Guess that’s why she lost the election. :)

Nov. 18, 1929: William J. Knight is born in Noblesville, Ind. Knight, whose Depression-era family home has no indoor plumbing, spends summers working on his grandparents’ grain farm.

Knight earns the nickname "Pete" when, in grade school, he wiggles his nose like Peter Rabbit to get a girl's attention.
Knight attends Butler and Purdue universities before entering the armed forces.

1950: Knight is drafted into the Air Force. “I became interested in flying … in high school and so forth,” Knight said. “But it was never a burning desire.” Nevertheless, Knight launches himself on what will become a long and storied flying career, earning the descriptor “unflappable” from his peers.

1952: Knight enters the Aviation Cadet Program.

1958: Knight graduates from the Experimental Test Pilot School.

1964: Knight graduates from the Aerospace Research Pilot School.

June 29, 1967: Knight’s X-15 plane suffers a total power failure at 107,000 feet. Knight safely reenters the earth’s lower atmosphere, according to one report, by “flying the crippled rocket plane by the seat of his pants.” Knight recalled, “Anybody who says they are not scared is either lying or they are not too bright. You’re scared, but you control your fear.”

Oct. 3, 1967: Knight flies Mach 6.7, 4,520 miles per hour, twice the speed of a 30.06 bullet, in an X-15 rocket-powered airplane, earning the title of “fastest man alive.” The record stands for fixed-wing aircraft. During the far-from-routine flight, Knight’s plane suffers severe heat damage; the hydraulic lines that connect to the speed-brake actuators are damaged, but do not burn through. A witness to the flight describes the exterior of the X-15 as resembling “burnt firewood.” During his series of X-15 flights, Knight ascends to 280,000 feet above the earth.

Vietnam era: Within 48 hours of finishing the X-15 program flights, Knight has orders cut for Vietnam. He flies 253 combat missions over Vietnam, including 223 in an F-100 Super Sabre squadron.

1982: Knight retires after 32 years in the Air Force, having reached the rank of colonel. He flew as the test-pilot on more than 100 types of aircraft, served as vice commander of Edwards Air Force Base and earned his astronaut wings on a trip of more than 50 miles above the earth’s surface. His many honors include the Distinguished Flying Cross and enshrinement at the National Aviation Hall of Fame.

1984: Knight begins serving on the Palmdale City Council. A diminutive man, Knight is often low-key in public. Joe Davies, a former Air Force officer who met Knight in 1964, said his friend was motivated to enter the world of politics “by a desire to serve his state and his country, just the same as he did in the service.” Of his transition from the military to politics, Knight remarked, “Government is a strange animal.”

1988: Knight becomes Palmdale’s first elected mayor. He is re-elected to a second two-year term in 1990, serving until 1992. Planning Commission member John Mayfield says of Knight, “I feel that Pete Knight is an outstanding leader and he set Palmdale on a course of integrity and leadership that embodies teamwork and working together for the good of the city.”

1992: Knight wins a seat in the state Assembly, where he serves until 1996; his voting record and proposed bills are distinctly conservative. Among the causes he champions are forcing non-English-speaking students into regular classes within three years, eliminating teacher tenure and abolishing several government panels in the interest of efficiency. In state office, Knight earns the respect of political friends and foes alike. Oxnard Republican Nao Takasugi describes Knight as “not a very flamboyant, garrulous type of person. He thinks things over before he speaks, but when he does speak he gets attention.” Democrat John Burton says Knight “participates, but he doesn’t feel a necessity to get up and spout off on every issue.”

1993: Knight apologizes publicly for distributing a poem that mocked Latino immigrants and offended lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

1996: Knight is elected to California’s 17th Senate District, geographically the state’s largest Senate district. He describes his voting record as “pro-family, pro-job creation and anti-tax.” One of his controversial bills includes a measure to make it much easier for Californians to carry concealed weapons. Faced with pending disclosure in the press, Knight acknowledges that he has an adult son who is gay and a brother who died of AIDS.

2000: Knight sponsors a March ballot initiative to bar recognition of same-sex marriages in California. Denying that is he out to bash gays, Knight says he simply wants to “maintain the status quo of the family unit.” Voters overwhelmingly approve the measure.

Aug. 9, 2001: An initial rendering of a mural dedicated to Knight, created by artist Val Benavides, is unveiled on the Lancaster Aerospace Walk of Honor. The mural, which will adorn a wall at the corner of Lancaster Boulevard and Elm Avenue, up the street from Knight’s Walk of Honor monument, is officially dedicated on Sept. 22. “We’re really pleased to have Pete now adorn the Walk of Honor,” says Lancaster City Manager Jim Gilley. “He truly is one of America’s heroes.” Knight was accompanied by his second wife, Gail. He has three sons from a first marriage and four stepchildren; the Knights share 15 grandchildren.

Sept. 2, 2003: William J. “Pete” Knight High School, the Antelope Valley Union High School District’s seventh comprehensive high school, opens for 850 freshmen on 70th Street East and Avenue S in Palmdale.

March 9, 2004: Knight’s 42-year-old son David, a custom furniture maker in Baltimore, is married to his longtime partner, Joseph Lazarro, an architectural designer, in San Francisco, two days before the California Supreme Court shuts down same-sex weddings in the state. San Francisco had tested state law by sanctioning almost 4,000 gay and lesbian marriages. The elder Knight declines to talk about his son’s legally uncertain marriage, though he insists his drive to keep gays from marrying doesn’t make him anti-gay. David Knight is the only one of “Pete” Knight’s three sons to follow his father into a career as a military pilot. David graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy and flew jets in the first Persian Gulf War. “My father was certainly proud of me. He spoke at my pilot training graduation,” David Knight recalled.

April 7, 2004: Knight is diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia, which develops when there is a defect in bone marrow.

April 12, 2004: Knight takes a leave of absence from his Senate duties for rigorous medical testing related to his illness.

May 4, 2004: Knight spokesman David Orosco announces that the senator “will be undergoing appropriate treatment for this sudden ailment.” Acute myelogenous leukemia is often treated with chemotherapy and radiation.

May 7, 2004: Knight passes away about 7:30 p.m. at City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte. “The worst thing about this is he wanted to keep working, going, contributing,” said Knight’s wife, Gail. “He wanted to live. He wanted to try. God had a different plan.”

Knight's lifetime honors include a 100% pro-taxpayer voting record, as recognized by the California Taxpayers Association; a 100% pro-jobs voting record, as recognized by the California Chamber of Commerce; a Taxfighter Award from the National Tax Limitation Committee; a Distinguished Citizenship Award from Palmdale Elks Lodge #2027; a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Palmdale Education Foundation; a Legislative Achievement Award from the Law Enforcement Alliance of America; a Defender of Freedom Award from the National Rifle Association; and a Recognition of Outstanding Contribution from the California Pilots Association.

Republicans and Democrats – including those who lean to each party – are nearly equally likely to say the U.S. should be a world leader in space exploration (72% and 69%, respectively). Partisans also have largely similar views on many of NASA’s priorities.

When Donald Trump won this year’s presidential election, he not only became the first Republican to win the popular vote in two decades but did so with key support from blacks and other ethnic minority groups. And contra those GOP presidential candidates in an earlier era, Trump made time to court votes in racially diverse communities. He showed up.

According to exit polls, Trump carried 46 percent of the Latino vote, a 14-point increase from 2020. Asian support rose to 39 percent from 34 percent four years ago. And though overall black support for Trump ticked up by only a point, his gains among subsets of black voters were notable. The Associated Press reported that Trump won a quarter of all black men and a third of black men ages 18 to 44. MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki recently observed that since 2012, black voters have shifted 15 points toward the GOP.

Trump’s increased appeal to minority voters, along with poor turnout for Kamala Harris, helped give him an edge in swing states that decided the election. In Pennsylvania, for example, Harris won Philadelphia by 59 points, but that represented a drop from the 63-point margin that Joe Biden secured in 2020. Latinos are 16 percent of Philadelphia residents, and “Trump’s gains in the city were heavily concentrated in majority-Latino neighborhoods,” according to an NBC News analysis.

Likewise in Michigan, another battleground that Trump narrowly lost in 2020 and narrowly won in 2024. In Wayne County, which includes heavily black Detroit, Harris won by 29 points, but here again she underperformed Biden, who won the county by 38 points four years ago. The upshot was a net reduction of about 85,000 votes for Democrats in the state’s most populous region.

Trump also made remarkable inroads in large blue states that he lost. Biden carried California by 29 points in 2020, but Harris won it by just 20 points this year. In New York, another liberal stronghold, Harris beat Trump by 11.7 points, or roughly half of Biden’s margin in the Empire State four years earlier. Nor was this a matter of Trump simply turning out more registered Republicans and independents. A New York Times analysis of voter patterns in New York City found that Trump performed in minority areas long regarded as home to the Democratic Party’s base voters.

“In every neighborhood in New York City, from Red Hook in Brooklyn to Riverdale in the Bronx, Vice President Kamala Harris received markedly fewer votes than Joseph R. Biden, Jr. did in 2020, while in most neighborhoods, Mr. Trump notched modest increases compared with his last run,” the Times reported last week. In minority communities, Trump’s gains were the most impressive. Heavily Asian neighborhoods shifted 19 points toward Trump; majority black neighborhoods moved 46 points in his direction; predominantly Hispanic parts of the city shifted 55 points his way.

These achievements were even more impressive given that Trump was running against a woman of black and Asian descent who made overt racial appeals to voters. In the final month of the campaign, Harris and her top surrogates—including former president Barack Obama—made impassioned pleas to black men to back the Democratic nominee. Yet Harris wound up losing ground with racial minorities in general, and with black and Hispanic men in particular.

One lesson here for Republicans: stop ceding votes to Democrats. Even in the bluest precincts, show up and make your case. Trump made campaign stops in Harlem, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. He visited black churches in Detroit and met with black entrepreneurs and civic leaders in Philadelphia. This attention paid dividends on Election Day.

What we don’t know for certain is whether these GOP gains are unique to Donald Trump or whether they will endure once he exits the political scene. My guess is the shift is bigger than the candidate and part of a broader, decade-long trend that shows blue-collar voters fleeing the Democratic Party. Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be working class, and larger numbers of them have started to vote like working-class whites. Increasingly, economic status matters more than ethnic identity when filling out a ballot.

This piece does a good job showing what conservatism is all about.

Yes, it’s crazy out there. After reading all the sick posts by Lemmy extremists, it makes sense why some people would be afraid. It’s also why we must stand up to the fear, and not let Blue MAGA and Lemmy extremists make us afraid.

Yep, and the intolerance of the democratic party is horrible, as the last few days have shown. Lemmy was posting memes about murder and laughing. All becuase the guys had different politics than them.

Yeah, I wonder how come the Democrats didn’t release the files when they were in power? I agree with you, it’s very frustrating that so many politicians from both main political parties didn’t release the files.

I’m all for them being released!

Yay!! No room for political violence in this country. Hope he goes to prison for rest of his life.

The bosses felt that those fed employees weren’t doing a good job.

He’s come around and changed his mind about that. The sub seems to pro-Trump now