Trump ordered that the term Homo sapiens be changed to Hetero sapiens. In history books and on websites, the airplane from which the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima will no longer be identified as the Enola Gay, but rather the Enola Straight. Trump also ordered billionaire Mark Cuban, who supported Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, to change his name to Mark American. If he does not do so, he will be charged with terrorism.   read more

A petition on a White House website (“We the People”) calling for Texas to withdraw from the United States and create its own new government had collected more than 94,000 signatures as of November 14. A similar petition advocating for Louisiana to go its own way had collected more than 32,000 supporters, while three petitions (two in upper-case and one in lower-case) seeking Georgia’s withdrawal from the union had gathered combined signatures of more than 42,000.   read more

In 1980, there were more than 28 million vets and more than two million soldiers on active duty in the U.S. By 2010, the number of veterans had declined to 22 million and the total of active duty personnel had dropped to 1.4 million. Over the past 30 years, the U.S. population has increased by 80 million people. That means the percentage of veterans in society fell from 12% in 1980 to about 7% by 2010.   read more

Closed seminars include the topics: “How to Create Robust, Culturally-Sensitive and Practical Guidelines for Gifts, Entertainment and Hospitality in High Risk Markets: A Guide to What You Can Do” “10 Trip Wires to Avoid When Conducting an FCPA Internal Investigation.”   read more

Who is on the “heat list?” Not just fugitives who have been linked to past homicide suspects, but also victims and those close to victims. The criteria for the list were based on the work of Yale University Sociologist Andrew Papachristos, an expert on Chicago gangs. Joseph Salemme, commander of the fugitive unit, told the Chicago Sun-Times that “hot people” are those “stopped with a murder victim, or arrested with a murder victim—or victims—in the past two years.”   read more

The highest profile race won by an independent was in Maine, where former two-term governor Angus King easily won his state’s open Senate seat with nearly 53% of the vote. Another independent, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, posted an even more impressive total, claiming 70% of the vote in winning his second term. In Nevada 4.5% voted for “None of the above” in this year’s Senate race, the highest percentage gained by that option since it was made available in 1976.   read more

In March 2010 Petraeus testified to the Senate that the Taliban’s momentum had been stopped in much of Afghanistan, a statement that bore no relation to reality. He also told The Wall Street Journal that Taliban attacks involving roadside bombs had “flattened,” when Pentagon statistics showed that they had actually doubled in the previous year.   read more

Morell served as a presidential briefer, i.e., chief of the staff who presents the President’s Daily Brief, for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and he was with President Bush on September 11, 2001. After serving as executive assistant to CIA Director George J. Tenet, from 2003 to 2006, during which time the CIA was engaged in torture, Morell took a secret assignment overseas, including in London, UK.   read more

The new laws transcend what 17 states previously have done by legalizing the drug only for medical use. The Obama administration quietly made it clear before the election that it would not allow any state to sanction recreational marijuana. However, officials were careful not to make too much noise about the initiatives, especially in swing state Colorado.   read more

The Sunlight Foundation determined that the Political Victory Fund, despite its victories, actually got less than a 1% return on its investment helping or hindering candidates for office because it lost most of the big races it invested in. In the biggest race of the year, the NRA allocated $7.4 million opposing President Barack Obama, and another $1.9 million supporting Mitt Romney.   read more

two years later, the state’s rate was down, to 2.62, according to the latest assessment from the Violence Policy Center. But that rate still represented the highest in the U.S., with the national average calculated at 1.22. Other states ranking high in 2010 for female murders at the hands of men included South Carolina (1.94), Tennessee (1.91), Louisiana (1.86) and Virginia (1.77). Statistics for Florida were not available and data from Illinois were incomplete.   read more

As the military switched from paper-based recordkeeping to computer-based during the Gulf War era (1990–1991), Army units failed to keep and preserve adequate records, even after the Army introduced a centralized report collection system. Many units ignore the new system, and military culture, which had celebrated near-obsessive recordkeeping for 200 years, began to devalue the entire enterprise. In addition, competing bureaucracies blamed one another.   read more

The change was brought about by a 3.1% increase in exports to $187 billion, an all-time high. Sales of commercial aircraft, heavy machinery and farm goods, especially soybeans, helped fuel the rise. Another key factor was a $2.2 billion boost in oil exports, spearheaded by the production of natural gas by fracking (hydraulic fracturing).   read more

The study found that the presence of a Hispanic police chief correlates with a reduction in the intensity of immigration enforcement, suggesting that the political power associated with a local Latino community being able to win the appointment of a Hispanic chief leads as well to more lenient immigration enforcement, the burdens of which tend to fall upon Latinos regardless of their legal status.   read more

The Air Force had lobbied for months to have the material labeled as naturally-occurring waste in order to qualify for disposal at Clean Harbors’ Buttonwillow landfill in the Bakersfield-area. The residue is believed to be from cleanup efforts related to radioactive paint used more than 50 years ago on glow-in-the-dark dials and gauges.   read more

Despite the decreasing coverage of the war in Afghanistan, there are still about 68,000 U.S. troops in the country and 280 Americans died there during the first ten months of 2012. The United States this year has launched more drone strikes than at any other time in the 11-year conflict.   read more

Rick Tyler, a top adviser to Todd Akin’s failed Missouri Senate campaign, called Crossroads’ efforts “a colossal failure,” and said that Rove “has a lot of explaining to do, mostly to his donors. I don’t think donors are ever going to invest in that level again because it turns out that the architect didn’t know what he was talking about,” he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.   read more