Wednesday Overnight Open Thread - November 19, 2025 [Nostalgia Rex]
—Open Blogger
Good evening Horde. The time has come for mid-week shenanigans of the overnight variety. What? A double shenanigans link?! Yep - just for tonight. Because you're special (and it fits with the theme).
Welcome to the Wednesday night ONT which means another random assortment of interweb morsels and mystery clicks. Pull up a chair and sit a spell. Good will offerings of amusing puns are happily accepted. Be nice to your fellow commenters and AoS contributors. Don't be a traffic cone.
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Squirrel Aggression Display Cafe
—Ace
Secret Beach, Oregon
by DanielSnaps_
Inside a squirrel's nest. I mean a hole in a tree, not those nasty things they build.
Okay, now I understand that these "if you're left brained you see an X, if you're right brained you see a Y" memes are clickbait. No one sees X or Y. Everyone sees Z, the thing that it obviously is. There is no one who doesn't immediately recognize this silhouette and it's not a f***ing turtle or rabbit, I can tell you that.
And here's another one.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... we can't get fooled again!
No wonder we all saw a cow. I feel very dumb. And I apologize for the Fake News.
Teacher creates a cult for her students with herself as the Cult Leader.
Something something from that Lion King movie. Based on the videos I see, meerkats spend all day hanging out with warthogs. Nothing to see here.
Polite dogs wait for their slow friend to come to dinner.
Steampunk decapitation device.
Oh, to have one tenth of the joy and rizz of this dog.
Rabbit trembles at having his nails cut. Animals just hate this.
Leopard's skills at stalking from a reclining position are unmatched.
So you like worms, Olivia?
All beings love a slide.
Caretaker runs with his elephants. Looks fun, and also, very dangerous. You have to have a lot of faith in the agility of elephants.
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James Comer: I'll Give Bill and Hillary Clinton the Steve Bannon Treatment -- Prosecution Then Prison -- If They Continue to Refuse to Testify
—Ace
If only, if only.
We'll see. We certainly have adequate justification and adequate provocation given that Biden sent Steven Bannon and Peter Navarro to prison for refusing to testify before the J6 illegal committee.
The Clintons are demanded to testify about a matter the Democrats claim must be fully exposed and aired out, the Epstein Pedophile ring.
So what excuse can they offer the Clintons for refusing to tell us what they know?
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer on Tuesday said he would give former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the same treatment Democrats gave Steve Bannon if they do not comply with congressional subpoenas to testify on their alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein.House Democrats referred Bannon for prosecution after he failed to comply with a House January 6 subcommittee subpoena. He was later convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress and sentenced to four months in prison in 2022.
Comer said the Clintons are two Democrats that his committee has not heard back from regarding subpoenas for their testimony on their ties to Epstein, and that continued silence will be met with criminal referrals.
"We expect to hear from Bill and Hillary Clinton," Comer said on the "Just The News, No Noise" TV show. "Donald Trump answered questions for years about Jeffrey Epstein. Every day he gets asked questions about Epstein, and he answers them in front of the American people. We've subpoenaed Republicans and Democrats.
"Other Democrats have sent letters saying they knew nothing about Epstein, which would hold in court if something ever comes out that they did know something, then they've committed perjury there," he continued. "But the Clintons have never responded. They're the one group in this investigation that's never had to answer questions in front of a credible reporter, and they've never certainly answered questions from attorneys or members of Congress.
"So we expect the Clintons to come in, or I expect the Clintons to be met with the same fate that Bannon and [Peter] Navarro were met with when the Democrats were in control," he concluded.
Comer also noted that other Democrats have not helped bring the Clintons in to testify because they are too focused on trying to criminally connect Trump to Epstein.
"
Two Partisan Hacks Ignored Supreme Court Precedent to Claim the Texas Redistricting Map Was Illegal.
Judge Smith Dissents
—Ace
Jerry E. Smith, Circuit Judge, dissenting:
"Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night!"
I dissent from the entirety of Judge Brown's opinion granting a
preliminary injunction.* * * * *
PRELIMINARY STATEMENTI append this Preliminary Statement to dispel any suspicion that I'm
responsible for any delay in issuing the preliminary injunction or that I am or saw
slow-walking the ruling. I also need to highlight the pernicious judicial
misbehavior of U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown.
In my 37 years on the federal bench, this is the most outrageous conduct
by a judge that I have ever encountered in a case in which I have been involved.In summary, Judge Brown has issued a 160-page opinion without giving
me any reasonable opportunity to respond. I will set forth the details. The
readers can judge for themselves.This three-judge district court held a nine-day evidentiary hearing/trial
on the motion for preliminary injunction. That hearing was concluded Friday
October 10. The judges immediately retired to confer. Judges Brown and
Guaderrama voted to grant the preliminary injunction. I voted to deny. It was
understood that the majority judges would begin putting together an opinion.
During the next 26 days, there was silence--nary a word from either
judge.On Wednesday November 5, Judge Brown sent me a 13-page outline of
the expected majority opinion "so that you and your chambers might be able to
begin preparing your dissenting opinion."Nothing else for a week.
On Wednesday November 12, Judge Brown sent a message stating, "We
currently anticipate issuing our injunction on Saturday, November 15. We will
endeavor to get you a draft before we issue it. Sadly, we do not believe we can
wait for a dissenting opinion before we rule--the fuse is simply too short in light
of Purcell. We will, however, note on the opinion that you are dissenting. We are
not trying to cut you out, we just don't have the time. Ideally, of course, we'd
have liked to have seen your dissent before we issue our opinion, but that will
also be impossible."
So, in other words: They withheld their corrupt and lawless decision from him so that he couldn't construct a dissent, and then rushed out the ruling claiming there was suddenly a big hurry that would not permit him to review it.
Yes, you heard it right. To summarize, in case the reader doesn't get the point: Judge Brown was announcing that he would issue an opinion three days later--an opinion that I hadn't even seen and might not be furnished before its issuance. That is unthinkable, but it occurred--and not accidentally.
I'm omitting further details about this game of hide-the-salami the other judges played with the dissenting judge. See the actual dissent for those details. I want to get to the forest without seeing each stalk of bamboo one-by-one.
This outrage speaks for itself. Any pretense of judicial restraint, good faith, or trust by these two judges is gone. If these judges were so sure of their result, they would not have been so unfairly eager to issue the opinion sans my dissent, or they could have waited for the dissent in order to join issue with it.What indeed are they afraid of?
Judges on multi-judge courts understand how important is the
deliberative process to fair and accurate judicial decisionmaking. As I say later
in this dissent, judges get paid to disagree as well as to find common ground.
Judges in the majority don't get to tell a dissenting judge or judges that they can't
participate. If the two judges on this panel get away with what they have done,
it sets a horrendous precedent that "might makes right" and the end justifies the
means....
When I was a newer on the bench, a friend asked me, "Now that you've
been a judge for a few years, do you have any particular advice?" I replied,
"Always sit with your back to the wall."
Now Judge Smith names names -- specifically, George and Alexander Soros, who are funding this lawsuit and many other lawsuits challenging Republican redistricting.
The main winners from Judge Brown's opinion are George Soros and Gavin Newsom. The obvious losers are the People of Texas and the Rule of Law. I dissent...
The resulting dissent is far from a literary masterpiece. If, however, there
were a Nobel Prize for Fiction, Judge Brown's opinion would be a prime
candidate.Judge Brown could have saved himself and the readers a lot of time and
effort by merely stating the following:I just don't like what the Legislature did here. It was unnecessary, and it seems unfair to disadvantaged voters. I need to step in to make sure wiser heads prevail over the nakedly partisan and racially questionable actions of these zealous lawmakers. Just as I did to the lawmakers in Galveston County in Petteway, I'm using my considerable clout as a federal district judge to put a stop to bad policy judgments. After all, I get paid to do what I think is right.
In 37 years as a federal judge, I've served on hundreds of three-judge
panels. This is the most blatant exercise of judicial activism that I have ever
witnessed.
There's the old joke: What's the difference between God and a federal
district judge? Answer: God doesn't think he's a federal judge. Or a different
version of that joke: An angel rushes to the head of the Heavenly Host and says,
"We have a problem. God has delusions of grandeur." The head angel calmly
replies, "What makes you say that?" The first angel whispers, "He's wearing
his robe and keeps imagining he's a federal judge."Only this time, it isn't funny.
I'm omitting another long passage, in which Smith establishes that Judge Brown loves claiming that any Republican redistricting efforts are necessarily racist, and they all must therefore be stopped.
Smith previously dissented in another case of leftwing judges invalidating legislators' redistricting decisions, and the reviewing court found that he was right and the leftwing judges were wrong.
Speaking of fortune: Just a few weeks ago, the Fifth Circuit answered the
main question at hand, holding that "[t]he most obvious reason for mid-cycle
redistricting, of course, is partisan gain.3 The question for this three-judge
district panel is whether the Texas Legislature did its mid-decade congressional
redistricting to gain political advantage or, instead, because the main goal of
Texas's Republican legislators is to slash the voting rights of persons of color.Once again, here we go again: Criticizing the behavior of DOJ lawyers in
last decade's redistricting battle, I noted the following:It was obvious, from the start, that the DoJ attorneys viewed state officials and the legislative majority and their staffs as a bunch of backwoods hayseed bigots who bemoan the abolition of the poll tax and pine for the days of literacy tests and lynchings. And the DoJ lawyers saw themselves as an expeditionary landing party arriving here, just in time, to rescue the state from oppression . . . . The [DoJ] moreover views Texas redistricting litigation as the potential grand prize and lusts for the day when it can reimpose preclearance via Section 3(c).[4]
"Preclearance" is the old regime in which southern states -- states of the former Confederacy -- could not change their election laws at all without prior approval -- "pre-clearance" -- from the federal government. This regime was finally ended about ten years ago-- but leftwing judges are trying to bring it back through the back door.
...
Because the "obvious reason" for the 2025 redistricting "of course, is
partisan gain," Judge Brown commits grave error in concluding that the Texas
Legislature is more bigoted than political....
It's all politics, on both sides of the partisan aisle. George and Alex Soros
have their hands all over this.One of the plaintiffs' top experts is Matt Barreto. He is a paid Soros
operative and does not attempt to hide it. His CV confirms it. He expects to
receive $2.5 million6 from George and Alexander Soros. Nor is this something
new. Soros has been pumping money into Barreto's UCLA Voting Rights
Project for years.8 And this steady supply of money won't stop until 2026, at the
earliest. Unsurprisingly, Barreto has been on quite a road show for years,
parading across the country opposing Republican redistricting.That is the tip of the iceberg. The lawyers are involved as well.
...
To his credit, the lead counsel for plaintiffs does not try to hide it, either.
Chad Dunn acknowledged so in open court--he works with Barreto at the same
Voting Rights Project11 that receives Soros funding. Dunn is a respected attorney
in Texas election law cases, most recently serving as counsel in the Jackson
case,12 in which the Fifth Circuit squarely declared the political nature of mid-
decade redistricting. Mr. Dunn, along with his Voting Rights Project colleague
Sonni Waknin, also represented the plaintiffs before Judge Brown in the Petteway
case, which was overturned by the en banc Fifth Circuit.Mark Gaber also appeared in Petteway and Jackson. He is the Senior
Redistricting Director at Campaign Legal Center, a Soros-funded group.It does not stop there. The Elias Law Group draws from the Soros
coffers, too. Counsel for the instant Gonzales plaintiffs, David Fox, is a partner
at Elias, which "has collected more than $104 million" from Democrat Party
committees and donors, including Mr. Soros.15 Firm Chair Marc Elias formed
entities, "tucked inside large existing nonprofits," that "raised tens of millions
of dollars from some of the richest donors on the left--including from
foundations funded by Mr. Soros."On a silver platter, Judge Brown hands Soros a victory at the expense of
the People of Texas and the Rule of Law. Judge Brown won't tell you that. I
just did.Relatedly, Gavin Newsom took a victory lap in Houston to celebrate the
Democrat redistricting win with Proposition 50.19 Indeed, he did so "on rival
Gov. Greg Abbott's home turf Saturday and called on other blue states to push
back on a GOP effort to retain control of the U.S. House." And after the
improperly premature issuance of Judge Brown's opinion, the Houston Chronicle
pointed out that Governor Newsom quickly tweeted, "Donald Trump and Greg
Abbott played with fire, got burned -- and democracy won . . . This ruling is a
win for Texas, and for every American who fights for free and fair elections."21
That tells you all that you need to know--this is about partisan politics,
plain and simple....
Regardless of one's political slant, it's obvious what Texas is trying to do in 2025. The Republicans' national margin in the House of Representatives is LULAC
so slim that squeezing out a majority might even depend, day-to-day, on whether
some seats are vacant because of deaths or resignations.In 2021, the Texas Legislature, with both houses controlled by
Republicans, devised a strategy of creating safe seats for both Republicans and
Democrats, but with a decided majority of the state's delegation still Republican.
Whether (as a matter of political clout) that was the wisest strategy is disputed
and indeed was fulsomely debated in 2021.In mid-2025, the strategy changed: The new plan was to make more seats
winnable for Republicans by moving some Democrats incumbents from their
districts and rendering other districts unwinnable by Democrats. That sacrificed
the wider margins in some of the old districts. The tradeoff is obvious.There is some speculation that this new strategy will backfire on
Republicans in 2026 because, if they do poorly in the mid-terms, the new
Republican seats created in 2025 will be a Pyrrhic victory, because they will lose
elections in the closer districts. That is purely a matter of political strategy that
federal judges have no business touching.
Apparently, the plaintiffs -- funded by George Soros -- argued that creating fewer but safer Republican seats, as they did in 2021, is obviously the correct political choice for Republicans, so that now that they've decided to go for the incorrect choice -- more seats, but each less defensible -- it can be for no other reason than RACISM.
Not changing political fortunes or strategies. No, it must be Racism. There is no other explanation.
The challenge faced by these plaintiffs The challenge faced by these plaintiffs and Judge Brown is to explain how it could be that the Republicans would sacrifice their stated goal of political gain for racial considerations. It makes no sense to advance the notion that the Republican Legislature would draw districts for the purpose of disadvantaging racial and ethnic minorities if, by doing so, they lessen the number of new Republican seats they might gain.The plaintiffs' theory is both perverse and bizarre. They actually
contend that if the Republicans are sincere about gaining more seats, they could
have drawn not five, but six, seven, or eight additional seats and that the reason
they did not is that the real reason is racial animus. The absurdity of that notion
speaks for itself. Yet it's all that the plaintiffs and Judge Brown have to offer to
defeat the State's claim that the 2025 lines were drawn for the sake of politics
and not race.
Smith now points out that the Supreme Court seems likely to blow up the whole idea that minorities get special protection in redistricting -- but rather than wait for that coming ruling, the liberals rush to get last licks in.
Judge Brown rushes to issue this injunction before the tension between Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and racial-gerrymandering jurisprudence is resolved by the Supreme Court in the currently-pending Callais case. Given Judge Brown's creative read of the facts and novel approach to the law, he should have considered denying this injunction for that reason alone, recognizing that a fundamental shift in voting-rights jurisprudence is not unlikely. Because the power to stay proceedings "is incidental to the power inherent in every court to control the disposition of the causes on its docket with economy of time and effort for itself, for counsel, and for litigants," it would have been well within the authority of this three-judge court.The fact that Callais may fundamentally change the nature of this case
also weighs in favor of a stay. It is reckless for this court to proceed with opining
on the merits, which amounts to nothing more than a general guess as to whether
existing voting-rights jurisprudence will survive Callais.* * * * *
Judge Brown has a lingering habit. He correctly recites part of a legal
principle, then veers off track along a spectrum--intentionally misleading at best
to false at worst. The opinion is replete with selectively copying and pasting parts
of legal rules or standards. Beyond that, things get dicey.This holds especially for Judge Brown's discussion of the standard for
preliminary injunctions.
He points out that Brown first correctly states the first criterion for an injunction -- a "substantial likelihood of success on the merits" (after a full trial)-- but then immediately omits the "substantial" part and just rules that the Soros plaintiffs are merely likely to win.
A modifier like "substantial" is meant to limit injunctions to only cases where the outcome is barely arguable, and the ultimate ruling mostly fore-ordained.
Instead, Brown just says he thinks one side will probably win and boom, there's your injunction.
...
He should give less consideration to the omission and more consideration
to the actual words on the page. Judge Brown accurately cuts and pastes the
following: A preliminary injunction is "an extraordinary and drastic remedy
which should not be granted unless the movant clearly carries the burden of
persuasion," and the likelihood of success on the merits is "the most important"
factor of the framework.But the cut-and-paste job is selective. Judge Brown left out the fact that,
giving attention to the relevant cases cited in Jackson, "the most important" factor
language in Jackson27 is a direct quote from Mock v. Garland.28 And any cursory
reading of Mock easily reveals that the word "substantial"29 (the word Judge
Brown tries to avoid) is part of the first factor in no uncertain terms: "a
substantial likelihood of success on the merits."Judge Brown doesn't tell you that. I just did.
The opinion is caught in an illogical straitjacket from which it cannot
escape....
This is intentionally misleading at best, disingenuously false at worst.
There he goes again.
...If this is not judicial activism, I am not sure what would be.
...
If this were a law school exam, the opinion would deserve an "F."Remember that recent Fifth Circuit redistricting case, the one that Judge
Brown said was procedurally and factually analogous to the instant one. Judge
Brown conveniently omits the key sentence in that mid-decade redistricting
case: The "most obvious reason for mid-cycle redistricting, of course, is partisan
gain." Judge Brown doesn't even pretend to grapple with Justice Stevens's
relevant quote. It is far from a mere coincidence that the opinion goes to the
mats over the omission of one word, when it suits the results-driven outcome,
but overlooks the most significant sentence about the most obvious reason for
mid-decade redistricting, which is partisan gain.The combined weight of the procedural and substantive law is against
what these plaintiffs and Judge Brown are trying to do. Not only do plaintiffs
have to show clearly that they are entitled to the drastic and extraordinary remedy
of an injunction, but they must also do so when Supreme Court and Fifth Circuit
precedent is stacked against them. Nothing in any bag of results-oriented tricks
can save that wished-for result.Judge Brown is an unskilled magician. The audience knows what is
coming next.
...This panel decides both law and fact. The salient issue of fact is whether
the Legislature drew the new lines on account of race. The answer is easy: It
did not. And that question is not even close.Did I forget to mention: "The most obvious reason for mid-cycle
redistricting, of course, is partisan gain."
He notes the testimony of the man who used statistical analysis to redraw the maps -- and his testimony is that the maps are based on R vs. D partisan analysis, not race.
Judge Brown ignores all of this to find the "fact" that the maps are based on race.
This order, replete with legal and factual error, and accompanied by naked procedural abuse, demands reversal.* * * * *
Darkness descends on the Rule of Law. A bumpy night, indeed.
My take? Judge Smith's argument is sturdy and strong, built from the tallest, straightest bamboo.
The fire in this dissent, and the revelation that the other judges are naked partisans who never find a Republican election move they can't overrule, gives me some hope that the Supreme Court will stay this lawless injunction -- again -- and deal the Soroses a well-deserved loss.
Olivia Nuzzi's Got a Fuzzi and She Wants All the World to See It
—Ace
Olivia Nuzzi is -- then was -- and now is again a fantastically overpromoted "journalist."
I first noticed her suddenly appearing everywhere in media about six or eight years ago. I didn't understand why she was suddenly ubiquitous, as she had broken no major stories. She did cover... Anthony Weiner's mayoral campaign, and got the pretty minor scoop that his campaign manager had quit after he lied to her, I think probably about the affair that was revealed during that campaign.
But that's not really enough to make a media star, is it? She seemed to be yet another "on author" attitudinal writer, mostly writing slightly-disguised opinion pieces in which the primary point of view was her own and the primary subject was always herself.
She was Wonkette with a more aggressive agent.
She recently had a fall from grace -- a brief and shallow fall from grace -- when her former fiance, the damp liberal cuckold Ryan Lizza, revealed that she had been having a torrid "digital affair" -- which is a nice way of saying "sexting and dirty pictures with mutual masturbation" -- with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., while writing a piece about him. And, liberals spat: as she was writing unfavorably about his then-opponent, Joe Biden.
The left hissed that this breached journalistic ethics but may I ask: what journalistic ethics? What the fuck are you even talking about?
Yes, she had a conflict of interest in that she had an emotional attachment to the subject she was writing about and therefore a bias against his political rivals.
Which she did not disclose.
This is true of the entire media, which has been having an equally torrid "digital affair" (and often, a physical one) with the Democrat Party for decades.
Yes, Olivia Nuzzi should have disclosed that she was unable to evaluate RFKJr. objectively.
And so should "former" Democrat aide and Gun Control, Inc. spokesman Jake Tapper declare that he, too, in unable to cover the object of his passionate affections with the level of objectivity the media used to pretend to require.
Anyway. Olivia Nuzzi's back in the news. She served the briefest exile from "journalism" -- I think she was fired and exiled from "journalism" for, what, a year? -- and is now hired again to be celebrity gossip sheet and reactionary liberal rag Vanity Fair's west coast editor.
She also sat for an "interview" with the New York Times as public relations for her return to "journalism."
And she's written a book, which I assume is mostly about her adventures in celebrity dick-riding.
Vanity Fair excerpted it. Here, she deploys all her Airport Thriller skill as a novelist, by which I mean she can't write worth a f**, to wax eloquently about... the worm that died in RFKJr.'s head, and how she learned to hate that worm and love that worm.
Later, when the affair turns cold and RFKJr. seems uninterested, she complains:
Okay, that one is not real, that one is a parody of Nuzzi's breathlessly-indiscreet style by a guy calling himself "Magilla." But I chuckled when I read that and I have to admit it took me in. I wanted you to have that same pleasure.
And given Nuzzi's actual writing, can you really blame me for falling for it?
Her former fiance, Ryan Lizza, himself an overpromoted left-wing "journalist" but nearly to the extent of his almost-wife, was a cuck before he was actually a cuckold. To fire back at Nuzzi, and maybe to anticipate nasty things she has to say about him (she has accused him of "hacking" her email and stalking her), Lizza has just dropped another piece about his former bed-partner, and it's... well it's something.
I don't know if I really appreciate this vengeance-by-online-trashing kind of article, but I can't say he doesn't reveal a few things about Olivia Nuzzi, and answer questions I had, like "How did this low-talent nothing who looks like Faye Dunaway -- and when I say that understand that I do not find Faye Dunaway actually attractive, just... "strking" -- suddenly become the It Girl of the leftwing media?"
Or, if you've followed the career of MSNBC's -- excuse me, MS NOW's -- Katie Tur, it might not surprise you all that much.
Lizza begins with some bad attempts to sound like a trash novelist. In this, he's competing with Olivia Nuzzi herself, who's also now attempting to sound like a bad trash novelist. They're competing to see who can get Harold Robbins to roll over in his grave the most vigorously.
Olivia had just returned from a reporting trip--at least that's what she told me it was--and her Herschel backpack, the one with the flap that never quite closed properly, was tossed beside our bed, its contents scattered on the floor.That's when I noticed the sheets of Kimpton Hotel stationery that would alter the course of our lives.
It is surreal now to think back to that room, the one overlooking the courtyard garden that became a metaphor for our decade-long entanglement. It was dazzling during spring's full bloom and foreboding when winter stripped all signs of life. And lurking underground, way in the back, was the invasive bamboo, which grows like a cancer, and if not tamed, would march through the entire courtyard and kill everything.
Your metaphors are strained and gay. And how did we move from deciduous trees to bamboo? Pick an arboreal lane, Sir.
I spent hours hacking at the sprouts to keep the bamboo at bay, just as I had with all the secrets that Olivia and I shared.
Any chance we're going to get off the bamboo metaphor any time soon?
I tried to poison the roots, cut off the supply of water and nutrients, and repair the underground wall meant to halt their advance. I should have known that it was futile and that, at some point, the bamboo would take over the garden, and that's all anyone would see.
Okay, so this is what we're doing now. This is about bamboo now.
This is a story of bamboo.
I can still picture the hotel paper and reporting notepads spilling into the walk-in closet, where a year earlier I had spent an afternoon on my knees carefully arranging scores of her boots, high heels, sneakers, and slippers on an enormous shoe rack.Olivia almost cried when she saw the results. "Nobody has ever done anything like that for me," she said.
It is tempting now to forget those moments, to see it as a lost decade, and to cast her as a cartoon villain. After all, she deceived me for a year and smeared me with false allegations. And not just little lies but big fantastical falsehoods-- blackmail!, (A former child actor, Olivia always had a keen sense for the dramatic.) She orchestrated a plot with the help of a senior Trump official to try to have me imprisoned, and now she's written what appears to be a largely fictitious and self-serving account about it all.
So, yes, I have reason to be annoyed, maybe even a little angry.
She was a former child actor? I don't see anything about that on IMDB, except for an appearance on Billions, which I assume was one of those grating journalist-appears-as-herself things.
Wikipedia does offer this:
In 2010, Nuzzi, as "Livvy," released a song titled "Jailbait," as part of an attempt to launch a music career.
Jailbait? That's going to be very relevant soon.
Some math tells me that Nuzzi, born in 1993, would be 17 or 18 when she recorded "Jailbait" as "Livvy."
Maybe she did her child acting work under a different name, and wants to keep that out of the press. Maybe Lizza will tells us more about it in future reports. (This is Part 1.)
Enough about Lizza's style. Here's his first dirt-drop, the first actually interesting facts he has to disclose.
But first: More fucking bamboo.
Amor fati, the Stoics advised--love your fate. I have admired that sentiment more than I have practiced it, but that's the spirit that will guide this series of posts. You have one life, so find beauty and humor and wisdom even in the seemingly darkest and most embarrassing chapters.Besides, like bamboo, the truth has a way of forcing itself out into the open. And in this case, the true story is more bizarre, and ultimately more illuminating about politics and media and love, than anything I've ever covered, let alone experienced.
Do we have all that out of our systems now?
I just got an email:
I'm RIVETED.Signed,
A panda
Okay, on to the actual dirt.
Remember when I said "Jailbait" would soon be important?
I wasn't just saying that. I wasn't just providing roughage and filler to this post without providing real nourishment. I was offering a scaffolding to the next disclosure.
Like stalks of bamboo, perhaps. (The panda told me to work that in.)
[I] was used to cleaning up Olivia's messes.Not that long ago, I had helped her untangle herself from an unusual relationship with Keith Olbermann, the former MSNBC host.
What? This is an Olbermann story now?
The twists! The turns!
Keith is tall and plain and rigid and quivers in the wind.
Like, say, bamboo.
She had messaged him out of the blue. They started talking, and soon after, she fled her unhappy home in suburban New Jersey and started living with Keith in Manhattan. He paid for her to attend college, outfitted her in Tom Ford and Hervé Léger dresses and some $15,000 worth of Cartier jewelry.
She started living with him just out of college?
When she was 17 or 18?
When she was recording "Jailbait"?
This Keith Olbermann, huh?
Later, he covered her rent and furnished her apartment in a doorman building in the West Village. While Keith, who was 34 years older, was generous, there were strings attached.
What do you call it when an older man pays the rent for a much, much younger college student and expects "strings" in return?
I guess you could call it a Sugarbaby/Money-Daddy situation.
You can also call it a kissing cousin of de facto prostitution.
Olbermann himself brags that he did most of Katie Tur's work for her -- he claims he wrote her articles and edited them into a comprehensible state. So he seems to often providing money or service in kind for his much-younger SugarBabies.
Olivia had concealed the relationship from me and other friends...
This sounds like prostitution.
On the other hand, I can't blame her. Who wants a sexual relationship with Keith "This is the finger I write my Special Comments with?" Olbermann publicly known?
And if you're not a long-enough reader to get that -- a long time ago, one of his fans wrote a blog-post about him having taken her to a hotel to have sex with her. After he... digitally pleasured her, and this time I don't mean by use of a computer, he triumphantly held up his finger and boasted, "This is the finger I write my Special Comments with!"
Allegedly.
But who are we kidding?
...but one day she told me everything--too much, actually--and together we hatched a plan for her escape.
To escape the Olbermann-fronted apartment, they built a long but sturdy ladder out of ten stalks of bamboo.
Or at least, I like to imagine that's what they did. I have a feeling it was more boring than that. I would guess that Lizza had to front money to pay for her new, non-Olbermann-fronted apartment. He doesn't confirm that but I'm seeing a pattern with this Nuzzi woman. She climbs and advances chiefly on her back.
Now I will give away the main interesting fact divulged by this article. This is a spoiler, because, while Lizza's actual style is dogshit, he does in fact structure this vengeance piece to have a payoff and punchline.
So you can read it now if you like. Otherwise, I'm going to ruin it for you.
Throughout the article he leads you to believe that when he speaks of Nuzzi's return from the Kimpton Hotel, he's about to talk about his realization that she had an affair with RFKJr. Let me credit him, he builds to this well. He crafts a fine, sturdy structure of bamboo held together firmly by strips of bamboo-skin, flattened and scraped-out to serve as fine ligatures.
No but really, he keeps talking about Nuzzi's penchant for older men, for older male political men, and particularly for older male politicians with presidential ambitions. He talks about her having indiscreet relations with sources she's writing about.
And then you think, ah, the final piece of the bamboo puzzle. He's about to discover her affair with RFKJr.
As he approaches that, we get this, Ryan Lizza's bad writing framing Olivia Nuzzi's bad writing:
But one mess at a time. As I tidied up the desk, something on the Kimpton stationery caught my eye. I started to read."If I swallowed every drop of water from the tower above your house," Olivia had written, "I would still thirst for you."
Unfortunately, the lack of a water tower on our Georgetown home's roof ruled me out as the note's intended recipient.
But it's not RJKJR. That comes in later part.
This part is about him discovering, in 2020, after she traveled to South Carolina to "interview" another politician involved in a sex scandal, that she apparently had an affair with...
(...last chance to read it before the spoiler...)
She later explained to me that she became "infatuated" with him after their interview, that she couldn't get him out of her head, and that as her obsession intensified, she sent him increasingly risqué pictures and texts, secretly followed him on the campaign trail when she told me she was out covering other candidates, and fantasized about a rendezvous, which was consummated at his home in South Carolina one night after she went dark on me and made up a story about how she was dealing with a crisis concerning her sick mother.I was sure our relationship was over. And certainly our book project was dead. She had crossed a journalistic red line. How could we write a book about the presidential campaign if Olivia had a sexual relationship with one of the candidates?
I looked at the date on her aborted letter to "Mark": March 5, 2020--just a few days ago.
I called my agent.
"We have a big problem," I said. "Olivia is sleeping with Mark Sanford."
...Mark Sanford.
You remember him, right? The Republican governor who disappeared from work without notice for a week or two only to later be found in the company of an Argentinian woman whom he later abandoned his wife for?
So that's Part 1, and we're only up to 2020. I imagine we will have multiple parts and multiple bouts of shameless infidelity before we reach 2024 and Nuzzi's "digital affair" with RFKJr.
The legend of Olivia Nuzzi's indiscretions grows rapidly -- much like the fast-growing bamboo forests of India.
And I can't lie, I am, like the panda, RIVETED.
Here's my takeaway: We must always TrUsT tHe MeDiA because they are all smart, ethical, informed, well-socialized, of unimpeachable character and powerful moral fiber (bamboo-like, one might say) and most of all sane, and have no biases at all that they routinely hide from the public.
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Hollywood Is Dying and Good Riddance
—Ace
"Dying" is overstated. But they are experiencing a reduction in status, a loss of wealth and social position, which for almost everyone, and particularly for narcissists, is a deathly bitter pill.
Did hyperfeminization -- combined with cross-sex playacting, as men act like women and women act like men -- contributed to Hollywood's reduction of status?
It's complicated but the answer is emphatically yes with a side-order of Fuck To The Yeah.
So what caused this? Conservative writers Helen Andrews and Joy Pullmann offer a compelling answer: systemic feminization. In a recent essay that has since gone viral, Andrews explains how so many sectors of the economy and academia have been feminized. Not only do women outnumber men in many institutions, but they are imposing a more feminine culture that encourages "empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition."Although she largely agrees with Andrews's essay, Pullmann notes that this cultural transformation is not a simple switch from masculinity to femininity. Rather, it's more the takeover of a kind of transgenderism (women acting like men and men acting like women) over traditional gender division: "our society has reversed men and women's roles and in so doing abandoned both masculinity and femininity."
The result is a toxic mishmash of values that combines the worst of both. Instead of masculinity and femininity, we get some confused, aggressive, and arbitrarily applied vision of conformity and safetyism at all levels, with little concern for excellence. In such a system, people advance by maintaining the status quo, pleasing the right people, and discrediting rivals who fail to follow the rules. Success is determined by maximizing harmony and collective self-esteem, not by delivering high-quality products consistently and efficiently.
The American entertainment industry was already feminizing (or transgenderizing) since Obama's presidency--say 2008 onward--but this transformation was made complete by the #MeToo movement 10 years later. In a matter of weeks, serious male filmmakers and producers were canceled and replaced by less offensive substitutes (usually women) willing to compromise quality to push a political message. Perhaps there was some nominal cleaning up of Hollywood as a result of this, and perhaps it helped to empower some unfairly neglected women, but it all came at the heavy cost of ceasing to produce movies and shows that normal people would care to watch.
The palm-fingering Weird Sisters of the gay Oz movie have been put on hold, possibly because the studio just doesn't want them weirding the public out before the second part of Wicked debuts.
Wacko Wicked Press Tour Put on Ice After Erivo's Voice Fails and Grande Opts Out "In Solidarity" -- Did Universal Pull the Plug on Weird Interviews?November 18, 2025
The Wicked: For Good [the part two sequel] press tour was abruptly suspended in New York City just days before the movie's release, with Hollywood outlets claiming Cynthia Erivo "lost her voice" and Ariana Grande refused to continue press appearances without her.But the official narrative isn't sitting well with online observers. After all, since when does a singer temporarily losing her voice require a full-blown solidarity pact from her co-star, complete with the studio shutting down scheduled interviews?
It's a question fans, influencers, and industry watchers have been asking nonstop since the news broke. Speculation has only intensified because the Wicked press tour had already become something of a spectacle for reasons Universal probably didn't anticipate.
Long before the Wicked: For Good press tour was pulled, fans noticed something unusual about the promotional circuit. Instead of straightforward discussions about the film, fans were treated to a highlight reel of baffling moments featuring Grande and Erivo seemingly locked in their own private wavelength -- one that didn't always translate to the rest of the audience. Or, you know, Planet Earth...
Here, a dirty man vigorously shook Ariana Grande's hand in a "hail the victor" sort of way. She pretended her arm was injured, and her lesbian co-star kissed it to "make it better." This guy isn't a rando; it's Marc Platt, producer of the movie. He's promoting the movie, too.
Erivo always seems on the edge of a panic attack or nervous breakdown so Ariana Grande is always soothing her with uncomfortab-to-look-at hand holding.
Sometimes it's just finger-holding.
If it sounds like I'm implying a lesbian relationship, I'm not necessarily claiming that. But I am claiming that they are definitely putting on a show of lesbian touching for the largely-gay fan base of the movie. Almost every gay-crazy twitter account is celebrating this touchy-touchy cringefest, some saying "We're winning!" As in, "gays and lesbians are winning, just look at these Hollywood adult pretenders engaging in lesbian hand-play." Erivo is a very out lesbian, and Ariana Grande is either a convert or else is just role-playing. Gay 4 Pay, as they say.
Below, the lesbian-coded pair celebrate each other's "auras" and Cynthia Erivo has some kind of mental crisis over hearing a helicopter overhead. Ariana Grande responds by, as usual, touching her and soothing her.
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ICE Targets Charlotte, NC for Illegal Alien Arrests; Thirty Thousand Students In Public Schools Stay Home
—Ace
Does this mean that around 30,000 of Charlotte's public school students are illegals or children of illegals? I think it does. I did not hear of any leftist campaign to Keep Your Kids Home as a protest. This was organic.
Note the number claimed earlier was 20,000, but it appears to be 30,000.
Almost 20% of the school population appears to be illegal alien children.
All paid for by American taxpayers.
On Monday, Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools saw a tremendous number of absences, nearly 20% of students, shortly after ICE showed up in town and illegal migrant communities became afraid of going out in public.
Nearby district, Wake County, told illegals that it will have teachers deliver Zoom lessons so that they can stay home to evade ICE.
Congressman Pat Harrigan @RepPatHarriganCharlotte has 900,000 residents, and more than 150,000 are foreign nationals, which comes out to roughly one in six people.
When a city carries numbers like that, it shows up everywhere. Uptown murders are up 200 percent. Aggravated assaults with knives or guns climbed from 86 to 111 year over year. Strong-arm robberies went from 26 to 31 in the same period. Families feel the strain in housing, in classrooms, and in basic public safety.
That is the environment @CBP walked into because the scale of the population shift and the rise in violent crime have outpaced what local agencies can handle on their own.
A city cannot function when the pressure points stack up like this. Charlotte has to put the safety of its residents first or the numbers will keep getting worse, no matter who pretends otherwise.
One illegal injured an officer by "weaponizing his car." I guess a new euphemism for "running down a cop" has dropped.
One person was injured after a vehicle was used to attack Department of Homeland Security agents performing a crackdown on illegal immigrants in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Sunday."his afternoon in Charlotte near University City, a United States citizen weaponized his vehicle, driving a large van at law enforcement while they were conducting an operation," DHS posted on X.
The officer is reported to be in stable and culturally-enriched condition.
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Joy Reid: I Would Be Alarmed If I Saw a Man's Penis in the Women's Locker Rooms
—Ace
As background, Joy Reid previously admitted that she was "homophobic," stating that she would "cringe" at the sight of two men kissing, and asserted that most people would, too.
No lies detected.
But here's the lie: As a black leftist, she's allowed to say that, because blacks aren't down with everything gay like white leftists are.
But she got hired by MSNBC, the whitest and leftist of all white leftist organizations.
And when her blog got a fresh look, and her long history of (admitted) "homophobia" and derogatory cracks about then-Republican Charlie Crist being gay-- again, no lies detected -- she began claiming that her blog had been #Hacked, with unknown parties, possibly Russian, inserting homophobic material into her old and little-read blog, just to embarrass her in the future.
This lie was always ludicrous -- she never reported this very serious foreign #Hacking operation to the FBI, for example, because it's a crime to file a false criminal complaint -- so she has come up with a new way to talk about it. She no longer actually says she didn't write these posts, she just implies it, without reviving the ludicrous lie explicitly. Black Conservative Perspective clips this appearance on Piers Morgan in which Joy Reid -- or, as some call her, "Racial Maddow" -- insinuates that she didn't write the post, but admits she's "responsible" for whatever is "on that website." In other words, she didn't write this stuff, but she has so much integrity that she will take "responsibility" for the material that Russian #Hackers planted on her website. She's so full of integrity she'll take some blame for not having detected the #Hacking sooner.
Isn't that big of xer?
But now Racial Maddow is no longer employed by a White Leftist organization and can now go back to being a Black Leftist Commentator, and, get this, it turns out her views now more closely align with those that Russian #Hackers planted on her blog.
She now thinks it's alarming for women to see a penis in their sex-segregated places.
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Federal Panel of Judges Rules That Republicans Aren't Allowed to Gerrymander in Republican States
—Ace
...because when you gerrymander to reduce Democrat seats, you're usually also reducing sets dominated by black or Hispanic voters, and these judges say you can never, ever reduce the "impact" blacks or Hispanics can have on elections.
You can, of course, always reduce the impact of white voters, as California just did.
In fact, it's legally required.
A three-judge federal panel ruled that the redrawn Texas congressional redistricting map was "racial gerrymandering" and ordered the state to use 2021 maps for the midterm elections.
Since it's a federal voting rights case, the only appeal is to the Supreme Court. It's unclear whether the high court will have time to rule before the 2026 primary filing deadline next month.
"Any claim that these maps are discriminatory is absurd and unsupported by the testimony offered during ten days of hearings," Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said in a statement. "This ruling is clearly erroneous and undermines the authority the U.S. Constitution assigns to the Texas Legislature by imposing a different map by judicial edict."
Texas state law allows for partisan gerrymandering. Republicans claimed that the map was being redrawn to give them a partisan advantage and to "better reflect Texans' conservative voting preferences -- and for no other reason," said the governor. The Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that the courts could not intervene if a map was drawn to give one side a partisan advantage.
"The public perception of this case is that it's about politics," U.S. Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote in the ruling. "To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map."
Indeed, it's a lot easier to prove "racial gerrymandering" based on the number of voters of color in a new district compared to the last one. It doesn't matter if many of those black and Hispanic voters would vote Republican. The Voting Rights Act only recognized the color of the voter's skin.
GOP-aligned people filed a lawsuit against the California gerrymander that Gavin Newsom just put into action. They allege that gerrymander is also a racial gerrymander, packing Republican-leaning -- and largely white -- voters into as few districts as possible.
How much do you want to bet that that lawsuit gets laughed out of court, resulting in the de facto rule that Democrats are allowed to gerrymander but Republicans aren't?
...
California Gov. Gavin Newsom was openly gloating about the decision. He had just rammed through his own Democratic redistricting map that would reduce the nine Republicans currently serving in the 52-member California congressional delegation to four.
"Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned -- and democracy won," Newsom said in a statement Tuesday. "This ruling is a win for Texas and for every American who fights for free and fair elections."
We'll see if the Supreme Court accepts cert on an expedited basis. They're already weighing whether or not the leftist-schemer-fabricated, left-wing-judge imposed doctrine of "disparate impact" -- which claims that you can never adopt any law at all which might have a "disparate impact" on black voters, no matter legislative intent -- can still stand.
In the congressional gerrymandering fight between Republicans and Democrats ahead of the 2026 midterm election, a number of states are keeping watch for a potential game changer from the U.S. Supreme Court.During the rare rehearing of a Louisiana redistricting case in October, the court's conservative majority appeared inclined to weaken the Voting Rights Act's Section 2 protections against racial discrimination in the political mapmaking process.
Such a ruling could spark a new wave of congressional redistricting, especially in the South, where voting is often racially polarized and Section 2 has long prevented the dilution of Black minority voters' collective power. Without the current Section 2 protections, Republican-led southern states may undo districts where Black voters have a realistic opportunity of electing their preferred candidates, who are usually Democrats.
This redrawing could give the GOP a sizable boost, as the party seeks to keep control of the House of Representatives.
When the Supreme Court would release its decision is crucial. Time is running out to redo maps, which have to be finalized ahead of a state's filing deadline for candidates seeking to run in a primary election for the midterms.
"The earlier the decision comes, the more likely the decision is before the date for candidates to declare that they're going to be running, and the more time there is for legislatures to meet and consider maps and redraw their maps," says Nick Stephanopoulos, a professor specializing in election law at Harvard Law School.
The next batch of filing deadlines arrives in December. Still, Stephanopoulos notes these cut-off dates are "just products of state law."
"If a state legislature that's hellbent on gerrymandering wants to do so, it wouldn't be especially surprising if that same legislature delayed the filing deadline, potentially even change the date of the primary election, in order to give themselves enough time to gerrymander," Stephanopoulos says.
As I've already said, I think Roberts is too cowardly to vote this pernicious discriminatory rule down, and Amy Coney Barrett is a liberal-leaning flake who wants her fellow liberals to accept her back into the club.
As if we needed more bad news for 2026-- Indiana RINO liberal Republican state legislators are refusing to redistrict that "red" state. A gerrymander could change the partisan balance of the state delegation from 7 to 2 to 9-0 in favor of Republicans, but "Republicans" are refusing.
President Donald Trump is unleashing his anger at Indiana Senate Republicans for not backing the GOP redistricting effort, posting his displeasure three times to Truth Social in the last 24 hours and calling President Pro Tempore Rod Bray a "Total RINO.""In the entire United States of America, Republican or Democrat, only Indiana "Republican" State Senator Rod Bray, a Complete and Total RINO, is opposed to redistricting for purposes of gaining additional Seats in Congress," posted Trump on Monday afternoon, who has seen Republican lawmakers in four states now reject his mid-cycle redistricting scheme. In another Monday post, Trump said competitors were lining up to primary Bray.
Bray is not the only Republican in Indiana who doesn't back redistricting. On Monday, Indiana state Sen. Blake Doriot of Goshen issued a statement saying that he was a Trump supporter but that he opposed redistricting.
"I have long been a Trump supporter, and I want President Trump to continue to be successful with a Republican-led House so he can continue fixing our woke colleges, fighting illegal immigration and crime, and encouraging us to speak about our great nation and be proud of who we are as Americans -- not apologize for it," Doriot said in a statement.
The news comes as Trump is set to issue a retributive endorsement as early as Monday against one of a handful Indiana Senate Republicans who opposes the White House's mid-cycle redistricting plan.
Among the holdouts targeted by the White House: Republican state Sen. Jim Buck of Kokomo, who is facing a primary from Tipton County Commissioner Tracey Powell. Trump could back Powell Monday, according to a person familiar with his thinking speaking exclusively with POLITICO, following through on MAGA's and White House allies' long-running threats to primary opponents of their mid-decade redistricting effort intended to protect their slim House majority in the midterms next year.
Welcome to Wednesday. So far, it's not great.
Wednesday Morning Rant
—Joe Mannix
Another day, another story about ICE arresting an illegal alien who was given a CDL. Unlike the last flurry of stories about this where many of the drivers had a printed name of "NO NAME GIVEN" on their CDLs, this one does include the person's name: Akhror Bozorov. He's not only an illegal alien, he's an illegal alien who is wanted as a terrorist in his native country of Uzbekistan but was released into the country by the Biden Administration.
Like last time, however, neither DHS nor the issuing state (the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in this case), nor the press outlets covering it bring up an uncomfortable fact about these CDLs. Last time around, most of the pictures of licenses issued to Messrs. Given were REAL ID compliant licenses. So, too, was the license given to Bozorov. His REAL ID was probably fraudulent. Non-citizens may be issued them legally, but only if they have official status - green card (permanent resident), valid visa, DACA (I know) or TPS (I know). It is unlikely that Bozorov had any of these.
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The Morning Report — 11/19/25
—J.J. Sefton
Good morning kids. Well, there are autopens and then there are autopens.
At the trial for Linda Sun, a former top aide to New York Govs. Kathy Hochul and Andrew Cuomo allegedly forged Hochul’s signature on invitations for dignitaries from Henan, a province in China. . . Jurors in Brooklyn federal court were shown copies of letters purportedly sent by Hochul on March 26, 2018, inviting a six-member delegation from the province in central China to a meeting with then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo. But the letters bore clearly forged versions of Hochul’s signature — that featured “overly loopy” handwriting, her former chief of staff Jeff Lewis testified.
And speaking of autopens, there are also Manchurian candidates:
A big part of the Biden ‘autopen’ scandal is that we don’t really know who’s making decisions in parts of the government. A signature doesn’t really mean much these days and government has gotten so big and chaotic that there are really complicated chains of authority, yet a lot of the actual work, including even the signing, is down by junior personnel . . . Prosecutors say that Sun, who served as Cuomo’s director of Asian-American affairs, forged the governor’s then-No. 2 Hochul’s signature several times that year in an attempt to curry favor with Chinese officials. “Her loyalty was for sale, and the Chinese government, which wanted to influence the New York government, was willing to pay her to do their bidding,” prosecutor Amanda Shami said during last week’s opening statements. . .That’s why the question of who was actually wielding executive authority in the Biden administration and in any administration matters so much. . . What we have is a system of low-level staffers who can do anything with no oversight and can work for anyone.
While this is certainly true, it's not so much the low-level staffers, it's Biden himself. But considering his brain function was and remains somewhere between that of a cup of yogurt and a dessicated clump of lichen, it's whoever Biden was fronting for, be it Obama, Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod, George Soros or some combination of them and others. It kind of puts the stories of the Chi-Coms owning massive tracts of our farmland as well as trailer parks and other property that are very close or otherwise butting up against our military installations, and Chinese nationals with direct connection to or are agents of the Chi-Com party and/or intelligence apparatus in everything from our schools and media to some of our most sensitive defense and industrial establishments into very alarming perspective.
But not to worry because we now have this to deal with:
Mamdani’s First Endorsement Called Al Qaeda Terrorist a Hero . . . Daughter of an illegal alien criminal and terrorist supporter runs for office in New York.
Dearborn’s Muslim Mayor: Call to Prayer Through Loudspeakers No Different From ‘Church Bells’
Remember, just because this insanity takes place in places that you have long held disdain for, doesn't mean it will only stay there and never have any impact on you.
And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.
- ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY LINKS
- This needs to be a bigger story.
Hochul Aide Allegedly Forged Her Signature on Invites for Chinese Dignitaries
- A cautionary tale from the New York governor's office.
Could China Have Run the Biden Junta?
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Daily Tech News 19 November 2025
—Pixy Misa
Top Story- So, Cloudflare. (Cloudflare)
Cloudflare carries something like 20% of the world's web traffic, but for a few hours late last night (my time) or early yesterday morning (US time) it wasn't carrying much of anything, because it stopped working.
Six times.
Not a DNS problem like the recent outages at Azure and Amazon, but a fumbled configuration file change like that massive Crowdstrike outage sixteen months ago.
- And it's going to keep happening, so buckle up. (The Verge) (archive site)
I run traditional unshared physical servers at a smaller datacenter, not bound to any of the major players. On the one hand, a few years ago that datacenter had a fire and while the fire didn't cause any damage, the same could not be said for the sprinkler system mandated by local fire codes. (Yes, a sprinkler system. In a datacenter.)
On the other hand, not one of these big global outages have affected us.
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Tuesday Overnight Open Thread - November 18, 2025 [Doof]
—Open Blogger
Howdy Hordelings! Welcome to the Tuesday night ONT. So glad you stopped by. What's going on in your world tonight?
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Return to Witch Mountain Cafe
—Ace
Witch Mountain, Sedona, AZ
throwawayMambo5
Here's the trailer for Escape from Witch Mountain (1975). This is the movie where I first saw Kim Richards and I was allowed to have a crush on her because I was younger than she was. I also think this movie started the trope, which we'd see continued in the Wonder Twins, where the sister has an awesome power and the boy can turn into a bucket of lukewarm water or form the shape of a puddle. I think the boy in this had the amazing power of... playing a f***in' flute without his hands or something. Meanwhile the girl can PK an RV over a f***in' canyon like a psychic Evel Knievel. #WOKE
Florida Weather is f***ed up, too.
Hast thou seen the white whale?
Dogs showing off ninja stealth skillzzz.
Not in front of the other employees, Gertie!
My eyes and heart say "real" but my brain says "AI."
Roast duck. (Or penguin?)
Bears are begging us to domesticate them already.
For ten seconds I was certain I was looking at a woman. Now I realize I'm a furry.
Border collies never leave work back at the office.
Dog is so happy to be adopted.
Big tough doberman is a scaredy-cat for the rain.
The heart wants what it wants.
Christmas is coming, and the true enemies of Christmas are in training.
Puppy grows up to be a big strong dog but he still wants to lay his head down on his mommy.
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Zohran Mamdani Declares NYC a City of "International Law," Not American Law
—Ace
And this isn't just rhetoric. The Socialists believe this is their moment to bring about the communist utopia on earth.
Greg Price @greg_price11This is one of the most insane things I've ever heard a politician say.
Zohran Mamdani declares that New York is a "city of international law."
Last time I checked, I was pretty sure New York is an American city under U.S. law.
Hit the links for video. Embeds aren't working for me since the Cloudflare outage.
"Raylen Givens/JewishWarrior13:
Raylan Givens @JewishWarrior13🚨WATCH: Zeharan Mamdani, the incoming mayor of New York, reaffirmed yesterday in an interview with ABC network that he will do whatever he can to enforce the international arrest warrant against PM Netanyahu if he visits New York, even if it is during a visit to the UN General Assembly.
Mamdani has already said he intends to ignore Trump's lawful orders as president and as the top law enforcement officer in the country, as regards deporting criminal aliens.
So he intends to implement "international law" while committing insurrection against constitutional American law and authority.
Guy Benson @guypbensonHe is very eager to enforce illegitimate "international law" against the elected leader of the Jewish state, but is explicitly opposed to the enforcement of actual, binding federal immigration law in his city.
Islamic law trumps American law.
And the worldwide communist revolution trumps all:
Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktokBREAKING: Elected Democrats just released a video encouraging members of the military to commit treason and DEFY orders from Trump and Hegseth
Update: David Strom just wrote a post expressing the same idea: This isn't "just rhetoric." Like Hitler, they mean it.
Greg Price @greg_price11Meet Aber Kawas.
Zohran Mamdani just endorsed her for a New York State Assembly seat in Queens.
Here is Kawas saying 9-11 was America's fault because of our "system of capitalism, racism, white supremacy and islamophobia."
House Votes 427 to 1 to Release Full Epstein Files
—Ace
The lone "no" vote was cast by Rep. Clay Higgins, who objected to the trashing of grand jury secrecy and worried about many people named in the files being exposed to unfair publicity. Remember, this is all the unvetted, unverified stuff -- anyone can make any accusation and get it jotted down in a government record.
I guess this case is now a matter of such intense public interest that such concerns don't matter.
Now it goes to the Senate:
Nick Sortor @nicksortor2h
🚨 BREAKING -- IT'S OFFICIAL: The Epstein Files Transparency Act has PASSED the House of Representatives, 427-1
The sole NO vote was Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), but it's unclear why.
The bill, which is on the floor due to @RepThomasMassie and @RoKhanna's discharge petition, would force the release of the Epstein files
It now heads to the Senate, where it's expected to receive pushback, and even possibly be amended.
I think this will wash out as a net negative for Republicans, because the media will continue ignoring the actual Democrats associating with the convicted pedophile while continuing to insinuate this is a Republican scandal.
Despite the fact that if there were Republican names in those files -- especially Trump's -- Obama's and Biden's Angry Democrat DOJ lawyers would have leaked them starting in 2015 and would have kept re-leaking them through this past election.
The dog that didn't bark is the telling clue.
Leaked emails already show a Democrat group begging for donations for... current Democrat minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, pimping him as "Brooklyn's Barack."
This broke two days ago. Heard about it from George Sloppadopoulos yet?
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Leaked Emails: Epstein Despised Trump (But Had Warm Relations With Democrats!)
—Ace
The media is running cover, of course.
Democrats started this mess by releasing select emails they thought would damage Trump, but those cherry-picked messages turned out to be nothing burgers. House Republicans responded by releasing more than 20,000 emails, and the damaging information that emerged pointed right back at Democrats.
The emails revealed that Epstein really disliked Trump, telling former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers in February 2017 that he had "met some very bad people," but "none as bad as trump." In other messages with Kathryn Ruemmler, who served as White House counsel under President Barack Obama, Epstein described Trump as "worse in real life and upclose" after Ruemmler sent him a message calling Trump "so gross." So much for the narrative that Trump and Epstein were close pals.The emails also revealed that Epstein discussed blackmailing Trump with anti-Trump author Michael Wolff.
Byron York writes about the Democrats' complete lack of interest in Democrats who visited Epstein's Pedo Island, while screaming about Trump, who never visited the island.
He recaps an old article by the blackmail enthusiast Michael Wolff, noting all the names of Democrats who did not break with Epstein even after his conviction for trafficking.
Foremost not among them: Donald Trump.
The article is a long list of people who hung around with post-prison Epstein. Microsoft founder Bill Gates, "for whom Epstein has become a key adviser," was helping Epstein deal with his image problems. Mort Zuckerman, "the real estate billionaire and owner of the Daily News." PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel. Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury Secretary and president of Harvard University. Ehud Barak, the former prime minister of Israel. Then-Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim. The lawyer Reid Weingarten. Thorbjørn Jagland, then-head of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. Nathan Myhrvold, a former top executive at Microsoft. Harvard professor Martin Nowak. Richard Axel, a Nobel Prize winner. Investment fund manager Ron Baron. Josh Harris, owner of the Philadelphia 76ers and the New Jersey Devils. And then: "A high ranking official from the Obama White House, whose name I am asked not to use."They all came to Epstein's house in New York. "These meetings, and this lifestyle, have somehow stayed private or secret -- or apart -- not out of any formal or stated restrictions, but because, in some sense, it would be very hard to explain just what you're doing there with a brazen sex offender in a guffaw-inducing home flaunting all moderation," Wolff wrote. "And yet, defying disgrace, and tolerating his tone deafness -- or mocking attitude toward the zeitgeist -- so many come. Gladly. Willingly. Feeling that his invitation is quite an extraordinary privilege."
He could also have named Katie Couric and George Sloppadopoulos, but I guess he thinks he can still break into real media and wants to protect his leftwing media fellow travelers.
..Given today's political situation and the things Wolff has been saying recently, here is something interesting. Out of all the names dropped, one is conspicuously absent: Donald Trump. The billionaire developer, reality TV star, and future president, who had a falling out with Epstein around 2004, did not even merit mention as a former friend. Wolff saw fit to name former President Bill Clinton as absent, but Trump, who at that point had not yet entered national politics, was just not there. Some years later, of course, after Trump became president, his adversaries saw Epstein, like they once saw Russia, as an opportunity to bring him down, and the Epstein story became all about Trump. But in 2014, when Epstein was alive and active and Wolff wrote the profile, Trump wasn't part of the picture.
Maybe that tells you something is wrong with the way the story is being reported today. Whenever new information is released, such as the thousands of documents recently made public by the House GOP, and when that new information contains nothing to incriminate Trump, the usual suspects loudly proclaim that more new information is still being hidden that will incriminate Trump. It must all be released! One prominent Democratic senator, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, literally said recently, "Clearly, Donald Trump was at the center of a child sex ring. That is heartbreaking that the President of the United States was involved in that kind of gross, craven immorality."That is a positively surrealistic read on what we know about Epstein so far -- and we know a lot.
Of course, the Epstein emails do contain frequent mentions of Trump -- as his mortal enemy, who he believed was behind his arrest for trafficking.
York again:
"Your world does not understand how dumb [Trump] really is," Epstein wrote to former Treasury Secretary and Harvard President Lawrence Summers in May 2017, Trump's fourth month in office. When, in July 2017, former Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler wrote, "Trump is truly stupid," Epstein replied with a one-word answer: "Duh."In an exchange with New York Times reporter Landon Thomas, Epstein wrote that Trump was "evil beyond belief," and that he, Epstein, had tried to warn the world about his former friend. "I told everyone from day one," Epstein wrote.
"I know how dirty Donald is," Epstein wrote to Ruemmler in August 2018. "My guess is that non-lawyers, NY biz people have no idea." Then Epstein boasted to an unknown recipient in December 2018: "I am the one able to take him down." Meanwhile, Epstein exchanged long emails with adviser Michael Wolff in which Wolff offered Epstein counsel on trying to damage Trump, blackmail Trump, and possibly run him out of office.
It would be an understatement to note that Trump was living rent-free in Epstein's head. "The emails suggest that Trump remained a fixation for Epstein," CNN wrote, "as he's frequently mentioned numerous times over a span of nearly a decade -- including long after their friendship ended."
By the way, remember when Elon Musk, breaking with Trump, breathlessly announced that Trump was "in the Epstein files"? Of course Trump is in the Epstein files; he's all over this set of Epstein files because he was so deeply in Epstein's head. Trump will be in other Epstein files, too, because Epstein apparently could not stop thinking and talking about him.
Finally, one problem with reading the Epstein emails today is that Epstein was, in the words of one recent assessment in the Atlantic, a "notorious liar." It is reasonable to take Epstein's statements of opinion at face value -- he appeared to really think Trump was dumb -- but not his statements of fact.
So when Epstein says that victim Virginia Giuffre "spent hours at my house with [Trump]," there's no compelling reason to believe him. Giuffre, now dead, wrote a book that said no such thing about Trump and also testified under oath that Trump "didn't partake in any sex with us ... [and] never flirted with me." Giuffre said she never saw Trump and Epstein together. She was asked, "Did you ever see Donald Trump at Jeffrey's home?" and answered, "Not that I remember." In addition, she said she did not remember seeing Trump at Epstein's island, or his house in New Mexico, or his house in New York.
The Democrat-Media Party has a Hot Take on Epstein's hatred of-- not friendship with, hatred of -- Trump.
That take? "If even Jeffrey Epstein (the notorious liar, note) says that Trump is bad, then Trump must be very, very bad."
They seem incapable of understanding that if Epstein hated Trump, and considered him the worst man on the planet, and also had information about Trump engaging in criminal activity with underaged women, then of course he would have leaked that information.
Therefore: Epstein had no such information about Trump.
The media which thinks it is so smart that it is the only institution in the world capable of reading information and drawing conclusions for it still can't wrap its stunted little brain around that conclusion.
Instead, we get this: "Leave aside" the question of whether there's any evidence Trump was a client of Epstein. Just look at how many times he's "in" Epstein's emails!
As York points out: Yes, he's mentioned by Epstein, as an enemy.
But unlike dozens of Democrats, there are no emails in which Trump speaks with Epstein.
We have proof that Epstein was using his paid operative Stacey Plaskett to get anti-Trump testimony into the congressional record.
You might think, "Gee willickers, if the media is this interested in Trump-Epstein stories, surely they must all be seizing and pouncing on this one!"
You might think that, but you'd be wrong. Again.
One would expect that such a story would dominate the headlines and the talk shows, especially given the Democrats' months-long, full-court press on the Epstein Files. The Protection Racket Media has other ideas about what makes news in the Epstein case, as [Newsubsters'] Jorge Bonilla discovered watching the Sunday news shows:The Plaskett story early enough for pre-production of This Week, and yet there was no mention whatsoever of what would otherwise be a scandal. There was likewise no mention of Plaskett on NBC's Meet the Press, CBS's Face the Nation, or CNN's State of the Union.As is the case with "news" in the Trump Era, the durability of a story is directly proportional to its ability to (a) cast aspersions on Donald Trump, and/or (b) cover up some other, more nefarious scandal. ...
Epstein coaching a Member of Congress as to what questions to ask of a committee witness isn't notable? Does this not warrant prominence on the Sunday shows? For an Elitist Media intent on mining the "Epstein Files" for revelations, this is a huge omission. But not surprising, because this does not directly implicate President Donald Trump in any crime.
The wagons didn't just circle around Plaskett on television. Straight Arrow News did some research on the coverage of the story, and found that -- with a handful of exceptions -- the Protection Racket Media did its best to shut the story down...
The media is asking Plaskett zero questions, but one citizen got through on the CSPAN lines and did ask about her servicing her pedophile patron:
MAZE @mazemooreIn 2023 Stacey Plaskett was taking calls on C-SPAN and a caller asked her about her relationship with Epstein.
Plaskett: "He wanted to make contributions to the Democrat party."
She left out that she personally asked him for money and texted him during hearings on what to say.
Informed citizens, doing the job that the "American" media refuses to do.
Illegal Alien Helped by Left-Wing Judge to Escape ICE Has Now Been Deported
—Ace
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has deported an illegal alien whom Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Judge Hannah Dugan is charged with trying to help evade arrest by federal agents.
Over the weekend, ICE agents deported illegal alien Eduardo Flores-Ruiz of Mexico. Flores-Ruiz crossed the southern border in 2013 and was apprehended by Border Patrol agents in Nogales, Arizona. He was swiftly deported to Mexico, but illegally crossed the border again, a felony.
Flores-Ruiz also faced charges for strangulation and suffocation, battery, and domestic abuse.
This is what I call a "full-spectrum cultural enricher."
In April, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Dugan for allegedly helping Flores-Ruiz evade arrest by ICE agents by purposefully misdirecting agents from Ruiz inside a Wisconsin courthouse....
A month after her arrest, surveillance footage from inside the courthouse showed Dugan seemingly pointing ICE agents in the wrong direction on purpose so that Flores-Ruiz could avoid arrest.
Video of that below the fold. If it actually posts. Cloudflare is causing all sorts of outages.
I never mentioned it, but back in late August a federal judge denied Dugan's motion to dismiss on grounds that as a judge she can do wha'ever she want.
A federal judge on Tuesday denied a motion to dismiss the criminal charges against Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan in the immigration enforcement-related case that has drawn national attention as an example of the Trump Administration's effort to punish judges it sees as antagonistic to its increased deportation efforts.
No bias detected.
Hint: She wasn't arrested for "being antatgonistic to increased deportation efforts."
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman issued a 27-page order denying Dugan's motion. Dugan's attorneys had filed to dismiss the case earlier this summer, arguing that the prosecution violated judicial immunity and represented extreme federal overreach into the operations of the state court system.
Continue reading
Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury, Harvard Professor Larry Summers, "Steps Back from Public Life" After Revelation He Sought Jeffrey Epstein to be His "Wingman" In His Seduction of the Daughter of a Red Chinese Banking Executive
—Ace
This is somehow connected to Drumpf, I just know it!!!
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers in a statement Monday said he would be stepping back from public life and expressed deep regret for past messages with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in the wake of new revelations about the extent of their relationship."I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused," he told POLITICO. "I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein. While continuing to fulfill my teaching obligations, I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me."
Emails revealed that Summers, who served as Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and a top adviser to President Barack Obama, repeatedly sought advice from Epstein on romantically pursuing a woman he referred to as his mentee. Epstein in one message referred to himself as the prominent economist's "wing man." Summers in another exchange suggested women in aggregate have a lower IQ than men.
Summers' comment comes after a senior Trump administration official and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) each called on institutions to sever ties with Summers.
The statement leaves question marks hanging over the fate of several positions Summers occupies, which include a board seat at OpenAI, a tenured position at Harvard, an unpaid nonresident fellow position at the liberal Center for American Progress think tank and a paid contributor role at Bloomberg News. A Summers spokesperson declined to answer a direct question about those roles.
Politico refuses to name the woman he was trying to seduce. It was Jin Keyu, a professor in China, and daughter of a major figure in Chinese banking.
Matt Stoller @matthewstollerNov 17
There's an interesting angle about the CCP in the story of Larry Summers trying to seduce someone he was mentoring. Her father is a Chinese official running part of the Belt and Road initiative, and she explicitly thanked Summers for supporting her Dad
Matt Stoller @matthewstollerNov 1
It's very awkward that Larry Summers was manipulating Chinese and U.S. politics as a means of seducing a Chinese economist he was mentoring.
Is it "awkward"? Some might call it efficient.
Flashback to a Charlie Kirk tweet from July 25: Trump tells a reporter, "You ought to be talking about Larry Summers.... or Bill Clinton, who went to the island 28 times. I never went to the island."
Trump said yesterday: "We have NOTHING to do with Epstein. The Democrats do. All of his friends were Democrats. Reid Hoffman, Larry Summers, Bill Clinton. They went to his island ALL THE TIME. All Democrats."
But asking Bill and Hillary Clinton about their repeated trips to Pedo Island will be difficult: They're refusing to testify.
They cite no justification for doing so, they're just refusing.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna @RepLunaBill and Hillary Clinton are refusing to appear before House Oversight for their depositions regarding Jeffrey Epstein. Notice how House Democrats suddenly have nothing to say about it.
Remember when Peter Navarro refused to testify and Joe Biden sent him to prison?
Drew Holden @DrewHolden360Peter Navarro went to prison for what the Clintons are currently doing on the Epstein hearings.
The House is voting soon to release all the secret Epstein grand jury materials. The flake traitor "libertarian" Tom Massie is outgassing right now.
Trump asked the House to vote in favor of the release.
I'll be posting more about the Epstein disclosures -- and the media's refusal to cover them -- later today.
