Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, November 4, 2025, and National Candy Day. I have already had pie and that’s it for sweets today, but these candies from Wikipedia look good. The caption? “Pantteri is a soft, chewy Finnish sugar candy. The colored ones are fruity, while black are salmiakki (salty licorice-flavored).” The Finns love their salty licorice, which is definitely an acquired taste.
It’s also International Eggplant Day, Liberace Day (he died on this day in 1987), National Hemp Day, National Homemade Soup Day, National Quacker Day (we have none in the pond), and National Stuffed Mushroom Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 4 Wikipedia page.
Walking to work today in the dark, I came across these two anti-ICE signs, which give a flavor of how heated up Chicago is. Nazis and rats!
Da Nooz:
*Important elections are happening today, with a lot of attention paid to Mamdani’s sure-thing win as NYC mayor,
After more than nine months of President Trump using the full force of the federal government to impose his will on the nation, elections across the country on Tuesday will offer the Democratic Party its biggest chance yet to assert its viability as a serious opposition party.
No federal contests that could provide a meaningful check on Mr. Trump’s powers in Washington will be decided. But races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia headline an Election Day that will provide a critical update on the state of the Democrats’ rebuilding project and a preview of the fault lines in the 2026 midterm elections.
The 2025 races have been buffeted by many of the same forces that shaped the 2024 race, led by an affordability crisis that is pinching voters in cities, suburbs and rural areas alike. Unlike in the 2024 election, it is now Mr. Trump and his ambitious regime of tariffs that are seen as driving the economy.
Ken Martin, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, predicted in an interview that victories on Tuesday would help his party head into 2026 with “a head full of steam.”
“Where there were once strong headwinds against the Democratic Party, there now seems to be wind at our back and momentum for sure,” Mr. Martin said. He insisted, “it’s not just an anti-Trump wave that we’re seeing,” but a powerful chord that Democrats have struck with their message on economics and affordability.
Of course, its helps Democrats that the biggest contests are being held in states that Mr. Trump lost. The flip side is that any defeats in those states could be especially deflating.
Beyond the governors’ races, mayoral contests in New York, Minneapolis and Seattle will highlight generational and ideological divides in the Democratic Party. Supreme Court elections in Pennsylvania, a key swing state, offer a check on the main parties’ strength. Races farther down the ticket — state legislative showdowns in Mississippi, a close attorney general contest in Virginia, two seats on Georgia’s public service commission, even a City Council recall in Mesa, Ariz. — will offer glimpses at the state of both parties in a time of division and rancor.
In New York City, the rise of 34-year-old Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who polls show is favored to win the mayor’s race, has demonstrated the left’s appetite to inject fresh faces and new ideas into the fight. Mr. Mamdani faces a November rematch with former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after Mr. Mamdani’s victory in the Democratic primary.
And the redistricting measures could change the balance of power in the House:
Other consequential contests include a California ballot measure to redraw the state’s congressional lines. The measure could squeeze as many as five House Republicans out of their seats and fortify a half-dozen Democratic incumbents in an effort to offset redistricting gambits by Republicans in Texas, North Carolina, Missouri and potentially more states.
Republicans hold a three-seat majority in the House headed into the 2026 midterm elections, magnifying the importance of each seat carved off the battleground landscape by partisan mapmakers.
Here are two maps from the NYT showing how redistricting would change the Congressional districts:
Houston gets more red:
. . . and the Los Angeles area gets more blue as Hispanic and black-dominated districts are expanded into formerly Republican areas:
I don’t like any of this gerrymandering, and by both parties, as it’s an unjustifiable way to consolidate or obtain political power.
*Speaking of elections, the Washington Post has an editorial board op-ed that’s quite critical of NYC’s future mayor: “Zohran Mamdani’s success is a warning.” I was surprised at first, though I’ve heard the Post’s op-ed section has turned towards the right lately, perhaps because owner Jeff Bezos is courting Trump. At any rate, I don’t like Mamdani for several reasons, and would probably have to write somebody in if I lived in NYC. Thank Ceiling Cat I don’t. But his victory is assured, though, according to the Post, not welcome:
Voters have been reminded repeatedly about Mamdani’s long history of radical politics. The unapologetic socialist has called for higher taxes to fund government-run grocery stores, free child care, free public transportation and vastly expanded state power in the housing market. He once called the New York Police Department “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.” He suggests rerunning a long list of failed social policy experiments more worthy of a late-night bull session at Bowdoin College than a serious political platform.
Mamdani has walked back some of his old positions, but never very convincingly. While he apologized to the NYPD and said he would retain the current mayor’s police commissioner, he recently admitted he hadn’t spoken to her since making the offer. And while he no longer defends eliminationist rhetoric about Jews, he remains fixated with Israel. Whenever confronted with his most radical views, the undeniably talented politician simply smiles and pivots to “affordability.”
The 34-year-old has had only one full-time job outside of politics, working as a counselor at a nonprofit for about a year. His greatest accomplishment before winning the Democratic mayoral primary in June was getting elected to the state assembly. If he wins, he’ll go from leading a paid staff of five to overseeing a $116 billion budget and 300,000 city workers.
It’s notable that voters see many of Mamdani’s flaws. Only 39 percent of New Yorkers think he is qualified for the job, compared to 47 percent who say he isn’t. Meanwhile, nearly three-quarters of voters say former New York governor Andrew Cuomo (D), running as an independent, has “the right kind of experience.” Yet Mamdani consistently leads polls by double digits (even as he appears unlikely to win an outright majority).
Why are so many voters siding with someone they think is unqualified? No doubt he is a generational political talent who has successfully used social media to mobilize voters. It’s also fair to assume New Yorkers are unimpressed with what the wheezing political establishment has to offer. Cuomo gained some national notoriety for his opposition to Trump during the pandemic but was forced from office amid sexual harassment allegations. Eric Adams, the current Democratic mayor, dropped out after a series of corruption scandals.
And here’s the warning:
Supporters of free markets have failed to articulately make their case in New York, and Mamdani’s success is a warning to business-friendly Democrats that they’ll have to do better. It’s not enough to say socialism is bad; defenders of the American system have to show why people’s lives are improved by economic freedom — and why many American failures are often the result of government intervention rather than a free market run amok.
It’s pathetic that there’s such a lame slate of candidates, and that 47% of city residents don’t even think Mamdani is qualified for the job compared to 39% who say he is. And everyone realizes that his economic schemes are a no-go. ?Democrats simply have to do better than grab onto the first genial candidate, even though his promises are ineffectual.
*I couldn’t resist this WSJ headline, as I didn’t know who it referred to: “The Arab World’s last militant leader is elusive and defiant.” It turns out that he’s the leader of the Houthi rebels in Yemen:
Over the past two years, Israel has systematically killed off or hobbled the leaders of its most-powerful enemies: Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. Yet it hasn’t been able to neutralize one, whose unrelenting resistance has made him, in the eyes of supporters, the last militant leader still fighting in the Middle East.
Diminutive and soft-spoken, Abdulmalik Al-Houthi has survived relentless attacks by Israel, the U.S. and other regional powers by hiding out in caves and never appearing in public while counting on Iran’s support to help keep his rebel movement in power in Yemen. For more than a decade as commander of Houthi forces, his playbook has been to keep challenging more formidable opponents with brazen missile attacks, gambling they have more to lose than he does.
Israeli officials say they believe Al-Houthi intends to keep doing that, especially now that the war in Gaza has helped raise his profile in the Arab world, where he is seen by many as the last and most credible defender of the Palestinian cause.
While Israel and the Arab world were expressing support at the end of September for President Trump’s plan to end the war in Gaza, the Houthis were hitting a Dutch-flagged ship with a cruise missile, leaving it in danger of sinking. That extended a campaign that had crimped a vital sea lane for two years and drew the U.S. into pitched naval battles.
Al-Houthi has said he’ll respect any truce signed by his Palestinian allies Hamas. But whatever the outcome, the Houthis are expected to continue their religious war against Israel and the U.S. over time. The group’s slogan, chanted at rallies, is “God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse the Jews, Victory to Islam.”
. . .In private meetings, officials from Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have tried repeatedly in recent months to convince Houthi leaders to stop attacking Israel and ships in the Red Sea, and go back to being a relatively small-time player in the region’s conflicts. But the group always refused, people familiar with the meetings said.
“They genuinely believe in this jihad to remove Israel from that land,” said April Longley Alley, a former United Nations diplomat who has engaged with the Houthi leadership. “And they’re going to keep pushing.”
The global spotlight has emboldened Al-Houthi, who in almost-weekly speeches by video from an undisclosed location has positioned himself as the most prominent Arab and Muslim leader standing up for Palestinians.
“If the Muslim world remains silent as Palestinians face extermination,” he said in a speech in March, “it will only embolden America and Israel to commit further atrocities.”
*As the AP notes, “The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is a major piece of the U.S. social safety net used by nearly 42 million, or about 1 in 8 Americans, to help buy groceries.” But that program is endangered, as Trump says the government shutdown will bring it to an end because of the government shutdown. Now two federal judges have ruled that SNAP can be resumed using contigency funds, and have ordered Trump to report when the resumption will occur.
Two federal judges on Friday said the Trump administration must tap into contingency funds to make payments for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the government shutdown, ruling against the government in a pair of suits over the imminent benefits lapse. Roughly 42 million Americans rely on SNAP to help buy food.
In a case brought by a coalition of states in federal court in Massachusetts, Judge Indira Talwani ruled that the government is required by law to tap into the emergency money to make at least partial payments, and gave the administration until Monday to tell the court whether it planned to do so.
In Rhode Island, Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. granted a request for a temporary restraining order from a group of municipalities and nonprofits that sued to block the imminent funding freeze, according to attorneys for Democracy Forward, the group leading the suit. The ruling was made from the bench. An entry on the case docket said the court “orders the USDA to distribute contingency funds” and report back to the court by noon on Monday.
McConnell on Saturday ordered the Trump administration to pay SNAP benefits in full by Monday and to report to the court by noon regarding the status of the distribution. In the order, the judge said that if the government chooses to use its discretion and decides not to use other funds to make a full payment, then it must make a partial payment using the total amount of the contingency funds. The order said the contingency funds must be used to make a partial payment by Wednesday.
In her ruling, Talwani stopped short of ordering the administration to send SNAP payments on Saturday, but she rejected the government’s argument that the $5 billion contingency fund cannot be used to fund benefits during the lapse in appropriations.
“At core, Defendants’ conclusion that USDA is statutorily prohibited from funding SNAP because Congress has not enacted new appropriations for the current fiscal year is erroneous,” Talwani wrote. “To the contrary, Defendants are statutorily mandated to use the previously appropriated SNAP contingency reserve when necessary and also have discretion to use other previously appropriated funds.”
Talwani wrote that “the court will allow Defendants to consider whether they will authorize at least reduced SNAP benefits for November, and report back to the court no later than” Monday.
Of course we’re now used to Trump ignoring judges’ orders, but if he does so this time a lot of people will be scrambling for food. The news shows huge lines forming outside of food banks, and people in those lines aren’t going to be favorably inclined towards Trump. If he had any political savvy, this is one thing the “President” wouldn’t fight.
*I don’t often quote the WSJ’s op-ed column since it’s biased: not just right-leaning, but right-leaning regardless of the facts. Still, I read it, for you never know where you’ll find an acorn. And the latest op-ed by editor James Freeman does point out one reason why the Democrats are in trouble:
Give some credit to those lonely voices in the Democratic expert class who are trying to pull the party back from the progressive cliff. It surely would be easy to give in to pessimism these days watching Democrats in the world’s financial capital threatening to elect a Marxist mayor. But there are still members of the party who have reflected on the 2024 campaign results and would like to win some elections in parts of the United States that lie outside of New York City. Some of them have published a new effort called, “Deciding to Win: Toward a Common Sense Renewal of the Democratic Party.”
The report states:
In order to take back Congress and the presidency, Democrats need to understand the political and strategic landscape we face. Deciding to Win aims to provide the most comprehensive account to date of why Democrats lost and what our party needs to do to win again. We draw on thousands of election results, hundreds of public polls and academic papers, dozens of case studies, and surveys of more than 500,000 voters we conducted since the 2024 election. Deciding to Win argues that since 2012, highly educated staffers, donors, advocacy groups, pundits, and elected officials have reshaped the Democratic Party’s agenda, decreasing our party’s focus on the economic issues that are the top concerns of the American people. These same forces have pushed our party to adopt unpopular positions on a number of issues that are important to voters, including immigration and public safety. To win again, Democrats need to listen more to voters and less to out-of-touch donors, detached party elites, and Democratic politicians who consistently underperform the top of the ticket.
One of the report’s co-authors, Lauren Harper Pope, illustrates how far and how quickly the party has moved toward ideas that voters reasonably reject:
The 2012 Democratic Party platform led with this:
Today, our economy is growing again, al-Qaeda is weaker than at any point since 9/11, and our manufacturing sector is growing for the first time in more than a decade. But there is more we need to do, and so we come together again to continue what we started. We gather to reclaim the basic bargain that built the largest middle class and the most prosperous nation on Earth – the simple principle that in America, hard work should pay off, responsibility should be rewarded, and each one of us should be able to go as far as our talent and drive take us.
The 2024 Democratic Party platform leads with:
The Democratic National Committee wishes to acknowledge that we gather together to state our values on lands that have been stewarded through many centuries by the ancestors and descendants of Tribal Nations who have been here since time immemorial. We honor the communities native to this continent, and recognize that our country was built on Indigenous homelands. We pay our respects to the millions of Indigenous people throughout history who have protected our lands, waters, and animals.
It goes on, but you see the problem for the Democrats. The report itself is certainly worth scanning, if not perusing.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili quotes the Bible, but Andrzej objects:
Hili: In the beginning was the Word, and after that – just babble.
Me: You’re exaggerating. You read too many newspapers.
In Polish:
Hili: Na początku było słowo, a potem już tylko bełkot.
Ja: Przesadzasz, za dużo czytasz gazet.
*******************
Three kitty memes today! From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:
From Jesus of the Day:
From Meow and a clever barista:
From Malcolm; look at this intrepid goose!
A father protecting his family.pic.twitter.com/3awyytq3dk
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 16, 2025
Tweets are thin today, but here’s a back-and-forth between Charles Murray and Steve Pinker. Murray wrote a piece in the WSJ called “Can science reckon with the human soul?” (answer: no), similar to a piece he wrote in the Free Press and which I criticized here, but mostly posted the contents of an email that Pinker sent me. Steve later revised his email into a letter to the editor of the WSJ called “Charles Murray’s unscientific case for the soul.” THEN the WSJ published Murray’s response to that letter, “Pinker whiffs at my case for the human soul.”
The fracas isn’t over, for Pinker now has a tweet thread saying au contraire, he didn’t whiff but hit a homer. Here’s the series of responses (the main point of contention was Murray’s claim that the existence of “termial lucidity”, the recovery of cognition in people with dementia or in comatose states, shows that God exists. LOL! Click on the screenshot below to see the whole thread:
Two from my feed. First, Whak-A-Mole with kitties:
I can watch these two aaaalll day!🤣 pic.twitter.com/BpoAQ94bEv
— The Internet of Cats 🐈🐈⬛ (@KittiesInternet) November 2, 2025
As Rebecca Tuvel points out, transgenderism is okay but transracialism is not:
A man dressed as a woman scolds a woman dressed as an Indian for Halloween. We’re hitting levels of hypocrisy we never thought possible. pic.twitter.com/p11vEgsu3g
— 9mmSMG (@9mm_smg) November 2, 2025
One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was 12 years old.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-11-04T12:08:42.342Z
Two from Dr. Cobb. I love this first one:
Anyway, we need some joy, so here's the Egyptian foreign minister being given a Lego Pyramid by the Danish foreign minister.
— Bruce Gorrie (@bsrg1.bsky.social) 2025-11-03T14:35:35.499Z
Not all cuckoos are parasitic. Here’s one non-parasitie cuckoo species that, thinks Matthew, evolved a hard-to-resemble egg to prevent its own nest from being attacked by nest parasites:
Once a year I like to remind myself and others how amazing Guira Cuckoo eggs are!
— Steve Portugal (@sjportugal.bsky.social) 2025-11-03T08:29:38.230Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
A king can stand people’s fighting, but he can’t last long if people start thinking. -Will Rogers, humorist (4 Nov 1879-1935)
Virginia does indeed have three excellent dems for the statewide offices of governor, lt. governor, and attorney general in today’s election. The gubernatorial candidate, Abigail Spanberger, is a moderate dem who has served as a CIA operations officer and later as a member of Congress unseating Republican Dave Brat who had earlier unseated Eric Cantor as not conservative enough. The race for attorney general is very close due to some unfortunate texted remarks a few years ago by the democratic nominee. The campaigns for all three dems have focused more anti-trump and less on their own specific records and their opponents’ specific records….which I think to be a mistaken total strategy. Meanwhile the Republicans have zeroed in on specific claims about the dems’ records…some of which may be true in part…without retort from the dems. Some good news is that our lawn signs promoting dems have not been stolen or vandalized for the six weeks they have stood in our largely Republican neighborhood.
“Unfortunate” is quite the understatement, Jim! Imagine Donny Jr texting something similar–and he’s not running to be the chief law enforcement officer of a state!
Aside from wishing violent death on his political opponents and their young children, is it true that Jay Jones was clocked doing 116 in a 70 a couple years ago? I haven’t verified it, since I don’t live there. And like I said yesterday, to each state his own. But the penchant for speed wasn’t the kicker. When he was sentenced to 1000 hours of community service for his reckless driving, did he really use 500 hours of it working for his own political action committee? Truly?
It’s really not a good look for the son of a former Virginia state rep and circuit court judge, even if someone authorized that self-serving “community” service. It reeks of narcissism and entitlement. Maybe he has a future in the White House!
Is there truth to any of these charges? Are the Republicans fabricating? Are the Democrats looking the other way because “our guy”? Have our expectations of leadership in both parties plummeted? What is going on out there???
Disclosure: I chose to live on the other side of the river when I worked in DC!
Yeah, Doug. I was pretty pissed off when that stuff started to surface and took down my sign supporting all three dems, replacing it with a solo Spanberger for governor sign. But regardless, Miyares, the current ag and Jones’ opponent has done enough in his four years to be unacceptable to me. I did not like Kamala at all, but preferred her to trump. I don’t like Jones’ behaviors at all but prefer his politics to Miyares’. In VA we have had experience with cross-party postings as Gov and AG in the past. When (now) Sen Tim Kaine was governor in the 2008 period, future governor, republican bob McDonell was ag. I was working in the executive office building in Richmond on loan from NASA for a year and only saw McDonnell in the building once.
So to fully (not) answer your question, I cannot get details from my dem friends, so Given that the texts are clearly true, and we have a history in the Commonwealth of such entitled behavior by our elected leaders, I have no reason to think the other stuff not true, but Miyares’ record drives me to, as the old Mailer/Breslin campaign said years ago, “vote the rascals in”.
BTW, I have voted for a moderate republican for statehouse in the past when I found the dem unacceptable and before the days when any republican opposing the party line would end up being primaried from the right. So I am not a dem, right or wrong, always a dem, but in this year’s ag contest, I hold my nose and vote for the dem miscreant.
So Doug. I overstated..I need an editor!..we have TWO excellent dems and one better than the other guy dem ag candidate.
Are we? It seems to me that the Administration has been relatively scrupulous about abiding by court rulings. (You might be thinking of Biden, for instance, on student-loan forgiveness.) In the case of SNAP benefits, for example, Trump has said they would use emergency funds. He only demurred because two courts were saying two different things. The only instance that I can think of where the Administration might be accused of ignoring a court is in the case where the judge ordered planes already carrying deportees in the air and outside U.S. airspace to be turned around.
This is very important, DrB. President Trump has never defied an adverse Court ruling except in the deportation case you referred to. He appeals adverse rulings from lower Courts he doesn’t agree with and has often won relief from temporary injunctions, allowing his orders to proceed pending eventual review by the Supreme Court. He has every right to take these steps as a determined Administration tests the reach of the Executive. That’s how your Separation of Powers works. But he has never (except in that deportation flight) said, “I don’t care what the judge said. The civil service is gonna do this because I said so.”
To say that we have gotten used to President Trump ignoring Court orders is a remarkable thing to say. If true, that would precipitate a Constitutional crisis. Every time. (And a moral crisis within the civil service in complying with illegal instructions from their Departments.)
As to the political wisdom of interdicting Food Stamps, my sense is that the program is popular only among people who aren’t in a million years going to vote Republican. Resentment against SNAP recipients codes Republican, I should think.
You can’t be serious.
You vaguely recall a single violation by the administration, against a backdrop of legal scrupulosity. This is a ridiculous reversal of reality. The administration repeatedly, knowingly and willfully violated multiple court orders by multiple judges – court orders that were issued, in many instances, to restrain the administration from violating the constitution.
This is a quote from just one article:
I will agree that the Trump administration obeys the law – when the law permits it to do what it wants to do and when it has nothing to gain by breaking it. But so do career criminals.
That judges say it doesn’t make it true. Chief Justice Taney once said blacks couldn’t be citizens.
“That judges say it doesn’t make it true”
That’s exactly Brooke’s point.
Something circulating on the net to the effect that a top Israeli lawyer has been arrested for leaking footage of a gang rape of a Palestinian.
Near as I can tell, the lawyer is female military and she was not arrested but resigned, and the Palestinian was male and was severely beaten and perhaps stabbed in the rear somewhere, but it may be well to try to keep tabs on actual details to counter inflated claims.
The ToI (Times of Israel) is following the alleged leaker-lawyer exploits but not the alleged leaked events video itself, it appears.
The story is complicated and goes back to July 2024, when allegations of the rape of a male prisoner at Sde Teiman Prison resulted in five officers being arrested and indictments made.
The Chief Military Prosecutor, Major General Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi was involved in the leak of a somewhat doctored video allegedly documenting abuse. The story led to right-wing Israelis storming the prison in support of the officers, a huge internet response from the usual actors, multiple investigations, and increased abuse of Israeli hostages by Hamas.
You can read about it here: https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/rygdy2kkwl
This just in – the whole affair, which involves the Judicial reform effort – put in context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58JGYouJD0U
Thanks!
I LOVE salmiak liquorice. Especially the Danish one, which goes right up into your sinuses. 🙂
Egypt will crush the Houthis if need be. Why? Forget politics. The Houthis are a direct threat to Egypt (think revenue from the Suez Canal). Egypt needs the money and will go to war to get it. As for Saudi Arabia and Qatar, they have other choices.
Egypt will send ground troops if need be. The other players (that includes the USA) won’t.
There form on this one, Frank:
Nasser sent a ton of Egyptian troops into Yemen (as a Third World Socialist and commie puke) in the 1960s in a BIG war against the monarchists. Yemen is what the entire Arabian peninsula would look like w/o hydrocarbons.
Nasser was a curse on humanity whose damage continues, only bested by Islamism. There has not been a time in ALL our lives when the Islamosphere hasn’t been (almost entirely) poor, and somewhere, at war. Religion of Peace.
D.A.
NYC
DA, there is a nasty rumor that the 60s Yemen war included chemical weapons provided by the USSR
HA! I was just thinking about that later on after posting. Chemical weapons are the main reason why that war is remembered I think. War in Yemen is not something surprising or new, but that mid-60s adventure was particular in its inhumanity. (The last Yemeni Jew died a few years ago, buried by his neighbor).
Not sure why the Qataris and Saudis are trying to talk sense into the Houthis – they were bombing them for a long time!).
D.A.
NYC
The BBC reports that Cheney died, probably after this post was written. https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c4gpxe1kg8kt
AP : “The program serves about 1 in 8 Americans and is a major piece of the nation’s social safety net. It costs about $8 billion per month nationally.”
What does “Americans” mean –
What does “social safety net” mean –
Why is the success of a program to decrease poverty measured by the size of the program –
— and by the corpulent size of the beneficiaries.
Honestly, poor people everywhere in the Americas now are fatter than the wretched of famine-ravaged Gaza.
Are we so used to obesity that we assume Israel must be starving the merely chubby?
Voted at 7am today at the high school next door. For stupid Cuomo 🙁
(Sorry PCC(E), write in vote are lame). To quote myself (sorry, I posted the link the other day also):
“We’re used to conmen as well – I thought!, New Yorkers can spot them a “long city block” away: after all – we gave the world Trump. But we never voted for him. Now lately we’ll vote the opposite – Bizarro Commie Trump – out of spite – ….
Like Trump, Zohran lies ALL. THE. TIME. And his supporters don’t care – it’s the narcissism and “owns” they want. His supporters are like MAGAs just with purple hair and dumb pronouns. The psychological similarities are eerie.”
https://democracychronicles.org/forgetabaht-it/
D.A.
NYC
“Purple hair and dumb pronouns”…nice, thanks, D.A.
Smartass Woke Left provokes
Dumbass Woke Right reacts
Perpetual conditions of the Friend/Enemy distinction (C. Schmitt, 1932)
Repeat ad infinitum
Stop it David. You’ll make Zohran’s aunt upset…
The news today seems to be Mamdani and SNAP, with a mention of the death of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Mamdani will most likely win, and the Democrats will try to read something into that about the state of the nation overall. The Virginia races might prove to be better bellwethers.
SNAP will be funded by the feds, at least in part. Here in the Seattle area, local food banks are scrambling to meet the anticipated demand, and local leaders are coughing up money to help fund purchases of food.
The state of the nation overall or the state of the city of New York? I thought he is the kind of person who would be unpopular in most other parts of the US.
Maybe his success would tell the party that the way to win elections is the Ezra Klein approach. Not so easy for a presidential election.
The nation overall. I do think that New York City is its own unique thing, but some Democratic pundits will claim to read more into it—that the party needs to turn even further left to regain power. I agree that Mamdani would not be a popular candidate in most places in the country, but the Dems tend to look to the big population areas for their aspirations—and their votes. This is one reason they are so out of touch.
If these are his exact words, then he really does have a head full of steam, or something else beginning with “s”. A full head of steam is something quite different.
He can see the carrot at the end of the tunnel…
It is interesting how “head full of steam” got conflated with “head of steam”, used to describe the pressure of steam available from a boiler. I wonder if Ken Martin wears a steam-turban as headgear.
Getting to my rulz limit but I claim a special “New York” exception today, and I’m a loudmouth!
The above comparison of the Dem’s 2014 statement and the recent one is incredibly illustrative. I’ve thought about these changes a lot (as I, for the first time) ticked down the Republican column on my ballot. It’d be like seeing Jerry in church!
Many people don’t seem to notice how our society has changed so much in the past decade. I think MORE than the 60s.
D.A.
NYC
Re candy day, that photo knocked the dust off an 1950’s memory of Chuckles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuckles
You always got the same set of 5 flavours, which included liquorice, which I liked a lot and all my friends detested; 🙂 .
If I were to join a cult, the Cult of Hili seems eminently reasonable.