Nothing but the truth. Even if against me.
Sunday, November 30, 2025
More Crime, not Less, After National Guard Deployment
Trump's MAGA morons raise hell when a foreigner kills Americans, but they never say a word when Americans kill Americans. This is what Arabs do with Israel. They raise hell when Israel kills Palestinians, but they never complain when Sudan kills millions of its own people.
Crime continues to spike across the US depsite Trump's claims that he is deploying the National Guard to combat crime. If anything, last week in Washington DC, those who were deployed to fight crime fell victims of the crime they are supposed to fight.
American killings are kosher - mass shootings at schools, racist burning of Black churches, random mass shootings by deranged Americans .... - all are OK. No we don't want to ban guns. But one foreign assassin and it's the end of the world, and overcompensating barbaric policies are enacted. It's xenophobia, pure and simple. Which is strange because all Americans, save the ethnically cleansed genocided indigenous nations, are or descend from immigrant foreigners. Americans have a very bad and selective memory of who they once were. They even hate Canadians who are an exact copy-paste of themselves, except Canadians chose to be a civilized people by acknowledging their past whereas Americans don't even want to talk about their ugly past.
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4 dead, 10 wounded in shooting at California banquet hall: Sheriff's office
JACK MOORE
Sun, November 30, 2025
[LI: America's identity with violence]
At least four people were killed and 10 others wounded in a shooting at a banquet hall in Stockton, California on Saturday evening, local authorities said.
The San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office said it happened shortly before 6 p.m. in the 1900 block of Lucile Avenue in Stockton.
Heather Brent, a public information officer for the sheriff's office, told reporters the gunfire came as people were at the banquet hall for a family gathering, calling the shooting "unfathomable."
She said the victims of the shooting range in age from juveniles to adults.
There was no update provided on the conditions of those wounded. Several people were hospitalized, the sheriff's office said earlier.
She said early indications are that it may have been a targeted shooting, although authorities have not yet identified a suspect or made any arrests.
"Our No. 1 priority right now is identifying the suspect in this incident," Brent said.
Speaking to reporters at the scene, Stockton Mayor Christina Fugazi noted the timing of the shooting, just a few days after the Thanksgiving holiday.
"Families should be together instead of at the hospital standing next to their loved one praying that they survive," she said.
Ethan Swope/AP - PHOTO: California Shooting
San Joaquin County District Attorney Ron Freitas said, "Tragedy of this nature is unthinkable. And it absolutely breaks our heart. Right now, we are doing everything possible to bring the individual that's responsible for this to justice."
Among the law enforcement agencies responding to assist are the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Stockton, a city of about 320,00 residents in central California, is located about 45 miles south of Sacramento.
The office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the governor had been briefed on the "horrific shooting."
Crime continues to spike across the US depsite Trump's claims that he is deploying the National Guard to combat crime. If anything, last week in Washington DC, those who were deployed to fight crime fell victims of the crime they are supposed to fight.
American killings are kosher - mass shootings at schools, racist burning of Black churches, random mass shootings by deranged Americans .... - all are OK. No we don't want to ban guns. But one foreign assassin and it's the end of the world, and overcompensating barbaric policies are enacted. It's xenophobia, pure and simple. Which is strange because all Americans, save the ethnically cleansed genocided indigenous nations, are or descend from immigrant foreigners. Americans have a very bad and selective memory of who they once were. They even hate Canadians who are an exact copy-paste of themselves, except Canadians chose to be a civilized people by acknowledging their past whereas Americans don't even want to talk about their ugly past.
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4 dead, 10 wounded in shooting at California banquet hall: Sheriff's office
JACK MOORE
Sun, November 30, 2025
[LI: America's identity with violence]
At least four people were killed and 10 others wounded in a shooting at a banquet hall in Stockton, California on Saturday evening, local authorities said.
The San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office said it happened shortly before 6 p.m. in the 1900 block of Lucile Avenue in Stockton.
Heather Brent, a public information officer for the sheriff's office, told reporters the gunfire came as people were at the banquet hall for a family gathering, calling the shooting "unfathomable."
She said the victims of the shooting range in age from juveniles to adults.
There was no update provided on the conditions of those wounded. Several people were hospitalized, the sheriff's office said earlier.
She said early indications are that it may have been a targeted shooting, although authorities have not yet identified a suspect or made any arrests.
"Our No. 1 priority right now is identifying the suspect in this incident," Brent said.
Speaking to reporters at the scene, Stockton Mayor Christina Fugazi noted the timing of the shooting, just a few days after the Thanksgiving holiday.
"Families should be together instead of at the hospital standing next to their loved one praying that they survive," she said.
Ethan Swope/AP - PHOTO: California Shooting
San Joaquin County District Attorney Ron Freitas said, "Tragedy of this nature is unthinkable. And it absolutely breaks our heart. Right now, we are doing everything possible to bring the individual that's responsible for this to justice."
Among the law enforcement agencies responding to assist are the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Stockton, a city of about 320,00 residents in central California, is located about 45 miles south of Sacramento.
The office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the governor had been briefed on the "horrific shooting."
What Would Saint Charlie Kirk Say About Trump's Incivility to Women?
I wish someone in heaven could ask Saint Charlie Kirk - and report back to us - what he thinks of Donald Dumb's uncivil and definitely un-Charlie-like vulgarities. Saint Charlie was a racist, a white supremacist, an extremist MAGA influencer who fooled credulous religious young people ... but he was civil and courteous.
I think the creep Donald Dumb should be clinically diagnosed as "demented". His recent spell of unnecessary and increasingly abusive language towards women is consistent with his long history of misogyny and degradation of women (African women are "low IQ", women are to be grabbed by the pussy, his fornication with porn actresses and prostitutes, his sexual harassment and alleged rape of various women, his abuse of teenage girls under the guidance of the Child Sex Supreme Guide and friend Jeffery Epstein, etc.).
But what is particularly striking is the increased frequency of these spells of abuse to women. It seems that his sick brain is losing the self-control that normal people have in social settings.
Last Thursday, CBS News chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes asked the loser Donald Dumb about the suspect in the shooting of two members of the National Guard in Washington, D.C. The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, is an Afghan national who was granted asylum by Trump's own supposedly strict immigration program. Cordes pointed out that the inspector general of the Justice Department found that Afghans who entered the U.S. after the fall of Kabul in 2021 had been thoroughly vetted by Trump's own administration (the dictator's own incompetent slaves Kash Patel and Pam Bondi). Cordes asked the president: "So why do you blame the Biden administration —"
"Because they let him in. Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? Because they came in on a plane, along with thousands of other people that shouldn't be here, and you're just asking questions because you're a stupid person," the Jerk-in-Chief responded.
Not only that, but the fact that the National Guard troops the dumb imbecile-in-chief deployed in Washington DC (as a MAGA marketing ploy under the guise of fighting hypothetical crime) have themselves become victim of that crime means that Donald Dumb's policies are pathetically failing. Donald Dumb is creating crime where none existed. The troops have been mowing lawns, picking up garbage, helping the elderly cross the streets.... because there is no sufficient crime to warrant their presence. National Guard troops are trained for war combat, not community policing.
This complete disaster, which was bound to happen, is all Donald Dumb's making. He knows it but he refuses to take the blame, as per his usual megalomaniacal character. While it might look good for his herd of MAGA morons that he is doing something about crime, this episode falls under the category of the unintended consequences of superficial, not well-thought through, off-the-cuff actions that one sees taken by "heroes" in bullshit American Hollywood movies which I am sure inspire Trump. And that is at the heart of the problem. Americans in general, and the Idiot-in-Chief in particular, live in a ficitional world fabricated by their own movie industry: Americans do tailor their lives to match the fictions, they believe that hapless but testosterone-laden action, rather than deliberate thought, is sufficient because "it looks good". For Americans with little culture, life imitates art. They live their lives according to what they see in silly, cheap, violent movies and games. That is why Americans have been losing every single war since WWII.
The posturing, the show, the patriotic bullshit, the theater.... are primary when the US decides to go to war. The depth of intellectual preparedness by the US government and armed forces always appears to be shallow on substance but heavy on appearance, PR, and other superficial metrics. It's that American business invention called "marketing" that has taken over serious, and yes academic, inquiry into major decisions like going to war. Didn't George W Bush like an idiot roost himself on an aircraft carrier and declare "mission accomplished" even as his soldiers were being mowed down in Iraq by improvised explosive devices?
Instead of looking back at history to try and comprehend present actions and their consequences, Americans worry more about the "looks" of their actions. Which is why there is often an emphasis on quantity and less on quality in American undertakings. American invasions are by the millions of troops deployed, millions of tons of materiel and equipment, massive disinformation campaigns (again, Bush's lie that Saddam Hussein has WMDs as a reason for invading Iraq)... all generally ending in disastrous failures with millions of people dead. During the Vietnam war, which the Americans like morons inherited from the French, stupid patriotism clashed with sensible opposition. Net outcome? Patriotism failed, the opposition won, the Communists won, the Americans lost with 50,000 dead US soldiers, and all of that heartache and torment to see Vietnam become a perfectly functioning Communist country and a "friend" of the US.
On Wednesday, the president assailed New York Times correspondent Katie Rogers, who co-authored an article on his age and physical stamina in his second term. He called her "third rate" and "ugly, both inside and out." The president's insults at Cordes and Rogers are just the latest in recent weeks that have targeted female reporters. While speaking to members of the press on Air Force One earlier this month, the president snapped at Bloomberg White House correspondent Catherine Lucey, telling her "Quiet. Quiet, piggy."
Earlier, while hosting the journalist-chainsaw-chopper Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) in the Oval Office, dumb Trump berated ABC's correspondent Mary Bruce because she "dared" ask about the 2018 chopping-off murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. A US intelligence report at the time concluded that MBS personally ordered the murder of Khashoggi. Incidentally, I think the French should offer MBS a few of their vintage guillotines because they retired them; Guillotines work on heads, but also on hands, legs, torsoes, etc.
Donald Dumb lashed out at Bruce of "embarrassing" the crown prince with her question and then called her a "terrible person and a terrible reporter." He said her question was "horrible" and "insubordinate." How dare a journalist ask difficult questions of entitled dictators and autocrats like himself?
The Society of Professional Journalists condemned Trump's attacks on Bruce and Lucey, which it said were not isolated and instead "part of an unmistakable pattern of hostility — often directed at women — that undermines the essential role of a free and independent press."
"Journalists are not props at a photo op — they are watchdogs for the public," Caroline Hendrie, executive director of the group, said in a statement. "When reporters ask hard questions about the murder of a fellow journalist, that is not an embarrassment. What's embarrassing is a leader trying to silence those questions."
Saturday, November 29, 2025
Did Trump's Deployment of National Guard Expose the Troops to Danger?
The Afghan killer of National Guard members in DC: Wasn't he vetted by the CIA when he worked for the agency? What kind of vetting could the Biden Adminstration have done when he was clinging in panic to the last plane leaving Kabul with thousands of people? Once in the US, the man applied for asylum: It was Kash Patel and Pam Bondi 's job to vet him, and they did and he was granted asylum. The only excuse is NOT to blame Biden but to blame Trump's minions for granting him asylum instead of deporting him right away IF they knew he was a potential danger. Finally, the man we now learn is a mentally ill person, just like ther hundreds of school mass murderers - who are not asylees or refugees or immigrants, but US-born dimwit nuts to whom Trump and his gun-toting imbeciles refuse to deny them access to weapons.
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Did Trump’s ‘political’ stunt of deploying that National Guard unnecessarily endanger the National Guard members’ lives?
The Atlantic colmunist and national security analyst for TV media, Juliette Kayyem, thinks so. She says that it was an unnecessary stunt that culminated in the shooting of two Guard members Wednesday.
"There are costs to performatively deploying members of the military — one of which is the risk of endangering them," she says. They basically have nothing to do all day other than hang out in the streets like stitting ducks in a non-combat zone, simply so the senile Moron can claim he's fighting crime. With him, it's the image that counts, not the substance. But in a country where any asshole can buy a gun and walk into a school and mass murder children, the Guardsmen and Guardswomen become easy targets.
Just like his targeted assassinations of fishermen in the Caribbean under the guise of combating drug smuggling. No one knows if these murdered people in the open sea are fishermen or drug smugglers, as no evidence is presented. But the black-and-white images of boats getting blown up in the ocean are welcomed by his moronic MAGA followers.
The Atlantic contributing writer Juliette Kayyem said Trump endangered U.S. National Guard soldiers when he deployed to Washington, D.C., for a political stunt.
Trump called the shooting of the two members in DC a "crime against the entire country" and said the "animal" who committed the murder would pay the "steepest possible price." This highly charged comment on the killing of guardswoman Sarah Beckstrom, while her fellow guardsman is fighting for his life, reflects Trump's feeling of guilt for causing their tragedy. Since they are not really fighting a war - they are rather trying incompetently to play police - it is difficult for the Moron to justify his deploying them. In fact, relatives of the slain Guardswoman, say that she had confided in them her thought that the deployment was "pointless".
Kayyem argued the tragedy was avoidable because Trump was warned not to station troops in the city in the first place. "The troops, deployed in an effort to reduce crime, are untrained in law enforcement; their days are spent cleaning up trash and walking the streets in uniform. Commanders, in a memo that was included in litigation challenging the high-visibility mission in D.C., argued that this could put them in danger," she wrote.
Kayyem added that Trump’s decision was merely a way to attack his "political" opponents and not a good use of U.S. military members.
"The National Guard has been deployed as part of the White House’s political attacks on cities run by Democrats, and the Guard members are vulnerable because politics is not a military mission," Kayyem continued... Morale is low among part-time volunteer soldiers, who have had to leave home to patrol the streets of an American city that Trump doesn’t like."
The "animal ", as it were, would’ve never been here if not for incompetent Kash Patel's FBI dereliction in granting asylum to the killer because of improperly vetting Afghan refugees who escaped Kabul with US troops. Patel is very busy flying his girlfriend on FBI and government planes all over the country to attend concerts, football games and parties. The combination of "marketing" deployment of troops on US soil and the incompetence of the Trump administration is a very dangerous mix that allowed unvetted criminals to cause harm to US troops. The killing in DC is no different from the mass killings in schools, churches, bars, etc. that take place every day in America, perpetrated by US-born Americans. Blaming refugees is disgusting racism and xenophobia.
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[a.k.a. Fochs Ewes]
Rep. Wasserman Schultz says Trump should blame self for putting National Guard in harm’s way with DC crackdown
Alexander Hall
Sat, November 29, 2025
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., former chair of the Democratic National Committee, suggested Friday that President Donald Trump is to blame for the death of a member of the National Guard.
Multiple left-wing commentators argued that the ambush-style shooting of National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe Wednesday only happened because of Trump’s orders to station the National Guard in U.S. cities.
On Friday, as the nation was still reeling from the shooting, CNN host Sara Sidner spoke to Schultz about the tragic incident.
The shooting, Schultz said, "begs the question, would an individual have flown across the country to target law enforcement officers in Washington, D.C.? And, I mean, the answer is likely no. So, why wasn‘t the president‘s first thought, 'Wow, you know, maybe I should reconsider deploying military troops in the nation‘s capital or in any city?'
"Particularly not when they haven‘t coordinated closely with the leadership of these cities and when we have law enforcement that are quite capable of handling the criminal justice issues that are — that we need law enforcement to focus on, and not our military."
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., blasted President Donald Trump, arguing he should blame his own choices for putting National Guard members in harm's way.
Trump said he launched the crackdown because local law enforcement had failed to handle the amount of crime in some of America’s most famous cities.
Since the shooting Wednesday, carried out by an Afghan national, according to authorities, Trump has called to halt mass migration from the "Third World" and to initiate a "reverse migration" plan.
Even before that, Sidner noted that "days before the shooting, the public learned through reporting that the Trump administration had planned to review and reinterview refugees that came in during the Biden administration."
"I just think that any administration needs to be careful about making sweeping generalizations," Wasserman Schultz responded. "If there were gaps that admitted this person, they would have failed over multiple levels of gaps. And this individual was trusted enough to participate in assisting our military during the war in Afghanistan."
National Guard members stand together behind yellow tape, after two National Guard members were shot near the White House in Washington, D.C., Nov. 26, 2025.
Trump should blame himself for putting the National Guard in harm’s way, Schultz argued.
"The president looks everywhere except inward to blame his own policies. We need to make sure that we don‘t have our military deployed in our cities, doing — handling law enforcement responsibilities," she said. "We certainly need to make sure we always have the proper and appropriate and tight, tight vetting processes, and those should be reviewed. But it‘s never the president‘s fault or his policies when it comes to his reaction, and it‘s pretty disgusting."
Have You Expressed Your Gratitude to the Senile Demented Moron for Thanksgiving?
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been taking courses and workshops to learn how to express "gratitude" to the convicted senile old felon geezer in the Outhouse. Many people and institutions - "free" and brave" Americans included - continue to climb down from their golden or ivory towers in fear and terror to pay their coerced respects to the dozy dick-tator.
Have you done your duty? Have you managed to send a letter, a text, a tweet, a phone call to the Outhouse for Thanksgiving to express your eternal gratitude for all the bountiful love that Dozy Don has been giving all of us lately?
Love in so many words for doing your job, like "stupid person", "quiet! piggy", "ugly inside and out", "terrible person", "seriously retarded", etc.; love in targeted killings of Caribbean fishermen in the open Caribbean Sea; love for a crashing economy on the verge of a recession due to his Dumb Majesty's tariffs; love for deploying the army against us on our streets while cowering to his powerful foreign and billionaire friends; love for deporting a Babson College student who was flying to spend Thanksgiving with her family; love for all the uncertainties we're all living through; love for increasing his and his family's wealth while we continue to sink in the cesspool he has created... So much love.
I think His Dumb Majesty is scoring big points with the "man upstairs", and believe it or not, his plans to earn the Nobel Peace Prize will be hastened by our very own personal Savior Jesus-Christ who sees all the good that His Dumb Majesty is doing on earth. In his own modesty, His Majesty doesn't think he'll make it to Heaven after he leaves this earth, but I disagree. I think His Majesty is negotiating with God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost on a deal to build Him an exclusive copy of Mar-a-Lago up there - to be named "Golden Paradise Trump Cloud" - where he can surround Himself with the guys (Hegseth, Patel, Rubio, Vance...) and gals (Leavitt, Noem, Bondi, ...) and also with fluttering angels like Jeffrey Epstein and his coterie of underage grils ... for eternity.
So much to be thankful for.
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A CIO says consumer sentiment has 'collapsed,' and US households are flashing a major warning sign
Consumer sentiment is in the dumps and sources say it's a signal worth watching.
Market pros say the Fed won't be able to ignore the red flags being raised by US households.
"Sentiment isn't wobbling at the edges or drifting lazily lower. It has collapsed," one CIO said.
Worsening consumer sentiment might be among the biggest red flags in the economy right now, according to one CIO.
It's hard to open a newspaper or turn on a TV without seeing an expert making grim predictions for why the US economy is teetering on the brink of recession. Top economists such as Mark Zandi have repeatedly emphasized that the US is on the brink, with just a few things holding back a downturn.
Even as delayed economic data is finally released and the economy moves on from the recent government shutdown, other experts say the data tells a grim story, particularly when it comes to the health of the consumers.
After the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment survey dropped to one the lowest levels ever earlier this month, the Conference Board on Tuesday showed similar results from its survey. It's confidence gauge fell to the lowest level since April, on a mix of inflation and labor market anxieties.
While few companies are hiring, many have opted to lay off significant chunks of their staff, leaving large groups without an income as the holiday season approaches. And according to multiple experts, confidence in the economy is reaching dangerously low levels.
"Consumer sentiment is at its lowest level ever," stated Mark Malik, CIO of Siebert Financial. "Sentiment isn't wobbling at the edges or drifting lazily lower. It has collapsed. It has broken through historical floors."
Siebert added that the Federal Reserve needs to start paying attention to this trend before things worsen. He noted that, monetary policy, which is intended to stabilize prices, is not working as intended.
"When consumer sentiment across all cohorts is flashing deep red, that is not nothing. It means households feel squeezed. It means the labor market doesn't feel as strong from the inside as the headline numbers suggest," Malik added.
Tie Lasater, CEO of Lasater Capital, also sees waning sentiment as a warning sign that markets and economists should be paying attention.
"Historically, sentiment alone doesn't cause recessions, but sharp, sustained collapses in confidence often precede or accompany economic slowdowns," Lasater said. "When households lose confidence, they shift into defense."
He added that when consumers adopt a defensive mindset, they scale back spending, negatively impacting businesses, and potentially spurring layoffs. The negative feedback loop reinforces the initial pessimism, pushing consumer sentiment down even further.
Noah Yosif, chief economist at the American Staffing Association who previously served at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, echoed the sentiments. He highlighted the concerning trend of employees at all levels exhibiting clear caution.
"Consumer sentiment is often a noisy predictor because feelings about the state of the economy vary substantially across different income levels and generations; so uniform pessimism across multiple demographics suggests a rare alignment of multiple economic pressures that cannot be dismissed as a temporary mood or isolated hardship," he stated.
Read the original article on Business Insider.
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Moody's Chief Economist Mark Zandi Warns Stock Market Downturn Could 'Knock the Wind Out of' the Wealthy and Trigger Recession
Fahad Saleem
Fri, November 28, 2025
An increasing number of company executives and economists have recently pointed to a widening gap in the economy, where the wealthy drive most economic activity and low-income Americans continue to struggle financially.
A potential stock market downturn could affect wealthier households and trigger a broader economic slowdown, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, recently told Bloomberg.
Zandi said high-income households are the "last pillars" of strength in the economy, and a stock market downturn would "knock the wind out of" them, raising the risk of a recession, according to Bloomberg.
The top 20% of earners in the U.S account for almost two-thirds of all spending, a record, Bloomberg said, citing data from Moody's. Before the pandemic, the bottom 80% made up nearly 42% of spending, but that share has fallen to 37%.
The U.S. economy could face a "big problem" if wealthy Americans become cautious in spending, Zandi said in a September post on X.
"The 20% of households that make more have done much better, and those in the top 3.3% of the distribution have done much, much, much better," Zandi wrote. "The U.S. economy is being largely powered by the well-to-do. As long as they keep spending, the economy should avoid recession."
Growing worries about an AI bubble and high tech stock valuations are raising concerns about a potential stock market downturn, which could affect wealthy households in the U.S., who hold the bulk of market investments.
The richest 20% of U.S. households own nearly 93% of all stocks, CNBC reported, citing data from New York University economics professor Edward Wolff.
"It's hard to overstate the significance of the soaring stock prices of artificial intelligence companies to the economy," Zandi said in a post on X earlier this month. "Spending by well-off Americans, driven by their surging stock portfolios, is the single most significant driver of growth."
Crime Rates Not Dropping Despite Trump's Massive Crackdown on Immigrants
US-Born white Iowa man uses illicit drugs then kills four people by beating them to death with a metal pipe.
Luke Truesdell is a white American murderer from Iowa.
He was found guilty on three counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder on Monday, Nov. 17. But he is white and US-born, so he is not disposable or deportable.
In June 2024, Truesdell used a metal pipe to fatally beat Romondus Lamar Cooper, 44, Keonna Victoria Ryan, 26, Amanda Sue Parker, 33, and Brett Anthony Brown, 34. The fatal beatings occurred in a detached garage in Marion, Iowa.
The cherry on the savagery cake is that Truesdell was motivated by Hollywood possibly making his crime into a movie. This is when life imitates degenerate art coming out of America's movie industry and its extreme violence which is exported to all countries around the world. America is indeed teaching violence not only to its own people - who are by far the highest perpetrators of mass killings and mass shootings - but to other countries. Violence is America's top export.
Truesdell told police he believed the people he attacked were involved in sex trafficking, though there was no evidence to support that belief. The paper further reported that Truesdell said he was high on methamphetamine and had not slept in two days.
Meanwhile, police in California evacuated a shopping mall yesterday Friday after a shooting left two people with gunshot wounds. The shooting was an "isolated" incident, the San Jose Police Department said.
The day after Thanksgiving, known as “ Black Friday,” marks the official start of the "holiday shopping season" in the U.S. and is the biggest shopping day of the year. Americans are brainwashed like a herd of cattle to spend their hard-earned money - or indebt themselves beyond their means - as if it were a tradition or a patriotic duty. Squandering one's money on non-essential junk is now associated with "holidays" (a positive association) and encouraged to be a repetitive behavior by labeling it a "season", which implies an obligatory regular recurrence.
Friday, November 28, 2025
Trump Pardons Drug Trafficking President but Kills Fishermen
Trump has so far pardoned close to 2,000 criminals, including his 1,500 MAGA mobsters who savaged the Capitol in their attack on Congress in January 2021. Many of his other pardoned criminals are "elite" people (financiers, politicians, etc. https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2025/11/trump-keeps-pardoning-criminals-like.html) and even spies (https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2025/11/trump-to-pardon-jonathan-pollard-jewish.html). He is expected to soon pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, the child sex pedophile associate of feu Jeffrey Epstein, a long time close pedophile friend of Trump himself.
Is there any logic in assassinating innocent fishermen in their boats in the Caribbean Sea claiming they are drug traffickers and smugglers, while pardoning a former president of Honduras who was sentenced for drug trafficking? The only explanation is that a former president is a VIP like Trump, a member of the elite whose crimes should be ignored, while lowly fishermen are disposable human beings that may be sacrificed in order for the Great Moron to say to his MAGA herd of morons that he is fighting crime. Note that he doesn't hold his own American morons responsible for using the illicit drugs and driving the drug smuggling into the US.
One way to cut the supply of drugs into the US is to hold the American people responsible for the highest demand for illicit drugs in the world.
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Trump says he will pardon former Honduran president serving sentence in drug-trafficking case
Juan Orlando Hernandez in Guatemala City, January 14, 2020. - Moises Castillo/AP/File
President Donald Trump said Friday he intends to grant a “full and complete pardon” to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, a move that would erase a major US drug-trafficking conviction for a onetime US ally who is currently serving a 45-year federal prison sentence.
“I will be granting a Full and Complete Pardon to Former President Juan Orlando Hernandez who has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly,” Trump announced on his Truth Social platform.
“This cannot be allowed to happen, especially now, after Tito Asfura wins the Election, when Honduras will be on its way to Great Political and Financial Success. VOTE FOR TITO ASFURA FOR PRESIDENT, AND CONGRATULATIONS TO JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZ ON YOUR UPCOMING PARDON.”
President of Honduras from 2014 until 2022, Hernández was sentenced last year and given an $8 million fine by a US judge for drug trafficking offenses.
Prosecutors had accused Hernández of conspiring with drug cartels during his tenure as they moved more than 400 tons of cocaine through Honduras toward the United States. In exchange, prosecutors said, Hernández received millions of dollars in bribes that he used to fuel his rise in Honduran politics.
During his years in office, the Justice Department said, Hernández “protected and enriched the drug traffickers in his inner circle.” Prosecutors cited his use of executive power to support extraditions to the US of certain drug traffickers “who threatened his grip on power,” while “promising drug traffickers who paid him and followed his instructions that they would remain in Honduras.”
The president’s announcement comes as his administration has focused in recent months on what it has said is a counter-drug operation in the Caribbean and the Pacific, with US military activity ramping up there.
The former Honduran president, who denied the chargers against him, had been extradited from Honduras after the US Department of Justice filed three drug-trafficking and firearms-related charges against him in 2022.
Following the announcement, Hernández’s attorney thanked Trump and said “we look forward to President Hernandez’s triumphant return to Honduras.”
“We are so grateful to President Trump and everyone who supported President Hernandez. We believe he was the victim of lawfare and a political prosecution. A great injustice has been righted and we are so hopeful for the future partnership of the United States and Honduras,” attorney Renato Stabile said in a statement.
Trump also used his Truth Social post Friday to strongly back Honduran conservative National Party presidential candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura, tying US support to the outcome of the election.
“If Tito Asfura wins for President of Honduras, because the United States has so much confidence in him, his Policies, and what he will do for the Great People of Honduras, we will be very supportive,” the president wrote.
“If he doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad, because a wrong Leader can only bring catastrophic results to a country, no matter which country it is. Tito will be a Great President, and the United States will work closely with him in order to ensure the success, with all of its potential, of Honduras!”
On Sunday Honduras will hold its general elections.
CNN’s Maria Santana and Jack Guy contributed to this report.
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Alabama Priest Hired a 17-year-old Concubine and Kept Her 'Employed' for 16 Years
Catholic "Father" Robert Sullivan made a vow of chastity after he "heard the call" to vocation and was ordained. But he hired 17-year old Heather Jones to be his paid concubine for the next 16 years, which makes him an even greater sinner than his fellow protestant reverends, pastors and other "shepherds" who can marry but still find enough excess libido to screw around with parishioners, prostitutes and such behind their spouses' backs.
Alabama's age of consent is 16, not 18. Alabama law also admits that sex between two people with a power imbalance between them (e.g. a priest and his parishioner, or a teacher and his/her student) is consensual.
We hear that shepherds in mountaineous countries fall in love with their ewes but there is no money involved. It's not love when money is involved, so shepherd Robert Sullivan engaged Heather Jones when she was only 17 years old to be his "private companion", a business arrangement that lasted 16 years until the "employed companion" changed her mind, as often happens with women who regret their own misadventures in the realm of the forbidden.
I am always impressed by the pedantic lies with which religious institutions explain themselves when caught in fornication scandals. I remember when, as a student at a religious-run school, a night supervisor priest was caught diddling with one of his boarder students in the showers. The news broke out the next day and everyone knew what had happened. But the principal announced the departure of the fornicating priest by explaining that "the priest had to leave the country to be with his dying mother". Needless to say, but the offending priest never returned to the school after "burying his mother"; the church must have appointed him to another school where he probably continued plying his shepherding trade in shower stalls late at night.
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Alabama priest leaves clergy after woman alleges ‘private companionship’ beginning when she was 17
Ramon Antonio Vargas
Fri, November 28, 2025
Robert Sullivan told his congregation he was taking a leave of absence on 3 August 2025.Photograph: Youtube
A longtime Roman Catholic priest in Alabama has voluntarily left the clergy after a woman alleged to his superiors that he provided her financial support in exchange for “private companionship” including sex beginning when she was 17.
Robert Sullivan’s self-imposed removal from the priesthood – known as laicization – was announced Wednesday, the day before the US holiday of Thanksgiving, in a public statement from Birmingham, Alabama, by Bishop Steven Raica.
The woman who accused Sullivan, Heather Jones, filed her allegations in a formal written statement to the Birmingham diocese that she then shared exclusively with the Guardian in August. Jones, now 33, also maintained that Sullivan had paid her hundreds of thousands of dollars to remain silent about their arrangement, backing up her claim with financial and email records, along with a copy of a legal agreement.
Raica’s letter said a subsequent church investigation into “the significant payments alleged to have been made by then-father Sullivan … found no link between the allegations and any diocesan, parish or school funds”.
“These four months since the allegations surfaced have been challenging in the life of our local church,” Raica’s letter added. “I am grateful for the patience and resilience of all who have been affected directly or indirectly by this matter.”
Members of the priesthood from which Sullivan, 61, chose to resign promise to be abstinent and teach that sex out of wedlock is sinful. Furthermore, people younger than 18 are classified as minors –and sexual contact with them considered to be abusive – under policies which US Catholic bishops adopted in the early 2000s amid the worldwide church’s decades-old clergy molestation scandal.
However, there is no indication Sullivan has drawn scrutiny from lay authorities. The legal age of sexual consent in Alabama is 16. And law enforcement investigators have in some cases been reluctant to act in cases of religious clergy accused of having improper sexual contact with teens who had reached the legal age of consent.
Alabama also is not among the US states with laws that say a power imbalance makes it impossible for there to be consensual sex between clergy and legal adults who are under the clerics’ spiritual guidance.
In her statement to Sullivan’s superiors as well as in an interview with the Guardian, Jones recounted growing up in foster care after being removed from her mother’s custody “due to severe neglect”. She wrote that she lacked reliable “adult support” during her formative years and therefore tried to make ends meet by working as a dancer at an “adult establishment” outside Birmingham.
Jones said she was 17 when she met Sullivan at that establishment, where she managed to land a job despite being under an applicable age limit. Sullivan was a regular patron, made it a point to tip her during her shifts and soon offered to “help change [her] life” if she called him on a phone number he slipped her, she wrote.
Sullivan then proposed “to form an ongoing relationship that would include financial support in exchange for private companionship”, Jones wrote. Jones said Sullivan went on to take her shopping, dining, drinking, and to hotel rooms in at least six different Alabama cities in part to engage in sex – beginning when she was 17 and over the course of several years.
He was said to have initially presented himself as a medical doctor, though Jones later learned he was a priest.
“At the time, I was a minor, with no experience navigating adult relationships, and no understanding of how power and influence could be used to manipulate someone vulnerable,” Jones wrote in her complaint. “I was hesitant but ultimately agreed due to his persistence and the desperate state I was in.”
Jones said she grappled with depression, addiction and emotional instability during her arrangement with Sullivan. She said she eventually spoke out against him because Sullivan had continued working closely with families and their children as the otherwise popular pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows church in Homewood, Alabama, leaving her worried “others may be vulnerable to the same type of manipulation and exploitation” that she described enduring.
Additionally, in 2020, Raica had appointed Sullivan to serve as one of the Birmingham diocese’s vicars general, meaning he held a high-ranking administrative position.
Sullivan told congregants at Our Lady of Sorrows’ 3 August mass he was taking “personal leave”. He did not provide a reason, but Jones by then had filed her complaint against him with the diocese.
Raica issued a letter to his diocese’s congregants informing them of the allegations against Sullivan and the reason for his leave on 13 August, the same day that the Guardian reported Jones’s story. That letter also said the diocese had forwarded Jones’s allegations to the Vatican entity which investigates cases of clergy misconduct.
Sullivan later asked Pope Leo XIV to “be dispensed from all the obligations” of the priesthood, Wednesday’s statement from Raica said. The pontiff granted the request on Monday, Raica’s missive said.
Jones did not immediately comment on Sullivan’s laicization.
Sullivan was ordained a priest in 1993, according to a previous Our Lady of Sorrows social media post.
Even Swiss Corporations Crawl with Bribes at King Donald the Dumb's Feet
The king's "favorite", botoxed Laura Loomer, has declared the installation of King Donald the Dumb on the American throne as in inevitability. Without an absolute (-ly moronic) Monarch, the white supremacist inbred hillbillies and rednecks of backwoods America face extinction.
Medieval-thinking Swiss sycophants and court jesters had to stop humping their sheep on their Alpine slopes, rush down from their backward mountains and yodel at the American King's feet while offering him golden gifts in exchange for favors, such as avoiding or lifting such inconveniences as tariffs that the King placed on their products. They did the same thing during WWII: Under the cover of neutrality, their secretive banks funded the Nazi war machine.
What this whole saga of corporations, banks, newspapers and media bending the knee and kissing the ring of the imbecile dictator is telling us, is the abolute lack of ethics and self-respect by the world of greedy capitalist corporations. They have no shame first surrendering their dignity, then buying it again from a hallucinating deranged and senile moron. Remember this, people: You are feeding the monsters by buying their stuff.
King Donald the Dumb of America
Trump’s Giant Gold Gifts Trigger Demand for Urgent Bribery Probe
Swiss lawmakers have urged prosecutors to assess whether gold gifts received by Donald Trump broke the country’s anti-bribery laws.
Parliamentarians Raphaël Mahaim and Greta Gysin have asked the nation’s Office of the Attorney General to examine whether presents reportedly given to the U.S President by Swiss business leaders—among them a Rolex watch and a gold bar—breached the criminal code on offering an “undue advantage” to a foreign public official, according to Reuters.
The request follows a U.S.–Swiss framework deal this month, lowering Trump’s 39 percent tariff on Swiss goods to 15 percent. This deal was announced 10 days after the Oval Office meeting where the gifts were given, the outlet reports.
The Swiss Green Party politicians wrote that “the end does not justify all means,” asking prosecutors to decide if criminal proceedings are warranted under articles that carry penalties of up to five years’ prison—or a fine, Reuters said.
Executives from MSC, Rolex, Partners Group, Mercuria, Richemont and MKS PAMP were listed as attendees to the meeting. Rolex declined to comment when approached by the Daily Beast, and the White House didn’t immediately respond.
Alfred Gantner, a Partners Group co-founder who attended the Oval Office session, told Reuters the collaboration helped resolve the dispute. A company spokesman declined to make any further comment to the Beast, as did MKS PAMP.
A person close to the group who visited the Oval Office told the Beast: “The gifts were presented to the Presidential Library, on behalf of the Group who attended the meeting, in full compliance with both U.S. and Swiss law, and were cleared with the White House ethics counsel.”
After the meeting, a Rolex Submariner desk clock, which retails for five figures, could be seen in the Oval Office, alongside the gilded accents and signage that now fills the room. A similar model—although made of stainless steel rather than gold—costs around $10,000. Axios reported the one-kilogram bar was valued at around $130,000.
Swiss outlets and European media have dubbed the saga “gold bar diplomacy,” with criticism across Switzerland’s Green and Social Democrat ranks and a formal probe request now on the table. The government has defended the public-private push while denying any quid pro quo.
Under Swiss procedure, anyone can report an alleged offense, and prosecutors then decide whether to open a case, Reuters said.
A spokesperson for the Federal Prosecutor’s Office told the Daily Beast that the department generally does not comment on media reports, but confirmed it had received three criminal complaints “against persons unknown” in connection with the meeting between the Swiss delegation and the U.S. President.
“The Federal Prosecutor’s Office is reviewing these complaints as usual. It is important to note that the receipt of a criminal complaint does not automatically mean that a criminal investigation has been opened,” the spokesperson added. “No further information is currently available.”
The Daily Beast has also contacted Mahaim, Gysin, MSC, Rolex, Mercuria, and Richemont for comment.
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Two lawmakers from Swiss Green Party have formally asked Switzerland’s public prosecutor to investigate whether luxury gifts including a gold bar and a Rolex watch offered to President Trump by Swiss business leaders violated the country’s anti-bribery laws.
The gifts came during a November delegation to Washington by executives from firms including MSC, Rolex, Richemont and MKS PAMP, among others. Ten days later, the U.S. and Switzerland agreed to a framework deal that slashes U.S. tariffs on Swiss goods from 39% to 15%. Critics in Bern are now calling the timing and the gifts themselves deeply suspect.
In their letter to prosecutors, the two lawmakers argued that the gifts may have constituted an “undue advantage” under Switzerland’s criminal code. Under that statute, offering or giving a foreign public official an advantage in return for favorable treatment can trigger criminal charges, potentially carrying prison time or fines.
Representatives for the businesses involved say the gifts were legitimate diplomatic gestures, and sources close to the delegation maintain the visitors cleared the presents with White House ethics counsel, claiming the items were handed over to the Presidential Library rather than kept personally by Trump.
For now, the probe remains in its earliest stage: prosecutors have received the complaint, but have not yet opened formal proceedings. Meanwhile, political critics in Switzerland are framing the episode as a glaring example of elite influence-peddling and a warning sign for global trade-diplomacy norms.
The post “Gold bar diplomacy”: Swiss politicians call Trump gifts a possible bribe appeared first on Salon.com.
Trump's Failures are Making Him Increasingly Irritable and Vulgar Toward Women
We already know he doesn't think much of women. He surrounds himself with incompetent, obedient and submissive blonde bimbos. He qualifies every African woman as a "low IQ" person. He attacks almost exclusively women reporters who ask him tough questions as being "ugly", "piggy" and "stupid".
Last Thursday, the criminal asshole attacked a journalist for asking a question during a Thanksgiving event.
“Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person?” he asked the reporter during a tense exchange about the suspect in Wednesday’s attack on two National Guard members in Washington, D.C.
The senile idiot again railed at President Joe Biden's immigration policies because the Afghan shooter on the National Guard in DC, who had worked with the CIA in Afghanistan, was allowed into the United States as part of a resettlement program in 2021.
But it was the Trump administration that vetted him over the past 5 years and granted him asylum last April. So when a female reporter pointed out to the Moron-in-Chief that the shooter “...was vetted and the vetting came up clean” by his own administration, the know-it-all imbecile first blamed psychiatry, “He went cuckoo ... I mean, he went nuts, and that happens too. It happens too often with these people.” The same criminal explanation by the violence-loving Radical Right and the NRA that guns don't kill, but sick people do.
Trump held a photo of the chaotic withdrawl of US forces and their Afghan collaborators from Kabul airport, and declared “There was no vetting or anything, they came in unvetted”. Of course, you can't be vetting thousands of panicked US-friendly Afghans trying to flee the Taliban along with the US soldiers. The cases should be studied one by one and carefully after these people land in the US. That is the job that the DOJ, the DHS, and the FBI should have done once the Afghans landed in the US. But they either all failed or no one should be blamed for someone turning "cuckoo". Many US-born morons go cuckoo every day and commit dastardly mass killings.
But the female reporter persisted, “Actually, your DOJ IG just reported this year that there was thorough vetting by DHS and by the FBI of these Afghans who were brought into the U.S....So why do you blame the Biden administration?”
The Moron-in-Chief did not like the question: “Because they let ’em in,” he fired back. “Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? Because they came into on a plane along with thousands of other people that shouldn’t be here, and you’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person.”
Trump said “it’s almost impossible” to remove the people who came in via this program.
Trump's long history of attacking the media, and female reporters in particular, is well known by now. But his utter failures in recent weeks is causing him to be much angrier and especially vitriolic toward the women who cover him.
He called Katie Rogers of the New York Times “ugly”. He chastised ABC’s Mary Bruce for asking what he called “a horrible, insubordinate, and just a terrible question” about Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman's responsibility in the assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Kashoggi. And when Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey asked about the Jeffrey Epstein files, he fired back: “Quiet, piggy!”
Clearly Trump is increasingly coming off the rails as he witnesses his own political demise for failing to deliver on many of his outlandish promises. Neither the economy is healthy, grocery prices are skyrocketing, inflation remains hanging over his head like the Sword of Damocles, his pretenses to making peace around the world are faltering. Russia's barbarity in Ukraine continues, so does Israel's barbarity in Palestine.
And... he is getting old, tired, sleeps during press conferences, makes incoherent rants, and may even be seriously ill. But he's a dictator, and old senile dictators often face the dilemma of leaving the stage with some dignity (and fade away from public life) or persist in their attachment to power (and become a laughable puppet to be manipulated by all the vultures around him).
Thursday, November 27, 2025
Southern Morons Prefer God to Science: They Earn Tickets to a Measles Outbreak
For the first time in more than two decades, the United States is poised to lose its "measles elimination status" which means that outbreaks are not rare, are recurrent and are not rapidly contained. This is one of Donald Dumb's achievements.
The backward Christian-Taliban southern states of the US - South Carolina, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Kansas and others are deeply religious and also deeply disturbed for electing a Moron to the White House. They pray in the Moron's $1,000-bible, though, but maybe God and his Son, our "personal" (all 8 billion of us earthlings) Savior, are not listening. Neither is the Holy Ghost. I wonder why. Could it be their racism? Could it be their hatred of their neighbors in need? Could it be that they prefer the ultra-wealthy over the destitute? Could it be that many of their reverends, pastors, elders and such other "shepherds" of the herd have in recent years being caught in adultery, child sex abuse, and other deviations of the flesh? Mmmmm...
They can at least trust their doctors - their real ones, not the quacks that Trump is putting in charge of the nation's health - when they tell them that vaccines are safe.
Perhaps doctors and scientists fail by not telling people that THERE IS NO 100% SAFE DRUG OR VACCINE, but when the odds are that out of 1 million vaccinated children, one or two might suffer side effects, they'd better take that chance rather than see their child die of dreadful diseases.
Vaccines are developed and tested (clinical trials) like all the drugs these imbeciles swallow like candy, which means that any given drug will benefit 50%, will have no effect on another 40% and about 10% will suffer adverse side effects. But that doesn't stop the anti-vaccine morons from taking drugs that are potentially far more lethal than any vaccine. Yet they listened to the lies of the charlatans of HHS, CDC and the Turkish Muslim "Dr." Mohammad Oz's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and decided not to get vaccinated and not vaccinate their children. That is behavior typical of primitive, ignorant, ultra-religious communities.
Such religious communities are in theory against euthanasia (or assisted dying) because they believe that life is sacrosanct. They cannot choose to die. The Church has decided that suicide is a mortal sin (Hahahahahahaaaa).... If you kill yourself, you will die - is this an oxymoron? Or just plain moronic?
But they seem cool with the idea of killing themselves or their children by denying themselves or their children vaccines that might save their lives.
Happy Thanksgiving? I ain't sure.
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South Carolina’s measles outbreak shows chilling effect of vaccine misinformation
Lauren Sausser, KFF Health News
Thu, November 27, 2025
The South Carolina Department of Public Health Mobile Health Unit, shown on October 20, has been providing vaccinations, including for measles, in a library parking lot. - Ken Ruinard/USA Today Network/Imagn Images
Near the back corner of the local library’s parking lot, largely out of view from the main road, the South Carolina Department of Public Health opened a pop-up clinic in early November, offering free measles vaccines to adults and children.
Spartanburg County, in South Carolina’s Upstate region, has been fighting a measles outbreak since early October, with more than 50 cases identified. Health officials have encouraged people who are unvaccinated to get a shot by visiting its mobile vaccine clinic at any of its several stops throughout the county.
But on a Monday afternoon in Boiling Springs, only one person showed up.
“It’s progress. That progress is slow,” Linda Bell, the state epidemiologist with the Department of Public Health, said during a recent press briefing. “We had hoped to see a more robust uptake than that in our mobile health units.”
As South Carolina tries to contain its measles outbreak, public health officials across the nation are concerned that the highly contagious virus is making a major comeback. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tallied more than 1,700 measles cases and 45 outbreaks in 2025. The largest started in Texas, where hundreds of people were infected and two children died.
For the first time in more than two decades, the United States is poised to lose its measles elimination status, a designation indicating that outbreaks are rare and rapidly contained.
South Carolina’s measles outbreak isn’t yet as large as those in other states, such as New Mexico, Arizona, and Kansas. But it shows how a confluence of larger national trends — including historically low vaccination rates, skepticism fueled by the pandemic, misinformation, and “health freedom” ideologies proliferated by conservative politicians — have put some communities at risk for the reemergence of a preventable, potentially deadly virus.
“Everyone talks about it being the canary in the coal mine because it’s the most contagious infectious disease out there,” said Josh Michaud, associate director for global and public health policy at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News. “The logic is indisputable that we’re likely to see more outbreaks.”
Schools and ‘small brush fires’
Spartanburg’s vaccination rate is among the lowest of South Carolina’s 46 counties. And that was true “even before covid,” said Chris Lombardozzi, a senior vice president with the Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System.
Nearly 6,000 children in Spartanburg County schools last year — 10% of the total enrollment — either received an exemption allowing them to forgo required vaccinations or did not meet vaccine requirements, according to data published by the state.
Lombardozzi said the county’s low vaccination rate is tied to misinformation not only published on social media but also spread by “a variety of nonmedical leaders over the years.”
The pandemic made things worse. Michaud said that fear and misinformation surrounding covid vaccines “threw gasoline on the fire of people’s vaccine skepticism.” In some cases, that skepticism transferred to childhood vaccines, which historically have been less controversial, he said.
This made communities like Spartanburg County with low vaccination rates more vulnerable. “Which is why we’re seeing constant, small brush fires of measles outbreaks,” Michaud said.
In Spartanburg, the overall percentage of students with required immunizations fell from 95.1% to 90% between the 2020-21 and 2024-25 academic years. Public health officials say a minimum of 95% is required to prevent significant spread of measles.
Children who attend public and private schools in South Carolina are required to show that they’ve received some vaccinations, including the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, but religious exemptions are relatively easy to obtain. The exemption form must be notarized, but it does not require a doctor’s note or any disclosure about the family’s religious beliefs.
The number of students in South Carolina who have been granted religious exemptions has increased dramatically over the past decade. That’s particularly true in the Upstate region, where religious exemptions have increased sixfold from a decade ago. During the 2013-14 school year, 2,044 students in the Upstate were granted a religious exemption to the vaccine requirements, according to data published by The Post and Courier. By fall 2024, that number had jumped to more than 13,000.
Some schools are more exposed than others. The beginning of the South Carolina outbreak was largely linked to one public charter school, Global Academy of South Carolina, where only 17% of the 605 students enrolled during the 2024-25 school year provided documentation showing they had received their required vaccinations, according to data published by the Department of Public Health.
No one from Global Academy responded to interview requests.
‘Health freedom’
In April, after visiting a Texas family whose daughter had died from measles, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (LI: who long peddled anti-vaccine stupidities changed his mind for a brief moment and) wrote on social media that the “most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.” He made a similar statement during an interview on “Dr. Phil” later that month.
But these endorsements stand at odds with other statements Kennedy has made that cast doubt on vaccine safety and have falsely linked vaccines with autism. The CDC, under his authority, now claims such links “have been ignored by health authorities.”
“What would I do if I could go back in time and I could avoid giving my children the vaccines that I gave them?” he said on a podcast in 2020. “I would do anything for that. I would pay anything to be able to do that.”
Throughout 2025, he has made other misleading or unsupported statements. During a congressional hearing in September, Kennedy defended his past claims that he was not anti-vaccine but affirmed his stated position that no vaccines are safe or effective.
Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, told KFF Health News that Kennedy is “pro-safety, pro-transparency, and pro-accountability.” Hilliard said HHS is working with “state and local partners in South Carolina” and in other states to provide support during the measles outbreaks.
Meanwhile, Kennedy has frequently championed the idea of health freedom, or freedom of choice, regarding vaccines, a talking point that has taken root among Republicans.
That has had a “chilling effect all the way down through state and local lawmakers,” Michaud said, making some leaders hesitant to talk about the threat that the ongoing measles outbreaks poses or the effectiveness and safety of the MMR vaccine.
Brandon Charochak, a spokesperson for South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, said the governor was not available to be interviewed for this article but referenced McMaster’s comment from October that measles “is a dangerous disease, but in terms of diseases, it’s not one that we should panic about.”
On a separate occasion that month, the Republican governor said he does not support vaccine mandates. “We’re not going to have mandates,” he said, “and I think we are responding properly.”
Even though the South Carolina Department of Public Health has repeatedly encouraged measles vaccines, the push has been notably quieter than the agency’s covid vaccine outreach efforts.
In 2021, for example, the agency partnered with breweries throughout the state for a campaign called “Shot and a Chaser,” which rewarded people who got a covid vaccine with a free beer or soda. By contrast, the pop-up measles vaccine clinic at the Boiling Springs Library featured no flashy signage, no freebies, and wasn’t visible from the library’s main entrance.
Edward Simmer, interim director of the Department of Public Health, would not speak to KFF Health News about the measles outbreak. During a legislative hearing in April, Republican state lawmakers voted against his permanent confirmation because of his past support for covid vaccines and masking. One lawmaker specifically criticized the agency during that hearing for the Shot and a Chaser campaign.
Public health officials in other states also have been blocked from new roles because of their covid response. In Missouri, where MMR vaccine rates have declined among kindergartners since 2020 and measles cases have been reported this year, Republican lawmakers rejected a public health director in 2022 after vaccine opponents protested his appointment.
In South Carolina, Simmer, lacking lawmakers’ confirmation, leads the public health agency in an interim capacity.
South Carolina Sen. Tom Davis of Beaufort was the only Republican on the Senate Medical Affairs Committee who voted to confirm Simmer in April. He told KFF Health News that his Republican colleagues raised valid questions about Simmer’s past support for covid vaccines.
But, Davis said, it would be “tremendously unfortunate and not beneficial from a public health perspective” if the Republican Party just took a stance against vaccines “as a matter of policy.”
The Department of Public Health had administered 44 doses of the MMR vaccine through its mobile health unit from October to mid-November. The last mobile vaccine clinic was scheduled for Nov. 24. But health officials are encouraged that patients are seeking vaccines elsewhere. The agency’s tracking system shows that providers across Spartanburg County administered more than twice as many measles vaccines in October as they did a year ago.
As of mid-November, more than 130 people remained in quarantine, most of them students at local elementary and middle schools. Cases have also been linked to a church and Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport.
“We’re reminding people that travel for the upcoming holidays increases the risk of exposures greatly,” said Bell, the state epidemiologist. “Due to that risk, we’re encouraging people to consider getting vaccinated now.”
KFF Health News correspondent Amy Maxmen contributed to this report.
Wednesday, November 26, 2025
Don't be Conformists: Dump Thanksgiving. Nothing to be Thankful for
With the psychopath Donald Slump sticking his knives into every facet of our lives, why are millions of Americans celebrating Thanksgiving is beyond belief.
For the most part, Americans are a very conformist bunch. They do stuff because they are told to do so, or because everybody else does, or because of the Joneses... they don't want to be the only ones not doing the stuff. Herd mentality, basically, and regardless of whether the stuff has meaning or value.
This year, there is nothing to celebrate with all the heartbreak around us. American democracy is in dire straits. Even if the Moron leaves the Golden Outhouse in three years, he's already caused irreversible damage by setting disastrous precedents that could inspire later wanabe dictators. If in ten years a Democrat president decides to screw with the country, he/she can always shelter behind Trump's precedents. It is hard to imagine American democracy restored intact after Trump.
Looking a Julius Cesar's criminal pathway to power, the similarities with Donald Hump are uncanny, although the Imbecile-in-Chief does not have the stature of Julius Cesar when all his "accomplishments" are to hurl insults and demented comments on social media.
Julius Cesar eviscerated the repository of the Roman republic, the Senate, committed war crimes (his troops massacred 400,000 people in one episode of his Gallic War), eliminated all the checks and balances in place (he degraded the Tribunes, representatives of the Plebe -i.e. the common people - the equivalent of the House of Representatives, and eliminated their veto power over the Senate's decisions), he placed the Magistrates (who were elected by the Plebe directly to make laws) directly under his control. He forced the Senate to grant him the "temporary" powers of a Dictator for a period of one year, had them extended to ten years first, then for life, whereas a Dictator was normally appointed by the Senate for no more than 6 months to handle a crisis. He appointed his own con men to prestigious positions and humiliated those who dared oppose him. He took away for himself the Senate's control of the Armed Forces and the Finances.... He illegally led his troops across the Rubicon river - the border of the Roman Republic with the Gaul region (southern France / Northern Italy) which he was conquering - and marched on Rome to illegally seize power. Basically, Julius Cesar destroyed the Roman republic that had existed for 500 years under the rule of law and the legitimacy of the people's election of its representatives, and replaced it with a one-man rule - that of an emperor - whose later excesses (Nero, Caligula....) led Rome into decline and to its ultimate demise.
Donald Lump inherited a republic, is screwing it inside out, attempted a coup, has rendered Congress a useless, non-functioning subsidiary of the White House, has transformed the Supreme Court into a rubber-stamping bunch of functionaries, is an avowed criminal who has no compunction breaking the laws and violating the constitution. While Donald Trump is no Cesar, he is engaged in a pattern of conduct of public affairs that is unprecedented in the history of the country and that resembles how Julius Cesar destroyed the Roman Republic. Again, it is hard to see how American democracy can survive the damage done by Donald Trump.
For those of us living this moment in the history of the US, this Thanksgiving Day cannot be more bitter. So I am not celebrating it this year.
When Lebanese Immigrants Take their Ultra-Religious Conservatism to the US
Ralph Lee Abraham is a Louisiana republican. Mixing his Lebanese descent's ultra-religious conservatism with the backwardness of Louisiana's southern conservatism is not new to the Lebanese American community.
This imbecile who has served as Louisiana's Surgeon General has halted his state’s vaccine campaigns and delayed warning the public about a deadly whooping cough outbreak. Because he's an idiot doctor who doesn't believe in science (???), he has secretly been installed - without fanfare - as the second-highest official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Department of Health and Human Services did not even announce this appointment. Abraham shares with the voodoo shaman Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., skepticism on vaccines. "Doctor" Abraham has promoted discredited COVID-19 treatments including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, although rigorous clinical studies had demonstrated ivermectin’s ineffectiveness against COVID-19.
In September, the conservative Lebanese American moron told news oulets that the COVID vaccine is “dangerous” and does not recommend it to his own patients. At a state legislative meeting last September, he claimed: “I see, now, vaccine injury every day of my practice” from COVID vaccines, though he did not specify the nature of these injuries. The claim contradicts extensive research showing COVID vaccines significantly reduce hospitalizations and deaths.
Many of today's Lebanese immigrants to the US are some of the most stupid and short-sighted Americans. They bring with them from Lebanon their ultra-religious barbarism and their religious hatreds (Christians vs Muslims, and vice-versa), as well as intra-religious sectarianism (Latin Catholics vs Greek Catholics, Armenian Orthodox vs. Armenian Catholics, Greek Orthodox vs. Maronite Catholics, etc....).
Nowadays, there is a syndicate of Lebanese-American Christians who want to turn Lebanon into another Israel, a christian one. It is understandable that many Lebanese Christians feel that their century-old attempt at finding a modus vivendi with the Lebanese Muslims has proven disastrous, and their immediate impulse is to seek a separation from the Muslims and a return to the smaller semi-independent Mount-Lebanon entity that existed prior to World War I.
But this poses a big problem for them: If they do separate and retreat into their Mount-Lebanon enclave, they stand to lose many of the cities and regions that define their pre-Islamic ideology as descendants of the Phoenicians. That was, in fact, the ideological drive behind enlarging the smaller but independent (from Ottoman Turkey) Mount Lebanon "Mutassarifya" in 1920 to the Greater Lebanon republic we know of today. This enlargement brought the Phoenician cities of Tripoli, Beirut, Sidon, and Tyre, as well as the Akkar Plain (north), the Bekaa Valley (east) and the Jabal Amel (south), all of which heretofore were part of Syria, into Lebanon. But it also brought a reluctant and large Syrian Muslim population into the country.
Hard as the French mandatory power advised them against this enlargment, the Christians did not listen to their French protectors who warned them that such a move would reduce them to a minority. But the arrogance and hubris stood in the way, and the small overwhelmingly Christian Mount Lebanon became the half-Muslim, half-Christian Greater Lebanon that has proven ungovernable, mostly because the Muslims never really identified as Lebanese. In Greater Lebanon, the Muslims cannot seek the presidency, reserved for the Christians under the constitution; the Muslims have co-religious sponsors around in the region (Saudi Arabia as the babysitter for the Lebanese Sunnis, and Iran as the nanny of the Lebanese Shiites). For these previously Syrian Muslim communities, they integrated Lebanon coercively and have yet to see Lebanon as their primary criterion of national identity; religious and sectarian affiliations remain deep and current.
Backed by beacons of oppression and backwardness, like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Syria, Egypt, Libya and others, the Lebanese Sunnis waged a war against the Lebanese State and the Christians from the late 1960s through the early 2000s, using the Palestinian guerillas as their militias. The Sunnis won and took control of the Executive power, sidelining the Christian president into a castrated figurehead. In turn, and backed by the "enlightenment" of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Tehran, the Lebanese Shiites waged a similar war against the Lebanese State and the recently-annointed Sunni masters over the country between the early 1980s through the present time. The Christians are sick to their stomach for watching the Muslim destruction of the nice country they managed to build since the 1940s.
So, a separation from the Muslims is, in and by itself, not a bad idea. I am all for it, but it has to be a reasoned, negotiated type of evolution of the Lebanese political system. This could be done in stages, beginning with an enhanced decentralized management in which local governments acquire more of the decision-making, and gradually moving to a federation or confederation between various more or less homogenous regions and districts. Moreover, this modification of the system of governance should be the product of the Lebanese themselves, and not something that is imposed by the outside.
South Sudan is a negotiated Christian secession from Muslim-dominated Sudan. Pakistan is a negotiated Muslim secession from Hindu-dominated India. Both have more or less worked. But Kosovo is a non-negotiated Muslim secession from Christian Serbia imposed by the West and it has hardly worked. Israel is a non-negotiated Jewish (although non-native foreign colonial) secession from Muslim-dominated Palestine imposed by the West.
But what the dumb Lebanese-American "representatives" of Lebanon's Christians in the US want is what amounts to a catastrophe of demographics, an orgy of violence, in which they clone the Israeli macabre experience of separation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and land theft. And they expect the United States under Trump to deliver. Their "proposal" includes:
- Evicting (ethnic cleansing) the Shiite Muslims from the south of the country. In this project, they want/imagine the Shiites gone, just as Israel wants/imagines the Palestinians gone: Ethnic cleansing and land grab. In fact, they model their ethnic cleansing on the Israelis: Somehow drive the Shiites from the south and up to the Bekaa Valley where they might be forced to settle for good, just as the Zionists want to drive the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank into the Sinai and Jordan, respectively. This would premit the Christians to retain the Phoenician sities of Sidon and Tyre. There are a few ancestral Christian villages in the south whose existence precedes the islamization of the country in the 7th century, unlike the Zionist Jews who had no established presence (no towns, no villages,....) in Palestine for 2,000 years. Now they only have "settlements".
- Like the Zionists did by forcibly gathering every willing Jew they could find around the world into Palestine to artificially raise the proportion of Jews in the demography of the new country, the Lebanese-American savants want to uproot all the Christians of Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Palestine and anywhere else in the Levant - and perhaps even the Egyptian Coptic Christians - from their pre-Islamic ancestral lands and move them to the Lebanese south to replace the Shiites. Thus millennia of Christian existence across the Levant would vanish to no return, and all the Levantine Christians would become concentrated in Lebanon (assuming they overcome their miserable divisions into a pleiotropy of Catholic vs. Orthodox ethnic and national sects).
- As for the Sunni Muslims of Lebanon, they can stay in their seacoast cities (Tripoli, Sidon, Tyre...) as long as they keep their mouths shut and don't complain as a minority in a Christian-dominated Lebanon. The current love fest between the Sunni Arabs, the Zionists and the Americans should provide some assurances to the Christians of Lebanon against potential Sunni barbarity, although such assurances would last as long as the love fest is ongoing. But history tells us that these love fests, based on oil and greddy capitalism, never last forever. Lebanon's Sunnis in such a future Christian Lebanon would be like the 1948 Palestinians who stayed in their lands after the creation of the artificial "State" of Israel. A 20% minority without much say in the governance, with a few decoy representatives in the Knesset with which the Zionists can claim to be "tolerant" and "democratic".
- Meanwhile, the national ethnic pockets that seem to be emerging in the region are used as a model. If the Alawites of the Syrian coast, the Kurds of the Syrian northeast, the Druze of the Syrian south, the Jews of Israel... are all non-Muslim or non-Arab enclaves that are either established or on on their way to some sort of separation from the rest of the Arabian peninsula, why can't a mostly Christian Lebanon also emerge?
Thus, in this scheme that is cloned on the Israeli model, the Lebanese Christians would rule the country again.
Where their decerebrated brains fail:
- Creating another "Israel" in the Levant is not an appealing proposition in general for the West. Unless one assumes a gigantic Crusade on the part of West to essentially de-Islamize the Levant, with troops on the ground and western settlements and the whole caboodle of colonialism and colonial rule, this is unacceptable for the west.
- The Lebanese Christian mindset is not like the Israeli Zionist mindset. The Lebanese Christians do not have the experience, the capabilities, the organization and the solidarity that made the Zionist Jews succeed in raping Palestine. Israel's success has much more to do with organization and manipulation of information than with military prowess. Without the American umbilical cord that feeds Israel with money, weapons, and propaganda, Israel would not survive.
- The Lebanese Christians and their moronic Lebanese-American advocates do not seem to have learned anything from their history with "Western help".
- They sought and obtained French protection for centuries, only to dastardly evict their own French protectors in 1943, when the French were on their knees during WWII. Not only did they engineer their own divorce from the West, but they did it to please the Muslims and the Arabs.
- They do not seem to have learned from Anglo-Saxon perfidy over the past two centuries. Not only do the protestant (and worse, Evangelical) Americans hate Catholics in general, they hate eastern Catholics even more. From American University of Beirut's origins in 1866 as the Syrian Protestant College, a "religious" missionary institution that failed to convert those Arab Papists of Lebanon to protestantism, changing instead after WWI to its new and improved "educational" American University of Beirut (AUB) that still harbors bitter animus toward the Catholic Maronites. The custodians of AUB refused to associate their university with Lebanon's name after its independence because they never did recognize Lebanon as a legitimate nation, hence American University 'of Beirut', and not 'of Lebanon'. All of which driven by England's rivalry with France. Since Lebanon's Christians were Catholic France's favorites, the protestant Anglo-Saxons (English then American) did their best to undermine the Lebanese Christians by fomenting Muslim and Druze strife and uprisings against the Maronite Catholics ever since the mid 1800s.
- In more recent history, the descent of a briefly (1940s-1960s) glorious and prosperous Christian-led Lebanon into hell began in 1974. More precisely, the creation of Jewish Israel pushed Christian Lebanon into the background. The "Question d'Orient" of the 19th century concerned the Christian minority of Lebanon and the need to protect it from Muslim (Turkish then Arab) intolerance. Nowadays, the "Question d'Orient" concerns the protection of the Jewish minority in Palestine. In the mid sixties, the Palestinians began asserting their identity as a nation, and not as a herd of refugees expelled by Jewish and Zionist violence in Palestine. Lebanon welcomed hundreds of thousands of these refugees. With violence erupting between the Palestinians and the Israelis, the Christian Lebanese and their decent Lebanon ended up paying the price of that conflict. In 1974, Henry Kissinger sealed an agreement with Assad of Syria (soon to be placed on Kissinger's own State Dept's list of State Sponsors of Terrorism) in which Syria would relinquish its Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in exchange for being granted dominion over Lebanon. All Arab countries backed that arrangement because it contained the revolutionary Palestinians inside Lebanon. The "Civil War" broke out in 1975 between the Palestinians and the Lebanese Christians who saw Yasser Arafat and his PLO as an existential threat. The Syrians invaded and occupied the country to "manage" the conflict such that no one wins. Since the Palestinians are majority Sunnis, the Lebanese Sunnis coalesced with the Palestinians against the Christians and the State.
- Throughout the period from the late 1960s to some time in 2004, the Americans consistently sided with the Palestinians, the Lebanese Sunnis and the Syrian occupation against the Lebanese State and the Christians. In 1982, at the height of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the republican president Ronald Reagan sent the Marines to Beirut not to assist the Lebanese state, but to protect Arafat and his Palestinian guerillas as they evacuated Beirut. To replace the Palestinians, Khomeini's Iran stepped in, gave birth to Hezbollah in 1981 which proceeded to bomb the US Marines headquarters near Beirut Airport in the first ever terrorist truck-bombing attack. What did Reagan do? He packed his remaining Marines and fled the scene, abandoning Lebanon and its Christians to Syria and Iran. Why would he do that? He didn't want to upset the oil-drenched Arabs, primarily Saudi Arabia which wanted the Lebanese Sunnis in power in Lebanon to the detriment of the Christians.
- Again in 1988, the Americans chose to appease the Arabs and Syrian at the expense of the Christians. Republican George H W Bush and James Baker the Turd threatened the Christians with Syrian "chaos" if they do not vote for the Syrian-appointed puppet candidate for the presidential elections. The Christians rejected the said candidate and Syria unleashed a three-year long barrage of violence on the Christian enclave, killing thousands of civilians. It all climaxed in October 1990 when Bush recruited Assad's Syria into the anti-Saddam Hussein coalition and the prince was, again, Lebanon and its Christians. Lebanon was forced to sign the Saudi-American dictated Taef Agreement that pushed the Christians aside and elevated the Sunni Muslims to power.
And now, the Lebanese Christians and their American Lebanese moron representatives in the US still trust the republican administrations because they think, against reason, that the US will help them because they are Christians. The Americans, Trump in the lead, do not give a shit about Lebanon's Christians. Arab oil, billion-dollar deals in the Gulf.... those are the priorities for the US. Lebanese Americans are so naive to assume that the "new Middle East" of Trump and Netanyahu will somehow ensure not only their existence, but their domination of Lebanese politics.
The question is: Does Trump, who is dangling before the eyes of these Lebanese American morons the prospect of a Christian Lebanon as a copy-paste of Jewish Israel, understand the consequences of creating a Christian Israel-like entity in Lebanon, especially since he won't allow it to arm itself because it might pose a threat to its baby Israel? I think not. How can a Christian-only Lebanon defend itself against the multitudes of hateful Arab and Islamic governments that will undoubtedly emerge once the Trump mirage of this new Middle East vanishes?
Trump makes promises to these Lebanese American imbeciles who know he won't keep them. He has Israel, why would he invest into a Christian clone of Israel? He is driving Lebanon's Christians into the abyss and they are happily rushing to the edge like Moutons de Panurge. Proof is that successive US governments have rejected any empowerment of the Lebanese Armed Forces because, in their fallacious arguments, any strengthening of Lebanon's military capabilities poses a "threat to Israel", as if Israel is a baby in diapers rather than the hyper-militarized American military base that can reach anywhere in the region. "Threats to Israeli security" is a red herring, a pretext to promote Israeli expansionism and land theft. Why would Israel, that can strike Tehran, Dubai and literally anywhere at any time it wishes, be afraid of a demilitarized independent sovereign Palestine free from Zionist occupation, brutality and racism? Why would Israel need a Christian clone next to it that is incapable of defending itself, and which Israel would have to defend?
I started this piece with Ralph Lee Abraham, the conservative American of Lebanese descent from Louisiana. He is a representative of that crop of Lebanese Americans who brought with them stale conservative ideas from the homeland and who adapted well to the primitive ultra-religious conservatism of backward America. Very few Lebanese Americans escape this destiny, notably Ralph Nader who was a progressive thinker who revolutionized American car manufacturing.
Unless and until the Lebanese Christians join the modern world, exit their Bronze Age mindset and stop playing politics with absurd superstititions and emotions, they will continue to fall victim to the promises of republican crooks like Reagan, the Bushes, and Trump. That is at the heart of their many failures over several decades to be united, to chart their own course, and score one victory, rather that beg and beg those who hate them and repeatedly betrayed them to help them against other people who also hate them. Stop reducing your existence to a poisoned choice between Arabs and Americans.
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