Today’s News 12th November 2024

• The Two Thanksgivings Between Halloween And Christmas
  The Two Thanksgivings Between Halloween And Christmas

  Authored by Timothy C. Hemmis via RealClearHistory,

  In the United States, November 11th has been known as Veterans Day since 1954 (before that, it was known as Armistice Day). Originally, Veterans Day commemorated the Allies’ victory in World War I. However, after the Second World War, veterans of that conflict including Dwight Eisenhower pushed to expand the holiday to honor all veterans. In many ways, this holiday is about giving thanks to those who have served in wars to protect the United States of America. In that sense it is as much a day of thanksgiving, if not more so, than the one at the end of the November.

  

  The Thanksgiving we all know and love, which we celebrate with turkey, mashed potatoes, cornbread dressing/stuffing, cranberry sauce, and a multitude of pies, began as a solemn day of prayer and remembrance. Churches and political bodies often declared a day of thanksgiving after major events. These “holidays” could take place any time of the year. So why November?

  President George Washington issued the first national day of thanksgiving on November 26th, 1789 as a day for prayer and giving thanks to God “for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation.” But Washington’s declaration was not the start of an annual holiday.

  President Abraham Lincoln, from the prompting of writer Sarah Josepha Hale, officially set a national holiday on the final Thursday of November in 1863. Established during the Civil War, the new holiday encouraged Americans to remember and give thanks for blessings and military successes of the United States of America. Lincoln and Hale both thought a holiday could help heal the divided nation.

  By the 20th century, Thanksgiving morphed into the feast we know today. The modern holiday is loosely based on the “First Thanksgiving” that the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony had in 1621, which was a harvest feast and a solemn day.

  The rise of American consumerism during the late 19th century led to the growth of holiday meals and celebrations. During Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, the holiday was moved to the third Thursday of November, which allowed for a few extra days of Christmas shopping to help boost an economy that had been limping along during the Great Depression. One could say that the holiday creep started with FDR.

  As both Veterans Day and Thanksgiving are sandwiched between Halloween and Christmas, these November holidays have unfortunately been relegated to a secondary status.

  Despite the origins of both these days of thanksgiving, we often forget the history and get swept up in the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. There is nothing wrong with putting up your Christmas tree early, but hopefully you and your family can pause and celebrate the two days of thanksgiving this November.

  Timothy C. Hemmis is Associate Professor of History with a specialization in Early American History at Texas A&M University – Central Texas in Killeen, Texas. His research focuses on empire, national identity, war and society in Revolutionary America (1750-1815). He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2015. He is a fellow with the Jack Miller Center.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 23:25

• Chinese National Arrested Again After Multiple Efforts To Enter Mar-a-Lago
  Chinese National Arrested Again After Multiple Efforts To Enter Mar-a-Lago

  Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Florida’s Palm Beach County police on Nov. 8 arrested a Chinese national after he tried, again, to enter President-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, according to court records.

  

  Li Zijie, a 39-year-old living in suburban Los Angeles on a student visa, allegedly arrived at the Trump property in an Uber on the afternoon of Nov. 7—the latest in a number of attempts he has made to get into the resort in the past few weeks.

  He made the trip hours after getting out of a mental hospital, where he had spent the previous week after a similar effort made in late October, according to a police affidavit.

  Li now faces two counts of trespassing, according to the county’s jail records. He’s being held in the Palm Beach County Main Detention Center, with bail set at $100,000.

  The arrest has heightened security concerns around Trump, who narrowly survived an assassination attempt in July during a Pennsylvania rally. In September, the Secret Service identified a man pointing a rifle through a fence at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach while Trump was playing golf. The Justice Department said on Nov. 8 that it had stopped an Iranian plot to kill Trump and charged three men allegedly involved in a murder-for-hire network.

  Li first tried to gain entry into Mar-a-Lago on July 19, six days after the Pennsylvania rally shooting, according to court documents viewed by The Epoch Times.

  Li pulled up in a gray Toyota and told Secret Service agents he had information implicating China in the assassination attempt and wished to give them the documents. The Palm Beach police issued a trespass warning and told him not to return.

  In the following days, Li drove into the town of Palm Beach at least four times but didn’t try to enter Mar-a-Lago, according to court records.

  On July 30, officers observed Li driving toward the Mar-a-Lago checkpoint and placing paperwork about Trump on vehicles. He was arrested the next day for allegedly trespassing on the premises. A local court ordered him to stay 500 feet away from the resort and from Trump.

  Li’s next attempt was on Oct. 30, when he tried to enlist help from a resident who lives nearby, according to court documents.

  The woman had a Trump 2024 political sign in her yard. Li asked if she was a Mar-a-Lago club member and whether she could drive him inside. The woman refused, and after seeing him enter a white Toyota, she called the police, who placed Li in a mental hospital.

  He returned to Mar-a-Lago on the day of his release.

  

  In the affidavit regarding the latest intrusion effort, Palm Beach Police said that because of the “increased attempts by Li to gain entrance into Mar-a-Lago” to make contact with the president-elect, a future attempt could lead to an escalation of enforcement.

  The Trump resort has faced repeated intrusion efforts, including two from Chinese nationals.

  During Trump’s first term as president, a Chinese businesswoman carried four cellphones, a computer, and an external hard drive past the security checkpoint, telling a Secret Service agent that she was there to use the pool, then later presenting herself to reception as an attendee of an already-canceled event.

  The woman, Zhang Yujing, was sentenced to eight months in prison for illegally entering the site. She was deported to China two years later, in November 2021.

  After that incident, another Chinese national, Lu Jing, was arrested in December 2019 after she entered the property and began taking pictures. A judge later acquitted her of trespassing charges but issued a six-month sentence on a separate charge of resisting arrest.

  During Trump’s 2018 Thanksgiving visit to the resort, a University of Wisconsin student sneaked into the Palm Beach club by standing with a group entering Mar-a-Lago. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and apologized for the act.

  The Epoch Times has contacted Li’s lawyer for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 23:00

• CNN Cheers As Top Kamala Staffer Calls For Jan. 6 "Disruption", Unelected Presidency
  CNN Cheers As Top Kamala Staffer Calls For Jan. 6 “Disruption”, Unelected Presidency

  Authored by Julianna Frieman via Headline USA,

  Jamal Simmons, the former communications director for Vice President Kamala Harris, elicited audible reactions from CNN panelists Sunday when he called for Democrats to disrupt President-elect Donald Trump’s transition.

  

  Simmons suggested President Joe Biden resign before Trump’s inauguration and make Harris the first woman president on CNN State of the Union.

  “There’s one promise left that he could fulfill: being a transitional figure. He could resign the presidency in the next 30 days, make Kamala Harris President of the United States,” he said, prompting CNN’s Scott Jennings to laugh, “woah,” and host Dana Bash to say “wow.”

  Former VP Harris Comms Director says on CNN that Biden should resign and make Kamala the first woman president to “disrupt” the Trump transition.

  “It would dominate the news.”

  “Democrats have the learn drama and transparency and doing things that the public wants to see…” pic.twitter.com/fb60u8xZuD

  — Julianna Frieman (@JuliannaFrieman) November 10, 2024

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Harris becoming president would absolve her from having to oversee the transfer of power from Biden to Trump, Simmons said.

  If Biden resigns, Harris’s ascension to the Oval Office would leave the role of vice president vacant.

  Harris would then have to appoint a vice president that must be confirmed by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress, according to the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

  “Democrats have to learn drama and transparency and doing things that the public will want to see,” Simmons said. “This is the moment to change the entire perspective of how Democrats operate.”

  “Okay, this has now jumped from an Internet meme to a Sunday morning show,” Bash quipped.

  Jennings joked that Simmons was writing the next season of hit political drama series House of Cards.

  Bash brought up a potential vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, referencing reports that some Democrats want to pressure Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, 70, to retire.

  Simmons cast doubt on the idea of a Harris nomination to the Supreme Court but reiterated that the possibility is at the behest of Biden.

  What ever could VP Kamala Harris do after losing the presidency to Trump?

  CNN commentator suggests Harris should be appointed to the Supreme Court.

  “Not only am I floating it, but I want to stir up everything. I want people’s heads to explode…”pic.twitter.com/F47XAD2A5X

  — Julianna Frieman (@JuliannaFrieman) November 8, 2024

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  “If he did it, again, it would fulfill his promise, his last promise, it would give Kamala Harris the chance to be the 47th President of the United States of America. It would disrupt all of Donald Trump’s paraphernalia,” he laughed. “Right? He’d have to rebrand everything.”

  “It would be easier for the next woman to run for president to not have to worry about historical weight,” Simmons said.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 22:35

• Top 3 Reasons Voters Gave For Not Supporting Harris: Poll
  Top 3 Reasons Voters Gave For Not Supporting Harris: Poll

  Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  An exit poll released by Democratic polling firm Blueprint outlined the top three reasons voters nationwide gave for not supporting Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, in her 2024 bid for U.S. president.

  

  The leading issue for voters was that inflation is too high. This was followed by the Biden–Harris administration allowing in too many illegal immigrants, and that Harris focused too much on cultural topics like transgender issues rather than the middle class.

  The poll asked 3,262 national and swing state voters in the two days following the 2024 election to rate the importance of potential reasons for their decision to vote for President-elect Donald Trump instead of Harris.

  In addition to inflation, illegal immigration, and Harris’s focus on transgender issues, the next three factors named by all voters were that debt rose too high under the Biden–Harris administration, that Harris is too similar to President Joe Biden, and that Harris would let in even more illegal immigrants. One choice that scored high among swing state voters in particular was that “Democrats did a bad job running the country.”

  “In the end, Harris couldn’t outrun her past or her party—perhaps it was a lack of time, but it was certainly a vice grip that proved impossible to escape,” the polling report’s authors wrote.

  The factors of least concern to voters were that Harris was too pro-Israel, too conservative, or not similar enough to Biden.

  The poll’s findings were published as top Democrats reel from Tuesday’s election results, point fingers, and assign blame for who’s responsible for Trump’s sweep of the seven battleground states.

  “In this election, Americans have made their voice clear: Democrats need to focus more on issues Americans care about, like wages and benefits, and less on being politically correct … Democrats have been too intimidated to speak up for the same values that many of us hold dear—the American Dream, public safety, and a common sense of right and wrong among them,” Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) wrote in a Nov. 7 post on X.

  “We cannot get wrapped around the axle by our base and resistance politics.”

  Democrats farther to the left than Suozzi disagree. During a community organizing video call on Nov. 8, progressive leaders defended their coalition and its focus on “marginalized communities” amid attacks from their party’s center.

  “Maybe you’re a leftist who feels deep frustration at the many calls to move the Democrats to the center at the expense of targeted and marginalized communities, the expense of suffering people and normal times,” Ash-Lee Woodard-Henderson, co-executive director of the Highlander Research & Education Center, told the virtual attendees.

  Progressive congresswoman Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wa.), also dismissed calls to blame the party’s left-wing coalitions, and their messaging on cultural issues, for Harris’s loss.

  “The blame game, you’ve seen it, it’s already started with a lot of cheap shots at our progressive movement, and it’s easy to finger-point even for us, but we need to resist it,” Jayapal said.

  “I imagine we share a lot of theories about this election and what led us here, but I think we actually need to look at the [exit polling] data.”

  Blueprint’s exit polling data seems to validate the concerns of the party’s more moderate members such as Suozzi.

  Another Democratic polling firm, GQR, logged similar sentiment among voters in a Nov. 6 poll. Taken with a smaller sample size of 800 national voters between Oct. 31 and Nov. 5, the poll found that voters ranked opposition to transgender surgeries and transgender kids in sports as the least important issue affecting their vote this year, at 4 percent.

  Roughly 64 percent of respondents said they had seen Trump campaign ads highlighting Harris’s previous support for taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for prisoners and illegal immigrants.

  In an exit poll by Fox News, 54 percent of voters—among a sample size of more than 30,000—said they believed “support for transgender rights in government and society” had gone too far. Twenty-two percent said it had “been about right,” and another 22 percent said it had “not gone far enough.”

  Voters were roughly split on the topic of gender-related procedures, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for minors under the age of 18 who identify as transgender. Forty-seven percent said they “strongly/somewhat favor” medical and surgical treatment for minors, while 52 percent said they “strongly/somewhat oppose” the procedures.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 21:45

• When Will The US Lose Its Last WWII Veterans?
  When Will The US Lose Its Last WWII Veterans?

  16 million Americans fought in the World War II, but today their ranks are rapidly dwindling. U.S. men and women who served in the conflict are now in their 90s (some are much older) with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimating that less than 70,000 remain alive today, a significant decline from the 930,000 alive in 2015 and more than two million five years earlier.

  As Statista’s Felix Richter reports, based on the best available Veteran data at the end of FY2023, the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics uses a deterministic projection model to estimate and project the veteran population for the next 30 years.

  Its findings show how the number of living WWII vets will rapidly decline over the coming years with the last ones expected to pass away in the early 2040s.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  The last American veteran of the First World War, Frank Buckles, passed away in February 2011, aged 110.

  World War II was the largest and deadliest conflict in human history claiming the lives of over 50 million combatants and civilians by the time it ended in 1945.

  More than 400,000 American service members died in the conflict, making it the deadliest war in America’s history as well.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 21:20

• Trump Allies Push Richard Grenell For Secretary Of State
  Trump Allies Push Richard Grenell For Secretary Of State

  Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClearPolitics,

  Allies of Donald Trump are encouraging the president-elect to make the most of what he described as “an unprecedented and powerful mandate” by nominating a dyed-in-the-wool MAGA diplomat to serve as his secretary of state, rather than an America First convert as he did during his first term.

  Enter Richard Grenell.

  

  He is the former U.S. ambassador to Germany, who served previously as the acting director of national intelligence, and whose chief characteristic is an undying devotion to Trump. During the frenetic early days of the presidential transition, a number of names have already been floated, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty. Grenell, a firebrand whose name gives establishment foreign policy circles heartburn, is already lining up support from divergent corners of the GOP.

  “He would be a break from precedent in the same way that President Trump’s foreign policy worldviews are a break with precedent,” said Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who has discussed a Grenell nomination with the Trump transition team.

  The incoming president and his foreign policy players will soon confront a world on fire. There is a land war in Ukraine, which Trump has promised to end even before taking the oath of office. The president-elect has also vowed to bring peace to the Middle East by bringing the Israel-Gaza conflict to a close. Across the globe, meanwhile, an increasingly aggressive China threatens Western interests.

  Dealing with those challenges will begin by naming a top diplomat to take over the State Department, which Lee described in an interview with RealClearPolitics as a bureaucratic “can of worms.” Grenell is particularly suited to that kind of work, added South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, because he “knows where the bodies are buried.”

  While Grenell has his detractors, particularly those within the foreign policy establishment, Lee and Graham both point to not just his work in the Trump administration but also his time as a State Department spokesman assigned to the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration. Perhaps more important than any diplomatic credential is the fact that he maintains perfect Trump fluency.

  “You have got to have a secretary of state who understands the world from Trump’s viewpoint in terms of trying to expand alliances and end wars. The closer the person is to President Trump,” Graham told RCP, “probably the better view they have.”

  Graham, a longtime confidant of the former and future president, said that while every name he has heard floated would be “a good outstanding choice,” when it comes to Grenell, “there’s nobody, I think, who has been closer to President Trump since 2016.”

  Not everyone has been so sympatico with Trump. During his first term, the former president tapped Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil, to be his top diplomat only for the relationship to quickly sour. At times, Tillerson found himself out of step with and blindsided by his boss, like when Trump undercut the diplomat’s efforts to negotiate with North Korea by tweeting that his secretary of state was “wasting his time.” Tillerson was later fired.

  Testifying before the House Foreign Affairs in 2018 after losing his job, Tillerson was asked to describe Trump’s value. Replied the Texas oilman-turned-diplomat, “I cannot.”

  For his part, Grenell has never strayed from Trump’s orbit. “I could be wrong,” said a former senior Trump official granted anonymity because they are also being considered for a role in the next administration, “but I think the job is probably his.”

  The former ambassador remains a favorite of the Trump family, and for the last four years, he could often be seen in Mar-a-Lago at the former president’s side. Of particular importance, sources note, is the fact that Grenell “never wavered” after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Other than longtime aide and confidant Jason Miller, the former official said, Grenell has “probably been the most loyal for the longest time.” That devotion has paid dividends. Grenell was with Trump in September during a meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky.

  Senate Republicans are eager to replace Secretary of State Antony Blinken and put someone in his place who will shake up the department.

  “He does represent something new,” Lee said of Grenell and the MAGA doctrine he represents. “I think he sees that we have spent an unbelievable amount of money and expended a significant amount of American sweat, blood, and treasure on projects that are sometimes hard to tie back to an American success, or to outcomes that make that sacrifice fully worth it.”

  Grenell is similar in this thinking to Trump but also style, a fact that has raised plenty of ire, not just in Washington, D.C., but around the world. He often feuds with reporters on social media when he takes issue with their reporting. He even earned a rebuke from German officials for blurring the lines of diplomacy and politics when he told Breitbart News in 2018 that he wanted to “empower” the European right. But brashness is an asset in Trump World.

  “If you want to avoid war, you better have a son of a bitch as the secretary of state,” Grenell told the “Self Centered” podcast earlier this year. America needs a “tough” chief diplomat, he added, “who goes in to these tables and says: ‘Guys, if we don’t solve this here, if we don’t represent peace and figure out a tough way, I’ve got to take this file, go back to the United States and transfer it to the secretary of defense, who doesn’t negotiate. He’s going to bomb you.’”

  Those kinds of comments may have made a candidate like Grenell untenable in other administrations or even during the early Trump era. But the president-elect will soon have a Republican majority in the Senate to help grease the appointment process. And anti-Trump Republicans who might hamper the nomination, like Sen. Mitt Romney, are increasingly rare. Lee said that there is growing concern with nominating from within the GOP Senate chamber for fear of raiding the Republican bench at the time the White House would need them most. “We’ve got to be careful not to take senators out of commission,” he explained, “because we’re going to need all hands on deck.”

  Although Trump named Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff, he has not yet moved to fill his cabinet. Whoever he wants, predicted Graham, he will get.

  “We’re going to have at least 53 senators. And I’ve got no doubt that if he was nominated by President Trump, he would get confirmed,” Graham said of Grenell.

  Added Lee, “Grenell is in lockstep with President Trump. I can’t point to anything in his persona and his background that would make him wildly unacceptable to other people.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 20:55

• California's Shift To The Right Lost On Newsom
  California’s Shift To The Right Lost On Newsom

  Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClearPolitics,

  California has entered a period of cognitive dissonance. Proposition 36, the state’s tough-on-crime proposal repudiating a decade of leniency, won in a landslide with 70% of the vote Tuesday. Voters are also now rejecting lenient progressive prosecutors – in the most direct way possible.

  

  Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, author of the 2014 ballot initiative most Republicans and many Democrats blame for the retail theft crime wave, previously survived two recalls over the past two years even when voters in San Francisco, one of the most liberal cities in the country, ousted his ally Chesa Boudin in 2022.

  But on Tuesday, former federal prosecutor and Republican-turned-independent Nathan Hochman soundly defeated Gascon 61.4% to 38%. Voters also appear poised to reject a ballot measure Newsom backed, increasing the minimum wage to $18 an hour. Another Democrat-backed measure aimed at bolstering apartment rent control failed Tuesday.

  Despite California’s tectonic shift to the right and the nation’s defeat of fellow San Francisco liberal Kamala Harris on Tuesday, it’s business as usual for Gov. Newsom and his hand-picked state Attorney General Rob Bonta. On Thursday, the pair anointed themselves the leaders of the Donald Trump resistance and protectors of California’s progressive values that the rest of the nation had just roundly rejected.

  Newsom appointed Bonta in 2021 when President Biden tapped Xavier Becerra, California’s former attorney general, as his Health and Human Services secretary. Newsom and Bonta have since forged a legal-legislative tag-team fighting for liberal causes and silencing their political opponents. The governor has used his bully pulpit to call special legislative sessions and push liberal measures in the Democratic super-majority controlled Assembly and state Senate while Bonta files lawsuits and civil rights investigations against their political adversaries.  

  In recent months, as Newsom has assailed oil and gas companies for “price-gouging,” Bonta has sued the industry for so-called “deceptive” practices on climate change. The attorney general has also used his office to try to stop pro-life groups and intimidate school boards who want teachers and administrators to notify parents when their children are gender transitioning in public schools.

  Newsom and Bonta held separate but obviously coordinated press conferences Thursday, positioning themselves as the protectors of “California values,” which they say Trump threatens. The two events seemed timed to bolster each man’s presumed ambitions for higher office. The term-limited Newsom deflected talk of a White House run while serving as Biden’s top surrogate before it all fell apart this summer and party elders chose Harris as the nominee.

  With that decision now fueling Democratic Party recriminations, Newsom is seizing on what he sees as an opening to elevate himself again to a national role – leader of the Trump resistance. The Bonta event the same day also sent a message to Harris that Bonta is Newsom’s hand-picked successor in next year’s already crowded governor’s race, so any effort by Harris to find a soft political landing spot as California governor would likely produce a bruising battle.

  It’s familiar ground for Newsom, who played the role of Trump’s foil during his last two years as president. During Trump’s first term, California sued the federal government over his past rules and regulatory actions more than 100 times, costing taxpayers more than $41 million in billable legal hours, according to Cal Matters. Newsom is using the same playbook, hoping it will boost his presidential chances, even though this time the national and even California’s political landscape has shifted significantly to the right.

  No matter to Newsom and Bonta, who on Thursday forged ahead with their plan, vowing to protect what they declared as the state’s top priorities of climate change, abortion rights, and shielding illegal immigrants from deportation.

  “The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack – and we won’t sit idle,” Newsom said. “California has faced this challenge before, and we know how to respond. We are prepared to fight in the courts, and we will do everything necessary to ensure Californians have the support and resources they need to thrive.”

  Meanwhile California Republicans, who number more than 6 million, and independents have set Trump on a glidepath to boost his popular vote margins once all votes are counted here, a process that could take days if not weeks to finalize. California’s vote-counting process extends so long because although county election officials can open and start processing vote-by-mail envelopes up to 29 days before Election Day, the results cannot be tallied until all polls close. In addition, vote-by-mail ballots postmarked on or before 8 p.m. on Election Day can arrive up to seven days afterward and be counted.

  California voters may play an even greater consequential role this election: Their vote in eight remaining too-close-to-call races could shift the balance of power in the House of Representatives. In 2020, California Republicans gained a total of four House seats, handing their party the House majority. They gained another seat in 2022.

  Of the nine California House races expected to be competitive this year, two have been called for Republicans. Another, expected to be a slam dunk for Democrats, emerged as a hotly contested race Tuesday night.

  On Thursday, Rep. David Valadao was declared the winner in a rematch of the 2022 race for California’s 22nd District in the agricultural Central Valley (against former Assemblyman Rudy Salas), even though Kamala Harris is expected to carry the district. Valadao is one of two remaining House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment following the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol.

  Republican Rep. Young Kim also won solidly in Southern California’s 40th District against Democrat challenger Joe Kerr, a retired fire captain. Kim topped Kerr 56.4% to 43.6%. 

  In the Central Valley’s 21st District, Democratic Rep. Jim Costa, who managed to win 10 congressional races in a row, now finds himself in a highly competitive race against challenger Michael Maher, a military veteran, former FBI agent, and business owner. With 62% of the votes in, Costa leads Maher by just 1.2%.

  There are seven other highly competitive congressional races across the state. Currently Republicans lead in six, though two are ahead by less than 2% with a significant portion of the vote still uncounted. One of those is an open Orange County seat previously held by Rep. Katie Porter, who lost her Senate primary race to fellow Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff. On Tuesday, Schiff handily won his Senate race against Republican Steve Garvey, 57.6% to 42.4%. 

  While California Democrats still have a big advantage in state-wide elected offices, Republicans have been making down-ticket gains since 2020. Aside from the public backlash on crime, there are also tactical reasons for renewed GOP success across the state.

  During California GOP Chair Jessica Millan Patterson’s time in office, Republicans have seen an increase of 800,000 in voter registration. Those gains flipped the majority of registrations from Democrats to the GOP in two of the most competitive House races – the 27th District previously represented by Porter, and the 41st District, where Rep. Ken Calvert, the longest serving California Republican in the House, is locked in a tight battle against former federal prosecutor Will Rollins.

  Ric Grenell, Trump’s former Director of National Intelligence and a name frequently mentioned for a position in the new administration, has been diligently working since 2021 with his group Fix California to register voters across the state.

  Patterson also credited Orange County Party Chairman Fred Whitaker, who launched a “Reclamation Project” to increase GOP voter registration in a now purple county that was once a Republican stronghold.

  “There’s been a lot of wonderful partners in this,” Patterson told RealClearPolitics Tuesday night, noting that Whitaker has done “an amazing job bringing former Republicans back to the party.”

  Unlike in 2016 and 2020 when Trump was considered a drag on Republicans in California, Patterson said Trump this year helped boost GOP support in key races.

  “I was talking to one member just the other day and President Trump had lost his district by about 13 points [in 2020],” she said. “Trump is now running even in their polling. So, we have a very, very great opportunity with Trump at the top of the ticket to turn out voters who wouldn’t otherwise turn out.”

  In the 2021 recall election against Newsom, there were 2.1 million people who voted for Trump in 2020 but didn’t turn out to vote for the failed referendum against the governor.

  “We are reaching these people, plus the new ones who are sick and tired of what Democrats have been serving up here in California,” Patterson said.

  Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ national political correspondent.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 20:30

• The Cost Of Owning A Home Is Soaring
  The Cost Of Owning A Home Is Soaring

  Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

  The soaring costs of home ownership are changing the metrics of unaffordability in important ways.

  We all know that buying a house is now unaffordable, but owning a house is increasingly unaffordable, too. Gordon Long and I have laid out the sobering explosion of the costs of homeownership, a rise that shows no signs of slowing, much less reversing.

  It would be nice to attribute it all to one source or one villain, but alas, it isn’t that easy. Costs are rising across the board for many reasons, none of which are reversible by enacting a policy tweak or two.

  For context, let’s start with inflation since 2020 and the cost of buying a house. Truflation pegs the aggregate inflation (a.k.a. loss of the purchasing power of the US dollar in our domestic economy) at 26% since January 2020. All else being equal, we would expect the cost of housing to have risen by about 25%.

  But according to the Case-Shiller national housing index, which tracks the purchase prices paid for each house over time, housing costs rose an eye-watering 45% since January 2020, as the index soared from 220 to 320.

  Traditionally, the primary cost of home ownership everyone tracks is the mortgage payment, the famous monthly nut of principal and interest, which of course goes up with the purchase price and the interest rate of the mortgage.

  As we all know, both the purchase price and the interest rate have gone up significantly, pushing the mortgage payment as a percentage of median household income up to levels that exceed the previous peak in Housing Bubble #1 circa 2006-08.

  

  If inflationary pressures remain elevated and the bond market isn’t buying the “inflation is fading” story, then mortgage rates might not drop even if the Federal Reserve cuts the Fed Funds Rate.

  

  But the mortgage payment isn’t the only cost of owning a home. All the other costs that were relatively affordable in decades past are now skyrocketing. Gordon listed the six basic categories of home ownership expenses: mortgage, property taxes, insurance, utilities, maintenance and repair and home-related services.

  

  Anecdotally, we’re hearing accounts of basic home insurance jumping from $3,000 to $13,000 annually in high-risk regions. We’re also hearing of insurers abandoning high-risk areas and entire states, leaving homeowners with few options for insurance. In response, some homeowners are “self-insuring,” i.e. they have dropped insurance coverage.

  The problem with this option is that should the worst-case scenario come to pass, as a general rule the federal disaster relief agencies will pony up a maximum of $40,000 to the uninsured–far from enough to rebuild or repair a severely damaged house.

  

  Insurers are not in the charity business. Once their losses run into the billions of dollars, they jack up rates to restore profitability. Recall that insurance is a global enterprise, and so the cost of our insurance is partly based on the cost of the reinsurance the big carriers purchase globally. If reinsurance rates rise, everyone’s rates rise accordingly.

  

  Unsurprisingly, homeowners are responding by raising the deductibles in their policy to lower the annual cost. This is a hybrid of “self-insurance,” as homeowners with high deductibles have to have the cash in hand to fund the cost of repairs up to the deductible ceiling.

  

  If you think the rise in the price of groceries is eye-popping, check out property tax increases, which are pushing 30% nationally. Since local governments depend on property taxes for a significant percentage of their revenues, we can expect these taxes to remain “sticky” even if housing valuations decline.

  

  The costs of maintenance and repair are soaring as well as the costs of construction materials and labor have increased, along with the other costs of doing business. Just as the cost of a sandwich or burger seems to be about $15 everywhere, the cost of any home project other than fixing a leaky faucet seems to be $10,000 or more now: tree pruning: $10K, roof repair, $10K, and so on.

  The soaring costs of home ownership are changing the metrics of unaffordability in important ways. It’s not just the initial purchase price that defines what’s affordable and what isn’t; so too do the costs of owning the house after our name is on the property tax rolls.

  *  *  *

  Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

  Subscribe to my Substack for free

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 20:05

• These Are The Ten Most Traded Currencies With The US Dollar
  These Are The Ten Most Traded Currencies With The US Dollar

  Each day, billions of dollars are traded on the global foreign exchange (FX) market. The U.S. dollar (USD) is involved in 88% of all trades and makes up 58% of global currency reserves. But which currencies are most frequently paired with the dollar in these transactions?

  In collaboration with OANDA, this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Julia Wendling offers a clear visual breakdown of the top currencies traded alongside the USD.

  

  The data is based on daily transaction volumes from the New York Fed’s April 2024 FX Volume Survey.

  FX Trading: The Most Traded Currencies Against the USD

  At an average volume of $93.3 billion per day, the euro was the most-traded currency against the USD in April 2024.

  

  The Japanese yen took the second place spot, followed by the Canadian dollar. Both currencies saw a large increase in daily transactions from last year. The daily trading volume for the Japanese yen-USD pair rose by $12.0 billion over this period. Similarly, the volume of the Canadian dollar-USD pair increased by $13.8 billion.

  Other Takeaways

  Despite being the world’s second largest economy, trading of Chinese yuan remains relatively low. With a daily transaction volume of $10.6 billion, the renminbi ranked #10 on the list. Three of its peers in Asia outranked the Chinese yuan—the Japanese yen (#2), the Hong Kong dollar (#8), and the Singapore dollar (#9).

  Free trade agreements boosted the foreign exchange flows between the USD and the Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, Mexican peso, and Singapore dollar.

  FX Trading Doesn’t Have to Be Complex

  Trading on the FX market can be intimidating. Understanding who the key players are can help bring clarity to investors. Learning how to manage risk, having a trading plan, and understanding price movements are also important.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 19:40

• Trump Taps Rep. Mike Waltz For NatSec, Lee Zeldin As Head Of EPA
  Trump Taps Rep. Mike Waltz For NatSec, Lee Zeldin As Head Of EPA

  President-elect Donald Trump has picked Florida Rep. Mike Waltz to be his White House national security adviser, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the discussion.

  

  Waltz, a Green Beret veteran who served in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Africa, won’t require Senate confirmation, and will step right in the middle of Trump’s vow to end the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

  In September of 2023, Waltz said in a Fox News op-ed, “The era of Ukraine’s blank check from Congress is over,” suggesting that future aid packages should have accountability and ensure strategic use of resources.

  Waltz also pushed for US allies to pay their fair share.

  We need this administration to bring our allies to meet their pledge to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense now, today. Unfortunately, Biden’s diplomacy seems to be lagging. The largest European states consistently fail to meet that benchmark, pledged at the 2014 NATO summit in Wales shortly after Russia’s last Ukraine invasion.  

  Germany, the largest economy in Europe and the most pivotal balancer to Russia, pulled back at the last minute from enshrining the two percent annual commitment into law. That needs to change – the administration cannot expect American taxpayers to pay for European security indefinitely.

  He also recommended that the US match “the dollar value of any aid it gives to Ukraine with securing the southern border.”

  Earlier this month, Waltz suggested that the Biden administration’s anti-carbon stance is “fueling the Russian war machine.”

  “And the reality is, they are constraining our oil and gas and forcing the world to buy from the likes of Venezuela, from Iran, and from Russia.”

  That said…

  Please say this is not so @realDonaldTrump? It seems Waltz’s policy is almost exactly opposite of what you spoke of on the campaign trail? Have you checked with your advisors like @DonaldJTrumpJr @TuckerCarlson @JDVance? https://t.co/oRA9cRRMHS

  — Scottie Nell Hughes (@scottienhughes) November 12, 2024

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Meanwhile, former Rep. Lee Zeldin has been picked to head up the EPA. As Zachary Stieber of the Epoch Times notes; Zeldin (R-N.Y.) will join the second administration of President-elect Donald Trump as head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Trump announced on Nov. 11.

  “Lee, with a very strong legal background, has been a true fighter for America First policies,” Trump told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement. “He will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet. He will set new standards on environmental review and maintenance that will allow the United States to grow in a healthy and well-structured way.”

  

  “It is an honor to join President Trump’s Cabinet as EPA Administrator,” Zeldin wrote on the social media platform X.

  “We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.”

  Multiple individuals served as the EPA’s administrator during Trump’s first term, including Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler. The current administrator is Michael Regan, who was appointed by President Joe Biden and has been in office since March 21, 2021.

  Zeldin’s appointment will need to be approved by the U.S. Senate, which will be controlled by Republicans starting in January 2025, before he becomes administrator.

  Zeldin, 44, represented New York’s 1st Congressional District, which includes most of Long Island, in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2015 to 2023. Zeldin opted against running for another term and instead ran for governor of New York. He won the GOP primary but lost to Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, by about 378,000 votes out of 5.9 million cast, including a majority of the vote outside New York City.

  Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), who now represents the district, said on X: “Lee Zeldin’s vision for the EPA focuses on economic growth while protecting our environment. His plan to restore energy dominance, create jobs, and protect clean air & water makes him an ideal choice to lead the EPA.”

  More recently, Zeldin has chaired the China Policy Initiative and Pathway to 2025 at the America First Policy Institute.

  Prior to his time in Congress, Zeldin was in the U.S. Army and deployed to Iraq. He then served in the state Senate before becoming a congressman.

  Zeldin’s votes on climate proposals include, in addition to all other House Republicans, voting against the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which included funding for improving the supply of water in western states.

  Zeldin has a 14 percent score from the League of Conservation Voters, an advocacy group, due to his voting record. The group in the past criticized Trump’s first administration over its positions on the environment and climate, and poured $115 million into the effort to elect Vice President Kamala Harris.

  Continue reading at the Epoch Times

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 19:15

• Which Is The Fastest US Fast-Food-Chain (By Drive-Thru Time)
  Which Is The Fastest US Fast-Food-Chain (By Drive-Thru Time)

  In 2023, America’s fast-food industry reached $388 billion, expanding by 66% over the past decade.

  In an industry defined by speed and accuracy, customers order in high volumes while restaurants average 5-8% profit margins. Earning customer loyalty often hinges on quality and consistency, especially as people are cutting down on eating out amid inflationary pressures.

  This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows the fastest drive-thru chains, based on data from the annual InTouch Insight Drive-Thru Study 2024.

  

  Taco Bell is the Fastest Drive-Thru in 2024

  Below, we rank 10 fast food chains by their total drive-thru time in 2024. To analyze drive-thru times, the study captured data through 165 unannounced visits for each restaurant by mystery shoppers, in locations across America.

  

  For the second year in a row, Taco Bell tops the list, with wait times half that of Chick-fil-A, at just over four minutes.

  Following closely behind is KFC, but with higher order accuracy at 89%, compared to 85% for Taco Bell. Both companies are owned by Yum! Brands, which has a $32 billion market capitalization as of October 2024.

  However, it’s worth noting that part of the reason these companies were top-ranking was due to a lower volume of cars in drive-thru lines.

  While average wait times were the longest for Chick-fil-A and McDonald’s, they both tied for the highest order accuracy, at 93%. Moreover, Chick-fil-A ranked first overall by fastest total time by car, reflecting the highest efficiency across chains.

  Overall, average drive-thru times across chains fell to five minutes and 29 seconds compared with six minutes and 13 seconds in 2022 as companies seek to win over increasingly cost-conscious customers.

  Fast Food Chain Prices are Outpacing Inflation

  How do fast food chains compare when it comes to price increases?

  Since 2019, prices at McDonald’s have risen by 40%, more than double U.S. inflation. This has boosted the company’s operating profits until March 2024, when they missed expectations.

  Furthermore, McDonald’s price increases exceed other chains over the past decade. The average price across 10 items has ballooned 100% since 2014, outpacing Taco Bell (81%), Arby’s (55%), and Chick-fil-A (55%).

  To learn more about this topic from a global perspective, check out this graphic on the price of a Big Mac around the world.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 18:50

• In Honor Of Veteran's Day: The Butterfly Effect
  In Honor Of Veteran’s Day: The Butterfly Effect

  To honor Veterans’s Day,  we are reposting Globla Macro Monitor’s June 2017 butterfly piece, which illustrates how sleepwalking can lead the world into a war that nobody wants.

  

  History’s Biggest “Butterfly Effect” Occurred On This Day

  The butterfly effect is the concept that small causes can have large effects. Initially, it was used with weather prediction but later the term became a metaphor used in and out of science.

  In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. The name, coined by Edward Lorenz for the effect which had been known long before, is derived from the metaphorical example of the details of a tornado (exact time of formation, exact path taken) being influenced by minor perturbations such as the flapping of the wings of a distant butterfly several weeks earlier. Lorenz discovered the effect when he observed that runs of his weather model with initial condition data that was rounded in a seemingly inconsequential manner would fail to reproduce the results of runs with the unrounded initial condition data. A very small change in initial conditions had created a significantly different outcome.  — Wikipedia

  On this day in history, June 28, 1914, the driver for Archduke Franz Ferdinand,  nephew of Emperor Franz Josef and heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire,  made a wrong turn onto Franzjosefstrasse in Sarajevo.

  Just hours earlier, Franz Ferdinand narrowly escaped assassination as a bomb bounced off  his car as he and his wife,  Sophie,  traveled from the local train station to the city’s civic city.   Rather than making the wrong turn onto Franz Josef  Street, the car was supposed to travel on the river expressway allowing for a higher speed ensuring the Archduke’s safety.

  Yet, somehow, the driver made a fatal mistake and tuned onto Franz Josef Street.

  The 19-year-old anarchist and Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, who was part of a small group who had traveled to Sarajevo to kill the Archduke,  and a cohort of the earlier bomb thrower, was on his way home thinking the plot had failed.   He stopped for a sandwich on Franz Josef Street.

  Seeing the driver of the Archduke’s car trying to back up onto the river expressway, Princi seized the opportunity and fired into the car, shooting Franz Ferdinand and Sophie at point-blank range,  killing both.

  That small wrong turn,  a minor perturbation to the initial conditions, or deviation from the original plan,  set off the chain events that led to World War I.

  

  Stumbling Into The Great War

  Fearing Russian support of Serbia, Franz Josef would not retaliate by invading Serbia unless he was assured he had the backing of Germany.   It is uncertain as to whether the Kaiser gave Franz Josef Germany’s unequivocal support.   Russia, fearing Germany would intervene, mobilized its troops forcing Germany’s hand.

  The great European powers thus stumbled into a war they didn’t want through complicated entanglements and alliances, and miscalculation.  Russia backing Serbia;  France aligned with Russia,  Germany backing the Austro-Hungarian Empire;  and Britian, who really didn’t have a dog in the fight except her economic interests, aligned with France and Russia.

  Later the U.S. would enter the war due to Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare threatening American merchant ships and the Kaiser floating the idea of an alliance with Mexico in the famous Zimmerman Telegram, which was intercepted by the British.

  Of course, some will argue that Great War in Europe was inevitable

  The great Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck, the man most responsible for the unification of Germany in 1871, was quoted as saying at the end of his life that “One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.” It went as he predicted.

  – History.com

  Nevertheless,  maybe the course of history would have been different if not for that wrong turn on June 28, 1914, which created the humongous butterfly effect, which we still experience the consequences this very day.

  The botched Treaty of Versailles  sowed the seeds the for World II.  The War contributed to the Russian revolution and Cold War.  The redrawing of borders in the Middle East after the War created the conditions for the instability and breakdown to tribalism the region experiences today.

  A map marked with crude chinagraph-pencil in the second decade of the 20th Century shows the ambition – and folly – of the 100-year old British-French plan that helped create the modern-day Middle East.

  Straight lines make uncomplicated borders. Most probably that was the reason why most of the lines that Mark Sykes, representing the British government, and Francois Georges-Picot, from the French government, agreed upon in 1916 were straight ones.

  – BBC News

  If Franz Ferdinand had not been murdered on this day in history,  that conflict between the Serbs and the Austro-Hungarian Empire may have been contained to just the Balkans.   Maybe.

  The butterfly effect.  Think how many small events, decisions, mistakes, one small turn, or “minor perturbations” in plans have had enormous consequences in your own personal life.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 18:25

• DC Swamp Draining May Spark Recessionary Pain For Region
  DC Swamp Draining May Spark Recessionary Pain For Region

  President-elect Donald Trump plans to make Elon Musk “secretary of cost-cutting” to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in slashing $2 trillion from the federal budget—about a third of what the bloated federal government spent in the latest fiscal year. This once-in-a-generation initiative will cut thousands of federal workers and reduce or even eliminate the vast cancerous bureaucracy with a new small government led by capable leaders.

  Musk wrote in an X post on Sunday night that this shock-and-awe approach will have “obstacles overcoming the Kafkaesque nature of the rules governing this vast bureaucracy and ensuring that maniacally dedicated small-government revolutionaries join this administration. ” 

  Musk was responding to Vivek Ramaswamy’s X post, “We won & now have a once-in-a-century opportunity to radically downsize the size, scope, and mission of the federal government. And the top obstacle to our success won’t even be the Democrats.” 

  Indeed, the obstacles are overcoming the Kafkaesque nature of the rules governing this vast bureaucracy and ensuring that maniacally dedicated small-government revolutionaries join this administration! https://t.co/ObfnIeuTXa

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 11, 2024

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Trump is less than three months away from implementing his plan to ‘Make America Great Again’… and thousands of federal workers across DC, Northern Virginia, and Baltimore region have been put on notice for potential job loss.

  

  A recent report by the Washington Post showed that approximately 15% of the 2.19 million civilian full-time federal employees in the US (data from 2023), or about 328,500, live in Northern Virginia, suburban Maryland, and even a touch of West Virginia. 

  

  The other 85% work elsewhere around the country. 

  

  More recent figures show that figure is as high as 373,000 in the Virginia, DC, and Maryland region. These job cuts could spark economic turmoil and reshape the DC landscape—or the beginnings of draining the swamp. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 18:00

• In Short, These Are Dangerous Times…
  In Short, These Are Dangerous Times…

  Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

  Mysteries Revealed

  “People in the media are aware of how illegitimately they’ve done their jobs that they think they’re on the verge of being locked up”

  – Scott Adams

  You must admit, it’s a little spooky how quickly and rigorously Mr. Trump intends to deconstruct those parts of the government at war with the people:

  • clean out “rogue bureaucrats,”

  • firehose the malignant agencies,

  • release and expose their document trails on spying, censorship, lawfare, and abuse-of-power.

  The consequence would be the return of consequence in our national life.

  It’s been absent for so long you can hardly imagine its power to get people’s minds right.

  

  There are already reports of frenzy among the culpable DOJ lawyers, and FBI Director Wray is set to resign before Mr. Trump can fire him. Attorney General Merrick Garland has gone radio-silent for his own good since Election Day. Expect many abiding mysteries to get unraveled, such as exactly how many federal agents did work the crowd around the Capitol on J-6, 2021 — which Mr. Wray has pretended to not be able to discuss “due to ongoing investigations.” Expect to learn more about the pipe-bomb caper at the DNC HQ a few blocks away that same day. Prepare to be amazed at how deeply criminal these schemes were. You must wonder if the document-shredding party is already underway, despite calls to preserve all the emails, memos, and texts.

  Then there are the poisoned realms of the intel blob located at CIA, DHS, State, DOD, and elsewhere being subject to inquiry and overhaul.

  Think: John Brennan, James Clapper, Bill Barr, Michael Atkinson, Mayorkas, Judge Boasberg, Mary McCord, Col. Vindman, Senator Warner, Avril Haines, Victoria Nuland, Samantha Power, Gina Haspel, Marie Yovanovitch, Jen Easterly, all their deputies, and many more unknown to the public. Some of these names may yet seem obscure to you. They were all neck-deep in what looks a lot like sedition, treason, real conspiracies, not theories. Even state officials such as New York AG Letitia James, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, and Fulton County, GA, DA Fani Willis, would be subject to federal charges under 18USC Section 242: willful deprivation of constitutional rights acting under color of law. That is exactly what the Trump lawfare cases amounted to.

  And then, of course, there are the long-running rumors of pedophilia and human trafficking networks among the elite, the Jeffrey Epstein list and the P. Diddy list. If these things exist, and they are released, history would shudder.

  Think: the Clinton Foundation.

  These people are looking ahead 70 days with visions of shoes dropping and hammers falling. If the mysteries are revealed, it’s hard to imagine that criminal proceedings would not be far behind. You can also imagine that the motivation across a broad and powerful elite class runs white-hot to stop Mr. Trump from entering the Oval Office. So, these days ahead will be fraught with threats, schemes, plots, ploys, and deceptions. The paranoia must be out of this world among people who still have the resources and hold the levers-of-power needed to undertake nefarious deeds.

  There is chatter about “a coup” being considered among as-yet-unnamed parties in the Pentagon to prevent Mr. Trump from rising back into power. It’s unclear how that would work among our high command of transsexual generals and admirals and their hapless DEI adjutants. The strata of colonels benath them might have different ideas. But it could be the starting gun for actual civil war. We would find out what the Second Amendment is all about. “Joe Biden” likes to say that the citizenry can’t go up against his F-16 war-planes, but he evidently does not understand how much mischief can be made with small arms — rifles, grenades, rockets, drones — despite examples of it all over the world lately. That is hypothetical for now, of course.

  In short, these are dangerous times.

  Mr. Trump would be advised to stay out of airplanes until inauguration day and to be extra-careful who he puts himself around, especially in public. You also must expect more lawfare of the most extreme sort going forward to January, every possible stone unturned to find procedural tricks to prevent certification of the election. Do you think Norm Eisen, Marc Elias, and Andrew Weissmann just laid back and watched football this weekend? They are probably quarterbacking efforts to finagle ballots for the remaining contested seats in Congress, in order to game-out Rep. Jamie Raskin’s well-publicized block-Trump play this coming Jan. 6.

  These are the darkest and most explosive parts of Mr. Trump’s admirably deep to-do list for fixing the many things that have stopped working in American life. The simplest picture of our current predicament, and why people voted as they did, is of “things going in the wrong direction,” Well, what direction is that, exactly? The tyranny of giant forces over our little lives and communities. It’s a leviathan government seeking to invade and dominate everything — and to do it with maximum malice when resisted. It has left American men and women mentally disordered, demoralized, stolen their sense of purpose, deprived them of roles in society that provide meaning, alienated them from each other, and from their history. And it has left them, as Robert Kennedy points out, catastrophically unhealthy.

  All of which is to say, we have more to clean up and reorganize than just our government. We’re going to get it done, you may be sure, even if the zeitgeist has to drag us kicking and screaming out of the malaise we’re stuck in. All of this points to some very different new arrangements to be made in our everyday life, beginning with the realization that the era of getting something-for-nothing is over.

  *  *  *

  Note to Readers: We are finally rebuilding the Kunstler.com website on Substack — which was taken-down a month ago on another host platform by nefarious parties

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 17:40

• California Tightens Climate Fuel Rules That Could Add $0.50/Gallon To Gas Prices
  California Tightens Climate Fuel Rules That Could Add $0.50/Gallon To Gas Prices

  Despite the incoming Trump administration’s likely move to deregulate all things EV, that isn’t necessarily going to stop California from continuing down its ‘green’ agenda path.

  And people wonder why there’s exodus from the state to places like Texas and Florida?

  Last week, the California Air Resources Board voted to amend the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which requires fuel producers exceeding carbon targets to buy credits from low- or zero-carbon suppliers, according to Bloomberg. 

  The updated rules accelerate target reductions, despite concerns over affordability as the state faces rising housing and energy costs. Governor Gavin Newsom is grappling with the economic strain on the nation’s largest state economy amidst this push for stricter climate measures.

  Its a move that is projected to raise gas prices by nearly 50 cents per gallon.

  

  Chair Liane Randolph commented: “We cannot afford to continue with the status quo. The health and economic impacts of these events are vastly underestimated.”

  The Bloomberg report says that consumer advocates are concerned after a report last year suggested California’s gas prices could rise by 47 cents per gallon in 2025, driven partly by the state’s unique, eco-friendly fuel requirements and high taxes.

  Currently, Californians pay an average of $4.29 per gallon—$1.22 above the national average, the report says. 

  Though the air board’s staff later revised this estimate without providing a new figure, the urgency of climate action pushed board Chair Liane Randolph to proceed, despite political calls for a delay.

  Meanwhile, Governor Newsom, clashing with the oil industry over soaring gas prices, recently signed a law mandating minimum fuel inventories to stabilize prices and established a watchdog to scrutinize potential price-gouging.

  Next time a Democrat argues they are fighting inflation, remind them of this genius move. This is the opposite of fighting inflation.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 17:20

• Resistance 2.0: Why The Campaign Against Trump Is Different This Time
  Resistance 2.0: Why The Campaign Against Trump Is Different This Time

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  The single most common principle of recovery programs is that the first step is to admit that you have a problem.

  

  That first step continues to elude the politicians and pundits who unsuccessfully pushed lawfare and panic politics for years.

  That includes prosecutors like New York Attorney General Letitia James and politicians like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who affirmed this week that they will be redoubling, not reconsidering, their past positions.

  For its part, The Washington Post quickly posted an editorial titled “The second resistance to Trump must start now.” They may, however, find the resistance more challenging both politically and legally this time around.

  It is important to note at the outset that there is no reason Democratic activists should abandon their values just because they lost this election. Our system is strengthened by passionate and active advocacy.

  Rather, it is the collective fury and delirium of the post-election protests that was so disconcerting. Pundits lashed out at the majority of voters, insisting that the election established that half of the nation is composed of racists, misogynists or domination addicts who long to submit to tyranny.

  Others blamed free speech and the fact that social media allows “disinformation” to be read by ignorant voters. In other words, the problem could not possibly be themselves. It was, rather, the public, which refused to listen.

  That does not bode well for the Democratic Party. As someone raised in a liberal politically active family in Chicago, I had hoped for greater introspection after this election blowout.

  Ordinarily, recovery can begin with “a terrible experience” when someone hits rock bottom.

  After a crushing electoral defeat and the loss of the White House and likely both houses of Congress, one would think that Democrats would be ready for that first step to recovery. However, those hoping for a new leaf on the left do not understand the true addictive hold of rage.

  In my recent book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I explore rage and our long history of rage politics. There is a certain release that comes with rage in allowing people to do and say things that you would never do or say. People rarely admit it, but they like it. It is the ultimate high produced by the lowest form of political discourse.

  Over the course of the last eight years, the U.S. has become a nation of rage addicts.

  For months, Democratic leaders denounced Donald Trump and his supporters as fascists and neo-Nazis. President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and others suggested that democracy itself was about to die unless Democrats were kept in power.

  Just before the election, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called those voting for Trump “anti-American.” By Hochul’s measure, over half of the American electorate is now “anti-American.”

  James is the face of lawfare. She may have done more to reelect Trump than anyone other than the president himself. She ran on nailing Trump on something, anything. In New York, she was joined by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in this ill-conceived effort. They fulfilled the narrative of a weaponized legal system. Every new legal action seemed to produce another surge in polling for Trump.

  Yet there James was, soon after the election, with another press conference promising again to unleash the powers of her office to stop Trump’s policies.

  Then there was Pritzker, doing the community theater version of “The Avengers” and declaring, “You come for my people, you come through me.”

  New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) added that he too will “fight to the death” against Trump’s agenda.

  Rather than lower the rhetoric, these rage-addicts ran out for another hit.

  Our prior periods of rage politics were largely ended by the public in major election shifts like the one this month. Things, however, are different this time around both politically and legally. The problem for the resistance is the very democracy that they claimed to be saving.

  Democrats lost after opposing policies supported by an astonishing share of the public at a time of deep political division. That effort included opposing voter ID laws favored by 84 percent of the public, among other things.

  They are now committed to opposing policies central to this election blowout, including deportations of illegal immigrants, which is favored in some polls by two-thirds of Americans.

  Likewise, Democrats have already doubled down on attacks on free speech, including blaming their loss on the absence of sufficient censorship. On MSNBC, host Mika Brzezinski blamed the loss in part on “massive disinformation.” Yet, according to some polls, free speech ranked as high as second among issues on Election Day.

  According to CNN, Trump’s performance was the best among young people (18-29 years old) in 20 years, the best among Black voters in 48 years, and the best among Hispanic voters in more than 50 years.

  Harris actually lost a bit of support with women, and Trump won handily among some groups of women.

  None of that seems to matter this time. We have an alliance of political media and academic interests wholly untethered to the views of most of the public. Yet, with both houses of Congress under Republican control, the investigations and impeachment efforts that hounded Trump throughout his first term will be less of a threat in his second term.

  For that reason, the center of gravity of the “second resistance” will shift to Democratic prosecutors like James, Bragg and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was just reelected.

  Various Democratic governors are also pledging to thwart Trump’s policies despite the results of the election.

  The “second resistance” will try to use state power to oppose the very issues and policies that led to this historic political shift. That means that there will be a legal shift in the focus of litigation to inherent federal powers versus state powers. That battle will favor the Trump administration.

  In fairness to these Democratic politicians, they are certainly free to go to the courts, as Republicans did under Biden to argue for limitations on federal powers. But the promise of California Gov. Gavin Newsom to “Trump-proof” the state is easier to make rhetorically than it will be to keep legally.

  Indeed, Trump will be able to cite a curious ally in this fight: Barack Obama. It was Obama who successfully swatted down state efforts to pursue their own policies and programs on immigration enforcement. Obama insisted that state laws were preempted in the area and the Supreme Court largely agreed in its 2012 decision in Arizona v. U.S.

  Congress may even seek to tie the receipt of federal funds to states cooperating with federal mandates. For this reason, Democrats, who campaigned on the promise to end the filibuster for the good of democracy, suddenly became firm believers in that Senate rule right around 2:30 a.m. last Wednesday.

  As the majority of the country walks away from the party shaking their heads, many activists are left only with their rage. Instead of reappraising the years of far-left orthodoxy and intolerance, some are calling to tear down the system or take drastic individual actions, including for women to break up with their boyfriends and husbands or to cut off their hair.

  They will actually keep their rage and dump their relationships. Now that really is an addiction.

  Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 17:00

• Subprime Consumers Feel All The Pain Ahead Of Spending Holidays
  Subprime Consumers Feel All The Pain Ahead Of Spending Holidays

  Working-poor households are still under pressure in a weak demand environment because of persistent inflation and high interest rates. Goldman’s latest note on the consumer shows a continued mixed picture, with the holiday shopping season of Black Friday just weeks away. 

  Goldman’s Michelle Cheng and Xinyu Ruan pointed out the continued weak consumer demand environment:

  US: recent data points to a weak demand backdrop. US October TRE (The Weekly Chain Store Sales Index) was -0.9% vs -0.6% in Sep; same-store ShopperTrak traffic was -5.0% in the last week of Oct.

  Our US colleagues find a mixed picture of consumer credit health, with household balance sheets remaining largely unlevered but personal savings rates declining well below long-term averages, credit delinquency rates rising yoy across cards, personal loans and auto loans, credit origination volumes at historically depressed levels and average FICO scores ticking lower for the first time in years – with pressure concentrated among subprime consumers. Softer consumer credit trends among subprime consumers are also translating into reduced spending activity among lower-income cohorts.

  Similar to past quarters, consumers have remained careful in their spending decisions, as discretionary spend has continued to be soft. Below data points show recent sentiment for the lowest income consumer continues to be under pressure, with both purchase intent and consumer confidence below historical levels. That said, consumer confidence trends have recently improved across income demographics, which could potentially be reflective of a change in consumer sentiment and expectations.

  The trend shows that working-poor households have been dialing back spending—or have hit a proverbial brick wall since the spring, as many financially drown in Biden-Harris’ inflation storm. 

  

   Not a great combo here…

  

  In recent weeks, we have noted:

  • US Working Poor Hit By “Weaker Credit Metrics & Mixed Confidence” As Black Friday Nears

  • Goldman Finds “Trade-Down Phenomenon” Strikes Rich & Poor Consumers

  One of the biggest drivers for voters backing Trump was inflation. AP found that high prices were the number one concern for about half of all Trump voters.

  

  Meanwhile, Democrats were trying to make the election theme all about women’s rights. Now comes the hard part for Trump in solving the nightmare inflation storm sparked by far-left liberals.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 16:40

• Let's Give Veterans The Post-Election Attention They Deserve
  Let’s Give Veterans The Post-Election Attention They Deserve

  Authored by Jim Gash via RealClearPolitics,

  After what has felt like years of non-stop campaigning, news coverage, polling, analysis, and predictions, our nation finally elected its 47th president. Sadly, the sharp, sometimes heated disagreement and discord of the campaign season didn’t end on Election Day. 

  We had hoped matters would be settled and the pace and temperature of the conversation might abate, but alas, here we are. Yet, even in the wake of a raucous election, we cannot overlook our nation’s annual celebration of the brave men and women who fought for our freedom – including the right to vote.

  This year, we cannot forget Veterans Day.

  

  A Day to Remember 

  On November 11, 1918, the Allied forces agreed to an armistice with Germany. This was seven months before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles that formally ended World War I, but in some ways November 11 was the more significant day.

  On that day, 106 years ago, the fighting finally came to an end. Peace had triumphed and good had conquered evil. But at a dear and devastating cost. During the course of the war, an estimated 8.5 million combatants and 13 million civilians were killed, making it by far the bloodiest war in history at the time. 

  And after over four years of fighting, it came to an end on that Monday in November, which is why we still celebrate Veterans Day on November 11.

  A Legacy of Bravery

  On Veterans Day, we not only honor those who bravely served this country in WWI. We also remember all the veterans who have sacrificed for our freedom and those who continue to ensure we can enjoy that freedom today. 

  The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2023 that there were 16.2 million veterans living in the United States. That’s over 6% of the nation’s population. Since 1775, however, when the Continental Army was created, over 41 million men and women have served in some capacity.

  Whenever needs on foreign or domestic soil have developed, Americans have risen to the occasion and served with courage. It is their legacy that we remember and honor on Veterans Day. It is their lives and sacrifice that deserve our reverence.

  But this year, their legacy is in danger of being forgotten and overlooked.

  Lest We Forget

  This year, Veterans Day is just six days after the presidential election. And if the months leading up to Nov. 5 are anything to go by, the election and its aftermath will continue to dominate headlines and capture the attention of the nation. 

  While understandable, the dominance of such political commentary has tremendous potential to overshadow the heroes we celebrate on Veterans Day. 

  Simply put, that cannot be allowed to happen. We owe our veterans a day of honor and remembrance. They have sacrificed and continue to sacrifice so much so that we can enjoy the freedoms that characterize America. They are the reason we have a democracy. They are the reason we can vote.

  Pepperdine’s university theme this year is freedom – and the freedom we experience at the societal level could not exist without the sacrifices of veterans. G.K. Chesterton said that “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” 

  We would do well to remember – and honor – all that our veterans have given up so we can live in freedom. 

  Breaking the Cycle

  Mere remembrance, in and of itself, will never be enough. Action is needed, and this Veterans Day, it is our turn to give back to those who have sacrificed so much for us. The truth is, veterans need our support. We as citizens must take steps to assist and uplift veterans who are all too often overlooked by society. 

  This is a heartbreaking reality, and the president-elect would do well to lead the way in breaking the destructive cycle in which veterans often find themselves. Initiatives in the areas of stable housing, career development, mental health, and transitioning to civilian life can and will make a difference. And each is another way we can show that we see and honor their sacrifice. 

  The Way Forward

  The United States was founded on the principles of freedom, and no one knows that better than the courageous men and women we honor on Veterans Day. But the adage is true: Freedom is not free. Freedom requires sacrifice. 

  On this Veterans Day, we say thank you to all veterans and their families who have given up more than we can understand so the citizens of this nation can continue to enjoy the freedoms we hold so dear. 

  Jim Gash is president of Pepperdine University.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 16:20

• Incoming Border Czar Plans Worksite Raids To Bust Migrant Sex, Labor Trafficking Networks
  Incoming Border Czar Plans Worksite Raids To Bust Migrant Sex, Labor Trafficking Networks

  Update (1618ET):

  Incoming “border czar,” Tom Homan, told “Fox & Friends” hosts earlier today that President-elect Trump’s administration will increase worksite raids to address out-of-control labor and sex trafficking nationwide. 

  “Where do we find most victims of sex trafficking and forced labor trafficking? At worksites,” Homan told Fox’s Steve Doocy.

  NEW: Trump’s ‘border czar’ Tom Homan says the administration will conduct workplace immigration raids; ‘The Biden-Harris Adm. has lost over 300,000 children’

  “Worksite operations have to happen. Here’s why…

  Where do we find most victims of s-x trafficking and forced labor… pic.twitter.com/2D6YGdE1F7

  — Unlimited L’s (@unlimited_ls) November 11, 2024

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Homan is correct about the sex trafficking and forced labor trafficking crisis spreading like wildfire nationwide because of Biden-Harris’ disastrous open southern borders.

  Here’s some of our reporting in recent months:

  • Migrant Population In Charleroi, Pennsylvania Explodes 2,000% As Crisis Unfolds

  • Watch: Resident Of PA Manufacturing Town Exposes Reality Of Haitian ‘Great Job Replacement’

  • “Blow Your Mind”: Ex-WSJ Journo Uncovers Hub Of An Alleged Migrant Trafficking Network In Springfield, Ohio

  • “He’s Taking My People”: Alleged Murder-For-Hire Plot In Charleroi Reveals Migrant Labor Mules

  • “No Americans”: Insider Of Alleged Trafficking Network Reveals How Migrants Ended Up At Charleroi, PA Factory

  • Union Makes Shock Claim: Colorado Meat Factory Involved In “Mgmt-Led Human Trafficking” Of Haitians

  • Sound Of Freedom: FBI Finds 200 Sex Trafficking Victims, Including Children

  • Shocking Investigation Finds CIA Contractor Moved Migrant Children Across America

  • Industrial-Size Staffing Firms Reportedly Support Biden-Harris’ Mysterious Nationwide Migrant Network

  Homan noted that Trump’s top priority will be national security. America can no longer afford to have ten-plus million unvetted illegal aliens running around the nation. 

  *   *   * 

  President-elect Donald Trump revealed on Sunday night that he plans to appoint Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement between 2017 and 2018, as the next “border czar.” 

  “I am pleased to announce that the Former ICE Director, and stalwart on Border Control, Tom Homan, will be joining the Trump Administration, in charge of our Nation’s Borders (“The Border Czar”), including, but not limited to, the Southern Border, the Northern Border, all Maritime, and Aviation Security,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. 

  Trump continued, “I’ve known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders. Likewise, Tom Homan will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin.” 

  “Congratulations to Tom. I have no doubt he will do a fantastic, and long awaited for, job,” Trump said. 

  

  In recent weeks, Homan gave one of the most based interviews on immigration to the far-left media outlet CBS News’ 60 Minutes. When asked about the taxpayer cost of deporting millions of illegal aliens, he responded, “What price do you put on national security?”

  Cecilia Vega asks: “Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?”

  “Of course there is. Families can be deported together,” says Tom Homan, head of ICE during Trump’s family separation policy. https://t.co/If9G1sNEzj pic.twitter.com/TIWhi25Vdu

  — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 28, 2024

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  At the Republican National Convention in July, Homan told Trump supporters: “I’ve got a message … to all the illegal aliens in violation of federal law … you better start packing now.” 

  This is Tom Homan, President Trump’s Border Czar. His message to all the illegals who crossed the border will give you goosebumps, “You better start packing now… cause you’re going home.”

  And to the cartels, he said, “Trump will wipe you off the face of the Earth! YOU’RE… pic.twitter.com/ygZICaVVJb

  — George (@BehizyTweets) November 11, 2024

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Homan recently torched far-left activist lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez while on The Hill.

  President Trump just put this man, Tom Homan, in charge of deportations. 🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/S5xYeV1Nmm

  — Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) November 11, 2024

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  While Homan secures the southern and northern borders and oversees the deportation of illegal aliens, there will be significant moves by the Trump administration to disrupt and destroy dark money financial and trade networks that have sparked the horrific 100,000 US drug death overdose crisis per year caused by fentanyl and other drugs – much of which starts as precursor chemicals shipped from China, cooked into fentanyl by Mexican cartels, then flooded in the Lower 48. 

  

  More on Trump’s plan to eradicate Mexican cartels: “Show No Mercy”: Trump’s Campaign Pledge To Annihilate Mexican Cartels Goes Viral.

  Make Law And Order Great Again.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/11/2024 – 16:18

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