The Morning Rant

—CBD

For some unfathomable reason, President Trump announced on Tuesday that military aid to Israel would end this year. His explanation is a mess of the rational and the irrational.

Is it a good idea? Absolutely.

Was it announced without any thought and without any political advantage? Absolutely.

Here is the transcript of the interview, and here is the salient portion.

Why? Because they don't need it, Brian. I mean, I asked them, because they don't need it. And because why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayad when they don't need it? It's a bad -- it's a bad talking point because when you say, why don't we give everybody $4 billion? Israel's our number one; we give them more than anybody else and they no longer need it. We've been doing it for years, I've been doing it, but Israel is a very thriving country, they don't need it. If they did need it, I would say keep it going.

Regardless of whether the aid is a good idea, El-Sayad's comments should be refuted as contrary to the current law and policy of the United States government. Recognizing the political pitfalls of aid to Israel is reasonable, but changing that dynamic as an afterthought on election Tuesday, rather than using it to his and the Republican Party's political advantage is simply stupid.

As for the aid itself? Israel obviously requires a large and sophisticated military to counter the many threats against it, and since American weaponry is the best in the world, it is appropriate that it prioritize that technological advantage. But that aid has been a millstone around Israel's neck for a very long time. It has given the American president a huge amount of power over Israel's military decisions, and to a lesser extent its foreign policy. Most recently, Drooling Joe Biden (or someone in his administration) restricted shipments of certain weapons to Israel to control its military operations in Gaza. And before that, in 2014, the Obama administration restricted shipments of Hellfire missiles.

But the real control occurs behind the scenes. The threat is not that Israel will be unable to purchase American weaponry, but that there are strings attached to each purchase. And that is a caustic and dangerous situation, because Israel cannot always act in its own interests, but must defer to American foreign policy demands and the whims of the president, whoever he might be.

Those 2,000 and 500 pound bombs that Biden restricted? How many Israeli soldiers died because they had to go house-to-house (a brutal and dangerous tactic), rather than simply destroying the terrorist hives from the relative safety of the air? How many hostages were killed because the Biden administration slowed the Israeli military effort?

The military and technological relationship between Israel and America is strong. Civilian high-tech and military cooperation makes us both stronger. While the loss of four billion dollars in aid will hurt the Israeli military budget, the freedom to act independently is, in the long term, a far more valuable thing.

But the political calculation was ham-handed at best, and non-existent at worst. It did nothing for President Trump except buttress JD Vance's drift toward Tucker Carlson-style Jew-hate, and it may very well have injured Bibi Netanyahu's political machinations in Israel to create a strong coalition.

Was it off-the-cuff pontification, or was it planned? Who knows, but the result is a mess. I doubt that this announcement, had it been made at a politically opportune moment a few weeks or months ago would have prevented the ass-kicking of the mid-term elections, but it might have mitigated it somewhat.

Political capital is ephemeral, and whatever President Trump might have earned with this ill-timed announcement will be dissipated by the time he needs it.

And that is illustrative of the problem with the Trump administration!

[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter and X/Twitter]. And if you folks who are on X/Twitter would follow me it would be much appreciated!

Mid-Morning Art Thread

—CBD

Vertical Mesquite
Tsuruoka Kakunen

The Morning Report — 11/5 /26

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning kids. As you can see and you could have guessed the overwhelming majority of the links this morning are analyses and opinions about the absolute disaster that was the midterm elections. For those of us old enough to remember them, past elections came and went and win lose or draw, we mostly shrugged our shoulders especially if our side/candidates did not emerge victorious and thought that life goes on, America was and always will be America and nothing much really will change.

This was more or less the tone of the latest podcast linked here as well as in the sidebar and available on the most popular platforms listed at the bottom of this post

That said, given the nature of who and what comprises the Democrat Party and especially a large percentage of the candidates that won both House and Senate seats on Tuesday, I truly do not share the optimism about the future of my Cohost CBD. Even still, as I have noted in the past, if my dear mother of blessed memory and her family miraculously could survive death camps, the labor brigades and death marches at the hands of the Nazis and still wind up living relatively long, blessed, fulfilled and happy lives, then is all really lost?

Well, I too am desperate to be as optimistic as I can, but in answer to that question we sure as hell are going to find out. And it ain't gonna be pretty.

In a resurfaced clip shared on social media this week, Cliff Connolly, a member of the steering committee of the far-left Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), emphasized the DSA’s “hatred” of the Constitution. The DSA may quadruple its presence in the House of Representatives and potentially force concessions from Hakeem Jeffries in any bid for Speaker following the midterms. . . Replacing the Constitution and the Presidency, Abolishing the Senate and Expanding the House, Ranked-Choice Voting and Multiparty Politics, Voting Rights for Noncitizens, Ending the Electoral College, Subordinating the Judiciary. (Meh they already control it- jjs), D.C. Statehood, Publicly-Financed Elections.

I can hear some of you groaning that it's all just blather and that there's no way in hell they can achieve any of that. Well if you don't think they're not going to go for it, now that they control both chambers, quite a few statehouses, including places like TEXAS that was supposed to be a bastion of Americanism, as well as the bulk of the bureaucracy and much of the Judiciary they're looking at green lights and no speed limits. And what of police forces and even the US Military?! plus the Antifa and BLM goon squads? I mean, for fuck's sake people we now have an actual U.S. Senator who is supported by and likely an actual member of the Muslim Brotherhood!

As friend and friend of the blog the erudite and estimable historian Robert Spencer postulates:

Many have observed that this election was a choice between continuing as a free republic or becoming a totalitarian socialist state and/or an Islamic republic. Many others, of course, dismissed such talk as campaign hyperbole, and it won’t happen all at once, but anyone who fails to recognize the hostility of the “progressives” to dissent and their determination to transform the nation into a one-party state are simply naïve or tragically uninformed. . . the MAGA movement is now dead. Those who hate America and everything it has been are firmly in power in Congress, and in two years will capture the presidency as well. The consequences of all this will be far-reaching, even to the point of making the free, open, and peaceful society in which we once lived a dim memory. All citizens of the United States should have taken it as a warning when one half of the body politic declared that restoring the nation’s greatness was a noxious and execrable idea. Or perhaps by the time that group constituted half of the electorate, it was already too late.

In any case, the twilight of what remains of that greatness is now upon us.

And from the Central Committee and Politburo conference table, I have this item from WInnie the Pooh's pu-pu platter:

China’s state-run Global Times wrote in the wake of the U.S. midterms that “the ‘myth’ of Western-style democracy is losing its appeal, even in the West.” The Chinese Communist paper did not explain why it decided to put its own cheap shot of “myth” in scare quotes, as the word was not quoted from any other source, and the point of the editorial was that democracy is mythical because the citizens of the U.S. and other Western nations do not actually believe their votes bring them better government.

Dumb statement in that Xi should've congratulated the forces of freedom and democracy such as we have here in the PRC! That last line is actually kind of humorous in that it's unintentionally truthful. We, that is our fellow citizens in name only just recreated , no not '68, but 1933 Germany right here at home!

Well as the late great Andrew Breitbart so brilliantly observed, politics is directly downstream from culture.

How Hollywood Helped Fuel Tuesday’s Blue Tsunami: Call it a collective approach, one that aligned key cultural forces together with one goal above all else. Progressive power.

Beyond that, this utter hideousness is also what it begets...

A special education teacher at a Montgomery County, Maryland, elementary school urged women to "stop giving birth" to boys because America's "patriarchal hell" means they're all "menace[s] to society," a Washington Free Beacon review found. The teacher, Dana Zentgraf, also called to overthrow the U.S. government. "It's your son too. It's all of them," Zentgraf wrote in a Facebook post under her online name, "Da Graf." "They are all menace[s] to society and we need to stop giving birth to them."

Well if politics is downstream from culture then what is being taught to our children from Pre-K through Post-Grad is upstream from all of it.

Unless and until we wrest total control of education, all is well and truly lost, perhaps forever. And considering the results of last Tuesday, the advances made by parents and others in breaking up or starting to break up the Indoctrinaton Mill that American academia has been for nearly 60 years will vanish.

On all this I nevertheless wish you all to keep the faith and have a good day, and pray for guidance and for the America we yearn for to somehow reemerge from the wreckage of Tuesday and what it will beget, and to endure.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• “the ‘myth’ of Western-style democracy is losing its appeal, even in the West.”
  China Gloats After U.S. Midterms: The World Is Tired of Democracy

Daily Tech News 5 November 2026

—Pixy Misa

• The CEO of Team Group - a maker of memory modules and SSDs but not of the chips themselves - says that the shortage will get worse next year before probably getting worse still in 2028. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  He also notes that the Big Three memory manufacturers whose profits now need to be calculated using the alphabets of dead languages rather than regular numbers are in no hurry to reverse this trend.
  
  Of course this means they'll get their lunch eaten in the long term by Chinese manufacturers like CXMT and YTMC, and good riddance.
  
  
  
• China meanwhile is still well behind the curve on complicated logic chips like GPUs, and has turned to Nvidia with a $70 billion order for export-friendly RTX Pro 5500 models. They'll get 1% of that if they're lucky, because Nvidia can't get the GPU chips or the memory chips. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  A pox on every house.

Wednesday Night ONT - November 4, 2026 [TRex]

—Open Blogger

Good evening Horde! The time has come for mid-week shenanigans of the overnight variety. The bar is open and fully stocked. Step up and place your order.

Welcome to the Wednesday night ONT which means another edition of random overnight fun and games. Pull up a chair and join the fun. Good will offerings of amusing puns are encouraged. Pants are optional. Be nice to your fellow commenters and AoS contributors.

If you're a troll, go away.

This is a Tucker, Candace, Megyn, and Bill Kristol free zone. Please.

[Top photo: Newark Airport, Terminal A - flag in reverse side flag configuration (right shoulder, stars leading). The other side wasn't photo accessible at the time.]

***

ONT Election Coverage

How did the Idaho advisory vote for a state gun turn out? The Wednesday ONT has you covered. Clearly the Winchester supporters are strong. Congratulations to the winner!

***

ONT Event Coverage

Are you wise in the ways of the Pittsburgh Parallel Parking Championship?

For six years, the Parallel Parking Championship in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has (for some of us) been motorsport's crown jewel, a thrilling contest pitting man and machine against time and a 20 foot parking space. The event was first organized by a young couple named Dan and Jenna, just to settle a long-standing family debate about who was the best parallel parker. It has since grown into a raucous street party, a participatory art form, a gift to motorists, and a communal act of joy.

The rules and scoring are simple:

Each driver begins from their preferred position and the timer starts when the referee sees the reverse lights of the car. The driver parks, then shouts "Done" out the window, stopping the clock. Hitting the curb or either adjacent car results in disqualification. Your final score is your time, multiplied by your distance to the curb. Ignore the units for now, and think about the implications. If one can get twice as close by taking twice as much time, that's a decent tradeoff. There's a small bonus for bigger vehicles, but it seemed insufficient; most good scores came from smaller cars.

I don't see a 2027 date yet, but looks like the last several annual events have taken place in mid September.

***

ONT Department of Archeology

"Noah's Ark remains" found burned and buried 30 feet below final resting place

Researchers claim they've potentially discovered wood from Noah's Ark in Eastern Turkey, potentially cracking a caper that has eluded believers for thousands of years.

The so-called discovery was reportedly made in the Durupınar Formation, a roughly 538-foot-long geological structure near Mount Ararat.

Discovered in 1959, site has fascinated Ark hunters for decades due to its ship shape and proximity to the events in the Bible.

Andrew Jones, project head and founder of Noah's Ark Scans, told the Daily Mail that they've discovered both charred and uncharred wood nearly 30 feet underground, which could potentially be "the charred remains of Noah's Ark."

The "so-called discovery"? Odd wording. Also good to know that the Ark's remains are beneath its final resting place. Would be a little strange if it was otherwise. Anyway...

However, Jones notes that the wood could entail the remains of a campfire a shepherd had started while sheltering inside the Ark hundreds of years ago.

Although they're unsure if it was purposefully set alight or ignited via lightning strike or volcanic eruption.

Doesn't really narrow it down, does it?

***

Mandatory Metallica

Do you know the Metallica pancakes story?

During a 1986 tour while Metallica and Anthrax were eating breakfast together, Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante asked Cliff Burton what vocal phrase James Hetfield shouts right before Kirk Hammett's guitar solo.

Burton casually joked that Hetfield was shouting "Pancakes!" (though the actual live/recorded lyric is typically "Fix me!"). For the rest of the tour, Burton would wink and mouth or say "Pancakes!" to Benante whenever that part of the song came on live.

Benante told Hetfield the story in 2010 who leaned into it, famously shouting "Pancakes!" (and evolving it into "Pancakes! Go!") during live performances of "Master of Puppets." Burton died in a 1986 tour bus accident. What started as a breakfast joke turned into an homage to Burton.

Good example here at the 5:34 mark:

***

Niche YouTube Channel of the Week

Tonight's feature is a YouTube channel from Joseph Ricketts. A recurring theme of this feature is my endless fascination that a relatively niche interest - if done well - can find and sustain an audience. Tonight's channel is a great example. It is a YouTube channel dedicated to snorkeling in any available body of water and showing what is there. That's it. No graphics, contests, challenges, or overwrought drama.

The channel's description is accurate: "I'll snorkel pretty much anywhere." Springs, rivers, ocean kelp forests, creeks, caves, and ponds. Perhaps the most odd venue so far is a night expedition into a retaining pond adjacent to a Home Depot. He's based in Florida but has videos from elsewhere too.

I'm not aware of anyone that is spending their time filming and commenting on retention pond ecosystems, let alone doing so without veering into clickbait. Joseph appears to love snorkeling and seeing the creatures of the water.

His videos are not complicated. They show him snorkeling, filming and include his commentary on what he sees. That's it. Want to see what a spring looks like up close? Want to see what it looks like where two rivers converge?

If you're curious to know about the world below the water line, check out his channel. He's been doing this since 2001 and has over 155k subscribers. Most videos attract several hundred thousand views (the Home Depot video now has over half a million views).

For a sample video, here's one with the goal of finding and filming giant tadpoles in a Florida spring:

***

News you can use - generator testing:

Interesting that a common comment is a request to include the Harbor Freight product in such a test. Apparently, the HF product is popular.

***

Pittsburgh Scanner

The Pittsburgh police scanner is an internet treasure. Thank you people of Pittsburgh and thank you Pittsburgh scanner!

***

Warren Zevon covering Prince on Letterman for the big ONT finish:

***

Correspondence can be sent to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com where it will be sorted and processed and filed. Are you lurking ????

Close it up

Post-Disaster Cafe

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Feisty badgers.

Dog is really earning this stick.

Baby hippo doesn't want to get out of the water. Until his mom tells him to.

Tigers are really good climbers. So there's no chance of escaping them. As with bears.

Expect traffic delays due to dam construction.

Ride the dragon.

Circus parrot.

An unhinged Democrat Constituent decided to attack a group of firefighters. This went as well as most of the plans of low-impulse-control, low-IQ individuals.

A longer video here.

Mountain goat shakes off, powers away from a mountain lion who's got it in his jaws.

Quick Hits

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Almost as if oil was being hoarded to drive up prices and then released the moment the polls closed: Crude oil prices plummet a day after the election.

Via Democrat propaganda outlet NBC:

Oil prices dropped sharply Wednesday, propelled by growing hopes for a resolution in the Iran war.

European Brent crude fell below $100 per barrel for the first time since Oct. 7. The move translated to a nearly $8 drop, or an 8.3% decline. U.S. crude oil, or West Texas Intermediate, also slipped 8.3% to close at about $88.12. It was oil's biggest daily decline since April.

Relief for consumers may follow. Oil's fall could bring the national average price of gas down below $4 in the "days ahead," Patrick De Haan, an analyst at GasBuddy, said.

Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt

Hamas Piker: I HATE AMERICA! YOU DESERVED 9/11
DNC: Well, we have a big tent!

Haley Stevens: I don't think we should blame Jews for produce
DNC: YOU TRAITOR! YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A USED CONDOM!

What a time to be alive.

Bill Melugin @BillMelugin_

7h

Understand the implications of what happened in Texas last night.

Gina Hinojosa has called on Gov. Abbott to end state & local cooperation with ICE & she can order that on day one.

Hinojosa voted against the 2017 SB 4 as a TX state rep. The bill was essentially a sanctuary cities ban and required TX law enforcement to cooperate with ICE detainers. She then voted against another SB 4 in 2023, which made it a state crime to cross illegally into Texas.

Should there be another border crisis in coming years, there will likely be no resistance from Texas at the border. No Texas DPS, no TX National Guard, no razor wire or water buoys, and no Operation Lone Star, which Hinojosa called a "dog and pony show" and "political theater".

Remember when 15,000 Haitians surged illegally into Del Rio, TX in 2021 under the international bridge? That was only stopped because Texas DPS responded on Abbott's orders and physically blocked further crossings by lining up their cruisers to form a wall. The Biden Border Patrol was caught off guard and offered almost no resistance, except for some horseback agents who were falsely slandered for "whipping".

Additionally, because Republicans failed to pass any legislation codifying President Trump's border security measures, if Dems take the White House in 2028, that Dem president could, if he/she wants to, reverse every single Trump border security policy immediately upon taking office because they were all done at the executive level, and they can order Border Patrol to go back to a passive catch & release policy like we saw under Biden.

Meanwhile, the latest caravan of illegal immigrants is due in Texas within weeks.

JD Vance: Let's Face It, the Real Takeaway From the Election Is That Trump Is a Warmonger and We Have to Embrace the Anti-Israel Policies of My Good Friend Tucker Carlson

—Disinformation Expert Ace

JD Vance has repudiated Trump's prosecution of the war with Iran.

We should be being nice to 9th century savages who are building nuclear weapons. Look at Europe -- just being nice to them works every time!

Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday called for a major pivot in the Trump administration's priorities after the Republicans lost control of the House and Senate in the Tuesday evening midterm contests.

Democrats took Senate seats not just in battleground states, but in typically Republican bastions like Texas, Kansas, and South Carolina. Vance, for his part, acknowledged that the administration had lost large portions of reliable voters.

"The reason we lost is the war," he posted on X. "The president himself said so last night. If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest," Vance went on. "But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there."

There's no doubt the Iran War was a major issue:

Byron York @ByronYork

From exit polls, the percentage of voters who ranked a particular issue a "crucial or major factor" in deciding their vote, followed by the percentage of them who voted Democrat:
90% Government corruption (56%)
89% Cost of living (58%)
74% Iran (63%)
73% Immigration enforcement policies (46%)
56% AI/Data centers (64%)

But "get out of Iran, leave those poor savages alone" is a big position on the left, and among the Ron Paul/Nick Fuentes Complete Isolation and Appeasement pseudoright -- who tend to vote for Democrats to show us all how much they hate us (and Israel).

Turning Israel into an enemy will make the Muslims like us.

Trust them!

JD Vance
@JDVance

One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"--whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.

So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."

Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.

There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn't sharp enough down the stretch. I'm sure that's true.

But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.

Another pollster--one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we'd lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:

1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel

Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She's also a great person.)

In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement--by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.

The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.

If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.

But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.

I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, "I told you so": you're right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let's take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.

JD Vance pointedly refused to endorse Beyamin Netanyahu, too. That's his choice, of course, but let's drop the pretense that he isn't just aping the politics of his close friend Tucker Carlson.

Vance has a lot of reason to want these to be the causes.

If the future of the GOP isn't through Michigan and the white working class but instead trying to win over Hispanics, there's no reason to run him.

Posted by: Red Turban Someguy

By the way, does JD Vance's Stronk America First Agenda include reducing the huge flow of Indians into this country to take American jobs and crash 18-wheelers into American citizens, or nah?

Nah, right?

I bet it's very important we retain a friendly relationship with India, right? And continue allowing huge transfers of population from India to the US?

Hey buddy, if you want to play this kind of politics, I'm game. Deal me in.

If you believe that Trump's divisiveness was a contributing factor to our loss (and our loss in 2022, and our "loss" in 2020), then you probably will have reservations about JD Vance's Big Smart Harvard-Educated Plan to replace Trump's divisiveness with the much more divisive divisiveness of Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes.

That's gonna be a no from me, dog. Hard pass.

Barack Obama: We Have to Solve This Problem of High Healthcare Premiums I Caused Under Obamacare After Vowing to Make Health Care Affordable Forever

—Disinformation Expert Ace

You don't say.

This will be a key Democrat demand for the next two -- or hundred -- years: Fix the healthcare scheme we promised you would fix healthcare forever. Take away healthcare from Republicans and give it to Democrats.

In the final sprint to the midterm elections, former President Barack Obama has hit the campaign trail to stump for Democrat candidates.

One of his favorite talking points? Health insurance premiums, he says, are too high. Apparently, he doesn't see the irony.

"We've got to make sure that nobody has to worry about high healthcare premiums," Obama declared at a rally in Georgia recently. If that sounds familiar, it's because it's virtually word-for-word the same line Obama was feeding to audiences during his first campaign for president in 2008.
AMAC Magazine, free with membership

Perhaps the 44th president needs to be reminded that his signature legislative achievement (the one that literally bears his name) was sold to the American public as a cure-all to lower health insurance premiums. Or, perhaps he simply can't cope with the fact that Obamacare is just as much of an ugly, dismal failure as his grotesque presidential library -- a monstrosity that has turned the American healthcare system into a nightmare for virtually everyone.

Either way, voters should feel insulted at how stupid Obama apparently thinks they are. How many times do Democrats expect the public to buy the same lie?

Disney Groomer Corporation Looks to Slash Workforce by 20% Because of Declining Revenues

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Palate cleanser, and early. I think we need it.

Some good news, by which I mean bad news for bad people:

The Walt Disney Company is looking at eliminating thousands of positions and has asked some managers to target 20% in annual cost savings, according to multiple media reports.

The possible job cuts come as CEO Josh D'Amaro is reportedly facing challenges from growing AI use, weaker box office revenue, mounting competition from streaming challengers and a slowdown in theme park attendance abroad, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the news.

It's almost as if alienating your (former) core audience with divisive family-unfriendly "inserting queerness" messaging has consequences.

And this isn't the first round of cuts:

...

Still, the company has made a number of substantial cuts this year. In fact, just last week, the Walt Disney Company's theme parks division laid off between 100 and 200 people.

...

The decision came after Disney offered voluntary early retirement packages in August to executives as part of a cost-reduction effort.

...

Prior to this memo, Disney had eliminated 1,000 roles in April, as well as made staff cuts in July and September. The September staff reductions impacted an additional couple hundred employees, mainly in the tech and HR areas.

In further Everything Is Gay news, Ben Wishlaw, who played a young "Q" since Skyfall, was disinvited from returning to the series when it reboots.

He says that he was disappointed, like George Takei was, that, while his character was made Officially Gay, for some reason a franchise in which he is only a secondary player chose to focus on the main characters instead of his secondary character's sexual leanings.

Ben Whishaw has confirmed he won't be returning as Q in the Bond franchise.

Whishaw, 46, played 007's tech wizard Q for nine years, appearing in Skyfall (2012), Spectre (2015) and No Time to Die (2021).

At just 31 when he was cast, he was the youngest actor to play the MI6 gadgets master; replacing John Cleese.

He was a bit of a drip if I'm being honest but I don't know if I can blame him for that. Everyone in the "Bond" movies -- I don't know if they really were even Bond movies at all -- was a sad-sack Low Energy Jeb after Casino Royale, probably because the idiot playing Bond thought that dour and depressive = realistic and gritty.

Oh, and of course Daniel Craig wanted Bond himself to be acknowledged as gay. I guess making Q gay was the Safety School of sexuality reveals.

In a 2024 interview, the actor shared his hunch that producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson will 'start all over again' with a completely new cast following Daniel Craig's departure as 007.

Last year Amazon MGM Studios struck a deal with longtime franchise stewards Broccoli and Wilson to take full control of Ian Fleming's franchise, and with auditions finally taking place for the lead role, Whishaw has confirmed his suspicions of a complete overhaul were correct.

The Sunday Times writes that Whishaw 'won't be in the next instalment', whilst talking to the actor about his acting back catalogue.

Whishaw said in the interview: 'I rarely think about Bond... that would be weird' as he mused about the fervent speculation around the reboot.

Me too. I was a onetime Bond fanatic and now don't even care who the next Fake Bond Actor will be.

Whilst he hasn't dwelled on his time with 007, Whishaw does have one regret about his portrayal of Q -- admitting that his character's homosexuality felt 'unsatisfying' because although there is a brief reference to him going on a date with a man in No Time to Die, his sexuality isn't picked up on again.

I mean, why would it be? It's the Bond Franchise not Q's Grindr Adventures.

It's a typical corporate move to make a minor character "canonically gay" for Twitter attention and then drop the matter.

In more James Bond news (and you can tell how checked out I am because I'm adding this as an afterthought instead of featuring it as big entertainment news), they have supposedly cast the new Bond.

As Nerdorotic said: He's white, so that's something.

I think one of those geeks also said something like "He's a decent pick of you're making a realistic movie about SAS operatives from the working or middle class, but not so much for a gentleman spy franchise."

I don't know. I've never seen a movie with him in it, except one of the "Fantastic Beasts" movies where he played, I'm guessing, a very secondary role. I have no memory of him (as I don't really remember the Fantastic Beast movie, except for Randy Daytona, who I really liked).

Update: He played who I guessed he played, "Newt Scamander's" brother, who's in the second movie for like three minutes.

The Brutal Shifts in Demographic Groups That Doomed Us

—Disinformation Expert Ace

I started bolding the important parts but I stopped because it's all bold-faced important.

Dmitri Bolt:

According to preliminary exit polling data from an SSRS Voter Poll, Latino men shifted 33-points toward Republicans in 2024 before swinging 24 points back toward Democrats in 2026. Latinos overall moved 27-points right before shifting 20-points left last night, while Catholics followed a 25-point Republican swing with a 16-point Democratic reversal.

The biggest reversal came among voters ages 18-29, whose 13-point shift toward Republicans in 2024 was overwhelmed by a 35-point swing toward Democrats last night. Suburban voters swung 20 points toward Democrats after moving six points right in 2024, while Asian voters shifted 25 points left after moving 12 points right.

The losses also extended to groups often associated with the Republican base. Men shifted four-points toward Republicans between 2020 and 2024, then swung 11 points toward Democrats in the preliminary 2026 results. Voters without a college degree moved 11 points right in 2024 before shifting seven-points back left, while households earning $50,000--$99,999 followed a 20-point Republican shift with an 11-point Democratic reversal. Even rural and small-town voters moved 15-points right before swinging 11 points back toward Democrats.

Did the electorate decide we were too "harsh" on immigration by deporting illegals, including dangerous predatory illegal alien criminals?

Maybe. Keep in mind, people are stupid and weak-minded. We've seen for decades that the public agrees that taxes should be cut and that the budget should be balanced, but then cry that you're being too meeeean when you actually cut government spending and firing goldbricking federal "workers" at useless money-pits like USAID.

They want all the benefits of fiscal sanity without the meeeean actions required to enact it.

Similary, the public may have decided they don't like open borders or illegals flooding our nation. But they think it's too meeeean to actually seal the borders and deport the illegals.

Remember when Kamala Harris' big contribution as Border Czar was to say to illegals, "Don't come"?

It could be that the sad fact is that while the public does want the border secured, the "meanest" action they will accept to secure it is a drunken sixty-year-old ex-partygirl mistress telling people "Don't come." Anything more than that is "extreme."

Update: I wonder if, starting six months ago, Trump let up on the deportation raids. And then restarted them after the midterms -- similar to his easing off on Iran with the promise of action after the midterms.

It is pretty firmly established that gas prices drove votes.

Note that in the below graph, the price of gas is inverted so that high prices are represented by the line going down and low prices are shown by the line going up.

It is done this way to show the very close alignment with Trump's approval rate. As the price of gas goes up, Trump's approval goes down.

A Federal Magistrate Dismisses Charges Against the FBI Agents Who Lied About Interfering in the Hunter Biden Probe

—Disinformation Expert Ace

A change of topic for the moment.

One of the FBI agents who lied under oath about interfering in the Hunter Biden probe openly admitted she was running a "shadow government" in the US bureacracy.

A federal judge on Monday dismissed a criminal complaint against two former FBI officials accused of lying to Congress about Hunter Biden, citing what he said was "weaponization" of President Donald Trump's Justice Department just before the midterm elections.

In a scathing, hourlong ruling read from the bench, U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said the investigation that produced the charges against Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides was rushed, conducted at the behest of Trump and FBI Director Kash Patel and dogged by "critical mistakes" that require the dismissal of the case.

"I am deeply troubled by what has happened here in this case," Faruqui said. "Whathas transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization."

Oh? We'll soon see that this magistrate -- not a real judge, and not confirmed by the Senate -- is zimself a big Weaponizer so long as that Weaponization goes against the right.

The ruling may not bring a permanent end to the matter because the Justice Department still has the option of pursuing an indictment, even though it has struggled during the Trump administration to persuade grand juries in the nation's capital to return indictments in politically charged prosecutions like this one.

The magistrate admits his decision is motivated by the political calendar:

...

"I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend that I cannot read a calendar," Faruqui said, alluding to the proximity of the charges to the elections, which will determine control of Congress for the last two years of the Republican president's second term.

Prosecutors had accused the two former FBI officials of falsely downplaying to Congress their knowledge of investigations into President Joe Biden's son and of a laptop the younger Biden dropped off at a computer repair shop in Delaware in 2019. But Faruqui said the Justice Department had failed to establish in its complaint that any statements made during 2023 testimony were intentionally false and had affected lawmakers' investigation of Hunter Biden or that the former officials had any motive to deceive.

Hans Mahncke @HansMahncke

This would be comical if it weren't so depressing. FBI officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides were caught dead to rights. Anyone with two functioning brain cells who has read the documents can see that they flatly denied to Congress what they were openly discussing in their own emails. The failure to do anything about the completely out-of-control DC courts, or to at least try to start fixing a system that makes it impossible to hold Democrats accountable, will be the most damning legacy of these past two years.

Oh, and:

A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit against Harvard University by the Justice Department, which alleged the school failed to provide admissions records that could ensure it had ended affirmative action in admissions.

The DOJ had accused Harvard of stonewalling the investigation into potential racial discrimination and refusing to comply with a federal investigation, ABC News reported. The lawsuit asked a judge to force the university to turn over the requested records.

U.S. District Judge Myong Joun concluded the DOJ failed to take the necessary procedural steps to acquire the data before filing the lawsuit.

Joun added that the ruling doesn't end the dispute over the data, stressing her decision was on the limited question of whether the government had adequately satisfied the prerequisites, at this point, for judicial enforcement to occur.

Below: More on magistrate Zia Faruqui.

The Wreckage

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Sorry for bailing last night. It was painful.

It was a bloodbath.

We're in a tough position now.

I'll talk about my early reactions and theories on the night in a later post.

For now, the damage assessment:

Republicans entered the night with a 53 to 47 edge, and Democrats needed to flip four seats. They flipped at least seven, with victories in some of the most Republican states in the country. The Republican seats lost were:

Texas: James Talarico defeated Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Ohio: former Sen. Sherrod Brown beat Sen. Jon Husted.
Kansas: Adam Hamilton unseated Sen. Roger Marshall.
Iowa: Josh Turek defeated Rep. Ashley Hinson.
South Carolina: Annie Andrews upset longtime Sen. Graham.
North Carolina: former Gov. Roy Cooper beat Michael Whatley for an open seat.
Maine: Troy Jackson unseated Sen. Susan Collins, who conceded Wednesday.

Democrats also held every seat they were defending in the battlegrounds. Sen. Jon Ossoff beat Rep. Mike Collins in Georgia, Chris Pappas defeated former Sen. John E. Sununu in New Hampshire, and Abdul El-Sayed defeated former Rep. Mike Rogers for Michigan's open seat, per CBS News. Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota and Juliana Stratton in Illinois kept open seats in Democratic hands.

We don't know yet if the cheating whore Mary Peltola stole the seat in Alaska from the real Dan Sullivan.

We also lost gubernatorial races, including Texas'.

Republicans held a 26 to 24 advantage in governorships going in, with 36 races on the ballot. Democrats flipped four GOP-held offices.

Texas: Gina Hinojosa defeated three-term Gov. Greg Abbott.
Georgia: Keisha Lance Bottoms beat Rick Jackson, ending a 24-year Republican run in the governor's office.
Ohio: Amy Acton defeated Vivek Ramaswamy to succeed Gov. Mike DeWine.
Iowa: State Auditor Rob Sand beat Zach Lahn.

At least we can finally say goodbye to the annoying game show host and grifter Vivek Ramaswamy.

They're still counting House seats, but not only did the Democrats take the House, but they'll have the largest majority they've had in decades.

In the the House, Democrats will start the year with what would be its largest majority in nearly two decades, NBC News projects. Democrats flipped more than two dozen districts, some that voted for Trump by double digits in 2024.

Trump is now obviously a lame duck. Not only does he face the most intensely hostile Congress than any president has ever faced -- Lincoln got rid of most of his congressional opponents by branding them insurrectionists -- but the cowardly NeverTrumpers and GOPe Corporate Supremacists who pretended to support him for the past ten years while covertly undermining him now have no fear of him and can undermine him more openly.

Unfortunately, Trump 1.0 had a golden economy to offset many voters' intense dislike of him. Trump 2.0 has a decent economy, but people can't see beyond persistently high inflation and they think the economy is in poor shape.

I assume this All-American Solid Citizen won:

Wednesday Morning Rant

—Joe Mannix

This article was written before election returns came in, so this is not an election thread. You are welcome to discuss that anyway if desired, since election returns are probably the main topic of conversation

The past decade or so has seen a wild proliferation of stuff that falls into the general category often called the "Internet of Things," or IoT. These are things that do something and connect to the internet either to perform its work or to extend its functionality. IoT devices are often referred to as "smart" devices. "Smart" cameras, doorbells, TVs, locks, thermostats, switches and more all go online to function or to work to their maximum effect. This is all increasingly common and often underscores security and privacy issues or risks. Those risks are so real that it's not unreasonable to just assume that all of it is simply not secure at all, and implement or it not based on your risk appetite.

But that's in the household. IoT is not merely merely for consumer electronics and household gadgets, it's also industrial equipment, and the risk profile there is radically different. If someone hacks your "smart lock," he can wander in and rob your house. If he hacks your "smart camera" and catches something compromising, he could blackmail you. If he hacks your factory, that's a whole different story. If he hacks your supply chain management, that's a whole different story. The risk blast radius in industry is much greater than it is at the household level, and those risks are not merely hypothetical. There have been some very public incidents in Europe that demonstrate the problem, as multiple attacks on industrial IoT were targeted squarely at the food supply.

Mid-Morning Art Thread

—CBD

Out There
Robert Cocke

The Morning Report — 11/4 /26

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning kids. Well, here we are and after yesterday about the only kernel of normalcy I can offer is that being a midterm election it's not unexpected and indeed usually the norm that the party in power generally loses the majority in Congress. Although 2006 was a huge exception to that notion.
Besides that, at least we won't have to endure the preening, strutting and hutzpocritical crowing of slag shit-whore RINO Susan Collins despite being ousted by Nazi devotee Graham Platner. Not that she advanced the cause of freedom and the American agenda during her tenure, either sitting on her hands or otherwise joining with the Democrats to advance their heathen policies and agenda in the name of "bipartisanship."

Mercifully, she's gone, but we are in for a rough time going forward, as the tale of the tape shows.

It’s the first midterm election since 2006 that a party out of power has won back both chambers. The final scale of the wipeout was not immediately clear due to slow vote-counting, including in the Alaska Senate race, which has ranked-choice voting. Tuesday’s sweep also realized dreams Democrats have held for decades, including turning Senate seats in deep-red Texas and Kansas blue, as well as ending Republican governorships in Ohio and Texas, where three-term Gov. Greg Abbott’s loss was one of the most shocking of the night... The president had prefaced the midterm results by telling The Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast that he was ready to become “Mr. Veto” if needed after 2026.

“They’ll be sending stuff up. You veto it,” he explained.

“And eventually, after a month or two of getting all vetoed, they’re just wasting [time], they come over, and you make a deal. I think that probably would happen, but hopefully we don’t have to worry about that.”

Oh terrific, Mr. President? You'll be making deals with terrorists that let them destroy whatever still remains of America incrementally instead of in one fell swoop? As with Iran, the President is clueless as to who and what he is dealing with. So for the past two years Mr. President, what have the Democrats compromised on that conceded even a scintilla of the MAGA agenda. I believe the answer is nothing. Not one damned thing?

They spent every moment since you were first sworn in and before it trying to impeach you as well as persecuting not only your cabinet members and advisers but even average Americans for the treasonous act of buying a MAGA hat or even donating a buck to your campaign.

At best we'll have gridlock but we're going to get it right in the neck.

They have telegraphed a not-so-subtle message: reprisals are coming. . . What’s driving the desire for reprisals? First, the Democrats have long sought to invalidate the Trump phenomenon. They simply cannot accept the fact that Donald Trump became the president of the United States and that his ideas—build the wall, restore law and order, Make America Great Again—enjoy popular support. They believe Trump is an embodiment of every “ism” and “phobia” in the book: racism, sexism, nativism, Islamophobia, transphobia. To invalidate his presidency, they believe, is to invalidate these prejudices.

They want to turn Trump into another Richard Nixon. If the president ends his political career in disgrace—or in prison—it will serve as a warning to any future right-wing populist that that is the inevitable fate of his movement and, if he attempts to win the presidency, his life. The second motivation for reprisals is to create a permanent deterrent against the development of a right-wing counter-elite. In previous decades, the staffer class of Democrats and Republicans had a mutual understanding, in which Republicans in Washington agreed to the boundaries determined by the Left. The Democrats might campaign hard against someone like Mitt Romney or oppose the fiscal policies of someone like Paul Ryan, but everyone understood that both Republicans would respect Democrat-defined boundaries of what was acceptable. . . Finally, a reprisal campaign would protect the Left’s institutional hegemony. The Democrats often campaign on the slogan “our democracy,” and they mean it literally. The federal bureaucracy, public universities, and public schools are almost monolithically left-wing. Democrats believe that these institutions are proprietary tools for their political movement, and that any use of them by the Right is illegitimate. They will not only seek to roll back any incursions by the Trump administration but also engage in reprisals to ensure that it never happens again.

The ultimate risk is the Brazilification of our politics, in which the stakes become thus: if you win, you face reprisals in the future; if you lose, you go straight to prison.

With all due respect to the erudite and estimable Christopher Rufo, Brazilification is the wrong word. It's Bolshevization if not outright Nazification because win lose or draw, their opponents, meaning us and anyone who dares even raise an eyebrow in disagreement, will not be going to prison, or if so it's merely a pre-execution holding cell.

With bust-out socialists as well as a Muslim Brotherhood Senator now ensconced in power, I cannot even imagine where we go from here should PLEASE GOD the Democrats are indeed kept in check for the final years of the Trump presidency and beyond!

So the puzzler for me is how did yesterday happen especially given the fact that a Donald Trump election three times and at the barest of minimums his candidacy in the first place represent a negation of the negation that was and is Obama and Clinton and Leftism in general happened in the first place?

Solve that riddle and at the very least we have a shot at saving America. For now buy guns and ammo while we still can — I know I will be — and speak out while you still can.

Ugh, what a horrid waking nightmare. But that said, don't let yesterday get you down. Take comfort in family and friends and have faith in the LORD. We shall overcome so on that note, regardless of everything horrible, count your blessings and have a good day, one and all!

2026 MIDTERMS
• A historic series of defeats, including Democrats flipping Senate seats in Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas — with equally staggering results in House races — positioning New Yorkers Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries to lead the Senate and House.
  Blue tsunami delivers Dems both chambers of Congress in stunning defeat for GOP and Trump’s handpicked candidates
  
• At its core, Tuesday was total beatdown of the president, his policies and personality. And it was predictable. It is not uncommon for presidents to suffer losses midway through their terms. In 2014, halfway through Barack Obama’s second term, Republicans picked up a whopping nine Senate seats.
  Michael Goodwin: How Trump reacts to this shellacking will determine his legacy
  
• Now it’s time to go on, first by resetting his core team of advisers, then by testing if Democrats are willing to work with him to do right by the country these next two years — or if they demand gridlock. Dems won purely as Trump’s opposition, without expressing any realistic vision going forward — but the public’s not likely to approve if they do nothing but continue to fight the president.
  A terrible night for Republicans leaves challenges for BOTH parties
  
• Far-left candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) were projected to win at least four House races, expanding the number of socialist lawmakers in the lower chamber from two to six.
  DSA bolsters Congress contingent after socialists pick up at least 4 House seats
  
• Abdul El-Sayed rode the blue tsunami to a win in Michigan.
  The Muslim Brotherhood Gets Their Man In Michigan
  
• Collins' luck ran out in what turned out to be a blue tsunami.
  End Of An Era: Susan Collins Concedes Defeat In Maine
  
• 'It's worse than anyone thought'
  Welcome to the Madhouse
  
• Minnesota Democrat Peggy Flanagan held off former NFL sideline reporter Michele Tafoya in a closely watched Senate race Tuesday, overcoming questions about her handling of multiple fraud scandals while serving as lieutenant governor in the administration of Governor Tim Walz.
  Walz’s Wingwoman Peggy Flanagan Prevails in Minnesota Senate Race

Daily Tech News 4 November 2026

—Pixy Misa

• Microsoft has made Windows 11 suck 20% less if you are running with just 8GB of RAM. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It is at least a step in the right direction. Albeit after a double marathon in the wrong direction.
  
  I have two old laptops with 8GB of soldered RAM that I might give this a try on.
  
  
  
• Some crazy person not working for Microsoft got Windows 11 running in 128MB of RAM. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It can even load Notepad. And the Start Menu. Well, about half the Start Menu, judging from the video. The icons never load.

Election Night ONT

—Doof

Howdy Hordelings! Welcome to the Election Night ONT. Appreciate you stopping by. Election discussion continues. Also - Open thread, as always. Anything else on YOUR mind tonight?

***

Some stuff to read while you await final(?) results

Election Technology Through the Years (from 2023)

The History of Voting Technology

Voting Equipment

A Brief Illustrated History of Voting

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How about a different type of old school voting tech?

Remember when the MLB All-Star voting took place mostly(?) by fans on paper ballots? Go to a big league game in the early months of the season, and they'd hand out punch card style ballots.

In later years, the ballots had cool cover art

2014 was the last year of paper ballots for MLB. All voting moved to online / digital formats after that.

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From our friend scampydog

My first thought was, "At least it's not the Black Panthers." Then i wondered if an AED was worse...

Nice job, Doggo!

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Something for our friend TJM

***

DJ Doof - Election Theme Edition

That last one is pretty obscure. You might recall Rhythm Corps from this minor radio hit of theirs from the late 80s -- which also fits the theme

***

Tonight's ONT brought to you by motivation

***

Doof Enterprises, LLC is not finding much whelm in tonight's election results.

Your feedback may or may not be very important to Doof Enterprises. Follow Mr. Doof on X @doof2112 or do the email thing – doof2112 at proton dot me.

Close it up

DDHQ Projects Democrats Will Take the House

—Disinformation Expert Ace

zerohedge @zerohedge

*DEMOCRATS WIN CONTROL OF THE HOUSE, DDHQ PROJECTS

Per the AP, Paxton trails Abbott's percentage of the vote by only 1%... That is good news. I can't imagine Abbott losing to the no name or it even being within 5 points. No hair lighting yet

Posted by: LinusVanPelt

Election Results Thread

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Here's PJ Media's election results page.

Decision Desk HQ's twitter feed.

My plan is to update this post with major headlines -- actual confirmed wins or losses, and strong evidence for coming wins or losses.

Jon Ossoff is predicted to win Georgia Senate, which was never actually seriously contested for some bizarre reason. Two, count 'em, two hard-left Democrat Senators are from Georgia and we can't do anything about it, apparently.

Ashley Moody (R) called for Florida Senator, per DDHQ.

A Democrat, Pia Dandiya, supposedly will win Floriday's redrawn 22nd District. This could be a bad harbinger.

Roy Cooper flips Tom Tillis' seat to blue in NC, which was 1, kind of baked into the cake and predicted for weeks, and 2, more or less a lateral move because Tillis was a liberal Democrat himself posing as a Republican.

Byron Daniels projected to win Florida governor, Anna Paulina Luna reelected to 13th CD. Neither unexpected.

Decision Desk HQ projects Republican Andy Barr wins the KY US Senate General Election. Via gnats local. Expected.

Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt

Hamas Piker: I HATE AMERICA! YOU DESERVED 9/11
DNC: Well, we have a big tent!

Haley Stevens: I don't think we should blame Jews for produce
DNC: YOU TRAITOR! YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A USED CONDOM!

What a time to be alive.