“In the days following President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, I reached out to a longtime Northern California family farmer to gauge his level of concern. Trump has, after all, already made full-throated declarations that his administration will conduct the largest deportation of undocumented residents in U.S. history. That should resonate in a place like California, with its estimated 1.8 million undocumented immigrants—and it certainly would shake up a state agriculture industry in which nearly half of all workers are undocumented. But the farmer, who asked not to be identified to avoid political conflict with business partners, was unruffled. A self-described social moderate and fiscal conservative, he and his family have spent generations in the business. While his own seasonal employees are on work visas, his understanding of the industry’s historical reliance on undocumented workers runs deep, through direct experience, colleagues and a seat on the board of an agriculture lending institution.” (11/21/24)
“Reelecting the Insurrectionist who provoked the January 6 attack is a monumental dereliction of civic duty by the American people. Donald Trump was provided a plurality mandate — enough of a match for him to burn America down. The electorate affirmed that the worst human being to hold the presidency deserves a second turn in the job. Despite Trump being eight years older and obviously losing his mind; despite the fact that he ran a corrosive campaign on naked malevolence; and despite his having promised to mass arrest, cage, and deport immigrants, Americans rewarded him with ultimate power. Toward the end of the 2024 election, the candidates made their closing arguments. Trump painted the United States as a dark, terrifying and infested place, festering with pet-eating immigrants, violent criminals, and deviant trans people.” (11/21/24)
“An unprecedentedly bad year for beached dolphins on Cape Cod might have to do with warming waters changing the availability of the animals’ food, said scientists hoping to curb the strandings. Cape Cod, the Massachusetts peninsula beloved by beach tourists and seafood lovers, has a long history of marine mammal strandings. That is partially because of dramatic changes in the tide that sometimes trap wayward dolphins if they swim too close to shore. But this year is different. The International Fund for Animal Welfare, which responds to marine mammal strandings, said Thursday it has responded to 342 live, stranded dolphins this year, and that is five times more than its annual average of 67. An already bad year got worse earlier this month when the organization was inundated with calls about beached dolphins. More than 50 of the animals were stranded on multiple beaches and waterways in the span of a week, the organization said.” (11/21/24)
“Of the television commentators who routinely disparaged, attacked, demeaned, and mocked former President Donald Trump and his supporters, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, co-hosts of MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’, belong to the ‘A’ team. Yet, after Trump’s extraordinary victory two weeks ago, including a sweep of all seven swing states and becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote in 20 years, Scarborough and Brzezinski visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago after the election, spending a reported 90 minutes with the president-elect. As for why they made the trek, Brzezinski said: ‘For those asking why we would go speak to the president-elect during such fraught times, especially between us, I guess I would ask back, ‘Why wouldn’t we?’ … the most likely reason: ratings. Since Trump’s victory, which several MSNBC hosts predicted would not happen, the channel’s primetime viewership is down a whopping 53%. By contrast, Fox’s ratings are up 38%.” (11/21/24)
“The week following the 2024 election, President-elect Donald Trump traveled to the White House to meet with President Joe Biden, who offered a simple, cordial greeting: ‘Welcome back’. It was a startling display of respectability for a Democratic administration that repeatedly referred to Trump as a fascist and claimed ‘he’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He’s literally a threat to everything America stands for’. Throughout Vice President Kamala Harris’ unsuccessful challenge, her campaign consistently cast Trump as representing a unique and grave danger to democracy and Americans’ way of life. In its waning days, the campaign warned voters that Trump would ’claim unchecked and extreme power’ if reelected. Trump has indeed promised a regime of retribution on enemies and to suppress dissent.” [editor’s note: Yet another “progressive” who only watched MSDNC for the “news” – SAT] (11/21/24)
“Texas authorities say they are prepared to offer President-elect Donald Trump 1,400-acres (567 hectares) of land along the US-Mexico border to build detention facilities for undocumented migrants. In a letter, the Texas General Land Office said the plot could be used to build facilities for ‘processing, detention, and co-ordination of the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation’s history.’ Trump has repeatedly pledged to deport millions of undocumented migrants and mobilise the National Guard to help carry this out. His plan, however, is likely to face enormous financial and logistics hurdles, as well as immediate legal challenges from rights groups. The letter, published online and sent to Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, notes that the owner of the recently purchased land had refused to allow a border wall to be built there and ‘actively blocked law enforcement’ from accessing it.” (11/20/24)
“After two Jordanian illegal [sic] aliens were charged with trying to ram their truck into Marine Corps Base Quantico this summer, Republican lawmakers and the governor of Virginia fired off six letters to senior Biden cabinet members demanding information about the incident. All that mail went unanswered. Likewise ignored were any requests for information about a major FBI counterterrorism sting that resulted in the arrests of eight Tajik border-crossers on suspicions of bomb-making. These examples of willful suppression are emblematic of a greater pattern in how the Biden administration sought to hide from public view everything it could about the worst mass migration border crisis [sic] in American history, which has flooded [sic] the nation with at least 10 million foreign nationals.” (11/20/24)
“Back in August, a few weeks after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro claimed victory in a bid for reelection, his critics stirred a global outcry. Opposition leaders posted polling station results on social media suggesting the unpopular autocrat had lost in a drubbing. In cities around the world and within the South American country itself, people marched. They called it the ‘Great Protest for the Truth.’ That push for election integrity received new nudges this week. On Tuesday, the Biden administration recognized Venezuela’s main opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, as ‘president-elect.’ Simultaneously, in neighboring Colombia, President Gustavo Petro called the July 28 election ‘a mistake.’ He had already declared the vote not ‘free.’ Those gestures follow recognition by the European Parliament in September of Mr. Gonzalez as ‘the country’s legitimate and democratically elected president.'” (11/20/24)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Ukraine has already begun using US-supplied long-range missiles in Russia, despite Putin’s warning that this exact sort of escalation will place NATO at war with Russia. This happens as Russia officially changes its nuclear doctrine to lower the threshold for when it’s permissible to use nuclear weapons in retaliation for attacks on its territory. So far the attacks appear to have been mostly repelled without having done any significant damage. This is frightening, but I have a hard time imagining that Russia makes any extreme moves against the US before Trump takes office. It seems like they’d want to wait and see what Trump does once he gets in before taking any horrifying risks like that.” (11/20/24)
“Did the working class, especially its white members, elect Donald Trump again because they are basically racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic? Are they craving a strongman who can protect white supremacy from a flood of immigrants and put the woke liberals in their place? Didn’t Harris lose primarily because she’s a woman of color? More than a few progressives, as well as the New York Times, believe these are plausible explanations for Harris’s defeat. I’m not so sure. The working class started abandoning the Democrats long before Trump became a political figure, let alone a candidate. In 1976, Jimmy Carter received 52.3 percent of the working-class vote; In 1996, Clinton 50 percent; In 2012, Obama 40.6 percent; and in 2020, Biden received only 36.2 percent. This decline has little to do with illiberalism on social issues.” (11/20/24)
