Category Archives: Uncategorized

Readers may or may not have noticed that Netflix is acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery for …

The cash and stock transaction is valued at $27.75 per WBD share (subject to a collar as detailed below), with a total enterprise value of approximately $82.7 billion (equity value of $72.0 billion). The transaction is expected to close after the previously announced separation of WBD’s Global Networks division, Discovery Global, into a new publicly-traded company, which is now expected to be completed in Q3 2026.

The numbers involved are a bit eye-watering, but otherwise it’s just the usual business maneuvering that goes on everyday.

And then this comes along:

Paramount Skydance (PSKY) announced on Monday a bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) in an all-cash deal worth $30 per share, or roughly $108.4 billion, as the company moves to top Netflix’s (NFLX) deal struck last week to acquire the storied studio. [yahoo!finance]

The CEOs involved are always important, but now it’s a step up in this case because …

The tentative deal between Warner Bros. Discovery and Netflix, agreed to by the boards of both companies, has yet to receive approval under the federal government’s antitrust review process, where success is far from guaranteed.

My bold. And who runs intruder Skydance Paramount?

David Ellison (born January 9, 1983) is the son of Oracle Corporation co-founder Larry Ellison, a centibillionaire. He is an American film producer serving as chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Paramount Skydance since August 2025. [Wikipedia]

And Larry Ellison is fabulously rich and famously ruthless.

I shan’t be surprised to hear that Skydance wins the day by, effectively, bribing the Administration to give them a pass on an acquisition, while denying Netflix permission for same. Yes, Ellison makes Trump look poor, but it’s also not a coincidence that Netflix is representative of change, a virtual icon of streaming of entertainment, while Paramount is closer to being Old Guard – and thus more likely to be closer to the President’s heart. Although Ellison didn’t make his money in movies, but in database technology. A small contradiction there.

Or you can just call it mercantilism and be done with it.

In any case, it’ll be shrill corruption, and I expect it to occur. I wonder how the bribe will be handled, and how the GOP will justify it. Sausage making at its best.

I’ve meditated on the proposition that, as generations pass, adults are fulfilling the responsibility to raise children to be adults less and less effectively. Various societies used to have tests, implicit or explicit, to pass into adulthood, and perhaps there are still some; I’m not an anthropologist.

But certainly not here in the States, outside of some sects.

Such tests are designed to impress upon the candidate the attitudes considered proper to a successful society. Whether they are appropriate and successful, again, I cannot say. But Erick Erickson’s observations of both left and right actually strike a bell for me:

The Biden Administration was overrun with white upper-income progressives from the non-profit world who’d never had a real job and could not relate to the real world.

The Trump Administration is overrun with the kids from wealthy white elites who live their lives online and have concluded that Twitter is real life because that’s where they spend their time.

The Biden Administration got radicalized by the white guilt of progressives. The Trump Administration got radicalized by an online horde of white kids who have convinced themselves that if it is buzzing on Twitter it must be real.

The elites and the experts deserve a lot of blame for people distrusting them, disregarding them, and discrediting them. But we’ve traded experts trained in a field of study for experts who learned everything they know from Twitter. We’ve gone from the elite of Harvard Yard to repeat residents of a Holiday Inn Express.

It does seem that way, doesn’t it? And Twitter, et al, have imparted important information to the extremists: They are not alone, and here’s more conspiracy theories that must be true, because they’ve been published.

As observed by many pundits, social media is not a communications medium for which we’ve evolved. Of course, that’s true of many mediums, but the lack of negative feedback, which discourages lying, hyperbole, and malice, even with primordial predecessors such as the old Coast to Coast radio program, and it being available 24 hours a day, may constitute a metaphorical further distance from normality than seen before.

And so we become burdened with arrogant young know-it-alls who only know social media. In my surlier moments I suppose I should add Just Like Me.

It’s something to think about, although I can’t imagine how to correct it. From what I read it seems the Ivy League colleges are on the edge of becoming little more than cesspits of autocratic confirmation bias vortices with way too much money to die sooner rather than later.

But we shall see.

We saw The Murder on the Links at Theater in the Round tonight. To be brief, we enjoyed it, but won’t remember it tomorrow – it’s not captivating. The fact that the murder happens on a golf course is more or less irrelevant; maybe Murder With Competing Theories would have been better.

But a comprehensible plot, a few fun twists, and accents that weren’t the worst in the world meant it was all OK.

I think this Axios article may give too much credit to the masters of MAGA:

“Double down”: Trump’s base sees ultra-MAGA as answer to GOP stumbles

Confronted with a growing string of GOP underperformances in off-year elections, key pro-Trump activists see more MAGA — not less — as the only solution.

Why it matters: The reaction suggests a movement uninterested in grappling with the limits of its appeal — a departure from the panicked introspection both parties have traditionally undergone after off-year disappointments.

Two observations:

1. True believers have the arrogance to believe themselves in possession of absolute truth, and consequently compromise is evil. This pushes MAGA leaders, and some of the base, into blaming past failures on insufficient purity – a sure path to Hell, for those of us with a religious bent.
2. The leaders of MAGA have been, for the most part, extreme figures excluded from real power & prestige until their entry into MAGA. If MAGA moves towards more acceptable positions, they lost power. I don’t seem them permitting such an attack on their position – they’ll gamble they can get enough of the country to accept them. What do they personally have to lose? Very little. Sure, they might still lose their power if they gamble on moving the country, but the alternative of becoming more reasonable puts their positions at risk.

These two thoughts will better describe how the MAGA leadership will careen into a flaming abyss of terminal obscurity.

[h/t Daily Kos‘ Greg Dworkin, from whom I grabbed this as I don’t care to give Axios my email address.]

I may have said the left was disappointed to lose the TN-07 special election on Tuesday, but right wing pundit Erick Erickson, on deeper analysis, appears to be horrified at the implications of a mere 8 point victory margin:

It is also fair to say that in a district that Trump won by twenty-two points just over 12 months ago, the Republican should not have won by less than ten points with turnout at roughly 2022 levels.

If we get to the midterms and every district shifts the way TN-07 did last night, the Democrats would pick up around 43 seats. Every single county in the district shifted left, some more than others.

Much like the Democrats, it doesn’t appear to have crossed Erickson’s mind to recommend Party reform, like, get rid of Trump and all his minions, adherents, and admirers, and get back to responsible governance. Yes, that might gut the Party, but moderate Republicans, who perhaps Erickson despises as he’s a purist with no skin in the game, should then return – although not in time for 2026 elections.

Speaking of the Democrats, will they reform before 2026? I have no special insights, but there’s precious little evidence that they’re in the process of recognizing their blunders and expelling those who blundered, especially out of self-interest.

I expect 2026 will be an exhibition of candidates who think the world operates one way and will fail to understand when the world turns unexpectedly and bites their hand off.

Underbus:

Verb used to describe the act of “throwing someone under the bus” or otherwise admitting someone’s wrongdoing for them.

• My sister was in trouble with my mom, so she underbussed me for something I did last week, and got herself off the hook.
• An underbusser is a grown tattletale. [Urban Dictionary]

Noted in “December 1, 2025,” Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From An American:

But Leavitt was careful to distance both the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from the order. When asked by a reporter, “Does the administration deny that that second strike happened, or did it happen and the administration denies that Secretary Hegseth gave the order?” she said: “The latter is true.” She attributed the orders of September 2 to Admiral Bradley, appearing to be setting him up for underbussing.

The usage appears to be subtly incompatible with the definition, but then is Urban Dictionary definitive? Merriam-Webster notes:

The left was disappointed yesterday, as Republican Matt Van Epps beat Democrat Aftyn Behn in the special election in the Seventh District of Tennessee. The victory margin was roughly 8 points, or 15,000 votes. While this is progress, as the previous election was won by the Republican by 22 points, it’s also true that special elections are not a great reflection of the general mood of the electorate.

That makes analysis difficult unless the analyst is on the ground in the district, and I am not. That Emerson College missed by 6 points (their prediction was 48%-46%) is disappointing and suggests they need to work on their adjustments methodology.

Speaker Johnson can stop sweating, now. If the weakest Speaker ever can stop sweating, period.

A few days ago Erick Erickson published a missive full of dismay. Here’s a sample:

While all of this was going on, President Trump was on social media calling for the arrest of Joe Biden and other assorted tirades.

There is clearly something off now about the Administration, and the President seems to be unleashing his frustration by tweet. The problem is that his various and assorted tweets do nothing about the cost of living. In fact, he is still dogmatically convinced that tariffs are making everything better.

One of the President’s posts again suggests tariffs could be a replacement for the income tax. But we know how much income taxes bring in, and we know how much tariffs bring in. The latter barely makes a dent in the budget. Also, if they are bringing in as much as the President says, that burden falls on Americans, not foreigners.

This tree had to be taken down his fall. We’ll miss it.

To his credit, Erickson’s expressed doubt concerning tariffs working as claimed from the get-go – but didn’t connect it to the essential extremism and amateurism, and its consequent dystopia, if I may hyperbolize slightly, of the President. This, of course, is because Erickson’s an admitted extremist himself, a purist, if you will.

But now he’s facing what’s been apparent to many observers for a while, and that’s extremism doesn’t actually work. Left or right, all the various extremist ideologies are not moored to reality, and the arrogance of trying to impose ideology, whether it’s concerning abortion, the gold standard, isolationism, or your favorite bugaboo, on reality is a guarantee of failure.

At issue is the simple fact that our perceptions of reality, for all that it’s critical to our survival, is actually quite limited. We can’t see down in microscopic realm, our sense of change over time is quite dubious, and, to stretch a point, when our philosophy fails, then for answers we pretend we know the mind of some metaphysical entity for which we have no evidence.

Erickson’s post tries to conceal some of his concern behind assertions that President Trump can still turn it around, but, truly, I suspect he’s really wondering if it’s time to call for Trump’s resignation and putting up with the cipher of J. D. Vance. This is symptomatic of the conundrum facing conservative voters. Do you go with the loony amateurs on the right, or the arrogant loons on the left?

Tough choice.

I selected this video not because of the gingerbread recipe, but for the inspirational story of Christopher Ludwick that can be found within.

I don’t know if it’s true, but it’ll make you smile.

Whoever this guy might be, he’s not a nominee for the Earl Landgrebe award, is he? Not a devotee to the President:

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.” [Punchbowl News]

Second bold mine.

It’s been apparent, since Day 1 of this Congress, that the House GOP would be vulnerable at the end of this cycle because of mass incompetence in both the White House and the House of Representatives. Even with a Democratic Party which is remarkably resistant to self-analysis and education, the GOP is in deep trouble.

How it all falls out will be not only fascinating, but remarkable. What if certain GOP members decide not to vacate when defeated, addicted to their positions of prestige? Will they have to be forcibly ejected? Will Speaker Johnson lose his re-election to the House? While I’m not historian, the grasping for power allied with vast incompetence is an explosive combination.

And notice what this anonymous Republican says at the end: Mike Johnson will be stripped of his gavel and they will lose the majority before this term is out. While it sounds far-fetched to me, it’s still a possibility. A few resignations from caucus or the House, a few Republicans requesting a new Speaker election, and we might see a new Speaker. Heck, if this guy is right, we might even see Johnson … expelled! Sounds like madness, doesn’t it?

In the end, will this make Democrats mistakenly confident in the rightness of their causes? Or will they be smart enough to backtrack on mistaken procedures (note I do not say position) and try to win back the trust of the independent voter?

I tell ya, my name is ‘Arthur’!

Father Frost Morozko (Soviet Union, 1964; known also as Father Frost and Jack Frost) is the story of Ivan’s pursuit of Nastenka. The former is an arrogant young man, out to see the world outside of his rural farming village; the latter is a Cinderella-like character, a young woman whose older, vulgar sister is favored by her mother, while her father spends his time murmuring “I’ll not say anything.”

But there’s more to this story. Father Mushroom takes an interest in cutting Ivan down to size, taking advantage of Ivan’s arrogance to give him a bear’s head and a good case of despair. Meanwhile, Nastenka wrestles, metaphorically, with her mother, her sister, and Father Frost, all while being sweet and charming.

Add in a gang of rogues and an appearance by a murderous Baba Yaga, a witch from Russian folklore, and it almost works. Charming but jerky, too magical but quite human, my Arts Editor muttered several times about stereotypes interfering with her enjoyment.

Another problem is cultural: Soviet, or Russian if you prefer, cinema and folklore sensibilities differ from American sensibilities. For example, Ivan throws the rogues’ clubs into the air quite early in the story, and they only descend, at a fortuitous moment, at the end of the movie. Now, this may fulfill Russian expectations that perhaps Father Mushroom arranged for them to fall when needed, or that the delay is an example of karma, but Americans might find that convenient, rather than sensible or essential.

In the end, it’s an interesting film from a country that no longer exists, but not excellent.

WaPo’s Matt Bai became despondent over social media back in September:

From The New York Times:

President Trump announced on Friday afternoon that he would grant “a Full and Complete Pardon” to a former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who, as the center of a sweeping drug case, was found guilty by an American jury last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.

The news came as a shock not only to Hondurans, but also to the authorities in the United States who had built a major case and won a conviction against Mr. Hernández. They had accused him of taking bribes during his campaign from Joaquín Guzmán, the notorious former leader of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico known as “El Chapo,” and of running his Central American country like a narco state.

The judge in his case, P. Kevin Castel, had called Mr. Hernández “a two-faced politician hungry for power” who masqueraded as an antidrug crusader while partnering with traffickers. And prosecutors had asked the judge to make sure Mr. Hernández would die behind bars, citing his abuse of power, connections to violent traffickers and “the unfathomable destruction” caused by cocaine.

Yep, you can buy your own justice, as Mr. Hernández had presumably grown rich from his corrupting ways.

But it may be worth considering President Trump’s pardon as indicative of a belief system in which, if you can exhibit sufficient wealth, then you should be above the law. For Trump supporters, the question then is whether you want to live in such a world. Mankind without constraining laws is apt to corruption of one kind or another. See the Epstein Files controversy.

Prop bet:

One of the most popular forms of sports betting is prop betting, which involves wagering on a specific outcome usually not tied to the overall game result. When you bet on a point spread, total or money line, you are wagering on a game outcome[,] while a prop bet is a more targeted wager looking at one area, usually a particular statistical category. The lines for prop bets are derived from oddsmakers in a similar way to game lines. [CBS Sports]

Noted in “I’m a huge sports fan. Gambling, especially prop bets, is ruining the fun.” Max Boot, WaPo:

Social media veteran Josh Barro published this back in June:

The problem with a “bubble” is that it prevents the people inside from accessing the information on the outside. But the core functionality of Bluesky is not that it keeps information out; it’s that it keeps information in. Like the containment dome over a nuclear reactor, Bluesky serves the important safety purpose of ensuring that whatever meltdowns occur within produce minimal fallout. So while I’m not on Bluesky, I value the platform, and I encourage its users to continue screaming at each other about how much the rest of us all suck. Please do not leave.

I do not have a Bluesky account, nor X, nor Twitter. While my initial objection was that their limited format did not really permit nuanced arguments, it’s become apparent over the years that they encourage echo chambers where birds of a feather can flock together and resolutely not listen to outside voices.

When I ran a social media platform, I absolutely valued the multiplicity of opinions that came with cases made and unmade. While I am not personally witnessing any of these platforms, the noise that leaks out is not at all encouraging – and why I do not join and only occasionally visit.

I should probably visit Mastodon.

[Written when ill, I forgot to publish this, so here it is, a simple pointer to an interesting article. — Hue]

Muhanad Seloom explores provocative questions of algorithm, drones, and war:

Israel’s recent campaign in Gaza marks a turning point in modern warfare: the fusion of counter-insurgency and artificial intelligence. Will Western states, with different traditions of counter-insurgency that emphasize legitimacy and population control, be influenced by Israel’s algorithmic model? This question carries high stakes. If Israel’s approach, which is characterized by automation, scale, and attrition, becomes a template for liberal democracies, it could normalize a form of warfare that values computational efficiency over human judgment. [War On The Rocks]

Will we use drones in wars of extermination?

I’m not quite sure what is meant by population control in this context. And I fear I’m a bit sick.

An ethnic language in Turkey called Laz is fading, and activists aim to do something about it:

As Laz gradually retreated from daily life, activists sought new ways to preserve it, and the Laz Institute has been at the forefront of these efforts for more than a decade.

The institute’s most recent initiative is turning to AI to create digital archives of the language. The initiative has been working for two years to integrate Laz into Mozilla’s Common Voice program, an open-source platform that trains voice recognition technology using recordings submitted by ordinary speakers.

“This project is important not only for increasing Laz’s visibility and raising awareness about the language,” Ismail Avci, the director of the Laz Institute, told Al-Monitor, “but also for building a serious repository of data.” [AL-Monitor, and not paywalled when I read the article]

I do hope it works out. While I’m not entirely convinced that saving dying languages is a critical activity for humanity, when the resources are available it’s worth doing. Notably, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s hometown has many Laz speakers, but the article does not state that Laz is a special interest of Erdogan.

He Who Wields The Evil … Yo-Yo?

Tonight we returned to the old holiday tradition of picking out some unfamiliar movie and watching it. This Thanksgiving it’s The Dunwich Horror (1970), an adaptation of an H. P. Lovecraft novella of the same name, supposedly a main component of the Cthulhu horror mythos.

Unfortunately, the movie is rife with questionable choices, such as suggesting the Old Gods were superior and should therefore return, which I cannot help questioning as If they were so superior, why were they banished from Earth or the Earth dimension? Why does the lead female, Nancy, fall for this creepy dude Wilbur Whateley? What’s she done to deserve his attentions? What’s going on with Grandpa?

Worse yet, while most of the components of an adequate movie are present, a few are missing, foremost being empathy. I didn’t care for any of these characters; they have that brittle sensibility common to many movies of the era. As a result, it’s hard to sit through this, rather than, say, imposing an interpretive dance element on it.

This really is a movie made for parody and mockery.

All that said, the special effects are not half-bad. Cthulhu is a chaotic effect on people more than a critter/God, and that’s a good choice. And cool car, Nancy.

If your taste is for cosmic horror, maybe this’ll appeal to you. So, too, for fans and alumni of Miskatonic University. Otherwise, though, it’s a movie for the Thanksgiving tradition, never to be viewed again. And mildly regretted in the first place.

Here’s Lawrence O’Donnell, via Alison Detzel on MS NOW, making the call, as they say in the elections analysis room on Election Night, in reaction to President Trump’s sudden reversal in regards not to the Epstein Files, but the election of Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of New York City:

“There is no more vivid image of the decline and fall of Donald Trump than the image that was created on Friday with Donald Trump slumped in the Oval Office at the desk in defeat, offering a political surrender to the man who stood beside him,” O’Donnell said, referencing Trump’s meeting with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. …

As O’Donnell pointed out, before the mayoral election, Trump had threatened to withhold federal funds from New York City if Mamdani was elected. But on Friday, Trump backtracked on that threat.

The MS NOW host called Trump’s flip-flop “a complete surrender” and described it as “the kind of reversal a politician offers only in defeat.”

O’Donnell said the reason behind Mamdani’s warm reception at the White House wasn’t because Trump was “charmed by his smile,” arguing it was instead a political calculation by the president.

“Donald Trump is losing, and Donald Trump knows it,” he said. O’Donnell suggested Trump was using Mamdani as a “political sign” to show the American people that he understands the issue that was at the center of the mayor-elect’s campaign: affordability.

However, according to O’Donnell, the president’s play did not pay off. “It was pure, pathetic, losing political calculation by a loser — by a president who presided over a party that just had its worst Election Day imaginable.”

And so, like so many other pundits on this and other subjects, O’Donnell is calling it the beginning of the end for President Trump, if not in so many words. Doubt it? Add the Mamdani loss to President Trump’s many miscalculations resulting in failures, from tariffs^[1], judicial nominations^[2], and political endorsements^[3] to Putin’s War^[4], inflation^[5], Rep Greene’s repudiation^[6], nomination of fourth-raters to the Cabinet^[7] and his failure to expel extremists from MAGA (Make America Great Again, Trump’s organization for his base of supporters)^[8], and there’s very few achievements of a positive nature. One might point to the Abraham Accords of his first term, and, if you’re a bit ballsy, his Gaza strategy of the second, but, to be honest, the first shouldn’t be given a final evaluation until twenty years on, and the second is not the success that many would like to claim. National bullying is a touchy game to play, at least for us. Russians and Chinese do it better.

OK, is it the beginning of the end? If my reader wants more tea leaves to read, the next special election of note, so far as this working dude can discern, is December 2nd in Tennessee for the seat of former Rep Mark Green (R-TN), who resigned in July to take a job in the private sector. The former Representative won his seat a year ago by 21+ points, and I read here that Trump won the district by 22 points.

Now?

Emerson College Polling gives Republican Van Epps a 2 point lead over Democrat Aftyn Behn.

Well, we saw the inaccuracy of polling last year, so it doesn’t pay to get too excited. But if a twenty point loss in support for the GOP in Tennessee is confirmed on December 2, the GOP may turn on the President, even if Van Epps still wins, despite Lead Toady Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) apparently undying support (see his behavior during the Epstein Files debacle, I shan’t restate it). And remember, the Senate may have already started to turn on him, with Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) less likely to feel kindly towards the President than Johnson.

Is this the beginning of the end? It’s a slippery question. I do not think Trump was capable of picking better candidates for his Cabinet and aides than he did due to his psychological inadequacies, so in that sense a disastrous end to the Trump Administration has always been inevitable. A constant, if you will.

So what’s the variable? Our response. The electorate’s response. Do we replace Trump and his minions with similar people? The Democrats have had a dismaying lean towards arrogance and, yes, autocracy. Will we be smart enough to demand small-d democrats run our government, or will we lean towards disastrous defaults that we may regret for decades?

¹ President Trump’s insistent repeating tariffs are working as predicted does not make it so; his retraction of tariffs on beef, coffee, and other items in an attempt to win the electorate back disproves the claim.

² Those nominees who’ve won confirmation by the Senate have not been the undiluted success expected, and perhaps assumed, by the right. A number of them have ruled against the President on critical issues, most notably tariffs. My suspicion is that a number of them, on review of judicial history and applicable law, decided that they are not invulnerable if accused of judicial malpractice, as the Senate has the power of impeachment and removal, and they had best rule properly, rather than ideologically. While some have ignored precedent and proper procedure, most notably Judge Aileen Cannon, others have objected to President Trump’s methods, leaving SCOTUS with the unsavory task of rejecting the President, and thus risking his childish wrath and possible consequences, which are almost necessarily going to be of an extra-governmental and violent nature, given their protected position; or acceding to his wishes and recording decisions which will reflect poorly on their legacy.

³ For a long while President Trump proclaimed his endorsements were a magic wand, that he was batting 100%, etc etc. None of that was true; an early example was his endorsement of Senator Luther Strange (R-AL), the appointed replacement for his AG, Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (R-AL). Senator Strange, despite being the incumbent, albeit appointed, did not even make it out of the primary, losing to (former State Supreme Court) Judge Roy Moore (R-AL), who went on to lose the general election to Doug Jones (D-AL). Recently President Trump has ceased to proclaim his endorsement is a magic wand for those receiving it, or so it seems. For example, in the New York City Mayoral race, he endorsed Democrat Andrew Cuomo, not Mamdani, the victor, and virtually ignored the conservative in the race, Curtis Sliwa. As a measure of fading political power, this loss, and its acknowledgment, as O’Donnell observes, is hard to beat.

⁴ During his reelection campaign, President Trump notoriously proclaimed he’d solve Putin’s War on Day 1 of his Administration. It’s still going on and President Putin’s disdain for President Trump is clear from his actions.

⁵ President Trump’s failure to cut inflation is so apparent that he’s been reduced to using a lie from Walmart concerning the price of Thanksgiving meal in a play to get consumers to not believe their eyes, harping back to one of his first plays for their attention (“don’t believe your lyin’ eyes”). Add in a huge jump in ACA premiums, which could have been avoided through negotiations during or before the recent government shutdown, and President Trump looks like someone who prefers what he sees as political revenge over being a wise leader.

Or a willful, selfish child.

⁶ The repudiation of the President by Rep Greene (R-GA), a long-time pillar of his support, may indicate the collapse of his support in Congress, especially given how the GOP voted to support the Epstein Files legislation in the House in nearly 100% portion, with only Clay Higgins (R-AL) discordant. There is no way for the GOP to normalize pedophilia, and Rep Higgins may have inadvertently terminated his political career with that vote.

⁷ Sure, go ahead, go through Trump’s Cabinet, US Attorneys, and his advisors and aides. Do you see even one who can be called competent to their job? Instead, they do battle to be the least worthy: Kennedy, Hegseth, Bondi, Miller, Bessent, McMahon, Vought, Noem, Halligan, Cannon, Luttnick, Vance, good lord is there any doubt that Trump is held in deep contempt for his foolhardy selections? The best of the lot may be State’s Rubio, and as I’ve noted before, his selection to that position might be a peculiar form of revenge on the former rival by President Trump.

In general, Trump’s people is a clown show worthy only of a life-long grifter and pathological narcissist.

⁸ The admission into MAGA and/or the GOP of such names as Fuentes and others has badly damaged the reputation of MAGA, which was already struggling with QAnon conspiracy theories of little plausibility. Basically, MAGA has become a residence tower for those who not only do not trust government, which is not without reason, but then choose to believe the impossible, implausible, or unproven, most usually because of confirmation bias. Trump’s failure to screen such dubious personalities out of the GOP and MAGA marks him as a political amateur who destroys most of what he touches.

Thankyouberryberrymuch. Brrrr.

Sadly, most of the ornamental grass was cut down this fall. It can make for magnificent displays of wrack and ruin after snowstorms when uncut.

Debanking:​

Debanking (sometimes spelled de-banking, and also known within the banking industry as de-risking) is the closure of people’s or organizations’ bank accounts by banks that perceive the account holders to pose a financial, legal, regulatory, or reputational risk to the bank.

Examples of this include the enforcement of anti-corruption and anti–money laundering laws, the closing of bank accounts of sex workers,^[1] and people considered to be politically exposed persons.

The closure of accounts is generally performed without giving a reason and without the prospect of appeal. De-banking can have severe consequences for individuals, as it cuts them off from many activities in society. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Florida AG launches probe into JPMorgan over Trump Media ‘debanking’ claim,” Ja’han Jones, MS NOW:

Florida’s Republican attorney general is launching an investigation into JPMorgan in an effort to boost President Donald Trump’s allegations that he and his family were victims of a “debanking” scheme following his efforts to fuel the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, whose reelection bid has been endorsed by Trump, announced Monday that he has opened an investigation into the Trump family allegations. “While coordinating with Jack Smith in the Biden DOJ’s Operation Arctic Frost, JP Morgan de-banked the Florida-based Trump Media Group, harming the company just before it went public,” Uthmeier said.

This should prove interesting.

Professor Richardson’s daily missive from a few days back reminded me of some speculation I had when the Senate abruptly passed the legislation ordering the release of the Epstein Files:

The strong vote in favor came after President Donald J. Trump, who had tried to kill the release of the Epstein files for months, on Sunday night suddenly reversed course. After failing to stop dozens of House Republicans from giving their support to the measure, he said he didn’t care if it passed, starting a stampede of Republicans eager to be on the popular side of the issue.

House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) evidently went along with this strategy because he expected Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) to stall the measure with amendments. If it finally passed nonetheless, the House would have to take it up again and could delay it further. After the House passed the bill, Johnson told reporters he would “insist upon” amendments.

But Thune was not inclined to play along. Johnson has been openly doing Trump’s bidding and jamming the Senate to force it to comply, and Thune appears to have had enough. Before the measure went to the Senate, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer asked for unanimous consent to pass the measure when it arrived. The Senate agreed, and thus the bill passed the Senate automatically by a unanimous vote in favor.

The difference between Senate Majority Leader Thune (R-SD) and Speaker Johnson (R-LA)? Johnson is a creature of President Trump, having taken office in 2017.. Thune?

Thune has sat in the Senate since 2005.

Thune has watched Trump, and before him Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, ruin the GOP. From McConnell he learned, I suspect, the lesson of the foolishness of blind allegiance, as McConnell gave Trump everything he could, most importantly SCOTUS seats, and in return … he’s being run out of the Senate by Trump in dishonor.

Under Trump, the GOP has become a haven for grifters and power-grubbers, unserious people, all led by a convict motivated entirely by the objective of the accumulation of wealth. The Majority Leader is, no doubt, watching. And remembering times when the Party was honorable.

My guess is that Senator Thune, presented with Trump’s back, is plunging a knife into it. Johnson will continue to be a weak Speaker, dependent on Trump; Thune, on the other hand, may strike out on his own and leave Trump with less influence than he thinks.

Far less influence.

Speaking of discharge petitions, this was announced by Rep Jared Golden (D-ME) a few days ago:

A bipartisan bill by Congressman Jared Golden (ME-02) to repeal an executive order that stripped federal workers’ union rights is on track for a vote in the House after months of delay by Speaker Mike Johnson.

The Protect America’s Workforce Act of 2025, which has enough cosponsors to indicate it would easily pass a floor vote, has languished since Golden introduced it with Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-01) in April. In June, Golden launched a discharge petition for the bill, which allows a majority of the House to force a vote on a piece of legislation if a majority of Congress signs it.

Today, GOP Congressmen Nick LaLota (NY-01) and Mike Lawler (NY-17) signed the petition, bringing the total number of signatures to 218 — the number required to force House action.

“America never voted to eliminate workers’ union rights, and the strong bipartisan support for my bill shows that Congress will not stand idly by while President Trump nullifies federal workers’ collective bargaining agreements and rolls back generations of labor law,” Golden said. “I’m grateful to Reps. LaLota and Lawler for bringing this discharge petition over the finish line, and I’m calling on Speaker Mike Johnson to schedule a clean, up-or-down vote on this bill.”

I’ll reinforce that the last two signers of the petition, Rep LaLota and Rep Lawler, both of New York, are Republicans, not Democrats.

The fact that the fury of the anti-union wing of the Republicans is not enough to hold LaLota and Lawler in line against the anger of the electorate is significant, in that it implies that the power of the anti-union wing, and of President Trump, appears to be waning.

This, the Epstein Files, and the untrustability of the Mendacity Machine^[1] are combining to force the Administration towards the edge of the cliff. MAGA, which has been agitating for the release of the files and was no doubt instrumental in the eventual victories in Congress, will be even more aggressive as Trump tries to find quiet maneuvers to delay the release. I’m still reminded that America’s a home for redemption, and MAGA, resentful as they may be to hear it, needs redemption to blend back into society.

¹ That is, the President.

Politico covers the sudden rise of the discharge petition:

Over the course of decades, House lawmakers had succeeded only a few times in triggering votes on bills the chamber’s leaders refused to call up.

Then Mike Johnson became speaker.

On the Louisiana Republican’s watch, the “discharge petition” has caught fire. Rank-and-file lawmakers have managed five times since he won his gavel two years ago to circumvent Johnson’s wishes by getting the 218 signatures needed to force votes on legislation he had blocked — more than in the prior 30 years combined.

In other words, the will of the Speaker of the House is broken.

Speaker Johnson’s response? According to Axios (paywall), he’s raising barriers.

Yeah, let’s just be open about this: due to his allegiance to the weakest President of all time, he’s a weak leader who’s damaging the GOP by bowing to the wishes of often tiny minorities, such as the hardliners who ejected former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, or the President, rather than paying attention to the tides of public opinion.