US Elections (& Politics) :)

[Parley]

What Americans should know about winter travel to Mexico amid increased caution advisory

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico has issued guidance to Americans headed to Mexico over the winter months, encouraging them to be mindful of the country's current Level 2 travel advisory and urging them to "exercise increased caution" due to "terrorism, crime, and kidnapping."

The embassy shared advice for planning safe travel earlier this month, including "following the entry and exit requirements, reviewing local laws, and other travel guidance from the U.S. embassy or consulate."

The Level 2 advisory -- outlined on the official State Department travel website -- applies to 17 Mexican states and notes that violent crimes include "homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery."

"There is a risk of terrorist violence, including terrorist attacks and other activity in Mexico," it adds.

Seven states including Baja California, Chiapas, Chihuahua, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Morelos, and Sonora have a Level 3 advisory, which means Americans should "reconsider travel." Six states -- Colima, Guerrero, Michoacan, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, Zacatecas -- have Level 4 advisories, indicating that Americans should not travel there.

The State Department website reminds travelers that it has "limited ability to help in many parts of Mexico," and government employees aren't allowed to travel to certain high-risk areas.

(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...

 

[Parley]

Pills aren’t working?

Who was President 11 months ago?

 

[bigredfish]

Who was President 11 months ago?

OK 10+ months.

pitiful

 

[Oceanslider]

But you just keep posting these TDS propaganda social media posts.

He's done quite a bit that you and others like you that are feeding off the propaganda are not giving him credit for.

I guess everything should have been totally shored up day one back on the job?

 

[Parley]

President Trump: Documents Signed by Joe Biden’s Autopen Are ‘Hereby Terminated’

The president made his announcement in a post on Truth Social and claimed those who operated the autopen were doing it illegally.

“Any document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the Autopen, which was approximately 92% of them, is hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect. The Autopen is not allowed to be used if approval is not specifically given by the President of the United States,” Trump stated:

The Radical Left Lunatics circling Biden around the beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office took the Presidency away from him. I am hereby cancelling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally. Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

In May, Trump said Biden’s alleged use of the autopen was growing into a bigger scandal.

“The president’s comments come after a Heritage Foundation report said in March the majority of official documents signed by former President Joe Biden were done so by using an autopen signature, raising many questions,” per Breitbart News.

The White House later hung portraits of U.S. presidents in the West Wing colonnade in the Rose Garden, but Biden’s was a photo of an autopen.

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...

 

[Parley]

OK 10+ months.

pitiful

So, on day one he is supposed to get all of this done???

 

[bigredfish]

But you just keep posting these TDS propaganda social media posts.

He's done quite a bit that you and others like you that are feeding off the propaganda are not giving him credit for.

I guess everything should have been totally shored up day one back on the job?

Nothing I’ve posted is propaganda Sparky.
You have a reality problem

 

[bigredfish]

So, on day one he is supposed to get all of this done???

I’m not the one saying illegal immigration is the root of all of our problems. He campaigned on it.

Day 1 no. But waiting 10 months to start if you’ve said it’s the #1 problem seems a bit late

Or can the entire administration only do one thing at a time?

 

[bigredfish]

THE REAL VENEZUELA STORY
The US State Department’s own 2025 report names Mexico as the only significant fentanyl source affecting America.Venezuela is not mentioned. Not once.Yet 21 strikes. 83 dead. Zero evidence released. NBC News confirmed what officials know: Caribbean drug vessels move cocaine to Europe, not the United States.

So why 15,000 troops? Why pull the USS Gerald R. Ford from the Mediterranean? Why defense contracts extending to 2028?

303 billion barrels.The largest proven oil reserves on Earth. Seventeen percent of global supply. Tens of trillions in asset value sitting beneath Venezuelan soil.

The New York Times reports Maduro offered access. Trump rejected it.
He wanted more.

The SOUTHCOM commander resigned after his senior military lawyer’s concerns about legality were sidelined. The UN Human Rights Commissioner stated the strikes fail international law standards. The administration’s own Office of Legal Counsel opinion reportedly prohibits strikes inside Venezuelan territory.The President announced land operations coming “very soon." (Me: tonight maybe)

This is not a drug war. This is a template.Designate a government’s military as terrorists. Declare “armed conflict” with criminal elements. Invoke war powers. Circumvent every constraint built since 1648.The Westphalian principle that sovereignty is inherent in statehood is being replaced with something older: sovereignty as privilege, revocable when the powerful decide.
Venezuela is the proof of concept.The template, once validated, does not stay in the Caribbean.Every nation with resources and a contestable government now lives in a different world than the one that existed in August.

The physics of international relations just changed.

 

[Oceanslider]

it might be that you have to get all your ducks in a row for such an action, and the pushback from liberals and their seated judges. This is going to see a lot of pushback. They don't want their current and future voting base to lose their welfare.

 

[bigredfish]

BREAKING: Trump to pardon former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez.

He was literally convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking — 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.
How does this make any sense?
https://x.com/EdKrassen/status/1994520335300137439/photo/1

 

[David L]

Well said...

 

[Parley]

The Afghan man suspected of shooting National Guardsmen was “clean on all checks." But DHS's Inspector General in 2022 warned of inadequate vetting. And a senior intel official tells me, “There wasn’t adequate screening done..

...We don’t have good fidelity on who any of them are."

The 29-year-old Afghan man suspected of shooting two National Guardsmen yesterday in Washington, D.C., was “clean on all checks,” a senior U.S. official told CNN. The official told CNN that “the US government had been doing continuous, annual vetting of individuals since the Afghans’ arrival in the US, especially in the wake of the failed terror plot disrupted before the election last year in Oklahoma, which involved an Afghan evacuee.”

But a senior intelligence official told Public, “There wasn’t adequate screening done,” of Afghan evacuees. “We don’t have good fidelity on who any of them are. We say ‘they’re vetted’ and he [the suspected shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal] was vetted. That meant we thought he wouldn’t turn his guns on us when we were paying him every month. And that worked for a decade with him. But the second we’re not doing that anymore, the deal on their end changes.”

Lakanwal came to the US as part of the Biden administration’s “Operation Allies Welcome.” Said the official, who asked to be anonymous, “Nation-building failed. We ended up importing massive amounts of people.”

Some online have asked why the US didn’t return the evacuees and why they were brought to the US in the first place. “The average Trump voter is asking, ‘Didn’t I vote to kick them out?’ I think that’s fair.” The person said they were told earlier this year, upon entering the Intelligence Community, “You don’t know how bad it is now,” regarding the government’s inadequate screening of evacuees.

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2022 published a report warning of security risks among the Afghan evacuees in the U.S. “DHS encountered obstacles to screen, vet, and inspect all Afghan evacuees,” it found. Information was “inaccurate, incomplete, or missing,” it added, and Border Patrol “admitted or paroled evacuees who were not fully vetted into the United States.”

On November 21, the Trump Administration’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued a memo saying it would revoke the refugee status of people who do not meet the criteria and would stop processing applications for permanent residence for all refugees who entered under President Joe Biden, about 233,000 people. The memo noted that the Biden administration had cut corners on properly vetting candidates.

The reason the US didn’t find many terrorist ties among evacuees was “because they were fighting the Taliban,” said the official. “If they were fighting the Taliban, we said, ‘They’re not terrorists.’ This individual [Lakanwal] and the election day attacker came up clean. There was no DEROG [derogatory information] on them. So we flew them to the States with no long-term plan.”

There is evidence that Lakanwal was mentally disturbed by his participation in an elite, CIA-run kill squad known as a Zero Unit, which conducted nighttime operations that included targeted assassinations of high-value targets. A childhood friend told The New York Times, “When he saw blood, bodies, and the wounded, he could not tolerate it, and it put a lot of pressure on his mind.”

Human Rights Watch and the UN published separate reports accusing the Zero Unit of having committed war crimes, including extrajudicial killings, torture, and civilian deaths

“You’re never supposed to bring your proxies home,” said the official. “They’re mercenaries we hire for a very specific purpose. We can’t bring large populations with a drastically different culture here. There was never a moment like, ‘Will these guys be good neighbors?’ It was, ‘Can I pay him enough to shoot the enemy and not me?’”

Why did the US government bring so many Afghans to the US in the first place? Was there a better option for them? And what should happen to them now?

 

[bigredfish]

The Afghan man suspected of shooting National Guardsmen was “clean on all checks." But DHS's Inspector General in 2022 warned of inadequate vetting. And a senior intel official tells me, “There wasn’t adequate screening done..

...We don’t have good fidelity on who any of them are."

The 29-year-old Afghan man suspected of shooting two National Guardsmen yesterday in Washington, D.C., was “clean on all checks,” a senior U.S. official told CNN. The official told CNN that “the US government had been doing continuous, annual vetting of individuals since the Afghans’ arrival in the US, especially in the wake of the failed terror plot disrupted before the election last year in Oklahoma, which involved an Afghan evacuee.”

But a senior intelligence official told Public, “There wasn’t adequate screening done,” of Afghan evacuees. “We don’t have good fidelity on who any of them are. We say ‘they’re vetted’ and he [the suspected shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal] was vetted. That meant we thought he wouldn’t turn his guns on us when we were paying him every month. And that worked for a decade with him. But the second we’re not doing that anymore, the deal on their end changes.”

Lakanwal came to the US as part of the Biden administration’s “Operation Allies Welcome.” Said the official, who asked to be anonymous, “Nation-building failed. We ended up importing massive amounts of people.”

Some online have asked why the US didn’t return the evacuees and why they were brought to the US in the first place. “The average Trump voter is asking, ‘Didn’t I vote to kick them out?’ I think that’s fair.” The person said they were told earlier this year, upon entering the Intelligence Community, “You don’t know how bad it is now,” regarding the government’s inadequate screening of evacuees.

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2022 published a report warning of security risks among the Afghan evacuees in the U.S. “DHS encountered obstacles to screen, vet, and inspect all Afghan evacuees,” it found. Information was “inaccurate, incomplete, or missing,” it added, and Border Patrol “admitted or paroled evacuees who were not fully vetted into the United States.”

On November 21, the Trump Administration’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued a memo saying it would revoke the refugee status of people who do not meet the criteria and would stop processing applications for permanent residence for all refugees who entered under President Joe Biden, about 233,000 people. The memo noted that the Biden administration had cut corners on properly vetting candidates.

The reason the US didn’t find many terrorist ties among evacuees was “because they were fighting the Taliban,” said the official. “If they were fighting the Taliban, we said, ‘They’re not terrorists.’ This individual [Lakanwal] and the election day attacker came up clean. There was no DEROG [derogatory information] on them. So we flew them to the States with no long-term plan.”

There is evidence that Lakanwal was mentally disturbed by his participation in an elite, CIA-run kill squad known as a Zero Unit, which conducted nighttime operations that included targeted assassinations of high-value targets. A childhood friend told The New York Times, “When he saw blood, bodies, and the wounded, he could not tolerate it, and it put a lot of pressure on his mind.”

Human Rights Watch and the UN published separate reports accusing the Zero Unit of having committed war crimes, including extrajudicial killings, torture, and civilian deaths

“You’re never supposed to bring your proxies home,” said the official. “They’re mercenaries we hire for a very specific purpose. We can’t bring large populations with a drastically different culture here. There was never a moment like, ‘Will these guys be good neighbors?’ It was, ‘Can I pay him enough to shoot the enemy and not me?’”

Why did the US government bring so many Afghans to the US in the first place? Was there a better option for them? And what should happen to them now?

Why did the Trump administration grant him asylum this past April?

 

[Parley]

Why did the Trump administration grant him asylum this past April?

Probably on a list given to him. I think he is more fully up to speed nowadays.

 

[Parley]

Black Friday retail sales up despite economic jitters

Axios ^ | November 29, 2025 | Ben Berkowitz
Posted on 11/29/2025, 12:49:40 PM by abb

Black Friday retail sales growth picked up this year, Mastercard said Saturday, as shoppers shook off economic uncertainty and weak sentiment.

Why it matters: The consumer remains the engine of the U.S. economy, and a strong start to the holiday season will be reassuring to those who questioned whether tariffs and a soft labor market might crimp demand.

By the numbers: Friday's retail sales excluding autos rose 4.1%, Mastercard SpendingPulse said in a statement. That's stronger than last year's 3.4% growth.

Online sales rose 10.4%; in-store sales rose 1.7%. The data are not adjusted for inflation. Demand was strongest for clothes and jewelry.

The Mastercard data lines up with other evidence that shoppers turned out Friday.

Pass_by, which analyzes retail foot traffic, said in-store visits rose 1.17% this year versus last. Adobe Analytics estimated Black Friday online spending at $11.8 billion, up a full $1 billion from last year.

Between the lines: Though economic vibes are generally weak, retailers are still optimistic.

Walmart recently raised its outlook for the year, and the National Retail Federation expects this to be the first $1 trillion holiday season.

What to watch: Cyber Monday will be the next key indicator of retail's health.

My comment: From the left wing Axios no less.

 

[johnfitz]

President Trump: Documents Signed by Joe Biden’s Autopen Are ‘Hereby Terminated’

The president made his announcement in a post on Truth Social and claimed those who operated the autopen were doing it illegally.

“Any document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the Autopen, which was approximately 92% of them, is hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect. The Autopen is not allowed to be used if approval is not specifically given by the President of the United States,” Trump stated:


In May, Trump said Biden’s alleged use of the autopen was growing into a bigger scandal.

“The president’s comments come after a Heritage Foundation report said in March the majority of official documents signed by former President Joe Biden were done so by using an autopen signature, raising many questions,” per Breitbart News.

The White House later hung portraits of U.S. presidents in the West Wing colonnade in the Rose Garden, but Biden’s was a photo of an autopen.

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...

"The president made his announcement in a post on Truth Social"... LOL LOL LOL ... does anythinbg the liar lies about on "truth" social mean anything? Here's some real truth:






Legal Analysts React to Trump’s Plan to Terminate Biden Executive Orders

If Biden's executive orders are deemed invalid, the implications could extend to presidential pardons—including those granted to Biden family members and political figures—potentially triggering challenges based on due process and the permanence of clemency.

The controversy could also establish stricter documentation requirements for future administrations, despite the fact that automated signature devices have been used since Thomas Jefferson's era and by multiple presidents, including Trump himself.

He added: "I am hereby cancelling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally. Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

Legal analysts have disputed the validity of Trump's argument. McQuade told Newsweek on Friday that "any president has the power to revoke any executive order of his predecessor, regardless of how it was signed," adding that "the auto-pen issues is irrelevant. Auto-pen signatures are valid."

In June, the president claimed that Biden's aides used the autopen to carry out "radical" policies. However, Biden responded: "Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn't is ridiculous and false."

"Trump is free to revoke all of Biden's executive orders, whether or not Biden personally signed them. But he doesn't have the same freedom with respect to 'anything else' (e.g., bills enacted by Congress, pardons) that Biden directed be signed by autopen."

"Joe Biden can't be charged with perjury. He never made any statements under oath. If lying was the only element of perjury, Trump would be spending a lifetime in prison right now."

It is unclear what the immediate impact of Trump's announcement regarding Biden's executive orders will be.



Impact, HA HA , no impact... It's just lyin' Trump trying to distract anyone he can from his thieving, the economy, and anything Epstein!!!