Welcome to a Hump Day (“የሃምፕ ቀን” in Amharic), Wednesday, November 12, 2025, and National French Dip Day. In the US, this comestible is a hot roast beef sandwich, and, like the one below, isn’t often served dipped in the jus In Chicago our version is served heavily dipped and sopping; it’s called an “Italian Beef”. Note that there is a cup of jus on the side below if you’d like to dip. (I do.)
It’s also Happy Hour Day, Chicken Soup for the Soul Day, National Pizza with the Works Except Anchovies Day (indeed: fish don’t belong on pizza), and Fancy Rat and Mouse Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 12 Wikipedia page.
Posting may be light today as I’m still struggling with insomnia, and it’s hard to brain. Bear with me; I do my best.
Da Nooz:
*Among the people Trump is deporting to their home countries are dozens of Iranians. Some of these entered the country illegally, while others are in the process of getting asylum. This is a particularly problematic action on Trump’s part since Iran is one of the most repressive countries in the world, and it seems wrong to send someone back there if they haven’t committed any blatantly illegal acts in the U.S. The NYT has the details. The article begins with a sad story about an Iranian who entered the U.S. illegally but then was put on a plane (in his detention clothes!) and sent back to Iran. It continues:
On Sept. 29, the Trump administration deported a planeload of Iranians, including Mr. Dalir, to Iran after reaching an agreement with Tehran. The U.S.-chartered deportation flight was a first. In the past, Iranian deportees were placed individually on commercial flights to Iran. Organizing a plane to Tehran had taken months of negotiations between American and Iranian officials.
For decades, waves of Iranians fleeing persecution found protection in the United States, including many who were at first unauthorized but later gained asylum.
. . .But President Trump has made mass deportation a cornerstone of his immigration policy and signed an executive order, which went into place on the first day of his administration, banning asylum for migrants who crossed the border illegally. The policy has since been partially blocked by a federal court. The Trump administration announced late last month that it was cutting the number of refugees that could enter the U.S. to a record low of 7,500.
And while, historically, migrants from countries difficult to deport to, like Iran and Venezuela, have languished in detention or lived freely in the United States, the Trump administration is pushing countries from across the globe to take back their own migrants.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said the 54 Iranians deported on the flight had a final order of removal or an order granting voluntary departure and they were all given due process. Ms. McLaughlin said among the Iranians deported were “terrorists, human smugglers and suspected foreign agents.”
Ms. McLaughlin said of the 54 Iranians deported on the flight, 23 had ties to terrorism, seven were on the terror watch list and five others were associated with human trafficking networks. She provided the name of one man convicted of having ties to terrorist groups and two others who she said had committed fraud by uploading false and altered photos.
“The Trump administration remains committed to fulfilling the president’s promise to expeditiously, and with the highest standards, deport illegal aliens from the country, ” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman.
Iran’s foreign ministry has said that more than 400 Iranians in the United States face deportation and that planning is underway for additional flights.
This is a tough one. If McLaughlin is right, at least 35 of the 54 depoarted Iranians were justifiably returned home. But what about those who hoped to follow in the footsteps of law-abiding, non-terrorist predecessors who were given asylum. Given the nature of Iran and its repressive theocracy, I would say that although all those deported must go before an immigration judge (apparently they had), the U.S. should consider exactly where they are deporting people to, and if they are sending them back to situations that might lead to their death. It would be nice if the government would give more detail about people they “remove,” though perhaps that would be either illegal or compromise national security.
*Apparently Senate Democrats were unwilling to compromise to get the government open again, and this has caused yet another rupture in the Democratic party. Although Chuck Schumer wasn’t one of the 8 Senate Dems who “defected,” leading to a possibility of opening up the government, the “progressives” are blaming him for what has happened:
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) wasn’t one of the Democratic senators who voted with Republicans to back GOP legislation to end the government shutdown. He is still taking most of the blame.
Angry progressive voters and party activists have focused their fury on the 74-year-old Schumer in the aftermath of what they see as a collapse by Senate Democrats.
Coming on the heels of big wins for the party in off-year elections last Tuesday, the letdown has reignited criticism of Schumer’s leadership, mostly from the left. Critics complained that he was too weak to keep his caucus united long enough to force Republicans to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act health-insurance subsidies, Democrats’ central demand in the fight.
“If this was Schumer’s best, his best clearly isn’t good enough,” said Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee in a message to donors, reflecting a sentiment among many left-wing groups. “The legacy of Chuck Schumer is caving, not winning,” he said.
Graham Platner, a progressive Democrat running for Senate in Maine, said the GOP bill advanced because Schumer “failed in his job yet again.”
But Schumer allies say he did the best he could with a bad hand, and pointed out that few Republicans had expected Senate Democrats to hold out as long as they did—about 40 days. Among his defenders was House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.), who said Schumer should remain in his leadership role and credited him for keeping Democrats largely united over weeks of votes starting in September even as Republicans didn’t budge.
. . .“I think that Sen. Schumer has held the line” during the shutdown fight, Jeffries said on the Parnas Perspective podcast. He said he expected Schumer to “stay in this fight as we’re moving forward together.”
Schumer isn’t expected to face a leadership vote until after next year’s midterm elections, and he won’t face voters again himself until 2028. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), the popular progressive who hasn’t ruled out a primary against Schumer, didn’t respond to a request for comment Monday.
But what was Schumer supposed to do? Are we sure that Senate Repubicans would eventually have caved on the healthcare extensions? I don’t think so, nor do I think that Schumer has been as bad a leader as many Dems thinkOne thing is for sure, AOC would not be a good leader, though she hungers for a Senate seat like a cat hungers for cream. I don’t think many of us want a Democratic Party that signs onto “progressive” ideals.
*In a letter to the WSJ, neurologist Michael M. Segal pushes back on Charles Murray’s claim that only the existence of God could explain claims of “terminal lucidity”: instances where people who are not lucid because they have dementia or are near death suddenly become lucid. Murray claims that this could not happen under naturalism. Terminal lucidity was, claimed Murray, evidence for a human soul. (He’s one of those people who find religion late in life and then tout it all over the press; he’s also written a book, Taking Religion Seriously.) Here’s his letter in its entirety:
Alexander Batthyány writes that “a good scientific theory should predict and explain what is observed. Mr. Pinker’s materialism does neither” (Letters, Nov. 6). Yet a biologically plausible hypothesis can both explain and predict the aforementioned phenomenon of terminal lucidity.
There are numerous examples of “irreversibly degraded” neural circuits that are jolted back into operation by the release of amine neurotransmitters such as dopamine or epinephrine. One example is immobile people with Parkinson’s disease who, after a fire alarm sounds, can run out of a room. Another is awakening from coma by activating the reticular activating system, as Gen. David Petraeus did for a comatose soldier by shouting the battle cry of his unit. Another is the memory improvement in people with Alzheimer’s disease when excited. Such activation of amine neurotransmission could be the biological basis for terminal lucidity, triggered by the pain or emotion of dying.
The hypothesis can also predict. Perhaps one day we will give an injection of epinephrine to comatose people who are dying to give them terminal lucidity. Only a small number would respond, and some would succumb to cardiac arrhythmias. But for a loved one who is dying, trying for a final goodbye could be rational.
The brain is complicated, with many billions of neurons. But we know enough about its biology that we don’t need to assume that there is an equally complicated entity called a soul that has zero neurons but contains a full copy of the brain’s information and the ability to engage in conversation.
*Speaking of books and prizes, as we did yesterday, the winner of the 2025 Booker Prize for the best work of fiction written in English and published in the UK or Ireland is a novel called Flesh, published in the U.S. by Simon and Schuster:
When David Szalay’s novel “All That Man Is” was nominated for the 2016 Booker Prize, the author described the award ceremony as “a horrible experience.”
He sat through a “very stressful” dinner, wondering whether his book would triumph, only for it to lose to Paul Beatty’s “The Sellout.” He later told The Guardian newspaper, “Only trauma imprints memories that clearly.”
On Monday night in London, Szalay sat through another Booker Prize dinner. But this time his latest novel, “Flesh,” won the prestigious literary award.
The author Roddy Doyle, who chaired this year’s judging panel, called it a “singular” and “extraordinary” novel.
“It’s just not like any other book,” Doyle told a news conference before Monday’s announcement about the novel, in which Istvan, a lonely Hungarian teenager, makes an unexpected rise to the height of British society. The sparseness of Szalay’s writing compels readers to “climb into the novel and be involved,” Doyle added.
Accepting the award, Szalay said that “Flesh” wasn’t easy to write, “and I didn’t always cope that well with the pressure. I didn’t cope that wisely or graciously.”
Szalay then thanked his wife for supporting him. “I’m sure she is bewildered as I am by the fact that those rather bleak times and this glittering evening are somehow part of the same process and same experience.”
“Flesh” beat the five other shortlisted titles, including Susan Choi’s “Flashlight,” Kiran Desai’s “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” Katie Kitamura’s “Audition,” Ben Markovits’s “The Rest of Our Lives” and Andrew Miller’s “The Land in Winter.”
. . .One of literature’s pre-eminent awards, the Booker Prize is given each year to the book deemed to be best novel written in English and published in Britain or Ireland. Last year, Samantha Harvey triumphed with “Orbital,” a novel set aboard the International Space Station. In recent years, the Booker has acquired a global following, and winning titles often become hits on both sides of the Atlantic. As well as a boost in sales, the winning author receives a cash prize of 50,000 pounds, about $65,800
“Flesh” has attracted a host of high-profile admirers since its publication in March, including the pop star Dua Lipa, who chose the novel for her book club, and the novelist Zadie Smith, who told a BBC radio show that “Flesh” was “astonishing.” Some novelists give their characters incredibly complicated inner lives, Smith said, but Szalay had the confidence to create a lead who doesn’t reflect much on the events that befall him, and who felt realistic because of that.
Well, it’s one to look for, but I’m still trying to get Ian McEwan’s latest novel, What We Can Know, via interlibrary loan. I’m wondering, though, why they tout Dua Lipa’s opinion of the book.
*I must admit to a bit of Schadenfreude about the reactions to Kim Kardashian’s new t.v. show on Hulu, as the reviews unanimously say that it’s a stinkeroo. To me, the whole family exemplifies what’s detestable about America: people getting famous for no good reason and then they get rich simpy because they slap their names on products. (The Kardashians would be largely unknown if Kim hadn’t leaked a sex tape.) At any rate, here’s a gander of just one take from U.S.A. Today, which gives the show one star out of four.
Hollywood never loses its ability to produce absolute garbage. And perhaps that’s somewhat reassuring.
But maybe you’d be surprised in the case of “All’s Fair,” from Ryan Murphy and Kim Kardashian. The two are powerful names in the world of Hollywood and celebrity. Murphy has produced countless TV shows that have been heaped with acclaim, ratings and awards and Kardashian is a reality show star turned businesswoman and billionaire, with millions of followers and fans hooked to her every move.
So if the two team up for a Hulu drama about wealthy divorce attorneys in Los Angeles, with help from actresses like Glenn Close, Naomi Watts, Sarah Paulson, Niecy Nash and Teyana Taylor, it should be great, right? It should, at the very least, be kind of watchable and have good fashion, you’d think?
“Fair” (now streaming, ★ out of four) doesn’t have a single one of those redeeming qualities. An embarrassingly terrible show with scripts worse than what ChatGPT was spitting out two years ago and acting worse than your local Christmas pageant, “Fair” is an unmitigated disaster of such outlandish proportions it’s a wonder not a single person in the production process didn’t stop and ask “What are we doing here?” to their fellows. And lest you think that it is the kind of “bad” that is messy and fun and ripe for hate-watching, I will disappoint you further: It’s so stilted, artificial and awkward not even a glass of wine and leftover Halloween candy can make it remotely enjoyable to view.
What are the building blocks of this soulless slice of Hollywood egomania, you ask? Kardashian and Watts play the ridiculously named high-powered divorce attorneys Allura Grant and Liberty Ronson, respectively, who leave their stuffy, fuddy duddy, man-led law firm to start their own practice, bringing along investigator Emerald Greene (Nash) with them (yes, again, that’s the real character name). They are somehow so successful as to have mansions, private jets and Birkin bags that are really the provenance of their billionaire clients, and do their impressive “lawyering” by blackmailing cheating husbands and staring blankly at their competition across conference tables while wearing truly heinous designer clothing (an important reminder that just because something is expensive doesn’t mean it’s in good taste)
. . . It’s impossible to take “Fair” seriously when not a single actor onscreen appears to be doing so. Watts, Nash, Close, Taylor (a member of the new firm) and Paulson are sleepwalking through their scenes, each one of them acting somewhat at a distance from the material and each other. It’s like you’re watching all of them through an old-fashioned telescope, so faraway and detached are their performances.
It gets worse (go read the last paragraph of the review), but you get the idea. Here’s the Rotten Tomatoes summary (the 4% approval rating comes from critics):
Wikipedia adds more sad stuff about America:
Despite the negative critic reviews, it became the most-watched premiere among Hulu Original scripted shows in the past three years with a viewership of around 3.2 million after three days of release.[32] Addressing the negative reviews, the BBC noted that viewers still liked the show for its high camp and statement fashion
And you didn’t think I was going to let you get away without watching a clip, right? It’s actually hard to find clips, which is itself telling.
@rottentomatoes First teaser for Ryan Murphy’s new legal drama series AllsFair. Starring Kim Kardashian, Naomi Watts, Niecy Nash-Betts, Teyana Taylor, Sarah Paulson, and Glenn Close. #rottentomatoes #tv #tvshow #tvtok #teaser #firstlook #kimkardashian #teyanataylor #sarahpaulson #trailer #hulu #ryanmurphy
*I have no news on Ghost the giant octopus, who senescing at the Aquarium of the Pacific while guarding a brood of infertile eggs. She should be dead by now, but the Aquarium says nothing. I think they’re hiding Ghosts’s demise. In September the Aquarium reported senescence as if it was death (it isn’t). I’m betting they won’t announce her demise, as they have taken her off of public view. I WANT TO KNOW!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, anomie reigns:
Hili: I’m starting to feel tired.
Me: Of what?
Hili: Thinking. I need a moment of mindlessness.
In Polish:
Hili: Zaczynam być zmęczona.
Ja: Czym?
Hili: Myśleniem. Potrzebuję chwili bezmyślności.
***********************
From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:
From Cat Memes:
From Jesus of the Day:
I thought that Masih would have something to say about the deportations of Iranians, but. . . . crickets. JKR is likewise quiet, but here is the redoubtable Dr. Hilton (she put in a lot of work that got the International Olympic Committee to ban trans-identified men from competing in women’s sports at the upcoming Olympics):
Neither of these is a FACT.
In FACT, neither of these assertions is coherent. pic.twitter.com/blrdMW2wr0
— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) November 10, 2025
From Luana: a massive drop of bacteria-sterilized mosquitoes over Hawaii, with the aim of saving endangered species of honeycreepers by reducing the mosquito population (they carry avian malaria). Eventually the mosquitoes will rebound, but this gives the birds a chance to rebound as well. And somewhere there’s a person with the job title of “Mosquito Sterilizer.”
A million mosquitoes are falling from the skies over Hawaii every week.
To rescue some of Hawaii’s rarest birds from extinction, scientists are releasing one million mosquitoes into the wild—every week.
These are not ordinary mosquitoes. They are lab-bred males that don’t bite… pic.twitter.com/xMBIb3Ruf4
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) November 7, 2025
Reader Simon gives us another reason to get cats rather than d*gs:
Good morning, patriots! Be sure to give your dog a big hug. 🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/evTZyQB9uA
— Lucy (@TheLucyShow1) November 9, 2025
From Malcolm; cat pwns d*g:
One from my feed. BE GOOD TO POSSUMS!
Hello, I’m a Possum.
Probably, you don’t know it, but I’m not here to cause any trouble. Actually, I’m here to help. Every night, I can eat lots of ticks, along with insects that spread disease.
I also keep snake numbers in check, even the venomous ones. My body is tough… pic.twitter.com/I2AAZLQ8Pf
— PROTECT ALL WILDLIFE (@Protect_Wldlife) November 10, 2025
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
A German Jewish girl was gassed to death immediately after arriving at Auschwitz. She was eleven years old. https://t.co/Ge5he1c7TG
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) November 12, 2025
Two from Dr. Cobb. LOL; the answer to the question is “measles”!
Measles.
— The Web of Evil (@webofevil.bsky.social) 2025-11-08T20:08:08.255Z
A thread of things that Matthew saw when he recently visited the Shanghai Museum of Natural History:
I feel as though I have been miniaturised and am in one of @tetzoo.bsky.social’s display cabinets…
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-10-19T09:14:18.450Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (12 Sep 1880-1956)
This quote is confirmed by the amazing number of comments to the tweet about sterilized male mosquitoes that say more or less the same thing:
It’s thanks to beliefs like this that Republican women have measles(!) and we’re cursed by MAHA.
Another example of the credulity of people can be found in the recrudescence of Nazi-type beliefs about global Jewish conspiracies:
Let’s face it, most of this criminal level of credulity is found on the right, where critical thought itself is apparently now demonized. There’s good reason to be scared of stupid unthinking people.
Critical thinking needs to be understood to be a moral obligation.
And yet it is a disproportionate share of people with PhDs and other advanced degrees who insist that boys can become girls, that puberty blockers are reversible and “affirming,” and that a year or two of shuttered schools was a necessary defense against a virus with a childhood survival rate of 99.99%.
Who is in greater breach of their obligation to think critically: those who never learned how, or those who declare it core to their profession?
Keith E. Stanovich: The Bias that Divides Us. Quillette, Sept 36, 2020
UNGATED
What our society is really suffering from is myside bias: People evaluate evidence, generate evidence, and test hypotheses in a manner biased toward their own prior beliefs, opinions, and attitudes.
Keith E. Stanovich: The Bias That Divides Us: The Science and Politics of Myside Thinking. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2021
Steven Pinker when asked to name the best books on rationality:
shepherd dot com/best-books/rationality
Keith Stanovich is a professor emeritus of applied psychology and human development at the University of Toronto.
Keith E. Stanovich: The irrational attempt to impute irrationality to one’s political opponents. in: Michael Hannon & Jeroen de Ridder (eds.): The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology. 2021, 274-284
Robin McKenna: Asymmetrical irrationality: Are only other people stupid? in: Michael Hannon & Jeroen de Ridder (eds.): The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology. 2021, 285-295
Daniel B. Klein: I Was Wrong, and So Are You. The Atlantic, Dec 2011
https://archive.li/P7mMk
A libertarian economist retracts a swipe at the left—after discovering that our political leanings leave us more biased than we think.
Peter H. Ditto et al.: Partisan Bias in Political Judgment. Annual Review of Political Science, 2025, Vol. 76:717-740
Abstract
This article reviews empirical data demonstrating robust ingroup favoritism in political judgment. Partisans display systematic tendencies to seek out, believe, and remember information that supports their political beliefs and affinities. However, the psychological drivers of partisan favoritism have been vigorously debated, as has its consistency with rational inference. We characterize decades-long debates over whether such tendencies violate normative standards of rationality, focusing on the phenomenon of motivated reasoning. In light of evidence that both motivational and cognitive factors contribute to partisan bias, we advocate for a descriptive approach to partisan bias research. Rather than adjudicating the (ir)rationality of partisan favoritism, future research should prioritize the identification and measurement of its predictors and clarify the cognitive mechanisms underlying motivated political reasoning. Ultimately, we argue that political judgment is best evaluated by a standard of ecological rationality based on its practical implications for individual well-being and functional democratic governance.
Boy those are some HUUUGE muddy dogs! Where I live the rare really big dogs are from out of town.. or somebody boasting about the size of their apartments: “Imagine how big my place must be to house a monster dog like this!”
And they frighten the locals.
D.A.
NYC (tiny dog land)
Though I really know nothing of movies, tv, and today’s mashups of the two…or about the arts in general, I have always respected Glenn Close and her choices for parts. So when I saw that she was in the panned “Fair”, I looked for her explanation of why, figuring that she might likely have a pretty good one. Here is a three minute you tube clip of her discussing her decision. Url should be
For fans of Glenn Close:
Glenn Close has nothing to prove. New York Times Magazine, Oct 9, 2025
https://archive.ph/IlDBV
I think she’s great. She was nominated 8 times for an Oscar (has not won one so far).
Very notable movies, in my opinion (I have not seen many of her movies):
The world according to Garp (1982) – her first film (she started in the theater)
Fatal attraction (1987)
Dangerous liaisons (1988)
All’s Unfair succeeded in having Naomi Watts zombified, I just saw a trailer – will stop there – but it was enough to not recognise her at all. A pity. And no, coach or not, KK can’t act
The standard of ‘All’s Fair’ was set for me when I saw a comment (I think in the Guardian) that said: “Why should you watch All’s Fair? I can tell you in five words: Kim Kardashian as a defence lawyer!” Six words, surely?
Iran is a hostile foreign power. Not every Iranian citizen who sneaks into the United States should be assumed to be on your side. I should think the presumption should be overwhelmingly in the other direction. Unless the “defector” who hid himself among you until you apprehended him has useful verifiable information about the regime, best to send them all back.
Yes. There was some talk a few years ago about specifically Iranians gaming the system (in Germany) pretending to be oppressed Iranian Christians. Graeme Wood (the Atlantic) who does a lot of excellent work on the jihadi space wrote an article about that and similar problems (in Germany) separating genuine cases from frauds.
I gather in the UK they don’t even bother trying.
D.A.
NYC
Measles bleet. (That’s a portmanteau of Blue and tweet.)
All women (and men) in the United States born before 1972 have (had) wild measles and are immune for life, regardless of political affiliation or opinions about vaccination. (Evidence for this is that health care organizations don’t require employees born before 1972 to show proof of measles vaccination.) Women and men (adult humans) born after 1972 were almost certainly vaccinated as infants unless their parents were traditional anti-vaxxers: sandal-wearing anti-vax earth-mother hippies, who skewed strongly Democrat. Anti-vax became Republican-coded only during Covid, and I’m not convinced that crunchy granola Democrats entirely embrace vaccination even now. Why should they? Irrational fear of MMR isn’t wiped away just because MAGA fears mRNA.
So if a measles pandemic swept through America and gave acute measles to all non-immune Americans, children and adults, most of the cases in adults would occur in Democrats (of both sexes.). Most of the cases in children would be in Republican families, with a sizeable number of traditional anti-vax Democrat families also.
Ergo, Democratic women (adult human females) would have something that Republican women wouldn’t. And that something would be measles. Because Republican women do have something that not all Democrats do, which is immunity to measles.
I was born in 1943 and grew up in rural Texas. I was not exposed to measles and only learned I was not immune after I was pregnant, when it was too late to get the vaccination.
Did you learn you weren’t immune because you actually contracted measles or rubella during pregnancy? Or was it through a test?
I’d forgotten all about the risks of rubella in pregnancy, since it’s been decades (?) since rubella has been endemic in the US. But it’s worth remembering: since the rubella vaccine is packaged with the measles vaccine, any significant drop in the rate of MMR vaccination carries a risk of increasing the numbers of children who are born with avoidable birth defects.
It was a test administered by the obstetrician.
Yes. Any woman contemplating pregnancy who wasn’t vaccinated as a child should be sure to get vaccinated against rubella as part of pre-pregnancy planning.
In a rubella epidemic, Public Health might advise non-immune pregnant women to consider being vaccinated. The known risk of wild rubella to an unvaccinated pregnant woman’s embryo/early fetus would then be higher than the theoretical and possibly zero risk of rubella vaccine. Rubella is so contagious that an unvaccinated woman would almost certainly get it if there was an epidemic. Ditto measles.)
https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications/healthy-living/canadian-immunization-guide-part-3-vaccination-specific-populations/page-4-immunization-pregnancy-breastfeeding.html
The progressives almost certainly knew after a few days of shutdown that the Republicans were not going to negotiate. Surely they knew that they would eventually have to capitulate. (If they didn’t know, they were naive.) The Democrats eventually conceded as expected, so now the progressives are opportunistically feigning outrage and staging a frenzied play to capture control. Leader Schumer didn’t vote to open the government but, as leader, he is the target because he represents the core of centrist Democrats.
If the progressives want to take over, they should go out and try to win elections fair and square, and not try to take over the palace from within. The internecine warfare is turning people away for the Democratic Party altogether, and it should.
I expect that additional outrages from the the other party will still enable the Dems to win the coveted Lesser of Two Evils award.
Possums are only “good” where they have evolved naturally.
In New Zealand, possums are an introduced pest and cause enormous environmental damage. Context matters…
AIUI, different “possums”.