Lily found a recipe for Macaroni cheese with crispy bacon at Weight Watchers:

Ingredients

Dry pasta

250 g, macaroni

Olive oil

2 tsp

Brown onion

1 medium, finely chopped

Garlic

1 clove(s), finely chopped

Shortcut bacon

125 g, finely chopped

97% fat-free cottage cheese

200 g, (1 cup)

Egg(s)

1 medium

Grated parmesan cheese

¼ cup(s)

Cherry tomatoes

250 g, truss variety

Instructions

Preheat oven to 200°C. Cook pasta in a large saucepan of boiling salted water following packet instructions. Drain.
Meanwhile, heat the oil in a medium frying pan over medium heat. Cook the onion and garlic, stirring, for 3-4 minutes or until softened. Transfer to a plate. Add bacon to the same pan and cook, stirring occasionally, for 4 minutes or until golden.
Whisk the cottage cheese, egg and half the parmesan in a large bowl until combined. Add the pasta and onion mixture. Season with salt and pepper. Mix until well combined. Transfer to a 6-cup (1.5L) ovenproof dish. Sprinkle with the bacon and remaining parmesan. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden.
Bake tomatoes on a baking tray with the macaroni cheese for the last 15-20 minutes of cooking or until skins start to split. Serve the macaroni cheese with tomatoes.

Weight Watchers has a huge number of great recipes.

CBS News reports:

A man who in 2021 was a member of the same National Guard unit as Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to be defense secretary, confirmed he sent a letter to his superiors warning that a tattoo Hegseth bears indicated that he was a potential "insider threat" ahead of President Biden's inauguration.

The Associated Press reported that 12 U.S. National Guard members were removed from helping to secure Mr. Biden's 2021 inauguration after vetting by the U.S. military and FBI. They were found to have made extremist statements in posts or text messages or had ties with right-wing militia groups. In an interview with podcaster Shawn Ryan, Hegseth said he was one of the National Guard members removed from securing the inauguration.

"I was deemed an extremist because of a tattoo by my National Guard unit in Washington, D.C., and my orders were revoked to guard the Biden inauguration… a Jerusalem cross tattoo which is just a Christian symbol," he told Ryan.

But that's not the tattoo that his fellow guardsman, DeRicko Gaither, pointed out to his superiors. He told CBS News, "When I looked at the pictures – in one he had the tattoo of the Jerusalem Cross, which I didn't think was a problem."

"The next photo he had on his inner bicep he had a bicep that said 'Deux Vult,'" Gaither said. "I looked it up, and that tattoo had ties to extremist groups. So, I sent to my leadership. I included the photo attachment and the Army policy about tattoos. I said I just want you to know what's going on. I received a response saying Pete had been removed from the mission."

So he's like Tulsi Gabbard? The people she was serving with saw her as a security risk as well. They reported her.

Does Donald Trump only know people who hate the United States of America? Or is that he only wants to be friends with people that hate America?

This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Friday:

Friday, November 15, 2024. Donald Trump wants to make America a s**thole country, as many do the right thing and leave Twitter note that racist Katrina vanden Heuvel feels perfectly at home there, Tulsi Gabbard is a threat to national security, and much more.

Trashy Garbage aka Tulsi Gabbard. Donald Trump wants to make her the Director of National Intelligence. Let's note this:

Catholics Against Cults

As Catholics in THE COMMON ILLS community, we lodge a strong objection to the notion that two term Congress woman Tulsi Gabbard is qualified to be the next Director of National Intelligence.

We are troubled by her reported appearance on a governmental watch list and that this resulted from members of the National Guard complaining about her priorities being something other than the United States.

We are troubled by her conspiracy theories that can be found all over her Twitter feed.

We are troubled by her cozying up to Bashar al-Assad, the butcher of Syria. She met face-to-face with him when he was designated as an enemy of the United States. That would concern us less if she were an individual member of Congress currently. But someone who wants to be the Director of National Intelligence is not someone who should be making her own self-determined 'diplomatic' missions with someone the US is at war with.

Chad Blair and Nick Grube (HONOLULU CITY BEAT) note:

The former congresswoman has also been dogged by her long-standing ties to the Science of Identity Foundation and its founder, Chris Butler. The Science of Identity Foundation is an offshoot of Hare Krishna that former members have described as a cult.

Within minutes of the announcement of Gabbard’s nomination, national media outlets like CNN predicted that her selection and the choice of Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz to be U.S. attorney general would set up major confirmation fights.

The position Trump nominated her for, director of national intelligence, requires Senate confirmation. The director leads the U.S. intelligence community, which oversees and directs implementation of the National Intelligence Program.

There are more than enough problems with Tulsi Gabbard. But when Donald I'm A Christian Trump thinks he can get away with installing a member of a cult as our Director of National Intelligence, we object. And we think many Christians would join us in that objection. We realize, as well, that the cult objects to Islam and would argue that if the Jill Stein Freaks could buy a clue, even people in Hamtramck and Deerfield would object to the nomination as well (though we are aware that this is a group of people who struggle to ever call Donald Trump out).

Of the man who 'guides' Tulsi, WIKIPEDIA notes:

Chris Butler, son of a communist anti-war activist, had entered the spiritual counterculture in 1960s, while enrolled at University of Hawaiʻi.^[1]^[2] Soon, he joined the burgeoning Hare-Krishna movement as a guru, taking the name Sai Young, and amassed a group of disciples.^[1]

However, after being publicly denounced by Swami Prabhupada, the leading exponent of the movement in U.S.A, Butler initiated under Prabhupada himself, joined the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), and received the name Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa.^[3]^[2]^[4] But in a few years, their relationship turned sour as he deviated from ISKCON's ways, choosing to marry and allowing his disciples to keep their heads unshaved.^[3]^[2] After the death of Prabhupada in 1977, Butler broke away from ISKCON and founded SIF, then known as the Hari Nama (lit. Holy Name) Society.^[5] Simultaneously, he began to deemphasize ISKCON's rigid adherence to Vaishnava texts and promoted a range of eclectic views.^[1]^[3]

In 1976, SIF's disciples launched a new political party — called the Independents for Godly Government — presenting themselves as a "multifaith coalition of conservative-minded reformers", and ran for the House of Representatives and Mayoral elections; the candidates did not disclose their links with SIF and explicitly claimed to have no affiliation with any religious organization including the Hare Krishna faith.^[1] The party was funded by a variety of businesses, including two local newspapers and a health-food store chain, run by the disciples themselves.^[6]

In the 1980s, he ran a late-night television show called "Chris Butler Speaks" on Channel 13.^[7] Since the 90s, Butler has kept a low profile, rarely speaking in public; in 2017, The New Yorker reported that Butler presents himself less as a Hare Krishna dissident and more as a member of a worldwide Vaishnava movement.^[1] Butler's wife Wai Lana has received acclaim for popularizing yoga through the Wai Lana Yoga show; in 2016, she was conferred with the Padma Shri award by the Government of India.^[8]

THE DAILY MIRROR notes:

But scratch beneath the surface and another mysterious backstory emerges — Gabbard and hubby Williams' ties to a shady Hindu offshoot cult that's for decades sought a back door into mainstream politics.

Critics have branded the secretive group, called the Science of Identity Foundation (SIF), as intolerant of women, gays, and Muslims, while treating its reclusive leader Chris Butler as some kind of all-powerful deity.

Murky ties to Butler's group, which straddles Hawaii and New Zealand, could well complicate Gabbard's bid to secure congressional backing for a senior cabinet-level post as Trump's top advisor for his key decisions on national security.

Williams, a part-Māori, part-Samoan filmmaker and surfer from Auckland, New Zealand, reportedly met Gabbard, a former Army officer, during her first run for Congress in 2012, when he volunteered to shoot her campaign ads.

That year, Gabbard made history by becoming the first American Samoan and practicing Hindu in Congress.

The pair bonded over their shared love of watersports and started dating about 18 months later.

But most importantly:

In a damning tell-all interview with The Independent in 2022, Gabbard's aunt, Dr Caroline Sinavaiana Gabbard, lifted the lid on what insiders call a homophobic, often anti-Islamic and misogynist cult.

She told the publication that her niece's career is all about the pursuit of power, and her bid for the presidency in 2020 was the culmination of four decades of Butler's efforts to seek political influence.

'Once again I find my niece's apparent penchant for parroting extremist toadies such as Tucker Carlson and vile strongmen such as Vladimir Putin, to be problematic and deeply troubling,' said the retired University of Hawaii professor.

'It gives me no pleasure to note that Tulsi's single governing principle seems to be expedience, which is in effect no principle at all.'

Tulsi Gabbard is free to belong in a cult. But her international cult membership should disqualify her from serving as the Director of National Intelligence. And when you add everything up, she does not belong anywhere near US government intelligence.

-- Kat, Trina and Mike

That's "Catholics Against Cults," "Catholics Against Cults" and "Catholics Against Cults." Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) notes:

Paul Eaton, a retired U.S. Army major general and a senior adviser to VoteVets, said in a statement that "putting Tulsi Gabbard in charge of our intelligence, which keeps Americans safe here and abroad, is dangerous and reckless. In Gabbard, Trump has a complete and total loyalist who will use and wield our intelligence to Trump's benefit, not to protect America and our Constitution."

"In combination with many of Trump's other appointments and nominations, we see a picture coming together of an administration made up of unqualified, marginal zealots who will constantly be trying to please their leader rather than fulfill their oath to put the Constitution and the safety of the American people above the president's ego," he added. "Many warned that Trump would dispense of all guardrails in a second term, so every whim of his would be carried out without question or protest. We are now seeing exactly what that looks like."

All of Trump's choices are lousy but there's no one lousier than Tulsi.

And if you don't grasp that, you may be to young to remember 9/11.

Donald Trump wants this raging incompetent who is also a security risk to be the DNI. That post was created after the US government determined intelligence failures led to 9/11.

Most of us pray never again to a terrorist attack on US soil like 9/11; however, a number of Americans who are terrorist experts maintain such an attack is highly likely.

If you think the outrage over Tulsi's mere nomination is big and wide -- and it is -- and for good reason -- imagine another 9/11 under her watch. And it won't just be her that the American people will be out for, it will be Trump as well, the idiot so stupid to nominate her in the first place.

Donald Trump, with his nominations, is demonstrating that the last thing he is interested in is making American anything but a s**thole country. For Health and Human Services, for example, he wants to install the non-medical nut job Robert Kennedy Junior who will wreck healthcare because he's a nut job.

He wants a man the House Ethics Committee believes assaulted a 17-year-old woman to be Attorney General (Matt Gaetz).

As for the awful Secretary of Defense nominee, let's just include ZETEO.

Watch now

6 Things About Trump’s Hawkish New Defense Secretary That Should Scare the Hell Out Of You

Meet Pete Hegseth: Fox host, Iran hawk, Christian Zionist, and more.

Team Zeteo and Mehdi Hasan

Nov 14

READ IN APP

President-elect Donald J. Trump sent shockwaves through the Pentagon this week, after announcing his pick for secretary of defense: Fox weekend host Pete Hegseth, who has zero experience in government.

But frankly, it’s not the lack of experience or his association with right-wing media that should worry people the most – it’s his clear love for war, war crimes, and war criminals.

With apologies to Donald Rumsfeld, he may be about to become the most extreme defense secretary in American history.

Watch the short video above to see Mehdi unpack six of Hegseth’s insanely war-mongering views and ideas, all of which are bound to break Trump’s ridiculous promise to bringing lasting peace – to the Middle East, or anywhere else!

They're all so awful that Kristi Noem -- the Michael Vick of politics -- might pass for the normal one.

Tulsi's a cult member and she's a security risk see Betty's "Cult member Tulsi Gabbard cannot be trusted with national intelligence."

Here are some discussions taking place.

If Trump installs the unqualified Tulsi as DNI and there's a terrorist attack that she fails to protect the country from, that's on him. She is not qualified and there are too many issues that go to the fact that the American people can't trust her. We don't need members of any cult serving in our government.

An e-mail to the public account states that I am trying to rush people into action. I'm not trying to do any such thing. With one exception and I'll get to that.

The writers is Black and a lesbian so she's targeted by Donald on three levels (race, sexuality and gender). I'm not telling anyone to "suck it up" as the writer states and "You don't feel you have anything to lose."

Let's start with that last part. Friday was not a good day last week but I made it through. At the end of the day, I was headed home with a friend and realized I needed to stop and grab some artificial tears. I'd had shots in one eye and the other got cauterize -- I've never had that before, it hurt like hell and it seemed to never end -- it was like a strobe light that repeatedly went off, then I'd have a blink a few times, hold my eye open again and the process repeated over and over. So I go in and I always try to be nice to people. And people coming up on one side of me, got nice. Yeah, I'd do selfie, yeah, I'd sign something for them. On the other side? I had no peripheral vision on that side. And I was spooked over and over and about the seventh time, I just wanted to get out.

So, yeah, I know what it's like to be scared and were it not for Satan being voted back into the White House, I don't think I would have been as bothered. But there, in my city that went for Kamala by a huge margin, with impaired vision, I was bothered and scared.

So I think we all know what it's like to be scared.

I was kidnapped and raped as a child. The only way I survived that was by focusing on getting out. And that's what I do in life. If it gets too dramatic, I go cold and go into planning mode. Don't deny it, never have.

Another tale, I didn't deal with my mother's death until seven years after. I wanted to initially but then everyone else was falling apart and I had to hold it together to make sure every funeral request came off and that warring family members didn't act out. And I was successful on the latter except for one family member who showed up stoned and then began to sob loudly throughout the ceremony and then, of course, skipped out. "It's so hard on _____," I had to hear from one relative after another. And, yes, I was pissed. It was my mother and I loved her and the drama queen who didn't even make it to the burial? If she was crying for any reason, it was guilt. She'd stabbed my mother in the back and they hadn't spoken in seven years. But I just had to nod along with these idiots and get through the day because my mother loathed a scene (which is probably the main reason _____ put on such drama).

So my natural mode is to move forward. For me. I didn't expect that from anyone else in the family and, to those I was close to, I encouraged them to grieve and feel what they were feeling.

We were stabbed in the back by racists. Some of those racists are on the left.

We're always asked -- excuse me, we're always expected to turn out and we do in election after election and then one of us has the presidential nomination and she's attacked over and over and over -- on the left. By Gaza Freaks and Jill Stein nuts. And by DEMOCRACY NOW!, THE NATION, IN THESE TIMES, THE PROGRESSIVE, and many, many more.

Their actions depressed turnout -- bad enough. It also trashed those of us excited to see someone like us with a chance of becoming president.

We were spat and we were stomped on.

I don't expect anyone to ever get over that.

And those who need to check out, do so. Take care of you. THE NATION, DEMOCRACY NOW!, Jill Stein, Gaza Freaks, IN THESE TIMES and THE PROGRESSIVE sure didn't worry about taking care of us.

So you take all the time you need. If that's a month, if that's four years, if that's longer, you take it. In fact, you don't ever have to come back to giving your free labor to the Democratic Party. Whatever you want, I am fine with.

I get it, in the 21st century we saw racism win and it didn't win just because of the right wing, the left helped it a lot.

And that's why --

Let me get to the one thing I'm asking.

What I'm asking is that we leave Twitter. (See Marcia's "Death to Twitter.") Jamie Lee Curtis is. Applause to her. I mean that sincerely. But I'm saying that those of us hit the hardest leave Twitter. Danielle's transferring to BLUESKY and others are going to THREADS or elsewhere. Musk is a racist who was born under apartheid and only left South Africa as apartheid was crumbling and he'd have to deal with Black people as free people. That scared him.

Jamie Lee's leaving and, again, applause for her. But notice who isn't leaving? Racist Katrina vanden Heuvel who used her magazine to rip apart Kamala every day. She's upset that people are calling her a a racist and noted her grandfather's long history of racism that enriched the family. That bothers her.

Supporting Elon Musk by using Twitter doesn't bother racist Katrina. She, in fact, embraces racism and the only thing that bothers her about racism is when people notice how racist 'left' Katrina really is.

All I'm asking is for you please leave Twitter. I'm asking you to reject racism. Black women can and are doing that. They're not the only ones. Again, Jamie Lee Curtis, thank you. Her decision is based on her child Ruby who is now a target in a Trump administration but she's doing it to show her support for equality across the board. I thank her for that.

But Katrina vanden Heuvel, a 'leftist' who owns THE NATION and presents herself as the last word in NYC lefties? She isn't leaving Twitter. She's a racist. She doesn't care about Black people. That's why she lives on the money her grandfather stole from Black artists and it's why her White ass lives in a Harlem mansion. She is no friend to Black people.

Trump is on a drive to destroy our country and, watch closely, we see what happened in the election as White 'leftists' are too concerned about their social media stature to do the right thing and leave Twitter.

I was shocked Saturday night to learn that Alyssa Milano had not left Twitter. I was doing that post and typed hold on while I went to check. She loathes Elon. She made such a big deal about getting rid of her Tesla. But she didn't get off Twitter. Under Elon, it is the home of racism, misogyny and homophobia.

But that doesn't bother her. She self-presents as a social justice warrior but the reality is that she won't stand with Black people. Or LGBTQ+ people. Or women. It's more important to her that she be on Twitter than that she take a real stand.

Let's wind down with Roland.