Welcome to Thursday, October 29, 2026 and it’s National Cat Day!
Here is a reader’s cat: Jango, staffed by Divy and Ivan in Florida. He is a male rescue tabby with a lovely ticked coat. Here he crosses his paws for you.
It’s also International Carignan Day (that’s a wine grape) and National Oatmeal Day.
. . . and here’s a lovely bowl of oatmeal I had at my inn where they put me up during the Kent Presents meetings in August of 2018. Look at all those goodies: dried fruit, nuts, cream, maple syrup, and fresh fruit on the side. I would eat this every day if I wanted to live forever. Leslie Stahl was sitting at the next table, an hour or two before she interviewed Henry Kissinger onstage. The previous night I rode back to the inn in a limo with her and asked her what she was going to ask Kissinger. She told me she was going to wing it. Good times.
About an hour later, Leslie interviewed Henry. Kissinger actually lived in Kent, Connecticut, where the meeting was held. He died in 2023 at age 100. He must have been 95 in this photo.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 29 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*A train crash in Spain yesterday killed at least 68 people.
Spain is living through a recurring nightmare. For the second time in less than a year, a high-speed crash between the same two train operators on the same busy line from Madrid to Seville threw the country into official days of mourning, shook its confidence in the security of it once-vaunted rail system and undercut its international image as a modernizing tourist mecca helping to thrust Europe forward.
Apparently the safety system on the tracks first went down, automatically stopping six trains in the region. But someone in the traffic control center told another train to keep going at normal speed, and it crashed into a stopped train from the rear at 120 mph.
At the moment of impact, Antonio de la Corte, 77, was napping in the third carriage in the back of the Renfe train. “Bam!” he said, recalling that he was immediately awakened, lurched forward and banged his knees while his brother, with whom he was traveling, hit his head. A rail shot through the inside of his train car like a skewer, killing people seated to his right, he said.
As he and his brother climbed down to the field, farmhands cut the fences around the embankment so passengers could take shelter in the fields of alfalfa and almond trees. Word of the disaster quickly spread, and Yahadi Mohamed Maulud, 41, a resident in the nearby town of Yébenes, loaded his car with water bottles and rushed to help.
“We found a massacre,” he said, describing torn limbs and one woman, drenched in blood, searching for her brother. He said he was one of the first people on the scene and helped move the injured passengers on makeshift stretchers.
Soon, a long procession of ambulances, police cars and fire trucks arrived under the whir of rescue helicopters flying low overhead. Dozens of Civil Guard officers, many wearing the white protective suits and masks used by forensic investigators, inspected the scene and gathered evidence.
. . .The scene was eerily quiet because people were either dead or so hurt they couldn’t speak. He said survivors used parts of the destroyed train as makeshift stretchers to extract the injured from the wreckage. That’s when the screaming started. Doctors among the passengers treated people in what became a field hospital among almond groves.
At least 68 people died in the crash. More than 50 others were injured, some critically.
This is the second train crash in a year on the same rail line from Madrid to Seville, and involving the same train companies.
*The Times of Israel reports the latest on the Israel elections, nothing reasons why Netanyahu might stay in power even though his Likud Party got a narrow plurality of seats.
Near-final results show that a clear majority of Israelis voted for parties opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued rule, yet the longtime premier could remain in power — not because his opponents lack the numbers to replace him, but because some refuse to recognize Arab lawmakers as legitimate political partners.
A historic surge in Arab voter turnout in Tuesday’s election has placed Israel’s Arab-majority parties in a position to determine the next government, putting the Zionist opposition’s longstanding refusal to rely on their support to a potentially decisive test.
With 85.6 percent of ballot boxes counted as of 2:32 p.m. Wednesday, partial results published by the Central Elections Committee gave 53 seats to Netanyahu’s bloc and 48 to the bloc led by Eisenkot’s Yashar party. The two Arab-led parties are projected to win a combined 19 seats — an unprecedented high — with 12 for the Joint List and seven for Ra’am. The two parties have five seats apiece in the outgoing Knesset. The previous combined record was 15, in 2020.
Despite leading the largest party, Netanyahu has no obvious path to expanding his bloc beyond his existing far-right and ultra-Orthodox allies to get the 61-seat majority he needs to form a government.
Meanwhile, the Zionist opposition and Arab parties are projected to hold 66 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, reflecting widespread opposition to Netanyahu’s government, in part due to the extraordinary turnout by Arab voters driven by deep animus toward Netanyahu’s government and its far-right ministers, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
Indeed, in a Trump move, Likud claims the election was “stolen” by Arab parties:
Claiming yesterday’s election was “stolen” by Arab parties, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party demands an investigation by police and the Shin Bet into allegations of widespread voter fraud and intimidation.
“The elections in Israel were stolen by Arab parties that support terror and the elimination of the Jewish state through serious criminal offenses of bribery, threats, violence, forgeries and the use of illegal software to mobilize voters,” insists the Likud party in a statement.
The Arab-led political parties, Ra’am and the Joint List, which run in every election and hold seats in the Knesset, received a record number of votes yesterday, and are projected to win a historic high of 19 seats. That number means that both Netanyahu’s bloc and the Jewish-led parties opposing him will be far from achieving a Knesset majority.
Here’s a bar chart of the votes published by the ToI.
Like my heartthrob Gal Gadot, who went back to Israel to both get an honorary degree and to vote (there are no votes by mail), I would have “voted for change” too.
And so much for the apartheid state! The Israeli Arabs may decide the fate of the government!
*The El-Sayed campaign in Michigan is distancing itself from this ad, produced not by them but by Cenk Uygur’s “Rebellion Pac”. It’s pretty dire, for it blames Israel and its war with Hamas on high American grocery prices. Here, watch it by itself (it’s hard to find the ad without commentary!)
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, sought to distance himself on Monday from an outside group’s political ad that endorses him and attacks his Republican opponent over support of Israel, a longtime U.S. ally.
. . .Dr. El-Sayed’s campaign emphasized that the ad, created by a left-wing political action committee called Rebellion PAC, was “not affiliated in any way” with him or his candidacy.
“Abdul is focused on pushing back against Trump’s agenda that is raising prices for Michiganders,” the campaign said in a statement on Monday. “No one speaks for Abdul but himself and his campaign.”
Dr. El-Sayed has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which was set off by the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed 1,200 people. The war has killed at least 74,000 people, according to Gaza health officials.
The ad, a version of which first ran in 2024, has garnered more than six million views since it was posted on X on Friday. On Monday, Representative Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel Democrat whom Dr. El-Sayed narrowly defeated in the Senate primary, publicly criticized it for what she called “fearmongering about Israel.”
And from the Free Press‘s piece “Abdul El-Sayed and the Banana Libel“:
Antisemitism is said to be the socialism of fools. Well, it turns out that it’s also the populism of the innumerate. U.S. military aid to Israel comprises at most a half a percentage point of the U.S. federal government budget. The overwhelming majority of that money is poured back into the American economy because Israel is required to spend the aid on U.S. weapons systems. Also—not that it needs stating—the U.S. does not pay for Israel’s health insurance system. Claiming that aid to Israel is responsible for high grocery prices is a grotesque lie that resurrects an ancient and sinister trope that blames international Jewry for economic misery.
So it’s not surprising that prominent Democrats like the party’s former chairman, Jaime Harrison, and El-Sayed’s opponent during the primary, Haley Stevens (who has endorsed El-Sayed in the general election) have offered full-throated denunciations of the ad.
One might think El-Sayed would take the opportunity to forcefully demand that Rebellion PAC take it down. This would be an easy way to win back some of the Michigan Democrats that have committed to his Republican rival, Mike Rogers. It would help dispel the Rogers’ campaign message that El-Sayed has ties to the antisemitic Muslim Brotherhood and can’t be trusted with national security. And yet, the only comment from the El-Sayed campaign has come from a spokesman, who said the ad was “not affiliated in any way” with the campaign. That’s not a denunciation so much as a weasel-word salad.
So, why not take the high road? One reason might be that Rebellion PAC is run by an ally of the campaign, Cenk Uygur. He was once a middling progressive influencer. In recent years he has transformed into a hollering podcaster obsessed with the perfidy of Israel and its supporters in America. El-Sayed appeared on a panel with Uygur in September at a conference sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America. Uygur’s nephew is the anti-American streamer Hasan Piker, who campaigned with El-Sayed in the final weeks of his primary campaign. Piker has said that the authors of the October 7 massacre, Hamas, are morally superior to Israel. He once said his favorite flag was the flag of Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist group that until recently rained rockets and missiles over Israel. He has also said that America “deserved” 9/11.
. . .It’s accurate to say that AIPAC tries to influence U.S. foreign policy to pursue a good relationship with Israel. But claiming that the lobby dictates U.S. foreign policy to presidents is an exaggeration that is a mirror image of the antisemitic libel that Jews function as a disloyal fifth column inside their host countries—or the idea that you can’t afford groceries because of military aid to Israel.
Indeed, El-Sayed offered a very similar argument as the Rebellion PAC grocery ad in an interview with The Ink published on August 3. “Israel is an affordability issue,” he said. “Every time you want to put glasses on kids’ faces or give people healthcare or fix a school, somebody pops up and is like, ‘Well how are you going to pay for that?’ I don’t know. Maybe we should keep our money here instead of sending it there to drop bombs on people’s schools or their hospitals. That’s our money.”
So maybe the reason El-Sayed is not denouncing Uygur’s antisemitic ad is because he pretty much agrees with its content. At the very least, he doesn’t want to offend the antisemites in Michigan who he hopes will make him the state’s next U.S. senator.
Call me ignorant, but I didn’t know that Hasan Piker was related to Cenk. But they’re both odious human beings: is it in the genes? As for “hollering,” yes, I fear that Cenk is going to blow an artery some day. As for the disgusting ad, well El-Sayed should denounce it, as it’s damaging him. But he can’t, as he’s walking a fine line between being an anti-Semite and being someone that Democrats will vote for.
*Defeated Brazilian Presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, who had his passport lifted after votes were counted, nevertheless managed to flee to the U.S. (with Trump’s help, of course):
The defeated Brazilian presidential candidate, Flávio Bolsonaro, arrived in Miami Wednesday after fleeing to Argentina with his family and boarding a private plane to the U.S.
Television images showed Bolsonaro and his family stepping off the private jet they boarded in Argentina late Tuesday after fleeing across the border from Brazil.
The Trump administration has said it would issue visas to Bolsonaro and his family to allow them legal entry upon arrival.
The long journey, carried out largely in secret, came after Bolsonaro lost the presidential election to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Sunday by a close but convincing margin. Shortly after the results, Brazilian authorities demanded Bolsonaro turn over his passports and remain in the country as he faces investigation over alleged financial crimes.
The son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing and says he and his family are the victims of a witch hunt by Brazil’s Supreme Court. He has refused to recognize Sunday’s election result—a position backed by Trump who told reporters Monday the race looked “rigged.”
Bolsonaro crossed from Brazil into Argentina at 10:50 p.m. local time Tuesday accompanied by his wife, Fernanda, and daughters Carolina and Luiza, Argentine authorities said. The family crossed into Argentina via the Tancredo Neves International Bridge in Misiones province, a remote area where the borders of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil meet.
Authorities in Argentina, where President Javier Milei has been one of Bolsonaro’s most fervent supporters, said they presented valid travel documents and faced no legal restrictions on entering the country.
At 11:30 p.m., just 40 minutes later, the family boarded a private aircraft operated by Baires Fly, with Guayaquil, Ecuador, listed as its destination on the flight plan—flight LV-JQW, according to Argentina presidential spokesman Fabian Fernandez.
I’m told the guy is a crook (but can’t vouch for any of that), but is he classified as a “refugee”? For sure he’s fleeing likely jailing, but I’m not sure how many dubious politicans we can absorb. After all, we abducted Maduro, who’s now in jail, whil Bolsonero will live a sweet life in the U.S. of A.
*In an op-ed in the WaPo, Theodore Johnson explains why debates between gubernatorial or Congressional candidates are waning, with candidates relying more on attack ads. It’s apparently due to fear of screwing up, as minor gaffes can be amplified in this age of social media.
Fear of such minor missteps going viral is just one reason there have been fewer debates this midterm year. A review by ABC News found that 21 of 36 gubernatorial races will pass without a debate. In 2018, just two states skipped them. The same trend holds for Senate elections — 21 out of 35 races will not feature a debate, a 50 percent increase from four years ago. For all the advantages that can be gained from a solid performance, a gaffe or shaky showing can be disastrous. Today, a candidate’s calculus increasingly hinges on a simpler question: Why bother?
Their reasons for opting out are all over the place. In Alabama’s gubernatorial election, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R), a MAGA firebrand sitting on an 11-point polling lead, refused to debate on pragmatic grounds, declaring, “There’s no reason to get up there and argue about differences of opinion.”
In Florida, Democratic nominee for governor David Jolly took an ideological stance, saying the nation’s politics are broken, and debates only “further the division, further the toxicity, further the insults, further the mistruths, further the bad faith.” And in North Carolina, both Senate candidates have taken a strategic approach: be open to debate but never agree to one; better to spend that time on cable news appearances and curated events to rally the base. No matter the explanation, the outcome is the same: Voters are denied the chance to see the candidates face scrutiny and each other.
Political debates are most useful when they have clear rules and formats, when candidates believe engaging their opponent is worthwhile to the campaign and the public, and when they serve as important civic rituals in a democracy. Since the late 20th century, televised debates have been common and widely expected for candidates competing for federal and statewide office. They offer a rare chance to speak to large audiences, followed by extensive media coverage. And they provide voters an opportunity to see the candidates largely unscripted and in the hot seat — conditions favorable to getting a glimpse of character and preparedness rather than monologued quips in safe spaces.
. . . Sometimes they’re successful. . . But extreme polarization, alongside candidates’ ability to bypass traditional media for direct-to-voter social platforms, has upended the landscape. The civic ritual now is to flood airwaves and mobile devices with attack ads and caricatures of opponents. If the age of debate is ending, then what replaces it should be worrisome to voters.
. . . Besides, what advantage does debating offer candidates when there’s little penalty for skipping them altogether? The rebuttal from Republican candidates can be summarized this way: “Well, what are you going to do — vote for communism?” Democrats who opt out suggest that elections are not helped by giving credence to MAGA politicians co-signed by the historically unpopular President Donald Trump. Better to avoid the unpredictable made-for-TV moment by producing short ads clipping an opponent eating crow, perfectly curated for a media-saturated electorate to devour.
Unfortunately, the author is right. Nixon lost to Kennedy because Tricky Dick wasn’t as charistmatic and sweated too much. Biden dropped out after his debate performance was abysmal. But there’s no political theater better than a good debate. It’s much more fun that watching attack ads or listening to stump speeches.
*The AP’s “Odd News” section reports that the originally drawn map of the Mason-Dixon line, the line that historically divided the American North from the South, is up for auction.
It’s perhaps the most consequential map in American history. And it could be yours.
The hand-drawn chart of the Mason-Dixon Line that eventually divided the free from the slave states is going up for auction. Remounted on backing made of Japanese rice paper, the document will go on sale Thursday in a livestreamed auction.
“It’s not that often that you can really get this close to something that is so historically important,” said Lauren Brunk, vice president of Brunk Auctions in Asheville, North Carolina. “And it was awe-inspiring, really.”
You can see the original map here (the current bid is $400,000), and here’s a map of the Mason-Dixon Line from Wikipedia:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili (who is not feeling well and went to the vet) ponders time and mortality with Andrzej:
Hili: October is coming to an end, and soon the trees will be bare.
Andrzej: If we live to see spring, we’ll enjoy the greenery again.
In Polish:
Hili: Kończy się październik, zaraz drzewa będą gołe.
Ja: Jeśli dożyjemy do wiosny, będziemy się znowu cieszyć zielenią.
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From The Foundation for Homeless Cats:
From Meow Incorporated:
From Shit Signs:
Just a few tweets as I was at the eye doctor yesterday (n.b. I am healing well):
From Malcolm: A man cudles a giant owl:
From the spoof site Babylon Bee via Luana; I bet you can guess what it’s about:
LGBTQ+ To Add ‘S’ For Sibling https://t.co/yRFjvYLqUB
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) October 24, 2026
Cenk is blowing an artery on “X”. Here’s his latest rant:
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was two years old, and would have turned 86 today had she lived.
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 29, 2026
And one from Matthew; yesterday was the 113th anniversary of the cartoon strip Krazy Kat, created by George Herriman. It’s a cartoon series that both Matthew and I love. Click to go to the tweet.
As a boy, I had always heard that the term “Dixie” for the South had it’s origin in the Mason-Dixon line. Down in New Orleans they tell a different story. Once one of the most prosperous cities in America, the city flowed with ten dollar bills, which, of course, bore the word “Dix” for ten on them. Hence the land of the dixie.