Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Democrats Set to Reject President Trump’s $1.5 Trillion Defense Budget Request

Most Democrats were already opposed to an increase and are set to reject the requested $1.5 trillion defense budget, Bloomberg reported Sunday.

Now, after their party won majorities in the U.S. House and Senate during the midterm elections, Democrats are “signaling they will block any efforts to push it forward,” the outlet continued:

At the same time, Republican lawmakers returning to the lame-duck session before the new Congress is seated in January may not be able to muster the support or political will to ram through the massive defense spending package, especially amid the Pentagon’s unpopular war against Iran that cost many of them their jobs.

“We must push for the development of a more realistic and sustainable approach to our national security — one that does not require a defense budget in excess of $1 trillion or one paid for with draconian cuts to critical domestic programs,” Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement after the election.

President Trump said in January the 2027 military budget should be bumped to $1.5 trillion, Breitbart News reported.

He explained the proposed increase would support what he called the “Dream Military” that would ensure America stayed safe and secure:

He linked the feasibility of the higher budget figure to revenue generated from tariffs, claiming that “tremendous numbers” from tariff income had made the larger figure viable. “Because of Tariffs, and the tremendous Income that they bring, amounts being generated, that would have been unthinkable in the past … we are able to easily hit the $1.5 Trillion Dollar number,” Trump wrote. He added that this approach would also allow for “pay[ing] down Debt” and providing a “substantial Dividend to moderate income Patriots within our Country.”

Trump later said there was an interest in increasing defense spending, adding that states should handle more of the domestic spending, according to Breitbart News.

“We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care. It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare — all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal,” he noted.

“We are delivering on President Trump’s commitment to expand American military dominance for decades to come. Previous administrations underinvested in our military while our enemies grew stronger and more dangerous, so we are now changing the game,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said upon release of the president’s fiscal year 2027 budget. “This budget builds this arsenal without compromising readiness that will ensure we remain the world’s premier fighting force, we protect the homeland, and we create peace through strength now and into the future.”

A CNN exit poll suggested Tuesday that a majority of midterm voters said the Iran War and high gas prices factored into their vote, and President Trump acknowledged Wednesday that the conflict with Iran cost Republicans votes in the midterm elections.

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Trump Endorses Amnesty, Admits Deportations “Might Be Too Tough” An Hour Before Naming Their Architect Chief Of Staff

President Trump told “60 Minutes” that his deportation policy “might be too tough” and that he would “love to do something on immigration” with the Democrats about to take over Congress, in an interview taped Friday, his first since the midterms. An hour after the conversation, he replaced chief of staff Susie Wiles with Stephen Miller, the architect of that policy.

Asked by CBS correspondent Ross Douthat whether the crackdown hurt Republicans in the midterms, Trump answered: “I think it both helped and hurt. I think I got an A+ for closing up the border. I get very high marks for getting the bad ones out.” “But I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs that created one violation for breaking of the law. And that was that they came into the country illegally.”

Douthat then asked: “So you think your deportation policy went too far?” “It was too tough,” Trump said. “I think it might be too tough. Yeah.”

He said the deal he has in mind with Democrats is “something that’s actually doable”: “some kind of legal status for the landscapers,” and for people like a hotel maid or waitress who are suddenly “taken out of the country.” “It’s tough,” he said. “It’s a tough thing.”

Trump said a group “on the sort of pretty far right” would like everybody removed, and when Douthat asked whether any of them work in his administration, he answered: “Well, there are a lot of those people.” Others, he said, are “more modified on that”: “get the killers out, get all the rough ones out, get the drug dealers out. But let the people that are here, and in some cases here for 10 and 15 years, work a deal for them.”

Does he expect Democrats to deal? “I think so, yeah. People have already called me,” Trump said, naming Texas Democrat James Talarico, whom he described as the state’s new senator and said he saw on Fox News saying immigration was something he wanted to work on.

Douthat noted Trump had called him “Tallafrico” during the campaign and asked: “If it took six months of not insulting the Democrats to get a deal done, do you think you could do it?” “Very easily,” Trump said.

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Clinton-Appointed Judge Forces Communist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Administration to Hand ICE Names and Birthdates of Certain Male Residents at Bronx Migrant Shelter

A federal judge has delivered a clear defeat to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s sanctuary-city obstruction, ordering his administration to turn over identifying information on certain male residents of a city-run Bronx homeless shelter to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In a ruling issued Friday, November 6, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, a Bill Clinton appointee, sided with federal immigration authorities in their months-long battle with New York City over records involving residents of the Bruckner Boulevard homeless shelter in Mott Haven.

The decision clears the way for ICE to obtain the names and dates of birth of certain male shelter residents with serious criminal histories, subject to screening by a court-appointed special master.

According to the New York Post, the city repeatedly fought requests from ICE for identifying information about people living inside the sprawling migrant facility.

But Kaplan rejected the city’s arguments that the subpoena was excessively burdensome or an improper attempt to circumvent New York’s sanctuary policies.

In his November 6 memorandum opinion, Kaplan wrote that the city “has not shown that producing this list would be unduly burdensome” and that the records are “material and relevant to the enforcement of the federal immigration laws.”

He rejected the city’s claims of an improper “fishing expedition” and speculation that ICE was mainly trying to undermine local sanctuary policies, stating that nothing in the record showed the agency sought the information for any reason other than enforcing immigration law against those with serious criminal histories.

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US Forces Leave A Major Airfield In Somalia After More Than A Decade

The U.S. military pulled all of its troops from a major air base in Somalia last month, after using the Baledogle Military Airfield for more than a decade as part of its counterterrorism mission in the country.

Troops left the airfield, located only a few dozen miles from the capital of Mogadishu, but will remain in the country. Horn Observer first reported the exit, citing multiple people familiar with the base. A military official familiar with the matter confirmed to Task & Purpose that the troops left the base for other parts of Somalia. The official said that U.S. forces might return to Baledogle in the future.

A spokesperson for U.S. Africa Command did not confirm reports of troops leaving, but said in a statement that the “U.S. military is an agile, mobile force. U.S. Africa Command repositions its forces to optimize for counterterror operations. In the interest of maintaining operational security, we do not discuss details of ongoing operations.”

It is not clear how many troops were assigned to the airfield before they were relocated, although the United States has kept dozens there in the past, supporting operations around the region.

The airfield is roughly 60 miles southwest of Mogadishu and has been a focal point of the ongoing Somali civil war.

In 2009, the militant group al-Shabaab captured Baledogle, using it as a training ground for its fighters for three years before African Union forces pushed them out. U.S. troops began operating at Baledogle in 2012, expanding their presence in the following years. Alongside counterterrorism missions, American troops trained Somali commandos.

On Sept. 30, 2019, al-Shabaab forces attacked the airfield using a combination of vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices and small arms. American and Somali troops at the base engaged the militants for an hour, eventually driving them back.

Despite some major shifts in U.S. operations on the African continent – including wrapping up combat missions against Islamic State militants in Nigeria and moving MQ-9 drones from Africa to Latin America – the military has continued its ongoing campaign against militants in Somalia. In October, American forces launched four separate airstrikes on al-Shabaab fighters in the country, per AFRICOM. Those are part of the expanded strike campaign since the start of the second Trump administration. Earlier this year the U.S. began a multi-million dollar upgrade project on an air base in Kenya that the American military uses for operations in the Horn of Africa.

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U.S. Approves Mexico’s $1.08 Billion Request for Helicopters, Equipment

The U.S. Department of State announced approval for the sale of 11 helicopters, high-tech equipment, and weapons to the Government of Mexico to strengthen its security operations.

State Department officials said Sikorsky, part of Lockheed Martin, would handle the sale.

The sale will include 11 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, 27 engines, 27 GPS Systems, and 27 radios. The helicopters would come outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment, including night vision, machine guns, and laser targeting systems.

The sale also includes training for Mexican soldiers and would require 15 U.S. officials or contractors to travel to Mexico for extended periods to provide training and support for the helicopters.

U.S. officials said the sale is meant to modernize Mexico’s helicopter fleet and strengthen relations and cooperation on security matters.

The move comes at a time when Mexico has been the topic of much criticism by the Trump administration and Republican legislators for its refusal to fully work with the United States to eradicate drug cartels and to also go after cartel-connected politicians.

As Breitbart Texas reported, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has been outspoken about not allowing U.S. troops or agents to operate inside her country, citing national sovereignty.

Most other countries in Latin America have joined an international anti-cartel effort called Shield of the Americas, where they have granted the U.S. full cooperation that includes shared intelligence, drone strikes, and joint operations with U.S. troops. The United States is also expected to train military and police partners in Latin America.

Mexico, by contrast, has limited international cooperation, limited to intelligence sharing while Mexican authorities carry out the actual operations. In one of the most famous controversies, Mexico’s federal government is currently prosecuting former Chihuahua Attorney General Cesar Jauregui for having run joint operations with agents from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency where they found and dismantled some of the largest drug labs in recent history, Breitbart Texas reported.

Sheinbaum and her government have also drawn heavy criticism for refusing to arrest and extradite Sinaloa Governor Ruben Rocha Moya. As Breitbart Texas reported, Rocha Moya is wanted by the U.S. Department of Justice on a criminal indictment accusing him of drug trafficking conspiracy and weapons charges for allegedly working for the Sinaloa Cartel.

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Scientists Grew Microbes In Mars-Like Conditions – And They Didn’t Just Survive…

Salt-loving microbes kept for months in a lab version of the Martian underground did more than hang on. They grew, according to a study from University of Florida researchers published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, in what lead author Adam Robinson says adds to “the growing body of evidence suggesting that we should consider the possibility of life on Mars today.”

The microbe is Haloferax volcanii, a salt-loving archaeon found in places like the Dead Sea and Utah’s Great Salt Lake, and a standard stand-in for life that could survive on other planets. According to the Daily Mail, Robinson’s team held it for 180 days in a solution seven times saltier than seawater, with almost no oxygen, a carbon dioxide atmosphere at a small fraction of Earth’s pressure, and either nitrates or perchlorates, chemicals found on Mars that can stand in for oxygen. Cultures given either chemical fed and reproduced; cultures given neither showed no noticeable growth.

Each hazard has been tested alone before, and some studies have shown microbes can cling on for months under several at once. Robinson said “far fewer have been able to combine these conditions together and show that microorganisms can actively grow.” A preprint on what appears to be the same experiment, posted on bioRxiv and summarized by Astrobiology.com, describes 160 days at no more than 24 millibars, a 99.9% CO2 atmosphere and 21 degrees Celsius. It reports growth in every low-pressure treatment, shown by rising optical density and by the microbes breaking down nitrate and perchlorate, and calls it the first demonstration of a halophilic archaeon growing under that combination.

The microbes also appear to have protected their water. They formed biofilms, clumps encased in a slimy protective layer, and lost very little water over the months-long run; the preprint puts water loss below 4%. Growth was far slower than in Earth-like conditions, but the colonies kept growing.

Robinson was careful about what it does not show.

“I would not say this study suggests there is definitely life on Mars today,” he said.

“However, this work adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that the shallow subsurface of Mars may still retain environmental conditions conducive to active metabolism and extant life.”

The lab also did not perfectly recreate every danger Martian life would face, and surviving on Mars is hard because cold, salt, radiation and thin air all hit at once.

Robinson told the Daily Mail that if Mars once hosted life, some organisms may have evolved to tolerate increasingly hostile conditions as the planet changed.

“If life from Earth can grow under hostile conditions it has never naturally encountered, what might potential life on Mars look like after billions of years of evolution under those conditions?” he asked.

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NASA: SpaceX, Blue Origin and 6 rivals to compete for lunar delivery contracts potentially totaling up to $10B in support of moon base project

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has revealed SpaceX, Blue Origin and six other aerospace companies are eligible to compete for lunar delivery contracts with a combined potential value of up to $10 billion as the agency advances plans to establish a permanent base on the Moon.

NASA outlined the next phase of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, establishing a $10 billion spending ceiling over the next decade.

This development follows NASA’s May announcement of plans to establish a permanent human outpost on the moon by 2032.

The announcement was made Saturday at the MAX POWER aerospace expo and air show at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The expansion brings together private companies to deliver scientific equipment, technology and infrastructure to the lunar south pole.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the moon’s infrastructure will be built “mission by mission.”

“We are building the Moon Base mission by mission,” Isaacman declared. “Today’s announcements expand nearly every part of that campaign, using the playbook that carried NASA through its greatest eras: fly often, learn, apply those lessons, and get more better and more capable with every mission. When our astronauts return to the Moon, they will arrive with the first elements of the Moon Base already waiting for them on the surface.”

NASA’s Program Executive for Moon Base Carlos García-Galán remarked that the program had made “incredible strides” toward completing the “near impossible.”

“In the eight months since Ignition, we’ve made incredible strides in accomplishing the near impossible: establishing a permanent outpost on the lunar surface,” said García-Galán. “We’ve consolidated numerous efforts into a streamlined program, evolving our human exploration architecture into an iterative and sustained campaign for Moon Base technology development and implementation. Most importantly, we’ve taken action, awarding new contracts and forging new partnerships to accelerate development.”

The multi-billion-dollar cap represents a maximum limit for future task orders rather than direct funding awarded upfront. As part of the initiative’s next phase, the agency has selected eight commercial partners to compete for upcoming moon delivery contracts.

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Pentagon’s ‘Iron Gate’ Operation: Washington Moves To Choke Off Iran’s Overland Military Trade

Despite the Iran war being very obviously deeply unpopular with the American public, Washington is seeking to tighten the noose on Tehran, particularly on the economic front.

This weekend saw the Pentagon unveil details of a new initiative called “Task Force Iron Gate” – which will seek to target Iranian alternative trade routes amid the US naval mission to blockade its main ports via the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf waters.

The effort seeks to strangle Iran’s overland military and technology supply networks, including by better monitoring the Caspian Sea region.

“The establishment of Task Force Iron Gate reinforces the success of our ironclad blockade against Iran at sea,” said CENTCOM chief Adm. Bradley Cooper.

“Strengthening CENTCOM’s collaboration with U.S. interagency partners will further constrain Iran’s ability to finance terrorism, rebuild weapons factories, and replenish their military,” the top commander added.

Michael Mulroy, a former US deputy assistant defense secretary for the Middle East, has further described that the operation will seek to comprehensively “cut the regime off from its ability to fight and ability to fund itself.”

An appointed task force will focus its sole efforts on finding out where “weapons systems are coming in, how they could potentially be cut off” and how “Iran is transporting its energy”.

CENTCOM said it will be be run by 20 civilian and military personnel, presumably with significant coordination from the National Security Agency (NSA) and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

The task force will be based in Tampa, Florida – which is home to both CENTCOM headquarters and US Special Operations Command (SOCOM).

But disrupting overland trade will be easier said than done, given Iran shares borders with no less than seven countries: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Pakistan Turkey, and Turkmenistan.

A Revolutionary ‌Guards spokesman ‌was quoted as saying on Sunday that Washington’s aims are impossible.

“The Iron ‌Gate plan is merely a wordplay, the Americans cannot achieve their objectives of imposing severe economic pressure to cause economic collapse in Iran through this approach,” spokesman Hossein Mohebbi told the semi-official Fars news agency.

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Hillary Clinton Attacks ‘Trump and His Cult’ – Says the ‘Pussy Grabbed Back with All Claws’ After Shocking Midterms

Twice-failed Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton gloated after the Democrats seized control of the House and Senate after last Tuesday’s midterm elections.

Clinton took a swipe at President Trump during an appearance on the “On with Kara Swisher” podcast.

Kara Swisher referenced Trump’s 2005 “grab her by the p*ssy” Hollywood Access tape that Hillary Clinton released as an ‘October surprise’ in 2016.

In October 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign, through the Washington Post, released a video of Trump and TV host Billy Bush having a private conversation about groupies.

“I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything…. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything,” Trump told Billy Bush.

Of course, Hillary Clinton’s October surprise did not work, and Trump went on to win the 2016 presidential election in a landslide.

Kara Swisher began her post-election podcast by teeing up Hillary Clinton.

“So Madam Secretary, has the pussy finally grabbed back?” Kara Swisher asked Hillary.

Clinton chuckled, “With all claws!”

“This is a total rebuke of Donald Trump and his cult and the many wrongheaded evil policies that he’s inflicted on us and the world,” Clinton added.

“But it’s also a real tribute to Democratic candidates and the campaigns they ran and how strong they were on the main issues of affordability and corruption. We had to finally lift the poisonous cloud that Trump has put over our heads for the last ten long years, but we also have a new crop of very exciting public servants,” Hillary Clinton said.

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Something Big Is Coming…

The British state is openly preparing the public for multi-day blackouts while lining up the BBC to broadcast pre-scripted government messages once the lights, water, and internet fail.

A so called “Black Sky” contingency now sits on the books: roughly 100 BBC staff would man a hardened radio studio stocked with its own fuel, food, and water for at least three days, pumping out official instructions over FM if the grid collapses.

This arrives weeks after the government launched an official “Be Ready” campaign ordering every household to stockpile three days of bottled water (three liters per person per day for drinking alone), non-perishable food, cash, a torch, and a wind-up or battery FM radio.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the public that unexpected events “seem to becoming more common” and that people should keep “those supplies in the house to get you through those moments.”

Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has gone further, stating that “we do live in a more dangerous and turbulent world” and warning that adversaries could be ready to attack by 2030, giving Britain “a little over 1,000 days to complete our mission: to be ready with our allies to fight and win.”

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