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This can happen when you give a guy a hard time:
- Author and blogger John Scalzi has thoughts on the election, Trump’s reaction, Republican reaction, NYC, and more.
- North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz watches Tuesday’s returns and says the thundering sound we’re hearing is the returning heartbeat of democracy.
Key pulse:
It’s good to be alive. - At The Moderate Voice, Kathy Gill sees Tuesdays elections as a night for women, people of color and Muslim Americans.
She has details ready. - Another view of the election, as libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara proclaims that A Criminal Wins in NYC
No, he’s not saying that Zohran Mamdani is a rapist who was convicted of 34 felonies. That’s another individual.
The logic seems to be that Mamdani is a Democratic Socialist, which is actually Marxism by another name. And writings in 1848 prove that Marxists want to steal everything from rich folks. Marxism has been shown by history to be bloody and destructive, and bloody destruction is illegal.
So the guy is a criminal.
Got all that?Key conclusion:
Given the destructive, bloody history of Marxism over the past 100+ years, to be a socialist today is an unforgivable sin. Ignorance is no excuse. There are no innocent socialists. - More coherently, our friend and frequent mentor Infidel753 is not joining in festivities over Tuesday’s election results:
So a man who (as I’ve shown with several links in the last few link round-ups) refuses to condemn jihadist slogans calling for the mass killing of Jews, accuses Israel of “genocide” over its almost inhumanly restrained response to the October 7 horror, has threatened to arrest Netanyahu if he ever comes to New York, and is now threatening to defund the New York campus of Israel’s Technion university — is being accepted and discussed as if he were simply a normal politician. We are still a long way from Germany of 1933, but this is definitely one more step along the road in that direction.
My own view is that a combination of Mamdani’s laser‑like focus on local issues (on which he turned out to be a very, very good campaigner), the astonishingly clumsy, over‑the‑top opposition, and Trump becoming Trumpier each day pretty much made Mamdani a hero to NYC voters by contrast.
- Right Wing Watch brings us Christian Nationalist leader Jason Rapert, who doesn’t much care for Tuesday’s ungodly election results:
- Tommy Christopher brings us Rachel Maddow, one day before this week’s election, reading in gattling gun style what turns out to be a series of omens which, in retrospect, gave more than a clue:
Polls showing Americans’ dislike of Trump, Trump issues, and pretty much everything Trump stands for all by astonishing margins.
- Brought to us by Ali Redford in Scotties Playtime, a video worth way more than the click it will cost, if only for its entertainment value, by Josh Johnson about everything leading up to the NYC election.
- For Jason Linkins, as well as most of New York, Alan’s terms are acceptable:
the promise of a new day
— Jason Linkins (@dceiver.bsky.social) November 4, 2025 at 7:11 PM
he died as he lived, making an ungainly and embarrassing spectacle of himself
— Jason Linkins (@dceiver.bsky.social) November 4, 2025 at 7:36 PM
- While PZ Myers enjoys multiple electoral repudiations of radical Republicanism, he gets a rightist email noting in headline form that NYC winner Zohran Mamdani By Channeling America’s Marxist Icon.
I never knew the US ever had a Marxist icon, and apparently neither did Professor Myers.
Turns out the Daily Wire regards early 1900s labor leader, socialist, pacifist, and war resister Eugene V. Debs as a follower of Marx. And Mamdani did indeed quote Debs on election night.
PZ Myers published a short speech Debs made in court as he was sentenced for opposing World War I.
Although I’m not a socialist, it really is not a bad speech.
- Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has more polling, this time on wealth and power. Turns out that, by stratopheric margins, pretty much everyone agrees wealth inequality in the US is too huge, the wealthy have too much power, and government should do something about it, like raise taxes on billionaires.
- Ruler of Rant Max’s Dad takes on Election Day and the surrounding state of the ALLCAPS, including Mamdani, Cheney, 60 Minutes, and boat bombing
Beginning with the Great Gatsby Ball:
As Americans were losing their food stamps on Saturday, Friday night the Marie Antionette in Chief held a Great Gatsby Party at Mar A Dumpo proving that Trump has never read a book in his life.To me, it’s almost as if Trump has a sort of lose‑wish inner guide. A sudden self‑aware‑self‑loathing?
I have an idea! Let’s take food from hungry kids, triple monthly insurance premiums, destroy the White House – then throw a huge, very huge, party for the ultra‑rich a couple days before an election!
Yeah! That should do it! - Hackwhackers reviews Trump’s triumphant Great Gadsby themed celebration of his new gold and marble bathroom, East Wing rip up, and $3 Million dollar golf trip, while grabbing food from kids ans families while raising monthly health insurance charges for most Americans. HackWhackers then goes to the history of France to find a comparison.
- News Corpse reports as White House Press Secretary is horrified at what Trump had to look at while sending his late night social media posts, but then swoons as Trump shows off photos of his extravagant new Lincoln bedroom toilet in the southeast corner of what is left of the White House.
- From The Borowitz Report, Trump notices Tuesday’s election returns, says I can see where this is going, and flees to Argentina.
- Amanda Nelson suggests that Tuesday’s results suggest that voters suggest that the Trump strategy of Hunger Game Shutdown didn’t work with voters. Turns out it isn’t working in court so far.
Could be cruelty isn’t as popular as MAGAFolk and their leader imagine:
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A reporter repeats a common question in mainstream press:
If we come to November first, and these contingency funds haven’t been released, if nothing has been accomplished in restoring SNAP benefits, will you call on your Democratic colleagues to reopen the government and deal with these shutdown crises immediately?In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson reports as Representative Joe Neguse begins his answer by correcting the premise.
Key restate:
The basis for your question is, and maybe the better way to state it would be, if the Trump administration continues to violate the law, if the Trump administration unlawfully refuses to release funds so that families in Colorado don’t go hungry, if the Trump administration refuses to follow the law, as they have for the better course of the last nine months, violating statute after statute, if in that scenario these actions unfold, then how will Democrats respond?Key legal fact:
Also today, two federal judges found that the Trump administration’s suspension of SNAP benefits during the ongoing government shutdown is indeed likely illegal. The administration claims that it cannot use a reserve fund established by Congress for emergencies to distribute benefits scheduled to be cut off on November 1. That claim has drawn lawsuits to try to get food into the hands of the 42 million Americans—one out of eight U.S. residents—who use SNAP, receiving an average of $186 a month.The same analysis is now available in audio format, as Richardson narrates in podcast.
My thought:
2/2
Two court decisions say that's illegal.But it does set up a sort of Sophie's Choice for Dems:
"Accept insane monthly increases in health insurance for ordinary Americans, or we'll starve lots of kids."
Better for the country if the press accurately reported it that way.
— Burr Deming – @BurrLand01@mastodon.world (@BurrLand01) November 2, 2025
- In Rural Missouri, Jess Piper is angry, as are many of us here, that the Republican governor and legislature can find money to counteract a statewide referendum in which we voters turned down gerrymanders, but can’t find a penny for food for hungry children during the federal Republican shutdown.
- Legal expert Imani Gandy suggests a terrible truth about poverty in the US. Appeals to human decency regarding hungry children have been answered with simple race baiting.
Her suggestion is that anti-hunger campaigns find their center in the demographic fact that most victims of poverty in America are White, with the highest rate occurring among kids.
Advocates, she says, need to face a sad fact and adopt a sad strategy: become more race conscious.
Sad fact:
That’s the empathy gap at work. In this country, there’s a sort of invisible algorithm that determines whose pain counts as human and deserving of sympathy.Sad response:
So if that’s what it takes to make America care about starving kids, then fine. Let white families be the face of this hunger crisis. Maybe when millions see starving white kids on their phones, they’ll realize that hunger is a policy choice, not an inevitability. - driftglass sees a bit of slight‑of‑hand at the Fox Network.
They report an AI generated fake video smearing all them thar corrupt food recipients as if it’s the real thing.
(Anybody can be fooled, right?)Then they get called on it. Their big exposé is a fake.
So now they have to admit their mistake and move on, right?
Well…
…no, actually…Instead they change the headline and the article to how, somehow, so many folks got fooled by a fake AI video.
So many, in fact, it went viral.How could such a thing happen?!!
Oh and mistake? Here? By us? Whatever do you mean?
- Juliet at Decoding Fox News leaves the beat for a moment to publish the full transcript of Trump 60 Minutes interview with the with the parts that were cut out included and highlighted.
A separate, much shorter, summary is organized by topic.
Key reveal:
In some cases it was obvious that producers just wanted to shorten Trump’s long-winded rants due to time constraints. In other instances CBS removed references to their own network.
There were also a few instances of ‘sane washing’ as Trump’s words were shortened and clipped to make his answers more coherent. The network also cut several times Trump made false claims about the 2020 presidential election. - Yeah, we all saw how Trump was listening to the birds in his head as everyone else struggled behind him to help the guy who, it turned out, had just fainted in the Oval.
Nan’s Notebook shows how it was even a little worse, with what Trump was like during the speech on weight‑loss drugs before the interrupting collapse.
- Reports come in of Trump not remembering that he pardoned a major financial contributor. Now we have Republicans going to ridiculous lengths to not know anything about the multiple news reports. This reaction is sadly typical:
COLLINS: Should the president know who he's pardoning?
MARKWAYNE MULLIN: I don't know anything about this one. That's the first time I've seen that.
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) November 3, 2025 at 9:36 PM
I don't know anything, anything at all, about whether Trump knows anything, anything at all, about the people he's pardoning.
I haven't seen what everyone else has seen about what he said about what he hasn't seen about whatever a President is supposed to know.
— burrland01.bsky.social (@burrland01.bsky.social) November 4, 2025 at 8:04 AM
- In The Beaverton Donald Trump pardons the Hamburglar.
- So Trump gets late-night-angry again:
I pretty much detest bullies which, I suppose, makes me illegal as well.
Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit devotes two sentences, and that’s all it takes, to destroying the main thrust of Trump fury.
- Julian Sanchez puts another Trump threat, this as election returns come in, into appropriate context:
As always, it's appalling at the same time it's so cheap, tawdry, and embarrassing. What a pathetic, shabby little gangster.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) November 5, 2025 at 6:26 PM
- Dave Columbo has a legitimate criticism for a president who cannot be legitimately (or legally) criticized:
- Seems the Trump administration’s clumsy file hiding exercises are not confined to the Trump/Epstein files. There are also the preposterous prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James.
Trump’s Justice Department partly complies with two court orders by two presiding judges to provide all Grand Jury documents, including those hidden from Grand Juries.
Journalist Marcy Wheeler at EmptyWheel examines documents, and the dates and correspondence around those documents that are still missing, and suggests that each new bit of information seems to be heading down the same Yellow Brick Road:
Why the continuing saga of missing evidence is so interesting:
Because they get closer to implicating Pam Bondi in misleading the court. - tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has a rundown of why the sandwich guy (oh come on – you know who I mean) was found not guilty of Felonious Food Fighting.
- At The Onion, an ICE agent panics as he suddenly realizes there are more children on the playground than he has flash bangs
- CalicoJack in The Psy of Life notes that deaths caused by Trump in his two terms are accelerating. He notes five deadly sources as the body count rises.
- I confess to not knowing too much about conflicts in the multi-ethnic country of Nigeria. I remember the government joining a few other African states to fight insurgent terrorist groups some of which are affiliated with al Qaeda. They are anti-Christian, attacking churches and those who attend. They reserve their greatest hatred for Shiite Muslims and Sunnis who insufficiently hate Shiites, or don’t hate them at all. So Mosques and those who attend them are attacked as well.
The President of Nigeria refers to the terrorist groups as snakes that must be smashed and welcomes international assistance.
Grung_e_Gene, at Disaffected and it Feels So Good, educates us on the non-education of Trump and his group, who watch a few accounts on television of the attacks on Christians and prepare to go to war against Nigeria.
Grung_e_Gene notes the pattern as the intellectually lazy (why bother checking anything?) Trump approach in South America ( that of lashing out at pretty much everyone his TV points at) gets extended to other continents.
- Brian Beutler asks if Democrats can please (pretty please, with a cherry on top) stop figuring out whom to exclude and direct a bit of attention to Republican divisions?
Republicans are, after all, currently in a hostile battle between full out Nazis and moderates (yeah, “moderates”) who think Nazi-adjacent is rightward enough.
If (knock on wood) Dems sweep Tuesday’s elections handily, can we ease discourse away from its obsession over whether Dems are too left wing to win, and take greater notice of the fact that Republicans are in a civil war over whether to be Nazis or merely lesser fascists?
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler.bsky.social) November 3, 2025 at 10:11 AM
A corrupt press is only partly to blame for the current focus.
The discourse comes out so topsy turvy because of the corrupted information environment. But some of this is self inflicted. Republicans work very hard to fan internal Dem divisions. Dems and libs don’t do nearly as much to egg on things like the fight over Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes.
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler.bsky.social) November 3, 2025 at 10:19 AM
[Note] Brian has more insights on this at least partially behind a paywall.
However, he has generously published large sections on BlueSky, here and here. - M. Bouffant at Web of Evil has about 45 links to different angles of coverage as Republicans go to war with each other over how close they want to get to this:
- We have gone a long destructive way in a short destructive time.
Dave Dubya has a whole lot of things Democrats can do and what former Trumpers can do to turn things around.
- In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce has a sweet‑as‑can‑be daughter with Down Syndrome. With her as a wonderful example, he objects to the classic capitalist argument that only economic contributors have human value.
I write in with a minor quibble:
Thank you for this, Bruce.
I believe most mainstream religions, as well as most secular individuals, share your embrace of the intrinsic value of every individual.
I think you are correct that ascribing value only by productivity is a classic capitalist value. It is also a classic communist value, one unnoticed even by economic scholars.
I saved part of my online debate a few years ago with a conservative friend. He made the common mistake of summarizing Communism as:
“…from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
In fact, even the earliest authors of Communist ideology, Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx, explicitly rejected what they saw as bleeding heart Christianity.
In ascribing this “according to his need” theology to the faith I embrace, they were probably correct: In the Acts of the Apostles, early Christian communities were indeed organized as communes. Paul’s instruction in Thessalonians 3:10 that those refusing to work should not eat was a reaction to deliberate idleness – exploiting and directing the work of others (“Hey! You missed a spot”).
Marx made a point of challenging what he saw as the Christian formulation to a different value: “to each according to his contribution.” His ideology defined human worth as dependent on productivity.
So, my traditional tight fisted conservative friends do have something in common with their harsh Communist brethren. - @whiskeywhistle98 goes serious, carrying what, for many of us, will be the saddest message.
Losing a parent can make it seem as if the nature of life, of the universe itself, has been altered to close around a suddenly missing piece.
- SilverAppleQueen has three watchful cats making sure all is well outside the homestead.
- The Strategic Studies Book Club goes back a century and a half to Ardant du Picq, who goes back another couple of millennia to Carthaginian general Hannibal who figured out the importance of morale in battle.
- Dave Barry celebrates the 55th anniversary of, in his words:
what I think we can all agree, as a nation, is the most wonderful thing that ever happened in the history of the world, or at least of Lane County, Oregon.
I refer, of course, to the exploding whale.He is talking about a very large dead whale that washed up on shore in Oregon, blocking a major highway, and the plan by authorities to blow it up: a plan which went wonderfully awry.
- The great Sarah Cooper explains what it is like to grow up Jamaican when others don’t believe you’re Jamaican.
Now we go for some W4 – WorldWideWebWisdom:
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