects”, the market will readjust itself as things become abundant and attainable.

Porter Stansberry’s Biggest Prediction Ever This shocking development in the energy sector could unleash trillions in new wealth for America… and make one little-known U.S. energy firm the next Exxon. 

Click Here to Get Porter Stansberry Free Report Today.

Even if everything you say were true, the alternative is far worse: A second Trump presidency could be transformative for the U.S. His focus on economic growth, job creation, and reducing bureaucratic red tape helped boost the economy during his first term.
Trump’s commitment to securing the nation’s borders and strengthening international alliances based on mutual respect—while holding adversaries accountable—reinforced America’s position on the global stage.
His emphasis on law and order, alongside a pro-business agenda, could reignite the economic momentum and security that many Americans are yearning for, making him a potential catalyst for renewed national strength.

image.png

‘Incredibly bad combination’: Columnist says Kamala Harris has 2 major problems | Watch

A Harris presidency would likely be a disaster due to her inconsistent track record and lack of clear leadership.She has frequently shifted positions on key issues throughout her political career, creating confusion and mistrust. Her tendency to prioritize political correctness over pragmatic solutions risks weakening America’s standing on the global stage and hindering domestic progress.
Harris has shown little capacity to handle complex crises, and her divisive rhetoric could further polarize the country. In times that demand strong, decisive leadership, her inexperience and indecisiveness could lead to chaos both at home and abroad.

Where, exactly, is our border open, and is there a welcome mat?

Who opened it and how? I ask because I’ll bet you don’t know.

Our border is no more open NOW than it has EVER been, False

So with crime up. And the future is green energy.
People are heavily vetted and must have a legally responsible American sponsor. They pay for their own flights and are granted temporary parole status for either 1 or 2 yrs. They are given working papers. The program is constantly monitored, and changes occur as needed.

When people refer to the U.S. border being “open,” they are often describing the perception of lax enforcement or policies that make it easier for people to cross illegally.

Here are some key points about how the border might be seen as “open”:

Surge in Illegal Crossings: In recent years, particularly since 2021, there has been a sharp increase in the number of migrants crossing the southern border illegally. This is seen as a sign that current policies are not as effective at deterring crossings as they once were.

Policy Changes: Several policies that were designed to control the border, like the “Remain in Mexico” policy (which required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims were processed), were reversed. Critics argue that this has encouraged more people to attempt to cross the border.

Catch and Release: In some cases, migrants who cross illegally are apprehended but then released into the U.S. while they wait for their asylum hearings. This is often criticized as creating a de facto “open” border since many people do not show up for their hearings.

Overwhelmed Border Patrol: Due to the sheer volume of migrants, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is often overwhelmed, which makes it difficult to enforce immigration laws effectively. When resources are stretched thin, some migrants manage to cross without being apprehended. While the border isn’t literally “open” (there are border agents, barriers, and checkpoints), these factors contribute to the perception that it’s not secure or effectively controlled.

It also sends a message the administration will be focused on appeasing the radical left.

Expect: Open Borders: Giving free medical, jobs, and other resources to illegal immigrants at the expense of Americans.

Green Energy: Enforcing extreme green energy policies leads to higher energy costs. Imposing excessive regulations, driving up prices, and Stifling economic growth. While enforcing extreme green energy policies, leading to higher energy costs.

Soft on Crime: Advocating lenient criminal justice reforms that undermine law enforcement and public safety.

Wealth Redistribution: Excessively redistributing wealth, discouraging innovation and hard work.

Tax Hikes: Raising taxes on individuals and businesses, reducing disposable income and competitiveness.

Healthcare Overhaul: Pushing for government-controlled healthcare, risking reduced quality and longer wait times.

Surviving Alaska: Down and Out in America;s Coldest City – Bing Videos

Nachamu  on X: “@EllCee14 @GOPIsrael When people refer to the U.S. border being “open,” they are often describing the perception of lax enforcement or policies that make it easier for people to cross illegally. Here are some key points about how the border might be seen as “open”: Surge in Illegal Crossings: In” / X

I believe that God has a purpose for all of us in life, and sometimes we may not even know what it is, but I’m certain that Donald J. Trump is destined by God to save our country from a total takeover by the Communist Democratic party. Donald Trump now has a 66 percent chance of victory  #TrumpVance2024

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

I fact checked ….USA TODAY 

Let’s talk about what tRump did in his time as POTUS shall we? 

Let’s talk about Trump’s LONG string of broken promises. He promised to build a wall. He did 52 miles out of 2,000. Much of it was replacement, not new. He promised to make Mexico pay. They didn’t. He promised to cut the deficit. He added $8T to it. He promised to unveil a new health care plan. It didn’t exist. 

He promised a middle-class tax cut. He cut taxes for the rich. The middle class is paying for it. He said COVID would just go away like magic. Hocus Pocus: it didn’t. He said he wouldn’t play golf as President. He made 250 visits to his own golf clubs. It cost taxpayers $136 million. He said he’d increase economic growth by 4%. He didn’t. President Biden did. And Trump is the first President to LOSE millions of jobs since Herbert Hoover. 

He promised an infrastructure plan. He had none. President Biden signed a massive one. He promised to hire “the best people.” He fired half of them, and then said they were the worst ever. He promised to bring down the price of prescription drugs. He didn’t: President Biden did. He promised to drain the swamp. He didn’t: He WAS the swamp. 

He promised to make America Great Again. He didn’t. 

If he did, it’d still be great. But he’s been campaigning on the same thing since 2015. This was only a partial list of broken promises. The American voters are smarter than to elect him again. At least I hope they are. No way in Hell this lying traitor gets my vote,,,,, Trump was fired in 2020 as a result of being able to get nothing done. Thank Trump for saving Obamacare, Anyone believe that?? Trump meltdown, or the ravings of dementia Trump.   ~USA TODAY (A Rag sheet full of Communist Propaganda).

So, I fact checked ….USA TODAY AND THEY ARE WRONG:

The Historic Results of President Donald J. Trump’s First Two Years in Office | The American Presidency Project Trump Administration Accomplishments – The White House | Trump’s Final Numbers – FactCheck.org | PolitiFact | How Donald Trump performed on 11 key promises.

Trump’s Biggest Accomplishments, Failures From His One-Term Presidency.

Side Note: In Trump’s first 3 years he added 3.1 Trillion Dollars to the U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time through World Peace and not giving our tax dollar out through foreign adversaries and Americans came first. Then the Democrat Virus enters into the United States, and they tack on $5 trillion in 2020 in stimulus waste. AND THE U.S. ECONOMY WENT TO HELL IN A HAND BASKET!

2020 stimulus payment amounts – Search

The 2020 PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) Stimulus Checks, part of the broader Economic Impact Payments under the CARES Act, were designed to provide financial relief to individuals and businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic1. However, there were concerns about “corporate freeloaders”—companies that took advantage of these relief measures without necessarily needing them.

Some large corporations received significant funds through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which was intended to help small businesses keep their workforce employed during the pandemic2Critics argued that some of these corporations had sufficient resources to weather the crisis without government aid, thus diverting funds from smaller businesses that were in dire need2.

The controversy highlighted the challenges in ensuring that relief efforts effectively targeted those most in need, and it sparked discussions about the oversight and distribution of such funds2.

Corporate freeloaders and the 2020 PPE Stimulus Checks – Search

Tracking PPP: Search Every Company Approved for Federal Loans – ProPublica

Learn more: 1home.treasury.gov 2jsri.msu.edu 3irs.gov

Good news for the GOP doesn’t come from the pages of USA Today.  

This election is not about choosing the most likeable person. We are voting between two vastly different ideologies. 

This is why I am voting for Trump. I’m voting for the First Amendment and freedom of speech. I’m voting for secure borders and LEGAL immigration. I am voting for election integrity to include mandatory voter ID. (Why would anyone vote against this?) I’m voting for the Second Amendment and my right to defend my life and my family.

I‘m voting for the police to be respected once again.

I am voting for law & order and an end to allowing protesters to trespass and burn our cities, destroying innocent small businesses. (hear that Tim Walz)

I am voting for personal responsibility and the end of the revolving door where criminals are being put back on the street. (hear that Kamala Harris). 

I’m voting for the continued appointment of Federal Judges who respect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I’m voting for the next Supreme Court Justice(s) to protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I’m voting for the Electoral College and for the Republic in which we live. . I’m voting for keeping our jobs to remain in America and not be outsourced all over the world – to China, Mexico and other foreign countries.

I’m voting for doing away with all of the freebies given to all of the illegals and not looking after the needs of the American citizens and homeless veterans. I’m voting for the military & the veterans who fought for this country. 

I’m voting for peace progress in the Middle East.

I am voting for the return of teaching math, history, and science instead of the indoctrination of our children into Communism.

I’m voting for 1A & 2A and Freedom of Religion.

I’m voting to keep men out of women’s sports. I’m voting to fight against human/child trafficking. I’m voting for America. I’m voting for Trump.

And most will be voting out the Democrats as Americans, especially in NC are tired of the America Last policies that left them with less money than there should have been and a horrible response from the clowns at FEMA.

Ragena WhiteThen answers one thing why so many people from NC are on TV and social media saying otherwise. It’s been reported by CNN that more than 60% of locals say FEMA response has not been good.

James WadeI don’t know where you got your information on TV, but I can only tell you what I have seen.  We have had over 500 landslides and over 100 bridges washed out (from local news).

We had no water, no electricity, and most had no cell service.

Getting to people for rescue and sending people supplies was extremely difficult especially in the first week. I have seen the local, state and federal governments pitching in along with churches, individuals and volunteers from out of state..  

All working together we have seen a tremendous response. Disinformation from social media and other sources, mistrust of the government, political spins and patience have been a problem.

FEMA had to suspend going door to door for 48 hrs. because of an armed threat. Some of the disinformation about FEMA was that they were stealing things, taking gas, their property and there was no FEMA money.

VIDEO: Capito Highlights Three Years of Failure from President Biden and his Administration

Biden was the de facto front-runner to secure the Democratic presidential nomination after launching his re-election campaign Tuesday. 

Some Americans touted the president’s successes, but others told Fox News they couldn’t think of a single accomplishment.

“Absolutely nothing,” Suzanne said.

Nancy said she’s “not very positive” toward Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I wish I could say something positive,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

BIDEN WANTS YOUR VOTE TO ‘FINISH THE JOB.’ REMEMBER WHAT HE’S PROMISING

But Kent said Biden’s greatest accomplishment was passing the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which, according to the White House, will create 2 million jobs per year over the course of a decade and will “rebuild our roads and bridges with a focus on climate change mitigation, resilience, equity, and safety for all users.” 

“That’ll help the country,” Kent said. 

Joe Biden recently launched his re-election campaign

Americans pointed to the Afghanistan withdrawal, record-high inflation and the border crisis as some of President Biden’s biggest failures while in office. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Aikee said she liked how the president has worked to protect abortion rights and eliminate some student loan debt. 

“The student loan debt, even though it’s in the Supreme Court right now, that really helps me and my daughter because we both have student loans,” she said. 

Biden’s approval rating hit an all-time low, 37%, this month, while 59% of U.S. adults disapproved of the president, a Gallop poll found. The president’s popularity is worse among younger voters, with 36% of 18- to 29-year-olds approving of his performance, according to an Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School poll released Monday.

People that Fox News spoke with pointed to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, decades-high inflation and the border crisis as some of the president’s biggest failures while in office.

Suzanne in nashville criticizes Biden

On President Biden’s failures, Suzanne said she couldn’t “name them all.

There’s just one thing after another.”  (Fox News)

“Closing down our energy production,” Peter said. “That’s what I think is the biggest failure, because that raised the cost of every single thing we do.” At the start of his presidency, Biden halted oil and natural gas leases on public lands in an effort to curb carbon emissions and revoked a permit for the Keystone Pipeline. 

One woman, Suzanne, said, “the border, inflation — I can’t name them all, there’s just one thing after another.” Kent, an Army veteran, said the Biden administration’s greatest failure was “when they brought the troops back from overseas.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

“They handled that wrong,” he said.

In 2021, Biden ordered the U.S. remove its military from Afghanistan after a 20-year-long war. A suicide bomber killed 13 American service members during the withdrawal’s chaos.

To watch the full video, click here.

Megan Myers reported from Baltimore; Isabelle McDonnell and Teny Sahakian reported from Nashville.

Democrats have shattered all the norms, Sean Duffy says | Watch

‘America Reports’ panelists Sean Duffy and Jessica Tarlov react to the Democrats’ ‘fascism’ claims against former President Trump.

Full interview: Vice President Kamala Harris sits down with Bret Baier in ‘Special Report’ exclusive | Fox News Video

White House asked why Biden hasn’t appeared with Kamala Harris on campaign trail more: ‘Stay tuned’ | Watch

FULL REMARKS: Jim Gaffigan Shows No Mercy To Democrats Or Republicans At 2024 Al Smith Dinner

IDEO: Capito Highlights Three Years of Failure from President Biden and his Administration

Pivotal battleground state North Carolina surpasses 1 million votes cast in the 2024 election

White House defends economic record after Biden blows $1.8 trillion hole in budget

7 key forces shaping the final days of the election: From the Politics Desk

There are ominous signs that Kamala Harris’ Blue Wall is collapsing

Jim Gaffigan at Al Smith Dinner – YouTube

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Trump works the drive-thru

LIVE: Donald Trump works at a McDonald’s on MAGA tour of Pennsylvania

TRUMP: “I’ve now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala” at McDonald’s

Trump works the drive-thru at Pennsylvania McDonald’s

by Brett Samuels 

Former President Trump on Sunday stepped behind the counter at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania, working the drive-thru for a short time after he spent weeks mocking Vice President Harris’s past experience at the fast-food chain.

Trump traded his suit jacket for an apron at a McDonald’s location in Bucks County. He worked the fry cooker and handed an order to customers at the drive-thru. The former president stopped at the fast-food chain ahead of a town hall in Lancaster, Pa., later Sunday. He is also expected to attend the Pittsburgh Steelers game against the New York Jets on Sunday night.

Trump has been fixated for weeks on Harris’s past experience working at McDonald’s in college. The Harris campaign launched an ad in August highlighting the vice president’s upbringing in an effort to appeal to middle-class voters.

The ad noted that Harris worked at McDonald’s while earning her college degree at Howard University. She had referenced the experience during past campaigns as well.

Trump and his allies have repeatedly suggested Harris did not actually work at McDonald’s because it was not listed on her resume. “I’ve now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala,” Trump quipped Sunday.

The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment about Trump’s McDonald’s visit. A campaign spokesperson highlighted an exchange on X in which Trump did not say he would support a minimum wage increase.

“Trump is nothing more than a sock pocket for billionaires when it comes to the policies that matter for working people’s bank accounts,” Joseph Costello posted on X.

Trump’s love of fast food is well known. The former president has been photographed eating McDonald’s on his campaign plane, and in 2019 he served college athletes visiting the White House McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King.

When Did Harris Say She Worked At Mcdonald’s?

Harris appeared to first mention a summer job at the fast-food chain in 2019 during her first presidential campaign. The New York Times reported that, at the time, she joined striking McDonald’s workers on a picket line in Las Vegas in support of a $15 minimum wage. “If we want to talk about those golden arches being a symbol of the best of America, well, the arches are falling short,” Harris reportedly said. Harris has also mentioned working at the company in this year’s general election, including in an interview with MSNBC.

Harris’ campaign told the Times she worked at a franchise on Central Avenue in Alameda, California, in 1983, the summer after she was a freshman at Howard University. They said she worked at a number of stations in the restaurant, including the french-fry machine, but have not provided much other information. Her campaign did not provide the Times with any friends or family members who could vouch for the claim that she worked there, but they did identify one of Harris’ friends from when she was a teenager who said “she recalled Ms. Harris having worked at McDonald’s around that time,” telling the paper Harris’ mother mentioned the summer job.

Where Did Trump’s Allegations Come From?

The allegation that Harris is lying about working at McDonalds started circulating after the conservative outlet The Washington Free Beacon published an article in August pointing out McDonald’s was not on a job application or resume, she submitted after graduating from college—though the job was for a law clerk position to which the McDonald’s experience may not have been applicable.

A conservative news website is getting thoroughly mocked on social media for attempting to gin up some controversy about Vice President Kamala Harris.

The Washington Free Beacon did a deep dive into Harris’ past work at McDonald’s that was breathlessly headlined, “‘I Did Fries’: Kamala Harris Claims She Worked at McDonald’s, but She Never Mentioned It Until She Ran for President. Did She Really Toil Beneath the Golden Arches?”

The Democratic presidential nominee has previously mentioned that she worked at McDonald’s after her freshman year in college to earn extra money.

She discussed the experience in an interview earlier this year with Drew Barrymore,  saying, “I did fries, and then I did the [cash register].”

Former President Bill Clinton mentioned Harris’ McDonald’s job during his speech at the Democratic National Convention, joking, “I will be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president, because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s.”

Harris formerly working at a fast food restaurant may make her relatable to Americans, so apparently, the Beacon wanted to ensure she was on the up-and-up. The article noted that Harris didn’t mention the Mickey D’s gig until a labor rally in June 2019, and it wasn’t mentioned in either of her memoirs.

However, what likely aroused suspicion for the Beacon reporters is that she left her job at Mickey D’s off her October 1987 job application for a law clerk position in the Alameda County district attorney’s office.

The Beacon notes that Harris did list several jobs in a section that asked for every position she had held in the last 10 years, but not McDonald’s. Snopes was also unable to verify Harris’ employment at McDonald’s. HuffPost also reached out to McDonald’s, which didn’t immediately respond.

A Harris campaign official said on background that the vice president worked at McDonald’s during the summer of 1983 in Alameda, California, where she handled register duties and manned the fry and ice cream machines.

But after Free Beacon editor Peter J. Hasson promoted the story on social media, many people expressed that the publication was grasping at straws to make Harris look bad.

The article did recognize Harris may have worked at McDonald’s, but said “the absence of that detail in public records and her campaign’s coyness and refusal to provide any further details raise questions about what is now a foundational narrative.”

WATCH: Trump disparages Harris as he visits a McDonald’s in swing state Pennsylvania. Donald Trump is pulling one of the most iconic American companies — McDonald’s — into the political arena in the final days of his third White House bid.

The former president stopped by one of the fast-food chain’s Pennsylvania franchises during his Sunday swing through the Keystone State, where he swapped his suit jacket for an apron to work as a fry attendant. He later handed customers food through the drive-thru window at the restaurant — which was closed for the event — telling them he had made it himself and that it was all on him.

Manning the fry machine is the same job Vice President Kamala Harris has said she held as a young woman, a biographical detail revealed during her first campaign for president. It has since become a centerpiece of the middle-class origin story she has made key to her pitch to voters as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.

Trump, whose deep affection for the Golden Arches and its offerings is well documented, has meanwhile grown fixated on Harris’ employment there. In interviews and on the campaign trail, he regularly accuses Harris – without evidence – of making up the factoid. His visit to the restaurant is his latest attempt to sow doubt about the Democrat’s work history.

“I’m looking for a job,” Trump said to the owner of the McDonald’s in Feasterville-Trevose on Sunday. “And I’ve always wanted to work at McDonald’s, but I never did. I’m running against somebody that said she did, but it turned out to be a totally phony story.”

Harris has largely ignored Trump, as well as calls from his supporters and inquiries from conservative news outlets to provide proof of her time there. Her campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment about Trump’s accusation and his upcoming visit to McDonald’s.

A campaign official told CNN that Harris worked at a McDonald’s in Alameda, California, during the summer of 1983 when she was still a student at Howard University in Washington. She worked the register and manned the fry and ice cream machines, according to the official.

On Drew Barrymore’s talk show earlier this year, Harris told the actor, “I did fries. And then I did the cashier.” And as a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris mentioned her work at the fast-food chain while joining striking McDonald’s workers on the picket line.

Her time there was repeatedly referenced onstage at this summer’s Democratic National Convention as her allies contrasted her upbringing with Trump’s upper-class roots. Former President Bill Clinton joked that Harris would “break my record as the president who has spent the most time at McDonald’s.” Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett asserted that “one candidate worked at McDonald’s,” while “the other was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”

“Can you simply picture Donald Trump working at a McDonald’s?” said Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. “He couldn’t run that damn McFlurry machine if it cost him anything.” Donald Trump works the fry station at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s 

21 States Have Shifted to Donald Trump in Past Month—Nate Silver Forecast

Former President Donald Trump used his McDonald’s visit to cast doubt on a part of Vice President Kamala Harris’ life story. © Win McNamee/Getty Images

  • Donald Trump visited a McDonald’s in a key Pennsylvania county on Sunday.
  • Kamala Harris said she once worked at a McDonald’s, which is a key part of her biography.
  • Trump repeatedly claimed, without evidence, Harris did not work at McDonald’s.

Former President Donald Trump has long been known for his love of the Golden Arches.

After landing at the Philadelphia International Airport on Sunday, Trump and his team traveled to a McDonald’s franchise in Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania, where he donned an official employee apron and began handing out orders to customers waiting in the drive-thru lane. He also helped cook the restaurant’s signature fries.

Trump’s visit, however, had little to do with his fondness for the food.

For weeks, Trump has attempted to sow doubt — without providing evidence — that Vice President Kamala Harris ever worked at McDonald’s, which has become a key part of her biography.

Harris said she worked the cash register and made fries during the summer of 1983. At the time, Harris was an undergraduate at Howard University, and her campaign says she worked at a McDonald’s on Central Avenue in Alameda, California, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The former president said in Detroit on Friday that Harris “lied about working at McDonald’s.”

Trump senior advisor Jason Miller also cast doubt on Harris’ McDonald’s employment on Saturday, telling reporters that Trump was going to the restaurant “so that one candidate in this race could have actually worked at McDonald’s.”

Trump needled Harris again on Sunday. While at the drive-thru window, he said he worked at McDonald’s for “15 minutes more than Kamala” and once again accused her of never having worked at the chain.

Trump briefly served as a McDonald’s fry cook during his visit. © Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images

Harris has firmly pushed back against Trump’s accusation.

“When Trump feels desperate, all he knows how to do is lie,” Harris campaign spokesman Ian Sams told Business Insider. “He can’t understand what it’s like to have a summer job because he was handed millions on a silver platter, only to blow it.”

The Harris campaign has promoted the vice president’s experience at McDonald’s as a part of a middle-class upbringing that might resonate with millions of Americans — and that separates her from the affluent life led by Trump.

Harris and Trump remain locked in a historically tight race. Trump has sought to promote his handling of the economy, an issue he used to his advantage when President Joe Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee.

But when Biden exited the race in July, and Harris became the nominee, she quickly went to battle with Trump on the economy and succeeded in eroding his once huge advantage on the issue in key swing states.

McDonald’s, which is headquartered in Chicago, is the world’s largest fast-food chain, with more than 40,000 locations. The chain plans to have 50,000 locations around the globe by the end of 2027, according to its company website.

McDonald’s is also a major employer.

In Pennsylvania alone, the company says its franchises employ over 25,000 people. In a statement provided to Business Insider on Sunday, the owner of the McDonald’s location that Trump visited said he was honored to “showcase” the restaurant chain.

“As a small, independent business owner, it is a fundamental value of my organization that we proudly open our doors to everyone who visits the Feasterville community. That’s why I accepted former President Trump’s request to observe the transformative working experience that 1 in 8 Americans have had: a job at McDonald’s,” Derek Giacomantonio said.

“As a former crew member, I can attest this job is more than burgers and fries, but a meaningful pathway to opportunity.” Trump’s appetite for McDonald’s — and other fast food chains — has been well documented.

After winning the requisite number of GOP delegates needed to secure the party’s 2016 presidential nomination, Trump was photographed eating a McDonald’s Big Mac on his private jet.

And in January 2019, Trump hosted the college championship-winning Clemson University football team at the White House, where he ordered an assortment of fast-food staples for the players from McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, and Domino’s Pizza.

It’s unclear why Trump has latched on to Harris’ McDonald’s employment or why a visit there was warranted during one of his few remaining weekends before Election Day. But in recent interviews, Trump has suggested that a small detail about his rival’s past shouldn’t be dismissed.

“We would say, well, that’s not a big lie. It’s a huge lie,” Trump said, “because McDonald’s was part of her whole thing.” Trump also visited a McDonald’s early in his presidential campaign, this one in East Palestine, Ohio, after a train carrying hazardous materials  derailed there, sparking an environmental and public health crisis. 

There, he joked to a woman working the register, “I know this menu better than you do. I probably know it better than anybody here.”

The former president has long stated his affinity for fast food.

During a 2016 CNN town hall, Trump, a self-described “very clean person,” attributed his preference for their offerings to the quality control, saying, “You’re better off going there than someplace you have no idea where the food is coming from.”

“I think the food is good. I think all of those places, Burger King, McDonald’s, I can live with,” he added. “The other night I had Kentucky Fried Chicken. Not the worst thing in the world.”

Trump brought that affection into the White House:

Where he once served Clemson’s national championship football team a smorgasbord of burgers and pizza. His son-in-law Jared Kushner quipped in his autobiography that he knew Trump had turned the corner in his battle with the coronavirus when he requested his favorite McDonald’s order.

“McDonald’s Big Mac, Filet-O-Fish, fries and a vanilla shake,” Kushner recounted.

In an appearance last week on Fox News, Donald Trump Jr. bemoaned that the network in its interview with Harris didn’t ask her which McDonald’s she worked at. He asserted that his father’s familiarity with the chain’s offerings would surpass the Democratic nominee. “I think my father knows the McDonald’s menu much better than Kamala Harris ever did,” Trump Jr. said. 

People often ask me which party I identify with, and I often answer that question

Libertarianism beliefs and principles
 A political philosophy that emphasizes individual liberty, minimal government 
foreign intervention, and the protection of personal freedoms

Libertarians envision a society where individuals are free to pursue their own paths, experiment with new ideas, and engage in commerce without undue interference from the state1. 

1. Here are some key beliefs and principles of libertarianism:

  1. Individual Liberty: Libertarians believe that individuals should have the freedom to make their own choices about their lives, bodies, and property, as long as they do not infringe on the rights of others1
  2. Minimal Government: The role of government should be limited to protecting individual rights, such as life, liberty, and property2. Libertarians advocate for a “night-watchman” state that provides  basic functions like defense, police, and courts, but otherwise minimizes its involvement in people’s lives3.
  3. Free Markets: Libertarians support free-market capitalism, where voluntary exchanges and  competition drive economic growth and innovation1. They believe that government intervention in the economy often leads to inefficiencies and distortions.
  4. Rule of Law: Libertarians emphasize the importance of the rule of law, where everyone is subject to the same laws, and those laws are applied consistently and fairly2.
  5. Spontaneous Order: Libertarians believe that order in society can emerge naturally from the voluntary interactions of individuals, rather than being imposed by a central authority2.
  6. Property Rights: Strong property rights are central to libertarian philosophy, as they are seen as essential for individual autonomy and economic freedom4.
  7. Non-Aggression Principle: This principle states that individuals should not initiate force or coercion  against others. It is a core tenet of libertarianism, emphasizing peaceful coexistence and voluntary cooperation4.

1www.libertarianism.org 2www.cato.org 3en.wikipedia.org 4iep.utm.edu

Libertarianism is a political philosophy that emphasizes individual liberty, minimal government intervention, and the protection of personal freedoms1. Here are some key beliefs and principles of libertarianism:

Does this align with your understanding of libertarianism?

And the views of Randal Howard Paul (born January 7, 1963) is an American politician serving as the junior United States senator from Kentucky since 2011.

A member of the Republican Party, he has described himself as a constitutional conservative and a supporter of the Tea Party movement. His libertarian views have been compared to those of his father, three-time presidential candidate and 12-term U.S. representative from Texas, Ron Paul.[1][2]

Paul attended Baylor University and is a graduate of the Duke University School of Medicine. He was a practicing ophthalmologist in Bowling Green, Kentucky, from 1993 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2010. He was re-elected to a second term in 2016 and won a third term in 2022.

Paul was a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. While he initially opposed Donald Trump during that year’s Republican primaries, he supported him following his nomination and became one of his top defenders in the Senate during his first impeachment trial,[3] though on key votes he aligned with Trump the third least among Republican senators during the Trump presidency.[4]

 Opinion: Trump’s MAGA base might want to brace themselves – Harris could win

LIVE: President Trump Hosts a Town Hall in Lancaster, PA – 10/20/24

Trump’s Full Rallys RSBN Archives – Search Videos

❤🇺🇸Trump2024🇺🇸❤

15 Reasons Smart People Often Seem So Quirky

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Ignoring Your Mental Health?

It’s not the fact you got knocked down 100 times. It’s the fact you’ve chosen to get back up 101 times. “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.” – Confucius

6 Ways Your Body Feels the Impact

July 21, 2023

It’s no secret that being proactive is the best way to stay healthy. Experts recommend a dental cleaning every six months, a yearly check-up with your doctor and regular screenings for certain cancers. But when did you last assess your mental health or take steps to improve it?

Meelie Bordoloi, MD

Meelie Bordoloi, MD

It’s easy to think of mental health as separate from physical health. But mental health significantly impacts your physical health, says MU Health care psychiatrist Dr. Meelie Bordoloi. You may be feeling the effects without realizing that stress, anxiety or depression is to blame.

Physical Reactions to Mental Health Issues

Over time, poor mental health can take a toll on your body and increase your risk for chronic conditions:

  • Anxiety increases the risk of arthritis, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and high blood pressure.
  • Depression heightens the risk of diabetes, heart disease and stroke.
  • Stress raises your risk for obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

But mental health doesn’t just affect your physical health “someday.” Mental health issues can immediately affect how you feel and how your body functions in many ways:

1. Increased cortisol levels

Cortisol is a hormone that regulates how your body reacts to stress — when you’re under stress, your adrenal glands release cortisol. But managing stress isn’t the only function of cortisol. It also helps to regulate:

  • Blood pressure
  • Blood sugar
  • Inflammation
  • Metabolism
  • Sleep

Chronic stress increases cortisol levels and impacts all these bodily functions. “High cortisol levels can lead to weight gain, increased blood sugar, skin changes, and various medical issues,” Dr. Bordoloi says, “especially if you’re not managing your stress well.”

2. Impaired executive function

People with depression often have unusually low activity in their prefrontal cortex — the area of the brain responsible for decision-making, problem-solving and working memory. These skills are collectively known as executive functions. You use these skills daily to work and learn.

Anxiety also impacts your executive function skills. It can cause you to overthink, making it hard to focus.

“These mental health issues may lead to poor work performance or failure to finish tasks,” Dr. Bordoloi says. “In children, it can manifest as defiance and not wanting to do schoolwork.”

3. Digestive distress

If you live with stress or anxiety, you might feel it in your gut. “Your gut health and mental health are closely connected,” Dr. Bordoloi says. “You need to pay attention to both.”

Your mental health influences your gut health by impacting your diet, causing inflammation and altering your hormone levels. These changes may impact the balance of bacteria in your gut, ultimately affecting how it functions.

4. Reduced energy and motivation

Chemical imbalances associated with depression can lower your desire to be active and productive. Dopamine and serotonin are “feel good” neurotransmitters that send signals throughout your body.

“When your levels of dopamine and serotonin are low, as happens with depression, you don’t have a feeling of well-being,” Dr. Bordoloi says. “That can lead to a lack of energy and interest in activities you previously enjoyed.”

Dopamine and serotonin also play an essential role in regulating your sleep. An imbalance can affect how much rest you get and how much energy you have the next day.

5. Pseudo symptoms

Stress and anxiety can cause physical symptoms that mimic the signs of severe physical disorders. These may include:

  • Heart palpitations that feel like a heart attack
  • Muscle spasms or paralysis when mental health issues disrupt signals from your brain
  • Psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES) that look like an epileptic seizure
  • Sensory disruption resulting in trouble with vision, hearing, smell, touch or taste
  • Trouble swallowing

“In many cases, we cannot know the true cause of the symptoms without testing,”

Dr. Bordoloi says. “These are all manifestations of stress and mental health disorders.

6. Sensitivity to future stressors

A period of chronic stress can impact your body forever. Your body’s normal stress reaction adapts to meet the needs of chronic stress. So even after you remove the stress from your life and improve your mental health, your body may remain sensitive to stress triggers.

“This change may not be noticeable until the next trigger pops up,” Dr. Bordoloi says.

“But when it does, your body may react strongly, even if it’s only a minor stressor.” 

Children and Mental Health

There is no physical difference in how children’s and adults’ bodies react to stress and mental health issues, Dr. Bordoloi says. But when adverse childhood experiences cause extreme stress, that child’s lifelong health can be impacted.

“When a child experiences stress like that at an early age, they may develop physical ailments, such as heart failure and high cholesterol, at a younger age than someone who hasn’t experienced extreme stress,” she says. “It can ultimately lead to a shortened lifespan.”

Even though the body’s physical reaction is the same, teens and children may not handle stress as well as adults.

“The frontal cortex is still not very developed, even in a teenager,” Dr. Bordoloi says. “When exposed to stress as an adult, you have more maturity and better decision-making capacity. You’ll react differently than a child without experience dealing with stress.”

Strategies for Managing Mental Health

Keeping yourself mentally healthy often involves proactively taking care of your mind and mood and knowing how to manage acute symptoms when they arise.

Stay mentally healthy

Making minor adjustments to your daily lifestyle can go a long way for mental health, according to Dr. Bordoloi. She recommends:

  • Eating a healthy diet consisting of unprocessed, whole foods
  • Exercising regularly to help regulate dopamine
  • Exposing yourself to sunlight for at least five minutes a day
  • Getting enough sleep (experts recommend seven to eight hours a night)
  • Keeping a routine, which is especially important for children and teens
  • Practicing mind-body exercises, including yoga, meditation, tai chi and Qigong

Manage acute stress or a panic attack

If you find yourself in a stressful situation or managing an anxiety attack, try:


Next Steps and Useful Resources

Want more mental health tips and tricks?

The impact of stress on the thyroid occurs by slowing your body’s metabolism. This is another way that stress and weight gain are linked. When thyroid function slows during stress, triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4) hormone levels fall. Also, the conversion of T4 hormone to T3 may not occur, leading to higher level of reverse T3.

Case-control and population-based studies provide conflicting results regarding the association between thyroid hormones and cancer. However, a large body of evidence suggests that subclinical and clinical hyperthyroidism increase the risk of several solid malignancies while hypothyroidism may also reduce aggressiveness or delay the onset of cancer.

Thyroid Hormones and Cancer: A Comprehensive Review of Preclinical and Clinical Studies – PMC | Coping with Cancer | Surviving Cancer | Stanford Medicine

Patients respond in different ways to their diagnoses, the initial medical workup,
subsequent test results, and the implications of all that is happening to them.
Many patients respond by…LOVING LIFE AND NOT FEARING DEATH!!

Healing Mind, Body and Spirit – Search Videos

The University of Dayton (UD) community has shown incredible support for Ben Lavelle, a redshirt freshman punter who is battling Stage 2 testicular cancer1. | PressReader.com – Digital Newspaper

Despite his diagnosis, Ben has remained connected with his team and studies, thanks to the extraordinary efforts of his professors and the UD community.  His professors have gone above and beyond, with some even providing remote classes and personal support1.

Ben’s unexpected return to the practice field before a game against Davidson was met with a hero’s welcome from his teammates1His story is a testament to strength and solidarity of the UD community, which has rallied around him and his family during this challenging time1.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Cheating Breaks Trends

What voters in close suburb that broke for Biden are saying about 2024

In critical states Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, voters share mixed feelings about a deadlocked presidential race.   © (Jeffrey Phelps / Associated Press)

I spent 3 days in the ‘blue wall’ states.

Here’s what voters told me

Story by Noah Bierman

It’s hard to believe after the Fox News interviews, the daily barrage of screaming ads and all the history on these two candidates that anyone would be left undecided with less than three weeks until election day.

Yet there they were, surprisingly easy to find, drinking lattes at a strip mall Starbucks, browsing magazines at Barnes & Noble and eating eggs with their spouses at a pancake restaurant. Some were leaning toward former President Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris but were waiting on family meetings or a final round of online research. Others were hoping for inspiration on the drive to the precinct on Nov. 5.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris hugs a child after speaking during a campaign event at Washington Crossing Historic Park, in Washington Crossing, Pa., Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. © (Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press) 

I spent three packed days last week in three industrial states that have proven critical in deciding the presidency during the Trump era — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — on and off the campaign trail with Harris, talking to voters along the way.

Polls show the race a dead heat in the three so-called “blue wall” states, along with the four other battlegrounds, with about 5% of voters undecided. But it’s difficult for broad surveys to capture the complexities and contradictions that run through voters’ minds as they process an unprecedented election that involves a candidate who tried to overturn his 2020 election loss and would be the first president in history with multiple indictments and felony convictions. 

I found Democrats battling insomnia and altering travel plans, Republicans who were friendly to a reporter but suspicious of the mainstream media and an overriding sense of disillusionment.

“Both of them are not good,” said Amgad Fram, a 61-year-old engineer from a Detroit suburb called Novi who was meeting for coffee with a friend.

Amgad Fram, of Detroit, remains undecided in the last three weeks of the campaign but is leaning 60-40 toward voting for Trump. © (Noah Bierman / Los Angeles Times)

He started the conversation saying he would vote for Trump for the third time because he’s going to “stop the flood of people coming to this country,” Fram said “You know, I shouldn’t be saying that, because I am a foreigner,” who moved from Jordan in 1981.

He is angry about a recent break-in at his brother’s mansion by Ecuadorian migrants here illegally, he said. And he pointed to sky-high unemployment in Jordan, which has one of the world’s highest refugee populations, as a cautionary tale.

But the conversation flipped when he began discussing Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 election and his increasingly authoritarian rhetoric.

“I don’t really like that,” Fram said. “The reason we first immigrated to this country was to be free and to get rid of those dictators.”

He put his current odds of supporting Trump at 60% and said it would depend on a meeting with his large family.

The more committed Republicans I spoke with tended to dismiss those aspects of Trump’s rhetoric, blaming the media for a double standard and accusing prosecutors of pushing a political agenda.

Donald Trump arrives to speak at a meeting of the Detroit Economic Club on Thursday in Detroit. © (Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)

“You kind of dance with the devil you know,” said Yves Francois, a 55-year-old salesman from Hartland, Mich., who was eating a fast-casual Middle Eastern lunch with his friend in Oakland County, just outside of Detroit. “Do I have a problem with that? I don’t know,” he said of the criminal charges and convictions. “The timing of it seems pretty crazy when these are things that could have happened four, five, six, seven years ago and you just now bring them to light.”  

He was curious whether I would ask similar questions challenging Harris supporters but said he did not mind and wished we could all have a more civil dialogue. To him, Trump’s statements alarm people and then we “take our eyes off of the stuff that’s really obvious” with the economy and the broken immigration system.

The Harris campaign is spending the closing weeks begging voters to keep their eyes on Trump’s threats to use the military against his political enemies, his attempts to overturn the last election that resulted in the Jan. 6 insurrection and the range of former high-ranking members of his national security staff who have warned that he is a threat to democracy. They are frustrated that Americans are giving his presidency a much higher approval rating in retrospect than they did when he was in office.

“We barely survived,” said Olivia Troye, a former national security official in the Trump administration who praised the actions of her former boss, Vice President Mike Pence, and others who pushed back against Trump.

Troye spoke with me on a vivid fall day in Washington Crossing, Pa., a historic park along the Delaware River, after appearing on stage with Harris and other Republicans who warned about Trump.

Olivia Troye speaks at a Kamala Harris campaign event Wednesday in Washington Crossing, Pa.  © (Matt Slocum / Associated Press)

“When he starts talking about using the military against people, or law enforcement, I think we should take that very seriously because those discussions were had in the White House where he actually talked about shooting Americans,” Troye continued. “I was there for those. I witnessed that. No president should ever talk about shooting his own people.”

That’s scaring committed Democrats like Claudia Seldon, a retired rehab nurse who was having her Wednesday coffee meet-up with friends in a downtown Detroit cafe earlier in the day.

“I’m worried if he does win, what’s gonna happen and if he doesn’t win, what’s gonna happen,” said Seldon, who plans to leave early this year for her winter home in Nevada to avoid traveling during potential election related turmoil.

Her friends Heather Hamilton and Joan Nagrant were counting absentee ballots in 2020 at the convention center when crowds tried to interrupt the process, a foreshadowing of Jan. 6. They were sequestered but remain nervous about returning for the job this year.

Heather Hamilton, Claudia Seldon and Joan Nagrant talked about their election plans over coffee in downtown Detroit.  © (Noah Bierman / Los Angeles Times)

Many voters are seeing Harris’ ads with Troye and others running in battleground states. But some just hear political noise. The fliers that come through the mail slot accumulate but go unread. These voters manage to avoid news about the two candidates racing back and forth through their states on a near weekly basis.

“It’s less about us and more about them,” said Daniel Santos, a 36-year-old water company employee from Racine, Wis., who voted for former President Obama and Trump and has yet to make up his mind this time.

▶️  Related video: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan governors hit road to deliver ‘blue wall’ states to Kamala Harris (The Canadian Press) – Search

Daniel Santos, 36, who works for a water company in Racine, Wis., is undecided in the presidential race.   © (Noah Bierman / Los Angeles Times)

“I will vote,” said Ana Gallo, a 36-year-old warehouse worker who was putting up Halloween decorations in front of her small house in Racine. “I gotta sit down and think about it and read a little bit about what’s going on.”

A U.S. citizen from Mexico, she has been working on her husband’s legal status for more than a decade. That will weigh heavily on her vote, as will the economy. Trump says a lot of “over the top” things but she didn’t think he governed that way when he was in office, she said. She’s still learning about Harris.

Regina Gallacher, a 58-year-old physical therapist from Rochester Hills, Mich., said she is looking for a third party candidate because Trump “really scares me” but and she doesn’t “get warm fuzzies” when she hears Harris talk and found her replacement of President Biden on the ballot “very slimy.”

Her husband, a union Democrat, is voting for Trump for the first time but they don’t talk about it at home because Gallacher, who grows repulsed when Trump appears on television, would rather avoid a heated conversation with her husband, who is unlikely to change his mind. If she has to choose between the two, it will be Harris, she said. But she is unsure.

“We’ll get through it” if Trump wins, she said. “I just won’t be happy about it.”

Regina Gallacher, a 58-year-old physical therapist from Rochester Hills, Mich., said she is looking for a third party candidate.  © (Noah Bierman / Los Angeles Times)

Just when the divisions seemed bleakest, I ran into Jim Kusters, a retiree and Trump supporter who was sitting for breakfast in Mt. Pleasant, Wis., with his two friends: a Harris voter and a former supporter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who would not say who will now get his vote.

Kusters said his biggest problem was media bias. But it didn’t stop him from talking to a reporter or bantering with his friends. It wasn’t personal for any of them. Between taking shots at the candidates, they told stories about their families.

“We go back and forth all the time,” Kusters said.

Like just about everyone I met, they are ready for the campaign to end.

“Trump is obviously insane, and then Harris, I don’t think she has a plan,” said Clayton Ewing, a 63-year-old retiree from Shelby Township, Mich. who has voted for Trump in prior elections. Ewing said he may wait until he gets to the polls to make a final decision.

“I just hope whoever gets in, does a good job,” he said.

“We can go four years down the road and get some new characters.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

That sounds interesting! The “blue wall” states typically refer to Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which have historically voted for Democratic candidates in presidential elections1.

What did you do during your visit?

Any memorable experiences or places you enjoyed?

Learn more 1en.wikipedia.org 2abcnews.go.com 3msn.com

4msn.com 5apnews.com 6thehill.com

The Democratic governors of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan are actively campaigning to support Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid. They are touring their states to energize voters and emphasize the importance of these key “blue wall” states in the upcoming election12.

Don’t Believe The Communist Democrats (Obama’s Propaganda.) Would you like to know more about their campaign efforts or the upcoming election?

The ignorance of the left continues to amaze me.

Why would you talk about something you know nothing about. At least educate yourself so you have accurate talking points. The left just regurgitates everything the media says. These people are living a life of lies…..Ones that could land them in a communist nation.

If this happens, they will learn what hardship means. The problem is they’ve been given so much that they have no idea how much they have to lose. It’s going to be a very sad day if dancing the Harris Waltz gets into office. People are going to have a stark, fast, and cruel education on what it means to live in that kind of country. 

Learn more 1apnews.com 2abcnews.go.com 3nationalpost.com 4newsroom.ap.org

Where Did All The Bellwether Counties Go?

By Ryan Matsumoto

Graphics by Elena Mejía

Filed under 2020 Election

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY EMILY SCHERER / GETTY IMAGES

From 1980 to 2016, 19 counties voted for the winner of the presidential election every single time. The most impressive of those was Valencia County, New Mexico, which voted for the victor in every presidential election from 1952 to 2016.

But in 2020, 18 of these 19 “bellwether counties” voted for former President Donald Trump. Just one — Clallam County, Washington — voted for President Joe Biden. 

The Trump era made us rethink a lot about politics and elections in America, including the counties that are useful barometers of the national political environment. And like so many electoral trends, demographics play a major role in explaining why these once-bellwether counties finally missed the mark in 2020.

[Even Though Biden Won, Republicans Enjoyed The Largest Electoral College Edge In 70 Years. Will That Last?]

These former bellwether counties are much whiter and less college-educated than the country as a whole. For instance, Washington County, Maine — the median bellwether county  in terms of its share that’s non-Hispanic white — is 89 percent non-Hispanic white, which is much higher than the overall U.S. population that identifies as such (60 percent). It is also not as educated: Just 22 percent of adults 25 or older have a bachelor’s degree or higher, which is substantially lower than the 32 percent who have a college degree nationwide.

White voters without a college degree used to vote more like the country as a whole, which helps explain why these counties maintained their bellwether status for a long time. From 1980 to 2012, for instance, these bellwether counties consistently voted within a few points of the national popular vote. They were particularly representative in 2012, when the average 1980-to-2016 bellwether county was just 0.8 points more Democratic than the nation. But that changed in 2016 when Trump made huge gains with white voters without a college degree. As such, the margins in bellwether counties became substantially more Republican even as the country only became a little more Republican, as you can see in the chart below.

Arguably, it was 2016 — and not 2020 — when bellwether counties first showed signs of falling by the wayside, given their dramatic swing to the right in that election. A total of 35 counties voted for the winner of each presidential election from 1980 through 2012. Nineteen of these counties continued their streak in 2016 by voting for Trump, but the remaining 16 counties ended their bellwether streak by voting for Hillary Clinton. 

In other words, only 54 percent of bellwether counties from 1980 to 2012 kept their status in 2016. And notably, the 16 counties that lost their bellwether status in 2016 are more racially diverse (median of 46 percent non-Hispanic white, compared to 89 percent) and more highly educated (median of 27 percent of adults 25 or older with a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 22 percent) than the 19 counties that maintained their bellwether status.

[The Frost Belt & Sun Belt Illustrate The Complexity Of America’s Urban-Rural Divide]

That Trump did so well in the remaining 19 bellwether counties in 2020 should come as no surprise, then. Trump remained very strong with white voters without a college degree in 2020, helping him win Iowa and Ohio by comfortable margins and remain competitive in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. 

In total, Trump won 18 of the 19 former bellwether counties, winning the average such county by 13.7 points in 2020. And as was true in 2016, those counties voted substantially to the right of the nation.

In fact, they became even more Republican — the average bellwether county from 1980 to 2016 voted 18.2 points to the right of the nation. Ultimately, of course, Trump’s strong performance in these counties didn’t matter because of Biden’s gains in the more highly educated suburbs of Milwaukee, Grand Rapids and Philadelphia.

But it’s not just demographic trends driving the loss of bellwether status. Increased political polarization is another reason why fewer counties are consistently indicative of presidential results in recent years. In fact, according to David Wasserman of The Cook Political Report, just 303 counties were decided by single-digit margins in 2016, compared to 1,096 counties that fit that description in 1992. The fact that there are fewer swing counties means that there are fewer potential bellwether counties.

[How Much Did COVID-19 Affect The 2020 Election?]

In the end, only Clallam County retained its streak this year. However, its bellwether status is by no means guaranteed in future elections. As we’ve seen in the past two presidential elections, bellwether streaks can suddenly end thanks to America’s continually evolving political and demographic trends. Moving forward, it is entirely possible that there will be no single county that consistently indicates the results of a national election.

The United States is composed of 3,143 counties or county equivalents. Of them, Clallam County, in northwest Washington, has the longest record of always voting for the winning presidential candidate.

Since 1980, Clallam County has voted in every presidential election for the candidate that would go on to win the White House. Since 1920, it has only voted for the losing candidate in 1968 and 1976. Political scientists have a term for counties or states that anticipate how the rest of the country will vote—bellwethers.

Before the 2020 election, Clallam was one of 19 counties with an unbroken record of voting for the winning presidential candidate since 1980.

Those counties were:

  1. Warren County, Ill.
  2. Vigo County, Ind.
  3. Bremer County, Iowa
  4. Washington County, Maine
  5. Shiawassee County, Mich.
  6. Van Buren County, Mich.
  7. Hidalgo County, N.M.
  8. Valencia County, N.M.
  9. Cortland County, N.Y.
  10. Otsego County, N.Y.
  11. Ottawa County, Ohio
  12. Wood County, Ohio
  13. Essex County, Vt.
  14. Westmoreland County, Va.
  15.  Clallam County Wash.
  16. Juneau County, Wis.
  17. Marquette County, Wis.
  18. Richland County, Wis.
  19. Sawyer County, Wis.

Until the 2020 election, Valencia County, N.M., held the record for the longest streak of selecting the winning presidential candidate, going back to 1952. ALSO, Vigo County, Ind. began selecting the winning presidential candidate in 1956. Ottawa County, Ohio, Westmoreland County, Va., Juneau County, Wis., and Sawyer County, Wis., started their streak in 1964.

Clallam County is holding municipal elections in its three cities—Port Angeles, Sequim, and Forks—in 2021. Twenty-six offices are up for election in those cities.

The 19 pivot counties across America to correctly pick the president every time over the past 10 election cycles, A recent history of presidential election bellwether counties

By Samuel Wonacott

The concept of “pivot counties” refers to counties that have consistently voted for 

the winning presidential candidate over multiple election cycles. While I couldn’t find a specific list of 19 pivot counties that have correctly picked the president every time over the past 10 election cycles, there are several well-known swing counties that have played a crucial role in recent elections.

These counties often reflect broader national trends and can be key indicators 

of the overall election outcome. 

Some notable examples include:

  • Maricopa County, Arizona
  • Miami-Dade County, Florida
  • Macomb County, Michigan
  • Bucks County, Pennsylvania
  • Waukesha County, Wisconsin

These counties have been closely watched in recent elections due to their potential to swing either way.

 If you’re interested in more detailed information, you might 

want to check out resources like 270toWin or FiveThirtyEight.

Additional reading:

Pivot Counties: The counties that voted Obama-Obama-Trump from 2008-2016 – Ballotpedia

Election results, 2020: Pivot Counties in the 2020 presidential election – Ballotpedia

Donald Trump’s Chances of Winning Popular Vote, According to Odds, Polls

Biden voters are flocking to Donald Trump and it’s because of the economy

Climate Science, Risk and Solutions: The MIT Climate Primer | Watch

16 Things Smart People Naturally Do Without Saying a Word

Brain Exercises to Train Your Cognitive Abilities

Why Are Some People Left-Handed? | Watch

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Raven ‘Nevermore’

US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris smiles during a presidential debate with former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2024. Historian Allan Lichtman has said polls may be underestimating Democratic voting strength. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images 

US Election ‘Nostradamus’ says Polls Underestimating Kamala Harris Support

US Election ‘Nostradamus’ Hits Back at Criticism of His Predictions (msn.com)

Story by Joe Edwards

The raven is a symbol of intelligence, wisdom, prophecy, and the unknown123

It is a symbol of death, loss, and grief 3 4 5In the “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, the raven represents the speaker’s unending grief over the loss of Lenore, and his inability to escape his fate 4 5The raven also contrasts with the bust of Pallas, a symbol of reason and logic, in the speaker’s chamber, a symbol of his isolation and despair 5.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris engaged in a combative first interview with Fox News on Wednesday, sparring on immigration policy and shifting policy positions while asserting that if elected, she would not represent a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.

Harris’ interview with Fox’s Bret Baier marked her first foray onto the network, which is popular with conservative viewers, as she looked to broaden her outreach to GOP-leaning voters with less than three weeks until Election Day. Her nearly-30-minute sit-down with Baier repeatedly grew heated, with the two talking over each other, as he pressed her on immigration and her changing policy stances since her first run for president in 2020. 

 60 Minute Interview – Videos

Kamala Harris Sits Down with Bret Baier in Exclusive interview (youtube.com)

4 takeaways from Harris’s interview on Fox News (msn.com)

Watch the explosive exclusive interview where Fox News’ Bret Baier puts Kamala Harris on the hot seat! The Vice President squirms under pressure as Baier grills her on the toughest issues facing the nation. From border control to economic policy, no topic is off-limits in this shocking exchange. You won’t want to miss this rare glimpse into the VP’s unfiltered thoughts and reactions. Tune in for the full, unedited conversation that’s got everyone talking!

Her nearly-30 minute sitdown with Baier repeatedly grew heated, with the two talking over each other, as he pressed her on immigration and her changing policy stances since her first run for president in 2020. When Baier kept talking as Harris tried to respond to his challenges on immigration, Harris told him, “May I please finish. … You have to let me finish please.”  

Harris tried repeatedly to pivot the conversation to attacking Donald Trump. 

But she also had plenty to say about herself. A week after saying she couldn’t think of any move made by Biden that she would have done differently, Harris asserted that “My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.” 

Harris did not offer specifics, but said, “Like every new president that comes into office, I will bring my life experiences, and my professional experiences and fresh and new ideas.”  Asked to clarify her assertion that she wants to “turn the page,” though Democrats currently hold the White House, Harris said she is running on “turning the page from the last decade in which we have been burdened with the kind of rhetoric coming from Donald Trump.”

On immigration, Harris expressed regret over the deaths of women who were killed by people who were detained and then released after crossing into the U.S. illegally during the Biden administration, but she criticized Trump for his role in blocking a bipartisan immigration bill earlier this year that would have boosted border funding.

“I am so sorry for her loss, sincerely,” Harris said after Baier played footage of the mother of Jocelyn Nungaray blaming Biden and Harris for her daughter’s death. Harris indicated she no longer supports decriminalizing crossing the border illegally, as she did in 2019.

“That was five years ago and I am very clear that I will follow the law,” she said. She gave the same answer about proposals to allow those in the U.S. illegally to get driver’s licenses and subsidized healthcare. Of Trump, she said, “People are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader and who spends full time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances.” She added, “He’s not stable.”

She also sought to focus Fox viewers on Trump’s talk of “the enemy within” and threats to punish political rivals.Baier challenged Harris over her attestations to Biden’s mental stamina after his disastrous debate with Trump in June that forced his exit from the 2024 presidential race and her elevation to the top of the ticket.

She again defended Biden, but added, “Joe Biden is not on the ballot and Donald Trump is.” Trump’s campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Harris was “angry, defensive, and once again abdicated any responsibility for the problems Americans are facing.” She added that if “Kamala can’t handle the pressure of an interview with Fox News—she certainly can’t handle the pressure of being president of the United States.”

Pushing back against Baier’s line of questioning at times, Harris at one point told her interviewer, “I would like it if we could have a conversation that is grounded in a full assessment of the facts.”

PolitiFact | Live fact-checking Kamala Harris’ interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier

Kamala Harris Says She Won’t Be ‘A Continuation’ Of Joe Biden In Combative Fox News Interview (msn.com) 

Harris’ interview with Fox News is marked by testy exchanges over immigration and more (msn.com)

Kamala Harris ‘didn’t have answers’ for many questions put to her in Fox interview (youtube.com)

Democrats See 103 Percent Increase in Pennsylvania Voters Leaving the Party (msn.com)

Victor Davis Hanson: Trump will beat radical Kamala Harris – YouTube

Kamala Harris held to account over southern border (youtube.com)

Presidential historian Allan Lichtman has suggested that polling is underestimating support for the Democratic Party and Vice President Kamala Harris. Replying to a question during one of his regular YouTube livestreams on whether reports that the Democratic Party was pulling ahead in terms of mail-in voting in some states (such as Pennsylvania, a key swing state) could be a sign they could win them, Lichtman said: 

“I can’t say it proves that states would be blue, but it’s certainly a sign that it’s likely that these states would be blue,” the American University professor said. “The polls in 2016 underestimated Republican voting strength. It’s my view based on what I saw from 2022-2024 that the polls are now underestimating Democratic voting strength.”

According to FiveThirtyEight, just 2.4 points separate the candidates as of Wednesday morning. “As we saw in the special election for the congressional seat in New York held by the disgraced George Santos, the Democrat outperformed the poll right before the election by seven points.”

Santos, a former Republican representative, pleaded guilty to two charges relating to campaign fraud in August. He represented the Third Congressional District of New York. Following a special election for his seat, he was replaced by Democratic Representative Tom Suozzi, who had previously held the seat.

Lichtman added: “Even if the polls are off by a point or two, the Democrats are going to do a point or two better than the polls—they will sweep Pennsylvania.” The latest aggregation of national polls currently show Harris narrowly leading the former president in the race for the White House.

Lichtman has earned the moniker “Nostradamus” for his impressive track record predicting the outcome of presidential elections using his model—”The Keys to the White House”—though the system is not without its critics. Lichtman has already predicted that Harris will win the 2024 presidential election, based on this model.

His system hinges on 13 keys, which evaluate the standing of the incumbent party based on a variety of factors, including the economy, foreign policy and domestic politics, including social unrest, major scandals and the presence of a major third-party candidate. If six or more of the 13 keys—all true/false statements—are false, the incumbent party is predicted to lose the election. 

Should five or fewer be false, it is expected to win.

The 13 keys, as set out by the historian in a 2012 article for the Social Education journal, are these:

  1. Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
  2. No primary contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
  3. Incumbent seeking reelection: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
  4. No third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
  5. Strong short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
  6. Strong long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
  7. Major policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
  8. No social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
  9. No scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
  10. No foreign or military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
  11. Major foreign or military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
  12. Charismatic incumbent: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
  13. Uncharismatic challenger: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

And Kamala is an accessory to the biggest lie told to the world.  Remember?  The one where they all told us Joe was at the top of the game and everyone else was wrong.  She was also appointed with no votes from constituents.

 I can’t believe Trump tried to overthrow our government by flooding our nation with millions and millions of illegals to change the electoral votes per state as well as provide amnesty and a pathway to citizenship so they can all vote for their saviors, all while we pay to support them. Then after bringing in all the illegals, he’s supporting states making Voter ID illegal! Can you believe it?

 I’m still mad at him about that! More Democrat Lies!! 🤔🤣

Don’t fall for the propaganda from the overtly biased media.

Verifiable facts: support for Harris in national polls fell to single digits before she dropped out of the 2020 race. Her approval rating as vice president was 28%, a HISTORIC LOW for any modern vice president. After democrats could no longer pretend to support Biden, they now embrace Harris after they previously rejected her and had no say in her recent nomination.

Democrats love to say Trump is a threat to democracy. But they are apparently OK with their party’s leaders not allowing voters to choose their own candidate. These people somehow managed to live through Trump’s first term (and probably enjoyed the prosperity of those years), and now believe that THIS time he will surely destroy democracy!

The United States suffered the embarrassment of having a puppet president for the last four years. We can’t allow another one with Harris. She has hidden voters. Kind of similar to what happened with Trump in 2016, but with opposite results. Many supporters (especially men) are laying low. But they’re going to vote. On top of this, Harris is underestimated as a fighter. She was raised by a determined and intelligent mom who taught her to fight like hell. “I love a good fight,” Kamala said last week with a capable grin…Oh baby, baby we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

She is a political chameleon and she cackles afterwards like a psycho? . One need only examine her answers on various political issues in response to a 2019 ACLU questionnaire to the DNC’s presidential candidates. She has virtually turned a 180 on every single one of those answers. Why? Because it is no longer politically expedient or tenable.

She will say anything and do anything to be installed as president. But make no mistake about it, she is a mere empty suit, an avatar, who is not truly in control. Biden being forced into “retirement” within 48 hours after publicly declaring he would not budge, shows you that the true power lies outside the Oval Office, at least with DNC elected officials.

I’m not a believer in Lichtman’s “model”, per se.  But he is a good analyst and, with the polling adjustments made this year to counter the Trump undercounts of 20 and 16…plus the Harris ground game, with the voter registration and early voting numbers coming in, there are definitely silent blocks favoring Harris this go-round that could end up making Trumpers, who are convinced Trump is winning, feel like normal people felt after the election of 2016.

Trump is now the favorite amongst the professional oddsmakers.

In addition to their aggregate of pollsters, Real Clear Politics runs an aggregate of seven of the top odds makers as well. Their model had the oddsmakers preferring Harris +8.8 back on 8/15. As of this afternoon the model has Trump +16.4. A +25.2 swing for Trump in two months. He’s surging and Harris has three weeks to turn it around. Do oddsmakers get it wrong sometimes? 

Yes. Are they right more often than not? Absolutely.

It is true that in the Trump era polls have so far underestimated his support which should concern people who care about retaining our democracy.  However, due to a number of factors unique in this election, I believe they are underestimating Harris’s support. 

In particular, the unusually high numbers of undecided Republicans and African American voters.  Those are two constituencies that generally “come home” to their party in large numbers. The difference this year is the number of undecided Republicans is unusually high. 

My bet is because they can’t bring themselves to vote for Trump. 

Many of them are likely to stay home or even vote for Harris. On the other hand, it is not unusual to have a large number of black voter’s undecided at this point and they usually come home.  There is little reason to suggest that will not happen in this election especially with the existential threat posed by electing Trump again. 

Odds makers absolutely are the best source for predicting an outcome as math is the only objective foundation, and opinion and bias does not serve as a handicapper.  In fact, it costs them.  We can tell from Harris’s scrambling and Obama’s lecturing they don’t like what they’re seeing.

What is wrong with Lichtman?  Is he so damn egotist about his keys that he can’t stand the thought they are wrong and hence HE is wrong?  He was supporting Biden early on and even as Biden’s polls dropped beyond hope Lichtman’s model kept saying he should win.  And that tells you his model and theory only happens to have been working for many years as its missing data (it can’t account for incompetent candidates)!  

For example he keeps claiming the economic figure he uses is godly and the fact people are still underwater compared to the 23% inflation over the Biden years (total inflation) doesn’t matter.  And that inflation and how people still feel it in their wallets every day is playing a big part into perceptions driving the election.   And he simply refuses to look into this despite inflation of this level not having an effect on any elections since the Carter years.  He just refuses to adjust like any scientist would, taking their theory and model and when results do not predict out, you change it (scientific method).  And that shows he is more charlatan and showman than science related.

I don’t know about this one.  I know, in 2016, they certainly underestimated the support for Trump.  This was partially a result of Trump’s supporters’ mistrust of polling services leading to fewer respondents than would normally be expected.  Since Trump’s followers are no less wary of pollsters now (likely more so), I don’t see why the results would be skewed the other direction this time.

The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was the culmination of months of false claims about election fraud, including a litany recited by then-President Donald Trump in a speech shortly before a mob stormed the building, temporarily halting the counting of electoral votes in a joint session of Congress1To provide new clarity on the events of that day, EpochTV and The Epoch Times have produced a documentary, “The Real Story of January 6,” which takes a close look at the shooting of 35-year-old Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt and the deaths of three other supporters of former President Donald J. Trump2.

The Real Story of January 6 Part 1 | [Documentary] 📺🙃 EpochTV (altcast.tv)

The Real Story of January 6 Part 2: The Long Road Home |(youtube.com)

Plot to Overturn the Election (full documentary) | FRONTLINE (youtube.com)

Jan. 6, Three Years Later: 10 Documentaries to Watch | FRONTLINE (pbs.org)

Using Lichtman’s 13 keys to predict the election results Trump wins. His 13 keys are True or False questions with each true favoring the incumbent party.  

1. Incumbent party mandate – Joe did not have a mandate he was elected because he was not Trump and the Democrat party stole the election, the math does not add up.

2. The incumbent party has more seats in the House of Representatives – False 

3. There was no serious contest for the incumbent party’s nomination. – False, there was no primary for the incumbent party’s nominee at all. 

4. No significant challenge by a third party. – True 

5. The incumbent party had a strong short-term economy – False wages went down and inflation went up 

6. The incumbent party had a strong long-term Economy – False, it was neither particularly strong or weak. 

7. The incumbent party effects major policy change – True although it had arguably negative results especially on border policy changes. 

8. No Social unrest during incumbent party’s term – False College campuses taken over by pro-Palestinian demonstrators for several months and it is starting up again on some college campuses. 

9. Incumbent party has no scandal during term in office. – Falsely hiding of Biden’s senility and Cocaine in the White House and Hunter’s ties to Joe being part of his influence peddling schemes are definitive scandals as well as the immigration debacle. 

10.  No foreign or military failure. – False (Afghanistan was a total failure and embarrassment).  Joe pulled out leaving Americans behind…he actually left US citizens behind saying “you’re on your own”. Oh, and he left billions in military equipment for the Taliban 

11. Major foreign or military success. – False the world is on the brink of another world war; China is threatening Taiwan and Iran will soon threaten Israel with nukes. 

12. The incumbent is charismatic or a national hero. – False Harris is not a good speaker and she is not a national hero of any sort. 

13. Uncharismatic challenger and is not a national hero.  – Toss Up Could go either way depending on whether you believe Trump has charisma or not. However, for the sake of argument let’s just say True. In my estimation that is. But I tell everybody don’t listen to how he says it… but listen to what Trump says,

They say crime is down under Biden’s Term but don’t believe it for a second.

The FBI openly and publicly posted declining violent crime stats when it was in the news cycle and a topic at the presidential debates. Trump was “fact checked” by ABC moderators that crime actually declined from 2021 to 2022 when the issue was raised.

Now, just days ago, with the news cycle moved on to the next big thing, the FBI quietly revised its nationwide violent crime stats to show that crime did not decline but actually surged from 2021 to 2022, meaning that Trump was, in fact, correct. 

According to a criminologist professor Carly Moody at William & Mary, the FBI has never issued a revision so large, and what troubled Professor Moody more was that the FBI made this revision without any explanation and quietly. If you believe this is just some type of coincidence, I got a bridge to sell you. The “deep state” is real, and it is for Harris and against Trump. That’s why no poll matters. If Trump is winning, mail in ballots for Harris will just appear. If the deep state has the power to remove a sitting president (Biden) within 48 hours after he openly declared he would not budge, it can sure as heck install Harris.

I know for sure that the legal voting Immigrants, ( who don’t do polls), that have families and roots seeded in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belorussia (now Belarus), Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgizija (now Kyrgyzstan), Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia (now Moldova), Poland, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan are voting for Harris because they know Trump will pull out of NATO and then Putin will run wild!

Related Articles

Oh brother, what does Edgar Allen Poe have to say about this is the Raven.

The Raven Edgar Allan Poe – Search Videos (bing.com) 

“The Raven” follows an unnamed narrator on a dreary night in December who sits reading “forgotten lore” by the remains of a fire[6] as a way to forget the death of his beloved Lenore. A “tapping at [his] chamber door”[6] reveals nothing, but excites his soul to “burning”.[7] The tapping is repeated, slightly louder, and he realizes it is coming from his window. When he goes to investigate, a raven flutters into his chamber. Paying no attention to the man, the raven perches on a bust of Pallas above the door.

Amused by the raven’s comically serious disposition, the man asks that the bird tell him its name. The raven’s only answer is “Nevermore”.[7]  The narrator is surprised that the raven can talk, though at this point it has said nothing further. The narrator remarks to himself that his “friend” the raven will soon fly out of his life, just as “other friends have flown before”[7] along with his previous hopes. As if answering, the raven responds again with “Nevermore”.[7] The narrator reasons that the bird learned the word “Nevermore” from some “unhappy master” and that it is the only word it knows.[7]

Even so, the narrator pulls his chair directly in front of the raven, determined to learn more about it. He thinks for a moment in silence, and his mind wanders back to his lost Lenore. He thinks the air grows denser and feels the presence of angels, and wonders if God is sending him a sign that he is to forget Lenore. The bird again replies in the negative, suggesting that he can never be free of his memories. The narrator becomes angry, calling the raven a “thing of evil” and a “prophet“.[8] 

Finally, he asks the raven whether he will be reunited with Lenore in Heaven. When the raven responds with its typical “Nevermore”, he is enraged, and, calling the bird a liar, commands it to return to the “Plutonian shore”[8]—but it does not move. At the time of the poem’s narration, the raven “still is sitting”[8] on the bust of Pallas. The raven casts a shadow on the chamber floor and the despondent narrator laments that out of this shadow his soul shall be “lifted ‘nevermore'”.[8]

Project 2025, Social Security and Medicare

Since Biden dropped out and endorsed her, Harris has delivered two speeches and both times she referred to Project 2025 — a conservative plan for remaking the federal government via the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — as Trump’s plan, even though the former president has disavowed it.

And in both speeches, Harris cited Project 2025 as evidence that Trump wants to cut Social Security and Medicare, even though the former president has offered no plans to do so.

Harris, Wilmington, Delaware, July 22: He and his extreme Project 2025 will weaken the middle class and bring us backward — please do note that — back to the failed trickle-down policies that gave huge tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and made working families pay the cost; back to policies that put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block; back to policies that treat health care as only a privilege for the wealthy, instead of what we all know it should be, which is a right for every American.

Harris, Milwaukee, July 23: But Donald Trump wants to take our country backward. He and his extreme Project 2025 agenda will weaken the middle class. Like, we know we got to take this seriously. And can you believe they put that thing in writing? Read it here: 2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf (project2025.org)

But here’s the thing. When you read it, you will see Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare. 

What is Project 2025? Project 2025 Explained | 5 Criticisms of Project 2025 (youtube.com)

Agenda 47  (styled by the Trump campaign as Agenda47) is the  manifesto of the Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump, which details policies that would be implemented upon his election as the 47th president of the United States.[a] Agenda 47 is a collection of formal policy plans of Donald Trump,[1][2] many of which would rely on executive orders and significantly expanded executive power.[3]

The platform has been criticized for its approach to climate change[4] and public health;[5] its legality and feasibility;[6] and the risk that it will increase inflation. Journalists have described it as fascist[7][8] or authoritarian.[9][10]

In September 2024, Trump’s campaign launched a tour called “Team Trump Agenda 47 Policy Tour” to promote Agenda 47.[11][12]

As we have said before, Trump says he has no plans to cut Social Security or Medicare.

In his four years as president, Trump did not propose cutting Social Security’s retirement benefits, and his budgets included bipartisan proposals to reduce the growth of Medicare without cutting benefits. (For more, see our February 2020 article “Competing Claims on Trump’s Budget and Seniors,” which details how Trump as president proposed cuts to the Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs, but not to retirement benefits.)

After leaving office, Trump has pledged not to cut Social Security, most recently on July 20 in his first joint campaign appearance with his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. “We will not cut one penny from Social Security and Medicare,” Trump said in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

In January 2023, when House Republicans were discussing ways to cut government spending, Trump said in a video: “Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security to help pay for Joe Biden’s reckless spending spree.”

As for Project 2025, Trump described it at his Michigan rally as “seriously extreme.” He added, “I don’t know anything about it. I don’t want to know anything about it.” Project 2025 lays out “four goals and principles” for Medicare “reform,” but there is nothing in the 900-plus page document that calls for cutting Social Security, which the authors of the project call a “myth.”

Harris and the Democrats link the project and its agenda to Trump because, as CNN has reported, there are more than 100 people involved in the project who have worked in the Trump administration. Prominent figures such as Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s chief of staff, and Stephen Miller, a top aide who was involved in setting major immigration policy, are associated with conservative groups that advised the project.

Project 2025, which mentions Trump hundreds of times, includes concepts that Trump supports, including — as Harris alluded to — cutting business taxes and rewriting the nation’s health care laws. But it also proposes things that Trump did not do when he was president, such as setting just two individual tax brackets of 15% and 30% (down from seven) and eliminating or transforming entire government agencies.

There is no telling what parts of Project 2025 Trump would implement, if elected. 

But Project 2025 is not his “agenda” or “plan,” as Harris said.

Trump’s UNSTOPPABLE Surge: SHOCKING Poll Results from ALL 50 States GUARANTEE Victory! (youtube.com)

Harris’ ‘dissonance’with Catholics, FBI’s ‘enduring’ pro-Joe Corruption and other commentary (msn.com)

Steve Kornacki explains how one district in Nebraska could decide the election.

23-year-old Brit is the youngest woman to scale all of the world’s tallest mountains.

The Under-The-Table Ideological Battle That Would Follow A Kamala Harris Win.

Where has in-person early voting started? Here is where it stands across the U.S.

The Battleground State Where Kamala Harris Is Winning the Most Republicans.

Climate Change, The Silent New Enemy Of Armed Forces Everywhere (msn.com)

How little-known fault lines could trigger next major earthquake in US (msn.com)

Is the US electoral system favoring a few voters over the rest of the country?

Victor Davis Hanson: Trump will beat radical Kamala Harris (youtube.com)

Solar Heavy – Final Frontier (youtube.com)

🎶
🎹
🎼

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Climate Calamity Part 1

Earth’s ‘vital signs’ worsening as humanity’s impact deepens (phys.org)

As 25 Earth vital signs worsen, scientists warn of ‘irreversible climate disaster’

Story by Mongabay

Earth’s climate system continues to rapidly deteriorate, with global temperatures on track to far overshoot 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) of warming by the end of the century — a mere 75 years from nowThat warning comes from an international group of eminent climate researchers and Earth System scientists who reviewed the planet’s vital signs in the journal BioScience.

“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled,” the authors write. “The global failure to support a rapid and socially just fossil fuel phasedown has led to rapidly escalating climate-related impacts.”

The researchers evaluated 35 planetary vital signs. and found 25 are at record levels – Search (bing.com) driving a series of increasingly severe climate-linked disasters over the past year. These extreme events affected millions of people across the globe and included devastating floods in East Africarampant wildfires in the Amazon and Pantanal ecosystem, and heatwaves across Europe and Asia. Back-to-back Hurricanes Helene and Milton battered the U.S. Southeast — two more examples of supercharged storm systems.

“It’s very likely that climate change is making powerful hurricanes like Helene and Milton more common and devastating,” study author William Ripple, distinguished professor at Oregon State University and director of the Alliance of World Scientists, told Mongabay in an email.

 ▶️ Related Video: Coping with climate change (For Your Life) – Search (bing.com)

“The climate crisis is becoming increasingly severe, and we are now faced with many climate-related disasters along with catastrophic risks in the longer term. We are continuing to go in the wrong direction, with enormous fossil fuel emissions and unsustainable consumption by the wealthy,” he added.

For Helen Adams, senior lecturer in Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation at King’s College London, who was not involved in the report, the science presented by the report in Bioscience is clear, though she takes issue with its tone.

“I don’t disagree with science, but for me the question is what do we gain with these doomsday narratives?” she says, adding that there is a need to strike a balance between detailing the gravity of the situation and motivating climate action. “We need to reclaim a more positive narrative that has, to an extent, been co-opted by oil and gas companies about a better future, about future possibilities.”

As 25 Earth vital signs worsen, scientists warn of ‘irreversible climate disaster’ © Mongabay

Arctic sea ice fragments float between two icebergs near Greenland. Researchers believe that climate change may be pushing the Greenland Ice Sheet perilously close to a tipping point. Image by Adam Sébire / Climate Visuals (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

Earth’s deteriorating vital signs

The report authors assessed 35 planetary vital signs that indicate the current state of natural systems and human influences on them that, taken together, offer insight into how Earth’s climate is changing in response to human activities, says Milton.

That picture makes for grim reading.

The researchers note that consumption of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) grew by 1.5% in 2023, hitting an all-time high. Although renewable energy sources also grew, this is mostly attributed to increasing energy demand, with fossil fuel sources dwarfing alternatives by roughly 14 times.

Greenhouse gas emissions and atmospheric concentrations continue to climb with both carbon dioxide and methane at “record highs.” Increasing methane emissions are “troubling” as methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, despite lasting only a decade in the atmosphere.

Earth surface temperatures also set new records, with 2024 on track to be the hottest on record (with 2023 setting the previous high), the report notes. Biodiversity continues to suffer with global forest loss of 28.4 mega hectares in 2023, compared to 22.8 mega hectares in 2022. Last year’s sea surface temperatures hit new heights and combined with record extremes of ocean acidity to stress marine life.

“We are concerned about recent trends in many planetary vital signs, including record-breaking greenhouse gas concentrations, tree cover loss due to wildfires and ice loss,” Ripple says. “We are especially troubled by global consumption of coal and oil reaching all-time highs in 2023.”

Numerous Dead Zones in the Oceans Around Us – Search (bing.com)

Coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef. “Extraordinarily warm” ocean temperatures in 2023 and 2024 are driving the fourth global-scale bleaching event, the recent climate report states. Image by The Ocean Agency/ Ocean Image Bank.

The authors also cite the results of a large scale survey of 380 climate scientists, conducted by the Guardian newspaper, 80% of whom hold the bleak view that average global temperatures will increase 2.5° C (4.5° F) by the end of the century, echoing concerns of the 2023 UN Emissions Gap Report.

Climate change-fuelling emissions are likewise driving dangerous feedback loops, and the report references 28 that have now been observed, including thawing Arctic permafrost and methane emissions from tropical wetlands. These feedbacks add to human emissions and contribute to the looming threat of climate tipping points. Five of sixteen such potentially irreversible thresholds could be crossed with an increase of just 1.5° C (2.7° F), including the eventual loss of the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets, the report warns. Earth temperatures have already increased over pre industrial levels by 1.3° C.

“Overall, this points to a complex situation where climate controlling feedback loops and tipping point systems are interconnected in a way that could trigger self-perpetuating processes that amplify warming beyond human control,” the authors write. This severe and worsening climate scenario could ultimately help trigger “societal collapse”, a possibility that the report notes is the focus of increasing research, as climate change combines with other threats in a global polycrisis.

Adams, however, pushes back on this finding. 

“There isn’t the evidence to suggest that the impacts of climate change will lead to societal collapse,” she says, emphasizing that underlying drivers of inequality and social injustice must be addressed, in addition to climate change. In her view, the climate change discussion needs to be reframed around food prices, energy security, jobs, healthcare, and continuity in cultural practices to “focus on the things people care about.”

Amid the gloom there are bright spots. One of these, says Ripple, is the recent declines in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon — a critically important biome that plays a vital role in both carbon and methane cycling globally.

“From climate and biodiversity perspectives, the Amazon rainforest is one of Earth’s most important ecosystems. So, we are encouraged by the declining deforestation rate in the Brazilian Amazon,” Ripple says. “Increasing solar and wind energy consumption is also a positive trend, although fossil fuel subsidies are likely slowing the adoption of renewables.”

image.png

As 25 Earth vital signs worsen, scientists warn of ‘irreversible climate disaster’  © Mongabay

Hurricane Milton on October 8, 2024 from the International Space Station. Scientists were astounded by Milton’s rapid intensification from a tropical depression to a category five hurricane — intensification also seen in Hurricane Helene and an effect caused by a dangerously warming world. Image by NASA Johnson via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Nothing short of “immediate, high 

, and socially just climate policies” are needed to avoid a further decline of Earth’s vital signs, says Ripple. The report authors describe a range of mitigation measures, with rapid phase down of fossil fuel use a priority.

“[R]educing methane emissions is critical,” as this greenhouse gas is responsible for an estimated 30% of current warming. Drastically cutting methane emissions could have an outsized impact on easing the climate crisis.

“In addition, the adoption of a sufficiently high global carbon price could help to dramatically reduce emissions while providing further funding for climate action,” Ripple notes.

Protecting, restoring, and rewilding ecosystems; reducing overconsumption; reforming food production; and inclusion of climate change in education curriculums are all encouraged.

The report also suggests “stabilizing and gradually reducing the human population,” by empowering education and rights for girls, a contentious and controversial viewpoint. “I would push back strongly on the population control point,” Adams says. “Unsustainable use and unequal distribution of resources are the problem, not overpopulation.”

The report authors say their aim is “to communicate directly to researchers, policymakers and the public” in order “to alert humanity to the growing threats that we face as clearly as possible and to show leadership in addressing them.”

Referring to the upcoming UN COP29 climate summit — scheduled to begin this November in Baku, Azerbaijan — Ripple says he hopes to see a binding agreement on global fossil fuel phaseout, along with a rapid timeline to kickstart climate action. “We also hope that wealthy countries will increase their climate finance pledges to better support the Global South in scaling up renewable energy capacity and adapting to climate change.”

Banner image: FWC officers assist to remove debris left by Hurricane Milton. Image by Florida Fish and Wildlife via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Citations: Ripple, W. J., Wolf, C., Gregg, J. W., Rockström, J., Mann, M. E., Oreskes, N., Lenton, T. M., Rahmstorf, S., Newsome, T. M., Xu, C., Svenning, J., Pereira, C. C., Law, B. E., & Crowther, T. W. (2024). The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on Planet Earth. BioScience. doi:10.1093/biosci/biae087

This article was originally published on Mongabay

Coal excavator at sunset

A coal mine in Newcastle, New South Wales. Credit: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg / Getty Images

An international team of scientists has warned the world is on “the brink of an irreversible climate disaster”.

Their annual report – the 2024 State of the Climate Report, published in BioScience, finds more of Earth’s vital signs are in extreme distress.

The team behind the report says that a global carbon price, renewable energy, ecosystem restoration and reductions in overconsumption are among the ways to address the emergency.

“It feels a bit like déjà vu as our report continues to confirm what scientists have been saying for decades, but also somewhat depressing as the trends we are plotting are mostly heading in the wrong direction,” report co-author Dr Thomas Newsome, an ecologist at the University of Sydney, tells Cosmos.

The report is part of an annual series. The first publication, in 2020, declared a “climate emergency” and was co-signed by 11,258 scientists from 153 countries.

“Our reports are intended to educate the public, policymakers, and researchers about the state of the climate crisis. We present the latest information on planetary vital signs, current and projected climate impacts, and policy recommendations,” lead author Professor William Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University, USA, tells Cosmos.

“We are motivated to publish these annual reports because Earth’s climate is changing rapidly and there are many new developments every year.”

“The paper is a very welcomed addition to the collection of annual assessments that are published by independent but very well-established groups of scientists,” says Dr Pep Canadell, a chief research scientist at CSIRO Environment and executive director of the Global Carbon Project, who wasn’t involved with the research.

“These rapid assessments are, in part, in response to the very slow cycles of updates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the fact that the key climate indicators are changing very rapidly.

“I praise most in this assessment the very up-to-date data which shows the remarkable times of change we are experiencing.”

As 25 Earth vital signs worsen, scientists warn of ‘irreversible climate disaster’ © Mongabay

A coal burning power plant in Poland. The recent report warns that immediate action must be taken to reduce fossil fuel emissions to avoid irreversible climate disaster. Image courtesy of Anna Liminowicz via Climate Visuals (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).  Reversing destabilizing global trends

This year, the report highlights the 3 hottest days in recorded history, all this July, as well as annual emissions from energy generation exceeding 40 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent for the first time in 2023.

Kamala Shows Where Americans Are on Her Priority List After Voter Asks If More Taxpayer Money Will Head Overseas (msn.com)

Read More

It also points out the UN Environment Programme’s estimate that current emissions policies will warm the world by 2.7°C in 2100, compared to preindustrial levels.

This is despite 195 countries being signatories to the Paris Agreement, which pledges to keep climate change to well below 2°C, aiming for 1.5°C.

“Tragically, we are failing to avoid serious impacts, and we can now only hope to limit the extent of the damage,” write the researchers.

The team has tracked 35 planetary vital signs, including metrics like ocean acidity, fossil fuel subsidies, greenhouse gas emissions, population, and tree cover loss.

Of these, 25 are at record levels.

The report comes as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Professor Jim Skea, said on the weekend that “1.5°C is slipping away from us” in an interview with the UK’s The Telegraph.

Skea emphasised the UN’s estimate of nearly 3°C by 2100, saying that even 2°C of warming was “a big ask”.

“In reviewing the state of Earth’s climate, it has become extremely clear that humanity is far off track with regard to climate action,” Ripple says.

“We are seeing a significant increase in scientific research on the topic of climate-related societal collapse. I am deeply troubled by both current climate-related disasters and such long-term catastrophic risks.”

The researchers say that the rapid phaseout of fossil fuels worldwide should be a top priority for addressing these risks, including: “a sufficiently high global carbon price that could restrain emissions by the wealthy while potentially providing funding for much-needed climate mitigation and adaptation programs”.

They also suggest that rapid cuts to methane emissions can slow heating in the short term, and drastic reductions to overconsumption and waste are necessary particularly among wealthy countries. “In a world with finite resources, unlimited growth is a perilous illusion,” write the researchers.

Scientists May Have Discovered The Limit Of Human Life Spans. Here’s How To Add More Years To Yours (msn.com)

The View’ host admits Kamala Harris needs ‘concrete examples’ of how she will differ from President Biden (msn.com)

Researchers sound alarm on ‘irreversible climate disaster’, Earth’s 25 vital signs hit extremes – CNBC TV18

2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth | BioScience | Oxford Academic (oup.com)

As 25 Earth vital signs worsen, scientists warn of ‘irreversible climate disaster’ – Search (bing.com)

I was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Despite dementia, I’m still living a full life. (msn.com)

25 of 35 planetary vital signs at record extremes: 2024 State of the Climate 

Report —Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (pik-potsdam.de)

Biden says Harris will ‘cut her own path’ if elected president (msn.com)

Net Zero is becoming synonymous with economic suicide (msn.com)

rising price of groceries – Search (bing.com)

rising price of healthcare – Search (bing.com)

rising price of gasoline – Search (bing.com)

rising price of inflation – Search (bing.com)

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Climate Calamity Part 2

Climate-related disasters shown in the report.

Top (L-R): Rescue of people stranded by floods in Canoas, Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil, 2024; Duda Fortes, Agência RBS); “Drought in Ethiopia due to rains unrealised” (Ethiopia, 2011; Oxfam East Africa; CC BY 2.0). Bottom: Firefighters contain a bushfire burning around the town of Aberdare (Australia, 2013; Quarrie Photography, Jeff Walsh, Cass Hodge; CC BY-NC-ND 2.0); The aftermath of Hurricane Matthew (Haiti, 2016; UN Photo / Logan Abassi; CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

A new report from a team of international scientists has revealed harsh realities on Earth, with 25 of 35 planetary vital signs reaching record extremes. Without immediate action, scientists warn that these extremes could threaten life on Earth.

In the new study, published in the journal BioScience, scientists presented a stark look at the state of the climate crisis.

“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis,” the scientists wrote.

Scientists use 35 different planetary vital signs to track the effects of climate change, including human population, global tree cover loss, meat production per capita, energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, ice mass changes, glacier thickness and more.

Burning bush fire

(John Crux Photography/Moment/Getty Images)

Almost Half of Earth’s Vital Signs Are Now ‘Code Red’, Scientists Warn

Environment

By David Nield

A new report from a coalition of international scientists is unequivocal about the severity of the environmental crisis that we’re in, with 16 out of the 35 ‘vital signs’ used to track climate change now rated as code red – that is, they’re at record extremes. 

The number of climate-related disasters is escalating, the report warns, with related human suffering – already at levels that are difficult to quantify and imagine – set to keep on rising rapidly as well.

We’re now faced with a stark choice: make quick and meaningful changes to the way we live our lives and treat the planet, or face the very real possibility of global societal collapse further down the line.

“As we can see by the annual surges in climate disasters, we are now in the midst of a major climate crisis, with far worse to come if we keep doing things the way we’ve been doing them,” says ecologist Christopher Wolf from Oregon State University.

“We implore our fellow scientists to join us in advocating for research-based approaches to climate and environmental decision-making.”

Some of the issues that the team points towards include the increasing frequency of extreme heat events, rising global tree cover loss (with wildfires playing a major role in that), and more cases of the mosquito-borne dengue virus.

There’s also the matter of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, which are now at their highest since records began: 418 parts per million. Meanwhile, 2022 is on track to be one of the hottest years on record. 

Other vital signs tracked by the researchers include surface temperature anomalies, Antarctica ice mass change, ocean acidity, and major floods in the US costing at least a billion dollars to clean up.

The report also mentions numerous climate change-related events that have occurred just this year: the worst drought in Europe in 500 years, for example; record-breaking rainfall on the east coast of Australia; a deadly heat wave in India and Pakistan; widespread dust storms in the Middle East; and a severe flood that destroyed roads in Yellowstone National Park in the US, to name a few.

“Climate change is not a standalone issue,” says sustainability scientist Saleemul Huq from Independent University, Bangladesh. “It is part of a larger systemic problem of ecological overshoot where human demand is exceeding the regenerative capacity of the biosphere.”

“To avoid more untold human suffering, we need to protect nature, eliminate most fossil fuel emissions and support socially just climate adaptations with a focus on low-income areas that are most vulnerable.”

Experts predict a rise of 3 degrees Celsius in terms of global warming by 2100, a temperature level that the planet hasn’t seen for some 3 million years. However, despite repeated warnings, many trends are still going in the wrong direction.

The researchers have put together a 35-minute documentary called The Scientist’s Warning to spur more action and increase awareness. They’re hoping that more and more scientists now make a stand about the urgent action that needs to be taken.

There is still hope. The researchers note an unprecedented numbers of scientists are speaking out about the climate crisis, and are calling for “massive-scale climate change mitigation and adaptation” to happen immediately for the sake of future generations.

“Look at all of these heat waves, fires, floods and massive storms,” says ecologist William Ripple, from Oregon State University. “The specter of climate change is at the door and pounding hard.”

The research has been published in BioScience.

Home – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet (nasa.gov)

Twenty-five of these vital signs are already breaking records, including human population, coal and oil consumption, ruminant livestock populations, U.S. heat-related deaths, carbon emissions, methane levels, fossil fuel subsidies, ocean heat content changes, ocean acidification, glacier thickness and tree cover loss, among others.

The 25 planetary vital signs that have reached record levels, as reported by researchers, include:

1 Greenhouse Gas Concentrations: Levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are at all-time highs.

2 Global Surface Temperatures: Average temperatures are increasing rapidly.

3 Ocean Heat Content: Oceans are absorbing more heat, leading to rising sea temperatures.

4 Sea Level Rise: Global sea levels are rising due to melting ice and thermal expansion.

5 Forest Loss: Deforestation rates are increasing, leading to significant tree cover loss.

6 Biodiversity Decline: Many species are facing extinction at an alarming rate.

7 Fossil Fuel Consumption: The use of fossil fuels remains high, contributing to climate change.

8 Human Population: The global population continues to grow, putting more pressure on natural resources.

9 Energy Consumption: Overall energy use is increasing, often from non-renewable sources.

10 Ocean Acidification: Increased CO2 levels are making oceans more acidic.

11 Heat-Related Mortality: Deaths related to extreme heat are rising.

12 Global GDP: Economic activities continue to grow, often at the expense of the environment.

13 Livestock Numbers: The number of livestock is increasing, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.

14 Food Production: Intensive agriculture is impacting the environment.

15 Government-Declared Climate Emergencies: More governments are recognizing the climate crisis.

16 Wildfires: The frequency and intensity of wildfires are increasing.

17 Floods: Severe flooding events are becoming more common.

18 Droughts: Prolonged droughts are affecting more regions.

19 Glacial Melting: Glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates.

20 Freshwater Availability: Access to clean freshwater is decreasing.

21 Air Quality: Pollution levels are worsening in many areas.

22 Plastic Pollution: Plastic waste is accumulating in oceans and landfills.

23 Soil Degradation: Soil quality is declining due to overuse and erosion.

24 Chemical Pollution: The use of harmful chemicals is impacting ecosystems.

25 Extreme Weather Events: The frequency and severity of extreme weather events are increasing.

These indicators highlight the urgent need for global action to address climate change and protect our planet. 

What are your thoughts on how we can tackle these issues?

According to the scientists, the human population is increasing by around 200,000 people per day, while ruminant livestock populations are increasing by around 170,000 animals per day. They also found that fossil fuel consumption increased 1.5% in 2023.

A separate report, the 2024 Forest Declaration Assessment, recently confirmed a decrease in tree cover, with 6.3 million hectares of land deforested in 2023.

Although the scientists did find that renewable energy consumption increased in 2023, renewables are still not overtaking fossil fuel demand enough to limit severe impacts of climate change.

Further, scientists warned that atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane concentrations have reached record highs, the average surface temperature of the Earth is at a record high, ocean acidity has broken records, ocean heating is at an all-time high, and global sea levels are at the highest amounts ever recorded. 

On the other hand, Greenland and Antarctic ice masses have reached record lows, and the average global glacier thickness is at an all-time low.

We are already seeing the devastating impacts of these vital signs hitting extremes, with a 117% increase in heat deaths in the U.S. from 1999 to 2023. Last year, areas across Asia experienced deadly heat waves that killed thousands of people, the report authors warned.

Now, the U.S. is facing two back-to-back hurricanes amid rising ocean temperatures, which have nearly doubled in the past two decades, a recent report from EU Copernicus found.

More From EcoWatch

The authors of the report on the planetary vital signs are warning that governments need to take immediate actions to protect life on Earth. They have recommended actions and policies such as establishing a global carbon price, replacing fossil fuels with renewables, limiting greenhouse gas emissions, encouraging plant-based eating, protecting and restoring ecosystems, and reducing overconsumption and waste, especially by the wealthy.

“A large portion of the very fabric of life on our planet is imperiled,” said William Ripple, a professor at Oregon State University College of Forestry, which led the study. “Ecological overshoot, taking more than the Earth can safely give, has pushed the planet into climatic conditions more threatening than anything witnessed even by our prehistoric relatives. We’re already in the midst of abrupt climate upheaval, which jeopardizes life on Earth like nothing humans have ever seen.”

Key climate indicators from greenhouse gas levels to ice loss have reached record levels this year in what researchers call a “critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis”

By James Dinneen

8 October 2024

The Park Fire burns through the night on July 30, 2024 near Chico, California

A wildfire burns in California on 30 July 2024

David McNew/Getty Images

A growing number of the planet’s “vital signs” have reached record levels due to climate change and other environmental threats, according to a stark report by a group of prominent researchers.

“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster,” write William Ripple at Oregon State University and his colleagues. “This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled.”

Read more: Our plans to tackle climate change with carbon storage don’t add up

The report is the fifth annual State of the Climate report led by Ripple in an effort to present a clear warning of what the researchers say is a crisis given the extremes measured across key climate indicators, from greenhouse gas levels to tree cover loss.

“The climate crisis isn’t a distant threat, it’s a here-and-now crisis,” says Michael Mann at the University of Pennsylvania, one of several well-known co-authors of the report, which also includes historian Naomi Oreskes, Earth scientist Tim Lenton and oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf.

The researchers assessed 35 “planetary vital signs”, including the amount of heat in the oceans and the thickness of glaciers. The vital signs also include measures of the human factors driving many of those changes, such as meat production per capita and subsidies for fossil fuels.

Watch the Earth’s tectonic plates grow, shrink, and jostle for position in this new model of the last billion years on the planet. Earth’s Evolution Over A Billion Years – Bing video

Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know : Gregory Wrightstone

Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know : Gregory Wrightstone : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archiv

Greg Wrightstone 
♫ Gary Jeff Walker | on 700 WLW (iheart.com) 55 minute Timestamp

Greg Wrightstone inconvenient facts – Search (bing.com)
Greg Wrightstone geologist – Bing video 

Steve Goreham – Search Videos (bing.com)
Sunday Night LIVE w/ Billy Cunningham @ 7/24/22 –
on 700WLW (podcast) | Listen Notes TimeStamp1:29.50
Since 1880 140 year – 1° degree raise    Democrat of Arizona  
compare climate to desert environment – Cows | Burp & Breathe 
  CO2   Coal Natural Gas Oil     20x Nature Emits    4 molecules 
 Since 1660 (362 Years) Temps went up 1.8 ° Celsius.  °C to °F?
 Global Govt. is spending $500 Billion Annually 



 Steve Goreham is the Executive Director Climate Science Coalition of America 
Steve Goreham Best-Selling Author Speaker-Speakers Bureau | Goodmanspeakers
Steve Goreham books – Bing video  
              Steve Goreham bio – Search (bing.com)

Steve Goreham climate – Bing video
Steve Goreham Wikipedia – Bing video

Every State has a different climate: The warmest state in America isn’t
Louisiana or Texas, according to data. See how every state ranks. (msn.com)

Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/?intent=111

Global Temperature – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

The 10 most recent years are the warmest years on record. This graph shows the change in global surface temperature compared to the long-term average from 1951 to 1980. Earth’s …

Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

https://climate.nasa.gov

Home – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

Earth’s average surface temperature in 2023 was the warmest on record

Five Factors to Explain the Record Heat in 2023 (nasa.gov)

Fears Over Climate Change Top Concerns About AI And Global Conflict, Study Finds | Watch (msn.com)

’60 Minutes,’ under fire for Kamala Harris editing decision, has history of liberal controversies (msn.com)

Pennsylvania Dems Allege Harris Is Screwing Up Her Campaign in Their State: Report (msn.com) 

Here are 4 campaign promises from Harris. What are their chances if she wins? (msn.com)

Polls Close in Georgia After Record-Breaking Early Voting: What We Know (msn.com)

Trump Aims to Ban Taxes on Social Security. Here are the Pros and Cons. (msn.com)

How 469 mile road visited by 16,700,000 a year has been destroyed (msn.com)

10 UNSETTLING Things Discovered In Antarctica | Watch (msn.com)

Paths to Victory in the 2024 Election (msn.com)

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment