1/. Andrew Sullivan with a ray of hope......
BTW this picture is from South Park!
You’d have gone broke betting against the resilience of the Trump phenomenon this past decade. He has survived two impeachments, one insurrection, one plague, one lost election, one incredibly close assassination attempt, several major lawsuits, and the passionate, undying hatred of 40 percent of the country. None of it counted.
He’s had, of course, some very lucky breaks: the mass migration and cultural extremism under Biden, along with the epic fuck-up of Joe’s attempt to stay in power as a near-corpse. But there are some signs that the entire MAGA operation is beginning to fray — as its manic transgressions, dumb overreach, and intensifying contradictions become harder to ignore. https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/are-the-wheels-finally-falling-off?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=61371&post_id=178465333&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=2cwgv&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
2/. SNL Cold Open.....Epstein!
3/. MAGA really believes this! Tom Tomorrow nails it again.....
4/. Love the sarcasm in this title - "Democrats Sure Taught Trump a Lesson"......
At roughly the same time that Senate Democrats were readying themselves to cave to their Republican colleagues on Sunday — effectively ending the weekslong government shutdown without winning any real concessions on health care policy — President Trump was getting booed by the crowd at an N.F.L. game between the Washington Commanders and the Detroit Lions.
Trump, the first sitting president to attend a regular season N.F.L. game since Jimmy Carter in 1978, wants the Washington Commanders to name their planned new stadium in his honor, as a tribute to his time in office. He probably arrived at the game thinking the fans would cheer him. Instead, he faced the jeers of thousands of angry people. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/opinion/shutdown-democrats-senate-midterms.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
5/. Here's the playbook, and our media falls for it over and over......
6/. Chuck Schumer has imaginary friends......
Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, has a pair of very sweet imaginary friends. They’re a middle-class couple called Joe and Eileen Baileyand they live on Long Island. At one point the imaginary couple, who feature in Schumer’s 2007 book, Positively American, were called the O’Reillys. According to the Hill, one Schumer aide said the name then was changed because the publisher thought O’Reilly was “too ethnic” for mass consumption. Another aide said that claim was false, and Schumer just wanted a name that “sounded more national”. Naming strategy aside, the key point here is that Schumer has said he runs all his policy decisions by this completely fictional couple. He’s referred to them hundreds of timesthroughout his political career. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/15/chuck-schumer-government-shutdown?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
And if you think this is hard to believe, here is John Oliver from two months ago......13 most amusing minutes...
7/. An appalling story from the Times on the way immigrants are being treated by ICE and the horrors of their detention centers, aka gulags.....
Cruelty is the point.....Steven Miller is the architect of this abomination of a Secret Police.....
In August, Jemmy Jimenez Rosa and her husband, Marcel, took their three young daughters on a vacation to Cancún, Mexico. On their return to Boston Logan airport, a Customs and Border Protection officer took Ms. Rosa aside and led her to a back room where she was told she should say goodbye to her girls. “I keep thinking this is a nightmare. Is this a nightmare? Like, is this really happening?” Ms. Rosa recalled.
Ms. Rosa was placed in a detention cell at Logan. Officers gave her virtually no information and dismissed her husband’s requests that he be allowed to bring her diabetes and anxiety medication. Ms. Rosa was born in Peru and has been a lawful permanent resident of the United States since she was 9 years old; she is now 43. Just weeks before the trip to Cancún, she had renewed her green card without incident. Her husband and her daughters are American citizens.
9/. Thom Hartmann on the Epstein scandal, and how it reflects a more serious problem.....
The New York Times reported that Donald Trump personally called Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and then had Bondi, Blanche, and Patel take her into the top-secret no-recording-devices-allowed Situation Room to urge her to drop her support for releasing the Epstein files. He apparently also tried to reach Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) for the same reason. Yesterday’s newly surfaced details about Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump again reveal something far larger than the tawdry specifics of their relationship, as grotesque as those are.
They point to a structural crisis at the heart of American democracy. https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-epstein-affair-has-move-from-ae7?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=302288&post_id=178739886&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=2cwgv&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
10/. Bigfoot doesn't like Ford 150's....2 minutes....
11/. Angus Petersen writes what you might be thinking in your more serious moments.....
You walk into your kitchen late afternoon, your daughter is finishing her homework, your son’s backpack hanging off the chair. The grocery bags sit by the door and you glance at the receipt — the “just getting by” sum feels heavier. You remember when it didn’t feel like this. You were told this couldn’t happen here but here it is. You can see it happening, and the weight of that truth settles in a way it didn’t before.
The global economy is tightening and the strain is everywhere. You are aware of inequality in your own community, but the fault lines run far deeper now. Worldwide debt has surged to an almost unthinkable $337.7 trillion, driven by loose policy and shaky assumptions about growth and risk. That number isn’t abstract. It is the weight bearing down on real families, real homes, real futures, including yours. You feel the squeeze in rising utility bills, in the small sacrifices you make each month, in the quiet fear that one disruption could tip everything.
12/. Amazing review of a Chinese luxury car.....2 minutes....
13/. If you ever get jury duty, and it's a political case, you know what to do......
When I was a brand new prosecutor at the Southern District of New York, the office’s elite mob prosecutors tried John Gotti Jr. three times within a year. All three times, the jury hung. Throughout the doomed prosecutorial trilogy, I’d go over to the courtroom and watch bits of the trial, enthralled at the cinematic spectacle: witnesses named Mikey Scars and Little Joey, bugged social clubs, beefs and sitdowns and hits gone good and bad.
Prosecutors technically can re-try a case after a hung jury, but generally will stop after two tries, maybe three if there’s a compelling need. After the third Gotti trial resulted in a hung jury, the SNDY did the right thing and dismissed the indictment.
14/. Again, I wish this was funny.....Climate "Science".....
15/. Long but really interesting article by Bill McKibben....on the way Christianity has been taken over by the haters......
If you go to a church, is it like one of these?
Trumpism’s most revealing and defining moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most dangerous, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – came earlier this autumn. In the course of a few weeks, the US president started showing everyone his plans for a gilded ballroom twice the size of the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to build it. Then, after nationwide protests against his rule, he posted on social media an AI video of himself wearing a crown and piloting a fighter jet labeled “King Trump”, which proceeded to bomb American cities and Americans with a graphically vivid load of human poop.
He has done things 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of deaths from his cuts to USAID is 600,000 and rising, and this week a study predicted his fossil fuel policies would kill another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have dared – really, no other president would have imagined – unilaterally destroying large sections of the White House in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of some of the richest Americans, almost all of whom have business with the government. And no one – not Richard Nixon, not Andrew Jackson, not Warren Harding, not anyone – would have imagined boasting about defecating on the American citizenry.
17/. Master Negotiator Schumer.....
18/. Angus Petersen with what happens after 1.5C.....
The slow creep of the major climate markers we have long watched has turned sharper, and as you look toward your children’s future, it is clear the ground beneath us is shifting faster than anyone expected. The story begins with ice, and with a single glacier. On the eastern edge of Antarctica, the Hektoria Glacier pulled back five miles in just two months, retreating nearly ten times faster than anything scientists had recorded before. That is not just another line in a scientific report. It is a fracture in the idea that change unfolds slowly enough for us to adapt in comfort.
At the same time, the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, opened with a warning that few wanted to hear. Global temperatures are virtually certain to rise beyond the 1.5 degrees Celsius mark set in the Paris Agreement. A new report from the United Nations Environment Programme found that even if every country meets its current commitments, the world could still warm by between 2.3 and 2.5 degrees. In the same week, Typhoon Kalmaegi tore through the Philippines and Vietnam, killing hundreds and flattening entire villages. Researchers linked the storm’s strength to abnormally warm ocean waters that fed its intensity.
19/. Do
you do any of these things? Answer yes, and you have dementia!
20/. She's going to christen the new Ballroom!
21/. Train Dreams movie - excellent review by the Guardian, on Netflix this Friday.....
The dreams of the title are premonitions of the future, memories of the past, yearnings for an alternative present – and sometimes just the dreams that disturb the sleep of the film’s lead character, a logger named Robert Grainier, richly and expressively played with few words by Joel Edgerton. He is part of an exploited itinerant labour force in the early 20th century who cleared woodland wildernesses, built bridges and made way for the American railroad. He lives a quasi-hobo existence but is possessed of a passionate, unspoken inner life to which this fine movie gives expression. His emotional life is the tree that falls in the forest without making a sound.
Director Clint Bentley has adapted the 2011 novella by Denis Johnson, co-writing the script with Greg Kwedar; they have created a lovely looking, deeply felt film, clearly absorbing the influences of Terrence Malick in some of the low camera positions, sunset-hour compositions, narrative voiceovers, and epiphanically revealed glories of the American landscape. There is also something of the early work of David Gordon Green, a film-maker once considered an heir to Malick.
22/. TV - David Duchovny in "Malice"......on Amazon now.....
I can’t say I had “Jack Whitehall stars with David ‘The X Files/ Californication’ Duchovny in glossy TV thriller” on my 2025 bingo card, but here we are, and a good time with it can be had by all. Alongside, perhaps, a smidge of national pride to see the daft lad from Fresh Meat, Bad Education and Travels With My Father all grown up and holding his own.
The glossy thriller in question is Malice, in which Whitehall plays Adam, a tutor promoted to manny (male nanny, for those not au fait with rich people’s terms), who is bent – for reasons as yet unknown – on ruining high-rolling businessman Jamie Tanner (Duchovny). Whether he has it in for the rest of the Tanner family and friends, or they are just doomed to be collateral damage, is not clear, but that doesn’t spoil the machiavellian fun .https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/nov/14/malice-review-david-duchovny-jack-whitehall-amazon-prime?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
23/. The Guardian reviews 5 Crime and Thriller books......
The Murder at World’s End by Ross Montgomery (Viking, £16.99)
The first novel for adults by award-winning children’s author Montgomery is a locked-room mystery set in 1910 on a remote tidal island off the Cornish coast. At Tithe Hall, Lord Conrad Stockingham-Welt is busy instructing his servants to prepare for the apocalyptic disaster he believes will be triggered by the imminent passage of Halley’s comet. The labyrinthine house is a nest of secrets and grudges, harboured by both staff and family members, who include an irascible and splendidly foul-mouthed maiden aunt, Decima. When Lord Conrad is discovered in his sealed study, killed by a crossbow bolt to the eye, she co-opts a new footman to help her find the culprit. With plenty of twists, red herrings and a blundering police officer, this is a terrific start to a series that promises to be a lot of fun.
24/. TV - "The Beast In Me", the #1 show on Netflix......Bob Lefsetz gives us his thoughts.....good thoughts!
Mary and I are on episode 4, and it's really gripping....
And “The Beast in Me” is now number one on Netflix, America’s, the world’s, number one streaming service, and that means more people are exposed than…are even watching cable TV news.
So you should watch “The Beast In Me,” I want to know your take. https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2025/11/15/the-beast-in-me/
Today's Jewish joke
The year is 1974.
Sy Gelfand was getting a haircut prior to a trip to Israel
.He mentioned the trip to the barber who responded, "Israel? Why would anyone want to go there? It's crowded & hot and full of Pushy Israelis..
You're crazy to go to Israel. So, how are you getting there?"
“We're taking Sabena," said Sy. "We got a great rate!"
"Sabena?" exclaimed the barber. "That's a terrible airline. Their planes are old, their flight attendants are ugly, and they had a hijacking last summer. So, where are you staying in Israel?"
"We'll be in Tel Aviv at the Hotel Dan."
“That dump! That's the worst hotel in the city. The rooms are small, the service is surly and they're overpriced.
So, whatcha doing when you get there?"
"We're going to go on tour, we are definitely going to stop at the Knesset and we hope to see Golda Meir.."
“That's rich," laughed the barber. "You and a million other people are trying to see her.
As if that could ever possibly happen.
Boy, good luck on this lousy trip of yours. You're going to need it."
A month later, Sy Gelfand came in for his regular haircut.
The barber asked him about his trip to Israel..
"It was wonderful," said Sy , "not only were we on one of Sabenas brand new planes, but it was overbooked and they bumped us up to first class.
Security was top notch. The food and wine were wonderful.
We had a beautiful 28 year old stewardess who waited on us hand and foot.
And the hotel-it was great! They'd just finished a $25 million remodeling job and now it's the finest hotel in the city.
They, too, were overbooked, so they apologized and gave us the presidential suite at no extra charge!"
"Well," muttered the barber, "I know you didn't get to see Golda Meir.."
"Actually, we were quite lucky, for as we toured the Knesset, apparently a Secret Service agent overheard my wife Susan mention to the tour guide that as President of her Mizrachi Women chapter, over 60,000 dollars had been raised for underprivileged children in Israel .
He tapped her on the shoulder and asked if we would be so kind as to step into a private room because someone wanted to thank her .
Sure enough, five minutes later Golda Meir herself walked through the door and shook our hands!
She then said a few words of thanks to my wife and kissed her on both cheeks.”
“She then leaned over very close to me-and whispered something in my ear.”
"Really?" asked the Barber. "What'd she say?"
She said, "Where'd you get the terrible haircut?”
Today's elderly joke
An elderly couple walked into a McDonalds and sat down at a table near some young people who were having dinner.
The old man approached the counter and placed an order for one meal. He returned, unwrapped the hamburger, carefully cut it in half, and placed one half in front of his wife.
Then he gently counted out the fries and split them evenly between them.
He placed two straws into the soda and set it between them.
The old woman began to eat her half of the burger while the man just watched.
From time to time, he took a small sip of the drink, but he never touched the food.
People around them started to notice and looked on with quiet sympathy.
A young man approached and politely offered to buy them another meal so they wouldn’t have to share.
The woman smiled and said kindly, “Thank you, but we’re used to sharing everything.”
Still, the man hadn’t eaten a bite. He simply watched as his wife enjoyed her meal.
The young man returned and offered again.
This time, the old man responded, “Thank you, but we really do share everything.”
The young man paused for a moment, then asked: “But sir… what are you waiting for?”
The old man smiled and said: “The teeth.”
Today's golf joke
Here is an actual sign posted at a golf club in Scotland :
1. BACK STRAIGHT, KNEES BENT, FEET SHOULDER WIDTH APART.
2. FORM A LOOSE GRIP.
3. KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN!
4. STAY OUT OF THE WATER.
5. TRY NOT TO HIT ANYONE.
6. IF YOU ARE TAKING TOO LONG, LET OTHERS GO AHEAD OF YOU.
7. DON'T STAND DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF OTHERS.
8. QUIET PLEASE...WHILE OTHERS ARE PREPARING.
9. DON'T TAKE EXTRA STROKES.
10. WELL DONE.. NOW, FLUSH THE URINAL, GO OUTSIDE, AND TEE OFF!
Today's Welfare joke
A young man with his pants hanging half off his ass, hair in a long ponytail and a half inch thick gold chain around his neck walked into the local welfare office to pick up his check.
He marched up to the counter and said, "Hi. You know, I just hate drawing welfare. I'd really rather have a job. I don't like taking advantage of the system, getting something for nothing."
The social worker behind the counter said "Your timing is excellent. We just got a job opening from a very wealthy old man who wants a chauffeur and bodyguard for his beautiful daughter. You will have to drive around in his 2017 Mercedes-Benz CL, and he will supply all of your clothes."
"Because of the long hours, meals will be provided. You'll also be expected to escort the daughter on her overseas holiday trips. This is rather awkward to say but you will also have, as part of your job, the assignment to satisfy her sexual urges as the daughter is in her mid-20's and has a rather strong sex drive."
The guy, just plain wide-eyed, said, "You're bullshittin' me!"
The social worker said, "Yeah, well... you started it."
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