Wednesday, November 06, 2024

In new study, scientists track brain function as people watch movies

By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay News
Nov. 6, 2024 

A person's brain performs an intricate juggling act while watching a movie, a new study demonstrates. Photo by Adobe Stock/HealthDay News

A person's brain performs an intricate juggling act while watching a movie, a new study demonstrates.

Scans showed that 24 different brain networks and regions engage from scene-to-scene, based on hard it is to follow the movie or what's currently on the screen, researchers reported.

The brain's "executive control" networks -- regions related to planning, solving problems and prioritizing information -- tend to kick in when a movie's content is more difficult to follow or ambiguous. But during more easily understandable scenes, the brain hands off processing to regions with specialized functions.

"Executive control domains are usually active in difficult tasks when the cognitive load is high," said lead investigator Dr. Reza Rajimehr, a research scientist with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"It looks like when the movie scenes are quite easily comprehendible, for example if there's a clear conversation going on, the language areas are active," Rajimehr said. "But in situations where there is a complex scene involving context, semantics and ambiguity in the meaning of the scene, more cognitive effort is required, and so the brain switches over to using general executive control domains."

For the study, researchers analyzed data from functional MRI brain scans taken of 176 young people as they watched an hour's worth of short clips from movies like Inception, The Social Network and Home Alone.

Using AI, the researchers identified brain networks and tracked how they related to a movie's scene-by-scene content, including people, animals, objects, music, speech and narrative.

For example, different networks are engaged when people are recognizing human faces or bodies, tracking movement, identifying places and landmarks, observing interactions between humans and inanimate objects, processing speech or interpreting social interactions.

The new study was published Wednesday in the journal Neuron.

"Our work is the first attempt to get a layout of different areas and networks of the brain during naturalistic conditions," Rajimehr said in a journal news release. "With our movie stimulus, we can go back and figure out how different brain networks are responding to different aspects of the movie."

Future research might look at how brain network function differs between individuals, Rajimehr said.

"In future studies, we can look at the maps of individual subjects, which would allow us to relate the individualized map of each subject to the behavioral profile of that subject," Rajimehr said. "Now, we're studying in more depth how specific content in each movie frame drives these networks -- for example, the semantic and social context, or the relationship between people and the background scene."

More information

Johns Hopkins Medicine has more on brain anatomy.

Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.



Stellantis trimming 1,100 jobs at its Toledo Jeep Gladiator plant

Nov. 6, 2024 /

Automaker Stellantis will lay off 1,100 workers at its Jeep Gladiator production plant in south Toledo starting Jan. 5 to improve efficiency and help reduce excess supplies of the pickup truck. Photo by Stellantis/Jeep

Nov. 6 (UPI) -- About 1,100 workers will be laid off indefinitely in January from the Jeep Gladiator plant in Toledo, Ohio, Stellantis officials announced Wednesday.

The automaker is eliminating one shift at the Toledo plant and will operate with a single shift after Jeep Gladiator sales slowed this year, leaving the automaker and dealerships with large inventories of the pickup truck and other Jeep models.

Stellantis wants to greatly reduce current inventories before the end of the year when new-year models are made available for consumers.

The Toledo South Assembly Plant only produces the Jeep Gladiator pickup and cutting production by eliminating half of the factory's shifts will help the automaker to get off to a better start in 2025, Stellantis officials told CNBC.

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The automaker intends to begin laying off the 1,100 workers at the Toledo factory on Jan. 5 after recently issuing a mandatory Work Adjustment and Retraining Notification to state and local officials.

The reduction in work shifts will help improve efficiency at the Toledo factory, Stellantis officials told the Detroit Free Press in a prepared statement.

The layoffs are "difficult actions to take but they are necessary to enable the company to regain its competitive edge and eventually return production to prior levels," the statement said.

The United Auto Workers Union represents the Toledo factory's workers, who will receive supplemental unemployment benefits for a year in addition to state unemployment benefits.

Laid-off workers also are eligible for one year of transition assistance and will continue receiving health insurance benefits for two years.

About 4,400 workers are employed at the Toledo South factory, which will reduce the workforce to about 3,300 after the layoffs.

Stellantis owns the Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram and Fiat brands, and company officials are trying to align its U.S. production to consumer demand for its vehicles.
'I need you to stand up': Simone Biles asks Biden to 'make some things shake' before 2025



Carl Gibson, AlterNet
November 6, 2024

Simone Biles competes in the floor exercise on the way to a ninth national all-around title at the US Gymnastics championships (ELSA/AFP)

President Joe Biden is getting some encouragement from legendary gymnast Simone Biles to use his last days in the White House wisely.

In a tweet posted on Wednesday afternoon, the seven-time Olympic gold medalist asked Biden to make the most of his lame-duck period, though she notably didn't give him any specific instructions.

"Mr. Biden, I need you to stand up, straighten your back and make some things shake before your departure," Biles tweeted, before concluding with: "xoxo the women in America," with a blue heart emoji.

As the lame-duck president, Biden still controls the executive branch of the federal government for the next 75 days until Jan. 20, 2025, when President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States. And as the outgoing president, all cabinet secretaries of all federal agencies still report to Biden until next January.

While Biden would still need Congress to pass legislation for him to sign into law between now and Jan. 20, Biden still has the power of the pen to sign executive orders that will be in place until Trump takes the oath of office. While Trump has the power to undo executive orders, Biden can still make efforts to frustrate Trump's attempts to reshape the federal government, as he did by strengthening protections for federal workers this spring.

One key component of Project 2025 — which Republicans are now admitting is the Trump agenda — is the gutting of the federal civil service via an executive order known as "Schedule F," which Trump signed in 2020 and Biden promptly rescinded after taking office. That executive order removed protections for federal workers and would allow a president to drastically increase the number of direct presidential appointees from approximately 5,000 to more than 54,000. But in April, Biden announced that he had announced new protections for federal workers "from political interference," perhaps to head off a potential new Schedule F executive order.

"Day in and day out, career civil servants provide the expertise and continuity necessary for our democracy to function. They provide Americans with life-saving and life-changing services and put opportunity within reach for millions," he stated. "That’s why since taking office, I have worked to strengthen, empower, and rebuild our career workforce. This rule is a step toward combatting corruption and partisan interference to ensure civil servants are able to focus on the most important task at hand: delivering for the American people."

And as the Supreme Court decided in July, presidents are effectively above all laws provided they categorize any potential crime as an "official act." Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor even warned that the immunity ruling would mean that presidents could assassinate political opponents without fear of prosecution, provided they refer to it as an "official act."

"Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency," Sotomayor wrote in her official dissent. "Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune."

Click here to read Biles' tweet.





High turnout, no post-election violence… Is democracy in the US still under threat?
analysis



In a presidential election that US democrats framed as a fight for democracy itself, former President Donald Trump – who pledged to rule as a “dictator” if re-elected – won a resounding victory. Was the 2024 vote a success for the world’s most powerful democracy?


Issued on: 06/11/2024 -
By: Joanna YORK
Kristin Scruggs votes at the 146-year-old Buck Creek school on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in rural Perry, Kansas. © Charlie Riedel, AP

Ballot boxes opened across the US on Tuesday amid heightened security with election officials preparing to fend off voter intimidation and potential violence.

Yet, after a tumultuous campaign, election day went smoothly. A series of bomb threats in parts of Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania turned out to be hoaxes that did little more than delay the counting of some ballots.

“That just shows you the resilience of our system and our people. We’re battle-tested,” said Brad Raffensperger, Secretary of State for Georgia where, in Fulton County, 32 polling places received bomb threats and five were briefly evacuated before reopening.

Elsewhere, as officials reported generally high turnout, voters queued peacefully – if they hadn’t submitted their ballots already. More than 84 million Americans voted early, almost equalling record figures from 2020 when the vote took place during the Covid-19 pandemic.


Yet even as they cast their ballots, nearly three-quarters of voters said they felt American democracy was "threatened", according to preliminary national exit polls from Edison Research.

Fears were divided between Democrats and Republicans: voters who said they felt democracy was under threat split their vote evenly between Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, the poll showed.

But threats of mass protests and violence in the wake of the vote failed to materialise as Trump stormed to a quick victory in several swing states.

Harris is set to deliver a speech conceding defeat on Wednesday evening, paving the way for a peaceful transfer of power.

‘Too big to rig’

“We haven't seen any trouble because Trump won,” says Giovanna Di Maio, non-resident fellow at the George Washington University and a teacher at Paris's Sciences Po university. “The scenario would have been completely different if we had areas, and especially swing states, in which the vote was so close that the two camps asked for recounts. That would have caused delays, and with delays come a lot of disinformation and questioning regarding the process.”

As vote counting began, Trump himself stoked fears that there was “talk about massive cheating in Philadelphia”, which multiple local officials dismissed as “disinformation”.

But as results fell in Trump's favour, claims of cheating died down.

Since the 2020 election, which was contested by Trump and his supporters, many swing states have introduced new voting regulations to either release results faster or reinforce the integrity of vote counting. But there is little indication that 2024 vote counts will be widely challenged.

“Past claims of voter fraud all came from Trump and suddenly that's not part of the discussion anymore,” says Emma Long, Associate Professor in American history and politics at the University of East Anglia.

She doubts that voters who feel past elections were fraudulent will be able to completely shake off their concerns. “I don't think [that feeling] is going to disappear just because they won this election. It will lurk underneath everything – ready to return at a later point if they feel that things aren't going their way again.”

Among Trump supporters, the idea that an election could be "stolen" is “rooted in people's minds and feelings”, adds Di Maio.

The former president used this fear to rally voters, she says. “One of Donald Trump’s strategies coming into the 2024 campaign was mobilising crowds, especially in rural areas, by convincing people that what they needed to do was to turn out in such huge numbers that the election was going to be too big to rig.”

The tactic succeeded. “Ironically, the man who's done the most damage to the perception of American electoral democracy is now president-elect of the country,” concludes Long.

‘A dangerous moment’

Trump won clear victories in the popular vote and with the Electoral College. His Republican party also reclaimed control of the US Senate for the first time in four years, and is heading towards a majority in the House of Representatives.

As a result, the Republicans now “don't have to turn to any anti-democratic means to increase their power. They hold all the levers of power within America's democracy,” says Richard Hargy, a specialist in US politics and visiting scholar at the Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict at Queens University Belfast.

The win may have quelled anxiety over the future of democracy among Trump voters, but it has realised his opponents’ fears. For Democrats, a new Trump presidency “will further undermine the institutions of government and the pillars of American democracy that have already been damaged by Trump, both in his first term and in his four years out of office”, said Long.

If anything, Trump’s presidential campaign sought to stoke rather than dispel these fears as he warned that he would deploy the military to target political opponents, take action against news organisations for unfavorable coverage and mused gutting the neutral civil service.

Trump's cabinet picks will give important clues as to his true intentions in office, says Long. “If he stacks the administration with far-right figures then that will be a sign that he's giving them free rein.”

Others believe the future president’s intentions are already clear. “Trump has gotten a very, very clear mandate. We're in for a significantly authoritarian turn in America,” says Rene Lindstaedt, Head of the School of Government at Birmingham University. “I think he feels emboldened and he will absolutely follow through on a lot of the things that he said. This is an extremely dangerous moment in American history.”



The Worst People in the World Are Making a Ton of Money After Trump’s Victory


Private prisons, crypto, banks, and the stock-market in general are all soaring at the news of Trump’s return to the White House.

By Matthew Gault 
Published November 6, 2024 |

Donald Trump has won the presidency and businesses connected with him and his allies are soaring. According to early financial reports, winners include banks, crypto-related stocks, and private prison companies. All of the worst people in the financial game.

Trump Media & Technology Group’s plummeted in the early hours of the election on Tuesday as people waited to see who would be elected president. It was up on Monday but crashed so hard during the election that trading of the stock was briefly halted. On November 3, it hit a low of $32.80 a share.

On Wednesday, however, as markets woke up to the news that Trump would return to the White House, DJT soared. It jumped 10% in after-hours trading on Tuesday night as the early returns from the election favored Trump. It’s up just under 8% so far today, trading at around $42 a share as of this writing.

Crypto stocks also won big following Trump’s election. Bitcoin hit a new all-time high of $73,737, a surge of almost 10%. Ether, Solana, and other cryptocurrencies followed suit. Trump, led by his son Barron, is a very crypto-friendly president. His campaign raised millions in crypto donations. On the campaign trail, Trump promised to make America the “crypto capital of the planet.”

Elon Musk is also reaping the early rewards of Trump’s victory. Tesla stocks have gained ground all morning and are up 15% as of this writing. Musk went all in on Trump after an attempt on the president-elect’s life over the Summer. He bet big on Trump winning. It appears the bet is already starting to pay off. In addition to a surging stock price, Musk is also expected to have a seat at the White House table. Musk has teased he’ll be responsible for slashing government spending, but the details aren’t yet clear.

Private prisons also saw a huge bump in stock prices. GEO Group is up a shocking 26% this morning and CoreCivic—once known as Corrections Corporation of America—is up 20%. Why? One of Trump’s big campaign promises was the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. That kind of program will require a lot of infrastructure. Camps, if you will, in which to concentrate large groups of people. It’s a good bet that private prisons are poised to make a lot of money off the project.

Overall, the stock market loves the Trump victory. The dollar, yields on U.S. Treasury bonds, and the S&P 500 are all up. How long that will last is anyone’s guess. Even Elon Musk has insisted Trump’s policies will tank the U.S. economy.

Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, takes the stage for his last rally of the election year at Van Andel Arena on November 05, 2024 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. © Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images







How an economic crash could line Trump's pockets


















Thom Hartmann, AlterNet
November 5, 2024 

America’s billionaires would love to have a recession, particularly a really severe one.


In a recent “town hall,” billionaire Elon Musk acknowledged what 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists across the country have predicted: If Trump is elected and he and Elon undertake their project to gut government spending, it will provoke a severe recession.
“We have to reduce spending to live within our means,” Musk said. “And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity.”

Most Republican voters aren’t taking his embrace of a recession or a short-term depression like George W. Bush brought us seriously.

“Why would the Republicans,” they’re asking, “who generally represent the interests of corporations and the rich above all else, risk crashing the stock market and economy where those very same wealthy people have their money invested?”

The question itself reveals a misunderstanding of how things work for the morbidly rich.

They are, uniquely, in a position to profit from the same economic downturns that wipe out average working people or those who’ve put their money into 401Ks invested in the market or certain stocks.

This is a story as old as capitalism. During the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s, for example, some of America’s greatest fortunes were made or massively expanded.


My (late) friend Gloria Swanson once told me over dinner in her apartment how her former manager and lover Joe Kennedy, who’d made a pile of money manipulating the stock market, bailed out as the market began its slide and even shorted the market, increasing his wealth. But once it had crashed, when everybody was broke, she said, he bought stock with a vengeance.

“Cash is king” was the phrase of the day, and Kennedy was well stocked in cash (he even bought a movie studio). By the end of the Depression, he was one of the richest men in the nation.

J. Paul Getty’s favorite phrase was, “Buy when everyone else is selling, and hold on until everyone else is buying.” It’s something you can only do at scale if you’re fabulously rich to begin with.


The afternoon of the Great Crash — October’s Black Tuesday under Republican President Hoover in 1929 — Getty skipped his parents’ golden wedding anniversary to head to Wall Street where he began buying stocks, particularly in small oil companies that were in trouble.
“It is the opportunity of a lifetime to get oil companies for practically nothing,” Getty later wrote. Out of that, he became one of the richest men in the world.

Flash forward to the modern era.

When Wall Street banks — exploiting Republican-demanded deregulation of banking and investment rules — crashed the American economy in 2007, home prices (and, thus, homeowner equity) collapsed by 21%. Over 10 million Americans lost their homes to banking predators like “Foreclosure King” Steve Mnuchin, and tens of millions of others were underwater.


The stock market plummeted by over 50% in the last year of Bush’s presidency. On October 9, 2007 the Dow was at its all-time peak of 14,164 but by March 5, 2009 it had collapsed to 6,594.

While over 8 million Americans lost their jobs and were wiped out as the Bush Crash started today’s homelessness crises, the top 1 percent saw it as a buying opportunity.

Working-class people were desperately unloading stocks in their 401Ks at a loss just to pay the bills, as wages plummeted in the face of a loose labor market.


But the morbidly rich were doing great.

Between 2009 — the bottom of the Bush Crash — and 2012 when the recovery really began, the top 1 percent of Americans saw their income grow by over 31 percent. Fully 95 percent of all the income increases in the country were seized by the top 1 percent of Americans during that period.

As the economy recovered, rich people who’d used their increased income to buy stocks at the market bottom rode the S&P 500 up by 462 percent to 2020. A billion dollars invested in 2009 became $4.62 billion in just 11 years, a period during which the combined wealth of American billionaires went up by over 80 percent.


Then they did it again 10 years later!

The Trump/Covid Crash of 2020, for example, presented America’s morbidly rich with another brand new and huge opportunity to get richer on top of a crisis brutalizing the rest of America.

Once again the market collapsed, this time under Republican Trump, and working people, now out of work, were selling their stocks at a loss just to pay the mortgage and buy food.


But for the wealthy, it was a gift from God.

March 16, 2020 — just after Trump declared a pandemic and lockdown — the Dow sustained the largest single-day crash in its entire history. For the investor class, Trump and his billionaire buddies, this was an even better opportunity than the Bush crash of 2007!

Fewer than three months later, on June 4th, we learned that the seven richest people in America had seen their fortunes increase by fully 50 percent.

And with Trump’s massive tax cut for his fellow billionaires, they could keep most all of it: by that time the average American billionaire was paying less than 3 percent in income taxes (a situation that persists to this day).


Just during that one single terrible pandemic year of 2020, the Institute for Policy Studies documents, the world's 2,365 billionaires saw their wealth increase by a full 54%, as U.S. billionaires saw their net worth surge 62 percent by $1.8 trillion. Average billionaire wealth worldwide increased 27% in that one year alone.

Billionaires’ real taxes have fallen by a full 79 percent since Reagan’s election in 1980, and a 2012 analysis found that as much as $32 trillion was safely squirreled away in tax-fraud offshore shelters.

And, apparently, they’re happily anticipating the next crash that their boys Musk and Trump, along with their bought-off Republicans in Congress, are working hard to bring to pass with threats of massive federal spending cuts.


— Economic downturns not only cut wages and present buying opportunities for the wealthy and corporate America, they also give massive companies far more leverage when negotiating with vendors, which are typically desperate smaller businesses.

— Billionaires and massive companies retain access to credit so they can leverage their buying opportunities in ways smaller companies and working class individuals can’t.

— And corporate power to fight unionization increases exponentially as workers scramble and compete for jobs that have become vanishingly rare.


But the average American can be forgiven for thinking that Republicans would be reluctant to crash the economy. Their lived experience is very different from that of Elon Musk (532% increase in wealth during the single year of 2020), Mark Zuckerberg (86% increase), or Jeff Bezos (65% increase).

During the Bush Crash, average income for the poorest 10% of Americans fell by a full 23%, making business (and billionaires) much more profitable while working people were skipping meals, selling their houses for a song, and cutting pills in half.


Thirteen years later, the Trump Crash threw 8,500,000 Americans out of work: According to the World Economic Forum, the adjusted unemployment rate hit 22.7 percent in 2020, higher than even during the Bush Crash, and it’s taken almost four years for working people to get back on track.

Small business revenue collapsed by more than a fifth under Trump, new business formation cratered, and by July 2020 one-in-five American families were behind on their rent. The rate of hunger in America doubled at the same time the GOP sought to cut food stamps (SNAP) and Medicaid benefits.

The Bush and Trump crashes, in other words, did the work the morbidly rich have been demanding for years. Wages fell, unions struggled, corporate profits hit highs literally never before seen in America, and hedge funds bought up millions of distressed single-family homes to flip into high-priced rentals.

The stock market became absurdly cheap with both crashes, providing both the multimillionaire members of Congress and their billionaire backers with what used to be once-in-a-lifetime buying opportunities.

Now, they want to do it again. And Musk is gleefully proclaiming his willingness to pull it off.

So don’t be so sure Republicans in the House and Senate won’t celebrate billionaires Trump and Musk dragging America into a second Republican Great Depression if they have a chance.

They and their billionaire buddies have almost nothing to lose and a new and even larger fortune to gain.





TRUMP'S  HEALTH CZAR
MSNBC's Vaughn Hillyard gets in RFK Jr.'s face over vaccine plans
BE AFRAID, VERY AFRAID

Sarah K. Burris
RAW STORY
November 6, 2024 

FILE PHOTO: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump greet each other at a campaign event sponsored by conservative group Turning Point USA, in Duluth, Georgia, U.S., October 23, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

MSNBC's political reporter Vaughn Hillyard challenged Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Tuesday after he claimed that he didn't want to eliminate vaccines.

Kennedy has spent years opposing vaccines, according to many reports. But when he spoke to Hillyard, he promised to ensure they were accessible to anyone who wanted them.

As FactCheck.org wrote, "Kennedy insists he’s not ‘anti-vaccine,’ but many of his debunked arguments are straight from the anti-vaccine playbook, which he and his nonprofit have helped write.”

Trump announced during a Nevada rally last week that Kennedy was "going to work on health and women's health."

Also Read: RFK Jr. earns millions from conservative and anti-vax companies: disclosure

"Would that include COVID vaccines that are currently on the market?" asked the reporter.

Kenndy hedged, saying he wanted the "best science" for vaccines, and Hillyard seized on the moment.

"As part of that, during the pandemic, the height of the pandemic, you were questioning the FDA and calling them out for approving the emergency authorization of the COVID vaccines. If you had been in charge of the FDA at that time, would you have blocked the authorization of the COVID vaccines?"

Kennedy claimed that he argued that vaccines wouldn't stop transmission.


"They were saying you need to take this vaccine in order to protect. I knew in May 2020 that the vaccines were not going to protect against transmission. I was reading the studies," Kennedy said.

The government had claimed that the vaccine would lessen the severity of the illness if transmitted and reduce the number of people dying in hospitals.

Hillyard challenged whether RFK would have allowed the vaccine, and Kenndy dodged again, saying he would have been "honest."

"You wouldn't have blocked it?" Hillyard hammered.

"I wouldn't directly block it," Kennedy said. "I would have made sure we had the best science. There was no effort to do that at that time."

So Hillyard asked why the American people should have confidence that he would ensure a vaccine was available in the future in a similar situation. He also grilled Kennedy on which agencies he would eliminate, a question that comes from the politician's campaign pledge to close down the Food and Drug Administration and Center for Disease Control.

Watch the interview below or at the link here.


Potential Trump cabinet member gives first insights into his health priorities

Brad Reed
RAW STORY
November 6, 2024 

Sick child with the measles (Shutterstock)

Former left-wing conspiracy theorist turned Trump ally Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has big plans now that the twice-impeached former president is now heading back to the White House.

NPR's Steve Inskeep reports that Kennedy told him during an interview on Wednesday that the new Trump administration "will recommend getting fluoride out of drinking water" and will also provide consumers with more "information" about vaccines.

Kennedy has for decades pushed baseless theories linking vaccines to autism, despite the fact that multiple studies have found no such link.

According to the Mayo Clinic, "a small study in 1998 suggested a link between vaccinations and autism spectrum disorder," although "the study was reviewed further and retracted" and "the author's medical license was revoked due to falsified information."

Additionally, fluoridation of water has been credited with vastly reducing cavities in children.

Kennedy was long a fringe figure in Democratic politics who pushed false conspiracy theories about former President George W. Bush stealing the 2004 election from rival John Kerry.

RFK Jr. discusses fluoride, vaccines as he says he's ready to take role with Trump administration


By Mike Heuer
Nov. 6, 2024 /

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies during a House Judiciary hearing on the federal government on July 20, 2023, in Washington, D.C., and on Wednesday said he will join President-elect Donald Trump's team in some capacity and focus on health issues. File Photo by Jemal Countess/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 6 (UPI) -- Former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is expected to have a role within President-elect Donald Trump's administration and says fluoridated water and vaccines are priorities.

"President Trump has given me three instructions," Kennedy told NPR host Steve Inskeep during a phone interview on Wednesday.

"He wants the corruption and conflicts out of the regulatory agencies," Kennedy said. "He wants to return the agencies to the gold standard [of] empirically based, evidence-based science and medicine that they were once famous for.

"And he wants to end the chronic disease epidemic with measurable impacts on a diminishment of chronic disease within two years."

Related
Trump names Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr. to presidential transition team
RFK Jr. suspends presidential campaign, endorses GOP nominee Donald Trump

Kennedy said Trump's new administration immediately will recommend state and local governments cease adding fluoride to local water supplies.

He said a federal judge appointed by former President Barack Obama on Oct. 4 ruled the Environmental Protection Agency hasn't done health and safety studies regarding the effects of fluoride in public water supplies.

"One of the findings ... was that at this level, fluoride is almost certainly causing neurological development," Kennedy said, "and loss of IQ in our children as well as arthritis, bone breakage, thyroid problems, bone cancer and a number of other diseases."

He said adding fluoride to water "made sense in the 1940s" but no longer does because it's added to toothpaste.

Kennedy cited Austria and Germany removing fluoride from their respective water supplies and said both nations have about the same or lower cavity rates than the United States.

Kennedy also said he will "immediately" begin work to ensure proper research is done on vaccines to better ensure "vaccine safety."

"We're not going to take vaccines away from anybody," Kennedy said. "We are going to make sure that Americans have good information right now."

He said the "science on vaccine safety" is lacking and it's important to ensure "scientific studies are done to enable people to make informed decisions regarding vaccinations for themselves and their children."

Inskeep asked Kennedy about his famous family's liberal ties and his former status as a Democrat, which Kennedy renounced and became a Republican earlier this year.

"You're now joining an administration that appears to be dominated by a handful of billionaires -- Elon MuskJohn Paulson [and] Trump himself," Inskeep said. "How do you view what somebody might see as an extreme concentration of wealth and power that's coming here?"

"The Republican Party now only controls 30% of the wealth in our country," Kennedy responded. "The Democratic Party controls 70%, and this is really a metamorphosis that took place because of Donald Trump."

Trump chased billionaires out of the GOP and the Republican Party "now is the party of labor unions [and] and the party of working people," Kennedy said.

The GOP "is the party of the American poor," he added. "And those are the people who voted for Donald Trump. Those are the people that he's going to keep those promises to."

Kennedy said every presidential administration, including the Biden administration, has billionaires funding it, which is why the Biden and Harris campaigns outraised Trump by a two-to-one margin.

"If you want to worry about billionaires in government,you should have been asking that questions for the past four years," Kennedy said. "That is something that I've been concerned about my whole life."


JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY 1959



The 50-year war on democracy that built Trump's oligarchy and killed the American dream

Thom Hartmann
November 6, 2024 

Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk speaks as Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. president Donald Trump looks on during a rally at the site of the July assassination attempt against Trump, in Butler, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 5, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” — Frédéric Bastiat, Economic sophisms, 2nd series (1848)

We just watched the final fulfillment of a 50 year plan. Louis Powell laid it out in 1971, and every step along the way Republicans have follow it.

It was a plan to turn America over to the richest men and the largest corporations. It was a plan to replace democracy with oligarchy. A large handful of America’s richest people invested billions in this plan, and its tax breaks and fossil fuel subsidies have made them trillions. More will soon come to them.


As any advertising executive can tell you, with enough money and enough advertising — particularly if you are willing to lie — you can sell anybody pretty much anything.

Even a convicted felon, rapist, and friend and agent of America’s enemies.

America was overwhelmed this fall by billions of dollars in often dishonest advertising, made possible by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court, and it worked. Democrats were massively outspent, not to mention the power of the billionaire Murdoch family’s Fox “News” and 1500 hate talk radio stations.

Open the lens a bit larger, and we find that it goes way beyond just this election; virtually every crisis America is facing right now is either caused or exacerbated by the corruption of big money authorized by five corrupt Republicans on our Supreme Court.

They are responsible for our crises of gun violence, the drug epidemic, homelessness, political gridlock, our slow response to the climate emergency, a looming crisis for Social Security and Medicare, the situation on our southern border, even the lack of affordable drugs, insurance, and healthcare.

All track back to a handful of Supreme Court justices who’ve sold their votes to billionaires in exchange for extravagant vacations, luxury yachts and motorhomes, private jet travel, speaking fees, homes, tuition, and participation in exclusive clubs and billionaire networks that bar the rest of us from entry.

For over two decades, Clarence Thomas and his wife have been accepting millions in free luxury vacations, tuition for their adopted son, a home for his mother, private jet and megayacht travel, and entrance to rarified clubs.

Sam Alito is also on the gravy train, and there are questions about how Brett Kavanaugh managed to pay off his credit cards and gambling debts. John Roberts’ wife has made over $10 million from law firms with business before the court; Neil Gorsuch got a sweetheart real estate deal; Amy Coney Barrett refuses to recuse herself from cases involving her father’s oil company.

None of this is illegal because when five corrupt Republicans on the Court legalized members of Congress taking bribes they legalized that same behavior for themselves.


As a result, we have oligarchs running our media, social media, and buying our elections, while the Supreme Court, with Citizens United, even legalized foreign interference in our political process.

Our modern era of big money controlling government began in the decade after Richard Nixon put Lewis Powell — the tobacco lawyer who wrote the infamous 1971 “Powell Memo” outlining how billionaires and corporations could take over America — on the Supreme Court in 1972.

In the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision, the Court ruled that money used to buy elections wasn’t just cash: they claimed it’s also “free speech” protected by the First Amendment that guarantees your right to speak out on political issues.


In the 200 preceding years — all the way back to the American Revolution of 1776 — no politician or credible political scientist had ever proposed that spending billions to buy votes with dishonest advertising was anything other than simple corruption.

The “originalists” on the Supreme Court, however, claimed to be channeling the Founders of this nation, particularly those who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, when they said that “money is the same thing as free speech.” In that claim, Republicans on the Court were lying through their teeth.

In a letter to Samuel Kercheval in 1816, President and author of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson explicitly laid it out:

“Those seeking profits, were they given total freedom, would not be the ones to trust to keep government pure and our rights secure. Indeed, it has always been those seeking wealth who were the source of corruption in government.”

But Republicans on the Supreme Court weren’t reading the Founders. They were instead listening to the billionaires who helped get them on the Court in the first place. Who had bribed them with position and power and then kept them in their thrall with luxury vacations, “friendship,” and gifts.

Two years after the 1976 Buckley decision, the Republicans on the Supreme Court struck again, this time adding that the “money is speech and can be used to buy votes and politicians” argument applied to corporate “persons” as well as to billionaires. Lewis Powell himself wrote the majority opinion in the 1978 Boston v Bellotti decision.

Justices White, Brennan, and Marshall dissented:

“The special status of corporations has placed them in a position to control vast amounts of economic power which may, if not regulated, dominate not only our economy but the very heart of our democracy, the electoral process.”

But the dissenters lost the vote, and political corruption of everything from local elections to the Supreme Court itself was now virtually assured.

Notice that ruling came down just two years before the Reagan Revolution, when almost all forward progress in America came to a screeching halt.

It’s no coincidence.

And it’s gotten worse since then, with the Court doubling down in 2010 with Citizens United, overturning hundreds of state and federal “good government” laws dating all the way back to the late 1800s.

Thus, today America has a severe problem of big money controlling our political system. And last night it hit its peak, putting an open fascist in charge of our government.

No other developed country in the world has this problem, which is why every other developed country has a national healthcare system, free or near-free college, and strong unions that maintain a healthy middle class. It’s why they can afford pharmaceuticals, are taking active steps to stop climate change, and don’t fear being shot when they go to school, the theater, or shopping.

It’s why they are still functioning democracies.

The ability of America to move forward on any of these issues is, for now, paralyzed with the election of Trump and the GOP taking over the Senate.

This is not the end, though; hitting bottom often begins the process of renewal.

Many Americans will continue to speak out and fight for a democracy uncorrupted by the morbidly rich.

And so will I.






























Trump planning ‘largest mass deportation operation’ — on day one

GRIFTERS

Donald Trump Jr., Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump (AFP)

Donald Trump has called immigrants “animals,” “monsters,” and “murderers,” and said they are “poisoning the blood of our country.” He falsely claimed they are responsible for a “surge in crime,” because “it’s in their genes,” and claimed they’re “eating the pets.”

Trump, now the president-elect, reportedly plans to conduct a massive deportation operation of undocumented immigrants on his first day in office.

“The American people delivered a resounding victory for President Trump, and it gives him a mandate to govern as he campaigned, to deliver on the promises that he made,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s national press secretary, told Fox News Wednesday, Newsweek reports. “Which include, on Day 1, launching the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrants that Kamala Harris has allowed into this country.”

Axios reports Leavitt says that “mass deportation operation” includes “millions of undocumented immigrants.”

Back in September, Trump infamously attacked President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and immigrants.

“What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country,” Trump said. “And look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don’t want to talk — not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”

That same month Trump called for “remigration,” the forceful deportation of immigrants, including those in the U.S. under lawful and unlawful circumstances. He vowed to “end the migrant invasion of America,” and falsely characterized some programs that allow legal entry to the U.S. under law.

“We will stop all migrant flights, end all illegal entries, terminate the Kamala phone app for smuggling illegals (CBP One App), revoke deportation immunity, suspend refugee resettlement, and return Kamala’s illegal migrants to their home countries (also known as remigration).”

Remigration, as NCRM reported at the time, is advocated by some in the European far-right, nationalist, and fascist movements.

Marine Le Pen, the French far-right nationalist who promotes anti-immigration and anti-Islam positions, viewed remigration as so extreme she broke with her allies over it. Earlier this year Politico Europe reported Le Pen said “that she was in ‘total disagreement’ with the reported discussions on ‘remigration.’” Those discussions included the forced deportation of some French citizens, who were described as “unassimilated citizens.”

The Washington Post reports Trump “has made 41 distinct promises for his first day in office, including mass deportations and banning transgender women from sports.”

Steve Bannon admits 'Project 2025 is the agenda' after Trump wins


David Edwards
November 6, 2024 
RAW STORY

Real America's Voice/screen grab

Right-wing pundits admitted that a controversial plan to reshape the country called Project 2025 is Donald Trump's agenda after he won the 2024 presidential election.

On his daily War Room podcast, host Steve Bannon agreed with conservative pundit Matt Walsh, who made the admission on social media.

"Now that the election is over I think we can finally say that yeah actually Project 2025 is the agenda," Walsh wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

Bannon sought to spread Walsh's message.

"Matt Walsh, I think, is a very smart and funny guy," Bannon said before amplifying the social media post. "Now that the election is over, I think we can finally say that, yeah, actually, Project 2025 is the agenda."

"Fabulous," the conservative host laughed as he instructed his staff to re-post the sentiment on social media channels.

"Put that everywhere," he said.

Watch the video below from Real America's Voice or click the link.




Ecstatic J6 offenders look forward to pardons from 'Daddy Trump' — and retribution
RAW STORY

A man clashed with Captiol police on Jan 6, 2020 (Shutterstock)

Donald Trump’s reelection is electrifying the Jan. 6 offender community, prompting a wave of elated X posts anticipating presidential pardons and, in some cases, calling for retribution against the Department of Justice and congressional investigators.

“We are on the cusp of a prisoner exchange,” Derrick Evans, a former West Virginia state legislator who served three months in prison for storming the U.S. Capitol, wrote before the polls had closed on Tuesday. “Swapping patriots for traitors.”

At 1:39 a.m., when it was evident Trump would win, Evans wrote: “I can’t imagine the excitement from my fellow Jan 6 prisoners who are still in prison tonight. Hold on, guys… you are coming home!”

Adam Christian Johnson, who served a 75-day sentence for stealing then-House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s lectern on Jan. 6, posted a video of himself on X at 1:46 a.m. popping the cork on a bottle of champagne. He captioned the video: “I. Want. My. Lectern.”

Another convicted Jan. 6 offender, Eric Clark, replied to Johnson: “When we go to DC to get our pardons, we’re all going to ask Trump to let you take the lectern home with you. You’ve earned it.”

The X account of Edward “Jake” Lang, who is currently awaiting trial in a Brooklyn, N.Y. jail on a charge of assaulting police at the Capitol, posted a message at 1:32 a.m. in all caps: “IM COMING HOME!!!!! THE JANUARY 6 POLITICAL PRISONERS ARE FINALLY COMING HOME!!!!”

Even before Trump’s reelection, prosecution had hardly dampened Lang’s militancy. In June, he had announced from jail that he was forming a “militia” alongside prominent conspiracy theorists to address potential “civil unrest” surrounding the election.

The expectation that more than 500 people convicted of violent crimes at the Capitol could receive presidential pardons and a smaller number currently incarcerated could be freed is not unreasonable, considering Trump’s statements on the campaign trail.

Trump dangled the promise of pardons for Jan. 6 offenders during campaign rallies while falsely referring to them as “hostages.” And Trump kicked off his campaign in March 2023 with a rally in Waco, Tex. that featured a recording of the so-called “J6 Prison Choir” singing the Star-Spangled Banner, overlaid with Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Members of the Proud Boys, the fascist street gang that provided the engine for the attack on the Capitol, also took note.

The group’s primary Telegram channel posted a message calling the election for Trump at 1:24 p.m., adding, “We are so f---ing back!”


Leaders of the group are currently serving prison sentences for seditious conspiracy ranging from 15 to 22 years. Enrique Tarrio, the Proud Boys' former national chairman, told the Washington Post that prosecutors tried to get him to implicate Trump in the attack on the Capitol but that he refused to cooperate. Even as he faced sentencing, Tarrio publicly supported the former president who will be returning to the White House in January.

The Proud Boys Telegram channel celebrated Trump’s reelection on Wednesday morning with a series of graphics showing members in tactical gear thronging an oversized bust of Trump.

The channel also posted an obscene meme depicting Trump using a Sharpie to draw genitalia on the forehead of Attorney General Merrick Garland, accompanied by the words, “YOU’RE FIRED.”

The post was quickly followed with the message: “RELEASE ALL THE J6 POLITICAL PRISONERS NOW.”

Following news of Trump’s reelection, some Jan. 6 offenders simply expressed relief.

“DADDY TRUMP IS COMING HOME!” Rachel Powell, who is currently serving a 57-month sentence at a medium-security prison in West Virginia, posted on Wednesday morning. “When I get out, I will be working with the Patriot Freedom Project.”


Powell, who was nicknamed “Pink Hat Lady,” was seen in videos directing other rioters on how to take control of the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Jenny Cudd, who was sentenced to two months of probation after pleading guilty to trespassing at the Capitol, posted a video on X at 3:09 a.m. central time saying, “We’re all real excited that we’re about to get presidential pardons.”

But others are calling for retribution.

Addressing a post to the FBI Washington Field Office and the Department of Justice, Treniss Evans, who spent 20 days in jail for obstruction of an official proceeding on Jan. 6, wrote on X: “Remember what you did to patriots? What legal justice do you think will be coming for you?”

He also singled out the now-defunct House Select January 6th Committee chaired by Rep. Benny Thompson (D-MS).

“You sorry bastards in the so-called Select Committee, your time is coming too!” he wrote.

Some supporters of Jan. 6 offenders have also suggested that anonymous online sleuths who have provided hundreds of tips to the FBI to help identify wrongdoers should themselves face criminal charges.


Derrick Evans, the former West Virginia state lawmakers, rejected an appeal for unity made by Trump during his victory speech.

“Piss on ‘uniting the country,’” Evans wrote. “I want to see these treasonous scumbags in shackles facing a military tribunal.”



'No excuse this year': George Conway says Americans will 'suffer' from Trump’s 'chaos'

Matthew Chapman
November 6, 2024 
RAW STORY

George Conway (Chip Somodevilla/AFP)

America squarely has itself to blame for what "we all must suffer through," never-Trump conservative attorney George Conway, one of the president-elect's strongest critics from the right, wrote for The Atlantic.

At least in 2016, wrote Conway, "those of us who supported Donald Trump at least had the excuse of not knowing how sociopathy can present itself, and we at least had the conceit of believing that the presidency was not just a man, but an institution greater than the man, with legal and traditional mechanisms to make sure he’d never go off the rails."

But, he added, "the chaos, the derangement, and the incompetence" over those four years means we have every reason to know what will happen again.

"So there was no excuse this year," he wrote." We knew all we needed to know, even without the mendacious raging about Ohioans eating pets, the fantasizing about shooting journalists and arresting political opponents as 'enemies of the people,' even apart from the evidence presented in courts and the convictions in one that demonstrated his abject criminality."

The fact is, Conway continued, Trump is "a depraved and brazen pathological liar, a shameless con man, a sociopathic criminal, a man who has no moral or social conscience, empathy, or remorse. He has no respect for the Constitution and laws he will swear to uphold, and on top of all that, he exhibits emotional and cognitive deficiencies that seem to be intensifying, and that will only make his turpitude worse."

But America understood all of this — and had extensive knowledge of everything from the authoritarian blueprint of Project 2025, to his plans for economy-busting, price-exploding tariffs, to his pledges to put conspiracy theorists like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of public health. And all of that was fine with a majority of the voting public.

"I dare not predict the future again, particularly as it comes to elections and other forms of mass behavior," wrote Conway. "But I daresay I fear we shall see a profound degradation in the ability of this nation to govern itself rationally and fairly, with freedom and political equality under the rule of law. Because that is not actually a prediction. It’s a logical deduction based on the words and deeds of the president-elect, his enablers, and his supporters—and a long and often sorry record of human history. Let us brace ourselves."


The list of who Donald Trump has ‘pledged to punish,’ according to one of his targets

David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
November 6, 2024 1

Donald Trump (Photo by Spencer Platt/AFP)

Vice President Kamala Harris, now the former Democratic presidential nominee, frequently said on the campaign trail: "On day one if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemy's list. When elected, I will walk in with a to do list."

Donald Trump is now President-elect and, according to Politico, he has "a lengthy inventory of people he’s pledged to punish."

"For years, Trump has peppered his speeches and social media posts with vengeful calls for his political opponents, his critics and members of the media to be prosecuted, locked up, deported and even executed. In the waning weeks of the 2024 campaign, he escalated those promises of retaliation to a fever pitch," Politico reports Wednesday. "Now that he’s won, he has both a popular mandate — and the power — to begin implementing his platform of punishment."

Trump "will be emboldened by a Supreme Court ruling that grants presidents broad immunity from criminal accountability after they leave office. And he is expected to be surrounded by aides more willing to dispense with norms to carry out his wishes."

Back in March of 2023, Trump declared, "I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution."

Who's on his list? According to Politico, nearly two dozen individuals, largely in the legal and political spectrum, along with dozens of intelligence specialists, and unnamed journalists:

President Joe Biden

Vice President Kamala Harris


Former President Barack Obama

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi


New York Attorney General Letitia James

Manhattan Justice Arthur Engoron

Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney


Special Counsel Jack Smith

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg

Former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley


Former FBI Director James Comey

Hunter Biden and the rest of the Biden family

Former FBI special agent Peter Strzok


Former FBI attorney Lisa Page

Rep. Adam Schiff (Now Senator-elect Smith)

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg

Former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Mark Pomerantz


Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen

U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd

Rep. Jamaal Bowman


51 intelligence professionals who signed letter about Hunter Biden laptop

Members of the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack

Unspecified people engaged in election fraud


POLITICO reporters, editors and publisher

It's not just Politico.

Trump has often called the mainstream media, the “enemy of the people.”

In his victory speech early Wednesday morning, Trump referred to the press as, “the enemy camp,” according to The Guardian.

"Introducing his running mate, the Ohio senator JD Vance, Trump said: “I told JD to go into the enemy camp. He just goes: OK. Which one? CNNMSNBC? He’s like the only guy who looks forward to going on, and then just absolutely obliterates them.”

READ MORE: Trump Closes Campaign With Misogynistic Slur, Violent Rhetoric Against Women

'Executions are warranted': Far-right groups plot out violent post-election fantasies
RAW STORY
November 6, 2024

AR-15 (M4A1) (Shutterstock)

Far-right extremists are laying out their violent fantasies online in the light of Tuesday election result, Wired reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, supporters of President-elect Donald Trump are calling for mass executions of dissidents and posting murderous memes. “Build the gallows!!” said one post on the far-right, antisemitic platform Gab.

This comes after Trump spent much of the election campaign promising to run as an authoritarian, pushed constant conspiracy theories about his enemies rigging the election or the justice system, and faced limited accountability over claims he incited a violent mob to attack the Capitol on January 6 following his 2020 election loss — all of which seems to have empowered his more radical supporters to think about purges.

"A poster on Patriots.win, a pro-Trump forum, shared an AI drawing of Nancy Pelosi with a noose around her neck about to be hanged," noted the report — while some other posters "shared images of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ... suggesting he too be hanged 'for high treason.'"

One Truth Social poster wrote, "Many executions are warranted. These traitors are a terminal cancer that MUST BE completely eradicated to make America healthy again,” while another wrote “It sounds like a Military Court should sentence her [Kamala Harris] to death. Yes?”

Prior to the election, many far-right radicals were glorifying the idea of domestic terrorism or civil war, no matter who won the election, arguing that it was best to burn down the whole system and create their ideal dictatorship in its place.

Trump, for his part, has often indulged in violent rhetoric, calling for retired generals from his own administration, like Mark Milley, to be executed for treason when they spoke out against him.