Where we are now

 First the good news:  Paul Pelosi went home today.  Of course he will continue to receive medical care but did not have to go to a rehab facility.  This is remarkable for anyone after a skull fracture, but especially for a man of 82. 

Now the mildly interesting news:  Oprah Winfrey told a virtual get-out-the-vote event, "If I lived in Pennsylvania I would already have cast my vote for John Fetterman, for many reasons."  She was compared to Victor Frankenstein abandoning the monster he created, but better late than never.  She also expressed support for Beto O'Rourke, Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams.  Maybe she was just waiting for Mehmet Oz to come out with one more dumb thing and sure enough:  On Tuesday Dr. Snakeoil told Sean Hannity people had better vote for him so there would be at least one Republican senator "on the Atlantic coast" between Maine and North Carolina.  A number of people who passed fourth grade geography hastened to point out that Pennsylvania is not on the coast, and once again he was confusing it with his home state of New Jersey.  I'm still trying to work out why the actual location of senators is important.  Anyway, that happened.

Now I'm not an economist and I don't deal in the social media like the young folks, but it appears to me that Twitter is experiencing what they call a market adjustment.  That's when you lay off half the workforce, get delisted by the NYSE and watch your stock price plummet because advertisers suddenly find you as toxic as Kanye West.  Or to put it another way, "activist groups pressuring advertisers...they're trying to destroy free speech in America!"  Not to worry -- those free speech champions the Saudi royal family are pouring in the petrodollars.  Why wouldn't users pay $20 a month to be "verified"?  Stop!  Come back!

MSNBC are supposed to be the good guys, or at least the corporate version, so why did I see this chyron:  ECONOMY ADDS 261,000 JOBS IN OCTOBER unemployment rises to 3.7 percent.  Can there be no good news (outpaced the 205,000 predicted by Dow-Jones) without bad news?  At least an explanation for the seeming contradiction?  I know the market loves unemployment yet it gained 400 points today.  Maybe I should stop trying to understand capitalism.  

If you run your mouth as regularly as Trump, sooner or later you will say something true -- it's like those monkeys eventually typing Hamlet or whatever it is.   Last night he was in Iowa telling the farmers about how he cut estate taxes for the rich (what the Republicans invariably call "the death tax") when he blurted, "I always say if you don't like it, leave it to charity.  Some of us have horrible children."  The idea of Trump dropping so much as a quarter in a panhandler's MAGA cap is ludicrous, of course, but the rest seemed to come from some deep and secret place.   If you're a decent and humane person, you don't stop loving them.  ("I love you more than the whole world, pal.  You gotta get some help.")  If you're not, you mock them for cheap laughs from a bunch of Buckeye buttheads.

I used to live around the corner from the Cuban mission to the UN in New York.  The sidewalk was closed; pedestrians had to walk in the street.  An NYPD officer was stationed in a kiosk night and day.  This is not the mission.  This is a synagogue in (I think) Hoboken.  They received a threat credible enough to get the FBI involved.  They have announced that the man who issued the threat "no longer poses a danger."  Fine, now what about all the others?  The Christofascists who whinny about their religious freedom have nothing to say.

The pandemic is past its peak and the Trumpanzees have finally put on masks.  Here is one of the more courageous ones:

He's bravely throwing a Molotov cocktail at a Tulsa doughnut shop which was the scene of a drag queen art installation.  It's 2:30 am so everyone has gone home.  He left a note full of Biblical quotations and other messages of hate.  The fire damage was minimal.  The shop's GoFundMe requesting money for repairs has been oversubscribed fourfold.  Cry more, MAGAts.

Elsewhere in Tulsa investigators have discovered additional unmarked graves which may be related to the 1921 Race Massacre.  This is why it's important to crush CRT -- it makes white people feel bad about themselves and they take it out on donut shops.  What can you expect?

Ron DeSantis is leading Charlie Crist for governor but he's leaving nothing to chance.  He put out a truly eye-watering ad claiming that he's the "protector" his god created "on the eighth day" to save paradise.  I swear.  If this doesn't make the simple forget his taste in footwear, nothing will.  And they will deserve him.  (Sorry, I still think he looks like Tucker Carlson's special-needs brother.  All right, more special needs.)

Remember what I wrote about walking back hoaxes?  The Q stoner and the crop circle dudes?  Joe Rogan has admitted he made up the absurd story about schools providing kids with litter boxes which has become a centerpiece of the Bolduc campaign.  I don't expect that gumboil to admit he was taken in by it.  And I just remembered who Rogan is:  He used to be on News Radio back in the 1990s when he had hair.  I miss Phil Hartman.  I miss radio.