Is this political cartoon too close to the truth?
What do you think that they have him wrapped around their little fingers?
What do you think?
Sunday, November 08, 2026
It Amazes Me!
[Essay]
It amazes me all the people who voted Republican last week. There must be millions!
Yeah, I can discount MAGA people because they would have voted for him anyway. But the others… there is no excuse.
They put themselves ahead of morality.
When the kneeling American citizen was killed by a shot to the back of the head by an ICE agent, they didn’t care.
When they saw all the corruption in the government, they didn’t care.
When he was convicted of 34 counts of cooking the books, they didn’t care.
When accusations of pedophilia, they didn’t care.
When he slept around with other women, they didn’t care.
When they voted to take away the civil rights of people, they didn’t care.
When they took away food stamps, they didn’t care.
When they took away healthcare from the indigent, they didn’t care.
When they gerrymandered districts to cheat, they didn’t care.
There is a word for that kind of people… bigots.
If you voted Republican you are a bigot, you are the type of people who didn’t mind the Jim Crow laws because it didn’t affect them.
The Republican party is a party of racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic people! They are complicit to discrimination.
If you voted Republican so are you!
[/Essay]
Cuckoo Award!
The Hillby Suryatapa Chakraborty11/07/26President Trump raised concerns Saturday about some Democrats calling for the impeachment of Republican officials, referring to the threats as “extortion at the highest level” and asking the Justice Department to “look into this.”“The Democrats are going around threatening a lot of people … with Impeachment and many other forms of punishment, even though they admit they have no reason to do so, and there have been no impeachable acts committed, or even thought of, by the victims of this illegal process,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post Saturday.
And he wants them investigated for doing, with cause, what he does out of malice?
This deserves no other award than the one being handed out here… for having the cojones to do this!
This award is handed out to politicians and notables who perform an undeniable act of stupidity, hypocrisy, idiocy, "Do As I Say, Not As I Do," Political lunacy, Monumental stupidity, double standards, or other forms of craziness.
Lies! Lies, and More Lies!
[Editorial]
They have torn down the old and rebuilt… slowly. They cheated and refused to hold hearings on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, claiming it was too close to the election. When Justice Antonin Scalia died on February 13, 2016, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately stated that the vacancy should not be filled until after the upcoming presidential election.
PoliticoBy Burgess Everett and Glenn Thrush02/13/2016Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate should not confirm a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia until after the 2016 election — an historic rebuke of President Obama’s authority and an extraordinary challenge to the practice of considering each nominee on his or her individual merits.The swiftness of McConnell’s statement — coming about an hour after Scalia’s death in Texas had been confirmed — stunned White House officials who had expected the Kentucky Republican to block their nominee with every tool at his disposal, but didn’t imagine the combative GOP leader would issue an instant, categorical rejection of anyone Obama chose to nominate.“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president,” McConnell said, at a time when other elected officials, from Sen. Bernie Sanders to future Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer, were releasing statements offering condolences to the justice’s family, which includes 26 grandchildren.
Keep this in mind: All eleven Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee signed a letter to McConnell explicitly vowing to refuse to hold hearings or votes on any nominee put forward by President Obama.
But they sang a different tune in 2020. When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, they suddenly had a different story to tell.
“The historical precedent is overwhelming and it runs in one direction," he says.PoliticoBy Marianne LeVine09/21/2020Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pushed back Monday against Democratic allegations of hypocrisy over holding a vote this year on Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement, arguing that historical precedent is on his side.Democrats are accusing McConnell and other Republicans of a double standard when it comes to the Supreme Court, citing McConnell’s 2016 decision to block President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, because it was an election year. But McConnell and Senate Republicans claim 2016 was different because the White House and Senate were controlled by different parties.During the Obama administration, Republicans blocked or stalled around 200 of Obama's nominees. Judicial nominees usually came from the states where they would sit and would be backed by organizations like the American Bar Association (ABA). But all that changed with the Trump administration; he outsourced the selection process to conservative legal organizations, completely bypassed the American Bar Association, and focused on quickly filling vacancies with young, ideological originalists who put their ideology before the Constitution.
And now, in this election cycle… gerrymandering, threats to use troops, outrageous claims that undocumented immigrants are voting, and lawsuits against the states! The people saw through his lies and those of his party.
The voters said, “Enough of this bull!” But the message didn’t sink in…
AP NewsBy SEUNG MIN KIM, MARY CLARE JALONICK and LINDSAY WHITEHURSTNovember 6, 2026President Donald Trump led a transformation of the Supreme Court that ushered in a conservative supermajority but soon he will confront an emboldened Democratic-led Senate that is preparing to play hardball on his judicial nominations.Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is likely to return as majority leader next year, promised in an interview with The Associated Press that Democrats will prevent Trump from installing a “right-winger” on the Supreme Court and that they are “not going to allow any crappy nominees” elsewhere in the federal judiciary or in Trump’s Cabinet.After years of being on the losing end of highly partisan confirmation fights against Republicans, especially on Supreme Court nominees, Democrats will be under considerable pressure to wield the same type of aggressive tactics.
We have until January 3 to worry that a justice might just decide to "retire" to allow Trump to appoint another far-right judge.
[/Editorial]
A Possible Scenario
That is who JD reminds me of: Charlie Brown. Because he is like a clown in everything he does.
So what will happen? Well, Congress gets to vote on the new president's pick. The new President nominates a Vice President and Congress votes! Before the election, I could see this possible scenario working, but now, I can’t see a Democratic Congress voting for a VP that Vance picks. Also, I doubt very much that JD isn’t involved with all the corruption in the White House. Then the Speaker will become President!
So how likely is this to happen? Well, for Trump to step down… I give the odds at 50/50, but with the administration being so myopic, I think that they will miss the big picture. I said the odds are 50/50, so what’s the other half?
Declining Health + an Ambitious Inner Circle → Behind-the-Scenes Control = A puppet. They just lead him around like an old, senile man, tell him to smile! Sign here! Wave! Just like with Reagan.
Saturday, November 07, 2026
It Is Bigger Than You Think
Yesterday, I wrote about Trump and his never-ending appeals of his criminal convictions. But it goes deeper than that… before he died, what the judge ruled in that case is BIG if it stands. But the real threat goes far deeper than his personal legal battles, it’s about what his administration is doing to the federal court system
What is it that is so big? The judge ruled that the police and prosecutors need a warrant to search social media!
Three labor unions say government review of immigrants’ social media feeds violates the First Amendment. A federal judge who wrote “I agree” has died.The Christian Science MonitorBy Varsha Bansal, ContributorOct. 29, 2026The future of a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s right to surveil immigrants’ social media posts using artificial intelligence was thrown into doubt Wednesday following the sudden death of a federal judge who only weeks ago ruled the case could move forward.“Plaintiffs’ allegations are of an ongoing surveillance program that is actively chilling the speech of their members and otherwise causing harm. ... I agree,” U.S. District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein wrote on Oct. 1.In the wake of Judge Hellerstein’s death, a new judge will be “randomly” assigned to his cases, according to the district executive for the Southern District of New York.The surveillance suit, brought by three of the nation’s major labor unions, argues that the government’s monitoring of millions of visa and green card holders’ online activity is a form of “viewpoint discrimination” that violates the First Amendment. The unions say that’s already resulted in “adverse immigration action” based on the beliefs those immigrants profess.
Like I said, this is important because it limits the government's ability to go looking through “our stuff” without a warrant during witch hunts.
For now, the Trump administration’s surveillance programs will be allowed to continue. That’s because, while Judge Hellerstein allowed the case to proceed, he did not impose an injunction that immediately ordered the Trump administration to stop reviewing immigrants’ social media posts.
And now, the government is on another witch hunt—and this time, it's in homeless shelters. Digital dragnets laugh in the face of "probable cause!" Whether it is the government data-mining a homeless shelter or the feds executing secret warrants to sweep up years of a person's social media data, it smacks of “Big Brother.”
It is just like what happened in the elections. The Trump administration gave the states a list of “illegal voters.” Those lists unraveled under local investigation, with election officials finding massive numbers of clerical errors, jumbled data, and eligible U.S. citizens falsely flagged. If the states had acted on the list, thousands of legal voters would have been affected! GIGO: garbage in, garbage out!
And that is exactly what is going to happen to the homeless shelter data… it will be splashed all over the headlines: “Hundreds of illegal immigrants living right under Mamdani's nose.” But in the end, they will only find one or two, while the other accused individuals will face the nightmare of trying to prove they are U.S. citizens.
Saturday 9
Saturday 9: One Less Set of Footsteps (1973)
On Saturdays I take a break from the heavy stuff and have some fun…
On Saturdays I take a break from the heavy stuff and have some fun…
Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.
1) Jim Croce sings that "tomorrow is a dream away." What are you dreaming about today?
How to get up to the cottage before I have to close it for the season. Minor problems just kept popping up. Like a crown coming off or weather problems.
2) He promises that his lover will soon hear one less voice a-talking. Who is the most recent person you spoke to? (Texts, e-mails and IMs don't count.)
The lady at the counter of the farm store where I picked up eggs, milk, and farm fresh chocolate chip cookies!
3) He admits that he and his lover have run out of things to say to one another anyway. Let's turn that around: Is there someone in your life with whom the conversation always flows freely?
My brother.
4) He mentions the jeans hanging upon her door. Do you often wear blue jeans?
Always! I used to get all dolled up going to the doctors… but that showed my age. Everyone else are in jeans except us old folk!
5) As a high school student, Jim Croce was not especially interested in music. During those years he concentrated on foreign languages, especially German. Say something to us in German.
Guten Morgen
6) His focus changed when he got to college. That's when he joined a choral group that was chosen for a foreign exchange tour of Africa and the Middle East. When did you first travel far from home? Where did you go?
When I was little we drove to every state this side of the Mississippi in July visiting every battleflied and sometime staying at military officer housing and then in August we spent the month at my mother’s cousin cottage on Lake Winnisquam in New Hampshire. The last time I was there was when we bought our boat for the New Hampshire lake cottage that my parents bought in 1975. The cousin we stayed at died many years earlier and her son ran the business.
7) In 1973, when this song was popular, Norman Mailer was atop the best seller lists with his controversial biography of Marilyn Monroe. When you curl up with a book, is it more likely to be fiction or non-fiction?
Fiction.
Off in the stars fiction with space battles ot magic.
8) Home calculators were innovative in 1973. You could choose a large desktop calculator that featured big keys and plugs into the wall, or a hand-held, battery-operated model. Today every cellphone and laptop has a calculator built in, so do you ever still reach for a stand-alone calculator?
No.
But it was 1972 when HP launched the HP-35! I was in engineer school beck then. Do you know how many slide rulers went into the trash? I didn’t buy one, one of the kids in the dorm rented his out. He had a sign-up list on his door. Buck an hour, five dollars to take it to a test.
Yes, he was very shady. He made bugs, you know listening devices, but he was know for “Blue Boxes” where you could call anywhere for free and he sold them big $$$$.
He got busted! Instead of jail time… he made Blue Box detectors and sold them to the phone company. He was always in and out of legal trouble.
c
Probably groceries. Or an audiobook.
The oak is always the last to surrender; its brown leaves will hold on through the wildest of blizzards and surrender only when new life starts to bud.
Now that most of the trees have shed their leaves, the state road that I talk about—it's the diagonal line about halfway up—is visible, and you can see the west-facing cliffs. That is typical for around here; the mountains are called the "Hanging Hill," which was made famous by Frederic Edwin Church in his painting West Rock.
There is another artist who painted around here… you might have heard of him if you like the Hudson River School of painting: Nelson Augustus Moore.
He used to live about half a mile away alongside the same brook that runs near my house, which the land trust is buying. I can look out my window and see the same mountain that he saw. When I was little, we used to play along that brook, and back in high school, our science class even panned for galena, a mineral of lead, silver, and sulfur that was mined right there during the Revolutionary War.
In the “If it ain’t one thing, it’s another” department:
Yesterday it rained for the first time in fifteen days and it poured! It came down in buckets. It was impressive, but luckily there were no winds, unlike the downburst on the Fourth of July that knocked out power for four days.
A couple of hours later, I heard a drip… drip… drip… The classic sound of a leak.
I found it in the atrium. I also found other water stains on the window sill. Now what?! This is a floor-to-ceiling glass wall, two giant window assemblies. Back in 1990, it cost $3,000 each!
However, since the windows and skylights are over thirty years old, I have already been budgeting for their replacement. This just moved the schedule up. A number of the thermopane windows are also fogging up between the glass.
All these age-related repairs… even the front door lock needs replacing because I have to wiggle the key just to open it. It is all these little things!
Friday, November 06, 2026
Where Is This Case Going?
The judge was set against it. Trump’s lawyers favored it. What? Trump’s 34 fraud convictions—they have been arguing, first, that the case should have been heard in federal court, even though the charges were about falsifying business records in New York, which are state crimes! Second, that he has presidential immunity!
The judge was having none of it! But the judge just died!
CBS NewsBy Graham KatesNovember 5, 2026More than two years after President Trump was convicted of 34 felonies tied to a 2016 "hush money" payment to an adult film star, his lawyers are set to argue their appeal Thursday in New York.Mr. Trump's attorneys in the case have changed — one former defense attorney, Todd Blanche, is now U.S. attorney general, and another, Emil Bove III, is a federal judge — but his new team of personal lawyers has continued in filings to echo the arguments he made throughout the trial in 2024.An Oct. 16 filing by Mr. Trump's attorney Robert Giuffra, the powerful co-chair of the white shoe firm Sullivan & Cromwell, began with a line that Mr. Trump himself frequently said and posted on social media: The case, "should have never been brought."
That is total bull! A jury voted unanimously on all charges… Guilty!
A unanimous jury convicted Mr. Trump in May 2024 for his part in a scheme to falsify business records related to reimbursements made to Michael Cohen, his attorney at the time. Cohen had paid $130,000 to adult film star Stormy Daniels, days before the 2016 election, in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump years earlier. Mr. Trump has denied the allegations.
Folks… these were not campaign expenses! This was hush money that he failed to report!
"The question here is whether the White House statements and strategy introduced at trial in this criminal case—responding to public allegations of personal wrongdoing bearing directly on the President's integrity and fitness for office—were official," Giuffra wrote.
Come on, folks—it had nothing to do with the White House! It didn’t have anything to do with the campaign! This is how Trump works… keep tangling them up in never-ending court cases!
This is what they are arguing: that a candidate paying off a person to keep quiet is a legitimate campaign expense!
The judge’s body hasn’t even cooled yet and…
NewsweekBy Taryn PedlerOct 30, 2026President Donald Trump's attorneys have launched a fresh attack on the federal judge who oversaw a case involving the president's New York criminal conviction, criticizing his handling of the ongoing legal proceedings in a court filing submitted one day after the judge's death.Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein died of natural causes on Wednesday morning, aged 92. On Thursday, a 43-page court filing that Trump's legal team submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit took aim at Hellerstein's previous decisions in the case.The filing did not mention Hellerstein's death but accused him and the New York County District Attorney's Office (DANY) of repeatedly finding "meritless reasons" to prevent Trump from moving his criminal case from state to federal jurisdiction following the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity.
This is a state case! He committed fraud on business records!
So now what?
Trump's legal team is asking the Second Circuit to reverse Hellerstein's order denying permission to remove the case from state court.The filing's conclusion asks the appeals court to remand the matter with instructions to grant Trump leave to remove the case and adopt the state trial court's judgment.[…]The judge's cases are expected to be randomly assigned to other judges in the Manhattan court.
It is supposed to be random… we will see. Will it be a "Trump" judge that he appointed?
Stay tuned for the next exciting installment of Trump’s never-ending legal saga!
The Nutmeg State.
The Nutmeg State. The Blue Wave hit Connecticut. I have written about the national elections but not Connecticut. I am saddened by one loss, and very disappointed one didn’t lose.
Blue wave crashes over CT General Assembly
Minority Leader Stephen Harding, a Brookfield Republican, says he believes he lost
CT Mirror
by Mark Pazniokas
November 4, 2026Republicans lost as many as eight of their 11 seats in the Connecticut Senate and at least nine in the House, with some races still to be determined early Wednesday morning, leaving the GOP with its smallest-ever presence in the upper chamber.
Democrats projected majorities as large as 33-3 in the Senate and at least 111-40 in the House, with House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, saying if other close races fall their way, the House Democratic advantage could be as much as 116-35.
In the Senate, only three of the Senate’s 11 Republicans were clear victors: Sen. Eric Berthel of Watertown, Sen. Henri Martin of Bristol and Sen. Rob Sampson of Wolcott. Democrats currently have a 25-11 majority. Incomplete results showed Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, trailing his Democratic challenger Aaron Zimmer with 71% of the votes counted
Sadly, my state rep. didn’t lose. She is a staunch Republican, totally anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ. I only contacted her once and once was enough. I got the distinct impression that she didn’t want to represent all her constituents… just the straight ones.
Sen. Rob Sampson of Wolcott didn’t lose either, and he has introduced many anti-trans bills and amendments. These included one to ban trans women in sports, and another stripping us of our health insurance!
The Republican that I wished got reelected… Sen. Kissel. The CT Mirror reported;
Democrats said they also unseated three other incumbents: Sen. John Kissel of Enfield, a state senator for 34 years, lost to David Kiner in the 7th District; Sen. Heather Somers of Groton lost to Joe de la Cruz in the 18th; and Sen. Jeff Gordon of Woodstock lost to Ethan Werstler in the 35th.
Why a Republican? Because he was an old-fashioned Republican… voted for the people, not the party. Back in 2011, when the trans non-discrimination bill passed, he looked up at us and gave a thumbs up! He was a “straight shooter.” When we (as in those who lobbied for us) talked to him, he said he was for it, but the party… no.
This photo was taken in the Capitol stairway. We were just coming down from the Senate gallery after the vote. In the photo: Sen. Beth Bye, me (CTAC), Sal Tarmarkin (CT Equality), Jennifer Levi (GLAD), Betty Gallo (Gallo & Robinson, lobbyist), and Gretchen Raffa (Planned Parenthood). Missing is Jerimarie Liesegang (CTAC), who was being interviewed.
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