The first thing I see when I open the newspaper this morning? The lede is about the shooting in Australia at Bondi Beach. A father and son murder team killed 15 people and injured dozens more in an antisemitic attack on people celebrating the first night of Hanukah. I noticed a short-lived effort on the part of gun death advocates celebrating that the shooting didn’t happen in the US and claiming that “it happens everywhere.” For the record, Australia has strict gun laws and mass shootings are rare.

Meanwhile, there was a shooting at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. As of this writing, the shooter is still on the loose. THEN, there’s a story about how Donny’s budget cuts have threatened a crime-riddled town in Louisiana plagued by gun violence.

It’s just a lot of violence to wake up to, so I thought I’d… highlight it and put it at the top? It’s the world we live in. I think it’s getting worse, not better…

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Wow. On the topic of violence, Rob Reiner and wife, Michele, murdered? That was the last thing I expected to see when I got up this morning. Reiner was an outspoken critic of Dim Leader. So far, I know nothing of the details but it says something about the society in which we live today that the question pops into one’s mind, unbidden. Was this a political murder? It’s possible. It’s also possible it was something else so I’ll wait and see. I was just shocked by this…

UPDATE: Reiner’s son, Nick, has been arrested in connection with this event. Tragic. Is it a relief that it wasn’t some political thing? Yeah, but not much…

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Have you seen that photo? It’s a big talking point right now. The right is being told this is a photo of Donny with the Miss USA pageant contestants. Maybe it is. If it’s from the island, a survivor needs to speak up and say so. Either way, though, this photo doesn’t implicate 47 in anything. Redacting the faces is dramatic, but everyone is dressed and nobody appears to touching anything untoward. So what happens if it IS just a photo of him with pageant contestants? Won’t the right use that to undermine all of the other evidence that supports the idea that Donny was in deep with Jeffrey?

That’s the thing that bothers me most about things being tossed out, presented as one thing that turn out to be another. It makes it harder and harder to know what’s true and it’s so unnecessary. Donny is the personification of all seven of the Seven Deadly Sins. Nobody has to make up terrible things he’s done. He’s got plenty of real ones. When someone does make them up, it doesn’t harm him, it protects him.

What we do know about that photo, though, is that it was released by the Epstein estate along with something like 95,000 other photos. It seems weird that Epstein would keep a photo of Donny with some contestants, but lots of things about Epstein seem weird. Donny DID own the pageants. He is said to have violated the women’s privacy during the pageants by “inspecting” facilities while the young women were changing clothes. Maybe that explains Jeffrey’s interest.

This photo, however, is going to be a bit tougher to explain away. This is a condom package from Epstein Island. It bears the Drumpfster’s likeness with a brag that sounds just like the “man” himself. Donny is trying to downplay his involvement with Epstein and prevent any evidence from coming out that might implicate himself. The harder he tries, the more it seems Donny wasn’t just a client at Epstein Island. He seems to have been part of the team.

I don’t have enough information to be sure. Maybe there are condom packages with images of Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Steve Bannon, and/or Alan Dershowitz. Maybe. Maybe those packages simply weren’t released. But we all know this game. If the Dems release something they think is incriminating, the GOP works to dismiss it and then releases something of their own. I suspect, because we’ve all seen the ‘Donny Condom,’ if a ‘Clinton Condom’ existed, we would have seen that by now, too…

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The Bill of Rights became law on this date in 1791. Those were good things we had, there, rights. It’s too bad a small handful of wealthy miscreants decided we had had them too long. It’s just one of many down sides to living in a fascist authoritarian regime. I thought I should mention it in remembrance of what we’ve lost…

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I want to do a follow-up on yesterday’s NFL football. The Niners won, which they needed to do. There was an outside chance they could have improved their position considerably if certain very unlikely things happened and that was fun, but those unlikely things didn’t happen so they ended up just holding their own – but that’s good enough to make the playoffs at this point.

Next week the Niners are playing the Indianapolis Colts, now led by 44-year-old QB Phillip Rivers He came out of retirement to play after the Colts lost their other Quarterbacks to injury. Physically, he didn’t look like he was in game shape but he played well. They almost beat a very good Seahawks team. That means the Niners have their work cut out for them.

The Chiefs were eliminated from playoff contention yesterday. That hasn’t happened in years. Worse, for them, their star Quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, tore his ACL with about two minutes left in the game, while he was trying to drive the team downfield for a chance to even the score. He’ll probably have surgery and miss most of next season. As I watched the Chiefs get closer and closer to elimination, I noticed an upsurge in injuries to the team. I began to wonder if the idea they were at risk of being eliminated somehow increased the chance of injury. It’s just speculation.

The Dallas Cowboys were essentially eliminated, too. There IS a chance – 6%-8% – so I can’t say they’re out, but they’re out. They have to win all of the rest of their games AND they need help from other teams. I’m okay with both the Chiefs and the Cowboys watching the playoffs from home…