Elections; 2024
POSTED BY: THG
UPDATED: Friday, November 21, 2025 00:12
VIEWED: 206031
PAGE 477 of 514
Officials from the justice department and FBI have begun consulting lawyers amid fears that they will be prosecuted when Donald Trump returns to the White House, it has been reported.
The concerns have been driven by Trump’s vows to seek “retribution” against members of a “deep state” that he claims deliberately set out to undermine him when he was president and falsely alleges was weaponised against him after he left office.
They have been intensified by the president-elect’s nomination of the rightwing former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general, a position that would put him in charge of the justice department and America’s federal law enforcement agencies.
Gaetz – who himself underwent a two-year FBI investigation into sex-trafficking allegations that ended without charges – was chosen after reportedly telling Trump that he would “go over there and start cuttin’ fuckin’ heads”. He had previously called for “a full-court press against this WEAPONIZED government” in a social media post.
“If that means abolishing every one of the three letter agencies, from the FBI to the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] I’m ready to get going!” he continued.
A former senior justice department official who served during Trump’s first presidency said the choice of Gaetz was a mark of the incoming president’s seriousness about seeking payback against those he believed had wronged him.
“He needs to be able to control the department, which he can do through a loyal [attorney general] beholden to him,” the former official said. “[Gaetz] understands that he owes everything to Trump, who can protect Gaetz as well through his pardon power. Trump is confident that Gaetz will do whatever Trump tells him to do.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/18/trump-gaetz-justice-fb
i-retribution
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Republicans take aim at Medicaid
If Republicans are looking for spending cuts to offset their huge tax cuts, the only big pot of money plausibly open to them is Medicaid. Guess what?
President-elect Donald Trump’s economic advisers and congressional Republicans have begun preliminary discussions about making significant changes to Medicaid, food stamps and other federal safety net programs to offset the enormous cost of extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts next year.
....House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) told reporters Wednesday that a “responsible and reasonable work requirement” for Medicaid benefits resembling the one that already exists for food stamps could yield about $100 billion in savings. He also said another $160 billion in reduced costs could come from checking Medicaid eligibility more than once per year.
....Republicans have long denied that they are trying to reduce benefits for low-income Americans on either Medicaid or food stamps.
"Republicans have long denied." Ha ha. That's hilarious. Of course they want to reduce Medicaid and food stamps. Poor people are not a constituency they give a shit about.
The only good news here is that Arrington is presumably talking about 10-year savings, which means his Medicaid proposals come to about $26 billion a year. That's not huge even if they go through with it. Medicaid may be the only big pot of money around, but even it's nowhere near big enough to pay for their stupendous, budget-busting tax cuts for the rich.
https://jabberwocking.com/republicans-take-aim-at-medicaid/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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POPULAR VOTE:
76,479,422 for Trump (50.0%) / 73,837,136 votes for Harris (48.3%).
Total votes counted: 150,316,558
Trump's lead: 2,642,286
California: 7% left (Just shy of 1.1 Million votes left)
Oregon: 4% left
Utah: 3% left
Colorado: 3% left
New York: 3% left
Washington: 2% left
Mississippi: 2% left
Maryland: 2% left
Alaska: 2% left
Compared to the 2020 election:
The 2020 results were 74,223,369 for Trump and 81,282,916 votes for Biden*
The total EXACT vote count in 2020 was 155,506,285.
The total amount of votes less in 2024 compared to 2020 is down to only 5,189,727 now.
Trump now has 2,256,053 more votes than he did in 2020.
Harris now has 7,445,780 less votes than Biden* did in 2020.
This is two days in a row now where it look like none of the counting has come from California. Several states have finally finished counting and are now officially off the list.
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Trump is fine.
He is also your current President. 
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House is at 220 R / 213 D now.
The pickup was the Alaska seat I said would go R. The last two are the California districts that were toss ups.
The Republican is up +1.2 with 87% counted in D13. There is still a 50/50 tie with 91% counted in D45.
--------------------------------------------------
Trump is fine.
He is also your current President.
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How ‘comrade’ Tulsi Gabbard became a favorite of Russia’s state media
November 18, 2024
In 2017, when she was still a Democratic member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbard traveled to Syria and met the country’s authoritarian president, Bashar al-Assad. She also accused the United States of supporting terrorists there.
The day after Vladimir V. Putin began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ms. Gabbard blamed the United States and NATO for provoking the war by ignoring Russia’s security concerns.
She has since suggested that the United States covertly worked with Ukraine on dangerous biological pathogens and was culpable for the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Germany in September 2022. European prosecutors and U.S. officials say that sabotage was carried out by Ukrainian operatives.
Ms. Gabbard’s comments have earned her sharp rebukes from officials across the political spectrum in Washington, who have accused her of parroting the anti-American propaganda of the country’s adversaries. Her remarks have also made her a darling of the Kremlin’s vast state media apparatus — and, more recently, of President-elect Donald J. Trump, who this week picked her to oversee the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies and departments.
Her nomination as the director of national intelligence has raised alarms among national security officials, not only because of her lack of experience in intelligence but also because she has embraced a worldview that mirrors disinformation straight out of the Kremlin’s playbook.
No evidence has emerged that she has ever collaborated in any way with Russia’s intelligence agencies. Instead, according to analysts and former officials, Ms. Gabbard seems to simply share the Kremlin’s geopolitical views, especially when it comes to the exercise of American military power.
In Russia, the reaction to her potential appointment has been gleeful, even if Mr. Putin’s government remains wary of American policies, even under a second Trump administration.
“The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. are trembling,” Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Russian newspaper, wrote on Friday in a glowing profile of Ms. Gabbard, noting, positively, that Ukrainians consider her “an agent of the Russian state.” Rossiya-1, a state television channel, called her a Russian “comrade” in Mr. Trump’s emerging cabinet.
https://attentiontotheunseen.com/2024/11/18/how-comrade-tulsi-gabbard-
became-a-favorite-of-russias-state-media/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Congratulations America. You got back with your ex who is supposed to be in prison.
Dear ‘Undecided’ and ‘Both Sides are Evil’ voters,
“I don’t do politics”
Well baby, politics is going to do you, regardless.
Voting 101: Nine people on a bus. Three vote to drive over a cliff. Two vote to go get ice cream. Four don’t bother to vote. Everyone dies.
Like it or not, you're on the bus with everyone else. Make your voice heard.
The Harm-Reduction approach means:
• It’s not always about the ice cream
• The people abstaining for moral purity reasons ("I’d only vote for a VEGAN ice cream parlor!”) are functionally equivalent to those abstaining because they are okay with either option
• The ice cream not being very good does NOT mean driving off the cliff is somehow better
https://www.tumblr.com/mckitterick/tagged/let%27s%20not%20drive%20the%
20world%20off%20a%20cliff%20mkay%3F
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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American voters gave Donald Trump a solid win on Election Day. But they didn’t give him a wrecking ball to destroy the country’s military and intelligence agencies.
That’s what’s so scary about Trump’s nominations of Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard as secretary of defense and director of national intelligence, respectively. Neither is remotely qualified for two of the most important management jobs in government. They’re polemicists and ideologues — wreckers, to be blunt, rather than builders. If confirmed, they would do more to doom Trump’s presidency than Democrats ever could.
Trump is a disrupter, and this latest set of nominations (including Matt Gaetz for attorney general) has shown that he hopes to overturn what he imagines as the “deep state.” Trump’s bark was worse than his bite during his first term. But now he is gathering a war cabinet for what seems to be a serious assault on the leadership of the military and the intelligence community.
Hegseth’s nomination is especially dangerous. On Fox News, he has made a career out of denouncing the senior military leaders he would direct as defense secretary. His recent book, “The War on Warriors,” includes personal attacks on Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Adm. Lisa Franchetti, chief of naval operations. He smears them, in effect, as diversity hires.
“The Left captured the military quickly, and we must reclaim it at a faster pace. We must wage a frontal assault,” Hegseth writes. He describes what he regards as the current military ethos with an imaginary call to arms, “We will not stop until trans-lesbian black females run everything!” This is crazy nonsense.
Hegseth won’t be running a Fox talk show if he’s confirmed. He will have absolute power to fire any general officer who doesn’t meet Trump’s political standards. The Wall Street Journal reports that the transition team is already drafting an executive order for a “warrior board” to recommend generals and admirals for dismissal. A Journal editorial Thursday sounded the right warning: “The military isn’t Mr. Trump’s enemy, and a purge mentality will court political trouble and demoralize the ranks.”
Loose talk about court-martialing retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, adds to the poisonous atmosphere. Milley is a target because he stood up to bullying from Trump and his supporters.
https://attentiontotheunseen.com/2024/11/18/trumps-national-security-w
recking-crew/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The Death of American Modesty and Character
Posted on Tuesday, Nov 19, 2024 6:00AM by Mark Harvey
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2024/11/the-death-of-american-mo
desty-and-character.html
There are much better theories of how a president is chosen and many of them have to do with perceptions, the subconscious, and the zeitgeist at the time. In their book Implicit Leadership Theories: Essays and Explorations, Robert G. Lord and Ruth Kanfer argue that leaders are often chosen based on prototypes of what voters think a leader should look like. Furthermore, they say that people choose leaders based on mental shortcuts (schemas, or heuristics, to use a technical term). In choosing a candidate, it’s far easier to forego analyzing all of the complex issues of the times and make a choice based on a very simple impression or prototype of what a candidate represents.
I’ve watched too many of those silly “man-on-the-street” or vox populi interviews of why a person was going to choose Trump for president. The answers invariably include that “he’s a good businessman and he’ll run the country like a business.” The red tie, the boxy suit, and of course thirteen years on The Apprentice making great displays of firing people in a contrived boardroom offer a very nice heuristic for “good businessman.” But anyone with even a faint interest in his business accomplishments would realize that he managed to go through four bankruptcies in his New Jersey casinos alone. Somehow the failed Trump steaks, vodka, airlines, and university barely made a dent in his persona as shrewd businessman.
Another of our great generals, Dwight Eisenhower exhibited some of the same unassuming characteristics as Washington. Eisenhower grew up in the dusty cattle town of Abilene, Kansas. His journey to become Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces and saving Europe from the Nazis was unlikely, but he seemed to have remembered his modest beginnings.
Counseling Louis Mountbatten, the allied commander in southeast Asia during World War II, on how to be a good leader, Eisenhower wrote,
He must be self-effacing, quick to give credit, ready to meet the other fellow more than half way, must seek and absorb advice…take full blame for anything that goes wrong; in fact he must be quick to take the blame for anything that goes wrong whether or not it results from his mistake or from an error on the part of a subordinate.
That philosophy in today’s America might be construed as weak even though Eisenhower oversaw the greatest war effort in human history. He was revered worldwide and even before WW II ended, he was awarded Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire by the King of England. It’s easy to imagine him being smeared in today’s scummy political climate and even being cast as a communist. For Eisenhower supported the right to unionize and said, “Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of their right to join the union of their choice.” He also prevented men from his own party from dismantling Social Security.
The heuristic or schema of Eisenhower would be that of the quiet warrior, unsung hero, or silent sentinel. In other words, with today’s lust for self-aggrandizement, he wouldn’t stand a chance of being elected.
More at https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2024/11/the-death-of-american-mo
desty-and-character.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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It’s one thing to be unhappy with your lot in life, your country, and the way things are headed. And millions of Americans are truly struggling in a country with huge disparities of income. But it’s altogether irresponsible to vote for someone who is going to make your life worse just because he has the cheap facade of a businessman. Whether you have preexisting medical conditions, trouble paying for groceries, a daughter who may someday have a septic pregnancy, or a concern with that most existential threat––climate change––the policies espoused by Trump and his proposed cabinet will make your life sadder and sorrier.
During one of Adlai Stevenson’s campaigns, a woman yelled, “Every thinking person will be voting for you!” Perhaps prophesying today’s America, Stevenson replied, “That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority.”
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2024/11/the-death-of-american-mo
desty-and-character.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump campaigned on mass deportations. Now he’s threatening to use the U.S. military to carry them out.
By Nick Turse | November 19 2024, 12:23 p.m.
https://theintercept.com/2024/11/19/trump-deportation-plan-military/
There are an estimated 13 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. A onetime mass deportation operation would cost at least $315 billion, according to a recent analysis from the American Immigration Council. A longer-term project involving arrests, processing, and deportations would cost around $968 billion over more than 10 years. The report emphasizes that this is a “highly conservative” estimate. It does not take into account the likelihood that this deportation operation of 13 million people would require the construction and staffing of detention facilities on a scale that dwarfs the current U.S. prison system, which held 1.9 million people all told in 2022 — let alone the effect of removing an estimated 5 percent of the American workforce from the country, who collectively pay over $105 billion in taxes each year.
Trump’s spokespeople did not respond to The Intercept’s request for more details on the cost of the plan or exactly how the military would be employed in the deportation process before publication.
During his first term, Trump deported about 1.5 million immigrants, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute. The Biden administration is on pace to match that number.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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