Sunday Sunny Afternoon

I recently saw The Kinks jukebox musical Sunny Afternoon. I normally don't go to such things (jukebox musicals) but I did enjoy it quite a bit.

Now Is The Time

There Dems will probably take the House. I mean, if they don't then my somewhat cynical view of their strategy will be more than validated, but I still expect them to.

Whem the Dems won in 2006, the legend of Rahm Emanuel was born. Do we think his genius really won it? No, but he made sure that was the story. 

Are You Going To Do Something

We can't have elections going back and forth between political parties claiming to be able to solve "affordability" and then not doing it. It is a problem that "affordaility" is not one thing and there is not one magic "affordability" button. Energy prices are one simple thing to focus on, but even if the follow through on these promises (they had better!) they are just one thing.

Across the country, Democrats have seized on rising anxiety over electricity costs and data centers in what could be a template for the 2026 midterm elections.

In Virginia, Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger pledged during her campaign to lower energy bills and make data centers pay more. In the House of Delegates, one Democratic challenger unseated a Republican incumbent by focusing on curbing the proliferation of data centers in Loudoun County and the exurbs of the nation’s capital.

In New Jersey, Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill promised to declare a state of emergency on utility costs and freeze rates. And in Memphis, State Representative Justin J. Pearson, who is challenging Representative Steve Cohen in a high-profile Democratic primary next year, has vowed to fight a supercomputer by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, that would be located in a predominantly Black neighborhood.

A nontrivial chunk of the party (hi, Senator Gillibrand) are tech shills and there are going to be some conflicts

Morning

Sunday funday

Every Week Is Health Insurance Week

I'm rarely an accelerationist, as the costs of burning it all down are quite high and the likelihood of what emerges from the ashes not being an eldritch horror is low, but it's hard not to root, a little bit, for Trump to just go ahead and destroy our health care system.

I know, I know, it probably wouldn't be good, as I said, but...

We Must Hurry If We Are To Dance

RIP Tom Stoppard

Did We Find A Good Republican

This is good, at least.

The state senator said he declined the invitation and believes it violates the Hatch Act, which restricts certain political activities by federal employees.

Walker said he would have reported the alleged violation to federal authorities “if I thought that there was anyone of integrity in Washington that would follow through on my accusation and actually cause someone to lose their job over it.”

“I refused (the invitation), but the underling who reached out to me is trying to influence the election on my dime,” Walker told The Republic. “That individual works for me. He works for you. He’s on my payroll, he’s on your payroll, and he’s campaigning on company time. That’s a violation of the Hatch Act. He’s a federal employee. He works in the White House. But does anyone care about the rules anymore? Not that I can tell.”

I Suppose He Could Still Have Him Murdered At Sea

I'm starting to suspect that Trump's stated reasons for things are not always the actual ones? Big, if true. Hopefully I read about this kind of thing in the newspaper more!

Joke, but I don't want to read a piece about that in the newspaper, I want all coverage to start from the position that these people lie about everything all the time. Because they do!

20 stories taking them at faith, followed by one "hmm.. perhaps things aren't as they say? Much to consider, though we will forget this tomorrow," is not the appropriate way to cover them!

Morning

Slacker Saturday.

Happy Hour

 Get happy

Kill'Em All

Pete's a real man, unlike you.  He's willing to push the big red "kill innocent people" button.  Everybody respects Pete now, and that empty hole inside of him is filling up with warmth.

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

But spicy chatbot is so useful.

On November 20th American statisticians released the results of a survey. Buried in the data is a trend with implications for trillions of dollars of spending. Researchers at the Census Bureau ask firms if they have used artificial intelligence “in producing goods and services” in the past two weeks. Recently, we estimate, the employment-weighted share of Americans using AI at work has fallen by a percentage point, and now sits at 11% (see chart 1). Adoption has fallen sharply at the largest businesses, those employing over 250 people. Three years into the generative-AI wave, demand for the technology looks surprisingly flimsy.

Whether AI adoption is fast or slow has profound consequences. For the world to reap productivity gains from AI, normal businesses must incorporate the tech into their day-to-day operations. It is also the most important question in determining whether or not the world is in an AI bubble. From today until 2030 big tech firms will spend $5trn on infrastructure to supply AI services. To make those investments worthwhile, they will need on the order of $650bn a year in AI revenues, according to JPMorgan Chase, a bank, up from about $50bn a year today. People paying for AI in their personal lives will probably buy only a fraction of what is ultimately required. Businesses must do the rest.

They are not designed to do the things their boosters have pretended they are good for.  We went from curing cancer to handling scheduling to 'horny computer friend.'

(yes I know the Shakespeare is 'double' not 'bubble')

Lunch

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I am sure there are many fine Black Friday deals.

If The President Says It, Then It Is News

I would accept that more if news outlets published his more obviously batshit stuff without qualification or attempt to explain, along with the more plausible-sounding stuff.

PALM BEACH, Florida, Nov 27 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday his administration may slash income tax completely over the next couple of years because of government revenue generated from tariffs.

"Over the next couple of years, I think we'll substantially be cutting and maybe cutting out completely, but we'll be cutting income tax. Could be almost completely cutting it because the money we're taking in is going to be so large," Trump told U.S. military service members on a video call.

This is batshit too, of course, but it's the kind of thing that sounds plausible if Reuters and others news outlets bless it.

Fundamentals

Denaturalization is something Dems have to come out against. They'll start with someone unsympathetic, someone with a murder conviction, and they'll keep going. A poll will come out with a majority supporting "removing citizenship from people guilty of the worst crimes." Dems will cower. David Shor will tell them it is a winning issue (for Trump).

The line needs to be drawn before that.

Yes there are Dems speaking out on these issues generally, but leadership is wedded to the "talk about health care and affordability and nothing else" strategy.

Denaturalization

I won't post the latest rant from gramps, but the desire by Miller (and him) to engage in mass-denaturalization is, actually, Nazi shit.   

Morning

Smell the Glove Friday!

Holiday weekend posting might be less than normal, or not! We will see!

Dinner

eat

If You're A Star They Let You Do It

It is hardly hidden that certain "journalists" have a bit more license to get away with certain things, but it isn't aways clear just why some are treated like "stars" and some aren't. Sure the person getting paid millions to sit behind the anchor desk is a "star" whether or not they deserve to be there, but there are some people who aren't really "stars" - like Lizza, like Nuzzi - who keep bouncing back from scandals. Neither is a household name. No one is clamoring for them. And yet...

Oh Dear

Time for another blogger ethics panel.

We Are Aware Of All Internet Traditions

 Happy Turkee Day!

Nothing like an impossible-to-explain-you-had-to-be-there joke being your major life's legacy.

Morning

Don't forget to take the turkey out of the freezer.

Happy Hour

Holiday weekend begins.

Sleepy Donald

Not bringing his best, anymore.

The Great Noticing

The elite press chooses to notice things when the time is right (according to them).

And when he is in public, occasionally, his battery shows signs of wear. During an Oval Office event that began around noon on Nov. 6, Mr. Trump sat behind his desk for about 20 minutes as executives standing around him talked about weight-loss drugs.

At one point, Mr. Trump’s eyelids drooped until his eyes were almost closed, and he appeared to doze on and off for several seconds. At another point, he opened his eyes and looked toward a line of journalists watching him. He stood up only after a guest who was standing near him fainted and collapsed.

Though even in this piece, it takes them awhile to get there, perhaps realizing he reads 3 paragraphs at most.

With headline-grabbing posts on social media, combative interactions with reporters and speeches full of partisan red meat, Mr. Trump can project round-the-clock energy, virility and physical stamina. Now at the end of his eighth decade, Mr. Trump and the people around him still talk about him as if he is the Energizer Bunny of presidential politics.

Sure.

Lunch

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Sounds Deliberate

Nasty people.

Earlier this month, Bruna Ferreira was leaving her home in Revere to pick up her 11-year-old son, Michael Leavitt Jr., from school in New Hampshire when her car was suddenly swarmed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. They demanded her name and driver’s license, but Ferreira did not have the document on hand, her sister, Graziela Dos Santos Rodrigues, recounted.

The father is the press secretary's brother.

After Ferreira was detained, Dos Santos Rodrigues said Michael Leavitt Sr. and his father, Bob Leavitt, reached out to her.

“They just kept saying, ‘Tell her to self-deport,’” she recalled. “Self-deport to where? Brazil is not her home. They’re trying to push it off as a vacation. That’s not a vacation. Bruna barely speaks the language.”

Despite their protestations otherwise, the collective press corps (and I don't just mean opinion pundits) are capable of getting mad about something and expressing it. That these are hideous, nasty people reveling in their power to ruin lives doesn't seem to bother most of them!

Rolling Back

If our long national nightmare ever ends, and Dems take control of everything, there will be tremendous resistance within Dem power circles on rolling back literally everything that Trump has done. Oh no Fox News might yell at us if we let foreigners into our parks again!

Status quo bias is is extremely strong and it cannot be acceptable to maintain this status quo

Papers, Please

Having special deals for residents/citizens and soaking international tourists is a common practice, but most places have easy definitive ways to prove you are, in fact, a resident/citizen and the US has no such method that people are used to.

WASHINGTON — The National Park Service said Tuesday it is going to start charging the millions of international tourists who visit U.S. parks each year an extra $100 to enter some of the most popular sites, while leaving them out of fee-free days that will be reserved for American residents.

Also that's a not a minor fee increase.

About half of Americans have valid passports, according to the internet.

Morning

Wacky Wednesday.

Happy Hour

get happy

Nice Try

Sure

Brazil's former president Jair Bolsonaro has said "hallucinations" and a nervous breakdown led to an attempt to tamper with his electronic ankle tag.

Ah well.

Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been ordered to start serving his 27-year sentence in a 12 sq metre bedroom in a police base in the capital, Brasília, after his conviction for plotting a coup.

Afternoon

Busy with some things

For Our Amusement

The replacements will inevitably be worse, but at least we can laugh.

President Trump is considering removing Kash Patel as FBI director in the coming months, as he and his top aides have grown increasingly frustrated by the unflattering headlines Patel has recently generated, according to three people with knowledge of the situation who requested anonymity in order to speak freely.

Lunch

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I Had To See It

So you do too.

Excuse Me While I Felch A floozy newsie named Nuzzi got all boozy and told RFK Twosie he could suck something oozy from where she goes number twosie. The mere thought makes me woozy. by Maureen Dowd

— NY Times Pitchbot (@nytpitchbot.bsky.social) November 24, 2025 at 4:36 PM

What Was Elon Thinking

Was he aware of what revealing everyone's location would reveal or was he too stupid to know this? Did he really believe all the libs were botnets and all the Nazis were Real Americans? Couldn't he actually know the answer to that? Was he in that much denial?

And if he did know, why is he doing it?

The Majority

I don't know what's "funnier" - the idea that Alan Dershowitz represents the majority of Americans or the the idea that before Bari Weiss came along, Dershwitz wasn't on TV daily and on the front page of the NYT regularly.

Bari Weiss says she wants to use her new perch at CBS News to “redraw the lines of what falls in the 40 yards of acceptable debate” in American political and cultural life. She says the aim is to sideline voices like Hasan Piker, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, and elevate… pic.twitter.com/hfbM4gOwcN

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) November 25, 2025

And Piker, Hasan, and Carlson didn't have daily (any) CBS spots before she showed up, either.

Total online brain poisoning, in addition to other issues.

Morning

Tricky Tuesday.

Monday Happy Hour

Get happy

As Soon As Infrastructure Week Is Over

 (MSNOW guy):

Kick Them When They're Down

I am really enjoying the Harvard Crimson continuing to stick it to Larry Summers. Remember that this was Larry's last tweet (as of now).

I found this article by a former Harvard Crimson President very disturbing. The moral bankruptcy that led the Crimson to endorse BDS some time ago, without subsequent withdrawal, appears to have spread to the news pages.

(I have shared Stoll's article to several at the Crimson…

— Lawrence H. Summers (@LHSummers) November 10, 2025

Unlawful

I am sure they will try some other nonsense.

A federal judge dismissed the indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday.

The judge found that the appointment of interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan in Alexandria, Virginia, was invalid.

I know none of this is funny, but Comey being indicted and then having the case dimissed every few months would be kind of funny. That asshole deserves it a bit!

Lunch

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Sweet Music

Just a little something to make you smile.

Here’s one particularly exercised senior House Republican:

“This entire White House team has treated ALL members like garbage. ALL. And Mike Johnson has let it happen because he wanted it to happen. That is the sentiment of nearly all — appropriators, authorizers, hawks, doves, rank and file. The arrogance of this White House team is off putting to members who are run roughshod and threatened. They don’t even allow little wins like announcing small grants or even responding from agencies. Not even the high profile, the regular rank and file random members are more upset than ever. Members know they are going into the minority after the midterms. “More explosive early resignations are coming. It’s a tinder box. Morale has never been lower. Mike Johnson will be stripped of his gavel and they will lose the majority before this term is out.”

There aren't that many cushy barely-show jobs if your party is about to be in the minority. Better jump quickly!

This Song Seems Familiar

Can't quite place the tune, though.

Wall Street is straining to absorb a flood of new bonds from tech companies funding their artificial intelligence investments, adding to the recent pressure in markets.

..

Companies were able to complete their sales. But some had to pay unexpectedly high interest rates. Prices of bonds from the companies have also been sliding—a sign that investors were caught off guard by the sheer quantity of bonds entering the market and of growing concern about the worsening credit metrics of the businesses.

Stock investors, already nervous about the sky-high valuations of AI businesses, have taken note of the weakness in the bond market. Meanwhile, the cost of insuring those bonds using credit-default swaps also has climbed, with negative sentiments from different groups of investors feeding into each other.

 

Any Curiosity?

I haven't actually seen (I do not see everything, I admit, but I have searched!) any mainstream journalist publicly raise an eyebrow, or ask for more clarification, about Lizza's accusation that Nuzzi was had "catch-and-kill operations."

Looking back, the aughts were amazingly a golden age of media criticism and self-reflection by journalists compared to now. Much of that criticism was stupid and the self-reflection used a funhouse mirror at Matt Drudge's house, but at least it existed. Now there is barely any public conversation about it from the players.

Morning

Momentous Monday.

Sunday Happy Hour

Get happy.

The Resistance

Somewhat interestingly, I've found CNN's homepage to be a hotbed of sedition (normal coverage of an abnormal presidency). I guess Trump doesn't read, so they can get away with it.

Catch and Kill

I am waiting for some other journalist (Ben Smith, this is a job for you!) to assert that doing catch-and-kill for your sources is just a normal part of elite journalism and you fools, you imbeciles, just don't understand how things work.

Morning

Sunday funday

Saturday Afternoon

Enjoy

America's Worst Humans

Sarah Hurwitz

You Won't Have Marjorie Taylor Greene To Kick Around Anymore

Resigning from Congress in January.

One thing I wish is that political journalists - and I do inlcude left-leaning ones in this, to some extent - would think about why there are so many Main Characters who come from the extended MAGA universe. This includes politicians, mainstream media figures, "influencers," etc.

Why is it regularly news what some C-List conservative youtuber says, but never news what, I dunno, Sam Seder has to say about something? I'm not suggesting there are no understandable reasons for this, but I think every involved should think about this occasionally.

And it isn't new, even if there is a new generation and the media system has evolved. Once upon a time we knew what Ann Coulter said regularly, for example.

All these "influencers" have some direct influence over their audiences and I am not saying they should never be covered. I am just not sure why we have 200 conservative protagonists in the great drama of the Politics Show, and and about 7 liberal ones.  4 of the liberal ones are Pete Buttigieg.

This isn't just a Trump phenomenon. It is also the case when Dems run everything.

Morning

Slack Saturday.

Happy Hour

get happy

Copy/Paste

I never want to hand it to Republicans, but this is a good template Dems can copy in response to DHS actions. Restitution is important!

“I want to make sure that Homeland Security can provide me with the definitive list of people who were detained, how long they were detained, whether or not they were released and, when property was damaged, whether or not they’ve been provided proper restitution,” Tillis said, in the hearing. “We’re the party of law and order, and I want to make sure that we’re also orderly in the process of enforcing it.”

No idea what is motivating Tillis here. I'm sure he will have different opinions about other nasty states - I certainly don't think Tillis is joining the Resistance - but the basic demand is good!

Afternoon Levity

From America's finest news source.

WASHINGTON—In the wake of a controversial incident aboard Air Force One in which President Donald Trump insulted a female journalist, Vice President JD Vance is said to have wept in his office bathroom, furious that the commander-in-chief had used his special “piggy” nickname on someone else. “But I’m supposed to be his piggy—I’m supposed to be his only piggy,” a weeping Vance said this week as he collapsed against the locked bathroom door and slid down onto the tile. “Somebody’s in here! Just give me a second! God, it’s not fair. She didn’t even do the oinks. It was hard enough to have to hold it together after he called Marjorie Taylor Greene a ‘ranting lunatic’ last week, but this—this is a bridge too far. Who does that bitch reporter think she is? I’m his piggy. Me! You just need to pull yourself together, JD, and show him you’re still his best little piggy.” At press time, Vance had reportedly locked himself in his bedroom and refused to come out after hearing Trump refer to someone else as a “fat slob.”

Seems Bad

I know there are no magic wands, but the Dem leadership has discouraged members from making an issue of this stuff since it started.

Multiple sources told Target 12 that Rhode Island sheriffs earlier noticed someone taking photos of the intern inside the courthouse and in Superior Court Judge McBurney’s courtroom. When approached, the individual identified himself as an ICE agent and was told to abide by standard courthouse rules, and to stop taking pictures.

The intern was reportedly shaken, so McBurney offered to drive him home. ICE agents then surrounded the judge’s car and demanded everyone to exit the vehicle, threatening to smash in the windows if they did not comply.

Dana Smith, Head of Security Operations for R.I. Superior Court, confronted the agents and told both the judge and the intern to stay inside the car. After an argument, ICE confirmed they had misidentified the teen and left. The intern was released once his ID was checked.

And Schumer and Jeffries have been almost silent themselves.

I have a lot of hate for Chuck but, man, Jeffries fucking sucks so hard. Chuck has some talents beyond "sucking up to Nancy Pelosi."

Lunch

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Newspapers Against Disclosure

I suppose we're nearing the era of "just ignore the Washington Post, everybody who matters does" but we are not quite there yet. Still DC's major newspaper and one of the remaining few national newspapers coming out against public disclosure is quite funny.

After all, the purpose of criminal investigations is to determine whether people are guilty of crimes. The Justice Department exists to prosecute those crimes. It does not exist to satisfy public curiosity. That’s a job for Congress and journalists. When prosecutors leak investigative information about people who haven’t been charged with a crime, that is normally considered a breach.

Yet here the Justice Department, by popular demand, is being directed to open its investigative books and publish a trove of information related to any “entities” with “known or alleged ties” to Epstein. That could include private information obtained in search warrants that is not incriminating.

Is the implication here that ordering the release is bad but it would be OK if it was all just leaked to journalists? But that would be bad, because it's a breach? I don't understand. And Congress is... passing a law to make this happen? Doing their job? Is there something different Congress can do here?

Sure the ideology of the WaPo is bad but also they are all stupid motherfuckers.

I swear nobody is even trying anymore.

Presidential Pardon Candidates

#Metoo has gone too far. President Trump, please fix this injustice!

Weisenburg and Thomas prepared from August 2024 to July 2025 to execute their plans, in which they allegedly intended to buy a boat, sail to Gonâve Island, kill every man on the island, overtake it by force, and take the women and children as sex slaves.

Gonâve Island has a population of about 87,000.

Elon Make A Boom Boom

This kind of thing is to be expected and the important thing is that SpaceX was able to obtain valuable the data that these kind of exercises provide (it's a piece of shit).

During the pre-dawn hours in South Texas on Friday morning, SpaceX’s next-generation Starship first stage suffered some sort of major damage during pre-launch testing.

The company had only rolled the massive rocket out of the factory a day earlier, noting the beginning of its test campaign, it said on the social media site X: “The first operations will test the booster’s redesigned propellant systems and its structural strength.”

Verdict: no structural strength.

Morning

Get it started.

Thursday Night

Rock on.

Motive

I thought for awhile what the motive for this would be, if we rule out mental illness (don't know!), and I suppose it's that being martyred by the evil libs can be a very lucrative play.

Appropriately Reported, At Least

Cool beans.

The U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify the swastika, an emblem of fascism and white supremacy inextricably linked to the murder of millions of Jews and that more than 400,000 U.S. troops died fighting against in World War II, as a hate symbol, according to a new policy that takes effect next month.

Welp

 (in response to Dems telling the military not to follow unlawful orders)

I blame the heated rhetoric of The Left.

Freedum

Smell it.

The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious, The Associated Press has found.

The predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested. A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Federal agents in turn may then flag local law enforcement.

Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over — often for reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view. They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement’s radar.

Larry Summers To Join Harvard Institute Of Politics

(joke)

Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers will immediately leave his role as an instructor at Harvard while the University investigates his ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey E. Epstein.

Malware 11

There have inevitably been numerous meetings in Microsoft (and other companies) where someone has pointed out that their spicy chatbot rollout has numerous catastrophic privacy and security issues and is therefore completely unsuitable and dangerous, and was overruled by someone else saying, "Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."

Microsoft’s warning on Tuesday that an experimental AI agent integrated into Windows can infect devices and pilfer sensitive user data has set off a familiar response from security-minded critics: Why is Big Tech so intent on pushing new features before their dangerous behaviors can be fully understood and contained?

As reported Tuesday, Microsoft introduced Copilot Actions, a new set of “experimental agentic features” that, when enabled, perform “everyday tasks like organizing files, scheduling meetings, or sending emails,” and provide “an active digital collaborator that can carry out complex tasks for you to enhance efficiency and productivity.”

Hallucinations and prompt injections apply The fanfare, however, came with a significant caveat. Microsoft recommended users enable Copilot Actions only “if you understand the security implications outlined.”

I Don’t See How Donnie Two Scoops...

I don’t like to be a doomer, but there is no way anything gets released in the "Epstein Files" that incriminates him

Morning

Therapeutic Thursday.

Happy Hour

Get happy

Bending Towards Justice

It isn't perfect, but 2010 me would definitely enjoy hearing about Larry's later in life humiliation.

Harvard has started a new review of ties that its former president, Lawrence H. Summers, and others at the institution had with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to the university.

I don't really understand people like this, but Larry loves being in the public eye and doing media hits and well...

The Crimson keeps whacking him.

The Finest People

Every one of them.

A man pardoned by President Donald Trump for storming the Capitol was arrested on child molestation charges, according to Florida officials, who said he tried to use an anticipated Jan. 6 payout to silence the victim.

Andrew Paul Johnson, 44, was arrested in Tennessee in August and extradited to Florida on charges of lewd/lascivious molestation, lewd/lascivious exhibition and transmission of material harmful to a minor.

Welp

Just made up an indictment.

NEWS: During a hearing in federal court in VA, prosecutors confirmed that the operative indictment in the case against James Comey was never shown to or voted on by the entire grand jury before it was presented in open court. Defense counsel argued that’s a complete bar to further prosecution

— Anna Bower (@annabower.bsky.social) November 19, 2025 at 4:36 PM

Seems like bad lawyer behavior to me!!!

What Game Is Thune Playing

Like Mike Johnson, I was a bit surprised that Thune just let the Epstein bill through. What's his plan here?

I don't think this is it, of course, but if you were a Republican wouldn't you hope Trump disappeared somehow? Most elected Republicans, anyway.

Immunity Card

It didn't work this time, but it probably does a lot of the time.

More than a dozen men have been arrested after trying to solicit a minor for sex in Bloomington, Minnesota, police say.

According to Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges, officers started the three-day sting on Nov. 5. They used several methods to find people who were attempting to solicit a 17-year-old girl for sex.

...

"When he was arrested, he said, 'I'm ICE, boys,'" Hodges said during a press conference Tuesday. "Well, unfortunately for him, we locked him up."

I am sure it is one reason many are joining. 

Almost Have To Respect The Game

What are the odds of there being another pardon?

I know there are no rules anymore, but some of us remember how Clinton pardongate lasted months.

Months into the Bush administration, and journalists/pundits/talking heads just could not stop talking about Clinton. It was an addiction. It was all they knew how to do. It was their entire careers.

Surprise Twist

I thought there would be Senate shenanigans.

Happy Hour

Get happy

Well Now That Laura Loomer Has Said It

Maybe our great journalists will take it seriously, because somehow that's how things work.

Over To You, Mr. Balls And Strikes

My skimming of the Law Blog Types has them saying that this ruling is designed to get around any existing objections Roberts will have, that does mean he can't come up with new ones!

A federal court Tuesday blocked Texas from using its newly drawn congressional map in next year’s midterms, ruling that the map is likely an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

US District Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was appointed to the bench by Trump in 2019, wrote that the challengers were “likely to prove at trial that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”

But as I said, I don't worry my beautiful mind with The Ass Law, none of it is real anymore.

Chuck's Lost The Baileys

When Dems get negative feedback from what they imagine (but isn't necessarily) is "from the left," they tell themselves it's just some weird online thing.  But everybody is online now.  No one platform  is a representative focus group, but if people are mad online then they are mad in real life, too.

Schumer Has Worst Ever Favorability Rating, 32-55%; Only 45-43% with Democrats

Other notables: oh no people not from NYC are mad they didn't get to choose the mayor. 

Majority of NYC Voters: Mamdani Will Be Good for NYC; Plurality of Voters from Rest of NYS: He Will Be Bad for NYC;

This is New  York state, not nationally, but one reason people might be less than thrilled with Chuck is that he isn't providing any voice on these things.

Strong Majorities Oppose Trump on: Demolishing East Wing of White House, Deploying ICE Agents to City Streets, Increased Tariffs, Prosecuting Enemies, Bombing Boats Claimed to Be Venezuelan Drug Traffickers & Cancelling Fed $ for Gateway Tunnel

Welp

Here we are again.

LONDON, Nov 18 - Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said no company would be unscathed if the artificial intelligence boom collapses, as soaring valuations and heavy investment in the sector fuel concerns of a bubble.

Pichai said in an interview with the BBC published on Tuesday that the current wave of AI investment was an "extraordinary moment" but acknowledged "elements of irrationality" in the market, echoing warnings of "irrational exuberance" during the dotcom era.

Solidarity

One reason I rarely feel much of an urge to defend our noble journalists is that they rarely defend each other when it matters.

They'll defend each other from criticisms from nasty assholes on the internet, like me, but they won't jeopardize their place in the pecking order.

All you have to do is repeat the "offensive" question.

Repeat Trips To The Appalachian Trail

I get that 'journalism' is a broad term, but what I never appreciate is how it is a flexible term, expanding and contracting to include/exclude certain people from the club as necessary.

I never really understand when journalists praise each other for being "excellent writers" when most of the best journalism, the necessary journalism, involves "boring" writing.

Writing with "flair" is an indulgence granted to special people, either granted extra room by their editors or because they are fortunate enough to get paid to do long magazine pieces. I roll my eyes whenever journalists get excited by an "excellent lede" in straight new stories because that always just means an editor let the journalist break the rules a bit. Which ones get to break the rules? You know, the special ones.

People of color rarely get to add color.

I'm not saying that there's no value in long profile pieces of presidential candidates, and similar, but even the best ones are more gossipy infotainment than vital journalism.

I definitely don't know what value there is in profile pieces written by people who are sleeping with those candidates (Mark Sanford AND RFk Jr!).

Journalism isn't beating the charges of its most unhinged critics (me) when Olivia Nuzzi is currently being promoted in every major outlet as somehow being the best of them.

Morning

Tantalizing Tuesday.

Happy Hour

get happy

That'll Be Tossed

Almost inevitably.

WASHINGTON, Nov 17 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Monday found evidence of "government misconduct" in how a prosecutor aligned with President Donald Trump secured criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey and ordered that grand jury materials be turned over to Comey's defense team.

U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzgerald of the Eastern District of Virginia found that Lindsey Halligan, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney leading the case, may have made significant legal errors in presenting evidence and instructing grand jurors who were weighing whether to charge Comey.

CNN Let This Paragraph Through

Impressed!

Some Indian American conservatives seem shocked that segments of the political right are now taking aim at them. When Democrats won big on election night, Ramaswamy advised Republicans to “cut out the identity politics,” saying “we don’t care about the color of your skin or your religion. We care about the content of your character.” After one X user said that the existence of Indians disgusted them, Dinesh D’Souza, the right-wing commentator who has peddled racism against Black Americans for decades, mused: “In a career spanning 40 years, I have never encountered this type of rhetoric. The Right never used to talk like this. So who on our side has legitimized this type of vile degradation?”

Though to be fair to D'Souza, he's been pretty racist agaisnt Indians, too.

Just one of many examples. At many times, you have described your political opponents of Indian ancestry with condescension as “Indian waiters” as if they were lesser.
And your invocation of DEI critique to directly ascribe Indian people as lesser here. pic.twitter.com/JXJm4eJ4Xw

— Agnicayanam (@Avnk90) October 21, 2025

America's Worst Airline

Avelo.

President Deals

This one was obviously bullshit. They barely tried to pretend.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture report released last Friday showed only two Chinese purchases of American soybeans since the summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea, totaling 332,000 metric tons from Oct. 2 through Nov. 12 — well short of the 12 million metric tons that the White House said China agreed to purchase by year-end.

And Then Everyone Forgot

 It wasn't just Rubio and the Senate that decided bygones.

With MBS’s arrival to DC, it’s worth remembering that 2 months after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Senate UNANIMOUSLY passed a resolution—co-led by Rubio—calling on MBS to be held accountable for the jailing & torture of Saudi activists & the murder of Khashoggi.

— Seth Binder (@seth_binder) November 17, 2025

Official DC decided, for whatever reason ($$$), that a few weepy tributes to Khashoggi had taken it far enough, and it was time to return to hard-headed realism ($$$).

America's Smartest Man

Harvard Crimson, continuing to do the best Larry Summers-related journalism. I hope Patel and Srivastava have non-journalism career plans, because there are no rewards for exposing made men.

Summers went on to describe what he saw as his “best shot”: that the woman finds him “invaluable and interesting” and concludes “she can’t have it without romance / sex.”

Throughout June, Summers fed Epstein updates about the woman’s workload and continued contact. Epstein urged him to play the “long game” and keep her in what he called a “forced holding pattern.”

The final messages, dated July 5, 2019, show Summers still in regular contact with Epstein. That morning, Summers wrote he was in Cape Cod with his family — “Bit of an Ibsen play,” he joked — and the two men exchanged a brief flurry of literary one-liners.

The thread ends at 1:27 p.m.

Epstein was arrested the next day.

The name they used for this Chinese-born woman was... "peril."

We must remember that Larry's great "bitches be stupid" speech, which he gave to a room full of mostly top women academics. 

There are three broad hypotheses about the sources of the very substantial disparities that this conference’s papers document and have been documented before with respect to the presence of women in high-end scientific professions. One is what I would call the—I’ll explain each of these in a few moments and comment on how important I think they are—the first is what I call the high-powered job hypothesis. The second is what I would call different availability of aptitude at the high end, and the third is what I would call different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search. And in my own view, their importance probably ranks in exactly the order that I just described.

In order: 1) women don't put enough time in, because they have kids, 2) bitches be stupid, 3) old lecherous men demand sex for help in career advancement, without which women cannot succeed due to sabotage. Obviously #3 is unimportant, in Larry's detached, objective, unbiased, sensibly centrist view.

Morning

Late start

Sunday Happy Hour

Get happy

Life After Cars

 My copy just arrived. I am sure you would like one of your own!

Mommy He Hit Me Back

I don't know what will happen with Venezuela, but I guarantee most of our glorious thinkfluencers will consider any retaliation to be an act of war, and not the actual act of war.

Elite Rot

I believe readers of this blog can take it as read that the bad orange man is indeed bad, that the current [and all past in my lifetime] incarnation of the Republican party being in charge is much much much much worse than the alternative of the Democratic party being charge.

But much as a party that won't object to genocide is unlikely to be up to the task of defending Democracy,  a party whose elite players welcome Larry Summers into the fold is unlikely to be up to the task of combatting racism, moral degeneracy, and corruption, let alone confront our economic problems in a productive and politically appealing way.

The time to clean house is now, because soon everyone will be yelling about the coming elections. Well, really, they do that they day after the last election but I don't have to listen to them.

The vacation home for the elite rot of the Democratic party is currently the Center for American Progress.  It's a shame because like many aught-era institutions it started with some promise.  Most of them went bad. 

Morning

Sunday funday.

Saturday Evening

enjoy

I Admit I Forgot That The First American Pope (Self-Declared, News Outlet Endorsed) Was Still Alive

Amazing stuff.

MEGYN KELLY IS RIGHT ABOUT EPSTEIN Bill Donohue

Dersh

Lawyers are going to lawyer, but this man's former client is dead and it is obscene (but not unique, of course) that a man who regularly performs this kind of sophistry is the toast of cable news, and a regular sympathetic NYT page 1 figure.

Dershowitz: The predecessor on your show described Epstein as a convicted pedophile. He pleaded guilty to one count of having sex for money with a 17-year-and-10-month-old person. That’s not a pedophile. pic.twitter.com/cz5r6S2gan

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 15, 2025

Also, generally it's absurd that outlets let criminal defense attorneys use them for PR purposes for rich and famous people. People like Dersh can do what they want in the courts, but high priced lawyers are largely in the PR business in cases like these. The courts, at least, will slap down some bullshit.

Not Beating The Charges

Journalists - people who work for the New York Times, people who used to work for the New York Times (white ones, anyway), people who desperately want to work for the New York Times, especially - will defend that place to the death against the rabid lambs of the internet, and then the New York Times does this. 

A couple of times I saw Nuzzi/Lizza referred to as a journalism "power couple." I don't think journalism should have "power couples" and I think if journalists were serious about defending the, well, seriousness of their practices and institutions they would vocally object to such things themselves.

If her journalism and her "ethical" practices related to journalism are what gets elevated by the people who make such choices, then you should consider that their critics have a point.

There might even be a defense of a kind of "fallen star" memoir if she had, in fact, fallen, instead of just being handed an editor gig at one of the few publications that still pays salaries (Vanity Fair).

Vance Glancing At His Watch

On one hand, if Trump bites it, everyone will hate Vance even more. On the other hand, Vance is an actual Nazi instead of just someone with some Nazi-adjacent views like Trump

WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Friday he received a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) exam as part of his recent physical, calling the scan "very standard."

Trump told reporters he got the MRI "because it's part of my physical. Getting an MRI is very standard. What, you think I shouldn't have it? Other people get it ... I had an MRI. The doctor said it was the best result he has ever seen as a doctor."

This was the previously reported MRI.

Morning

Slacker Saturday.

Friday Night

Rock on.

Time To Partially Fix The Problems I Created

The Trump special.

US President Donald Trump is readying substantial tariff cuts designed to address high food prices and a series of new trade deals — including framework agreements with Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador and Ecuador — as he seeks to address voter concerns over the cost of goods.

Why Do You Keep Focusing on Larry Summers, Atrios?

I wasn't 100% sure he was still an active paticipant in CAP, or if he just had a legacy courtesy title, but I was pretty sure he was!

Summers’s efforts at CAP are part of a multipronged effort by high-powered centrists in the Democratic Party to bend the agenda of the 2029 candidate toward the middle. As The New York Times reported over the summer, the Project 2029 advisory committee includes Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan, the economist Justin Wolfers, New America CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter, Roosevelt Institute principal Felicia Wong, and Third Way’s Jim Kessler.

Epstein buddy, Genocide Guy, Guy Who Thinks Democrats Should Be Republicans...

Aside from the Epstein stuff, Larry has shown numerous times that he will burn everything down if he doesn't get his way, so it is malpractice to keep him around!

Not Entirely Wrong

They should ask all those guys!

Stay tuned!

Cancel Culture

I can't believe these censorious lefties are trying to cancel their fine colleague, Larry Summers.

Harvard professors responded with outrage to a tranche of emails showing a close yearslong correspondence between former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers and sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein, reopening an old and bitter divide between Summers and the faculty.

Elsewhere In The Epstein Cinematic Universe

Sure why not.

Peter Mandelson had more than one leak to worry about after another tranche of his friendly emails to Jeffrey Epstein was made public.

The disgraced former US Ambassador could be seen relieving himself against a garden wall after a late-night visit to George Osborne's Notting Hill home.

The Finest People

I suppose Gaetz did, eventually, have some minor consequences, but I also don't doubt that he could have a comeback and the conservative morality police would have little to say.

The man President Trump wanted to be attorney general was allegedly paying for sex with a 17-year old girl who was working at a McDonald’s, saving up for braces, and partly living at a homeless shelter.

Last year, a House Ethics Committee report found “substantial evidence” that former representative and former attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz “regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him,” and that he “engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl” in 2017. The report also mentioned that Gaetz possessed and used cocaine and ecstasy while in office. Last month, newly unsealed court documents further detailed just how dire a situation the girl was living in before she was connected with Gaetz.

Morning

Frabtabulous Friday.

Happy Hour

Get happy

Best Buds

A little chance for the Crimson to get their digs in.

Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers maintained a close personal relationship with convicted sex criminal Jeffrey E. Epstein until just months before his death in August 2019, according to emails released by Congress on Wednesday.

Larry started it:

I found this article by a former Harvard Crimson President very disturbing. The moral bankruptcy that led the Crimson to endorse BDS some time ago, without subsequent withdrawal, appears to have spread to the news pages.

(I have shared Stoll's article to several at the Crimson…

— Lawrence H. Summers (@LHSummers) November 10, 2025

"moral bankruptcy"

DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT

But, Atrios, Why Are You Focused On Larry Summers?

Because the man has infested "Democratic" circles for decades, despite being a horribly corrupt conservative bigoted asshole responsible for numerous catastrophic decisions.

But, Atrios, isn't that all in the past?  Wasn't he rejected by Biden for any prominent role?

Lawrence H. Summers is a distinguished senior fellow at American Progress.

Yes Larry has plenty of Dem detractors, but the way of dealing with him for years was to keep giving him fancy titles, in hopes of keeping him on board, instead of just booting him into the sun.  This has never worked. It has just empowered him to wreck thingss.

America's Worst Humans

Zac Segal

Committee To Save The World

Who do we think the "she" is here?

*2019*

Akshually, It's Ephebophilia

The only question was who would go there first.

Morning

Thready Thursday.

Wednesday Night

 Rock on.

Welp

As Karoline Leavitt concludes her press briefing and walks off, @andrewfeinberg.com asks: "What was the president doing with Virginia Giuffre for hours at Epstein's house?" She did not respond.

[image or embed]

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona.bsky.social) 12 November 2025 at 19:20

Go For It

The more Trump, the better, I say.

President Donald Trump’s advisers have had conversations about him traveling the country to give economy-focused speeches as they privately weigh a number of strategies to improve his standing on the issue, administration officials told CNN.

DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT

And Then

I'd be more into the "we can't do shit until we take back Congress" strategy if I didn't know it would be followed by the "we can't do shit until we take back the presidency" strategy.

Yes, yes, I know, no magic wands, but don't tell me Hakeem Jeffries is the man for the hour.

2017

Larry Summers explaining his naughty joke to his pal Jeff (pdf). Click to embiggen as always.

The naughty joke is the first highlighted bit. As for the second...

DoorDash

 

Don't See How Donnie Two Scoops Wriggles Out Of This One

 Seems bad.

Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender whose death by suicide has spawned intense scrutiny of the high-profile people he knew, mentioned Donald Trump by name multiple times in private correspondence over the last 15 years with an associate and an author in Trump’s orbit, according to newly released emails from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.

The emails to longtime Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking after Epstein’s death, and the author Michael Wolff include conversations in which Epstein asserts Trump spent significant time with a woman whom Oversight Democrats describe as a victim of Epstein’s sex trafficking. The emails also include a message in which Epstein asserts Trump “knew about the girls” — seemingly in reference to Trump’s claim that he kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club for poaching young women who worked there, according to the newly released emails.

But What Did They Win

Yes you can argue, not necessarily convincingly, that it will be good for the November elections - a year from now - but at what cost.

They assert that in hammering away at the extension of health care subsidies that are slated to expire at the end of next month, they managed to thrust Mr. Trump and Republicans onto the defensive, elevating a political issue that has long been a major weakness for them.

..

And in holding out for weeks while Republicans refused to extend the health tax credits and Mr. Trump went to court to deny low-income Americans SNAP food benefits, Democrats also honed their main message going into 2026: that Republicans who control all of government have done nothing to address voters’ concerns that the cost of living is too high.

If by some miracle the take the House and Senate and then send "nasty" bills to Mr. Trump who will happily shut down the government again, will they go on TV and say there's no point in trying to stand up to him, again? 

Morning

Wacky Wednesday.

Happy Hour

get happy

Standards

For one, they try to prevent you from getting sued, but I guess it isn't Bari's money anyway.

“I’ve been hearing that standards will be eliminated or severely cut back. Bari has told people that she wants to get rid of standards and is shocked that they have so much power. She also asked openly, ‘What’s the point of standards?’” one CBS News insider claimed.

Optimism!

The optimistic take is that Republicans have fucked health care up so much that people will be mad. Which, I guess, but..

The president was back at it on Monday, promising an imminent solution to America’s growing health care crisis — on which he has repeatedly failed to deliver in the past.

“I tell you, we’re going to be working on that very hard over the next short period of time, where the people get the money,” President Donald Trump said, referring specifically to Americans thrown into crisis by expiring enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies. “We’re talking about trillions and trillions of dollars, where the people get the money,” he added, without giving details about a vague idea to send cash to affected policyholders to replace subsidies while bypassing insurance firms.

Trump’s off-the-cuff answer was a typical example of the waffle he sometimes conjures to escape a jam in a photo-op. But he could not disguise the downside of his “win” in the government shutdown, which looks set to end after Democrats failed to secure their top demand: the extension of those enhanced Obamacare subsidies.

Trump and Republicans once again own the issue of health care, with millions of citizens — not just those on ACA plans — afflicted by rising premiums and high deductibles against the backdrop of a wider cost-of-living crisis. And just as in his first term, Trump lacks a comprehensive, detailed plan to bring relief to citizens who lack health care, who can’t afford the plans they have or who know that the loss of a job could leave them without any coverage at all.

If the GOP cannot fix the immediate issue of the subsidies — and convince voters they have a serious solution to this and other affordability questions — their 2026 midterm election hopes could take a dive.

Ethered

There — I fixed the analysis so it is actually accurate to what happened when 8 Senate Dems caved instead of keeping up the righteous fight to deliver lower health care costs for Americans.

[image or embed]

— Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (@jayapal.house.gov) November 11, 2025 at 2:09 AM

Click to embiggen as always. 

"Far-Left"

Genuinely interested in the New York Times style guide for the use of that adjective.

Following up on some good @nypost reporting. https://t.co/hosIykQcN9

— Ben Oreskes (@boreskes) November 10, 2025

NYT's reporters are famous for not crediting other outlets, but some of them love to give a nod to the NYPost.

Good Job, Chuck

If the good senators (all of them) didn't let this all get rushed through with unanimous consent, they could've had more than 5 minutes to see what was in the thing they were voting for.

Remember this next time they tell you that the slow and measured speed of the world's Greatest Deliberative Body, the cooling saucer, is important.

...you too, Chris.

This is outrageous. Another reason the CR should not pass.

It creates a new offense, tailored perfectly to allow Trump to write a government check of millions of dollars to 8 Republican Senators.

GOP Leader Thune just made 8 of his colleagues rich. Off taxpayer money. https://t.co/1gOwplvsnw

— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) November 11, 2025

Morning

Get your morning on.

Happy Hour

It is time.

WE WILL NEVER STOP FIGHTING FOR YOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUU

Democrats have been fighting for months to address America's healthcare crisis

For the millions who will lose coverage
For people with cancer who won't get the care they need
For working families who can't afford to pay $25K more a year for healthcare

We will keep fighting

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) November 10, 2025

Democratic Whip Dick Durbin

I know it's much less of a real role than it can be in parliamentary systems, but the Whip is supposed to round up votes in support of the Leader's agenda.

My point is not that he is bad at his job. My point is that he is very good at it!

Yell Before It Is Too Late

I do wish people would understand more that members of congress and their staffs leak "things which might happen" to the press for two reasons: as trial balloon (by the people pro the thing happening) and as warning (by the people against).

You have to yell at them before they do the thing.  It is too late after.

I don't imagine that me yelling at them on this blog matters much, but behind the scenes, powerful interests are yelling at them constantly, generally pushing them in the wrong direction.

Or you can just trust that Chuck Schumer is doing the right thing, updated hourly, because he has such a consistently good record recently.

Just ask the Baileys. 

Sure Why Not

I'm sure this will get as much attention when it doesn't happen, like the "DOGE Dividend."

President Trump said Sunday that most Americans would receive a $2,000 dividend payment as a result of his administration’s tariffs levied against foreign countries.

Though I guess this is a setup to yell at the Supreme Court when they take your $2,000 checks away.

What's It All About Then

This was all about the filibuster.

— Karen Tumulty (@ktumulty) November 10, 2025

And not because of the fears of what an unrestrained Republican Senate would do, but because of fears that their own excuses for inaction and their favorite tool of responsibility avoidance would evaporate.

I have watched the Senate for years, and you really can't be too cynical about their reasons for doing what they do. It isn't that every senator starts out like that, but the institutional culture is extremely strong and deviators are punished. They haze uppity freshmen - including regularly leaking bullshit to journalists who take the word of senior senators over those freshmen - until they get in line. 

It's basically a cult. Playing along is the easy way and it's definitely the only way to get a committee chair by the time you are 74.

I Don't Like Being Lied To

I originally wrote this post as if caving was inevitable, and included a lot of very mean things that would make senators cry, but then thought "better" of it and deleted most of the mean things. Silly me!

Many of you seemed to be commenting on the original, deleted bits! Maybe they were posted somehow.

Anyway, whatever their reasons, this was not 8 "rogue" senators or even 10. It was a lot of them with grinning Chuck Schumer's blessing. They took the weekend to orchestrate the whole thing and make sure everyone played their hero/villain roles appropriately.

No senator who isn't calling for Schumer to be replaced should be listened to, because they are all being dishonest. That is, I believe, all of them, as of this moment.

Monday

Fool me once, shame on, shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again.

Gotta Admit, He's Not Wrong

Though of course he has no idea why and they have no interest in improving it.

Sure Why Not

We'll see if Axios is correct!

Senate Democrats on Sunday indicated they are ready to advance a package of bills that could end the government shutdown, multiple sources told Axios.

Why it matters: It is the most significant movement toward a bipartisan breakthrough in the talks to re-open the government in over a month.

At least 10 Senate Democrats are expected to support a procedural motion to advance a package of spending bills and a short term funding measure, multiple sources from both parties told Axios.

The deal would include a promised vote [in the Senate only] on extending Obamacare tax credits in December, the sources said.

Please clap.

Certainly Not The Best, Probably Not The Brightest

Welp:

“Reporting this up the chain was a hot potato: No one wanted to touch it,” the senior official said. They believed fear of being perceived as overly critical of Israel — whose supporters wield significant political power — drove that thinking. Biden officials worried that attaching their names to a recommendation to limit American support for Tel Aviv would hinder their future career prospects, the former senior official said, “which is in itself appalling.”

Eventually, high-level concerns about the information spurred discussions that included Biden. McGurk led the pushback to reducing support, two officials said; the controversial Biden adviser often behaved as “Israel’s lawyer” when U.S. officials questioned the country, another senior Biden-era colleague told HuffPost.

Upheld 6-3

There have been some completely insane "religious freedom rulings" but one suspects "banning prayer at a protest" will somehow be fine.

The Surrender Caucus

Polls show people don't blame the Dems, but if I were a not-getting-paid federal worker, I would certainly blame them for doing this to me and *then* caving for absolutely nothing.

At Thursday’s meeting, they told their caucus colleagues that they now had ten votes to re-open the government in exchange for no real Republican concessions. At that, much of the rest of the caucus went ballistic, and some of the supposed ten said that, in fact, they were not willing to vote for any such deal.

The leaders of the proposed Democratic cave-in, Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, both of New Hampshire, and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, then backed down. Only after that did Schumer go public with his proposal to reopen the government in exchange for a one-year extension of the ACA subsidies, along with a bipartisan commission to figure out a long-term solution.

Republican Senate Leader John Thune (R-SD), who had been led to expect a Democratic capitulation, first accused Schumer of “browbeating” his colleagues but then said later Saturday that talks were continuing.

What was the point of all of this, then? Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing (if they went through with this). 

I am sure they are telling themselves stories about how they have "raised healthcare as an issue" or whatever, but that's bullshit of course.

Morning

Sunday funday.

Saturday Evening

Enjoy

Saturday Long Read

enjoy 

A taste:

Every bit of this is disheartening on its face. But it’s actually worse than any first-blush irritation, that familiar annoyance that comes from encountering still another textbook exercise in witless triangulation. Because what this sort of reporting ultimately means is that if you have enough money to get somebody, anybody, to produce a white paper for you, which you can then put on some think-tank stationery? Then, my friend, you are ready to enter into the rushing current of elite reportage. For no matter how unhinged the position you’ve taken, or paid someone marginally credentialed to sketch out on your behalf—“Can Woman Think?: We Investigate,” “Is the Negro a Man: A Reconsideration”—that opinion will, by virtue of such provenance, possess all needed evidentiary gravity for the Times. And then some. (Only yesterday the Times ran this actual story, which is not parody.)

That's Your Audience

Fine, liberals are horribly intolerant. You still have to sell to them, the people who might buy your product.

Like other conservatives interviewed for this article, Ms. Bowers contended that left-wing politics had crept into the Kennedy Center, warping it so that it became a place that was not welcoming for all. And yet, she would not accept that Mr. Trump had injected his own politics into the place, which has driven away audiences.

“That characterization is a little unfair,” she said. “In the past, I don’t think that everyone felt welcome, to be frank with you. I know that lots of conservatives did not.”

Asked why people were not coming to the Kennedy Center as much anymore, Ms. Daravi, the head of communications, replied with two words.

“Liberal intolerance.”

Obviously businesses (and nonprofit arts orgs) don't always get it right, but generally conervatives don't understand that they didn't do all the 'woke shit' to please Joe Biden, they did it to sell widgets and tickets.