Finally Friday Reads: A Whole Lot of Shit be Flying

Posted: December 12, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, #We are so Fucked | Tags: , , , , , , | 6 Comments

John Buss, @repeat 1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I think we can agree that the year 2025 has sucked so much that our ears are ringing. Most of today’s headlines are going to follow us into the New Year, too. I’m going to try to be gentle, but wow. At least we see karma catching up with some of them. I hate to spoil your meals for the day. Any survivors of sexual trauma and assault may want to take the day off to breathe deeply and prepare for the new information that will start pouring in. This CNN story is both welcome and as horrifying as we thought it would be. “New photos released from Epstein’s estate showing Trump, Bannon, Bill Clinton, and other high-profile people.” We’ve known these connections, but when will we find out how lurid they go?

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have released photos from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate Friday showing the many powerful figures in the late sex trafficker’s orbit, including President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Steve Bannon, Bill Gates, Richard Branson and others.

Many of the men have been previously linked to Epstein, though the photos may shed new light on the extent of those relationships.

Taken collectively, the 19 images – which the Democrats on the committee said came from Epstein’s estate – reinforce the financier was tied in the past to a wide variety of powerful and high-profile people whose ties to him are now under significant scrutiny.

One released image shows Trump with six women with leis whose faces were redacted by committee members, while another depicts what appears to be a bowl of novelty condoms with a caricature of Trump’s face with the text, “I’m HUUUUGE!” The condoms – shown in a bowl with a “Trump condom $4.50” sign – were produced by a novelty shop in New York City named Fishs Eddy. The item is described as a “political satire condom” in the National Museum of American History’s online collection.

Other released images depict Steve Bannon and Epstein taking a photograph in a mirror; Bill Clinton with Epstein, Maxwell and another couple; and tech billionaire Bill Gates with the former Prince Andrew. Former Harvard President Larry Summers and lawyer Alan Dershowitz also appeared in pictures from the estate.

None of the released images depict any sexual misconduct nor are believed to depict underage girls. It was not immediately clear when or where they were taken, or by whom.

Politico also has coverage of the basic picture dump. “Trump, Clinton, Gates included in Epstein photo trove. The House Oversight Committee Democrats released photos from the Epstein estate linking powerful men to the late convicted sex offender.”  You’ll notice in this coverage, the photos have black squares covering the faces of the victims. More on that in the next suggested read.

Photos from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein tie the convicted sex offender to President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, tech billionaire Bill Gates and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.

These men and others are featured in the roughly 95,000 photos the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has received from the Epstein estate as part of its ongoing investigation. House Democrats publicly released 19 photos Friday morning.

“It is time to end this White House cover-up and bring justice to the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful friends,” the Oversight Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, said in a statement. “These disturbing photos raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world. We will not rest until the American people get the truth. The Department of Justice must release all the files, NOW.”

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson in a statement accused Democrats of “selectively releasing cherry-picked photos with random redactions.”

“The Democrat hoax against President Trump has been repeatedly debunked and the Trump Administration has done more for Epstein’s victims than Democrats ever have by repeatedly calling for transparency, releasing thousands of pages of documents, and calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends,” she continued. “It’s time for the media to stop regurgitating Democrat talking points and start asking Democrats why they wanted to hang around Epstein after he was convicted.”

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

The dump came after “U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman reversed his earlier decision to keep the material under wraps.”   This is from the AP. “Justice Department can unseal records from Epstein’s 2019 sex trafficking case, judge says.”

Secret grand jury transcripts from Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 sex trafficking case can be made public, a judge ruled on Wednesday, joining two other judges in granting the Justice Department’s requests to unseal material from investigations into the late financier’s sexual abuse.

U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman reversed his earlier decision to keep the material under wraps, citing a new law that requires the government to open its files on Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell. The judge previously cautioned that the 70 or so pages of grand jury materials slated for release are hardly revelatory and “merely a hearsay snippet” of Epstein’s conduct.

On Tuesday, another Manhattan federal judge ordered the release of records from Maxwell’s 2021 sex trafficking case. Last week, a judge in Florida approved the unsealing of transcripts from an abandoned Epstein federal grand jury investigation in the 2000s.

The Justice Department asked the judges to lift secrecy orders in the cases after the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump last month, created a narrow exception to rules that normally keep grand jury proceedings confidential. The law requires that the Justice Department disclose Epstein-related material to the public by Dec. 19.

More things will undoubtedly be released. Finally, we see some action from those of us who strongly believe in the preservation of our historical and geographical moments, parks, and buildings. The Washington Post has the story on this good news. “National Trust sues to stop Trump’s ballroom construction. The organization, which is charged by Congress with historic preservation, has retained President Barack Obama’s former lawyer as it seeks to pause the project.”

Historic preservationists begged President Donald Trump in October not to rapidly demolish the White House’s East Wing annex for his ballroom project, urging him to wait for federal review panels and allow the public to weigh in. Now a group charged by Congress with helping to preserve historic buildings is asking a judge to block construction until those reviews occur, arguing that the ongoing project is illegal and unconstitutional.

The lawsuit from the nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation, which was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, represents the first major legal challenge to Trump’s planned 90,000-square-foot addition and is poised to test the limits of his power. The organization argues that the administration failed to undergo legally required reviews or receive congressional authorization for the project, which Trump has rushed to launch in hopes of completing it before his term ends in 2029.

“No president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoever — not President Trump, not President Joe Biden, and not anyone else,” the complaint says.

The administration in October rapidly demolished the East Wing to make way for the ballroom over the objections of the National Trust and other historic preservationists who urged the White House to pause its demolition, submit its plans to the National Capital Planning Commission and seek public comment.

“She’s like the Energizer Bunny.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Finally, we should see the release of the first true face of the assault on our nation’s immigrant population. This is also from the AP. “Federal judge issues order to prohibit immigration officials from detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia.”

To let you know exactly how jumpy we are down here about these things, I’ll share this short tale this morning from Temple’s morning walk. I was talking to my neighbor, who had just come back from walking Dame Maggie, his Yorkie. I was just saying goodbye to her when a white SUV stopped in front of the house with the cherries flashing. I gulped noticeably. Josh closed the door, and I walked down the street towards the river and crossed to the neutral ground behind the line forming. I spoke with the woman in the car for a bit. The first thought that hit both of us was ICE, but after a bit of worrying, we decided it was just someone who had to return to the construction at the base. We were all white, and thankfully, none of our neighborhood’s gardeners or construction workers were around.  All of us thought the same thing, though. This is not normal.  And yes, I am still actively in the resistance.

A federal judge blocked U.S. immigration authorities on Friday from re-detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia, saying she feared they might take him into custody again just hours after she had ordered his release from a detention center.

The order came as Abrego Garcia appeared at a scheduled appointment at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office roughly 14 hours after he walked out of immigration detention facility in Pennsylvania.

His lawyers had sent an urgent request to the judge, warning that ICE officials could immediately place him back into custody. Instead, Abrego Garcia exited the building after a short appointment, emerging to cheers from supporters who had gathered outside.

Speaking briefly to the crowd, he urged others to “stand tall” against what he described as injustices carried out by the government.

Abrego Garcia became a flashpoint of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown earlier this year when he was wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador. He was last taken into custody in August during a similar check-in.

Officials cannot re-detain him until the court conducts a hearing on the motion for the temporary restraining order, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland said. She wrote that Abrego Garcia is likely to succeed on the merits of any further request for relief from ICE detention.

ProPublica remains my go-to source for uncovering outrageous abnormalities within the Trump administration. Keeping eyes on our Department of Justice (sic) is a necessary and noble cause. “The Shakedown: Trump’s DOJ Pressured Lawyers to ‘Find’ Evidence That UCLA Had Illegally Tolerated Antisemitism.” I’m not sure why Anti-Semitism remains the only “woke” policy this regime recognizes.

On the morning of Thursday, July 31, James B. Milliken was enjoying a round of golf at the remote Sand Hills club in Western Nebraska when his cellphone buzzed.

Milliken was still days away from taking the helm of the sprawling University of California system, but his new office was on the line with disturbing news: The Trump administration was freezing hundreds of millions of dollars of research funding at the University of California, Los Angeles, UC’s biggest campus. Milliken quickly packed up and made the five-hour drive to Denver to catch the next flight to California.

He landed on the front lines of one of the most confounding cultural battles waged by the Trump administration.

The grant freeze was the latest salvo in the administration’s broader campaign against elite universities, which it has pilloried as purveyors of antisemitism and “woke” indoctrination. Over the next four months, the Justice Department targeted UCLA with its full playbook for bringing colleges to heel, threatening it with multiple discrimination lawsuits, demanding more than $1 billion in fines and pressing for a raft of changes on the conservative wish list for overhauling higher education.

In the months since Milliken’s aborted golf game, much has been written about the Trump administration’s efforts to impose its will on UCLA, part of the nation’s largest and most prestigious public university system. But an investigation by ProPublica and The Chronicle of Higher Education,based on previously unreported documents and interviews with dozens of people involved, revealsthe extent to which the government violated legal and procedural norms to gin up its case against the school. It also surfaced something equally alarming: How the UC system’s deep dependence on federal money inhibited its willingness to resist the legally shaky onslaught, a vulnerability the Trump administration’s tactics brought into sharp focus.

According to former DOJ insiders, agency political appointees dispatched teams of career civil rights lawyers to California in March, pressuring them to rapidly “find” evidence backing a preordained conclusion: that the UC system and four of its campuses had illegally tolerated antisemitism, which would violate federal civil rights statutes.

The career attorneys eventually recommended a lawsuit against only UCLA, which had been rocked by pro-Palestinian protests in the spring of 2024. But even that case was weak, the lawyers acknowledged in a previously unreported internal memo we obtained. It documented the extensive steps UCLA had already taken to address antisemitism, many resulting from a Biden administration investigation based on the same incidents. The memo also noted there was no evidence that the harassing behavior that peaked during the protests was still happening.

This is a long read, but well worth your time. I leave you with a personal story from Facebook of a Father of a Daughter. Matthew Berdyck is one of those smart asses like me. He and his daughter are currently under attack by MAGA bullies. I know what it’s like to have your daughter stalked by folks like these. My youngest was three at the time, the so-called church people, and “right-to-lifers”. It has only gotten worse over time. I can only tell you how much my heart goes out to him and his family.  I got nightly phone calls telling me exactly where my daughter had been all day and telling me what an after-birth “abortion” would look like if performed on her. The Sheriff’s department told me I shouldn’t take these people seriously when I called to complain. That was 1992.

92 days after Charlie Kirk’s death, I finally understand.

When I saw the news reports that Charlie Kirk was shot, I didn’t know who he was. At first, I spoke out against his shooting because I get threatened a lot myself—killing people over political speech is well beyond reasonable.

Over the last 92 days, as my profile got bigger and bigger, I became subject to ongoing and continuing rage from the right. Boy, do they just love making jokes but start crying that they’re victims when someone gives them back what they dish out. Babies.

They’re gonna “get them dems,” but if someone gets them back, oh lord, the temper tantrum is going to be epic and heard all the way to dwarf-planet Pluto.

Over the last 92 days, I’ve had over 25,000 vitriolic comments from MAGA—I’m gay, I’m a lady, I’m a beta-male cuck, I’m a pedo, and on and on. At minimum, they’re just name-calling, but at worst they’re targeting my 17-year-old daughter like predators.

Currently, on my wall, there are hundreds of sexual comments about her, repeated threats to kill her, threats to hurt my 70-year-old mom, even a threat to dox and hurt my 94-year-old grandfather.

I’ve got 55 harassing voicemails, I’ve been subscribed to gay porn sites, cuckold newsletters, received spam from life insurance companies (death threats)—like, wow, these people are throwing a massive, uncontrollable fit over comedy.

I realize today, after 92 solid days of relentless, aggressive harassment, that I’m not even remotely shocked that someone offed Kirk. In fact, I’m actually surprised someone didn’t do it sooner.

These MAGA are rabid animals. Kirk was their demigod, Agent Orange.

Today, yet another one of them threatened my daughter and me—like, bro, you’re a real big man threatening a little girl, but that’s what MAGA is about.

It’s who they always were and it’s who they always will be, all the way to the day they’re voted out by the rest of us.
If one day I stop posting, then I guess I am Charlie Kirk—after I’ve been shot by some far-right, grammarless dingleberry honkeytron who couldn’t take a joke.

Follow me if you feel me.Update:
They’re already in the comments denying all of this happened even though it’s all visible on this page 💀💀

I can only tell you that any time you go after the blind followers of an autocratic cult, it ain’t gonna be pretty at all. I have some time off, and I have found all the good trouble I need to end the year on a high note.

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

Well, I’ve seen all there is to see
And I’ve heard all they have to say
I’ve done everything I wanted to do
I’ve done that too
And it ain’t that pretty at all
Ain’t that pretty at all
So I’m gonna hurl myself against the wall
‘Cause I’d rather feel bad than not feel anything at all

Finally Friday Reads: Thank you for Your Attention to this Matter

Posted: November 7, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, 2024 Elections | Tags: , , , , , , | 7 Comments

“The ultimate photo defining the trump presidency deserves the cartoon that ultimately defines the trump presidency. Thank you in advance for all the accolades. Dozing Don has a bad dream.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Yesterday, the foul-mouthed nickname guy who initiated the slur “Sleepy Joe Biden” spent most of a televised meeting sound asleep. This wasn’t just the usual work meeting where it’s easy to fall asleep listening to the droning tones of your CEO try to explain something that he never fully understood no matter how much data and explanations you gave him when you prepped him through the least technical stuff you had to do to show him the company was going underwater and your next assignment will be explaining it to some Republican Congressional aid so he can beg Congress for some form of bail-out. Oops, sorry, jumped back to me around 1980, didn’t really mean to.

This particular meeting of Big Pharma CEOS included a dramatic medical emergency. Donnie Dotard stood up and just stood there while a few others rushed to examine the fallen. The Secretary of Health and Human Services made a quick break for the door. Finally, a staffer thought about ushering the media out the door. Hopefully, with all that tacky signage and gold gee-gaws, they figured their way out of the Oval Office.

I noticed that Entertainment Weekly covered the story, but decided to go with The Independent instead.

A pharmaceutical executive collapsed in the Oval Office Thursday as members of the Trump administration were announcing a new deal for weight-loss medications.

The man was standing behind President Donald Trump during the event when his knees appeared to suddenly buckle underneath him. Reporters initially identified the man as Novo Nordisk executive Gordon Finlay however the company later denied that it was him.

Reporters who witnessed the incident first-hand said Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator for Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, helped the executive to the ground, preventing the man from hitting his head. As reporters were ushered out of the Oval Office, Cabinet members attended to the man, elevating his legs.

Okay, I’m too cheeky today, so fuck all that. Let’s see what Stephen Colbert had to say last night, as reported by TV Insider.  “Colbert Gives Verdict on Trump’s Reaction After Man Collapses in Oval Office.”

On Thursday’s Late Show, Colbert aired a clip of the scary moment, in which the man collapsed at the start of Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks’ speech. While several people rushed to help the man, including Dr. Mehmet Oz, the President rose from his desk and stood by nonchalantly.

“As I said, the fella’s okay, but I’m sure that was scary,” Colbert said. “But thankfully, the room was full of exactly who you want in a medical emergency: pharmaceutical executives. ‘Quick! Quick! Someone maximize shareholder value!’”

The late-night host reiterated that the man was “okay” and praised the quick action of everybody who rushed to help him.

“Well, almost everybody,” he added. “Because this photo’s been going around. Take a look at this photo, this viral photo from after the fainting. Look at that.”

Colbert showed a photo that has been making the rounds on social media, featuring Trump standing at his desk looking vacantly ahead as several people attend to the man in the background.

“They’ve got his legs up and everything!” Colbert stated. “That picture is worth a thousand words… none of which I can say on CBS.”

We’re beginning to see some analysis of the voting numbers and outcomes analyzed by political data specialists. Heather Cox Richardson has a good piece on some of that at her SubStack Letters from an American.

“None of this is complicated,” political data specialist Tom Bonier wrote yesterday about Tuesday’s dramatic Democratic victories around the country. “The [Republicans] ran on affordability in 2024. They gave sanctimonious lectures on cable news on election night about how the ‘silent working class majority’ had spoken. Then they governed as reckless authoritarians, punishing the working class.”

For nine months now, officials in the Trump administration have pushed their extremist policies with the insistence that his election gave him a mandate, although more people voted for someone other than Trump in 2024 than voted for him. Tuesday’s elections stripped away that veneer to reveal just how unpopular their policies really are.

Aside from the health of the country, this poses a dramatic political problem for the Republicans. The midterm elections are in slightly less than a year, and Tuesday’s vote, which suggests the 2024 MAGA coalition has crumbled, may spell bad news for the mid-decade gerrymandering Republicans have pushed in states they control, like Texas. Republican lawmakers created the new Republican-leaning districts by moving Republican voters into Democratic-leaning districts, thus weakening formerly safe Republican districts. That could backfire in a blue-wave election.

First thing Wednesday morning, on the day the government shutdown became the longest shutdown in history, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) wrote to President Donald J. Trump to “demand a bipartisan meeting of legislative leaders to end the [Republican] shutdown of the federal government and decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis.” They assured him that “Democrats stand ready to meet with you face to face, anytime and anyplace,” and concluded: “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Trump had a different approach to Tuesday’s news. He met with Republican senators before the cameras and admitted that the shutdown had badly hurt the Republicans. But rather than moving to compromise—as all previous presidents have done to end shutdowns—he reiterated his crusade to make sure Democrats can never again hold power. He demanded that Republican senators end the filibuster and, as soon as they do, promptly end mail-in voting and require prohibitive voter ID. “If we do what I’m saying,” he told the senators, Democrats will “most likely never obtain power because we will have passed every single thing that you can imagine.”

Former Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) stopped Bloomberg News Senate reporter Steven Dennis in the hallway to say: “We’re not going to do that.”

The results in the states were not as cheery as they could’ve been. This was especially true for ballot initiatives. This is from Bolts Magazine as reported by Alex Burness. “Five Ways Tuesday’s Results Will Affect Voting Rules and Democracy. From felony disenfranchisement and mail voting to mid-decade gerrymanders, Tuesday delivered verdicts on election law across these five states.”

On Tuesday, mostly in the shadow of the Democratic Party’s headlining triumphs, were a series of state and local elections that carried high stakes for election law and voting rights.

Conservatives failed to restrict mail-in voting in a state key to next year’s battle for the U.S. Senate. Voters in two states boosted Democrats’ mid-decade redistricting aspirations. And voters made sure that a plan to unwind one of the nation’s harshest felony disenfranchisement schemes can proceed.

Here, we tour these results, and some others, from five states where the rules of elections were most prominently on the line—California, Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

We’ve heard a lot about candidates, but it’s essential to read this information and consider what else was at stake.

Now that a Federal Judge ordered the Trump administration to continue to pay SNAP benefits for the month of November, we see the usual Trump move. Take it to court. This is from the AP.  “Trump administration seeks to block full SNAP payments for November.” Starving the elderly, children, and the poor is such a Republican Holiday Tradition!

President Donald Trump ’s administration asked a federal appeals court Friday to block a judge’s order that it distribute November’s full monthly SNAP food benefits amid a U.S. government shutdown, even as at least some states said they were moving quickly to get the money to people.

The judge gave the Trump administration until Friday to make the payments through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. But the administration asked the appeals court to suspend any court orders requiring it to spend more money than is available in a contingency fund, and instead allow it to continue with planned partial SNAP payments for the month.

The court filing came even as the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a memo to states that it’s working to make funds available Friday for full monthly SNAP benefits.

California and Wisconsin said some SNAP recipients already received their full November payments overnight on Thursday.

“Food benefits are now beginning to flow back to California families,” Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. A spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin also confirmed that full SNAP payments had gone through.

Forbes reveals that the Trump Family’s Grift is still strong and growing. “Trump Wine Hits Government Shelves. This is reported by Zach Everson.

Topline

The Trump Organization’s second-term push to monetize Donald Trump’s presidency has reached the aisles of military exchanges, as Coast Guard-run stores, which provide service members and their families with access to tax-free consumer goods, have stocked Trump-branded wine and cider.

Key Facts

Coast Guard Exchanges at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., and in Centreville, Virginia, recently stocked Trump-branded wine and cider, according to a photo posted on Instagram and confirmed by Forbes from calls to the stores.

Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the exchanges were carrying Trump wines in a statement to Forbes, saying, “The brave men and women of the USCG are pleased to be able to buy Trump wine and cider tax free.”

While there’s been no shortage of Trump’s businesses capitalizing on the presidency—from using the presidential seal on golf markers at his courses to selling a $75 coffee table book showcasing pictures by his official White House photographer—these wines are among the few times Trump products have been sold at a government facility.

The White House referred inquiries to the Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard deferred to DHS and the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment.

Representatives from the government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington had this to say.

“This is one of those things where there probably isn’t any legal issue, but there is an optics and an ethics issue,” said Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog.

It’s just one scam after another with this group. Jacqueline Sweet writes this at her SubStack Disaster Girl.   “FBI Informant Who Lied About Bidens Quietly Released From Jail Sparking Trump Pardon Fears. Alexander Smirnov was quietly furloughed from prison months ago.” For a guy obsessed with crime and criminals, he sure puts a lot of them back on the street.

An FBI informant convicted of lying to the Bureau about a fake bribery scheme involving the Bidens has been quietly released from prison just months into a six-year sentence—raising concern he could be pardoned by Donald Trump any moment.

Alexander Smirnov, who has multiple business ties to Trumpworld, was sentenced on January 8, days before Trump became president. He had pleaded guilty to fabricating a story that former President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, had received millions in bribes from Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, as well as to a $2 million-plus tax evasion offense.

Yet despite Smirnov being judged a flight risk, with ties to Russian intelligence and foreign assets, the U.S.-Israeli citizen has been mysteriously missing from prison for at least the past four months, Disaster Girl can reveal. Following reports in April that the Trump administration was reviewing the case, concerns have now arisen that the president is considering an imminent pardon.

Smirnov had been serving his sentence at FCI Terminal Island, a low-security prison in Los Angeles. He is still listed at FCI Terminal Island on the Bureau of Prisons website, with a release date of February 2029. But while no filings on the docket for his appeal indicate how or why his release was ordered, he has not been there since at least July.

His absence became apparent when a process server attempted to serve Smirnov with papers for a civil lawsuit related to Smirnov’s time working as a confidential informant for the FBI on a securities fraud case involving California man Andrew Hackett. The process server hired by Hackett told Hackett he had been unable to locate Smirnov at Terminal Island. The prison confirmed to the process server that Smirnov is on “furlough,” according to emails and court filings reviewed by Disaster Girl

The server said that the person responsible for processing service at Terminal Island FCI had “confirmed that Alexander Smirnov is affiliated with the facility, but is not currently housed there,” but that they had declined to provide his current location or any further details. “I was advised to call back in approximately 15 days, as [Smirnov] may or may not return to the facility by that time. The representative was notably guarded and provided minimal information beyond that,” an email from the server to Hackett states.

By October, after repeated attempts to locate Smirnov at the prison, Hackett finally received an answer from the local Sheriff’s Department, which said: “They’ve confirmed that Mr. Smirnov has been furloughed, but no forwarding or new address has been provided.”

Trump’s lies are still making Broadcast news.  This is from NBC News. “Trump touts cost of Walmart’s Thanksgiving meal to vindicate his policies — ignoring a key detail. Since Tuesday’s elections, Trump has repeatedly boasted that Walmart’s Thanksgiving meal bundle is cheaper than it was under President Joe Biden. But there’s also less food in it.”

In the wake of Republicans’ heavy election losses on Tuesday, President Donald Trump has responded to voters’ growing concerns by insisting the economy is actually experiencing a “golden age.”

As tangible proof, he has pointed to the cost of Walmart’s Thanksgiving meal bundle, which is roughly 25% less expensive this year than it was last year.

“Grocery prices are way down, and Walmart just announced that the cost of their standard Thanksgiving meal — this is the greatest, their greatest,” Trump said in a speech to the American Business Forum on Wednesday, adding: “It is 25% lower than one year ago. That’s a big deal.”

Trump is right — but the 2025 Thanksgiving bundle is also smaller than the 2024 package.

This year’s package, at less than $40, contains 23 items; last year, there were 29. The missing items this year include onions, celery, sweet potatoes, chicken broth, poultry seasoning, muffin mix, marshmallows, whipped topping and pecan pie.

This year’s meal comes with standard dinner rolls and fresh cranberries, which both currently cost less at Walmart than the sweet Hawaiian rolls and cranberry sauce in last year’s edition.

The 2025 meal also includes just one can of cream of mushroom soup, down from two in 2024.

Walmart did make some additions to its new package, including a twin pack of turkey stuffing, baby carrots and three boxes of macaroni and cheese. Last year, Walmart included ingredients to make stuffing from scratch.

I’m eager to see the Black Friday sales numbers. The only thing booming in the economy is AI-related stocks. They are bubblelicious.  And the news and demand for the Epstein files just keeps on building.  This is from The New Republic. “DOJ Admits to Republicans That Epstein Files Are Even Worse for Trump. Details in the files are reportedly even more damning for Donald Trump than previously indicated—and it was already bad.” Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling has the byline.

Rumors about Donald Trump’s connection to Jeffrey Epstein have gripped the Republican Party.

A few conservative representatives with ties to the FBI and the Justice Department have spilled that the true details of the Epstein files are “worse” for Trump than previously reported, according to journalist David Schuster.

Michael Wolff, a longtime chronicler of Trump’s White House who conducted extensive interviews with Epstein prior to his death, told The Daily Beast last month that Epstein had shown him photos of Trump with half-naked “young girls” in his lap.

These rumors have galvanized into a legitimate movement among Republicans, who are now, Schuster wrote on X Wednesday night, clamoring for the files’ full release.

For months, just four Republicans had penned their signatures on a discharge petition demanding transparency into the investigation of the pedophilic sex trafficker and his potential associates. Those conservative lawmakers include Representatives Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace, and Lauren Boebert.

Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, who won the special election in Arizona in September, has also vowed to sign the bipartisan petition. She’s the last signature that the House needs to force a vote on the issue—and Speaker Mike Johnson has conveniently refused to swear her in for more than a month.

But the disturbing new rumor has dredged up far more support, with “more than 100 Republicans” planning to vote alongside Democrats in an effort to “get in front of what’s coming,” reported Schuster.

The Trump administration has failed at every turn to mitigate anxieties about the president’s longtime friendship with the child sex criminal. The typically bombastic Attorney General Pam Bondi was silent when asked about the photos during a Senate hearing last month, a choice that further “spooked” several GOP lawmakers, with many interpreting her nonresponse as a very vocal “yes.”

Karma can be a bitch after all. Here are a few other suggestions as a close-out to this post.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blog lists today?