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November 2024

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Seth Barron Team of Successors Donald Trump’s appointments so far, some startling, share a common thread—comparative youth, an indication that the president-elect is looking beyond his own tenure.

By on November 15th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/team-of-successors

Donald Trump has announced his first high-level appointments, including some surprising choices. Pete Hegseth, best known for his Fox News appearances, was nominated as Secretary of Defense. Matt Gaetz, who waged an intraparty feud against fellow Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, has been put forward as Attorney General. Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat and acerbic critic of the intelligence community, has been named Director of National Intelligence. These nominees, among others Trump has offered, have generated tremendous consternation, in some cases running across party lines. Trump’s nominees have been called unqualified, partisan, and even threats to national security. But a significant and unnoticed thread unites the team that Trump is assembling around himself—their age, or rather, their youth.

Hegseth is 44. Matt Gaetz is 42. Tulsi Gabbard is 43. Vice President-elect J. D. Vance is 40, as is Trump’s proposed U.N. Ambassador Elise Stefanik. Lee Zeldin, Trump’s pick to run the Environmental Protection Agency, is 44. Vivek Ramaswamy, who will work with Elon Musk in non-official, nongovernmental effort nevertheless named the Department of Governmental Efficiency, is 39. Other major appointees are slightly older: proposed Homeland Security nominee Kristi Noem is 52, and Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio is 53, as is Musk. But it’s clear that Trump’s Cabinet-level staff skews young. In this respect it marks a departure from the Cabinet that Trump picked in 2016, when he chose an older, more conventionally qualified team. The average age of his picks for Defense, State, and Justice eight years ago was 67; the average age for those same roles today is 46.  

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Let Me Count the Ways By Joan Swirsky

By on November 15th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/11/let_me_count_the_ways.html

On November 5, 2024, a gigantic red wave engulfed America, elevating everything politically red to great heights and largely obliterating everything politically blue in its path.
It’s been only a week since the presidential election, but let’s ask the following questions anyway:

WHAT DID RED GAIN?

The White House — Oval Office.
The U.S. Senate.
The U.S. House of Representatives.
The Electoral College.
The popular vote.
All seven swing states.
State governor majority.
State Legislature majority.
The stock market hit record highs.

And Pamela Geller reports:

Trump and Elon Musk told Zelenskyy that the war is over, to prepare for negotiations, no additional funds or weapons will be sent to Ukraine.

Hamas called for an immediate end to the war.
Trump Gave Hamas until Inauguration Day to return the hostages.
The Houthis surrendered just hours after Trump won the Presidency.
The EU said it will buy its oil from America not Russia.

Qatar told all Hamas officials in the country to leave immediately.
Iran’s currency crashed.

Additionally:

The Fed cut interest rates a quarter of a point after Trump’s election victory. 

China’s President Xi Jinping congratulated Donald Trump on his U.S. presidential win and urged both nations to find the “right way to get along,” as looming U.S. tariffs threatened to return, as they did years ago.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Coming Era of MAGA Dominance Trump’s 2024 win, driven by a coalition of White and male voters with gains among Hispanics, Catholics, and union members, suggests a new era of Republican dominance amid shifting demographics. By Eric Lendrum

By on November 15th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/15/the-coming-era-of-maga-dominance/

Only Donald Trump could have pulled off the kind of victory we witnessed just over one week ago. The victory achieved by, and for, the man himself is already the greatest political comeback in American history.

But it is entirely possible that his win now could set up an equally unprecedented comeback, but not for any one particular individual. If the Republican Party plays its cards right this time, it could build off of the massive coalition that President Trump has built for himself and ride this wave of momentum to a new era of dominance in American politics.

The Old Map and the New Map

Just as importantly as 2016, the 2024 election perfectly displays the best path forward for the new Republican Party when it comes to establishing and maintaining an electoral majority every four years.

Prior to the entrance of Donald Trump onto the political stage, the GOP’s best hope for victory was to win virtually all of the states that were once considered “swing states” just two decades ago. This is best represented by the 2004 map when George W. Bush narrowly defeated John Kerry.

Bush managed to win the then-swing states of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida. The only swing state Bush lost that year was New Hampshire, even though he had won it four years prior against Al Gore. Kerry won the three Rust Belt states that have become much more important in recent years.

After winning eight of the nine swing states, Bush wound up with a mere 286 electoral votes to Kerry’s 251.

By contrast, even though President Trump lost five of the nine swing states from the 2004 map, his victories in the three Rust Belt states were enough to net him a total of 306 electoral votes, substantially higher than Bush’s best performance. He then beat his own record with his historic comeback victory eight years later, with 312 electoral votes and picking up one more of Bush’s swing states. By trading out the smaller states of New Mexico, Colorado, and New Hampshire for the more heavily populated Rust Belt, President Trump made Republican victories at the national level much easier than they were under Bush.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

One Month In, And The Gov’t Is Already $257 Billion In The Red – DOGE Has A Lot Of Work To Do

By on November 15th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/11/15/one-month-in-and-the-govt-is-already-257-billion-in-the-red-doge-has-a-lot-of-work-to-do/

On Tuesday, Donald Trump announced that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would head the “Department of Government Efficiency.” That same day, the Treasury Department released a report showing why this effort is so desperately needed.

In his announcement, Trump said that he’s assigned the two to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.” It will, he said, “become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time.”

At Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in late October, Musk, when asked how much he thought he could “rip out of this $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget,” said: “Well, I think we could do at least $2 trillion.”

Washington insiders scoffed at the entire idea of a “government efficiency” department or that these two government outsiders could somehow find $2 trillion to cut.

The truth is a Manhattan Project-level effort will be needed to restore a semblance of fiscal responsibility to the federal government.

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On Trump’s Foolish, Futile Matt Gaetz AG Nomination Andrew McCarthy

By on November 14th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/on-trumps-foolish-futile-matt-gaetz-ag-nomination/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=hero&utm_content=related&utm_term=first

I’m as stunned as anyone that President-elect Trump has nominated Representative Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) for attorney general, reminding everyone of Trump’s propensity to step on his own good publicity and provoke needless fights that undermine his ability to accomplish things the country needs done. That said, I suspect Nathan Wade would have a better chance of getting confirmed to run the Justice Department than Gaetz does, so I don’t see the point in wasting a lot of time discussing this.

I’m not going to dwell further on the sex-trafficking investigation in which Gaetz was implicated but never charged. I wrote about it at the time. The feds couldn’t make the case and he’s presumed innocent. As Luther related early this year, it’s been reported that Gaetz’s ridiculous, solipsistic move to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) was payback for the latter’s role in an ongoing ethics probe of Gaetz. The congressman has denied any wrongdoing. Nothing has been established, so I’m not going to repeat mere allegations at this point. I imagine we’re about to hear a lot more about them in the coming weeks, and become better informed about whether there’s fire under the smoke.

In that regard, the president-elect has done his eccentric protégé no favors.

I also don’t see much use in going down the rabbit hole of whether, as the rabidly anti-Trump, highly irregular House January 6 committee claimed, Gaetz was among a group of GOP Congress critters who broached the subject of a pardon following the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. I thought it was underhanded of the committee to imply that people were guilty of crimes — potentially including crimes of violence — based on speculation about pardons, particularly when Trump didn’t grant such pardons. A pardon is not necessarily an admission of guilt — something to bear in mind in an era of lawfare, when politicized actors weaponize investigative processes against their adversaries mainly for the purpose of humiliating and bankrupting them.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Heather Mac Donald Green Grifters Another elite-laden conference demonstrates the staggering hypocrisy of climate-change activism.

By on November 14th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/green-grifters

The latest global climate conference opened Monday in Azerbaijan. The timing is excellent. Any doubt regarding the wisdom of the next Trump administration’s likely pullout from such meetings should be dispelled by the conference photos alone. Here are tens of thousands of well fed, well-dressed members of the global elite—activists, employees of lavishly funded NGOs, armies of government bureaucrats, hundreds of heads of state—who have all travelled via jet and private plane to this remote corner of the Earth and who expect that every minute of their day will be supported by abundant, magically available energy. None has sacrificed a single personal comfort to save the planet. They assume that their smartphones will draw on an invisible web of transmitters and that they will be able to search the Internet and run AI queries at will, notwithstanding that doing so requires voracious energy use from a growing archipelago of server farms. They expect their PowerPoints to be well lit and their conference and hotel rooms to be heated or air conditioned as needed. They’re never without their bottled water, which is carried thousands of miles by carbon-emitting trucks and planes and kept sterile by plastic containers whose manufacture requires petrochemicals and plenty of energy. They do not wait on the sun to shine or the wind to blow to light their rooms, run their elevators, or power up their devices; they want energy now and without interruption.

You don’t have to be a “climate denier” to see that climate-change politics have become the largest global grift in history, one that grows in proportion with each new conference. It was just a matter of time before Third World basket-case countries exploited the First World’s virtue signaling. This year’s UNFCC COP 29 conference in Azerbaijan (COP stands for Conference of the Parties) features the demand that developed countries fork over billions, if not trillions, more dollars to the Global South, ostensibly to help it adjust to climate change. Those billions will follow all previous foreign aid into the same sinkhole of corruption and incompetence.

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ISRAEL, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Muslim official charged for leaking docs about Israel’s plans to strike Iran was CIA agent by Robert Spencer

By on November 14th, 2024

https://preview.mailerlite.com/r4u4m2n6w0/2613061146306942124/h5v6/

Everyone at the CIA would shudder with horror at the idea that a Muslim official might have more loyalty to the umma than to the United States government. The very idea would be “Islamophobic,” although it is standard Islamic theology, as is the idea that Jews are the worst enemies of Muslims (cf. Qur’an 5:82).

Meanwhile, will Asif W. Rahman be charged with treason, which is defined as giving aid and comfort to the enemy, for helping Iran in this way? Come on, man! Beltway insiders will protect him.

More on this story. “CIA official with top security clearance charged for leaking highly classified docs about Israel’s plans to strike Iran,” by Emily Crane, New York Post, November 13, 2024:

A CIA official has been charged with leaking highly classified US documents about Israel’s potential plan to strike back against Iran over a missile attack.

Asif W. Rahman, who worked overseas for the agency and held a top secret security clearance, was arrested by the FBI in Cambodia on Tuesday over the leaks, the New York Times reported.

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HHS Spends Hundreds of Millions Spreading DEI Through Medical Community

By on November 14th, 2024

https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/diversifying-doulas-hhs-spends-hundreds?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

“Equity” concept appears 829 times in Department’s 2025 budget request, reaching academia, bureaucrats, researchers and care providers.

The private sector is learning the hard — and costly — way that much of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion model is discriminatory and subject to expensive litigation. That has corporations “quietly altering” their approach, according to the Associated Press.

While federal agencies have also faced a mountain of legal challenges, the Biden administration has nevertheless pressed on with the President’s commitment to a “whole of government” DEI effort.

The Department of Health and Human Services — with a budget surpassed only by the Pentagon — employs 294 DEI staffers at an annual cost of $38.7 MILLION.

That’s doesn’t even include another $29.4 million in payroll for seven Offices of Minority Health embedded within various HHS agencies!

While their roles are dedicated to DEI, related efforts have permeated through virtually every area of the department.

Variations of the term “equity” appear an astonishing 829 times in the department’s 2025 budget request to Congress, impacting hundreds of millions of dollars of spending programs.

Resulting funds pour out across the country to achieve equity and “justice” in public health — to Black churches recruited to push vaccinations; to universities for hiring diverse researchers; and to special outreach for anyone from criminals, to the LGBTQ+ community, to the indigenous, and…doulas??

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NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

Restoring Deterrence Will Prevent Endless Wars Trump must remind Americans only by deterring enemies can he prevent endless wars. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on November 14th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/14/restoring-deterrence-will-prevent-endless-wars/

On January 3, 2020, the Trump administration conducted a drone strike near Baghdad International Airport, killing Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani.

Soleimani had a long record of waging surrogate wars against Americans, especially during the Iraq conflict and its aftermath.

After the Trump cancellation of the Iran Deal, followed by U.S. sanctions, Soleimani reportedly stepped up violence against regional American bases—most of which Trump himself ironically wished to remove.

A few days later, Iran staged a performance-art retaliatory strike against Americans in Iraq and Syria, assuming Trump had no desire for a wider Middle East war.

So, Iran launched 12 missiles that hit two U.S. airbases in Iraq. Supposedly, Tehran had warned the Trump administration of the impending attacks that killed no Americans. Later reports, however, suggested that some Americans suffered concussions, while more damage was done to the bases than was initially disclosed.

Nonetheless, this Iranian interlude seemed to reflect Trump’s agenda of avoiding “endless wars” in the Middle East while restoring deterrence that prevented, not prompted, full-scale conflicts.

Yet in a second Trump administration, rethreading the deterrence needle without getting into major wars may become far more challenging. The world of today is far more dangerous than when Trump left in 2021.

An inept Biden administration has utterly destroyed U.S. deterrence abroad through both actual and symbolic disasters: the Chinese dressing down of U.S. diplomats in Anchorage; the humiliating skedaddle from Afghanistan; the brazen flight of a Chinese spy balloon across the U.S.; the invasion of Ukraine by Russia; the October 7, 2023 massacre of 1200 Israelis; the serial Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea; the visible restraint of Israeli from fully replying to Iranian missile attacks on its homeland; and renewed bellicosity on the part of both North Korea and China toward American allies such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

How Can We ‘Trust The Science’ When We Can’t Trust The Data?

By on November 14th, 2024

‘https://issuesinsights.com/2024/11/14/how-can-we-trust-the-science-when-we-cant-trust-the-data/

Climate change is the challenge of our lifetimes,” we in the energy-hungry West often hear when lectured by leftist government officials and their allies pushing the “Net-Zero” religion. But what happens if much of the vital data behind the climate-change threat are made up?

Turns out, quite a lot of it is. At least that’s what the Daily Sceptic, a British-based science watchdog, claims. It recently detailed the allegations made by an independent journalist showing that 103 of the 302 supposed “weather stations” that provide data for both the United Kingdom government’s and academic scientists’ climate change forecasts don’t exist or produce actual data.

That’s right. Instead of data, the government manufactures “estimates,” as journalist Ray Sanders found.

If so, that means all of the science based on the falsified data is null and void. That includes the British government’s frequent dire predictions of massive global heating that will soon make life on planet Earth unbearable.

Still, that’s just the UK, right? Wrong.

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