Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
Stocks are higher this morning as markets digest the Trump victory. Bonds, on the other hand, are getting slammed.
The Trump trade is full swing, with stocks rising in anticipation of a more business-friendly environment. The action in bonds is probably to be expected, as investors adopt a risk-on position. Overall, Trump will probably be negative for long-term bonds for a few reasons. First, the risk-on aspect means that investors will prefer riskier assets like stocks to safe assets like bonds. Second, stronger economic activity will give the Fed less leeway to cut rates. And finally, hawkish trade policy is bad for Treasuries. The reason for this is that our trading partners run trade surpluses, which means they send us goods and services and we send them Treasuries in return. If trade declines, that means less demand for Treasuries and therefore higher rates at the margin.
All attention now turns to the Fed, which starts its meeting today. Longer-term, it will be interesting to see what happens to the GSEs.
The services economy expanded for the fourth consecutive month, according to the ISM Services Index. “The increase in the Services PMI® in October was driven by boosts of more than 4 percentage points for both the Employment and Supplier Deliveries indexes. The Business Activity and New Orders indexes both dropped by at least 2 percentage points. Each of the four subindexes are now above their averages for 2024. The Supplier Deliveries Index remained in expansion in October, indicating slower delivery performance. Concerns over political uncertainty were again more prevalent than the previous month. Impacts from hurricanes and ports labor turbulence were mentioned frequently, although several panelists mentioned that the longshoremen’s strike had less of an impact than feared due to its short duration.”
Mortgage applications fell 10.8% last week as purchases 5.1% and refis fell 18.5%. “Applications decreased for the sixth consecutive week, with purchase activity falling to its lowest level since mid-August and refinance activity declining to the lowest level since May. The average loan size on a refinance application dropped below $300,000, as borrowers with larger loans tend to be more sensitive to any given changes in mortgage rates”
Filed under: Economy |
All Things in Moderation 
This is good:
https://x.com/Banned_Bill/status/1853842945767592429
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Van Jones with the take of the night.
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Good piece.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/06/opinion/donald-trump-2024-election.html
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Also good:
https://www.thetimes.com/world/us-world/article/why-trump-may-stage-greatest-comeback-us-history-7dfr8tzrq
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Wait, I could have sworn The Atlantic promised that democracy was over if Trump was elected.
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/11/trump-victory-democracy/680549/
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They lied. As Tom Nichols continue to make statement after statement that should be followed with a line that should be familiar them, just instead of “Trump asserted without evidence”, it should be “I am asserting without evidence”.
And what is his evidence that J.D. Vance is kooky and crazy? That he compared Trump to Hitler? Does Nichols not have an editor?
The Atlantic is worse than a rag now.
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Anyone who watched even a snippet of Trump or Vance on Joe Rogan would have realized the MSM narrative was horseshit.
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You’d think. My mother–who is a lefty but also a virologist with two PhDs–swore up and down to me that J.D. Vance said he wanted to outlaw birth control. I told her no, that wasn’t a thing. She was sure it was. Said that she heard him say it with his own mouth.
Republicans really need to not underestimate the degree to which the MSM uses out of context clips to shape that narrative. The sense they have heard something from the mouth of Trumphitler or Kooky J.D. Vance or whomever is apparently very powerful. They should have a full on constant debunking team that attacks anybody using said clips out of context, community noting them when the show up anywhere on X, etc.
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I believe JD’s pro life position makes him opposed to Plan B. Many view Plan B as birth control in the same class as the pill and condoms. I can see the argument about him being against birth control in light of that. Also, he’s Catholic, and if he shares the faith’s position on birth control…
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JD’s response when asked about his Trump is Hitler comment is to say that he stupidly believed the media.
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Which is not entirely credible, but, meh. I don’t care. He’s a politician. They say stuff. I love that the media confronted him on that but barely mentioned Kamala’s U-turn on all her 2019 policy positions.
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Some interesting reporting in here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/06/how-donald-trump-won-presidential-election/
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In a single nod to actual reportage, he puts “retribution” in quotes. Nothing even suggesting the 91 felony charges and 34 felony convictions are all political attacks that would never have happened had he left the presidency saying he would never run again. No indication that he, in fact, did not incite a riot at the U.S. Capitol, and it was incited by “individuals” who may have been government agents, or working in concert with government agents. For reasons. Which I know is a crazy conspiracy theory even though it’s pretty much all on tape.
Bezos is going to have to do much more that prevent endorsements to fix the rot at WaPo.
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Trump is, stupidly, floating the idea of pardoning Hunter. Now, I don’t believe he’ll have the opportunity as I believe Biden will pardon Hunter before Jan 20th. But how is he Mr. Retribution when he is floating that? An argument to be made, one I don’t subscribe too, but a valid one none the less, is that Trump blanket pardon’s every member of the Biden admin as a conciliatory gesture to see if the madness can stop (it cannot until reciprocal consequences land) and as a way to force people to be fulsome in questioning them on the extent of the collusion during the lawfare.
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I disagree. I think pardoning Hunter as a mostly symbolic gesture helps take the wind out of the Resistance sails.
It also works well if he includes it with a blanket January 6th pardon.
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Understand completely but I don’t think the left will stop until hoisted on their own petard. Then, they can put up the money for the gambling license, personally.
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One thing that is interesting and will be entertaining to watch its evolution is that there were about 20 million less votes for Harris than there was for Biden in 2020. What will be the lefty conclusion on that? Will the left consider their policies to be unpopular? Will they think that the missing votes were actually fraudulent votes in 2020?
I suspect the conclusion will be they need to further liberalize voting laws
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“What will be the lefty conclusion on that?”
What makes you think they’ll acknowledge, much less reflect on it? 20 million mystery votes are not part of their world view, whether real or fake.
“I suspect the conclusion will be they need to further liberalize voting laws”
Agreed, but I think they will reach that point without ever talking about the 20m vote difference. And only talk about it if forced, and change the subject immediately if possible.
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“I think pardoning Hunter as a mostly symbolic gesture helps take the wind out of the Resistance sails”
I’m dubious. I don’t think it will. It will be a blip and they will be back to #resistance.
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I think it is impossible to get any goodwill from these people
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I agree. Do it or don’t, but except no good will.
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“I suspect the conclusion will be they need to further liberalize voting laws”
Blame third parties and also Biden’s support of Israel.
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Find it interesting that both hillary and kamala wouldn’t address their supporters after the election was lost.
girl bossing is hard work, i guess.
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Facing reality after a lifetime of unbridled entitlement is hard work, for sure.
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Spent some time on Twitter. The left is not taking this well.
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Nope. The fever has gotten worse.
https://www.popehat.com/p/and-yet-it-moves
No more honest either:
That of course is not what Nixon actually said to Frost.
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My early prediction: the left is setting itself up for a drubbing in the midterms, or Dems from even purple-blue areas are going to be working to distance themselves from this attitude, and the wokesters generally.
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The projection in that is off the charts
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The polls were of course off again. I wonder how polling companies get paid. What is their source of revenue?
If the MSM or PACs are paying them fees for their polling data, then that explains everything.
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My thought as well.
https://x.com/tomselliott/status/1854509141563244844?s=46&t=vSGsUlnc4rLxcUf7zfUiHg
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This was funny:
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I love the return of “I’m batshit crazy so I hope they’re listening!” Trump. Seriously.
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My thought is Woodward is on George Soros’s payroll. That’s my thought.
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Getting closer.
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It’s a stumper.
https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1854592212039847964
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I can’t believe they are talking about that. Is this intentional to draw attention to the 14 million votes harvested out of nowhere in 2020 for some reason, or did this guy not get the directions to not talk about it yet?
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They are going with this. They are really going with this.
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The autopsy:
https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/the-shattering-of-the-democratic
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They aren’t going to listen. I say that without reading but I’m betting I’m right.
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Getting there:
https://www.joshbarro.com/p/trump-didnt-deserve-to-win-but-we
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“By electing Donald Trump again, the American electorate has made a bad decision, one that will expose our country to unreasonable risks in areas from foreign policy to public health.”
Still not sure how they can’t see a Kamala Harris administration would have done the same thing, and the Biden administration already did both–and tried hard to do even worse. If they could have done it, they would have mandated vaccines and boosters to the entire population at every age range. With the mandates they lost a lot of the military, and applying ESG to the military began a process of neutering our armed forces that I’m hoping Trump reverses. Not saying Trump won’t expose us to other risks (and I sure hope he does better on public health this time around), but come on. Don’t pretend Harris was a good person to put in charge of these things. Her administration would have been a mess in both those areas and more.
“Fiscal policy will get worse — budget deficits will become even larger, keeping interest rates high, and programs that provide health care to the poor and elderly are likely to be trimmed back to finance tax cuts for rich people. Abortion rights are likely to be further restricted, with a hostile administration using the powers of the FDA and the DOJ to make abortion harder to provide.”
I doubt budget deficits will become worse than they were under Biden. Why would they? Interest rates just got cut; not sure what he has to do with keeping interest rates high. Trump has indicated multiple times he has no interest in reforming entitlements–and he didn’t reform any entitlements during the 4 years of his first administration. So what in the world makes him think it’s happening this time? When he didn’t do it the first time and says he’s not going to do it now. The Trump tax cuts mostly helped poorer people and were neutral or even punitive towards the rich. So again . . . based on what? And what about Trump suggests he’s going to do anything to make abortions harder to get from a federal perspective? That’s not his bag. It’s obviously not his bag. Why can’t these people base their complaints in reality? Like on tariffs or problems with cutting taxes on tips and overtime?
“and a state constitutional provision will not override any new federal laws or regulations that Republicans might impose with their new control in Washington”
Which during Trump, they will not.
“The inflation is mostly not Democrats’ fault”
I would argue that a competent administration that increased access to energy (so lowering the cost of almost everything) and controlled immigration and didn’t inject insane amounts of magic money into the economy would have had much less inflation, so yes, it is kind of their fault (although Trump’s too, as he also threw a lot of money into the economy out of nowhere, but not so much). Also, telling the people paying twice as much for groceries that they were wrong, and that the economy was actually great, was also not a good strategy.
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“Unless they’re content to be primarily the party of America’s well-off. Harris lost voters under $50,000 in household income as well as voters from $50,000 to $100,000 in income. But she did carry voters with over $100,000 in household by 8 points, one place where Harris did improve over Biden in 2020. This is not, as they say, your father’s Democratic Party. Not even close.”
You think the Democrats would want to have a strong economy to create more rich people, since it’s getting to where rich people are the only people that vote for them.
“Police misconduct and brutality against people of any race is wrong and we need to reform police conduct and recruitment. However, more and better policing is needed to get criminals off the streets and secure public safety. That cannot be provided by “defunding the police”.”
No mention of police unions who often put demonstrably “not the best” officers back out on the street. A lot of bad-apple police officers would be riding a desk instead participating in the death of someone like George Floyd if not for the police unions.
That said, what he describes is nothing like the Democrat party and will likely end up looking a lot more like the Trump administration.
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Sorry, I know I am late to the party here…
jnc:
The autopsy:
Basically the guy is suggesting that Dems need to become what Republicans already are. Nearly every bullet point that Teixeira suggests the Dems start vocalizing is something that Republicans in the main already believe.
Also worth noting…he advises that Dems begin to “say” these things, not they should begin to believe these things. I’m not sure if that was a conscious choice on his part, but hit is interesting that he doesn’t advise changing policy initiatives, only what the Dems are “saying”. This is in line with the typical Dem self-criticism in the wake of defeat, which is inevitably all about “messaging” and never about policy.
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A number of “autopsies” I’ve heard suggest the problem is messaging, but not that they need to sound like Republicans, they just need a better spokesperson to advance trans issues and the 1619 project. And of course some media ecosystem like the Republicans, like their own Joe Rogan and Fox News. Because the left doesn’t have any kind of media ecosystem, you see.
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Klein gets it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-election.html
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It’s the Obama coalition that, in many ways, has led to this point.
“What made that loss hurt so much for liberals was that by 2004, Americans knew who Bush was and what he had done.”
He also made clear promises. He said the war in Iraq was the same war as 9/11, which people generally believed although that was a lie.
Then once he had won, he started talking about bringing democracy to the Middle East. Klein says the travesty of Iraq was clear, and I don’t think that’s true. By 2006, maybe. And then Bush also started in on Social Security. I think his idea was brilliant and everybody in my age bracket and under would be in much better shape for retirement now had they passed it, but he hadn’t run on that–and that was a very big thing to tackle. And he had not prepared for the Democrats attacks and outright lies about the idea at all, and was caught flat-footed. If that sort of stuff had happened before the election, it might not have been nearly as clean a win.
“the interesting question might be why Trump didn’t win in a landslide. If Nikki Haley had been running, she probably would have.”
I think it’s obvious why Trump didn’t win in a landslide. A: He’s Trump. B: The media was horrendously dishonest about him in every way, and that impacts a lot of normies and low-information voters.
If Nikki Haley had been running, she might have won but I don’t think she would have swung working class blacks and Hispanics like Trump did. She might have gotten a lot more white suburban women, though. But I also don’t know if she could have ever motivated all the voting in blue states where people know their state is going for the Democrat. I could see her getting cleaner wins and higher margins in the blue wall states, though. Unlike a lot of Trump supporters, I like Halley and would have voted for her, despite her being a uniparty politician.
“Harris was dealt a bad hand.”
No, she was a bad candidate. Her failure in the primaries illustrated that as much as anything. But she had opportunities to show she was a good candidate during the lead up to the election, and she routinely proved to everyone not a cult member that she was a horrible candidate.
“I think she ran a strong campaign”
Unless you are a dedicated Democratic partisan, I don’t see how you could think that.
“She can be amazing on the stump.”
If this was true then she would have been, at least once.
“I went and listened to the appearance Elon Musk made on Joe Rogan’s podcast on Monday. It was strikingly right wing and conspiratorial.”
This is true, and I’m not sure why. I think Musk knows better, or I would think he would. At the same time–all he was saying was a watered-down version of what the Democrats had been saying every day, all day, since Trump won the nomination: “this may be the last democratic election we have, if you don’t vote for the right person”. It would be worth pointing out that that was his big conspiratorial line, and the Democrats couldn’t attack on it because they were doing the exact same stupid thing.
“But if these last years have proved anything, it’s that liberals don’t get to choose who is marginalized.”
He’s got that right, 100%. They think they do (especially in the media) and it’s clear that it’s not true. And together I think they are losing the next generation, especially men in the next generation. They are grooming an army of future Republican men that reside not only in red states, but everywhere.
“despite the wild statements and weaving rants”
He’s referring to Trump but honestly he could and should also be referring to the media who covered Trump.
“Because what liberals believed about Bush was true.”
In the sense that the Iraq war was a mistake, and that whole project was a mistake, sure. But a lot of things they believed about Bush were still actually lies. That said, he’s mischaracterizing Obama’s 2008 run; he was more Clintonesque in 2008 than 2012. He was more like a modern Democratic politician in 2012 and his win there, against a weak Republican candidate, was not as big as it had been against McCain–arguably a much better candidate than Romney.
“And my God, the corruption we are about to see.”
Klein may get some things, but he’s still not getting how much that is projection. I would expect any “corruption” out of the Trump administration is going to primarily be incompetence. And not particularly impressive compared to even the Biden Whitehouse. Much less Clinton.
That said, I think Klein will be (a) not well-received on this, (b) talked into shifting the blame off Democrats as time goes on, and (c) attacked and ignored, primarily, until he changes his tune, which I expect he will.
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If Trump’s second term is successful, then yes.
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Define “successful”. For this, all he and other Republicans need to do is not blame everything on men, not blame white men for all the problems of the world, not attack black and Hispanic men for “not doing their part” … and not start World War III.
Or the Democrats take the woke left out behind the barn and put it out of their misery. I repeat—it’s not the Republicans grooming Gen z to be Republican. It’s the Democrats, the left generally, and the media. All the Republicans have to do is not get in the way of that.
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“Define “successful””
At the end of it, a majority believe that they and the country are better off than they were at the start of his second term.
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That’s seems like a very bar. I don’t think he has to be anywhere near that successful for Gen Z to continue to lean “not Democrat”, especially Gen Z men.
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Oh no .
https://x.com/brianstelter/status/1854567632797683861?s=46&t=vSGsUlnc4rLxcUf7zfUiHg
Please don’t leave.
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A: Stelter can just f**k right off with his X account. “Only accounts mentioned by Brian Stelter can reply”. If I can’t tell him not to let the door hit him in the ass on the way out, what’s the point of even reading anything he writes?
B: I am actually astonished they remain so clueless. No sense of their deep irrelevance to everything. They were saying Trump was literally Hitler and painting the most horrific picture of the dystopian and tragic future we’re in for if Trump would win . . . and Trump got more votes than ever, and even in rock solid blue states Trump got more votes than ever. And women voted for him in droves. And yet! Brian Stelter thinks these journalists are brainiacs that are influential or relevant in any way? That their absence would even be remarked upon, let alone cared about? Joe Rogan gets more views that almost all the news networks put together. I think Tim Pool routinely does better than any CNN show.
Why does he think anybody would care? Why does he think they would be missed? They don’t do journalism. They don’t do reporting. They don’t share facts. You find out more about what’s going on in Washington from YouTubers and Podcasters who don’t live in Washington. Congressional Dish podcast provides more actual details about what’s going on in the capitol in one podcast than CNN has in the past 10 years. And she’s pretty liberal, so you can still be liberal and do journalism, but I don’t think any of the DC journalists do it.
Yet if Trump’s victory–and the large numbers of minorities and women that voted for him–does anything, it should serve as a rebuke to the press, that has been more hostile to Trump and his supporters than the actual Democrats. But no, they remain completely vapid and shallow and clueless.
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The shock is real:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/11/progressives-errors-2024-election/680563/
If you have “every prominent celebrity voice”, really what else do you need?
Shades of past losing campaigns.
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The solution will be censorship. Bank on it
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https://newrepublic.com/post/188197/trump-media-information-landscape-fox
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That’s the problem! Fox News and the right wing media juggernaut and right wingers like Joe Rogan … who had previously endorsed Bernie Sanders, and was pretty hostile towards Trump until the last couple of years and it wasn’t Trump responsible for Rogan’s conversion, it was this sort of bullshit.
I guess I shouldn’t be angry that they are such morons, given if anything will keep them losing it’s this sort of crap.
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Trump starts to get some respect at the Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/08/susie-wiles-trump-chief-staff/
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That’s a strange thing to read at WaPo. Makes me miss the days when you could go into the comments section without a subscription. I’d be interested to see the reader reaction to a story where they forgot to mention that Trump is literally Hitler.
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Rehabilitation of the brand
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I admit to being partial to Bill Burr and I found him true to form here.
”Somewhere between Applebee’s and Daddy Didn’t Stick Around.”
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Opps. Time to care about civil liberties again.
https://theintercept.com/2024/11/10/trump-nonprofit-tax-exempt-political-enemies/
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Cue the Forrest Gump “and just like that” meme
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Kevin, FYI
https://www.racket.news/p/note-to-readers-any-public-school
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I sent him an email and made a comment on that original post, but it sounds like he got a lot of responses.
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Stray dogs hit hardest.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2024/11/12/trump-has-made-his-pick-for-head-the-department-of-homeland-security-n2647653
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That was a stupid thing to put in writing if you want to run for president. But a rock would be a better head of DHS than Mayorkas, so I’m sure she’ll be fine.
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Now they are trying to assert that Biden deported more illegal immigrants than Trump did.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/13/pelosis-flawed-claim-that-biden-did-better-than-trump-border/
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That seems absurd, but also counts for nothing if you’re letting in hundreds of times more. Also without reading anything about it I’d bet they reporting like Indians with PhDs and Asians and, you know, the Irish.
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NY Times focus group follow up:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/13/opinion/focusgroup-young-undecided-voters.html
Scott, FYI:
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