Week of Hallow Eeek
ICE to Worsen,
Not a King but Prosecutes Enemies,
Not a King but Invades Cities,
Not a King but Kills Suspects in Boats
Definitely Not a King

My favorite, even though others are as great:

Beginning with this:
The holiday that we know as Halloween began as a Druid religious festival in ancient Britain. Back then, groups of Druid youths would go door-to-door demanding treats, and if you refused to give them one, they would burn down your house. If, however, you gave them a treat, they would still burn down your house. That’s how religious they were. Today we know them as British soccer fans.

Ending with this, about toilet papering houses:
And now let’s hear from you paying subscribers.

Beginning with this:
“Bang Bang You’re dead liberal!” – a Trump Gestapho member pointed a gun at Chris Gentry’s head while a group of peaceful protesters were subjected to unlawful violence from Greg Bovino and others in Little Village on October 23, 2025.

And including this encounter with a random American citizen:

Key conclusion:
Is Donald Trump a King? No, But Not for Lack of Trying

Nan disagrees, but only at the margins.
She sees the same long-term goal, but embraced by manipulators surrounding Trump.

Key plotters:
Trump is simply being used to turn the wheel in that direction. For these people he is nothing more than a figurehead … someone that the press can zoom in on as the initiator of multiple and various actions.
 
But it is the above-named group that is stealthily –and with unrelenting determination– working with Trump’s sizeable ego to destroy the United States and all that it has stood for over hundreds of years.

Plausible, I suppose. Trump is a phenomenally lazy at …well… thinking. Motivated more by ego and revenge than ideology. In the end, a difference that makes no difference.

News Corpse speculates that Trump was not told about the rest of Schumer’s address to the Senate.

The rest of the story:
Therefore, Trump likely didn’t hear that Schumer also said that “As we enter the 29th day of the government shutdown, where is Donald Trump? He is gallivanting in Asia, dancing in Malaysia.” Schumer also noted that Trump would “strike a trade deal that will sell out the American people,” and “give away vital national security tools, in exchange for little more than a photo op,” and that “This is Trump’s M.O. in foreign policy. He creates a giant mess. Then he wants everyone to praise him when he tries to clean it up and ignore the damage that he has inflicted.”

So…
Were previous criticisms of Schumer from folks like me a bit premature?

On Schumer:
Many Democrats have been critical of Schumer lately, believing that he has not been aggressive enough at countering the threat that Trump represents to democracy and America. Whatever the validity of that criticism, Schumer gave a bold and forthright condemnation of Trump on this particular occasion.

On Trump:
And Trump showed that, once again, he is a tender and fragile snowflake who can’t handle honest appraisals of his failures and flaws.
 
Consequently, Trump responds by lashing out with preposterously vile and childish insults and accusations of treason. But Trump’s inbred hatred has driven him to cast aspersions of treason on many of his political foes, including: President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, James Comey, Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney, and pretty much all of the media.
 
Trump also wanted all of the members of the House January 6th committee tried for treason.

He lists a few items, along with this:

Key corrective:
He did not take an IQ test. He took a basic cognitive exam, which is very, very easy to pass, unless you have serious cognitive deficits.

Key lament:
He’s making these claims while on a diplomatic trip to Japan, embarrassing us all.

My suggestion:
Perhaps they could add a beginning question to the cognitive test that would make the rest irrelevant:

Are you convinced you are taking an IQ test?

Professor Mike provides a transcript with this summary:
That wasn’t a slip. It wasn’t improv. It was a verbal car crash. He opens with a stammering attempt to compare himself to George Washington, immediately blanks out mid-thought, then announces that Washington is “above” him, so he’s “less than great.” He recalls a TV segment ranking him behind Washington and Lincoln — and says he got “extremely angry.” He then spirals into empty gestures, a shout-out to someone named “Mister Senator,” and caps it all off with this: “they didn’t put out eight wars, nine coming.”

Key danger:
All the while, in that fog, the real operators are thriving.

[Note] In a sudden reversal, Trump now says reports that he will name the new monster ballroom after himself come from fake news.
Ummmm… in the form of interviews with his staff.

One favorite, for which I discovered a source:

Professor’s comment:
Oh. So obviously, you’re all squeaky clean.

Tommy Christopher brings us her brother, Sky Roberts, demanding Trump put on his big boy pants and bring justice onto the perpetrators

Key demand:
These people are monsters, and we need to bring them to justice. And that’s what we’re doing here now.

Beginning at 1:04 (with some stumbling cleaned up):
Women are atrocious today. They are, they are immodest, they’re hoes, they’re dumb, like literally intellectually unintelligent.
 
They are shallow. They are deceitful. They are wicked. They are vile. They vote for trannies.
 
I’m not making it up. It is a 45, objectively 45 point difference between young men and young women today. That’s where we’re at. 45 point difference.
 
Women are radical progressives.

Last week, Darrell explained that leftists like me, by which he meant those to his left, are despicably anti‑American and that our little No Kings protests were an exercise in unfocused left-wing absurdity. Preemptively defending himself from prospective accusations of syncophantism (is too a word!), he lists 7 disagreements he maintains against Trump.

Apart from our friendship, Darrell and I do not hesitate in attacking each other’s views.

I am occasionally reminded of the late Republican Senator Everett Dirksen. One incident seems to apply as I consider this attack.

Senator Dirksen was delivering an especially harsh denunciation to an enthused audience. He stopped in mid-sentence and looked up from his written notes in puzzlement:
Do you know whom they’re talking about?
They’re talking about ME!.

This week, Dave Dubya examines in closer detail several of Darrell’s grievances against those of us on his left, and now stands guilty of committing painful vivisection on several of my friend’s points.

I wince in excruciating glee.

Key participants:
My god. It was stomach-churning bile expelled in texts by folks who work in the upper echelons of Republican politics…people who know all the players and the ins and outs of the Republican establishment. People who work as staffers to attorneys general, including Kansas’ own Kris Kobach, and legislators across the country.
 
People who should know better.

Key content:
There were at least a dozen “young” Republicans in the chat. The chat included the use of the N-word at least 12 times, and referred to Black folks as “monkeys” and “the watermelon people.”
 
The messages discussed “loving” Adolf Hitler and placing political opponents in gas chambers. The staffers talked positively about rape and used slurs to describe LGBTQ people and people with disabilities.

Key reaction:
And then, the unthinkable.
 
Vice President JD Vance was asked about the chat. It is something reporters should ask about. Many of the people who made those statements work with and for elected Republicans. One is a state senator. Vance dismissed the story: “I really don’t want to us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke, telling a very offensive, stupid joke is cause to ruin their lives,”
 
The vice president went on to say that critics are “pearl-clutching” over statements made by kids.
 
Remember that word: “kids.”

Republicans will continue to use hunger as leverage to get Democrats to stop demanding a halt to crazy increases in Medicare and Medicaid monthly premiums.

And so the Republican version of the Hunger Games goes on.

The same analysis is now available in audio format, as Richardson narrates in podcast.

A lot of times it ain’t purdy. Gerrymandering has been going on ever since Elbridge Gerry was Governor of mandered Massachusetts in 1810.

But the US Constitution says seats in Congress have to be assigned according to population, and the population is counted with each census, and the census is done every ten years.
So there you have it. Ten years — one census — one redistricting.

Trump started a sort of redistricting escalation by ordering Texas Republicans not to wait for the ten years to be up. So they’ll gerry the mander as Trump instructs to get him another 5 seats in Congress next election.

Hackwhackers has a few preliminary polling numbers showing that redistrict-gerry-aw-hell-you-know might backfire on Trump.

Seems a lot of Hispanic voters kind of liked Trump tough talk enough to consider MAGAtude. They turned out to be an important part of the base. But now ICE crackdown on brown skin and Spanish talk seems a bit unfair to …well… pretty much everyone.

So some of those newly safe Republican seats might just be a little hazardous to the manipulator votes.

Key tremble:
If you listen carefully, the message they’re sending is unmistakable.
 
With every panicked, quivering, desperate move, they are speaking with absolute clarity.
 
They are confirming how frightened they are right now.

Key insulation:
In their own skewed, Senate-brained view of the world, taking these kinds of votes helps to bolster democracy.

Either of two leading contenders for the Republican nomination could pose a danger to future free and fair elections. Both are Trump‑loyal conspiracy believers who view opposing ballots with suspicion.

Neither Republican extremist stands much of a chance in the general election, unless Democrats blow it by nominating someone completely unelectable.

James believes Democrats stand a good chance of doing exactly that.

A candidate with a history:
Barnes entered the 2022 Senate race with a lot of personal baggage, from unpaid parking tickets to unpaid property taxes to misleading the public about graduating from college to a weird controversy over a lingerie party.
 
But his political stances didn’t help him, either. Barnes supported eliminating cash bail in most cases, regardless of the severity of the crime. He also appeared in a t-shirt that called for the elimination of the Immigration & Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) and also said money could be taken from “bloated police budgets” at the height of the Defund the Police movement. He backed away from both positions unsuccessfully.

Did I mention that James seems on the verge of despair?

The New York Times, of course, hosts a well‑thought‑out opinion piece by David Brooks, examining how today’s ideologues on the right have adopted the tactics of yesterday’s early leftists, those early Marxists of 1848.

Brooks reasoning is …well… reasonable – right up until he unwittingly validates Buckley’s observation, conflating the position of pretty much everyone on the left today with that of Karl Marx and Vlad Lenin so many generations ago.

driftglass picks up the narrative as Brooks can’t help but engage in a little both‑sides laziness, including this bit of hippy punching:

Both sides are equally guilty because…
We now have a group of revolutionary rightists who have no constructive ideology confronting a group of progressives who let their movement be captured by a revolutionary left‑wing ideology that failed.

An encouraging comment never hurts.

Author John Scalzi tests Elon’s version by asking basic facts about himself. Turns out the clone just scrapes the net with the assumption that whatever is posted most must be true. That assumption turns out to be unreliable.