You’ve got all the details, let your overactive imagination do the rest.

By the way, if I’m not mistaken, that’s our Qatari jet we paid for in the background. It’s got that dark blue underbelly instead of the light sky blue color. That Reuters reporter is flying in a target. He deserves hazard pay, not insults.

I’m willing to bet that Democrats are better at multitasking than Republicans but unless Republicans stop going on break and actually, you know, get stuff done, there’s no way of knowing for sure.

But there are a couple of reasons why Democrats shouldn’t take impeachment off his table and it has to do with the differences that 5 years can make.

1.) Trump is an outlier. There’s no one as brazen or shameless. He takes Pleonexia to the next levels. His corruption is so vast and serious that it would be irresponsible to not impeach him.

2.) You may not have enough senators to convict him – at first. But what Democrats would have is the ability to call witnesses. This is what Mitch McConnell refused to allow back in the 2019 and 2021 impeachments. Without those witnesses willing to go on record in the Senate, with evidence, the people who are not news junkies were inclined to say that there were no impeachable offenses that he could be convicted of.

Witnesses might make a big difference. Without them it’s just political theatre. With them, it’s a way to get the most demented, greedy, unprincipled, cruel, selfish, well, I could go on. Insert your favorite adjective. But the one thing we can be fairly certain of is he steals things just like a criminal and he kills people without due process.

This time with the right witnesses, there might just be enough pressure on the senators who hold out because all the ugliness won’t be able to hide under McConnell’s drawl.

That makes two long standing east European leaders who were overthrown this year by similar strategy. Orban in Hungary was the first in case anyone has already forgotten.

The turnout in some states has broken records in early voting here in the US. THAT’S what has to happen. We have to turnout as many people as possible. It’s not just enthusiasm that is fueling this. It’s that we’ve been held back from doing anything about it for 2 years. It’s been a one party robber baron state taking absolutely everything it can get its hands on. Americans are sick of it and the ruin of our reputation around the world. We have been waiting for this midterm forever.

And Vance is running around telling voters:

“The Democrats talk a lot about the affordability crisis in the United States of America. And yes, there is an affordability crisis—one created by Joe Biden’s policies. You don’t turn the Titanic around overnight. It takes time to fix what was broken.” [1, 2]

Critics have pointed out that, other than the lie about it being Biden’s fault, that by the time the captain realized it was time to turn around, the boat was already sinking. In 2026, the captain is flooring it right into iceberg after iceberg and won’t stop until all the passengers and crew jump him and tie him to a smokestack.

Update – This just in from Brazil:

Another one bites the dust.

So, let’s do this thing. We don’t have any other choice.

All he can do is stop where they say it.

I’m referring to the documentary made by Oscar winner Alex Gibney. For awhile there, he couldn’t get YouTube to play ads for his new documentary on Elon Musk. He says something changed recently, he doesn’t know what, and the documentary is getting more publicity. I’m going to link an interview Gibney did with Katie Couric and you can get a sense of what Elon is about.

Actually, if you survived Pharmageddon, the collapse of the small molecule drug industry that coincided with the 2008 financial crisis, and the plans for R&D people now at the mercy of vulture capitalists, you know how this works. See Their Plans For Us on this blog from May 2011 for my experience and the vision of the future for American R&D scientists and engineers.

Gibney tells us what Elon really is. He is a capitalist, an entrepreneur, maybe a visionary (but not the Steve Jobs kind). But Elon is not an engineer. What he does is he buys patents of innovations that other people created. And it makes sense because R&D is incredibly expensive to do. A lot of startups have to stop after early research and find a vulture to keep the labs open. In exchange for the capital to buy instruments, reagents, materials, software and pay salaries (or equity) to their employees, they have to make presentations to people like Elon who will buy the patents. Then ELON makes money from them leaving the inventors with a tiny fraction of the profits.

This is why I have said that closing the NIH labs to review frivolous science was a transparent cover story for those of us who know they decided our futures 15 years ago. The vultures went through the NIH portfolio of early research and picked out the bits they found interesting and converted them into private investments. You heard it here first.

I’ll stop here because once you’ve been burned by these guys and know what they’re up to and how they’ve taken over struggling companies with bright ideas, you know the Elon type when you see him. He can’t hide behind his trillions and pass himself off as a god of innovation. He’s just a ruthless investor who knows how to manipulate the system so he can feed off of the people with ideas and make insane gobs of money.

He’s also an out of shape middle aged man with less sex appeal than a concrete block. Does he care what I think about him? No. But he does care a lot about what we say about him.

Here’s the Katie Couric interview with Alex Gibney with a trailer of his Musk documentary.

Ok, skirt, white T, black mules, black leather jacket. Oh yeah. I’m feeling tres cool. I checked the weather this morning again. It’s supposed to start raining but not until 9am, and then stop raining right around when I have to get the bus home. The temp is a balmy 23°c.

I get off the bus downtown and feel a rain drop. No biggy. It’s just sprinkling I say to myself. I pop into the coffee shop, grab my cold brew and head down 6th Avenue.

All the sudden, the heavens open up. Ok, not a tragedy. I have an umbrella. I also have this big iced coffee in my hand and a cream colored skirt with a white T. Gotta be careful.

The effing umbrella button was stuck. I struggle with it, my shoulder bag starts giving in to gravity. I finally get the button unstuck Ang then the top came off my coffee and started to form a gentle stream in the direction of my skirt.

So I put the umbrella down to fix the coffee cup when the pretty pink thing took flight and skiddered down the sidewalk. Mules are getting soaked, feet slipping, I’m chasing an umbrella with an iffy cup of coffee…

I’m still assessing the damage.

Anyway, let’s get ready for the storm:

Here’s Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American who puts it all together.

The media really let us down.

Yesterday, a petition with 100,000 signatures was delivered to the UK Parliament requesting to rejoin the EU after the UK voted for Brexit in 2016 and Andy Burnham suggested that talks at a November 20 EU/UK summit will explore options.

See, Keir Starmer, was that so hard??

Brexit has been a disaster for the UK and it comes on top of years of Tory imposed austerity.

What’s really hilarious and gobsmacking about Brexit is, aside from the lies that people like Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson spewed about the illusory benefits, you only had to do ONE ad to blow up the entire concept. It’s the one that says, just because you voted to leave the EU’s regulations doesn’t mean they’ll go away. If you do this thing, you’ll pay more to do the paperwork for goods to cross the trade barrier, BECAUSE THE EU IS YOUR CLOSEST GEOGRAPHIC TRADING PARTNER.

Use a visual aid, like a map, to drive home the point.

It’s like voluntarily imposing tariffs at Dover on everything that comes into and goes out of the UK. And the multinational corporations suffer not a whit. Do you think stock traders on the FTSE care about some fisherman in Scotland? No, they do not.

Get it done before the country looks too closely at the fine print that says, “thou shalt give up the pound for the euro and allow EU members from other countries to stay in the UK for up to 3 months at a time” Watch the 30% hard line Brexiteers lose their collective sh*t.

“Oh, we didn’t the Brexit that we got. We voted the other Brexit. Clearly, this Brexit suffered from faulty implementation.”

The UK media will hate it. The Brits will be climbing an uphill battle with roller skates on. But if it took a simple majority to get into this mess, then have a vote and let an overwhelming majority get yourselves out.

Acknowledge that Putin was behind it. Yeah, that’s the ticket! Blame it all on Vlad.

Give us hope on the other side of the pond.

Let me explain. This goes back to Ukraine bombing Yandex’s datacenters and wiping out 40+% of the bot traffic on X. Bots are active everywhere. I don’t like Facebook but I’m betting they’ve gotten around any roadblocks. Same with YouTube. Suddenly the number of pro Trump commenters seems to have gotten a lot quieter in the last few days.

Ukraine droned Yandex on Thursday, October 8, 2026.

The next day, October 9, Trump says we’re buying Russian oil. This after Trump recently bumped up the sanctions on Russian oil. The whiplash is striking. The Europeans are angry saying they feel betrayed. Welcome to the club.

Then on Saturday October 10, “Trump blamed Zelenskyy for high global energy prices, stated that Zelenskyy “better damn well stop” hitting Russian refineries, and remarked, “I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president… who can make a deal” (multiple YouTube sources)

Sure, sure. Russian oil refineries have been hurting for months and they now take their oil to Belarus to be refined. Lukashenko has been very good about that, charging Russia a nice premium for the service.

By the way, Trump also told Ukrainians that if they don’t stop using US intelligence for bombing targets in Russia, he’ll stop giving it intelligence. Yep, we give you intelligence but you’re not allowed to use it anymore or we’ll take it away.

Interesting. I wonder what Ukrainians were using it for?

Then Andy Burnham revealed that Russian bots and propaganda were partially responsible for Brexit, Britains worst Clusterf*ck since the English let their shield wall break at Hastings. They voted for Brexit in 2016, the same year that Russian bots flooded social media for Trump’s first “win”. They were busy little bots that year. And each vote won by a squeaker. The UK didn’t need an electoral college. Brexit passed by a sliver of a simple majority. He said the Russians interfered in the 2019 election as well.

He said that yesterday, October 11.

Let’s pull it all together and speculate based on timing and Andy Burnham’s revelation.

Trump is a notoriously thin skinned person with a relentless thirst for retribution against his perceived enemies. He also has an upcoming midterm a few weeks away where it is becoming more certain that he will lose support in the Senate as well as the House. He’s only been getting away with his authoritarian power grab and superpower suicide because Republicans rubber stamped everything he wanted to do. They gave him everything. After January, his protection is gone. Maybe he doesn’t care about that but he does care about not losing the midterms.

So, let’s say that Trump was relying on the Russian bots to work for him in the upcoming midterms. Some parts of the American electorate are still not picking up what they’re putting down. They’re easy to provoke and infuriate and infuriated voters go to the polls. He’s going to need more than he anticipated to vote for Republicans because they are extraordinarily unpopular.

Ukraine just took a significant amount of bot traffic offline.

That’s gotta hurt. Trump can’t afford to let even one voter sit it out.

So, Trump does what Trump has been known to do. He strikes back. In this case, he has two reasons for buying Russian oil. He needs to bring down the costs of transporting food and he needs to teach Zelenskyy a lesson. That’s why he’s buying Russian oil and cutting intelligence to Ukraine.

If I were to speculate even further, I’m guessing that Zelenskyy and his intelligence guy, Budanov, have gamed this out. Taking out the datacenters was a brilliant move because Russia is almost certainly going to step up the pounding on Ukrainian infrastructure. So why not make it harder for Russia’s asset in the US to win an election? If the Democrats win, Ukraine may be able to eke out a few more months of this war without collapsing its economy. When they take office, they’re more likely to take on Trump.

Will it succeed knowing Trump’s propensity to do whatever he wants regardless of what Congress says? His behavior suggests that he’s fearful of that exact probability. So, it could be a win for Ukraine if the bots are struggling to rile up its audience with outrage over trans athletes getting to play in women’s sports. Wait. What did I hear about Title IX recently?

That’s my theory and im sticking with it. Yes, Trump is a traitor to the international community, but probably not legally in the US. He’s done a lot of impeachable offenses in the last year though.

Are the broken glass Democratic voters incensed by this even more motivated to reverse this disgusting decision to help Russia destroy Ukraine? Absolutely. I predict this is going to backfire bigly. How would we know? Hmmm, I would expect Russia to dial it back until after the midterms so as to not draw attention to itself. You know, fewer bombings of busses and other outrages.

If course, I could be wrong. We’ll see.

I woke up this morning to some interesting news. Ukraine hit a major Russian data search provider, Yandex, knocking out 2/5 data centers. This happened a couple of days ago on October 8. Cloudflare has already noticed an astonishing effect on Bot activity on X. Check it out:

Another couple of hits like that and we might actually be able to communicate with each other without a lot of bad guys poking us into pie fights on the internet. I’d like to know how this will affect the midterms if the Russian bots can’t spread a lot of misinformation. Will the GOP be able to make up the difference?

The press better think of something fast. The DOJ has decided to investigate the biggest news names in the press pool for (don’t laugh) antitrust violations. I know. This comes a week after paramount solidified its merger turning cbs and cnn and all its local affiliates into Sundance. Hilarious.

It’s hard to feel sorry for the press these days. It really saw a business opportunity when it came to covering Trump. Now, all the great anchors and reporters have decamped to the web. So far, the powers that be haven’t gotten to independent news outlets but don’t underestimate the Trump administration.

Do you feel the chaos building? The big orange is starting to lose it. Right about now is when early voting is happening around the country and Trump has lost almost every one of the cases he took to the USSC to suppress the vote. But he’s still got a lot of surprised in his bag of tricks.

So be prepared for anything. Have alternate forms of communication in case there are internet disruptions, watch out for sudden unexpected detours to polling places. Mine is within walking distance. Look out for swarms of poll watchers. The nice thing about living in PA for voting is we now have paper trails and there are thousands of precincts. Trump would have to send out a metric ton of ICE agents and for once in the last decade, PA isn’t in play. We also don’t have any vote tabulating machines directly connected to the internet. We don’t even have e-pollbooks where election workers can check you in. You still have to sign in on paper in a binder.

The only loophole is in mail in ballots where you can have someone else witness your vote and pay you accordingly. That could still happen but that could happen in any state and probably doesn’t unless you’ve got a trillionaire friend who can spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help you win. That’s probably what Trump meant when he said mail-in ballots are susceptible to fraud. He would know.

Anyway, be prepared for anything. Now is about the time when a panicky Trump is expected to pull something that will make the authoritarian followers quiver with fear for their lives. Timothy Snyder says terrorist attacks happen in situations like this. Putin bombed apartment buildings and killed a lot of people. He blamed it on the Chechens but we know it was him.

Speaking of Putin, now is about the time when he “grinds Ukraine into a fine, fine ash” as Julia Ioffe would say. He’s only got a couple of months to wrap this up before Congress turns over and the possibility of getting rid of Trump happens. This time, Congress HAS to act. Get it done fast.

I’m wondering now if Putin’s deal with Trump on diesel has anything to do with a threat on OUR data centers, infrastructure and financial systems. These days companies spend a lot of time and money scraping their systems for vulnerabilities and remediating them asap. But state actors are clever and motivated. Putin wants to stamp out democracy in Europe and disabling the US as an ally turned out to be an achievable goal. Who knows what are tech bros are planning.

Ok, I don’t mean to get apocalyptic. All I’m saying is don’t let your situational awareness slip. There really are ax murderers out there who want to destroy this country and they’re getting close to doing it. So stock up, replenish your prepper pantry, check your batteries in your bug out bag. Make sure you have cash, a paper map and a plan in case there is unrest where you live.

Plan, plan, plan. Luck favors the well-prepared. Run fast, run far in case of plague. A stitch in time saves nine. Live to fight another day. And all that.

Recently, Peter Thiel gave an interview saying the evil isn’t necessarily bad. Evil could be good because it make things happen.

It’s not lacking context. This is what Christian end timers believe as well. Take Trump for example. The Christian end timer knows Trump is evil. He’s the worst of the worst. He breaks every commandment. He’s cruel. He’s corrupt. But they are ok with it because god is using him as an agent. And what is agency? The ability to get things done. So the worse he makes living conditions here abd around the world, the closer we get to being saved by Jesus’s second coming.

That reminded me of that video on Fundamentalism by Dominic Crossen, the Jesus scholar, who said:

Now comes Naomi Klein who is doing a thought experiment on why the tech bros are so obsessed by bunkers. She calls it end times fascism and how it differs from regular fascism is the leaders of this movement aren’t using the tools of the state to deliver something of value to its base this time. They are offering nothing because they don’t need the base anymore.

Fascinating interview. Whatever you think about Naomi Klein, she was right about disaster capitalism. This time? It’s about the coalition of tech bros and fundamentalists and survivalist libertarians speeding things up. Peter Thiel is advocating using evil to break the log jam of dogooders who are holding this system of things together.

Let’s hope the midterms are going to work more or less as intended because the Thiels of the world need to be stopped. It’s interesting that he calls his company Palantir because looking into the future and seeing nothing but catastrophe is what Tolkien warned about when he created the Palantir. The danger is that someone else will create a vision for you that feeds on your greatest fears and leads you to self destruction instead of to the light.

Here’s Naomi Klein on End Time Fascism.