The Holiday Survival Guide (Trump WON Edition)

posted by Kevin McCullough at Townhall 

Despite the poor advice of public personas across legacy media, there is zero need to worry that Thanksgiving 2024 can’t be a blessed gathering with friends and family.

Much hand-wringing, kvetching, and awful advice have been proffered by everyone from the leftist cabal on The View, the belligerent Joy Ried, or the completely trans-obsessed Jen Psaki. Yet despite their insistence on moon-barking these women (who surprisingly saw many more women vote for President Trump in every state nationwide than they had expected) should not determine the joy you get to enjoy this year.

So don’t let them.

And here’s a few keys to keeping the balance in check.

BE GENUINELY GRATEFUL FOR AN INARGUABLY CLEAN ELECTION. Given the possibility of the genuine amount of corruption that had been invoked in 2020, attempted again in 2021, and plagued the not-so-red-wave in 2022, there may have been legitimate reasons to believe that something akin to that would breakout in 2024. Despite the fact that the sore losers of this cycle laughed, ridiculed, mocked and litigated many of us who had those concerns in 2020, the Whatley/Trump leadership at the GOP, the non-partisan work of America 1st Legal, and the advanced effort of the Trump campaign specifically saw to it that in more than 200 instances of irregularities—immediate litigation occurred, judges made rulings, and the cheating was stopped. Yes, up through this past weekend, some wicked cheaters in Pennsylvania were still trying. But even the left-dominate state’s Supreme Court in Pennsylvania had to admit—based on the law—that Trump’s win and coattails the ballot dominated the race, and the victory was legitimate.

TELL THE SOUR-FACED THAT ALL WILL BE WELL. Sometimes a despondent loser in a contest cannot move forward—or so they want to make people believe. Oddly enough, when Clinton won his second term when Obama defeated McCain and Romney, and when Biden shockingly woke up the morning after being down millions of votes when all went to sleep and to awaken with a lead of some forty thousand votes, many of us found a way to go on. Did we wish for different outcomes? You bet. Did we run to the backyard to primal scream our way into Thanksgiving - most of us did not. Oddly god-fearing, family-loving, pro-America voters found a way to internalize the loss and redouble our fortitude to do better the next time. It builds character. But the sun still shines, and life will go on. And it will again. The meltdown lunacy of reality deniers like AOC, Psaki, and Ried is just a projection. They are despondent. They are simply lacking the dignity of reliance on God or even inner confidence to believe or know that tomorrow is coming.

THE NEW TEAM WILL SURPRISE MANY OF THEM. As the debate has shifted from Trump “being Hitler” to “just kidding about all of that,” expect them to focus on the impossible-to-stop cabinet appointments that Trump 2.0 already has working. The minor knee-scrape of the Gaetz nod aside, this cabinet is picking up steam; they are young, aggressive, and diverse, and many of them are already tackling in the private sector what they will now have the power to do something about. Instant accountability at CIA, DOJ, HHS, FDA, IRS, FBI, NIH, and DOD, will produce a realignment across the whole of government in historic fashion. Reports of lifelong bureaucrats in these organizations packing up boxes and heading for the exits are reasons to be optimistic. Your bitter-clinging friends and family won’t be able to see it initially. This is simply because they’re not used to seeing the government actually do anything. They will start to the minute Trump’s hand comes off the Bible on day one, minute one of his second term. Thousands of deregulatory executive actions undoing the abuses of Biden-the-interloper will already be written and ready to be signed. Cabinet heads committed to implementing America First priorities across the whole government will have firings prepared and structural changes ready to launch. And a Senate and Congress with slight but needed majorities will be jacked and ready to do the will of the people. The changes will be swift, the effects unexpected, and outcomes improved.

HELP IS ON THE WAY—WHETHER THEY LIKE IT OR NOT. The temptation is going to be great for empathetic and compassionate people to feel the need to hold hands and wallow in the hysterics of their pain-filled anxiety that is being loudly yelled at them from the two news channels that are about to be sold. Expect Rachel Maddow to throw hissy after hissy about her cut in pay. Similarly to the owners of her failed radio network back in the day, CNN and MSNBC share holders have discovered that lying to their audience 24/7 doesn’t help the bottom line. And while they did nothing but lie about Trump in the entirety of this election cycle, accountability about their brands of “journalism” is being dictated more by market demand than anything else. But even for the soon-to-be out-of-work staff at the most left-leaning companies, Trump’s policies will help. To the most hardened and disappointed Harris supporter—her gas prices will go down. To the angry, bitter abortion advocate—her groceries will be cheaper. To the angriest AOC-like crybaby in the universe—their ability to start a business and run it successfully will open up ten times what it is now. Tariffs won’t kill consumption but will stimulate companies to move back to the USA and create jobs. A more peaceful world won’t abide the Biden/Harris faux indignation rage about how dangerous Putin is—but it will stop him from invading neighbors. And shutting down the mullahs’ ability to get wealthy in Iran will stave off the requirement of more women globally being forced into hijabs.

We do not have to determine whether our friends and family are thankful this Thanksgiving. We can only control our own choices. 

All we can do is hug them, tell them we love them, and grin a deep smile of gratitude, knowing the delusion they’ve been coerced into believing is nowhere near the truth. Good won this round. Help is on the way. The outcomes will surprise and impress. And everyone will benefit—whether they like it or not.

See?

So much to be thankful for!

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

X22, And we Know, and more- Nov 25

 

Expect the D.C. Administrative State to Defend Itself by Any Means Necessary

posted by William Sullivan at American Thinker 

We do not live in anything resembling the nation that was envisioned by our Founders, and for the first time in modern American history, we seem to have reached a consensus in recognizing that fact. 

This was just dramatically evidenced in a presidential election, in which a broad coalition of voters from the political left and right voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, who promised to create a “government efficiency commission” to be headed by Elon Musk.  

How a “government efficiency commission” could become the emphatic demand of a populace that I watched vote for an unquestionable expansion of the federal government during the Obama years is a sobering thing. 

The Tea Party wasn’t cool when Barack Obama was thought to be cool. 

But nowadays, Barack Obama’s hectoring of the “brothers” for not getting on the trolley in supporting Kamala Harris has made him the farthest thing from cool, yet the Tea Party’s idea about shrinking the federal government couldn’t be cooler.

This “commission” has taken life as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is both a funny reference to a meme-coin involving Elon Musk and, more importantly, the greatest and most necessary idea in modern American history. 

As Charlie Kirk writes on X, the “creation of DOGE will be the first federal program whose goal it is to eliminate itself.  It exists to shrink government, not grow it.”
“This is a profound, historic step back to the Founders’ vision for America,” he continues.

As it hasn’t been authorized or funded by Congress, it won’t actually be a “federal program” at this point.  But that doesn’t matter.  Kirk couldn’t be more correct on that final point about this being entirely consistent with the Founders’ vision for a limited federal government, and Elizabeth Warren steps on a rake to prove him right.  On X, she writes that the “Office of Government Efficiency is off to a great start with split leadership: two people to do the work of one person.”

Musk responds that, unlike Warren, neither he nor Vivek Ramaswamy are being paid for their service, “so it is very efficient indeed,” further suggesting that “DOGE will do great things for the American people. Let history be the judge.”

The first thing that should stand out in this exchange is not Musk’s philanthropic nature in this endeavor, which is certainly more reflective of the Founders’ notion about public service, but his preemptive acceptance of eventual accountability.  

When was the last time you’ve ever heard anyone close to government or politics suggest that they would be entirely willing to accept blame for potential failure?  This is a refreshing proclamation for most Americans.  

Warren and her fellow Congressmen on both sides of the aisle, on the other hand, desire no accountability for their own performance.  That’s why they continue to rely upon unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats to grow their power and influence in government by confiscating trillions of dollars from law-abiding, taxpaying citizens.
It has become all-too apparent to most Americans on both sides of the political aisle that this bloated organism in Washington, D.C., comprised of unelected federal bureaucracies, extends its tendrils ever more expensively and invasively into Americans’ lives, and without the consent of the governed.   

America was designed to be a nation of laws.  But as political scientist Theodore Lowi said as early as the 1970s, liberalism is “hostile to law” and prefers “policy without law.”  The legislature’s creation of shadowy bureaucratic agencies as a substitute for making law allowed for circumvention of the Founders’ intent.  

Lowi observed, writes Mark Steyn in After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) were “set up by a Congress that didn’t identify a single policy goal for these agencies and ‘provided no standards whatsoever’ for their conduct.”

“Where do you go to vote out the CPSC or OSHA?” Steyn asks.  You can’t, of course, and while that’s obviously the point today, it was apparently less obvious back then.  Unelected, unaccountable, faceless bureaucrats have been given multi-billion-dollar budgets by Congress to craft policies that infringe upon even the most mundane aspects of American life.    

Steyn recalls that the “end-of-life counseling” language (i.e., death panels, or that maybe you’d be better off “taking a painkiller,” according to Barack Obama) was eventually stripped from 2010’s wildly unpopular Obamacare legislation after it became public knowledge.  But that doesn’t really matter, Steyn says, because there are over 1,000 references within the bill to all the things that the Secretary of Health and Human Services “shall” or “may” determine.

“Plucked at random,” says Steyn, quoting the 2,000-page Affordable Care Act of 2010 that no legislator ever read: “The Secretary shall develop oral healthcare components that shall include tooth-level surveillance.”

“From colonial subjects to dentured servants in a mere quarter-millennium,” Steyn quips about the ridiculously Orwellian notion of “tooth-level surveillance” by the federal government.  And again, he asks, “where do you go to vote out 'the Secretary'?”

In 2024, for myriad reasons that will be discussed for decades, Americans somehow finally got wise to the ruse.  Tea Partiers and Occupy Wall Streeters banded together, unified by one undeniable realization: the federal government is pretending to be something that it isn’t.  

This parasitic and destructive organism in Washington, D.C., has done everything it could to hide its nature from the public, while pretending to be the thing that our American Founders envisioned.

And most of us now, Left and Right, are wise to it.  Sure, longtime Republican voters like me might have balked at cutting wasteful defense spending in 2010.  And sure, Democrat voters might have become infuriated at the idea of cutting wasteful and ineffective agencies like the Department of Education back in 2016.

But here we stand today, as a ragtag coalition of rebels, wielding a flamethrower, which is the only thing that we know can destroy some of these agencies for good.  
The administrative state in D.C. is desperate and scared.  We are seeing the signs of this, in the Fed potentially lowering interest rates in spite of a weak job market and rising inflation.  This would unnecessarily yield stagflation that could be blamed on the Trump administration.

And in terms of foreign policy, the Department of Defense will be handing Donald Trump a grenade with a pulled pin when Joe Biden confusedly shuffles out of office in 2025.  The Biden administration will have escalated the war beyond anything in most of our lifetimes by directly providing missiles and authorizing deep strikes by Ukraine into Russian territory.

While I, like most people, am not in favor of Russian aggression in Ukraine, imagine, for a moment, that the United States had a territorial dispute with Mexico, and that Russia provided and authorized long-range missiles to strike deep in America’s heartland.  Would we respond in some other way than to assume this to be a direct act of war?

Americans are winning against the big government threat in our own country, but we haven’t won yet.  The malignant Deep State has been identified and openly targeted for eradication.  We should only expect that its efforts to maintain its own existence become more desperate from here.     

The Capitol Hill GOP Is – As Usual – The Weakest Link

posted by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall 

Too bad Trump can’t be the dictator on Day One that the commies claimed he would be because the Republicans in Congress seem committed to making things much more difficult than they have to be. They need to get on board or get out of the way. We’ve lost one nominee already, and they are showing that familiar wobbliness that they always get about Pete Hegseth and several others. They have announced no clear plans for the first hundred days, and when someone does not tell you the plan, you can assume that there is no plan. Plus, they seem to be going back to their old habits of selecting congressional leadership not based on core attributes like merit, loyalty and lib owning. Trump 2.0 is focused and eager to keep his promises and make America great again. The GOP Congress seems far too focused on business as usual.

This will not do. The old-school GOP types are failing to read the big America-shaped room. There’s a new sheriff in town and you better not leave him to face the bad guys all alone at high noon. An election is coming in just two short years; 2026 should be, if history is any guide, a bloodbath for the president’s party. But it does not have to be. Trump has shown that the old rules do not apply to him. This could be a triumph, but the Republicans in the House and the Senate need to get on board. It’s either the Trump dance or the usual failure Kabuki dance.

I say let’s go with YMCA.

First, we need some unity on Trump’s appointments. I know some of them are not to the GOP squishes’ liking. Too bad. Advise and consent is a thing; since I am not smarter than the Founders, I am not advocating that they rubber stamp anyone. But if you oppose a Trump nominee, it had better be for a better reason than Deep State hacks are upset, or she allegedly loves Putin, or the Dem go-to of bogus sex charges. You would think that after Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, they would realize how the scam works. And I worked on Capitol Hill for a little while – please spare me the feigned shock and horror that somebody scored some booty on the side. 

We need unity to the extent we can get it. We know Lisa Murkowski is the worst and that Susan Collins has to be a Maine Republican, but everyone else needs to fall into formation. We do not have time for showboats, wimps, or losers. I like John Thune’s Marvel villain name, and he needs to channel that vibe by bringing down the hammer. No slackers, no dissenters, no more scalps for the Democrats.

Over in the House, Mike Johnson has his work cut out for him with a narrow majority complicated by several folks taking off for administration jobs. But he already wavered on the transexual bathroom issue before finding some spine and taking a stand. His problem is that he wants to be nice, while the rest of us want to be victorious. Nice will not cut it. He has a key role in getting the Trump agenda passed. What’s the plan? What are the priorities? Who knows? Not us. There has been a long tradition of the GOP caucus leadership keeping us and the members in the dark, then dropping a garbage download at the last minute and demanding it be rammed through without thought, reflection, or amendment. That model cannot continue. Not only do the members need time to review legislation, but We The People do too – because we will catch the nonsense ourselves.

Johnson needs to be organized and focused to get President Trump’s agenda moving. But first, he must ensure that the right Republican is in the right job. We’re done with committee chairman picked because they are pals of the Speaker or are simply old. We need people committed to the President’s agenda wielding the gavels. Sadly, it is not clear that the GOP gets this. One example is the fight for the House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair. The choice for this critical slot is simple and obvious, yet the GOP is making it hard. Darrell Issa of California, who previously chaired the House Oversight Committee during the first Trump term, is an Army vet and a supporter of Trump on Ukraine and everything else. He’s up against Ann Wagner of Missouri, who was an ambassador to Luxembourg, which is barely a country, and is a huge Trump backstabber. Oh, she also identifies as a girl, which some of these hacks think matters. We’d take differently-abled lesbian Hindus of color chairing every committee if they were America First. 

But Wagner is an establishment snake. She just adored Trump over the last few months when she was running for reelection, but she will almost certainly revert to form if chosen. In 2016, she withdrew her Trump endorsement because he said mean stuff. She wanted to censure Trump over J6, though he did nothing wrong. Who needs that kind of invertebrate playing to the Washington Post chairing a key committee when you can get someone like Issa who will be with us in Ukraine and whenever else it counts?

This is the kind of unforced error the GOP needs to avoid. But the problem is that the GOP caucus has traditionally been unable to avoid unforced errors. The House needs to come out swinging with the legislation Trump needs to cut the budget and our taxes, focus on high-payoff investigations, and hold its tiny minority together. Everything depends on what happens up on the Hill. That is Trump 2.0’s Achilles heel, and the Democrats realize it even if our own people don’t seem to.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

Welcome to 

The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓 

Here’s a place to share cartoons, jokes, music, art, nature, 

man-made wonders, and whatever else you can think of. 

No politics or divisive posts on this thread. 

This feature will appear every day at 1pm mountain time. 

Incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz Outlines His Priorities for Trump Administration

Sundance reporting for Conservative Treehouse 

There are a lot of interesting discussions and interviews amid the political chatter today.  It’s often difficult to filter which ones actually matter in the big picture.  This is one of those interviews’ worth watching.

Incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, brother-in-law to nominated U.S. Surgeon General Janette Nesheiwat and husband to former DNI policy chief Julia Nesheiwat, appears on Fox News to discuss his priorities for the national security system under President Donald Trump.

Within the interview Waltz makes sure the collective NATO “west” get the unity message about U.S-Ukraine policy: “Jake Sullivan and I have had discussions, we’ve met,” Waltz says in the interview. “For our adversaries out there that think this is a time of opportunity, that they can play one administration off the other — they are wrong. We are hand in glove. We are one team with the United States in this transition.”  WATCH:

Mike Waltz is married to Julia Nesheiwat, the sister of Surgeon General nominee Janette Nesheiwat.

Julia, who -like all other people who work in DC silos- has never taken a married name.  Julia Nesheiwat was born in Carmel, New York, in 1975 to Jordanian Christian immigrants and raised in Umatilla, Florida. She has a BA from Stetson University, an MA from Georgetown, and a PhD from Tokyo Tech.

Julia Nesheiwat became a military intelligence officer. She received the Bronze Star Medal during Operation Enduring Freedom in Iraq. She departed the military as captain.  Julia Nesheiwat served in several U.S. administrations. Under George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, she held senior national security and economic policy positions. Her most notable role was as Trump’s 10th Homeland Security Advisor from 2020 to 2021. Her Bush administration posts included State Department seniority and Office of the Director of National Intelligence Policy Chief.

Suffice to say their bedroom conversations are likely Intel Community shop talk.

While it’s interesting that Congressman Mike Waltz was selected to be President Trump’s National Security Advisor, it’s actually Julia Nesheiwat that carries the curriculum vitae that seemingly qualifies her for the job.  This will be an interesting dynamic to watch unfold.

There is no such thing as mis-dis-mal-information, there is only ‘information‘.  However, the background information can often assist in giving context to the events that unfold in/around the DC silo system.

German Industrialists Very Worried About Trump’s Return – German Economists Say ‘Relax, We’ll Just Devalue the Euro’

Sundance reporting for Conservative Treehouse 

Germany is the largest economy in the E.U. However, due to a confluence of horrible events, most of them self-created as an outcome of ridiculous energy production decisions, the German industrial economy has been contracting since 2022.

Into this downward spiral of negative economic events within Germany, now comes the problem of President Trump eager to eliminate the Marshal Plan of one-way tariffs and start dealing with the trade inequities.  The German industrial manufacturing companies who make up the majority of the economic output are concerned, very concerned.

Within the discussion suddenly something appears that all Western financial pundits have yet to accept. Leo Barincou, a senior economist at Oxford Economics in Paris says:

[…] limited tariffs on selected products, such as cars, chemicals and agricultural products, may not be too much of a problem, Barincou says. A rising dollar, and hence a falling value of the euro, would offset some of the harm caused by the tariffs. “At a macro level, the impact would be limited,” he says. (read more)

Yep, here we go again.

We saw this play out in 2017 through 2019.  China first responded to tariffs by subsidizing their targeted industries and later devaluing their currency.  We began importing deflation because Chinese products arrived with lower, subsidized, prices, and we paid for them with higher value dollars.

The downside for the rest of the world was China pulling back from purchases of large industrial products from Europe.  This made the EU furious at Trump, and subsequently the EU central banks lowered the euro as an offset.  For Americans we started importing deflation from Asia and Europe.  Everything was arriving at a lower price and being paid using higher value dollars.

I find it a little humorous that Germany openly admits they will offset Trump tariffs, devalue their currency, and ship goods without tax impacts.  Meanwhile the gaslighting U.S. financial pundits will keep pretending this is not happening.

The names have changed, but the cause & effect outcomes remain the same.

Pope condemns ‘arrogance of invaders’ in Ukraine and Palestine

 

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The “arrogance” of the invaders attacking Ukraine and Palestine blocks the dialogue necessary to build peace in those countries, Pope Francis said.

Without explicitly naming Russia or Israel, the pope referred to “two failures of humanity” in achieving peace: “Ukraine and Palestine, where there is suffering, where the arrogance of the invader wins over dialogue.”    

Speaking Nov. 25 at an event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the peace accords signed between Chile and Argentina and mediated by St. John Paul II, Pope Francis said the agreement remains “model for the complete, definitive and peaceful settlement of a dispute” that “deserves to be reproposed in the current world situation, in which so many conflicts persist and degenerate without an effective will to resolve them through the absolute exclusion of recourse to force or the threat of its use.”  

In 1984, the Vatican brokered the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Chile and Argentina, putting an end to years of territorial disputes and military tensions primarily over claims to the Beagle Channel.

In his address, the pope sharply criticized the willingness of countries to remain entrenched in armed conflicts despite the suffering they create, and he condemned what he called the “hypocrisy of talking about peace while playing war.”  

“In some countries where there is much talk of peace, the most profitable investments are in arms manufacturing,” he said. “This hypocrisy always leads to failure, the failure of brotherhood, the failure of peace.”

Earlier in the day, the pope addressed a delegation from the Universal Peace Council — an interreligious body comprised of 15 peace organizations to promote peace and dialogue in the Holy Land — and told them that “dialogue is the only path for peace.”

Reflecting on the “devastating effects of war and hate,” namely poverty, hunger and discrimination, he acknowledged that it could seem as though “our commitment to dialogue may be in vain because it produces few concrete results.” 

“In those moments, remember that anything that is worth doing is not easy,” he said. “It requires sacrifice, it requires the willingness to commit oneself every day, especially when things don’t seem to be going our way.”

Pope Francis also recalled the importance of young people, who he said can be “great artisans of peace through dialogue” and reminding people “that a better world is possible.”  

“Young people can help others discover the crucial elements that pave the way for peace: forgiveness and a willingness to let go of past prejudices and wounds,” he said.  

https://catholicreview.org/pope-condemns-arrogance-of-invaders-in-ukraine-and-palestine/

Post-Election, Red Rural Counties Are Once Again Talking About Splitting off From Blue States

Ward Clark reporting for RedState 

It's a common situation where a state has big, politically conservative but sparsely populated rural and small-town areas that are outweighed by state politics by heavily populated, mostly liberal/progressive urban enclaves. California is one such place, and in the 2024 election things seem to have grown even more divided between the coastal urban enclaves and the eastern and northern parts of the state. The same situation holds sway in Colorado, where we lived for many years and where the Denver-Boulder Axis runs roughshod over the much more conservative eastern plains and much of the western slope. So it's understandable that some of the rural and small-town folks feel their states' governments do not well serve them and might seek to leave, to either form a new state or to join a neighboring one where the prevalent political climate is more to their liking. This happened in California, where the State of Jefferson movement proposed to form a new state out of the northern counties and the southern tier of Oregon. In Illinois, the conservative southern counties are looking to break away from the domination of Cook County and Chicago.

It seems like this issue comes up every few years or so, generally after an election. It's doing so again now.

A movement in a myriad of rural counties across deep blue states such as Illinois and California to split off and form new states appears to be gaining some steam in the wake of the Nov. 5 election.

Conservative residents of the rural regions are taking note of their peers fleeing to lower-taxed and less-regulated red states but they are ready to stay put — pining for a divorce with the urban sectors of their state. 

A group dubbed the New Illinois State has drafted a new constitution and championed plans to “Leave Illinois Without Moving.” On Election Day, seven rural counties in Illinois voted to contemplate splitting off from the state. 

"Voted to contemplate"; that's an interesting turn of phrase. Sort of like "endeavor to persevere." 

Some in California's northern tier have been pushing the State of Jefferson for some time now, but it seems there's a new movement to break up the once-Golden State.

Out in California, a similar movement has taken root as well. The New California State organization hopes to splinter off the counties outside the Bay Area, Sacramento and Los Angeles.

“I’m so flipping excited,” Paul Preston, who founded New California State, told the Wall Street Journal. 

Preston bashed the Golden State to the outlet as a “one-party communist state, and technically, they have seceded from the Union already.”

Note there's an important difference between this and the dust-up we had from 1861-1865 when 13 states tried to break away and form another nation. The movements in Illinois and California aren't proposing to leave the United States (although there's one group in New Hampshire that proposes just that) but just to redo the state border map to form new states.

And don't the citizens supposedly have the right to self-determination?

While people have the right to get the government they want, good and hard (apologies to H.L. Mencken), the Constitution makes it difficult to carve a new state out of one or more existing ones. The last time it happened was during the Civil War when West Virginia split off from secessionist Virginia and remained in the Union. Under the Constitution, the legislatures of any states involved would have to vote to allow the redrawing of borders or the secession of counties to join a new state. Then Congress has to vote to accept the new states. Article 4 of the Constitution describes the relationships between the states, between states and the federal government, and how new states are admitted to the Union. Article 4, Section 3 states:

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

Given that most of these redrawing of lines would result in some pretty safe Republican jurisdictions, it would be a job to get such approval through a narrowly divided Congress.

People should have the right to self-determination. The Constitution makes allowance for it, in that it specifically allows for the re-drawing of state lines, given the process designed. There would have to be significant pressure put on Congress by the voters to make this happen, as the Constitution also makes sure that this can't be done capriciously.

But when you look at the 2024 election results by county in places like California, Oregon, and Illinois, one has to wonder if this is an idea whose time has come.

Games – Pencilneck Says Trump Intel Nominees Not Qualified, But Rubio is “Unquestionably Qualified”

Sundance reporting for Conservative Treehouse 

Sometimes the issues go deeper into the core of DC than just the pretense games of Republicans -vs- Democrats.  Every once in a while, you see a specifically nuanced topic arise that tracks to the core of DC.  Intelligence nominations are one such topic.

Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Adam Schiff, appears on NBC Meet the Press to discuss the nominations made by President Trump.  Adam Schiff is the newly elected incoming senator from California and likely also heading to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The Intelligence Community, the “Six Ways from Sunday” group, run every aspect of Washington DC.  Almost every politician, representative, staffer and even lobbyist, are dependent on the approval of the Intelligence Community to exist.  The IC is the proverbial eye of Sauron with full access to every facet of life in DC, including communications, emails, phone calls, text messages, all of it.  The IC operate from Penthouse Suites in the fourth branch of government.

You will notice that former Gang of Eight member Adam Schiff has disparaging commentary for every one of President Trump’s nominees, except current Gang of Eight member, Senator Marco Rubio.  The alignment is not only about UniParty, in this example the alignment is the code of Omerta that exists within the IC “oversight” group.  WATCH:

Was the 2024 Election Truly the Beginning of a Historic Political Realignment in America?

posted by Mike Miller at RedState 

Political elites and talking heads talked about it on election night and in the weeks since: Was the 2024 general election an anomaly because Kamala Harris was a terrible communicator and an even worse campaigner, continually flip-flopping on her policies and revealing herself as a radical San Francisco leftist, or was the election truly the beginning of a historic shift? 

To legitimately ponder the question of whether any election is the beginning of a historic realignment rather than a political one-off, multiple factors must be considered; first and foremost among them, demographics: race, gender, education, income, regional shifts, and previous lessons learned, including economic impact patterns.

So What Was Different in 2024?

As The Epoch Times pointed out in a recent article, a shift saw traditionally Democrat voters, and to a lesser extent Republican voters, move to the other side. According to experts, the shift actually started long before, though more subtly than in this cycle.

The 2024 presidential election could be remembered as the year when Republican and Democratic voters reshuffled themselves into new coalitions based on class, according to experts.

The shift has been seen over the past four election cycles but became pronounced in 2024. Working-class voters chose the GOP in this election, while higher-income, higher-educated voters favored the Democrats, which marks a significant change.

College graduates favored Republican candidates in every election but one from 1988 through 2004. That began to change in 2008 and accelerated in 2016 when Democrats gained a solid majority of 55 percent among college graduates and held it the next two elections.

At the same time, voters without a college diploma have increasingly voted Republican. The shift began in 2012, when Republicans gained two percentage points among this demographic, landing at 48 percent. By 2024, Trump had reached 63 percent support from those with a high school education.

A similar migration occurred in terms of income. In 2012, 60 percent of voters with household incomes of less that $50,000 voter Democratic. By 2024, that number has dropped to 44 percent.

The election also marked a tipping point for upper-income voters. In 2024, a majority of households earning more than $100,000 per year voted Democratic for the first time since the data had been tracked.The Republican share for this group was 46 percent, the lowest ever.

The sub-question in each of the above examples is "Why?" 

Why did historically significant numbers of working-class voters abandon Kamala Harris and the Democrat Party in favor of Donald Trump and down-ballot Republican candidates? Why, since the 2004 presidential election, have a sizable portion of college graduates shifted to voting Democrat rather than Republican? 

The same question can be asked about race. 

While the question in each case is easy, the answers are often more complex, but to suffice it to say -- at least in my not-so-humble opinion -- working class and less-educated Americans have been far more hurt by Democrat policies and hollow promises and have finally, after decades, began to realize it.

This brings to mind the often-overused "It's the economy, stupid" admonition, or the historical belief that "people vote their pocketbooks." 

Given the disastrous four years of "Bidenomics," it's easy to conclude that everything from prices at the gas pump and grocery store to the cost of a new home were primarily to blame. But 2024 also showed a fundamental change in trust; a change in overall attitude. 

To paraphrase an iconic line from the classic movie "Network," hard-working blue-collar workers and others were "mad as hell" in 2024 and they figuratively cried out, in historic numbers, which they conclusively proved in ballot boxes across America, "And we're not gonna take it, anymore!" 

The "it" here has been decades of Democrat Party pandering, exploitation, and hollow promises that not only never came true, but in multiple examples, Democrat politicians have continued to only make things worse. One need only look at Chicago's South Side, the former economic powerhouse of Detroit, or multiple other Democrat-run cities across the fruited plain for ample proof.

Undoubtedly, the continuing shift among Black and Hispanic voters away from the Democrats and toward the Republicans in 2024 was historically profound. And that doesn't mean that the wise and objective among us haven't seen it coming -- some of us for years. 

As The Epoch Times noted:

Black voters have favored Democrats by at least 80 percent for the last half-century. That support fell from a high of 95 percent in 2008 to 85 percent in 2024. The drop-off was greater among black men, 77 percent of whom voted for the Democrat candidate in 2024.

Hispanic support for the Democrats had hovered around 65 percent for over 40 years. That dropped 13 percent in one election cycle. Just 43 percent of Hispanic voted Democratic this year. 

The astonishing part, particularly with respect to black males, was that the Democrat Party, including former President Barack Obama, knew early on what was happening. Yet, what did Obama, MSNBC's overtly racist host Joy Reid, the loony ladies on ABC's miserable show, "The View," and untold numbers of other leftists do?

Rather than consider the causes behind the historic shift, they instead chastised, ridiculed, and scolded black men for having the audacity to support Donald Trump and multiple down-ballot Republicans. Insane? Of course, but remember, the Democrat psyche remains arrogantly trapped by the misbelief that black conservatives and non-conservatives are betrayers to their race. 

This is precisely the definition of racism. 

If white Republicans believed the same about all white people, can you imagine the hysteria on the left? And in this rare interest, they would be right. Yet, the Democrat Party -- the most hypocritical group of people on the face of the planet -- believe that in their case, they couldn't be more right, and morally so.

The Bottom Line

While I'm tempted to declare the 2024 election the beginning of a permanent historic shift, I'm not ready to do so for two primary reasons, which can be boiled down to four words: Donald Trump, Kamala Harris. 

Donald Trump has been a political phenomenon from the moment he and Melania rode down the elevator in Trump Tower in June 2015 to announce his first presidential run. The Trump phenomenon has continued, with 2024 being an astonishing turnaround from his 2020 loss, despite several obstacles and against what some might call against all odds. (I am not among them.)

In stark contrast, Kamala Harris shot to the top of the Democrat Party under -- let's call it under "unusual circumstances" -- after having won zero primaries to get there. Her ridiculous word salads and inability to string together intelligible sentences, must less her inability to speak extemporaneously about her views and policies, was compounded by being an absolutely terrible campaigner.

Finally, the real test will come in the post-Trump era, beginning in 2028. 

Period.