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Tuesday, January 28, 2025

All North Korean recruits are taught a song that includes a verse about saving their last bullet for themselves to avoid capture, one former soldier told NBC News. read more


State GOP legislative leaders abruptly ended a special session called by Ron DeSantis and are pursuing their own immigration proposal, sparking an intraparty battle. read more


First let me hit you with some realities:

- - The secretary general of NATO, Mark Rutte, has said that the West is not prepared for the challenges that will come over the next five years and that it's time to "shift to a wartime mind-set." Kori Schake, who directs foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, writes that while World War III has not begun, "a world war is approaching."


Monday, January 27, 2025

Navajo citizens in Southwestern states have reported "negative, sometimes traumatizing experiences with federal agents targeting undocumented immigrants" in the week since Trump issued a series of strict immigration-related executive orders, according to Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren.


Elon Musk popularity: Despite his role in Trump's inner circle and overseeing DOGE, Elon Musk's popularity is waning. A recent poll shows he's becoming more unpopular with the public. Elon Musk's popularity has been decreasing since he took over the Department of Government Efficiency. A Wall Street Journal poll shows half of the respondents view his advisory role under Trump unfavorably.


Comments

Related ...

Trump's health team has a trust issue
www.axios.com

... Fewer than half of U.S. adults in a new poll trust health recommendations from President Trump and his picks to lead federal health policy, but Republicans are about as likely to trust them as they are their own doctors.

Why it matters: Democrats, independents and Republicans have all lost trust in medical professionals and government health agencies over the past 18 months.

- - - But there is still a deep partisan divide over how Americans view health information and the people and institutions who share health-related messages.

- - - The split emerged during the pandemic and has become more entrenched in the almost five years since.

By the numbers: Less than half of the respondents surveyed this month trust President Trump (42%) and Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (43%) at least a fair amount to make the right recommendations on health issues. ...


@#13 ... This equestrian manure has been going on in Texas for decades. It's gone nowhere. ...

Agreed.

Texas secession movements
en.wikipedia.org

... Texas secession movements, also known as the Texas Independence movement or Texit,[1][2] refers to both the secession of Texas during the American Civil War as well as activities of modern organizations supporting such efforts to secede from the United States and become an independent sovereign state. ...

More from the OpEd ...

... Recent American defense strategy has been based on the optimistic assumption that we will have to fight only one war at a time. But the closer cooperation among China, Russia, Iran and North Korea make a coordinated attack more likely, meaning we may have to fight three or four regional wars simultaneously.

- - - The weak U.S. industrial base has hollowed out American resilience. China's shipbuilding industry has a capacity more than 230 times that of the United States. When experts recently conducted war games with China, the United States ran out of long-range anti-ship missiles within three to seven days.

- - - The Chinese are building gigantic amphibious landing craft of the sort they would use for an invasion of Taiwan. They have developed a powerful microwave weapon that has the intensity of a nuclear explosion and can disrupt or destroy electronic components of our weapons systems. H.R. McMaster, a former national security adviser, recently said, "I think China is laying the groundwork for a first-strike nuclear capability against the United States."

- - - In 2023, the RAND Corporation issued a report on U.S. military "power and influence." Here's how it opened: "The U.S. defense strategy and posture have become insolvent. The tasks that the nation expects its military forces and other elements of national power to do internationally exceed the means that are available to accomplish those tasks."

Now, if you are holding a hearing for a prospective secretary of defense, you would think you might want to ask him about these urgent issues. Or you might come up with other serious questions: How do drones change war fighting? How will artificial intelligence alter the nature of combat? How do we shift from a defense policy built around counterterrorism to a policy built around nation-state warfare? If you're a Democrat trying to sink a nomination, you would think you'd want to ask substantive questions on life-or-death issues like these in order to expose the nominee's ignorance and unpreparedness. ...



Paul Overstreet - Love Helps Those (1988)
www.youtube.com

Lyrics excerpt ...

genius.com

...
Grandma she don't really get around good anymore
In fact to get her out the house is really quite a chore
But every day somebody seems to find a time to stop
To see if grandma needs something from where they go to shop
'Cause you see

CHORUS: Love helps those who cannot help themselves
It cares about those hearts that's been put up on a shelf
It will introduce a lonely soul to a lonely someone else
Love helps those who cannot help themselves

Mr.Johnson has a small farm down in southern Tennessee
But one year he took ill before the time to plant to seed
And no one knows which neighbour planted or they just won't tell
But he had his best crop ever by the time that he got well
'Cause you see

Love helps those who cannot help themselves
It cares about those hearts that's been put up on a shelf
It will introduce a lonely soul to a lonely someone else
Love helps those who cannot help themselves

A little helpless baby child was born into this world
She didn't have a daddy and her mother was just a girl
But there came a young man willing to give both of them a home
The girl he married the child he cherished though she was his own
'Cause you see

Love helps those who cannot help themselves
It cares about those hearts that's been put up on a shelf
It will introduce a lonely soul to a lonely someone else
Love helps those who cannot help themselves
...


@#13 ... Obama said in 2007 ...

Conservatives said in the 1990's ...

How the Heritage Foundation, a Conservative Think Tank, Promoted the Individual Mandate (2013)
www.forbes.com

... This came up at Tuesday's Western Republican Leadership Conference Debate, where Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich tussled on the question:

ROMNEY: Actually, Newt, we got the idea of an individual mandate from you.

GINGRICH: That's not true. You got it from the Heritage Foundation.

ROMNEY: Yes, we got it from you, and you got it from the Heritage Foundation and from you.

GINGRICH: Wait a second. What you just said is not true. You did not get that from me. You got it from the Heritage Foundation.

ROMNEY: And you never supported them?

GINGRICH: I agree with them, but I'm just saying, what you said to this audience just now plain wasn't true.

(CROSSTALK)

ROMNEY: OK. Let me ask, have you supported in the past an individual mandate?

GINGRICH: I absolutely did with the Heritage Foundation against Hillarycare.

ROMNEY: You did support an individual mandate?

ROMNEY: Oh, OK. That's what I'm saying. We got the idea from you and the Heritage Foundation.

GINGRICH: OK. A little broader.

ROMNEY: OK.


(Romney was prepared to go on, but Michele Bachmann, in her usual role as the person who makes the debates less useful, interjected and changed the subject. Here's a YouTube video of the entire debate. The Gingrich-Romney exchange begins at the 27:38 mark.) ...

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