Finally Friday Reads: My Favorite Time of the Year!

Jared Kushner was allegedly paid $50 million by a foreign government to get former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson fired.

In the new book Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East, author Matthew Cole reported that the United Arab Emirates paid Kushner millions to oust Tillerson, who had allegedly become extremely cozy with the Qataris.

Kushner’s lawyer has denied that he had an account in Cyprus, and denied that he asked for or received any money from MBZ.

Tillerson’s manufactured ousting caused a panic in Qatar—but the problem also presented its own solution: It could simply pay off Kushner too. In late March or early April of 2018, the Qatari government quietly informed Kushner they intended to help him secure his property at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. After that, Trump appeared to soften his hardline stance against the Qataris, but it’s unclear what, if anything, he knew about the foreign government’s deal with Kushner.

The entire US Oil Industry gets the title of Ugly. Well, maybe they can share it with J.D. Vance. The one thing you can say about Orange Caligula and his cronies is that they’ve made our economy very ugly.  This is from the New York Times. “U.S. Oil Industry Earned Over $130 Billion in Profit During Iran War. That was almost three times as much as what businesses producing and refining oil in the United States made in the same period in 2025.”  So, now you know exactly who you’re making rich when you fill that tank! Rebecca F. Elliott and Keith Collins share the lede.

The war with Iran has been very lucrative for American oil companies, which have earned more than $130 billion in profit as people pay much higher prices for gasoline, diesel and other fuel.

That is a conservative estimate based on the performance of more than 50 large U.S. oil and gas companies, most of them producers or refiners, in the six months from April through September. It does not reflect profits earned in March, the first month of the war, or in October.

These companies earned less than $47 billion collectively during the same period in 2025, a challenging stretch when oil was cheaper and companies were navigating the early fallout from President Trump’s trade war.

The blockbuster oil profits this year highlight longstanding concerns about who gains, and who pays the price, when wars interrupt the flow of energy. As of this week, Americans had spent an extra $147 billion on gasoline and diesel since the United States and Israel began striking Iran on Feb. 28, according to an analysis by Brown University’s Climate Solutions Lab. That amounts to more than $1,100 per household.

Some companies are benefiting more than others. U.S. refiners have fared especially well because fuel-making plants have been badly damaged by hostilities in the Middle East and Russia. With fewer refineries available to meet global demand, profit margins soared for those that remain online.

And the other forementioned ugly, JD Vance, can’t seem to get his stories right. This is from MSNOW’s Steve Benen writing at Maddow Blog. “Pressed on affordability at town hall, JD Vance says all the wrong things. A young conservative voter asked the vice president a sincere question about one of the most pressing issues facing her generation. It did not go well.”

With time running out in the election cycle, JD Vance participated in a primetime town hall on Fox News, which was largely unremarkable except for one unexpected exchange.

A local college student told the vice president that the right routinely tells young people to get married and have children but that conservatives have failed to acknowledge how financially difficult this is for many. She asked, “So my question is, how does the right, and yourself, expect us to start families young when the average price of a home in America now costs more than $415,000, which just feels out of reach for us?”

It’s worth emphasizing for context that the question came from a young woman who identified herself as the vice president of her university’s Turning Point USA chapter. That is, Vance wasn’t confronting a political opponent; the question came from someone inclined to agree with the Trump White House.

Almost immediately, the Ohio Republican demonstrated the kind of political instincts that have made him famous.

Q: How do you expect us to start families young when the average price of a home feels out of reach?JD VANCE: I want to point out that I've only gotten one question about Jon Husted's ass

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-30T01:28:44.964Z

“I want to point out that I think that I have been asked four or maybe five questions by my count,” the vice president began. “I have only been asked one question about [Republican Sen.] Jon Husted’s ass — and it was by [Fox News’] Jesse Watters.”

So, during a nationally televised event, a young conservative voter asked a sincere question about one of the most pressing issues facing her generation, and Vance’s first thought was to make a joke about a senator’s backside.

It’s impossible to say just how many young voters watching at home were amused by this clumsy attempt at humor, but it seems likely the number was small.

It only got worse when Vance actually tried to answer the question with some substance.

Let’s get to the Good now. This report on the upcoming election is by Ford McCracken writing for The Hill. “Cook Political Report shifts 12 more House races toward Democrats.” If all this happens, I’m going to party like its 1999 all over again.

The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election handicapper, on Friday shifted a dozen more House races toward Democrats in the final stretch of the midterm cycle.

The handicapper has shifted dozens of House races toward Democrats in recent weeks, and with the latest moves, it now forecasts more than 218 seats to “lean Democrat” or better, projecting a Democratic House majority of between 227 and 240 seats.

Notable shifts include Colorado’s 5th Congressional District, represented by Rep. Jeff Crank (R), which moved from “lean Republican” to a “toss-up.” Pennsylvania’s 1st Congressional District, represented by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R), and the open South Carolina 1st Congressional District made the same change.

Fitzpatrick serves in one of the only districts carried by former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.

In her analysis, Cook House editor Erin Covey wrote the competitive Senate race in South Carolina between Democrat Annie Andrews and Sen. Darline Graham (R) may pull Democrats over the finish line — even in a district that Trump won by double digits two years ago.

“Currently, GOP outside groups are outspending Democrats by more than $3 million,” Covey said. “But some Republicans are still concerned it won’t be enough, particularly if Democratic Senate nominee Annie Andrews — a Charleston resident — carries this district by at least a couple of points.”

Another Pennsylvania district, the 8th Congressional District, was shifted from “toss-up” to “lean Democrat.” Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R) has trailed his Democratic opponent in recent polling, and Covey wrote that attacks over the lawmaker’s stock trades appear to be having an impact.

Ohio’s 9th District, represented by Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D), moved in the same direction. Republicans have twice redrawn Kaptur’s district in the GOP’s favor, but she has fended off challengers. The election handicapper forecasts she will once again come out on top next week.

 Just go indulge in all the great news.  It will make you feel a lot better than plastic pumpkin full of Chocolate goodies tomorrow night.  But, one more ugly from the bad man in the People’s house. This if from Brian Beutler writing at Office Message.  Is this way all US Troops are learning how to do mass gravesites again? Is it why they’re storing up on water and food supplies? Add those other two headlines to your reads, if you want a bit more spookiness in your life this week. Beutler’s headline is this. “Inside Donald Trump’s Secret Plan To Restart The Iran War After The Election. Operatives aligned with the president spent months devising a plan to resume the war—only after ballots had been cast. Republicans have worked studiously to avoid tipping off voters.”

But more than anything, Mr. Trump wanted the war to be over, gas prices to be down, bygones to be bygones—all in time for November, when voters would render an interim verdict on his second term. The war had crushed his approval ratings, his party’s prospects were dimming, and he feared the uncertainty of facing off against Democratic majorities in 2027. The one thing he could not do, though, was admit defeat: leave the Iranian regime intact; withdraw from the Persian Gulf without reinstating a nuclear arms control agreement like the one he’d abrogated six years earlier.

And so he was relieved when his advisers came to him with a backup plan: He could draw hostilities down to a simmer. Gas prices would remain elevated, the U.S. and Iran would continue to trade strikes, but the U.S. military could ensure passage of enough oil through Middle East ports to stabilize them. Trump could reduce the salience of the war enough to contest the election on other issues. Then, with the election behind him, he could make his tormentors pay.

The plan worked. In the closing days of the election, Republicans and Democrats sparred over fabricated allegations of voter fraud, rights for transgender Americans, Cheesecake Factory decor, and the musculature of Senator John Husted’s buttocks. Not a single Republican incumbent or challenger had to take a position on Trump’s opaque plan to bring the war back to full boil after voters cast their ballots.

“Some of us have been briefed on the war plan,” says one concerned senator. “And while I cannot disclose any details, I can say this: the plan is insane. It will not achieve objectives and will set off a new cycle of escalation.”

Past presidents of both parties have allowed domestic political considerations to influence the timing of American military operations. Mr. Trump’s plan harks back to early 2007, when President George W. Bush “surged” U.S. operations in Iraq after badly losing a midterm election. But that war began with broad public support, and Mr. Bush had received authorization from Congress to wage it. Mr. Trump’s decision to subordinate military strategy to electoral considerations, and to escalate an unauthorized and unpopular war—a plan which has not been reported before—lacks clear precedent in our history.

“American voters need to know,” said one military service member who requested anonymity. “There’s been a lot of speculation, but voters should get the full picture when making their decisions.”

Boo!

Reality is scarier than even Dystopian Fiction!

But Star Trek fiction is greater than reality.

One more note from me on the side. I really want to say good bye to Sir Pat and all the good work he has done protecting women and children from violent men.  Here’s his obit from the New York Times.  The entire Star Trek franchise gave me hope for the future when I was one of those outlier children stuck in a bleak place to live.  He also did not hide his various geriatric diseases from the public as he narrowed the time to his exiting the earthly existence.

Patrick Stewart, who overcame a bleak childhood in England’s coal-mining country to find acclaim as a Shakespearean actor before making an unlikely career pivot in middle age that would bring him his greatest fame, playing a noble starship captain on the TV series “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 86.

The death, from Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia, was announced on social media.

With a commanding baritone voice — he had shed his Yorkshire dialect as an acting student — Mr. Stewart was by his late 40s an eloquent, statesmanlike presence on the British stage. But to many American television viewers, Mr. Stewart was a new face when he made his debut in 1987 as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard in “The Next Generation,” the first live-action spinoff of the original “Star Trek” series of the late 1960s.

I truly loved and admired this man. So many of the roles he chose would be anathema to lesser person.  He spoke truths from Shakespeare, Gene Roddenberry, the age of Arthur and the age of Claudius. He was an amazing role model in roles and as himself.

He was a simply good at everything he did.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?