Demand for observing time on Webb outpaces supply by a factor of nine. //

More than 600 scientists will review the proposals and select the most promising ones for time on Webb. The largest share of proposals would involve observing "high-redshift" galaxies among the first generation of galaxies that formed after the Big Bang. Galaxies this old and distant have their light stretched to longer wavelengths due to the expansion of the Universe. Research involving exoplanet atmospheres and stars and stellar populations were the second- and third-most popular science categories in this cycle.

“For all you stupid f*cks out there that still believe military service will be voluntary. Remember Germany 1936.” //

Selective Service @SSS_gov
·
Yesterday an inappropriate X post related to a mandatory draft was reposted on the Selective Service Agency’s X account. We are investigating this incident to determine how this happened and are proactively taking steps to prevent this from happening in the future. The reposted… Show more
10:25 AM · Nov 7, 2024. //

DaveGinOly in reply to inspectorudy. | November 7, 2024 at 4:17 pm
A POTUS’ authority to conduct the business of the United States (executive authority) is delegated down the chain of command. A POTUS can rescind that authority from any non-compliant agency, agency office, agency official, or employee. Those so divested of authority to act in the stead of the POTUS would no longer be able to access government networks or classified documents, authorize spending/purchasing, nor to conduct any government business. They will still be employed, they will still be paid. But they will only be able to twiddle their thumbs. Congress will have no say in this. An attempt to meddle with the POTUS’ authority to grant/rescind delegations of executive authority would be a violation of the separation of powers. //

CommoChief in reply to inspectorudy. | November 7, 2024 at 4:44 pm
Yep. Reassigned to Ice Station Zebra in the Arctic Circle to help count snowflakes as part of an ‘interagency TF’. They can always resign instead….

The Federalist independently verified 33 voters in whose name at least two ballots were cast, sometimes in a different county, sometimes in the same county. //

While it is unclear whether these voters were actively attempting to vote twice or other issues were occurring, a data analyst who spoke with The Federalist on the basis of anonymity says that number may just scratch the surface of the problem, given how poorly the NCSBE maintains its voter rolls. //

“The state board is not doing the job that they need to do, and that is having data integrity,” the analyst said. “There is no data integrity there, and every time that they’re queried about it, they say it’s ‘safe and secure,’ and it’s garbage. It’s absolutely garbage. It’s the worst system I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve been working as a data analyst for about 35 years. This is an extraordinarily bad — I mean, it wouldn’t pass any kind of muster, any kind of audit, anywhere.”

The analyst said that with a simple computer programming fix, it would be extremely easy to track these double votes, but the NCSBE inexplicably refuses to adopt such a solution. The NCSBE did not respond to a request for comment from The Federalist.

Many of the voter records reviewed by The Federalist are bizarre. Some appear to show a voter casting a ballot in mid-October and an individual registering to vote under that voter’s name in early November, likely through a same-day registration process at an in-person early voting site. “When they do that same-day registration, they don’t check,” Ragan said. “There’s no duplicate check at the polling place for a duplicate registration.” //

Despite an RNC lawsuit asserting that there are at least 225,000 voters who registered to vote in North Carolina without providing either a driver’s license or the last four digits of a Social Security Number, as required by federal law, the NCSBE has thus far refused to remedy the situation.

Long before Trump’s audacious rhetoric, rallies packed with fervor, and tweets that lit up the internet, the GOP had a blueprint for reaching minority voters. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t invented in 2023, or 2024. Go back a few decades, and you’ll find that Reagan and Jack Kemp had already planted the seeds. Their strategy? Think less “Build a beautiful wall” and more “Build opportunity and wealth.”

Jack Kemp was more than just another politician; he was an ex-NFL quarterback turned congressman who believed that economic empowerment was the great equalizer. His vision was straightforward but revolutionary for the time: break the cycle of government dependency and create opportunities for people to own their future. And he didn’t just whisper these ideas in a phone booth. He took them to the streets, addressing minority communities directly with speeches that resonated beyond typical party rhetoric. In a 1979 talk to the International Longshoremen’s Association, Kemp laid down an argument that felt as relevant then as it does now—why minority communities and the GOP shared more than they realized.

Kemp’s advocacy wasn’t just political theater. It was practical, rooted in the realities of his time, when America was wrestling with economic stagnation and social upheaval. He argued that conservative principles—entrepreneurship, lower taxes, deregulation—weren’t just talking points; they were tools that could dismantle barriers holding minority communities back. Reagan picked up on Kemp’s ideas and infused them into his 1980 campaign and his presidency, broadening the Republican platform’s appeal.

Fast forward to Trump’s rise. His 2024 campaign strategy included a surprising plot twist: an uptick in support from Black and Hispanic voters. Some analysts were quick to brand this as an unprecedented shift, a result of Trump’s unique ability to connect through a mix of bravado, policy promises, and a mugshot. But if you know your political history, you know Trump’s outreach to minority groups wasn’t entirely novel, his mugshot notwithstanding. It was the resurgence of Kemp’s vision, tweaked for a different era and amplified by digital media. //

Trump’s messaging, while often polarizing, hit on key themes that Kemp had long-before championed: economic opportunity and self-sufficiency. During his first administration, Trump pointed to job growth stats, touted the benefits of deregulation, and pushed Opportunity Zones—policies that echo Kemp’s urban revitalization agenda. Kemp believed that America’s inner cities, neglected by decades of failed policies, needed incentives for investment that would spark real, sustainable growth. Sound familiar? Trump’s version has different packaging, but the song remains the same. //

Now, back to Kemp’s original vision. He didn’t just want minority outreach to be an election-year gimmick. For him, it was about creating a long-term coalition grounded in respect and shared goals. Kemp’s view was that the GOP could be the party that lifted people up—not by expanding welfare but by expanding entrepreneurship. He believed that if people saw that the GOP’s version of economic growth and personal responsibility matched their own aspirations, they wouldn’t just be voters; they’d be champions of the party’s message. //

msctex
10 hours ago
One of the best Political "What If" scenarios there is, revolves around if Reagan had gone with Kemp instead of Bush.

Sabotage msctex
10 hours ago
He was made an offer he couldn't refuse. They shot him anyway.

Sabotage msctex
9 hours ago
Bush was the CIA director. Same arrangement (blackmail) that got LBJ on the ticket with Kennedy. Same follow up plan. Read up on the blood transfusion Reagan got after he was shot. He was never the same.

msctex Sabotage
8 hours ago
Damn, you live up to the name, don't you.

Any knowledgeable baseball fan will tell you that the big league baseball teams never use brand new baseballs in a game. They're too shiny to play with. So, what do umpires use to prep the balls and dull the shine?
New Jersey mud.

Time of Israel : “The United States is continuing to send forces to the Middle East ahead of an expected Iranian attack on Israel, with flight tracking sites showing American F-15E aircraft en route to Jordan.” //

The U.S. is bolstering its military presence in the region after intelligence reports suggested that Iran might attack Israel using Iraqi territory.

“The U.S. is trying to deter Iran from attacking Israel and is concerned that if it does strike Israel from Iraqi soil it would further escalate the regional war,” the Axios reported Tuesday. “Israeli and U.S. intelligence indicates Iran is planning a significant attack against Israel from Iraqi soil in the coming days (…).”

Merchan might throw out the conviction due to the Supreme Court ruling that a president has “at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.”. //

retiredcantbefired | November 7, 2024 at 6:10 pm
Why won’t Merchan uphold the conviction and then sentence Trump to as much prison time as he can pile on?

Hasn’t that always been the aim? //

TargaGTS in reply to retiredcantbefired. | November 7, 2024 at 6:23 pm
He could do that. But, because immunity claims are immediately appealable. He can sentence Trump to prison but that sentence would immediately be stayed by an appellate court pending appellate review. In fact, had SCOTUS issued their presidential immunity opinion prior to trial starting, that immunity claim as applied to the facts of this case would have had to have been settled prior to the trial starting. The thought process is, if someone is immune from prosecution, it’s not enough to keep them out of prison. It must be a prohibition on the process of the prosecution itself. //

PrincetonAl | November 7, 2024 at 6:14 pm
Merchan isn’t going to do anything for Trump’s benefit. He would do this for Democrats benefit.

The strategy would be rather than having this thrown out on appeal in NY, complain about the Supreme Court and throw it out pre-emptively. A NY state Court loss does the Democrats no good.

This would allow them to further attempt to undermine the Supreme Court and the immunity decision (which was a very reasonable one)

If he does it, that is why. //

Hodge | November 7, 2024 at 9:26 pm
The conviction was a political gambit to influence the election, and indeed almost every single one of my Democrat friends mentioned at least once in every conversation, so arguably it did have some impact.

However, it didn’t have enough impact; Trump won.

So, now the question is, what is the best path for the Democrats in winding this thing up? Trump will not run again and this makes the exercise rather pointless. Further, there seems to be some reason to believe that when this case reaches the Federal appeals level it will be exposed as legally insufficient, and keeping it in the limelight may more publicly expose questionable decisions and actions by the key players.

So, it may be better for Merchan to toss the whole thing, while blaming the Supremes for protecting Trump. The Democrats like to claim that the court in in the bag for Republicans, so that would play nicely to their base as an excuse while allowing Merchan to continue as a judge without any picky picky investigations into his conduct.

Bearsblow
a day ago
Riddle me this...

Biden 2020 - 81 million votes
Trump 2020 - 74 million votes.

Trump 2024 - 72.5 million votes AND COUNTING
Harris 2024 - 67.8 million votes and counting.

My point? Trump will receive nearly identical numbers in both the COVID election and this more normal election and yet when we say they stole 2020 we're election deniers? How does a party lose 14 million votes in 4 years without trump adding more? They ALL stayed home?

They didn't just cheat a little in '20. They cheated on a grand scale that's all but undeniable.

For this reason Trump should seek to crush the left for 4 years. Make them rebuilt from rubble that will take decades to do.

Stealing 4 years doesn't scratch the surface of what's been done. The damage is nearly incalculable to this country.

I'm not religious but thank GOD for yesterday!

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this new report involves the FBI sources who admit that they're worried about Elon Musk coming in and cleaning house as well.

Trump made a campaign promise vowing to create a government efficiency commission to audit the entire federal government. Musk would reportedly lead the effort.

One source tells the Times that cutting waste at the FBI will naturally lead to a massive reduction in staff, because the waste is everywhere in this partisan cesspool.

“When he tries to do efficiency at headquarters, the place is going to have five people … if he’s talking about a lot of dead weight,” they said, according to Picket.

“Try to find a person that’s actually working,” they continued, suggesting the FBI is clearly "bloated." //

pat
17 minutes ago
Those that agree to testify about FBI corruption, malfeasance and misfeasance and bring receipts, can stay.

On day one of Joe Biden’s disastrous presidency, he canceled the Keystone Pipeline. Since then, he’s waged a war on drilling and energy and has tried to shove a green agenda down our throats. It’s one of the many reasons a Democrat won’t be in the White House come January.

On Thursday, he made a strange but somewhat conciliatory speech where he promised a smooth transition of power to President-elect Donald Trump.

Yet it was only hours before he made a move to defy the GOP nominee and former president INCOMING PRESIDENT and further limited drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. //

But in 2017, Trump signed a tax bill mandating at least two lease sales in the refuge’s 1.6 million-acre coastal plain by the end of 2024. //

Trump reinstated the drilling program in a 2017 tax cut law enacted by congressional Republicans. Even so, no drilling has occurred in the refuge. //

USGS estimates there’s somewhere between 4.3 and 11.8 billion barrels of oil in the coastal plain. Those are huge numbers. For comparison, Alaska’s second biggest oil field, Kuparuk, holds about 2.5 billion barrels.

Last year, FDA advisers unanimously voted that oral phenylephrine is ineffective. //

No other lab was ever able to replicate the positive results from those two studies. And when FDA scientists carefully looked through the data, they found evidence that some of the numbers could have been fudged and that the results were "too good to be real."

As a final nail in phenylephrine's coffin, modern studies suggest that when phenylephrine is taken orally, it's highly metabolized in the gut, leaving less than 1 percent of the consumed dose as active in the body. The finding explains why oral doses don't cause the constriction of blood vessels throughout the body that could lead to an uptick in blood pressure—a side effect sometimes seen with pseudoephedrine. While researchers initially thought the lack of blood pressure increases was a positive finding, in retrospect, it was a hint that the drug wasn't working.

With that, a panel of advisers for the FDA voted unanimously, 16 to 0, that oral doses of phenylephrine are not effective at treating a stuffy nose.

Multiple outlets are reporting that anti-Israel mobs are chasing down Israelis and savagely beating them on the streets of Amsterdam Thursday following a soccer game between Maccabi Tel Aviv FC and Amsterdam's Ajax.

As of this writing, dozens of extremely disturbing videos are being posted to X depicting violent beatings as individuals are surrounded and then pummeled. //

Dildr Swaggins
9 hours ago
Remember, the P in Islam stands for peace.

The ballot issues amend the state constitutions, barring foreign nationals from voting in state and local elections. //

As divided as America may be, this election showed there’s one thing most Americans agree on: Only U.S. citizens should vote in U.S. elections.

Voters this week in eight states — Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin — overwhelmingly approved constitutional amendment ballot questions seeking to ensure noncitizens cannot vote in state and local elections. Foreign nationals are already barred from voting in federal elections.

Don’t be fooled by Democrats’ uncharacteristic acceptance of election results. It’s their only move right now. //

Earlier on Wednesday, the shrews of “The View” rehearsed the same talking points. “When the person you voted for does not win, you do not say the system must be broken or that it was rigged. You say, ‘It is what it is,'” said Sara Haines. “Unlike Donald Trump and his followers, I acknowledge that he won,” added Ana Navarro.

Of course, they “acknowledge that he won.” After their QUESTIONING ELECTION RESULTS IS A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY rhetoric from the past four years, what the heck other choice do they have? Their “we accept the results” posture started about five minutes ago — or, more precisely, the moment Trump questioned the results of the 2020 election. Before that, Democrats had for decades questioned pretty much every other election they had lost, which were all freer and fairer than 2020, by the way.

2016 is still fresh in Americans’ minds. Here are three minutes (of many) of Democrats calling Donald Trump an “illegitimate president” after that election and saying the contest was “stolen” from Hillary Clinton:

Democrats did the same thing in the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, and then again when Bush beat John Kerry four years later, to the point of stalling the Electoral College vote certification. Democrats even spun up a wild conspiracy theory that Karl Rove had colluded with voting machine manufacturers to change vote tallies. Jerry Nadler and other Judiciary Committee Democrats called on the General Accountability Office to investigate whether the machines were used to steal the election.

In 1960, after Hawaii’s governor had initially certified the results for Republican candidate Richard Nixon and a recount was underway, Democrat John F. Kennedy arranged for “alternate electors” (gasp) to be appointed. Sound familiar?

In 2018, Stacey Abrams insisted she had won the race for governor of Georgia against Brian Kemp even though she had lost. There are more examples where these came from. //

Not only did they insist, against all evidence to the contrary, that the 2020 election was the “most secure in American history,” but they also vilified anyone who disagreed as an “election denier.” They labeled Trump a Nazi, a tyrant, and an insurrectionist, and his followers the same.

So they’ve really backed themselves into a corner on election results now. What choice do they have but to concede in 2024?

That’s not the only, or even the primary reason, Kamala Harris and her supporters conceded the election on Wednesday though. They also admitted defeat because they got whooped. Unlike the 2020 election, the margins in 2024 weren’t razor-thin. Trump beat Harris in a landslide.

An op-ed at the Washington Examiner raises some interesting points on that score.

Both former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Kamala Harris lost to President-elect Donald Trump in earth-shattering fashion. During their respective runs, Clinton and Harris were viewed as inevitable and deserving. Each was conferred the special ability to make history by becoming the first female president, ending the United States’s patriarchal domination once and for all. At least, this is the narrative they sold.

Each campaign should have been about the best Democrat for the job, who just happened to be a woman. Instead, the campaigns were so focused on breaking a glass ceiling that all things became secondary to the biology of their candidates. //

What the Democrats don't seem to understand about elections, especially the one that just concluded, is that the American people are looking for a bit more in the Chief Executive than melanin content and whether the candidate is a setter or a pointer. //

Time will tell who becomes the first female presidential candidate for the Republican Party, but it’s safe to say she won’t focus on sex and gender above all else. There’s no reason to exclude the achievement of making history, but that should never be a main motivation for any candidate. It’s a tiresome, superficial strategy that clearly does not work. Beyond that, the nation deserves so much more than a leader who includes among her top goals the desire to soothe progressive sensibilities. //

if the GOP nominates a woman to run for president, the decision won't be because of her skin color or chromosome balance. It will be because she is strong, capable, and committed to the principles of liberty and property - to a strong, prosperous America. In other words, she won't get the nod because of her sex, but because she is who the GOP chooses as the best candidate.

That's a lesson that the Democrats could stand to learn. But, if this election just concluded is an indication, let's hope they never figure it out.