Welcome to Friday, November 6, 2026 and National Nachos Day. It’s time once again to learn where that name came from:

Nachos originated in the city of Piedras Negras, Coahuila, across the Mexco-U.S. border from Eagle Pass, Texas.  In 1943, Ignacio Anaya was a maître d’ at a restaurant called the Victory Club, when a group of women whose husbands were officers stationed at the nearby U.S. Army base Fort Duncan, traveled across the border to eat there.  Seeking to serve food to them quickly, but unable to find the cook, he cut fried tortillas into triangles, added shredded Colby cheese and sliced pickled jalapeño peppers  and heated them. When asked what the dish was called, Anaya responded, “Well, I guess we can just call them Nacho’s Special”; Nacho is a common nickname for Ignacio.

Here is Ignacio Anaya, the man who will forever fuel televised football games:

And an elaborate version, labeled on Wikipedia as “Nachos with chicken, with salsa and jalapenos on the side”.  I’d deep-six the cilantro and replace the chicken with ground beef. (or no meat at all):

It’s also Fountain Pen Day,

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 6 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Although Trump (and Vance) blame the Republican’s huge midterm losses on the war with Iran, the AP reports that, as James Carville wrote on the wall at Clinton campaign headquarters in 1992, “It’s the economy, stupid.” And so it appears to be. (Of course many voters see the Iran war, or the war between Israel and Hamas, as responsible for higher prices.)

President Donald Trump was publicly humbled by inflation in the midterm elections, as rising prices provoked a blistering set of losses for Republicans in House, Senate and gubernatorial races.

Most voters said that Trump’s own policies had smothered growth and driven costs even higher, according to The AP Voter Poll, a survey of roughly 100,000 midterm voters. The president’s message that the fault lay with his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, didn’t land. Americans saw prices start to climb with Trump’s chaotic rash of tariffs last year, and energy costs spiked after he launched a war with Iran in February.

About two-thirds of voters said Trump’s own policies had fueled inflation. By contrast, only about half of 2022 midterm voters said this about Biden’s policies, according to AP VoteCast.

Voters in states from California to Mississippi were broadly in agreement that Trump’s taxes on foreign imports have done more harm than good.

The election results matched what voters had been telling pollsters for months, but Trump had campaigned with a decidedly deaf ear.

“I’ve done a great job,” Trump said at one of his final midterm rallies in Iowa. “Prices are coming way down.”

LOL. He knows that ain’t gonna happen.  More:

Democratic victories in Tuesday’s midterms signaled that most voters don’t believe the economy or Trump is working for them.

Consumer prices are up 3.7% over the past 12 months, compared to an inflation rate of 3% when Trump began his second term. The president told reporters on Wednesday that the Iran war “drove the gasoline up a little bit short-term,” but he felt the choice to fight Iran was worth it because of its push for nuclear weapons. “If I had to do it again, I’d have to do it again,” he said.

There is no guarantee that a House and Senate with a Democratic majority can fix an economy pestered by uncomfortably high inflation. Trump and Congress would likely need to work on a bipartisan basis, or simply keep the economy stable enough to allow the Federal Reserve to ratchet down inflation through its setting of interest rates.

Reread that last paragraph. Democrats have limited power so long as Trump is President, and we’re not sure who will be elected President in 2028. Here’s the breakdown from the AP by party affiliation.

*I am not politically savvy enough to know how Trump’s actions can be limited after January, when the new Democratic-majority Congress is seated. He has the veto, and can issue executive orders, but the specter of impeachment (see below) looms over his administration. The WSJ discusses these issues in a piece about “Trump’s tough new reality.”

If Trump wants to accomplish anything durable going forward, he will have to accept limits to his authority and compromise—things he’s shown little interest in doing during his political career.

Republicans who have long aligned themselves with him—including those in his administration with future political aspirations—will face enormous pressure to create more distance from him following a historic bipartisan rebuke from voters. Trump’s longtime advisers expect the backbiting and interpersonal squabbles that defined much of his first term in office could come roaring back.

Meanwhile, Trump faces two years of investigations from the newly ascendant Democrats. And while he’s said he is prepared to work with the opposing party, reaching compromise in an increasingly toxic political environment will be challenging.

. . .He will soon be reckoning with fallout from the election. The newly empowered Democratic caucus on Capitol Hill has promised investigations into the president, his family and his allies that could poison any hopes for cross-party collaboration.

“The next two years for him I think are going to be two of the most difficult years of his life,” said former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican who ran against Trump in the 2016 and 2024 presidential contests and briefly worked for him in the run-up to his first term.

But Trump and his advisers say the president still has the power of the federal government at his disposal—and won’t be afraid to use it. On Wednesday morning, the official White House X account posted an image of Trump looking defiant in the Oval Office with the caption: “PSA: TRUMP IS STILL YOUR PRESIDENT.”

Advisers are already drawing up plans to aggressively flex his executive authority, according to administration officials, and Trump has said he’s ready to veto legislation he opposes.

“Whatever the midterm results, President Trump remains the most powerful force in American politics,” said Danielle Alvarez, a White House spokeswoman.

He is also trying to leave a mark on Washington, increasingly conscious of how he’ll be remembered after he’s gone.

It’s that last line that worries me, for I don’t think Trump has any inkling of what people will remember. The article mentions, as do others, that personnel changes may be in order, including “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride!

*What is the likely agenda of the Democrats after January? The WP notes that the party’s aims (beyond investigating corruption in the present administration) are vague, but gives a few hints.

But Democrats also argue they cannot — and will not — only be the anti-Trump party when they take control of both chambers in January with majorities larger and more ideologically diverse than anticipated. They have repeatedly stated they must materially improve the lives of voters or risk quickly losing Congress again.

“The American people have chosen House Democrats because they want to see a dramatic change in direction,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York), who is likely to become the nation’s first Black speaker, said Wednesday at a news conference with his leadership team. “That’s exactly what House Democrats will deliver.”

The party’s policy agenda remains vague. Though Democrats pledged on the campaign trail to tackle affordability, they have been light on legislative specifics, floating broad plans to reverse Trump’s cuts to health care funding, roll back his sweeping tariff regime and block his ability to wage war in Iran.

*The NYT has an article called, “On the Democrats’ agenda: Investigations of Trump and his family” (article archived here). It looks as if the Dems are getting ready for revengs.

*More on impeachment from the WaPo:

But Democrats sounded cool toward [a plan to impeach Trump] in the midterm campaign of 2018, too. (“For those who want impeachment . . . that’s not what our caucus is about,” said California Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi.) They got over it. A little more than a year after those elections, a Democratic-controlled House voted to impeach Trump a first time. They may get over it again, as both the facts and political convenience lead them to impeach first the president’s subordinates, such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and then the boss himself.

The Constitution gives Congress wide latitude over the matter. It has the power to impeach officials, including the president, when it judges them guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” What those are is a matter of debate. The Founders rejected the idea that running the executive branch badly was enough reason to remove a president. But James Madison suggested that abuses of power could be impeachable even when they don’t violate any federal statute. Such transgressions featured in each of the four presidential impeachments that have passed the House in U.S. history.

Because Congress has a broad power to exercise its judgment, and because Trump habitually disregards legal and moral constraints on his conduct, Democrats will have plenty of possible bases from which to launch an inquiry. Corruption, systematic misuse of the pardon power and launching a war without congressional authorization are all good candidates. Most voters aren’t eager for impeachment, according to a Wall Street Journal poll, but another survey from Politico found that 80 percent of Democratic voters would support it. A majority of all voters think Trump has committed impeachable offenses.

Democratic voters, happy to have won the midterms, will give their new representatives some leeway. But fast-forward a few months. If Trump decides to maintain his tariffs, continue the war in Iran or return to confrontational immigration enforcement, there’s no guarantee the Democratic Congress will be able to stop him. Given that so many pols spent their campaigns promising to “fight Trump,” how would they explain inaction on impeachment to voters? Such a posture would doubtless create an opportunity for Democratic presidential candidates to rebuke the Democratic Congress for cowardice.

I am not gung-ho about impeachment, but I am not dead set against it either. Remember, impeachment is just the charges themselves, brought by a majority vote of the House of Representatives, which the Democrats have. The trial itself takes place in the Senate, which needs a 2/3 vote to effect a conviction.  Three Presidents have been impeached (Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Trump [twice]) but none successfully. Nixon undoubtedly would have been convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors, but he resigned before a trial could take place.

*******************

From Give Me a Sign:

From Meow Incorporated:

From The Babylon Bee courtesy of reader Anna: Republican strategies to win the midterms (too late!):

From Masih, who got another well-deserved award. She’s dedicating it to Iranian women’s rights activist Mojgan Keshavarz, still in prison for her “crimes” though she was granted a five-day bailout in October.

Honored to receive the 2026 Wiesenthal Award of Valor in Toronto.

I dedicate it to my hero, @mozhgankshavarz, who was arrested, beaten, sexually assaulted, and subjected to mock execution for sending me videos of herself protesting against compulsory hijab.

This photo is a middle finger to the torturers of the Islamic Republic.

Last night, I stood beside her in front of more than 1,700 people. She received flowers instead of blows. Applause instead of threats.

To her torturers: Look at her now.

You wanted to make her an example of what happens to women who resist. Instead, she became a symbol of courage, and you became symbols of cruelty and cowardice.

I will proudly share every international stage I have with women like Mozhgan.

Dictators fear women standing together. That’s why we must never let go of each other’s hands.

Woman. Life. Freedom. ✌️❤️

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) November 5, 2026

The Number Ten Cat continues to denigrate Trump, as he has for years:

Trump pictured with all the Republicans he helped get elected in the midterms:

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) November 4, 2026

From Richard Dawkins via Luana. I didn’t know of this law, but you can find the Torygraph article archived here.

A new law that risks criminalising parents who question whether their children are trans must be scrapped, MPs, peers and experts have demanded.
‘Gender’, as opposed to sex, is an anti-scientific myth. If a child with a penis announces that he is really a girl, parents and teachers have a positive duty to educate him in the scientific truth that he is a boy.
Of course no parent should use physical or psychological abuse for any reason. But if anyone should be prosecuted it is those who abuse their duty of care by encouraging children in the anti-scientific delusion that they can choose their own sex.
https://t.co/ZVpDwMsmcH

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) November 3, 2026

From Malcolm; cat vs. d*g:

A video analysis of the difference between dog joining cat and cat joining the dog. https://t.co/lwnKdfHSrh

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 22, 2026

Steam train! Translation from the French: “Turn up the sound; it’s magnificent!”

Mettez le son, c’est magnifique ! https://t.co/ssLNwsdGey

— Manon 🇨🇵 🕊 (@manonbymanon_) November 4, 2026

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This Hungarian Jewih girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was one year old and would be 84 today had she lived.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-11-06T11:13:27.263Z

And two from Herr Doktor Professor Cobb.  First, a cat:

There's a YouTube channel called 'Ferrovia de Jardim' ("backyard railroad") owned by two model train enthusiasts, Daniel & Chico, in Barbacena, Brazil.They also have a cat named Titinho ("little uncle"?) who shares the space with occasionally hilarious results.😺🚂(www.youtube.com/@ferroviadej…)

— c0nc0rdance (@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social) 2026-11-04T23:57:45.144Z

Bob Dylan and the Pope! But why is Dylan dressed like that?

The Great Lakes region contains multitudes, but these are two of its types of guy.

— Fuzzy Dunlop (@angrybingo.bsky.social) 2026-11-04T18:05:55.579Z

And since it’s Dylan, I’ll post one of my favorites, recorded and released in 1965.  Al Kooper is in the organ and Mike Bloomfield on guitar.

Welcome to Thursday, November 5, 2026. I am declaring it International Hili Day, for, as Andrzej wrote yesterday in answer to several of my questions:

Hili was born in early spring 2013, and Paulina and her sister brought her to us. Hili will be buried tomorrow, under the pear tree she loved to climb when she was little.

The Queen was buried this morning. Here’s another nice photo of her:

We’ll have shortened Hili dialogues (yes, I’m keeping the name) for a a few days, as today I go to the ophthalmologist for my checkup and tomorrow I have visitors from out of town. Plus I haven’t prepared this post in advance, as I usually do, as yesterday I went to get glasses (and a pumpkin pie) at Costco yesterday and still have not recovered from Hili’s crossing of the Rainbow Bridge. Bear with me; I do my best.

It’s also Basketball Day, National Nachos Day, and National Saxophone Day.  Here’s Stan Getz  playing “Body and Soul”.  I posted Coleman Hawkins’s version of this song not long ago.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 5 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*I’m sure people are up to their ears in post-election analysis, so I’ll just post a couple of short items. This is from the NYT’s daily newsletter by Adam Kushner and Even Gorelick:

Two parties remade:

Democrats. Tuesday’s result will send both moderates (such as Adam Hamilton of Kansas) and progressives (such as Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan) to Washington. The two factions fought bitterly in many primaries this fall, but candidates from both sides won Election Day victories. Progressives want the party to push bold, transformative ideas like Medicare for All. But Democrats can’t maintain their momentum in 2028 if they can’t persuade Trump voters to back them again. Which way will the party go? The argument between the camps will define the next two years.

Republicans. Trump pushes his allies to parrot his ideas — on war, government spending, the economy. He threatens apostates that he will back their opponents in primaries. But it hurt Republicans in this election to be seen as proxies for an unpopular president. Now that he’ll be a lame duck, Republicans may feel comfortable putting distance between themselves and Trump. It began yesterday, when Vice President JD Vance attributed the electoral drubbing to the war in Iran. After a defeat come the recriminations.

*Trump admitted yesterday that the U.S. war with Iran contributed to the Demoocratic landslide in the midterms,

President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday blamed Republicans’ stunning midterm losses on the administration’s unpopular war with Iran, though Trump said he had no choice but to launch the conflict and would do it again.

“It’s largely true because it drove the gasoline [prices] up a little bit,” the president said Wednesday afternoon on the site of his half-finished White House ballroom, his first public appearance since voters handed Democrats significant majorities in the House and Senate.

“At the same time, if I had to do it again, I’d have to do it again,” Trump said of the war, before directing the attention of his aides and reporters to the helipad he had installed on the White House lawn in September. “You can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

Though Trump himself made the decision to go to war with Iran — egged on by powerful outside advisers and some aides, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — Trump continued Wednesday to distance himself from the GOP’s losses. Late Tuesday, he insisted that “if I was on the ballot, we would have won.” On Wednesday, he noted that “thousands” of people packed his rallies in competitive states in the final month of the campaign.

Trump’s acknowledgment of the war’s role in Tuesday’s Democratic landslide came after Vance posted lengthy remarks on social media saying voters wanted Trump to end the war, focus on the cost of living and inflation, put America first and “change our relationship to Israel.”

“The reason we lost is the war,” said Vance, who opposed the conflict and is considering a run for president in two years.

Vance’s post echoed the recriminations among many other Republicans, who blamed Trump for their party’s historic midterm rout. In private calls and texts through the night and into the morning, Republicans lamented political strategies — like an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting gambit in southern states — that failed to make up for politically damaging actions by the president, including launching the war with Iran and dismissing popular anger over high gas prices.

But surely a lot of things contributed to the Republican rout, and surely the cost of living played a substantial role.  Although Trump said he’d work with Democrats, but he also said this:

“My message is, congratulations to the Democrats, and I look forward to working with you for the good of our country,” he said.

The president said he plans to work with the opposing party, saying, “I know a lot of Democrats. I have total veto power and I’m sure we’ll be able to work things out.”

“I think they’re gonna want to work with me,” he said. “Otherwise I’d just veto everything and they’re not gonna want that.”

The president insisted that so many Republicans lost because he wasn’t on the ballot.

“I feel that I wasn’t on the ballot, and there was nothing that could be done about that,” he said. “If I was, we would have won.”

What he meant was “Congress damn well better do what I want, or I’ll kick their bills right back into the Capitol.”

*Over at “It’s Noon in Israel,” Amit Segal sees a bit of positivity for Israel in the U.S. slections, even though Democrats, mostly not friends of the Jewish state, took control of Congress.

It’s Thursday, November 5, and “There’s no question that the anti-Israel core in the House of Representatives has grown,” former Prime Minister Yair Lapid commented following the Democratic sweep in the midterms. But, he argues, there is still an opening with reasonable Democrats: “These people aren’t against Israel. They’re against extremist ministers who say crazy things.” Most importantly, he insists, “they’re against Netanyahu.”

Democratic congressman Brad Lander chose to stone rather than pick Lapid’s olive branch: “We aren’t starving for a barnstorming tour. We’re hungry to see respect for international law and human rights.”

New Michigan senator Abdul El-Sayed made sure to make his views on Israel clear in his victory speech: “We don’t want our money sent to do apartheid, or genocide, or war.” I’m certain Donald Trump’s announcement that the aid is coming to an end will now put El-Sayed’s mind at ease about the cost of bananas in Michigan.

What an odious, Jew-hating man!  Genocide and apartheid, indeed. This, of course, echoes Cenk’s infamous commercial blaming American problems on Israel and its “genocide and apartheid”—an arrant blood libel from Michigan’s Senator-in-Waiting. More:

But this blue tsunami has a silver lining. The blue wave raised all boats, and several strongly pro-Israel Democrats who were at risk are now safely sitting beside their significantly less friendly colleagues.

The fight to come will undoubtedly be over the source of the wave. The big winners of Tuesday were the Blue Dogs, the Problem Solvers and the New Dems. The DSA candidates were not the ones flipping R+15 seats. Still, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declared in Michigan, “If we can win here, we can win anywhere.”

The fact that El-Sayed won by only six points, compared with Texas Senate winner James Talarico’s 12, will not stop them from proclaiming 2026 Year One of the revolution.

Their revolutionary plans face a challenge in a House majority of around 40 seats. That overwhelming majority means the 10 to 15 new DSA members won’t have the numbers to hold the caucus hostage on votes. Meanwhile the Democrats holding the key positions next Congress are pro-Israel.

. . .The more immediate question for Israelis is whether the wave washed away Trump’s appetite for war with Iran. Thankfully, the president appears to be unaffected. Despite the Vance wing seeing the Republican defeat as its chance to end the Iran war, Trump flatly stated he would launch the war again, because “long term, it’s the only answer.”

. . . With his domestic agenda dead on arrival and just a dash of Trump’s stubbornness, the greatest losers of the midterms may still be the ayatollahs.

From Stacy. This is true: just google the word:

From Melissa Steinberg on Facebook. All American Jews need this sign in their front yard:

From Cats That Have Had Enough of Your Shit:

From Masih; two of 12 young men who were hanged. One was put through a mock execution before he was actually hanged.

This is the first “Hili dialogue” post without a new Hili dialogue. I don’t want to recycle old ones, at least today, and don’t know if I’ll retitle these posts, which have been going for over a decade.  What do you think.

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Środek tygodnia” in Polish): Wednesday, November 4, 2026, and National Candy Day. Below you see a box of the apotheosis of affordable American quality chocolates: See’s.  One of my great pleasures is going into one of See’s brick-and-mortar shops and picking out a pound, chocolate by chocolate (they let you do that, and even give you a gratis chocolate to eat). I believe some kind reader sent this box to me a decade ago:

It’s also Eat Smart Day, National Chicken Lady Day, and National Skeptics Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 4 Wikipedia page.

UPDATE: Democrats won nearly everything yesterday, taking both Houses of Congress. See my early-morning post here. The news below was written yesterday afternoon.

Da Nooz:  (Excuse me if the news is truncated, as I’m sluggish today because Hili died.)

*Trump just announced a cutoff in military aid to Israel, largely as a last-minute way of defusing a talking point that the Democrats are using (that this is seen as a positive talking point tells us where we are.)

President Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. would cut off military aid to Israel by the end of the year, suggesting the phaseout of grants to the U.S. ally could occur much faster than expected.

“We won’t be paying anymore to Israel,” Trump said during an interview with Fox News on Election Day. “We’ve already agreed that by the end of this year, we won’t be paying Israel.”

The phasing out of direct U.S. military aid to Israel has been under discussion for months, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly saying the country should eventually wean itself off U.S. assistance. Netanyahu had previously proposed eliminating direct military aid over the next decade.

The White House and an Israeli government spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“As far as paying Israel, Bibi Netanyahu and I have made a deal that we give Israel $4 billion a year and we made a deal months ago that we’re stopping and they’re fine with it,” Trump said. “They’ve become a very successful country. They don’t need it.”

According to the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. has provided Israel with about $174 billion in military assistance and funding through May 2025.

Trump cast the decision as a political calculation, arguing that ending the aid would deprive Democrats and other critics of Israel of a political talking point. “Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like El-Sayed when they don’t need it? It’s a bad talking point,” he said, referring to Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee. “The left uses the $4 billion payment…as a signal of unfairness. It’s almost too easy a target.”

El-Sayed has campaigned on ending unconditional grant payments to Israel.

It’s a shame Trump had to say it’s a way to go after Democrats, which is an insult to Israel’s autonomy and suggests that his alliance with Israel is paper thin or nonexistent.  He’s being an opportunist at the expense of the Jewish state. If the Israeli government is okay with this, then fine: it’s probably for the good that Israel wean itself away from the U.S. in this way. But remember, nearly all the money that the government gives to Israel for military aid is required to be spent buying weapons and other stuff from American companies. In the end, it’s one way the government has to funnel money from American taxpayers to the “military-industrial complex.”

*It’s a little earlier than I predicted, and it’s not clear how much of an escalation this is, but on Monday Trump ordered strikes on Iranian targets in the Gulf of Hormuz.

The United States launched strikes on Iranian targets, a U.S. official said, in what appeared to be a limited operation on the eve of Tuesday’s crucial midterm elections.

Iranian state media reported explosions being heard on the islands of Qeshm and Hengam in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, and in the nearby mainland area of Bandar Abbas. Unlike earlier in the war, the strikes were not publicly announced.

President Donald Trump previously said the U.S. wouldn’t launch strikes on Iran before the midterms. The unpopular war and the resulting impact on U.S. gasoline prices and other parts of the economy have been a vulnerability for his Republican Party as it tries to keep control of Congress.

A U.S. official, who wasn’t authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Monday that the strikes targeted Iranians using surface-to-air missiles against the U.S. in the strait. The move came as Iran said it had a two-day plan to reopen the critical waterway, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil supply flowed during peacetime, and resume nuclear talks with the United States.

. . .Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed for another wave of strikes on Iran after the U.S. elections, according to two regional officials and a third person familiar with the matter.

A return to full-scale war with Iran could help Netanyahu form an emergency government after he and his far-right allies lost their parliamentary majority in last week’s elections. Trump has alternated between threatening major strikes and pushing for a deal with Iran.

The two officials said diplomatic efforts have made progress and that mediators are trying to advance a framework for Iran to cease its attacks in the Strait of Hormuz in return for the U.S. lifting its blockade on Iran’s ports.

They said more talks are planned for this week

I give up on any more predictions, including about what the U.S. is trying to do with Iran. Perhaps there’s a secret plan, but Trump hasn’t seen fit to make his objectives clear to the American people.  Initially they were to prevent Iran from making nuclear weapons, with a brief mention of the people taking back the government, but we’ve heard precious little lately.

*Over at the Free Press, James Kirchick writes about Haley Stevens “treasonous defection” from the Democratic Party in a piece called, “When ‘Country over Party’ goes only one way” (the subtitle is “Haley Stevens is being called a traitor, but by reversing her endorsement of Abdul El-Sayed, she is showing exactly the kind of courage moderate Democrats once cheered.”) h/t: Barry. The article starts off with a comparison between Stevens and Liz Cheney:

Running for Senate two years ago, Michigan Democratic congresswoman Elissa Slotkin proudly accepted an endorsement from her former Republican colleague Liz Cheney. “It is a privilege to be here in Grand Rapids, the hometown of former President Gerald Ford,” Slotkin said to a room full of people holding “Republicans for Slotkin” and “Country over Party” placards. The 38th president, who also happened to be a Republican, “was a leader who understood courage in public service and putting your country over your party.”

Fast-forward to the weekend before the 2026 midterms, when another of Slotkin’s congressional colleagues, this one a fellow Democrat from Michigan, decided that she too could no longer stomach the burgeoning extremism in her party.

“Anyone who makes an election this important about themselves, and not Michiganders and our democracy, should think hard about whether they are serving the greater good,” Slotkin posted on X with respect to her fellow Michigander Haley Stevens, who had earlier that morning revoked her endorsement of Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and thrown her backing to Republican nominee Mike Rogers.

As we know, Stevens was disinvited as a supporter of El-Sayed because he refused to condemn two ads (not one), at which point she endorsed the Republican.

Compared to her fellow Democrats, Slotkin was mild in her rebuke to Stevens. “A despicable betrayal,” thundered Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer. “She’s evil,” seethed far-left shock jock Mehdi Hasan. “This person stands for absolutely nothing but herself,” fumed former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau.

Stevens’s switch was easily preventable. After losing the primary to El-Sayed by a single percentage point this August, Stevens immediately endorsed him. Earlier last week, however, a PAC run by progressive podcast host Cenk Uygur released an online advertisement, the message of which could have been lifted straight from the crusty pages of Der Stürmer. A couple is shopping at a supermarket when the wife tells her husband to “put those eggs back” because “we have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians.” When the husband points out plaintively that Israel has “universal healthcare,” she replies, “We’re paying for that too, probably.” Even the noted white nationalist Richard Spencer was embarrassed by this clumsy foray into fascist propaganda, lambasting Uygur for his “clownishly antisemitic” ad. All that was missing was a black screen at the end with the slogan Die Juden sind unser Unglück—the Jews are our misfortune.

. . .Since mounting his Senate bid, El-Sayed has given decent Michiganders across the political spectrum ample reason to believe that they too do not belong in his campaign. There was his callous remark after a Hezbollah-inspired terrorist rammed a car into a Jewish day school in a thankfully failed attempt to murder 120 children and their teachers: “hurt people hurt people.” There was his refusal to acknowledge the death of Ayatollah Khamenei because “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad.” There was his decision to campaign multiple times with Hasan Piker, the Mao- and Castro-loving useless idiot who recently compared suburban Jewish Michigan voters to the KKK. There was his outrageous statement that Israel represents a threat to the United States as great or even greater than Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and a regime with the blood of thousands of Americans on its hands. There was his courting voters at mosques whose imams cursed this country as the “House of Satan” and called for the “final annihilation of Jews.” This is a man who should never get a security clearance, never mind a seat in the United States Senate.

In an attempt to distract the electorate from these clear disqualifications, El-Sayed’s defenders would have us believe that expressing concerns about them is “Islamophobia.” It’s true that President Trump and others have made bigoted remarks about El-Sayed and his faith, and for that they should be condemned. But it’s not Michigan’s mosques that are under 24-hour security, nor is it Michigan’s Muslims who are being instructed to “sacrifice” their “own safety” and “future” in support of a candidate whose beliefs and associations represent a clear and present danger to them.

. . .But the question in this election actually has very little to do with those things. The question is El-Sayed’s radicalism. So important is his antisemitic worldview that El-Sayed is willing to lose a winnable seat rather than simply admit that, no, the Zionist lobby isn’t responsible for the rise in the cost of bananas, or your skyrocketing healthcare premiums, or the dismal student-teacher ratio in your child’s school.

What’s shocking isn’t Haley Stevens’s decision to wash her hands of El-Sayed and his rancid campaign, but that so few other Democrats have had the moral courage to emulate her. “Country over Party,” apparently, only goes one way. For those calling Stevens a “despicable” “traitor,” I have four words for you:

Hurt people hurt people.

Ouch! But “hurt” here means hurt feelings, not physical injury.

*The NYT reports that, in violation of the law, medical insurance companies are simply refusing to pay for some emergency care. It begins by recounting how the insurance company Anthem has stopped paying “Flight for Life,” an organization that flies patients who need immediate care to hospitals. This stoppage is against the law.

. . .The insurer’s willful nonpayment is the latest in a cascade of unintended consequences brought about by a widely supported law that was intended to protect patients from surprise medical bills.

The law, which took effect in 2022, calls for arbitrators to decide appropriate levels of reimbursement, and it has already triggered millions of disputes between medical care providers and insurers. Doctors have prevailed overwhelmingly, winning arbitration settlements that sometimes far exceeded the usual insurer rates.

Now, fed up with what they consider unfair outcomes, insurers are fighting back by refusing to pay.

The law, the No Surprises Act, was enacted with a large bipartisan majority to ensure patients never got excessive bills in situations, like emergencies, where they could not pick their doctors.

The arbitration system set up by the law was supposed to resolve billing disputes when health care providers and insurers could not agree on a price: An arbitrator reviews a proposed dollar amount from each side and decides which one is most reasonable. Insurers are required to pay that amount within 30 days, and billing patients for anything beyond that is prohibited.

Lawmakers expected the system to be used rarely and to produce reasonable payments. Instead, doctors and other health care providers have been swamping arbitrators with millions of claims, often for amounts that far exceed what is customarily paid for a service. And they have won the vast majority of their cases — sometimes receiving sums such as $440,000 for a breast reduction, $73,000 for an ankle X-ray, or $125,000 for assisting on prostate surgery.

Insurers have sued doctors and lobbied Congress to change the law, contending that the large awards and lopsided results are driving up health insurance premiums.

But with Washington moving slowly, they have adopted the strategy of simply declining to pay.

Everyone is at fault here: the doctors who overbill, the insurance companies who refuse to pay, and the government, which is moving too slowly. Since the law was a bipartisan bill, an important task of the new government should be to simply speed up the system. Here’s the NYT’s list of the frequency with which various insurance companies pay arbitrated settlements. Anthem and Cigna are by far the worst offenders, and remember, this is after the arbitration figure is set:

*A WaPo op-ed by Columbia biology professor Stuart Firestein emphasizes that the uncertainty of scientific results is not a bug in science, but a feature, for uncertainty is an essential part of science.

If you are worried about the world’s uncertainties, science has an answer for your anxiety. In fact, uncertainty is an essential part of science. It is what makes science the most powerful system for accumulating knowledge that humanity has ever devised. In science, revision is a victory.

This is not the science that you were taught in school, where there was a single right answer to every question on the test. But it is the real practice of science.

There is a tendency to ask: “How can uncertainty lead to knowledge?” But that’s the wrong question. Uncertainty is knowledge. To make progress, scientists depend on the fact that there is always the potential to improve existing knowledge, and they know that any scientific finding — no matter how powerful — can be refined. This is the nature of the scientific method, the process by which scientists collect data and test their hypotheses. In fact, a good scientific finding always acknowledges its limitations — which then point to what needs future investigation. Understanding and appreciating uncertainty for the possibilities it presents, in other words, are the keys to successful science.

If the world’s uncertainties are raising your blood pressure, you are in luck: You can take one of nine different classes of medication for hypertension, each working through a distinct pathway — despite the fact that scientists are still uncertain what regulates blood pressure in the first place. Roughly 90 percent of hypertension diagnoses are idiopathic, meaning a doctor cannot identify its root cause. Yet, here as elsewhere, imperfect knowledge means the potential for progress: Better drugs, or alternatives to drugs, may emerge as understanding improves. In the meantime, these medications have already prevented millions of premature deaths since their introduction 50 years ago.

Everyone benefits from scientific advances. I cannot imagine that anyone would prefer to be sick 25 years ago rather than today. Yes, some scientific progress has produced unintended, or even regrettable, consequences: The chemistry behind anesthetics advanced from research on the atomic bomb. But either way, it is not so much the shiny products of progress that have had the greatest effect. It is the ideaof progress, which has altered how human beings see the world.

Asking science to be definitive is making the wrong demand. Science gives the best answer, or answers, available — not the final word, but a provisional answer, with some indication of how dependable it is.

. . . Uncertainty in the practice of science is optimistic. Yes, optimistic: the optimism of possibility, of being able to imagine that things could be otherwise. Don’t wait around for the final answer that will never come. Take your blood pressure medicine. Act on the nearly correct science we have now.

Unsettled science is not unsound science. It is the real science.

Well, all scientists know this, but perhaps the lesson needs to be given to the public each generation. But the author neglects a very important point: some scientific knowledge is as close to absolute truth as you can envision. Examples: every normal water molecule consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.  The Earth revolves around the Sun, and is smaller than the Sun. Whales evolved from terrestrial mammals. And so on. Any of us would bet our life savings on the veracity of these statements, and that is close to absolute truth as you can get.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is being laid to rest, presumably in the garden.

*******************

From The Absurd Sign Project Uncensored:

From Wholesome Memes:

From Meow:

From Masih: an actress who gave up everything: her career, her health, and her freedom—just for posting one photo of herself without a hijab:

Shocking…
This is Taraneh Alidoosti. The actress who represented Iranian cinema to the world, the star of the film that won the Oscar. What did she do? She posted one photo without the hijab during Woman Life Freedom uprising in 2022 to show her solidarity with the People of Iran .

That is all. She said no to executions, no to the crackdown. That same week they came to her home and took her to Evin prison. When she was released, she was no longer the same Taraneh. Doctors diagnosed her with a rare illness that made her skin fall off and ravaged her body. She is still under treatment.

They say it was caused by drug interaction. Which drugs? What did they give her in that prison? No one answers. Today this photo is going viral across Iran because people want to see the price of one photo without hijab. To the regime it was just a photo.

To us, Taraneh is a woman who gave up everything: her career, her cinema, her health. And even now, in silence, mourning her father, she has not bowed. Taraneh, you did not just remove the hijab. You tore off their mask. We are your voice.

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) November 3, 2026

Did you know that Hasan Piker, who campaigned not only for El-Sayed but also for Zohran Mamdani:

The most successful streamer and young media capitalist today is Hasan Piker is worth $40M. He makes >$4M/year.

His business model? Denouncing capitalism, praising Fidel Castro, dressing like Mao Zedong.

He campaigned extensively for Abdul El-Sayed. https://t.co/c5jn28h5WZ

— Kevin Bass (@kevinnbass) November 2, 2026

From Malcolm: a man speaking fluent cat:

A cat totally freaked out by a human speaking cat language🐱 https://t.co/45beXAFiu1

— The Meow Cats (@TheMeowCats) October 20, 2026

The Number Ten cat is not just Labour, but a Democrat. Here he talks to Trump:

Donald Trump likes to talk but today it’s time for him to listen. Make sure he hears you, America.

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) November 3, 2026

Two from my feed. First, a real hero:

WATCH🚨: Knife to the flight attendant’s throat—she’s crying, screaming for her mama. Then a passenger steps up: ‘My turn.’ He swaps in, strips the blade, drops the attacker, and hands him to police.

Bravest airport move of the year. Absolute hero. 👊🏿✈️🔪 https://t.co/YEZsKrCogp

— Whiplash437 (@MrWhiplash_) November 2, 2026

A brave moggy:

Cats are cold blooded psychos. This lunatic just stared down 4 wild racoons like it was nothing. https://t.co/0uIi2FU3qD

— Mr_Fireside 🔥 (@Mr_Fireside) November 2, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auchwitz. He was 12 years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-11-04T12:30:00.741Z

And one from Dr. Cobb. There’s an informative thread about this snake, which is a hybrid species that produces only clones of the mother from unfertilized eggs:

This 'earthworm' has a flickering tongue! And that's because it's NOT an earthworm, it's a Brahminy blind snake (Indotyphlops braminus).They live in the dirt, eating insect larvae, harmless to humans.Let's talk about this ALL-FEMALE SPECIES & their genetics.(📷: thezenhenandthehoneybee, IG)

— c0nc0rdance (@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social) 2026-11-03T13:59:54.286Z

NOTE: Hili died today from metastatic liver cancer.  I am devastated but Andrzej even more so. He lost his wife and his cat companion within a bit more than a year. If you have a message for Andrzej, put it in the comments and I will convey it to him. 

Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, November 3, 2026, and it’s Election Day. I trust you will vote if you’re American, as that is our duty (though sometimes not our pleasure). It’s also National Sandwich Day.  Here’s my pastrami sandwich at Katz’s in NYC, eaten in 2014. It is of course on rye bread with hot mustard, and accompanied by the requisites: a plate of pickles (with the prized half sours) and a can of Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray soda, which, with its celery flavor, happens to be the perfect accompaniment to pastrami or corned beef.

It’s also Cliché Day, World Jellyfish Day, and Skeptics Day International.

There’s a Google Doodle today urging you to vote. Click on the icon below to see where it goes, which tells you where you must go to vote based on your location.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 3 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Although most of us think, based on the polls, that Democrats will win the House of Representatives tomorrow, the Senate is a more dicey call. The NYT, though, argues that the latest polls show the Democrats flipping enough seats to take the Senate as well (article archived here).

Democrats are ahead of Republicans in almost all of the seven battleground states that will determine which party controls the Senate, according to the final set of polls from The New York Times and Siena University before the midterm elections.

The surveys found that Democrats hold sizable leads in Texas, which has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988, and Kansas, which has not elected one since 1932.

To win a Senate majority, Democrats need to defend all the seats they currently hold and flip at least four seats that are currently held by Republicans. It has been seen as an uphill battle because many of the seats they need to win are in Republican strongholds.

But the new polls found Democratic candidates ahead in five states that now have Republican senators and effectively tied in a sixth. They hold leads in Kansas, Maine, Ohio and Texas and a narrow edge in Alaska. They are effectively tied in Iowa.

In Michigan, the lone top Senate battleground already held by Democrats, the poll found the Democratic candidate leading by double digits. (It was conducted before a Democratic feud erupted in Michigan this weekend.) The surveys did not include North Carolina, where polls have long found the Democrat leading and Republicans have pared back their campaign spending.

Dissatisfaction with President Trump and frustration over his management of the economy are dragging down Republicans, according to the polls. Just 38 percent of likely voters approved of the president’s job performance in the seven states in the poll, a strikingly low figure given that Mr. Trump had won five of the states by double digits just two years ago.

The newfound Democratic strength was powered by growing trust in the party to handle the economy — the key motivating issue for voters this year. Democrats hold a nine-point advantage on the cost of living across the battlegrounds, and they led on this crucial measure in every single state.

Here’s the chart that the NYT gives. As always, I’m not going watch the votes roll in over the evening; I’d prefer to go to sleep peacefully and wake up tomorrow to find out who’s ahead (or won):

*The WSJ reports that America’s Arab allies in the Middle East are getting reading for another American attack on Iran, something that Trump himself has intimated.

America’s Gulf allies are steeling themselves for a heavy U.S. bombardment of Iran that they expect to trigger a vicious cycle of retaliation against their own economic and civilian infrastructure as early as this week.

Their concerns are heightened by a lack of progress in the various efforts to reach a negotiated end to the conflict while the U.S. and Iran are threatening especially ferocious fighting if the conflict resurges.

President Trump has been leaning toward a large postelection attack that could target Iranian infrastructure and nuclear sites, but hasn’t decided whether to go ahead, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Iranian officials said over the weekend their response to any attack would be unrestrained.

“The only reason why I’m not finished with Iran is I want to be nice. I want to try and save all those lives if I can,” Trump said Sunday at a rally in Iowa ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections. “But at some point we’re going to have to give them the hammer.”

Governments including Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were running security drills—including at airports—and attendees at a major energy conference in Abu Dhabi were cutting short their stays on advice from their governments. Schools in the capital of Saudi Arabia, which is also under fire from the Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen, will remain online this week. Dutch and Belgian embassies in the region warned Thursday that security conditions could deteriorate quickly in the region.

Anwar Gargash, senior foreign-policy adviser to the U.A.E.’s president, said at a security conference over the weekend that the country hopes the diplomatic efforts will pan out, but is “braced for the worst.”

Will this happen? I’m guessing it will, and not long after the midterm results are in. Certainly before Congress recalibrates towards being Democratic in January, as they could put the brakes on Trump’s ambitions, though I’m not yet sure how. But Trump is impatient (his waffling is just that, not patience), and I’m betting he’ll order a strike within a month of the midterms. (But remember, I’m not a pundit; your guess is as good as mine.)

*Although Chuck Schumer has called Hayley Stevens’s defection from supporting El-Sayed a “despicable betrayal”, last Thursday Nancy Pelosi just pronounced both el-Sayed’s and Mamdani’s demonization of Israel as “concerning” and “wrong.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., criticized New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed over their views on Israel Thursday, calling their positions “wrong” and saying they did not reflect congressional Democrats.

The two progressive Democrats were mentioned by “On Brand” podcast host Donny Deutsch, who asked Pelosi how he, as a Jewish man, could reconcile his support for the Democratic Party with politicians whose statements he considered antisemitic.

“When you say Israel doesn’t have the right to be a Jewish state, that’s antisemitic as far as I’m concerned with all that,” Deutsch said.

When Pelosi asked for examples, Deutsch named Mamdani and El-Sayed, calling their comments “concerning.”

“No, it’s more than concerning,” Pelosi responded. “It’s wrong. It’s wrong. And it isn’t a reflection of the Democrats in the Congress of the United States. This new person in Michigan, we’ll see if he gets elected to the Congress. But the mayor, bless his heart, I hope he succeeds as mayor, but I don’t agree with some of the things he has said. But in terms of our people in the House of Representatives, if somebody says that, the other members disassociate themselves from it.”

Note that this is the opposite of what Chuck Schumer tweeted: “Senate Democrats are united in our support for Abdul El-Sayed.”  Are they?  More:

Earlier in the interview with Deutsch, Pelosi initially denied that anyone in the Democratic Party was antisemitic.

“The fact is that I really do not know of anybody there on our side who is engaged in antisemitism. That may be what it appears to be or what they’re charged to be. But if they are, it’s only a few. If there are, I think sometimes they say things that they shouldn’t and can be interpreted that way,” Pelosi said.Despite her concerns about Mamdani and El-Sayed’s comments, she dismissed their impact on the party as a whole.“People represent their districts, and we have to respect that. The job description, job title is representative, but that doesn’t mean it has an impact on the consensus of the Democratic Party, and [House Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries has been very clear on that,” Pelosi said.. . . . Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, acknowledged Pelosi “as one of the Jewish community’s best friends among House Democrats” but said it was alarming that she did not seem to recognize antisemitism among her colleagues.“Pelosi claims she wants for those voices to be marginalized within her party, yet she demonstrates that she has turned a deaf ear, both to antisemitic expression from her colleagues and to the rabbis anxious to set her straight on the magnitude of the problem. If she is indeed one of our best friends, should we not be scared by that?” Menken told Fox News Digital.

It’s Monday, November 2, and Israel’s future rests in the hands of a triumvirate, though none of its members is the country’s Caesar. As with the alliances that presided over the fall of the Roman Republic, whether Yashar’s Gadi Eisenkot, Yisrael Beiteinu’s Avigdor Liberman and Together’s Naftali Bennett act together or apart will decide the country’s fate.

The conventional wisdom puts Eisenkot at the head of the trio. With 21 seats, Yashar is the second-largest party in the Knesset, and the former IDF chief of staff will most likely be the first to receive the president’s mandate to form a government. Some are watching the enigmatic Liberman and his seven seats. Since 2019, his decisions about whom he will and won’t sit with have denied Benjamin Netanyahu a majority and fueled Israel’s long political crisis. But in my humble view, the man who holds the most power is sitting right now in the upper-middle-class town of Ra’anana: Naftali Bennett.

Here’s why.

The Together chairman is, along with the Yashar chairman, one of only two pivot players in any possible government.

Without him, an Eisenkot-Netanyahu government doesn’t add up. Even with Liberman, Likud and Yashar are stuck six short of a majority. Only Bennett can get them over the line, to a comfortable 67. As the bloc’s second-strongest figure, and once Eisenkot’s rival for its leadership, Bennett holds the other key too. Eisenkot can’t enter any government that includes Haredim and/or Arabs without Bennett providing the parliamentary ballast, and the vaguer but no less essential seal of approval.

But there is a fundamental difference between the two. Eisenkot would serve as prime minister in a minority coalition or, at the very least, as an equal partner in a unity government. He has something significant to gain. Bennett has a lot to lose. He would absorb much of the criticism and the electoral damage for every broken campaign promise, but on the income side of the ledger he’d have to settle for a senior (very senior) ministry, with no return to the most important office in the country.

. . .Over the weekend I spent hours going through every possible permutation for a government: a minority government with the Arabs, a minority government with the Haredim, even the purely hypothetical and absurd Arab-Haredi alliance, with Agudat Yisrael leader Yitzhak Goldknopf and Shas leader Aryeh Deri as rotating prime ministers. But only one answer guarantees Israel a strong and stable government able to contend with the challenges we face: unity.

Bennett may be the pivotal figure, the first rock to tumble in what becomes a landslide. But without Eisenkot and Liberman following him, and possibly Religious Zionism leader Bezalel Smotrich as well, stability will suffer, and with it the country’s most essential needs in security and society. As Sallust, the Roman historian and a contemporary of the First Triumvirate, observed, “Through harmony small states grow; through discord the greatest fall apart.”

Here is Bennett’s tweet (translated from Hebrew) recommending that Israel’s President (who has this task) recommend Eisenkot to cobble together the next government of Israel. It looks as if Bennett’s in favor of a Yashar/Likud coalition, which could, if the Arab parties join in, put Eisenkot in the PM’s seat.

*Over at Air Mail, Larry David has a “modest” proposal—or rather 12 of them—for the Democratic Socialists of America (article archived here). It is of course a spoof if you know David and the DSA: I’ll give you six, and you have the link to see the whole schmear:

I recently attended a meeting of the Democratic Socialists of America, where I officially enrolled as a member. Though I was new to the party, I put forth a number of proposals, many of which were met with considerable enthusiasm and, I’m happy to report, have now been incorporated into their manifesto. I present them herein.

1.) Let’s never forget we’re all in this together. Therefore, we have determined that all doors to private homes must remain unlocked at all times. Strangers may enter as they please to open your fridge, use your bathroom, floss, or just relax and watch a ball game. This open-door policy is the perfect way to get to know our fellow Americans.

. . . 4.) In our Socialist America, everyone will be so fulfilled spiritually and financially that the police department will be dramatically reduced to where an officer’s only job will be to adjudicate domestic disputes. Toward that end, stands will be set up at local farmers markets, where they will work to resolve marital issues in a folksy, farm-to-table manner. Fresh berries will be provided.

. . . 6.) The loss of a dog can be devastating and, in some cases, worse than even when a human passes. Recognizing that, we at the D.S.A. will institute a three-week bereavement period during which pet mourners will continue to receive full work compensation. This benefit will also apply to the loss of a cat, turtle, parakeet, or goldfish. For certain farm animals, such as chickens, donkeys, goats, and pigs, the bereavement period will be reduced to two weeks. Conversely, if you are the proud owner of a new pet, you’ll be granted a two-week paternity leave to bond with, house-train, and teach it commands. You’d be surprised what a goldfish can do if you get them early.

. . . 9.) The D.S.A. has great respect for religious traditions. Because of our burgeoning Muslim population, we want to take all measures to give these people a strong sense of belonging in America. Along those lines, we’ll require that all Caucasian women wear a hijab on weekends in solidarity with their Muslim sisters. In addition, Jews will no longer be allowed to refer to themselves as “the Chosen People.” Henceforth, their new nickname will be “the Bagel People.”

. . . 10.) We strongly believe in a two-state solution. To this end, we propose that Palestinians should be given all the land currently occupied by Israel and that Israel should be given Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific, where the weather is beautiful and grapefruits are aplenty. We think the Bagel People will be very happy there.

. . . 11.) Firing is prohibited in Socialist America. The only way anyone will be able to replace a worker is to trade them to another company, like they do in professional sports. The worker will also have a “no trade” clause in their contract so it can be voided if they choose to do so.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is no more.

*******************

From Things With Faces, a grumpy tree:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Meow Incorporated:

This is a post by Masih on Facebook, showing her berating Spanish officials for cozying up to Iranian authorities while denying visas to women protestors blinded by the Iranian cops:

From Luana; more Wikipedia editing:

Over the past months, a single Wikipedia editor has been quietly shaping @AbdulElSayed’s entry.

The editing has been intensive and highly directed. For example:

+ Hasan Piker controversy got cut down.
+ Syed’s antisemitism problem – deleted.
+ Harris and Obama endorsements went in.
+ A line saying AIPAC’s brand is “toxic” included.

Is it an op?

Well, two weeks ago the same editor had this to say in an edit summary on the El-Sayed page:

“another half month of this shit.”

🧵

— Ashley Rindsberg (@AshleyRindsberg) November 2, 2026

From Malcolm. Mama turned around right quick when a baby squealed:

Mama bear and… Wait for it. https://t.co/XF1NtaXAG8

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 22, 2026

From the Number Ten Cat, who’s proud of his CBS segment. He got a whole news segment, introduced by Jane Pauley:

CBS = Cat Bringing Smiles

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) November 2, 2026

Two from my feed. First, a viral video of a pro-Palestinian student striking two fellow students (the girl is Jewish) at the University of Michigan. She got arrested, as you’ll see. English translation of the tweet: “Probably the first time in her life that this dumb cow has faced consequences for her actions.”

Wahrscheinlich das erste Mal in ihrem Leben, dass diese dumme Kuh Konsequenzen für ihr handeln erfahren hat. https://t.co/Avtl4SnlrK

— Schrödinger (@OF_Schroedinger) November 2, 2026

I sure hope this is a real video and not staged:

When your Amazon delivery driver is a dog person…🥺🥺
Wait for end…🧐🧐 https://t.co/QDB8voxvlj

— Rosie Bella (@chronicalguy) November 2, 2026

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was four years old, and would be 89 today had he survived.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-11-03T12:01:59.123Z

And one from Professor (Emeritus) Cobb. It’s amazing, and he says: “The second vid extract is crazy! Don’t blink!”

Not enough people watched this video. #ScienceSky #SnekSky

— Leah (@leah.myatproto.social) 2026-11-02T18:44:02.102Z

Welcome to the first Monday of the month: it’s November 2, 2026, the last day before the Midterm Elections, and Plan Your Epitaph Day. I’m going to be incinerated, so I won’t have one, but have a look at the gravestone of Mel Blanc as shown in Wikipedia.  As Wikipedia notes:

[Blanc] later expanded to animation, providing the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Wile E. Coyote, Speedy Gonzales, Marvin the Martian, Foghorn Leghorn, the Tasmanian Devil, Pepé Le Pew and numerous other characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoons.^[7] Blanc also voiced the characters Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd after replacing their original performers, Joe Dougherty and Arthur Q. Bryan, respectively, although he occasionally voiced Elmer during Bryan’s lifetime as well.

Note the stones on top of the tombstone, signs of affection and respect places there by Jewish visitors.

If you don’t know where the epitaph comes from, here’s Blanc’s voicing of Porky Pig’s closing of Looney Tunes cartoons:

It’s also All Souls’ Day and National Deviled Egg Day. And the leaves are falling:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 2 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*It’s somewhat ironic that the “progressive” NYT broke the story about how Democratic candidate for Senate Mary Peltola was apparently part of a nefarious scheme to undermine her Republican opponent, incumbent Dan S. Sullivan, by recruiting another candidate, Dan J. Sullivan, Jr., in an attempt to confuse voters. (Although readers say this is legal and has done before, it’s still being investigated for possible violation of the law.) At any rate, there’s now a measure on the Alaska ballot that would eliminate the voting system that allowed this, and, further, the NYT, beating its chest, has a separate article on how it broke the story. From the first article:

Organizers of a ballot measure that would end Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system say the effort by Democrats to boost Mary Peltola’s Senate bid by stacking Tuesday’s ballots in an attempt to confuse voters should be the system’s death knell.

Since Alaska voters approved open primaries and ranked-choice general elections in 2020, opponents — most of them Republicans — have argued the system is too confusing for the average person.Now it’s been tainted by scandal involving the recruitment of a challenger with the same name as the incumbent. That has led to federal legal action, a Justice Department investigation and a separate state investigation.

. . . A similar referendum two years ago lost by 737 votes.

. . .Under current law, candidates for state and federal office in Alaska compete in one open, nonpartisan primary, with the top four advancing to November. Voters rank them in order of preference. If no candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes, the last-place finisher is eliminated and those votes are redistributed according to voters’ next choices. The process repeats until someone wins a majority of the remaining votes.

Ballot Measure 2 would return Alaska to primaries open only to voters registered to a particular party. That would be followed by a traditional general election where voters choose just one candidate.

I find the ranked-choice option confusing, and so would vote to repeal the system. After all, anybody can still run if they’re registered with a party (any party) and get the requisite number of signatures.  Below is from the second article, with the NYT so proud of itself.  Questions (in bold) are from NYT deputy editor Amy Gardner, answers are from the reporter, Kellen Browning:

Ballot-stacking is generally considered legal. Republicans have used the tactic in Alaska. What was newsworthy about the effort that led us to write an article?

Amy: It’s not unprecedented for campaigns or major parties to find decoy candidates with the same name as a major-party contender. But it is rare, and that’s what made the candidacy of Dan J. Sullivan unusual. We’ve also written extensively about other ballot-stacking efforts, by both parties — including in Alaska this year. Dan J. Sullivan’s candidacy also became a subject of interest in the Alaska political world and beyond, and questions were being raised when he barely campaigned. There is also the fact that the Peltola campaign so vigorously denied it, for so long. That made it a bigger story, in the end.

I’d add: Dan J. Sullivan is a retired schoolteacher who lives in a remote village accessible only by plane or boat. He has a Che Guevara magnet on his fridge. He gave money to a past campaign of Mary Peltola. It’s just a great story all the way around.

Kellen: Yes, Democrats have made the point that Republicans have done this, which is true. That doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t write about particularly glaring or interesting examples of it. And in this case, we were able to pull back the curtain and take readers inside the plan in an unusually detailed way.

I suppose Democrats will criticize the NYT for singling out Alaska, but I think Kellen’s response is okay, though past examples by Democrats of this kind of chicanery should have been mentioned. I can’t be arsed to go back and see if they were.

*Andrew Sullivan appears to have made the transition, at least for this election cycle, to supporting the Democratic Party. At least that’s the message in his latest column, “You know what to do” (subtitle”: It’s our last chance to show that Americans have not forgotten who we really are.”  Although I no longer subscribe to his site, the link appears to give his full article. Some quotes:

“Pretend I’m on the ballot!” the president insists, as if there is any other Republican on the ballot. It’s been two years of governance without a Congress — the lifeless body effectively passes one bill a year while deferring in every other single respect to the cult leader — so voting for a Republican congressman or senator is, quite simply, a vote for Trump. And an endorsement of his de facto suspension of constitutional balance.

So vote for anyone other than a Republican next Tuesday. Or if that’s too compromising for you, don’t vote at all. We need to send a deafening message to bring the republic back to some kind of balance — loud enough that the remaining sane Republicans hear it, and emphatic enough to render Trump’s inevitable attempt to delegitimize it futile.

Trump’s second term is, after all, a near-perfect illustration of why the Founders were smarter than he is. Economic policy has been conducted by presidential whim, not by Congressional deliberation. Tariffs can maybe work if they are raised gradually, and stably — but not when they change from rate to rate and country to country from minute to minute. Foreign policy follows the same monarchical structures so that a full-scale war, initiated by a foreign government, was launched without the American public or the wider Congress even being informed in advance. And because power is concentrated so thoroughly around one deeply unethical man and his cronies, and because the Congress is controlled by his cult, corruption is at stratospheric levels.

Yes, the war was and is a terrible idea. Yes, prices for almost everything are higher, and the president has helped make them so through war and tariffs. Yes, economic security feels out of reach for everyone on the brink of the AI revolution, with an executive obviously a mere plaything in the hands of unaccountable moguls. Yes, immigration control, however needed, has been marred by brutality, mindless enforcement, and abrogation of constitutional rights. Yes, the president has broken every minimal norm of decency, ending his campaign with jibes against jihadists and faggots and freaks, as if slurs were all he had left against El Sayed and Talarico.

But these are all downstream of the constitutional collapse: an executive branch staffed by clowns and led by a madman with no countervailing force. The answer to that is simple: a Congress that can function again as the central political body in our democratic system, so we can finally draw a line under Trump’s kleptocratic idiocracy. That can’t happen overnight, but a demonstration that the constitution still lives can be seen by the world next Wednesday morning.

. . . Voting for Harris in 2024 was an excruciating decision to put resisting a deranged despot ahead of my ideal policy goals. I feel no such conflict now. I don’t have a huge amount of confidence that the Dems will use their power wisely, but any use of Congressional power to push back on the tyrant will do for now

This was not hard for Sullivan to right, and I am pleased that he did. He even promotes a Congressional investigation of Trump’s pardons, thinking that we may need a Constitutional amendment to prevent the abuse of pardons to reward your friends.

*I’ve learned that on any subject where there’s an accepted “progressive” point of view, Wikipedia will adopt it, rendering the “people’s encyclopedia” biased and misleading. This is certainly true for the history of Israel and of conflicts between Israel and its enemies. Quillette has an informative essay on Zionism called “How Wikipedia rewrote Zionism,” a distressing example of bias (you can find Wikipedia’s article here).

Before 7 October 2023, the English-language Wikipedia article on Zionism opened by describing a movement that emerged to “espouse support for the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine.” Since then, the opening has been reworded to say that this homeland was to be established “through colonization,” immediately followed by a new sweeping claim: “Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.” The sentence is backed by an unusually large bundle of 17 citations, drawn from historians including Benny Morris, Rashid Khalidi, Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappé, and to the casual reader it looks like the settled verdict of scholarship. It is not. The editor who introduced it in August 2024 has since been banned from the entire Palestine-Israel topic area for non-neutral editing. Yet the sentence survives, and for a year Wikipedia formally barred its editors from even discussing whether to remove it.

That matters because Wikipedia is widely regarded as a generally reliable source of information, and its influence extends far beyond the millions of people who consult it directly: it has also been incorporated into many of the datasets used to train artificial intelligence systems, thereby shaping the information those systems subsequently reproduce. That reputation and reach rest in large part on one of Wikipedia’s foundational principles—presenting a “neutral point of view.” Wikipedia articles are supposed to summarise what reliable sources say without taking a position of their own. This principle is particularly important on controversial subjects, and few subjects are more contentious than Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more broadly.

The sentence is only the most visible symptom of a much larger change. Over the past three years, Wikipedia’s coverage of this topic has undergone an extraordinary transformation, best exemplified by the Zionism article itself. I recently conducted a quantitative analysis of the article’s revision history and found that since 7 October 2023, about 80 percent of the article has been completely rewritten, and only about 20 percent of the pre-October 2023 text has survived.

More importantly, this dramatic, measurable change reflected a fundamental shift in the topics emphasised by the article. For example, the volume of material associated with colonialism rose roughly two-and-a-half-fold, and coverage of ethnic cleansing roughly doubled. At the same time, discussion of antisemitism and persecution—the primary historical drivers of the Zionist movement—was cut approximately in half, while the return to the historic Jewish homeland went from the most prominent of the four topics to the least.

. . .Similarly, the scale of this rewriting cannot be explained by any recent fundamental shift in the underlying scholarship. For example, the most cited author in the article is Benny Morris, who published Righteous Victims in 1999, the substantially revised The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited in 2004, and 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War in 2008, drawing extensively on Israeli and Western archival material that had become available over the preceding decades. The same holds for the broader academic literature on the subject: the key works on which the article relies had all been published long before the page underwent its wholesale rewrite. In other words, there has been neither substantial new evidence nor a major historiographical shift since 7 October 2023 that could plausibly explain why four-fifths of a mature encyclopedic article suddenly needed to be replaced.

The explanation lies instead within Wikipedia itself—specifically, in the editorial choices determining which sources were foregrounded and how they were represented. An encyclopedic article is not supposed to reflect the political preferences of its editors, but to fairly represent serious scholarship on the subject. The post-October 2023 rewrite did exactly the opposite. Rather than neutrally presenting the actual range of views found among historians, the article moved towards a simplistic, partisan account, dominated by the perspective of Zionism’s political adversaries. Nor was the partisan editing limited to deciding which parts of the scholarship to foreground and which to push aside. It also repeatedly distorted what the scholarship actually said.

The article shows how the changes were effected largely by cherry-picking quotes from scholars like Benny Morris, changing their meaning. As the article argues,

The real issue, then, is not simply bias. It is bias introduced in the guise of neutral, scholarship-based synthesis—and nowhere is that clearer than in the opening paragraph of the article, where a sentence introduced by an editor banned for non-neutral editing still tells readers what Zionism is.

Don’t expect any change in the article, though. Those who want to eliminate the bias will be steamrollered by assiduous antisemites who hover over the article to keep it biased. That’s the way that all this ideological slant is produced in Wikipedia.

*Over at The Spectator, Douglas Murray contemplates the damage done to the City of Light in recent demonstrations, and asks “Will we always have Paris?” (archived link).

Two worlds met in Paris last week. Thanks to the presence of Art Basel, some of the world’s most valuable art that wasn’t already in the city was shipped there. It arrived just in time for Paris to go up in flames. Most of the art fair went ahead as planned at the Grand Palais, but the final weekend was cancelled.

. . . Unfortunately reports from the front line all confirm a pre-existing prejudice of my own – which is that almost no group is more detached from society than those who call themselves ‘artists’. A particularly fine example came courtesy of a woman called Louisa Buck, who writes for the Art Newspaper. Reviewing the carnage in the city, as well as the contents of Art Basel, Buck (the daughter of the late Conservative MP Sir Antony Buck) twittered admiration not for the art but for the vandalism.

Taking to Instagram, she wrote: ‘For me the most powerful artwork encountered in the last 48 hours was the defaced sculpture under lowering skies in Place de La République passed on my way off to Gare du Nord that speaks volumes of the fury and disappointment felt at uncaring governments and savage policing – and it’s not just restricted to France.’ She continued to trill about the beauty of the black graffiti that made it look almost as though the figure of Égalité was ‘weeping black tears… (or maybe her eyes put out altogether)’.

Of course to voice such sentiments, any person – especially an art critic – must have had their brains fall out altogether. The monument in question is one of Paris’s landmarks, with the 19th-century sculpture centring around a statue of Marianne, the symbol of France. But the art world has long been dominated by an elite of ‘anti-elitists’. So much so that the daughter of a Tory MP and knight of the realm thinks nothing of celebrating the despoiling of France’s national monuments because of the need for justice, progress or some such.

. . . In other words, it isn’t just France’s new culturally enriching population who believe burning things down can be good. Some of its home-grown best are up for it too. One French woman, Bettina Zourli, a sociology lecturer, was caught on camera last week arguing with a beautiful young Parisienne who had been threatened with rape by the rioters. Zourli appeared to have no sympathy for the victim, and explained to the younger woman that she was simply ‘collateral damage’. She has since apologised for her ‘clumsy’ words.

Like so many other French activists and thinkers, Zourli spoke her truth. France’s best include people who believe – to use the old cliché – that you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. But they never do make their omelette. They just leave every-one else with a bloody, burned-out mess.

The omelette making has spread to Italy and Spain, and I’d expect, as a result, to see Europe voting for hard-right candidates in the next year. But Paris will recover, as it always has, though it is slowly changing.

*The AP reports that a Brit named Karl Bushby is about to come home, after 28 straight years of walking.

Karl Bushby has spent 28 years walking home, but as he approaches the finish Monday, it’s not clear he’s ready for the audacious journey to end.

Pushing a cart loaded with camping gear up a busy country road in northern England about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the finish line, Bushby was uncertain of the future, anxious about the prospect of living in his mom’s basement and facing an identity crisis.

“My purpose and reason for living is about to end,” he said. “It’s going to be difficult … trying to blend back into a society that you just don’t know anymore.”

Bushby, 57, was just shy of 30 when he entered the unknown at the tip of South America on Nov. 1, 1998. Since then, he has walked 31,000 miles (50,000 kilometers) across four continents, navigated shifting ice over the Bering Strait and swam — a generous description of his technique — across the Caspian Sea and English Channel. He has battled almost every type of element and terrain imaginable through 30 foreign countries to get back to where he started half a lifetime ago.

Swampy jungle, scorching desert and frozen tundra slowed him down, but mountains of red tape helped turn what was supposed to be a 12-year trek into the epic he has dubbed the “Goliath Expedition.”

It’s taken nearly three times as long for Bushby to return to his mother, Angela, in Hull, as it took the hero in “ The Odyssey ” to make it back to his wife, Penelope, in Ithaca.

“Odysseus was a bit of an amateur,” Bushby quipped. “But, you know, I’ll cut him some slack — I haven’t met any giant Cyclops.”

The route, with the green part left to go. From yahoo! life courtesy of Karl Bushby:

. . . and an AP video. He is supposed to be home today, but there’s another video him having arrived in southern England. Thgt video also shows him crossing the Darnien Gap, the Bering Strait, and the English Channel (using the backstroke).

I am not sure that this trek is a good “reason for living,” but when you think of other people’s “reasons,” it doesn’t seem so outré.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is not comfortable. In fact, she is not doing well at all, and Andrzej fears the worst.

Hili: This armchair isn’t the most comfortable.
Andrzej: Come on, let’s lie down together somewhere else.

In Polish:

Hili: Ten fotel nie jest najwygodniejszy.
Ja: Chodź, poleżymy razem w innym miejscu.

*******************

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices

From CinEmma:

From Clean, Funny, and Cute Animal Memes:

And, as a treat, Khadija Khan shows us that Cenk already is blowing an artery!:

Masih shows some Iranians celebrating Halloween–in Iran!

Halloween in Iran…

The Islamic Republic calls Halloween a “Western vice” and tries to ban it. But young Iranians have a message for the ayatollahs: You don’t get to decide how we live, dress, dance, or celebrate.

While the new “supreme leader “ and other mullahs hide in fear, the young generation is out there celebrating their own lifestyle.

The regime wants to turn Iran into a graveyard. This generation is determined to turn it into a dance floor.

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) November 1, 2026

From Luana; a spoof of the Cenk/pro-El Sayed ad:

It was an honor to be a part of this video by the brilliant @cenkuygur for @AbdulElSayed . It is so important to go out and vote! #makeamericadeerborn https://t.co/5FqIGBeCdj

— Lyle Culpepper (@ShutupLyle) October 27, 2026

From Malcolm; neurons connecting. This is not only how learning takes place, but how memories are made:

Neurons establishing relationships with each other.

Fundamentally what happens when you are learning. https://t.co/xr5BIHbAl8

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 22, 2026

From Larry, who hasn’t learned the mantra, “Healthy at any weight”:

No fat cats here!

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) October 31, 2026

From FB; Michael Che makes a tasteless joke about Israel on Saturday Night Live:

“This week, a record number of people voted in Israel’s election — which is great to see, regardless of if you’re on the right side, or the left side, or the genocide.”  See for yourself at 2:09 below.

Weekend Update with Colin Jost and Michael Che! https://t.co/gPYlZQs1dN

— Saturday Night Live (@nbcsnl) November 1, 2026

One from my feed, showing cat wrestling:

If wrestling is fake then explain this… https://t.co/EDB0JxMuXF

— Donnie K “Trucken Marine” (@TruckenUSMC) October 31, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was five years old and would have turned 90 today had he lived.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-11-02T12:11:24.431Z

And one from Doc Cobb, who saw the Fremont Troll in person:

Seattlers will know where I am

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-09-27T21:03:54.823Z

Music:  Here’s Barbra Streisand, who along with Karen Carpenter was one of the two great female pop singers of our time. Here she’s singing “Somewhere,” written by Leonard Bernstein (music) and Stephen Sondheim (lyrics) for the musical “West Side Story.”  This is from Streisand’s 1986 “One Voice” concert, given at her home in Malibu, California.  What more is there to say except that there’s a long introduction by Robin Williams along with comments with various notables, and the singing starts at 3:20?

NOTE: Did you set your clocks back last night? Daylight Savings Time ended at 1 a.m., which became midnight. You either got an extra hour of sleep (as I did, thank Ceiling Cat) or you’ll get an extra hour of leisure or work.

Welcome to Sunday, November 1, 2026: we are now approaching winter in the Northern Hemisphere. As I posted 11 years ago:

Since November has arrived, I’ll take this opportunity to post one of my favorite Wallace Stevens poems. My absolute favorite is “Peter Quince at the Clavier“, but this one is more is appropriate since it expresses both the change of seasons and the degeneration of nature, ending with a completely mangled month.

Metamorphosis

by Wallace Stevens

Yillow, yillow, yillow,
Old worm, my pretty quirk,
How the wind spells out
Sep – tem – ber….

Summer is in bones.
Cock-robin’s at Caracas.
Make o, make o, make o,
Oto – otu – bre.

And the rude leaves fall.
The rain falls. The sky
Falls and lies with worms.
The street lamps

Are those that have been hanged.
Dangling in an illogical
To and to and fro
Fro Niz – nil – imbo.

As always on the first of the month, I post the appropriate month’s illustrations from the 15th century manuscript Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. November’s illustration, below,is explained by Celtic Studies Resources:

The central panel features a pastoral scene of peasants harvesting acorns from oak trees, for the benefit of swine grazing beneath the trees. In the background on the left a château is partially visible on the bank of a river. The château has not been identified; it’s possible that Colombe relied on his imagination in depicting the château; it’s also possible that it’s not extant and therefor unrecognized.

The peasant on the left looks poised to hurl his stick into the trees, striking the ripe acorns so that they would fall on the ground to be consumed by the waiting pigs. Farther back, in the middle distance, two other peasants accompanied by sticks and pigs are engaged in watching the pigs, and in assisting the acorns to fall.

You’ll notice that the oak trees are very straight, and have had their lower branches lopped off in a practice known as pollarding. It was common in the middle ages in Europe to pollard oak and hazel nut trees by lopping off the lower branches every year or so; these could be used for firewood, and the tree would still grow and bear nuts. It also allowed more trees to be planted, because they could be planted closer together without lower branches inhibiting the growth of nearby trees.

Those are hairy pigs!

It’s also All Saints’ Day, National Author’s Day, National Balsamic Vinegar of Modena Day, National Calzone Day, National Cinnamon Day, National Deep Fried Clams Day, and, ironically both National Pâté Day and World Vegan Day.

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates Native American Heritage Month (click below to see where the Doodle goes):

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The NYT (and every place else) reports that a renewed war with Iran is in the works. (article archived here).

Little is clear about the power dynamics that will govern Israel and the United States in the coming months after pivotal elections in both countries. But Iran’s leaders are watching the contests closely, analysts said, and bracing for a renewed round of conflict whatever the outcome.

Tehran expects more attacks whoever takes control in Israel or of Congress, and has shown little willingness to make concessions demanded by the Trump administration to seal a peace deal.

On Saturday, Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said on social media that he had met with senior leaders of the armed forces and directed them to respond to any kind or level of threat with an immediate response in order to establish “maximum deterrence.” He also directed them to be prepared to target all types of U.S. and Israeli assets.

“They have been expecting a new round of war already for a few weeks, and they’ve been preparing accordingly,” Hamidreza Azizi, senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, said of the Iranian government.

. . .In Israel, Iran would welcome the removal of Mr. Netanyahu from power, said Mohammad Saleh Sedghian, director of the Arab Center for Iranian Studies in Tehran. The Israeli leader helped persuade Mr. Trump to attack Iran this year and sought to orchestrate new airstrikes on Iran ahead of the election. But Iranian leaders believe that changing prime ministers would probably have an impact only in the short term rather than leading to a fundamental shift in Israeli policy, Mr. Sedghian said.

“Iranian and Israeli policies toward each other have remained consistent regardless of which government has been in power in Israel since the 1980s,” he said. “Any changes would likely be temporary rather than strategic.”

When it comes to the United States, Iran’s leaders are keenly aware of how the costs of the war, including higher gasoline prices for Americans, have affected Mr. Trump’s popularity and the Republican Party’s prospects in the midterms. Their assessment appears to be that a deal with Iran would benefit Mr. Trump politically, giving Tehran leverage in any negotiations to end the war. Iran, on the other hand, has already borne enormous costs including worsening inflation, without its leaders changing their stance.

Although the article mentions that the U.S. was pursuing a deal with Iran to help Trump and the Republicans, it’s too late now: the midterms are on Tuesday. All things told, my prediction (and I’m not a pundit) is that we’ll be fighting Iran again within a month.

*In a news analysis piece, the National Review argues that the U.S. and Israel could still bring Iran to its knees, but they have to focus on a clear objective to the conflict (article archived here).

The question for Israelis is not whether resumed war with Iran is prudent, but whether resumed war with Iran in the next six months can achieve a realistic strategic objective. The mistake of the war this spring was to seek expansive objectives, rather than to stage a series of strikes that would appreciably damage the regime, while allowing Israel to terminate operations when America dictated as much. Indeed, the reality of this war is President Trump, not Netanyahu, determines when the fighting begins — albeit not when it ends.

Trump’s relatively short attention span, reinforced by his management style, militates against long-term patient strategic planning. Trump quite clearly thinks in two- to four-week cycles. This explains his attempt to bring gas prices down through a cosmetic, ineffectual diesel deal with Vladimir Putin’s Russia in mid-October, just under a month before a probable midterm defeat. The result has been vacillation between intense pressure on Iran, negotiations, and pseudo-pressure masking desired disengagement. The Trump administration, however, is clearly contemplating a new round of strikes against Iran, as indicated by meetings with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Dan Caine and leaked planning discussions with CENTCOM Commander Brad Cooper.

The issue is the objective. Israel, with Netanyahu at the helm, will certainly be interested in resuming an offensive, but that offensive must have a clear goal to justify it. The United States and Israel can once again hammer Iranian missile and drone-launch capabilities and production facilities. They can also attack industrial targets across Iran, further undermining the country’s already battered economy. More limited strikes, including repeated ones, against Iran’s coastal missile launch sites and sensors are also justified.

Nonetheless, without fomenting an uprising or leveraging forces on Iran’s border, neither Israel nor the United States can base its immediate policy upon the collapse of the Islamic Republic, even if the Revolutionary Guard could lose its grip on power as rapidly as the Soviets did.

This does not mean, however, that pressure on Iran is fruitless. Instead, the United States can direct Israeli attention elsewhere, leveraging Israel’s capacity to solidify the anti-Iranian coalition that the U.S. sought to bring into existence under the first Trump administration.

This coalition relies on alignment between Israel and the Gulf States, not simply the United Arab Emirates. Emirati leaders, much like their Jordanian counterparts, appear to have realized that friendship with Israel is an asset in an otherwise volatile region and that Israeli military capabilities can, in fact, be leveraged in dangerous situations. But the Emiratis are only one part of the equation. The Saudis are the other. Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman has refused to move toward normalization with Israel absent dramatic concessions from Jerusalem and Washington, including over Saudi nuclearization. He has also refused to allow the U.S. to stage strikes from Saudi bases and constantly balked at even limited bombing campaigns against Iranian coastal targets.

. . . Iran aims to destroy Israel, force the U.S. from the region, and ultimately become a genuine threat to the U.S. through possession of nuclear weapons and ICBMs. Israel and the U.S.’s goal should be to destroy the Iranian regime. The past eight months show that patience is required. If we haven’t learned this, we haven’t learned anything.

Yes, and help install a regime that would not pursue nuclear weapons. I’m not sure how much time the U.S. really has to do this, though, as several articles imply that a Democratic Congress may be able to force Trump to do their bidding with respect to war. And that gives the U.S. until January 3.

*I no longer donate to Doctors without Borders (MSF) because of its blatant anti-Israel stand, but now Switzerland has suspended much of its funding to MSF for a different reason: sexual abuse in Chad by some of MSF’s employees. And not just a few employees either. Further, MSF is making excuses about how it failed to act as quickly as possible:

Switzerland’s federal government is freezing some funding to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) due to the agency’s handling of a sexual abuse scandal that saw staff victimise refugees in Chad.

Officials from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, or SDC, appear to have been blindsided by the scale of the abuse and MSF’s inadequate disclosure of information, according to Zurich newspaper NZZ, which first reported the funding suspension to MSF Switzerland this week.

The abuse was exposed by reporting by the Associated Press in 2024. Women and girls said they were forced to exchange sex for money, jobs, or better access to humanitarian assistance, pointing to staff from MSF. The agency initially reported this to Swiss authorities as a case involving three women, according to NZZ.

But the organisation would later find widespread abuse, including exploitation that may have amounted to “sexual trafficking”, AP reported in June 2026. MSF later acknowledged that it had identified 59 allegations of “misconduct, including sexual harassment, exploitation, and abuse” involving “staff, daily workers, external contractors, and suppliers”.

The organisation says it has dismissed 18 staff. However, SDC appears to have been in the dark about the extent of the abuse until the June 2026 media report, the NZZ report suggests.

As with all cases of sexual abuse, the findings are likely an undercount as victims and survivors are often hesitant to speak, or to trust investigators tied to organisations that employed their abusers. Some 4.5 million people in Chad need humanitarian assistance, including refugees who have fled the civil war and genocidal attacks in Sudan, internally displaced people, and host communities.

What MSF says: “As we investigated the abuse in eastern Chad in 2024 and 2025, we remained in contact with the SDC, informing it about the media reports and providing updates on the ongoing investigations and their progress during meetings in Bern and Chad,” an MSF spokesperson told us. “However, we did not proactively communicate the full scale of confirmed cases and dismissals as early as we should have.”

The AP report in 2024 implies that MSF’s behavior is not limited to Chad:

Christopher Lockyear, MSF’s secretary general, said the organization was not aware of the allegations and wanted to investigate. “Asking for money or sex in exchange for access to care or a job is a clear violation of our behavioral commitments,” he said.

MSF would not say how many such cases had been reported among Sudanese refugees in Chad. Last year, out of 714 complaints made about MSF staff behavior where it works globally, 264 were confirmed to be cases of abuse or inappropriate behavior including sexual exploitation, abuse of power and bullying, Lockyear said.

MSF has dropped the ball on this one, not disclosing information that it should have. Sexually exploiting the very people it’s supposed to help is shameful behavior.  They won’t get dime one from me, and I suggest that if you’re donating them, you reassess your strategy. There are a lot of groups that help people and don’t have a track record like MSF.

*Haley Stevens, the Democrat who was beaten in Michigan’s Senate primary by Abdul El-Sayed, is not taking defeat graciously, but that’s ok—I detest El-Sayed. The NYT recounts what she’s saying about him and why she may convert to Judaism. (Article archived here.)

Representative Haley Stevens of Michigan stood up from her dining table, where the tuna fish and matzo ball soup sat half-eaten, and let loose about the moment she grew disillusioned with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed.

It happened this month, during her state’s first Senate debate between Dr. El-Sayed, who defeated her in a bitter Democratic primary in August, and former Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee. Dr. El-Sayed, an outspoken critic of Israel, was asked if Iran or Israel posed a greater threat to the United States. He dodged the question, calling it a “ridiculous hypothetical.”

This was unacceptable to Ms. Stevens.

“He’s a good speaker,” she said during the lunchtime interview on Friday at her home in Birmingham, Mich., raising her voice and rising from the table. “He’s an orator. He is gifted. Then how does that happen? Come on!”

Since the debate, Ms. Stevens has sat for a procession of cable television interviews that have been increasingly critical of Dr. El-Sayed, her endorsement of him becoming shakier by the day. Their hug at a party unity brunch in August has faded into distant memory.

Representative Haley Stevens of Michigan stood up from her dining table, where the tuna fish and matzo ball soup sat half-eaten, and let loose about the moment she grew disillusioned with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed.

Since the debate, Ms. Stevens has sat for a procession of cable television interviews that have been increasingly critical of Dr. El-Sayed, her endorsement of him becoming shakier by the day. Their hug at a party unity brunch in August has faded into distant memory.

On Friday, Ms. Stevens announced that she would attend a Sunday church service in Detroit with Dr. El-Sayed, a peace offering brokered by Representatives Debbie Dingell of Michigan and James E. Clyburn of South Carolina. But Ms. Stevens’s statement came with a caveat: a demand that Dr. El-Sayed publicly disavow an ad that one of his allies posted online. She called the ad antisemitic because it blamed U.S. support for Israel for high grocery prices. [JAC: note below that this meeting is off.]

On Friday, Dr. El-Sayed pushed back.

In a blistering statement, he offered a reminder that he beat her in August and an assertion that “Congresswoman Stevens seems intent on relitigating a primary that ended three months ago.”

. . . .Several times in the interviews, she returned to her anger over the online ad, made by Rebellion PAC, a left-wing group that backed Dr. El-Sayed, and his refusal to publicly disavow it. The El-Sayed campaign has said it did not make and is not responsible for the ad.

“Maybe it’s how you fund-raise, maybe it is what you want people to believe, but the reality is that we are not going to say that the cost of groceries is because of Jews and the Jewish state,” Ms. Stevens said. “We’re not going to say we don’t have health care because of Jews and the Jewish state.”

Other Democrats, though, are criticizing Stevens for upsetting the apple cart. After all, Democrats are supposed to stick together so Republicans won’t retain Senate control.  But to me, enough is enough.  Is that end worth any means, including supporting a closeted anti-Zionist who can’t bring himself to condemn an antisemitic ad? Seriously! Stevens is acting like a Democrat should, condemning what should be condemned.  It’s gotten so that anybody who calls themselves a Democrat deserves support, no matter what they say or do.

Also, according to the Wall Street Journal, El-Sayed has disinvited Stevens from their joint appearance scheduled for today:

Abdul El-Sayed has disinvited Rep. Haley Stevens from a joint campaign appearance planned for Sunday at a heavily Black church in Detroit, the latest sign of Democratic division in this critical state.

The Senate nominee’s campaign has asked Stevens to stay away from El-Sayed events ahead of Tuesday’s election, according to two people familiar with the decision. Politico reported on the move earlier, after the two Democratic primary rivals sniped at each other in public on Friday.

Bickering within the party could hardly come at a worse time as Democrats try to hold on to a critical Senate seat.

Yes, winning has become everything, with party labels overriding anything, including antisemitism and blood libels.

*Over at his Substack site, which I can’t read fully because I don’t want to pay for any more subscriptions, Jesse Singal gives his reaction to the new documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, “You Can See Everything,” and he thinks the movie is terrific.

You Can See Everything is great. I saw it last week, after having been exposed to weeks’ worth of buzz making it sound like a documentary created in one day by Jesus himself, so I went in with certain expectations.

I’m not sure it was as good as social media and the most enthusiastic reviewers said (a dumb standard, to be sure), but it’s a great documentary. It will stick with me for a long time.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I think Nathan Fielder is a capital-G Genius, I believe Nathan for You is one of the, say, seven (?) funniest TV shows ever produced, and I think The Rehearsal (particularly season 2) is one of the most interesting and original TV shows ever produced. I am just a giant Fielder fanboy in general, even as I acknowledge that he is Not For Everyone (for some of the same reasons I Think YouShould Leave is NFE) — not everyone can handle the level of cringe he tends to bring to his projects. (I thought The Curse was good and I’m glad I watched it, but it bounced off me a bit in a way none of his own work ever has.)

I went in knowing as little as possible about YCSE given the insane level of Discourse, and you should do the same.

Singal then recounts part of the movie in which Holmes doesn’t understand the famous “Who’s on first” joke, even when it was explained to her; Singal thinks this is a deliberate attempt to buttress her reputation, as John Carreyrou puts it in a NYT piece, “the neurodivergent entrepreneur who operated on a different wavelength.” By the way, Carreyrou, who exposed Holme’s lies, wrote his own take in the NYT, and you should definitely read it. Back to Singal:

Fielder and director Lance Oppenheim (who I am furious at for being only 30 years old) linger on these moments, often heightening the weirdness with painfully long close-up shops, not to make sure Holmes has her say or that we’ve really heard her out, but to attempt to simulate, to the extent possible via film, the extent of falling under her sway.

Except it’s too late for that. She’s been convicted and is headed to jail, so now we’re dealing with a diminished version of her that has only a camera crew and Fielder to plead her case to. And she’s doing so not from glamorous digs but from a dusty beachside Airbnb.

But it’s the same thing: She’s a bullshit artist, and bullshit artists are going to bullshit. She will use whatever tactics are available to her, in a given situation, to attempt to cast a spell over whoever she is trying to bullshit. But she’s trying to bullshit a bullshit artist — and the difference is that Fielder is very open about being one.

The film is “about” a number of different things, all interesting — that’s what makes it great. And the more you watch it, the more layers you notice. But Fielder is almost always playing “Nathan Fielder,” at some remove from himself, when he’s on camera in supposedly documentary settings. And for the first half of YCSE, he plays the part of someone who just might be falling under Holmes’ sway.

Okay, that’s it: I MUST watch this movie. It’s playing locally and I’ll have to find the time to see it. If you have any interest in Holmes, or at least interest in movies and an acquaintance with her story, you should, too.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej remember old times (Hili is still ill and is being force fed and given IV fluids; I am quite worried).

Hili: There was once a big table in this room.
Andrzej: Our life was different back then.

In Polish:

Hili: Kiedyś w tym pokoju był wielki stół.
Ja: Kiedyś nasze życie było inne.

*******************

From Give Me a Sign:

From Now That’s Wild:

From Jesus of the Day:

Masih highlights the women, injured or shot by the Iranian regime or by Islamic patriarchy, on stage in Lodz. The group will also testify in Germany in about a week. There is translation of anything in Farsi:

What would you do if someone threw acid in your face or shot you in the eyes with a shotgun?

Look at these beautiful women. Yes, bravery is beautiful. Bullets took their eyesight. Acid scarred their faces. But they are still fighting not just for themselves but to protect all women from Islamists terrorists.

On November 9, these women will enter the German Parliament. They will stand alongside courageous women who have survived prison, torture, persecution, and authoritarian regimes.

This gathering is deeply personal to me.

In 2025, during Berlin Freedom Week, I met Julia Klöckner, President of the German Bundestag. Our conversation inspired a vision that is now taking shape.

Evelyn Zupke, Germany’s Federal Commissioner for the Victims of the SED Dictatorship, is hosting our Women Summit.

The participation of Julia Klöckner the President of Bundestag and Yaël Braun-Pivet, President of the French National Assembly, brings an important international parliamentary dimension to our shared commitment to women’s freedom.

Women from Iran, Afghanistan, and other authoritarian countries who have been denied education, erased from public life, imprisoned, flogged, sexually assaulted, and sentenced to death for demanding freedom and security.
#LetUsTalk

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) October 31, 2026

*From Luana. This tweet highlights an interesting post on population differences in gene frequencies, something that “blank slaters” argue is insignificant. As Luana and I argued in our Skeptical Inquirer paper, there are differences between human populations that are significant both historically and in terms of traits. Sadly, the article is largely paywalled. The tweet is part of a ten-tweet thread:

10/10

SNPs and structural variants describe DNA changes. Polygenic describes how many genetic influences contribute to a trait.

Specific variants bring their mechanisms—and uncertainties—into focus.

Population differences beyond polygenic scores:
https://t.co/X0EBW4zS4i

— Davide Piffer (@DavidePiffer) October 31, 2026

This tweet from the Number Ten cat reminds me of the cat Mehitabel’s song, “There’s a dance in the old dame yet.”

Life in the old cat yet!

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) October 29, 2026

From Malcolm, one delightful minute of cats and their boxes:

Cats obsession with box 😂😂😂

#Meme https://t.co/e5oJRkHCaW

— Merajul Hasan (@jusslaugh1) October 20, 2026

Two from my feed. First, Halloween humor:

This is hilarious…Happy Halloween 🎃 https://t.co/Rz08OGIbh3

— Meidas_Charise Lee (@charise_lee) October 31, 2026

Miss Dugan recounts some responses she got while teaching The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald would be baffled:

Miss Dugan.. The Great Gatsby 😂 https://t.co/mSrTYQXJag

— Brian4new (@GustBrian) October 30, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This German Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was 13 years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-11-01T12:16:10.183Z

And one from Doctor Cobb, displaying vocalizations of Mephitis mephitis:

So, if anyone wants to know what my yard sounds like at night…it's this. My yard skunk has A LOT to say, starting around 10 p.m.I did not *know* it was the skunk until tonight when I got a look with the headlamp from safe distanceIt is NOT a soothing sound 😂www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoP_…

— Cri 🕊🐝🐜📝🎭⚽😷 (@crawlieswithcri.bsky.social) 2026-10-08T06:13:25.343Z

**************

Music: Few pop and rock music lovers appear to know abut the 1964 T.A.M.I Show and its video, but it’s important in music history. It was the first widely publicized appearance of many stars and groups, especially James Brown, whose performance in the full video below (he appears at 1:17:37) is fantastic, showing why he’s been called “The hardest-working man in show business.” I love the bit in which they try to drag him offstage in a cape but he keeps coming back. From Wikipedia: