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…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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…

I don’t know what’s going to happen in the special election in Tennessee. It’s a heavily Republican district. The guy who just retired, Republican Rep. Mark Green, won his 2024 election by 21 points. The Drumpfster won that district – Tennessee’s 7th – by a similar margin. This election should be a walk for Republicans.

But the Republican, Matt Van Epps, is running on, “Ain’t Trump great?” at a time when NOBODY thinks Donny is doing great. Van Epps is promising to support Donny in every way. Like all of the other Republicans in Congress, he provides his own knee pads and has had his spine surgically removed to better serve his Precious.

Meanwhile, the Democrat, State Rep. Aftyn Behn, is running on the economy. The race is looking close enough that both team’s national committees are spending big money. Van Epps’ campaign asked Donny to come to Tennessee and Behn’s team got an appearance by Kamala, which may or may not be a good thing.

There’s a second conservative in this race, Jon Thorp, though he’s running as an independent. A normally Democrat-supporting PAC is pushing Republican voters to vote for Thorp, claiming Van Epps is a RINO. That’s a “Republican In Name Only.” There are also DINOS. Millions of dollars are suddenly being thrown at this campaign.

I don’t have high confidence the Democrats can flip a gerrymandered district that supported the Republicans by more than 20 points, but it says something that the district is seen as “in play.” If anyone can vaporize a 20+ point advantage in only ten short months, it’s Donny…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Donny is suggesting he’ll send everyone a “tariff dividend” of $2,000. He won’t. He hasn’t made enough in tariffs to send everyone $2,000. Worse, now that his dinosaur-like brain is beginning to register the damage his tariffs have done to the economy, he’s going to lower some of them, reducing the amount of money available to send out. But he loves that $2,000 dollar number, doesn’t he?

It came up again with health care. Now, instead of the ACA supplements Americans need, he says he want’s to give each person $2,000 to cover their own health insurance. So, first question, is that the tariff dividend AND the health care cash? Is he promising to send everyone $4,000? Or is it the same $2,000, promised for two different things? Is that annually? No one knows, but it seems like it’s intended to be a one-time good deal. $2,000 to cover health care in the US – for the rest of your life. That seems like a workable plan. If you’re rich…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, the great negotiator is offering his failed position on Ukraine again. The Drumpfster keeps offering up the same options: Ukraine gives Putin what he wants, and in return, Putin accepts it. That’s a hell of a plan, and for reasons no MAGA mind can fathom, Ukraine isn’t interested. When Ukraine rejects the surrender agreement, Donny just shuffles the talking points and re-issues it as a “new plan.”

The latest “new plan” being proposed is being described by many people as a Russian wish list. Some are saying it was written by Russia and translated by the US. The US denies that claim. Yeah, that’s convincing. Initially, Donny warned Ukraine they had to accept this plan by Thursday, but the regime have since walked that all the way back to “it’s just a proposal, at this point.” When all is said and done, it looks like there’s no “peace plan” at all…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But speaking of Russians writing things, the latest revelation coming from Musk’s racist website, Brand X, indicates that many top MAGA accounts are actually foreigners manipulating Americans. X added a feature showing the country of origin on X accounts and people started using the feature to look up the origins of popular MAGA accounts. Russians are on the list. So is Chile, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Morocco, Eastern Europe, and Thailand.

Look, it’s possible there’s a MAGA living overseas for some reason who maintains a pro-MAGA account, but I’d bet the lion’s share of these accounts are actual foreigners who intend actual harm to the US – and they’re achieving their goal by feeding MAGA derangement and fear…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yeah, the NFL. Specifically, the Niners. More specifically, Brandon Aiyuk. He’s a wide receiver. (For the uninitiated, he catches passes.) He’s very good at it. In 2023, Aiyuk was ranked seventh in the NFL. He wanted to be paid accordingly. He actually wanted to be paid a little better. It turned into a conflict between him and the team. He ended up getting a four year, $120 million dollar contract. $30 million dollars a year to catch a ball? And $27 million for 2026 was guaranteed! Yeah, America’s priorities are right in order, aren’t they?

Anyway, Aiyuk came out for the next season and promptly got seriously hurt. Really seriously. He missed the rest of that season and hasn’t played a snap this season. All of this is standard stuff in the NFL. It’s a violent game. People get hurt, sometimes badly. The team, the player, and the fans all just wait until the player can return and we get back to it. But for some reason, as yet undisclosed, Aiyuk hasn’t been doing what he’s supposed to do.

This caused the Niners to void the guaranteed money in his contract, a notoriously difficult thing to do. Now it looks like Aiyuk will be leaving the Niners and it could well be sooner rather than later. Aiyuk was a great player before his knee got destroyed. He might never be the same. That, too, is common in the NFL. Whatever team picks Aiyuk up will almost certainly be desperate at the Wide Receiver position. So desperate, they’ll take a chance on Aiyuk. But it looks like the Niners won’t be on that hook, after all.

Aiyuk is ONLY a question mark at this point. He’ll want lots of money because he played one good season, but he’s been out two years and he really (I mean, really) damaged his knee. I’m kind of glad the Niners get to move forward without having to put up with any more of his rehab shenanigans. The team might be losing a very talented receiver. They’ll definitely be losing a big problem. That’s okay with me…

Ever since Zohran Mamdani got elected Mayor of New York City, every corporate talking head from across the dial has been required to come out loudly in favor of “Free Market” Capitalism, as though there’s some threat to it out there. The most recent I saw was Bill Maher on his show ‘Real Time’ from his November 14 broadcast. He went so far as to show a nighttime satellite photo of South Korea, brightly lit up because of all of that beautiful Capitalism it has, like this:

See? Only Capitalists can afford lights, right? THEN, he showed a nighttime satellite photo of North Korea, so dark it looked like they had to pool their resources to buy even the single light bulb they share as a nation:

Pretty convincing stuff, eh? Well, unless you know that North Korea is a Communist nation. It’s not Democratic Socialist at all. Trying to convince me that Democratic Socialism is bad by showing me the failures of Communism is a bit like me trying to convince you ice hockey sucks because that “strategic battle” between the pitcher and hitter is pretty boring. Did I convince you? HOW? Telling you something I don’t care for about baseball has nothing to do with ice hockey. If it convinces you, it’s because you know nothing of hockey or baseball.

It’s weird that Maher might have made such an error, isn’t it? Love him or hate him, I think everyone would agree that Bill Maher is not a stupid person. Still, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and pretend he made an honest mistake because the alternative is to point out that he’s intentionally trying to deceive by knowingly presenting false information, more commonly known as “lying.” If one has to lie in order to defend their position, their position probably doesn’t deserve to be defended, right?

Do you know the happiest country on Earth, the country with the overall happiest population? Finland, a Democratic Socialist state, though they call it ‘The Nordic Model.’ (It’s technically listed as a Constitutional Monarchy.) It’s a mixed economy. But no country has included more elements of Democratic Socialism and they’re the happiest country on Earth eight years running now. Besides, NO country is perfectly whatever it claims to be.

Take the awesome and perfectly perfect US. We claim – no, we insist – that we’re a “Free Market” Capitalist nation and nothing else, ever. Well, until some corporation makes some catastrophic Capitalistic mistake and runs, hat in hand, to the US government to demand a little socialism in the form of a financial bailout. It happens here in the Greatest Country On Earth™ FAR more often than you might think. The American corporate motto seems to be ‘Socialism for me, brutal Free Market Capitalism for thee.’

Oh, and for Bill Maher, since I know he’s probably reading, here’s a nighttime photo of Finland, all lit up:

In fact, that’s all of Scandinavia, all Democratic Socialist and all lit up. Using the Maher standard of measuring the success of a given economic system based on how brightly a country shines at night, it looks like Democratic Socialism is doing okay…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I can’t say I feel badly, exactly, about what’s happening to Marjorie Taylor Greene. She seems to have gained access to more accurate information recently. I don’t know her source, but she has been coming out on the right side of an increasing number of issues, recently, and it’s weirding me out. She has become SO fact-oriented, the Trumpster kicked her out of MAGA. (“No facts in MAGA!”) Now she’s getting death threats and other abuse.

Nobody deserves death threats or other abuse for expressing their opinions, right or wrong. Still, it’s nice that she’s getting an opportunity to see how her team, Team Evil, treats people with whom they disagree. I’ll tell you this, though: if she wants to join Team USA, I think we should let her. I do not, can not, forget who and how she’s been, but Maya Angelou taught us, “When you know better, do better.” MTG seems to know better, now, and she seems to be trying to do better. Right thinking people ought to support that…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“It’s not just that they’re doing things that I don’t agree with politically, it’s that there’s so much malice and vindictiveness attached to all of it….” Bill Bryson, author of ‘A Short History of Everything.’

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here’s the thing about the MAGA anger that 47 isn’t doing what he promised. This is the first time they’ve known, known without question, that Donny is lying to them. I mean, when he says he and Xi have a great relationship, who can say? We certainly weren’t in the room while they were talking. Maybe they do. ARE fishermen off the coast of Venezuela drug runners? Donny said they were and I’ve never had the chance to talk to them. Maybe they were.

They can do that all day on a wide-ranging variety of subjects. Pretty much everything, in fact, they can’t or won’t check. But they don’t have to check to see if prices are lower or higher. It smacks them in the face every time they walk into a store. They’ve still got Donny’s whiny voice in their heads, “Prices are low, the lowest they’ve ever been. We’ve got the best prices.” Meanwhile, they’re buying off-brands or not at all because things are so expensive.

I suspect that as they internalize the reality that Donny is straight-up lying to them about the economy, they’ll start to see other areas where he may have been less than honest. How about job losses? Over the course of last month, I’ve seen many headlines about larger companies laying off workers. How many? 100 people! 1,000 people! 10,000 people! 466,000 people! 2 million people! A trillion people! (I learned that from Donny. BIG numbers are better.)

Okay, 153,000. That’s the estimated, actual number. It’s estimated because the regime isn’t offering that information any more. (We get excuses, instead.) The actual numbers make Donny look bad, so he stopped reporting them. But I’d bet some of those 153,000 people were MAGA and when Donny tells them the economy is booming, they wonder why it exploded all over them. In short, Donny’s lies aren’t distant anymore. They’re not about things MAGA doesn’t understand and may or may not be true. Donny’s lies are hitting home, THEIR homes and for the first time, they see it…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Big day for the Niners today. Brock Purdy, their starting Quarterback who has missed a ton of games with a bum foot, is coming back. So is one of their better Wide Receivers, Ricky Pearsall. That should improve the offense. Well, at wide-out anyway. Backup Quarterback Mac Jones did a VERY good job while Brock was out. I hope Brock plays well or the QB controversy gets somewhat louder.

The Defense is still the big question mark. The team has lost their veteran leaders for the season. They’re playing with backups and rookies. The up side? They have a very good Defensive Coordinator in Robert Salah, and they have a soft stretch in their schedule. It gives them something like five weeks to tighten up and get it together. Here we go, Niners…

Okay, help me out, here. I mean, make this make sense. By now, we all know about Donny’s murder spree on so-called “Venezuelan drug runners,” likely really just fishermen. Team Evil sees a boat in the Caribbean and they blow it up, insisting the boat was full of drugs and drug runners from Venezuela. Normally, those attacks kill everyone aboard, but not the most recent attack, as of this writing.

In the most recent attack, two of the four people aboard survived. I see, this morning, that the US is going to “repatriate” the two “to their home countries of Columbia and Ecuador for prosecution and punishment.” Great. He randomly attacks boats out fishing or on a pleasure trip, killing everyone aboard because he wants to pretend he’s being tough on drugs, then finds out he accidentally killed people from Columbia and Ecuador? Now Columbia and Ecuador have to be dragged into this just because the Drumpfster can’t confess error?

He has yet to offer any evidence of his claims beyond his well-known prevaricating mouth, but this has been an effort to ramp up MAGA anger at Venezuela, for some reason. Discovering his most recent victims were from Columbia and Ecuador just adds to the confusion. I don’t know why he’s not going to prosecute them here, but I guess it’s because there’s no evidence. Even if there had been, he blew it up.

So let’s sum up, shall we? He kills a bunch of people on boats, insisting they’re dangerous and evil drug runners. He actually captures two of the dangerous and evil drug runners. Now he’s sending those same dangerous and evil drug runners back to their home countries – specifically, NOT Venezuela – and just… setting them free? That doesn’t seem like a very effective drug-battling strategy, if you ask me…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Remember all the way back to, um, Saturday? When Americans held their ‘No Kings’ protest and the President of the United States decided to bomb the US in an attempt to intimidate protestors that didn’t intimidate protestors at all? Yeah, that time. The US fired artillery shells across I-5, claiming they were celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Marines, which occurs on November 10 so why wouldn’t you recognize it on October 18?

The military insisted it would be perfectly safe. GOP Representative Darrell Issa, who represents a district east of the base, called it “a spiteful publicity stunt” by Newsom. In a statement to the New York Times on Saturday, a spokesperson for Just Dumb Vance, William Martin, said Newsom misled the public about the safety risk.

That seems… less than supportive of Gavin Newsom’s call to close the highway for awhile during the live-firing-across-a-highway exercise. Newsom said it wasn’t just wrong – it was dangerous. He added that the President – or in this case, trump – “…using our military to intimidate people you disagree with isn’t strength – it’s reckless, it’s disrespectful, and it’s beneath the office he holds.” So who was right?

Well, this morning, there’s a report that one of the oh-so-safe artillery shells exploded early – right over the highway, in fact. Shrapnel rained down on a Highway Patrol car and a motorcycle that were part of JD Vance’s detail. Fortunately, nobody was hurt – because Newsom had closed the highway. It WAS a stupid and dangerous stunt and there WAS a problem that could have hurt or killed people. Gavin was right. Team Evil was wrong – again!

And STILL, ‘No Kings’ came off without a hitch, supported by millions of Americans nationwide…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, the Niners sure served up a game yesterday, didn’t they? They’re not exactly inspiring confidence during the week as we hear report after report about injuries. This guy’s hurt. That guy’s out. What happened? Who’s next? The reports leave the fans feeling like the team will hobble out on walkers and do the best they can. Then they come out and beat the Atlanta Falcons 20-10. It was… convincing…

Christian McCaffrey came out and played so well he looked like, well, like Christian McCaffrey in his prime. McCaffrey has been struggling this season. Apparently, the Niners finally changed their run scheme and McCaffrey, um… ran with it. My first thought was, “Why didn’t they do that sooner?” But the reality is, you get it when you get it and I’m glad they got it now.

On the other side of the ball, we all thought the defense was going to collapse after the loss of Fred Warner and Nick Bosa. Well, that’s what we get for thinking, isn’t it? The defense looked sharp and tight and played very well. Very well, indeed. No, they weren’t perfect but they were very good. As I watched the replacements command the field, I thought, “Hey, Bosa and Warner once played their first down in the NFL, too.” Maybe the replacements are just as good. We’ll see.

Last season, we Niner fans were burned so often by our kicker, we seem to have PTSD. The kicker comes on to the field, Niner fans groan, “Oh, no.” But that was our LAST kicker, whose name I will not mention. Our current kicker, Eddy Piñeiro, has been perfect on field goals and only missed one kick all season. We fans need to get over ourselves.

And, listen. I’m a Brock Purdy fan. I’ve been a Brock Purdy fan since he exploded onto the scene. He’s a very good player. But Mac Jones is better. He’s making better reads. He makes them faster. He’s got very good accuracy and zip on the ball. He has a deep ball Purdy lacks. In fact, the only thing I think Purdy has on Jones is his ability to move. Jones isn’t a statue, but he’s not as mobile as Purdy.

It’s still Purdy’s job, of course. He JUST got the fat payday. The Niners are on the hook for that money now and they’re not going to let Purdy go and absorb that loss. But it says something that the deciding factor is the money and not the on-field performance. If it was strictly on-field performance, I’d say Mac Jones has the edge.

I say again, Purdy doesn’t suck. I’m not going be too upset that we end up with him under center. But I’m going to be sad to see Jones take his talents to another team next season. I actually and honestly think he’s the better Quarterback…