It's <THE INCREDIBLE FIDE 4th ROUND PREDICTION CONTEST>.

Entrants submit a binary string of 16 1s or 0s.

<Do you know what the one simple thing is that separates the good from the bad players?

Good players make better decisions than bad players.

That’s it!

And what do most ambitious players do?

They play in a way that makes them avoid making tough decisions.

So if you can resist the temptation to have an easy life at the poker table, your win rate would skyrocket.

TT Out of Position in 3Bet Pot

Here’s an example of what I mean:

Our Hero raised TT from early position and got 3bet by the button.

He then called the 3-bet.

The flop came 774rainbow.

Hero checked, and villain made a small c-bet.

And then Hero simply shoved $345 into a pot of $245 with his overpair.

Why?

Because he was afraid of having to make a tough decision later in the hand.

So by shoving, he made sure that he doesn’t have to make any further decision in the hand.

Had Hero called, he might have been able to get another bet out villain.

But by shoving, he allowed his opponent to play perfectly.

As we can see, his opponent had AQ and simply folded.

Yes of course, he managed to deny equity, but with such a shove, he will fold out every hand that he beats and will get called by all the hands that are crushing him. ​
So here’s what you need to do:

You need to avoid the temptation to want to end the hand early.

Yes, you will get sucked out at times, which sucks! (pun intended)

But as we said, you make your money by making better decisions than everyone else.

<I’ve never really been on the same page as Congressional Democrats when it comes to shutting down the government. In the spring, I thought they should pick a fight over Elon Musk and DOGE-related cuts, but they didn’t.

Then in September, I thought all their options were pretty bad. But that tariffs, not health care, would at least highlight President Trump’s unpopular handling of the economy and provide more of a pain point for Republicans — without offering a deal that could actually help the GOP in next year’s elections by extending popular health care subsidies.

Mind you, I didn’t expect Democrats to actually extract concessions from the GOP on tariffs. Rather, if Democrats held firm, Republicans would eventually have to pass a budget on their own by eliminating the filibuster — something that Democrats would rather be without anyway should they win a trifecta back in 2028.

And then once the shutdown began on Oct. 1, I disagreed with the conventional wisdom that Democrats were “winning” it. True, polls found that a slight plurality of voters blamed Republicans rather than Democrats. But those same polls showed that voters didn’t understand why there was a shutdown in the first place, and that Democrats’ message on health care wasn’t breaking through. Moreover, Democrats’ advantage on the “blame” question was eroding over time — while Trump’s approval rating actually improved initially once the shutdown began.

Then something changed — and I was getting ready to eat crow. Late last month, Trump’s numbers began to plummet, with his net approval rating falling from −7.5 on Oct. 17 to −13 three weeks later. It wasn’t a huge shift in absolute terms. But Trump has had a high popularity floor and a low ceiling. It was something real enough to contribute to Democrats absolutely crushing Republicans in a series of elections last Tuesday in New Jersey, Virginia and other states. Meanwhile, Trump was starting to feud with Congressional Republicans, urging them to “nuke” the filibuster when leadership was reluctant to do so.

So what did Democrats do with their newfound leverage? Over the weekend, they just gave up.

Yesterday, Senators Cortez Masto, Durbin, Fetterman, Hassan, Kaine, King, Rosen and Shaheen voted with 52 Republican senators to provide cloture on the GOP’s appropriations bill. The shutdown isn’t technically over yet, but Republicans can now pass a budget bill on a party-line vote, so Democrats gave up all their leverage.

As someone who is supposed to take three cross-country flights over the next seven days, I’m happy that I won’t miss my meetings, I guess.

But as political strategy, I think this is malpractice. Predictable enough malpractice for a perpetually risk-averse party with a weak, unpopular leader who clearly doesn’t have confidence of his caucus. But malpractice all the same.

Trump made a big blunder on SNAP benefits

What happened in late October? There are a handful of plausible explanations, but I think the evidence is reasonably clear. On Oct. 18, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins warned voters that food stamps — more formally known as the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or SNAP — would run out of funding at the end of the month. This program is a huge deal, affecting roughly 42 million Americans. Although Rollins tried to blame Democrats, voters didn’t buy that at all — not when the Trump has been fighting court orders to continue to fund the program, and holding Great Gatsby-themed dinners at Mar-a-Lago....>

<....Google searches tell the story here. Since the shutdown began, searches for terms related to the Affordable Care Act — Democrats’ ostensible rationale for withholding votes — has never been more than a blip on the radar. Conversely, searches related to SNAP benefits increased roughly tenfold over their baseline beginning in late October:

There have been other stories in the news, but none of them had the staying power of SNAP. The No Kings protests were a big deal — and the timing lines up interestingly with the drop in Trump’s numbers — but only for 48 hours. Some pundits have tried to pin the blame for Trump’s approval decline on the destruction of the East Wing for the construction of a new White House ballroom, but searches for the White House were also a short-lived story with a much lower peak than either SNAP or No Kings. Meanwhile, as the FAA has announced a reduction in flights, searches related to flight delays have increased considerably in relative terms. But they remain modest relative to other news stories and postdate Trump’s approval decline anyway.

The increase in food-stamp-related searches has been far more persistent, as you might expect for a program that affects so many families.

Schumer’s strategy was fundamentally unsound

So why did Democrats cave? Look, some of the explanations are obvious enough. The risk-aversion thing is real: in Democrats are Villagers, not Riverians. Senators are privileged people who fly a lot, and the holiday travel season is forthcoming. Perhaps some Democrats felt like their wins on Tuesday provided cover. And the track record of parties trying to extract strategic concessions from shutdowns is basically 0-for-infinity.

But also, Schumer’s strategy was unsound and he never really had an endgame in mind after all. There were a series of interrelated problems with the party’s approach:

Democrats are essentially a leaderless party, with various political dynasties — the Clintons, the Cuomos, the Bidens, really everyone but maybe the Obamas — having been discredited. And Schumer himself is extremely unpopular, with a plurality of even Democratic voters having an unfavorable impression of him.

Schumer was so laser-focused on avoiding “blame” for the shutdown that he failed to articulate a positive case for why it was important to shut down the government for health care or other reasons. He wasn’t playing to win so much as not to lose.

Other Democrats weren’t all that consistent on the health care message either, with Democrats like Chris Murphy articulating alternative rationales for the shutdown and saying they couldn’t in good conscience fund a government they saw as authoritarian. It also probably didn’t help that Democrats were essentially doing their internal party negotiations in public in competing New York Times op-ed columns. They decided that they couldn’t fund the government without a fight, and then they backed their way into a rationale for it. But it’s not clear that their hearts were in the health care message. Relatedly, there’s a divide between the activist class, with their concerns about high-minded concepts like democracy and authoritarianism — I share those concerns, by the way — and the actual, rank-and-file party base, which is poorer, less progressive, less white, and more concerned about the cost of living.

Democrats’ approach to the shutdown was all about tactics as opposed to strategy. It’s not clear whether they actually wanted Republicans to nuke the filibuster. It’s not clear whether they’d have benefited if Trump had actually agreed to sustain Obamacare subsidies....>

<....In strategic games like poker, when you find yourself in a no-win position — faced with the choice between calling, raising as a bluff, or folding, all options seem about equally bad — it’s frequently because you misplayed your hand at some earlier stage of the game. I know I’ve been persistent about this point, but Democrats never really thought through their shutdown strategy or some of the inherent contradictions within it. They were making it up as they went along.

And then, they were absolutely handed a gift by Trump on SNAP.

Part II of the poker analogy. If things go as well as you can reasonably hope for — you have a bad hand, but you catch the best possible card that at least gives you a good draw or something that can beat a bluff — and you still don’t know what to do, then your strategy sucked. You probably should have folded in the first place.

Yes, Democrats did get a few small consolation prizes out of the deal — thanks for playing. And the timing of Trump’s unpopularity spike² was fortuitous enough that they likely picked up a few extra seats in the Virginia House of Delegates, for example.

But it comes at the cost of the activist class feeling like they were sold a bill of goods. I was struck, for instance, by Brian Beutler at the newsletter Off Message calling on Democrats like Fetterman and Kaine who voted for cloture to resign immediately (!). I’m citing Beutler here because while he can frankly be partisan, he has a pretty good mind for strategy and his newsletter is at least consistently interesting. (You can find plenty of Democratic commentators who are an order of magnitude more partisan.)

Beutler is predicting “an internal civil war” within the party and I don’t know what to think about that. Anything that happened in the shutdown is probably not going to be top of mind for voters next year. D.C. and New York-based analysts don’t always have their pulse on how rank-and-file Democrats think. But there are a lot of potential downsides for Democrats if Tea Party-type-dynamics start to emerge within the party where leadership is completely distrusted.

Here’s the easy part: Schumer shouldn’t be Minority Leader. It’s untenable to have someone in that position when they don’t even have majority approval among their own party’s voters. The few Democrats who have tried to defend Schumer have claimed that he wasn’t one of the pivot points in the negotiation with Republicans to reopen the government. But if he wasn’t, why is he party leader? He’s already abdicated his role.

<The Department of Justice is setting up President Donald Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to hear Trump revenge cases, according to a former U.S. attorney.

The Southern District of Florida U.S. Attorney’s office is reportedly ramping up the revenge prosecutions in a "mass investigation" and targeting Trump enemies, even eyeing cases against former President Barack Obama and former CIA Director John Brennan, MSNBC reported Tuesday.

The move has prompted several resignations, including two prosecutors, who stepped down from their jobs following an impromptu meeting Monday where they were ordered “to take part in a vast ‘conspiracy’ investigation into former intelligence and law enforcement officials.”

"At least one of them was asked to do something that was outside of their realm of comfortability and they believed would violate their ethical responsibilities," MSNBC senior White House reporter Vaughn Hillyard reported.

More than 30 subpoenas were issued on Friday by the DOJ, which reportedly “bypassed what multiple legal experts told MSNBC is standard protocol for its issuance of subpoenas, turning to a member of leadership to sign off on some of them, instead of a line prosecutor assigned to investigate the case.”

But there is another uncommon move.

"Typically, you would expect the line prosecutors who are handling the case to be the people who would sign subpoenas," legal analyst and former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuade told MSNBC.

"It sounds, though, like this is some sort of special project that they're putting together, some sort of special unit. Executive U.S. attorneys sometimes have in their portfolio special projects. So it sounds to me like this executive U.S. attorney is going to be leading whatever this effort is into this conspiracy investigation. But I do think it's noteworthy that this is not being handled the way a routine case would be handled for a violation of the law. Instead, it is being handled as a special case with a high-level executive member of the team handling this," she added.

The location of the case is also raising questions and concerns.

"The other thing that I thought was noteworthy about the reporting is that the grand jury to be impaneled is going to be in Fort Pierce, Florida. That, of course, is the district that the portion of the district, the southern district of Florida, that has one and only one judge, and that judge is Aileen Cannon. I don't know that we should be suspicious of everything Judge Aileen Cannon does, but we do know that her track record in the Mar-a-Lago case with the documents was first to impose some really extraordinary hoops for the prosecutors to go through at the time of the search," McQuade said.

"And then, of course, the dismissal of the case, finding the special counsel regulations to be unconstitutional, contrary to every other court that's looked at it. So I think there is reason to be very concerned about the irregularities that are occurring in this office," she said.>

<Just when it seemed he’d pulled off a victory with a Democratic capitulation over the government shutdown, President Donald Trump finds himself back in the clutches of Jeffrey Epstein.

The scandal involving his longtime friend seemed all but forgotten since the summer, when pressure built on the administration to release its files on Epstein, culminating in the revelation Trump had once given Epstein a lewd birthday note. On Wednesday morning, though, it resurfaced in dramatic fashion with a bombshell report that the late sex offender had alleged Trump “spent hours” at his house with a victim and “knew about the girls.” The report comes just as a new push on Capitol Hill accelerates to release the Epstein files and as Epstein’s longtime accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell prepares to ask Trump to free her from prison.

Emails from Epstein’s estate show him discussing his relationship with Trump in the years leading up to his 2019 arrest and subsequent death in federal prison.

“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump,” Epstein wrote in a 2011 email to Maxwell. He goes on to say that a victim, whose name is redacted, “spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.”

“I have been thinking about that,” Maxwell wrote back.

Her response is sure to draw renewed attention to what she knew about Epstein and Trump, especially now that she prepares a commutation plea to be sent to the White House. An anonymous whistleblower told House Democrats, who released the emails, about a potential “quid pro quo” taking shape between Maxwell and the Justice Department. She is serving a 20-year sentence on sex-trafficking charges related to her role in abusing girls with Epstein.

Back in July, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met personally with Maxwell behind bars, when the Trump administration sought to tamp down public outrage over its breaking of its promise to release the files. According to a transcript of that meeting, she maintained that she had never seen Trump “in any inappropriate setting in any way.”

If the Trump administration had hoped that would put the matter to rest once and for all, however, Blanche later admitted that he had no idea if she was actually “credible.”

Now, after being transferred to what Democrats describe as a “plum” minimum-security federal prison in Texas, Maxwell is said to be getting assistance from the facility’s warden to prepare her plea. “I am struggling to keep it all together as it is big and there are so many attachments,” she emailed her attorney about the petition.

Trump, who had sought to downplay the scandal over Epstein by claiming the push for the release of the files was all a “hoax,” while simultaneously claiming he’d banished the sex offender from Mar-a-Lago for stealing spa workers, has yet to comment on the new allegations. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the allegations as a smear campaign, asserting in a statement that “the Democrats selectively leaked emails to the liberal media” to target Trump. Republicans responded shortly after the release of the new emails by publicizing 23,000 documents from Epstein’s estate....>

<....The emails released by Democrats also show Epstein returning to the topic of his history with Trump years later in correspondence with the author Michael Wolff.

“Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop,” Epstein said in a 2019 email to Wolff, potentially referencing Maxwell’s role in recruiting at least one victim, Virginia Giuffre, from Mar-a-Lago, where Giuffre worked as a teenager.

Another exchange between Wolff and Epstein in 2015, as Trump was preparing to take part in a debate in the Republican presidential primary, showed Epstein contemplating how media questions about the two men’s relationship should be answered.

The emails add fuel to a fight in Congress to release more files related to Epstein, even as the White House has been fighting hard to prevent that from happening. On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson will finally swear in a Democratic lawmaker who would provide the final signature for a petition to force a vote to compel the Justice Department to release the Epstein files.

Arizona Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva won her special election back in September, but Johnson prevented her from being sworn in (allowing the Epstein files to be released) for seven weeks as he held the House out of session — then purported to be unable to swear her in while the House was out. This prompted Grijalva to file a federal lawsuit accusing Johnson of stalling her swearing-in. On the eve of her finally being sworn in late Tuesday, she said she intends to call Johnson out personally for his “obstruction.”

“I won’t be able to, like, sort of move on if I don’t address it personally. And we’ll see what kind of reaction he has,” Grijalva said.

Two Republicans who had already signed onto the petition are under pressure to backtrack. Lauren Boebert was summoned to the White House to meet with Justice Department officials and Trump has also been trying to reach Nancy Mace, though the New York Times reports his efforts have so far been unsuccessful.>

There may yet be justice for those poor girls, and here's hoping the head of the Paedophile Protection Programme faces the bar of justice.

<In 1940, Winston Churchill ordered the evacuation of 338,000 troops facing annihilation on the beaches of Dunkirk. Churchill called the successful operation "a miracle of deliverance." Historians portray it as a perfect example of victory in defeat.

Democrats raging at eight members of their caucus for ending the government shutdown might take a few lessons from the master of morale and strategy. What some hotheads framed as "capitulation" is, in the long run, the wisest plan.

Right after Dunkirk, Churchill famously said, "Wars are not won by evacuations." That is so, but stopping a potential disaster lets your side fight another day. Ending the shutdown prevented negative outcomes that had begun chugging the Democrats' way.

Shutdowns almost always bite the party that starts them. The record for this is so strong that I thought Democrats had erred from Day 1. I was wrong. Democrats effectively used the headlines to highlight the issue sure to haunt Republicans come the midterms: the soaring cost of health care.

Democrats prevailed in the recent elections, partly on threats to their health coverage, partly on rising food prices, tariff chaos and in-your-face corruption. But at a certain point, the news started turning from the fight to extend the Obamacare subsidies to flights being canceled and the poor losing food assistance.

With Thanksgiving approaching, the sight of family members sitting on suitcases in airports is not optimal. As many more Americans feel shutdown pain at the personal level, Democrats are harder pressed to avoid blame, even if the public liked certain items they were fighting for.

Now some firebrands just want a fight. But their contention that reopening the government caused a loss of leverage is based on illusion. Democrats never held meaningful leverage because they don't have the votes. Republicans control the White House, the House and the Senate.

To quote Barack Obama, "Elections have consequences."

The election of Trump and a mostly pliant Republican Congress created such consequences as attacks on Obamacare and, more ominously, our democratic institutions. Democrats can offer a prettier set of consequences, but they can only deliver them if they retake control.

The Democrats' winning message should be, elect us and we will restore health care security. Even the temporary loss of it will hit home. As another great American, Joni Mitchell, sang, "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone?"

Now, if the shutdown worked in avoiding even some pain, that would be an argument in favor. But it wasn't.

Speaking for Democrats who voted to reopen the government, Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent, posed the right question: "Does the shutdown further the goal of achieving some needed support for the extension of the tax credits?" (He's referring to credits that were temporarily increased during the pandemic, making coverage cheaper for millions.)

These senators come from the swing states of Nevada, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Maine. They are key to Democrats obtaining and keeping a majority in Congress. Without them, Democrats have no hope of obtaining real power. And without real power, their politics are just performance.

As noted, the shutdown did succeed in putting the specter of lost health coverage front and center. That mission has been accomplished. Trump's now railing that Obamacare is a "scam" to get the insurance companies filthy rich. Democrats should thank him for calling this revered benefit a "scam."

Assessing the dire situation at Dunkirk, Churchill chose not to make a heroic yet suicidal stand. But he followed closely with his immortal "We shall fight on the beaches" speech — a rally to the nation for continued resistance.

The midterms are the beaches that Democrats should be storming.>

Why not give it a go?

<The White House press secretary touts Donald Trump as the “most transparent and accessible president” in American history, citing his constant engagement with the media and practice of including reporters at government events. But in the past few days, Trump has been uncharacteristically reticent around journalists. It seems clear that he’s rattled by the Jeffrey Epstein crisis — the rare political issue that he can’t talk his way out of without alienating his base.

Since the House Oversight Committee released documents on Wednesday related to the late convicted sex offender, including emails by Epstein that mention Trump by name, Trump has been dodging the press. The Atlantic’s Jonathan Lemire reported on Thursday:

Last night’s dinner was closed to the press. No reporter was even given a glance. And later, when the White House held a signing ceremony for the president to officially end the longest federal-government shutdown in history, the reporters present were quickly whisked out of the Oval Office. Today, too, he didn’t talk to the press after signing an executive order alongside the first lady in the East Room.

On Friday, Trump had no public events or meetings on his schedule.

Instead of engaging with reporters — whom this president typically veers toward — Trump has retreated to social media to launch his counteroffensive on the Epstein crisis. On Truth Social this week, he repeatedly raged about “weak Republicans” who have “fallen” for the Epstein “hoax.” And he tried to change the topic, reminding his followers how “badly” Democrats handled the government shutdown.

Trump may well resume taking reporters’ questions with his usual bravado in the coming days, but it’s telling that he appears hesitant to do his usual extemporaneous riffing. His standard approach is to have total confidence in his ability to talk through or around any issue, often by way of disinformation or changing the topic. (Whatever you think of this as a communication strategy, it’s often worked for him.) But while MS NOW can’t confirm the allegations in Epstein’s emails, the questions are relentless and grounded in documents the public increasingly has access to. And when it comes to Epstein — who was awaiting trial on federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy when he died in 2019 — Trump appears less sure-footed, unable to carry off his usual retorts and attempts at diversion.

The reason is simple: Questions surrounding Trump’s relationship with Epstein and Epstein’s sexual offenses is one of the few issues over which segments of Trump’s base openly question him. As MS NOW contributor Philip Bump pointed out on Friday, on the issue of whether to release “the Epstein files” — more documents from the Justice Department’s investigation of Epstein — Trump has “found himself in the uncomfortable position of being empowered to deliver what his base wanted but not actually wanting to do so.” The president likely knows this doesn’t poll well with his base, as Bump notes:

In polling conducted in October by Ipsos for Reuters, 9 in 10 Republicans expressed approval of Trump’s presidency. But only 4 in 10 indicated that they approved of how he was handling the Epstein files. Quinnipiac University polling conducted this summer found a similar split: 84% of Republicans approved of Trump’s presidency, but only 44% approved of how he was handling Epstein.

Trump has reportedly lobbied some of the Republican lawmakers to drop their support for a House measure that would mandate the release of the Epstein files — without success. Although it’s unclear what the release of more correspondence or other documents could reveal about his relationship with Epstein, Trump does not have his usual control over his party, nor can he stop next week’s House vote.

Even from the safety of his Truth Social account, Trump’s whataboutism strategies are self-defeating. He called on Friday for the Justice Department to investigate Epstein’s relationship with such prominent liberals as former President Bill Clinton and former Treasury Secretary and former Harvard University President Larry Summers, saying that “records show that these men, and many others, spent large portions of their life with Epstein.” Attorney General Pam Bondi quickly agreed to it. But surely in the eyes of many MAGA followers, that’s all the more reason to release all the files.>

<President Donald Trump is struggling to manage the fallout from thousands of emails from Jeffrey Epstein that were released this week, the president’s biographer says.

Michael Wolff, whose history with Epstein has itself become a story due to the journalist giving the sex offender advice, claimed on the Daily Beast’s Inside Trump’s Head podcast that Trump is “completely freaking out” in light of the revelations.

In a 2018 message, for instance, Epstein wrote that he could “take Trump down.” The following January, Epstein wrote to Wolff that Trump “of course knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine [Maxwell] to stop.”

“This has been enormously, enormously frustrating to him for a very long time,” Wolff told co-host Joanna Coles. “The fact that this is now all coming home to roost, I think is completely freaking him out... We’re at a moment in time [where] he doesn’t know what to do. He has misplayed this every step of the way.”

Wolff said he doesn’t think Trump, 79, has any plan for how to address the topic.

“I think he has no strategy. I think he has no point of view. I think he feels cornered on this right now,” Wolff said. “My sense of the people in the White House is that they are kind of frantic. I mean, they don’t know what is true. So remember, the people in the White House are dealing with a situation in which they understand the political perils of this.”

Wolff went on to say that the White House isn’t marshaling its available resources to sift through the emails in part because no one wants to end up being “in the line of fire,” since Trump has been urging everyone to just move on from the Epstein scandal.

“In my experience, when you think that the government in the United States and the White House itself have unlimited resources to marshal—in reality, it’s all chickens with their heads cut off," Wolff said.

“They don’t know whose responsibility it is. Also, people don’t want to take the responsibility, because you put yourself in the line of fire. You’re going to get blamed,” Wolff added. “I don’t know if they have finally put a process in place. I suspect that they don’t. I remember other crises in the White House, in Trump’s White House, in which everything, rather than coming together to deal with it, everything in fact fell apart.”

“The first time around that led to the Mueller investigation,” Wolff continued, referencing the scandal that loomed over most of Trump’s first term. “So I think it’s perfectly likely that nobody is doing anything.”

When reached for comment, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told the Daily Beast: “The only person freaking out is Michael Wolff for seemingly acting as the PR agent for his good friend Jeffrey Epstein. Also freaking out is the Daily Beast and Joanna Coles for employing the disgraced Michael Wolff.”

Wolff, who interviewed Epstein years ago, defended his tactic of acting as an adviser to the sex offender to extract valuable information.

“I have no regrets at all. I would do it exactly the same. This is the way it is done,” Wolff told Coles. ”Once more, I am the only one who has been shouting from the rooftops that the central issue here is Donald Trump’s relationship to this monster."

“You have to have a certain kind of finesse and patience to be able to hold two contradictory truths in your head at the same time, which is to say that Jeffrey Epstein was a monster, but he had important things to say.”>

<One of Donald Trump’s top henchmen was forced to parrot the president’s stonewalling on the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, apparently unaware his boss was about to throw in the towel and tell Republicans to vote for the release of the Epstein files.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared on Fox’s The Big Weekend Show on Sunday. After ticking off regular MAGA talking points by complaining about Chicago and California, Blanche was asked about the Epstein files in the final few minutes of the interview.

Host Johnny Joey Jones referenced the latest release of sordid emails from the late pedophile, including one which mentioned Rhona Graff, Trump’s former executive assistant in the Trump Organization.

Jones said Americans want to know about “this kingpin pervert” who seemed to have personal information on every world leader and American politician and asked Blanche what evidence is left in the files still to be examined.

He also referenced Trump’s confusing messaging about the Epstein files, which he has labeled a “Democrat hoax”.

“I’ve heard President Trump say it’s all for show,” Jones said of the Epstein files. “And I’ve also heard President Trump say, now again, we need to look into him because of his ties to Democrats. In the meantime, he tends to know a lot about President Trump’s own personal assistants and people in his own inner circle.”

Blanche stayed on script while he spent around 90 seconds talking about Epstein. His Fox interview aired just a few hours before Trump’s epic Truth Social screed on Sunday night where he seemed to admit defeat and urged Republicans to release the Epstein files, which could come as soon as Tuesday.

As part of his Truth Social post, Trump claimed, “Nobody cared about Jeffrey Epstein when he was alive.”

“President Trump has said the same thing since the campaign trail about Jeffrey Epstein, which is that he has nothing to hide,” Blanche said on Fox. “And the Department of Justice has never disputed that.”

The deputy attorney general said Trump had already “directed” them on Friday to continue to look at the remaining content of the Epstein files.

“Which we’re happy to do,” he said. “This Department of Justice has done more than really any administration in recent memory to combat sex trafficking, to combat any kind of abuses against children, against young women, and so there’s nothing we have to hide when it comes to that, and so when President Trump tell us to investigate it we welcome it with open arms.”

Blanche pointed out that the Epstein investigation has been going on for over a decade, over several presidential administrations.

“We’re going to continue to find out if there’s anybody responsible,” Blanche said, “anybody that hasn’t already been held accountable and if they’re out there we’ll find them.”

Jones added, “Most Americans will say the fact it’s been going on more than a decade and it seems like nobody is left to prosecute or bring charges against. You can’t seem to find evidence is what’s concerning to people,” he said, before his co-host wound up the interview, saying they had already “thrown a lot at” Blanche.

Blanche, who used to be Trump’s personal attorney, was sent to interview Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in prison earlier this year, before she was moved to cushier confinement.

However, last week’s trove of Epstein emails highlighted contradictions from what the prisoner told Blanche, including Maxwell’s claim to have never seen Trump at Epstein’s home.

In one of the emails sent in 2011, Epstein told Maxwell had “spent hours at my house” with the late Virginia Giuffre.

That led to a feud between George Conway and Blanche on X last week.

Conway wrote, “Blanche’s questioning of Ghislaine Maxwell was either (a) completely incompetent; or (b) intentionally crafted not to elicit facts incriminating Trump.

“Either way, he is not fit to serve as Deputy Attorney General of the United States,” he added.

Blanche clapped back, “When I interviewed Maxwell, law enforcement didn’t have the materials Epstein’s estate hid for years and only just provided to Congress. Stop talking. It’s unbecoming.”>

<White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt finally received a major and embarrassing fact check over her continued falsehoods and misinformation about the skyrocketing cost of groceries in the United States.

In a post on X Tuesday, Leavitt linked to a White House press release and claimed, “Prices are steadying and wages are climbing, new DoorDash report shows.”

Leavitt was citing a Fox Business story, and so did the White House press release on statistics from the food delivery service’s State of Local Commerce report.

But social media wasn’t having any of it, slapping a community note on her post and calling it “Misleading.”

The note went on to explain what the DoorDash data actually found along with a link to the survey and another link to the USDA’s latest information on rising prices from August, the last time the stats were released.

“The report actually shows rising food prices. Avg price of a cheeseburger, a soda & fries increased 3.8% YoY in Sep25 while typical restaurant meals rose 3.2%” and “This echoes latest (Aug) USDA food cost data: 2.9% more overall, 2.7% (at home) & 3.9% (in restaurants),” the X note said in correcting Leavitt.

Leavitt’s post along with the community note went viral, with more than 4.4 million views and sparking a firestorm on social media.

“Lol. Just lie after lie,” this X user said in calling Leavitt out above a post on 500 items that have increased under Trump and his administration.

“Oops! Busted again by Community Notes. The truth shall set you free, Karolies,” another X user jeered.

“Clueless as usual! Talk about not understanding how to read the room,” wrote another.

Others found it hilarious that the White House and Leavitt even cited the food delivery service’s report as a gauge on the U.S. economy.

And this one: “More people are driving doordash, that must mean the economy is getting better.” While another added, “Wow Door Dash! Are you kidding me?”

“A door dash report? We’re using a door dash report to make claims about grocery prices and wages? Are we being serious right now? You’re not, I know that,” another fumed on X.

“Yeah, but Discount Tire’s latest report on the state of the U.S. economy says we still have a problem with inflation,” mocked another.

But Leavitt isn’t alone in constantly repeating false and misleading information on the struggling economy.

Trump spent last week spewing misinformation and flat-out falsehoods about how he’s made everything from energy to food prices, except for beef, more affordable since retaking office in January.

The President started addressing the issue after Democrats resoundingly trounced Republicans in the off-year elections, with many analysts suggesting they won so many races because of the faltering economy and labor market.

But despite Trump’s best efforts to convince people that he’s lowered prices significantly, Americans are seeing some of the highest prices ever for groceries and utilities. It’s not even a matter of what the President or anybody else says, because Americans just have to look at their bills to know prices are soaring.

So many people are struggling to just pay for the staples like milk, bread and eggs, let alone beef.

And energy prices? NPR reported earlier this month that the cost of electricity is up by double digits, spiking 40 percent since February 2020, with utility companies planning more increases in the months ahead.>

Where's that cross, <karoliar, trophy wife>?

<It’s not a matter of if the next recession comes, but when. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently warned that “sections of the economy” are already showing signs of strain — and that if the Federal Reserve doesn’t cut rates soon, the pain could spread fast. His warning landed like an echo of what many already feel: Something in the system is starting to buckle.

The numbers may still look fine, the talking heads may still smile, but the tremors have begun. And this time, it will be a recession unlike any before it, because the U.S. is uniquely unprepared to endure it.

In previous downturns, the country has had cushions. Families had savings, unions had leverage, and the government had credibility. Not anymore. Most Americans today have little to no savings, a mountain of debt, and a growing suspicion that the system only works for someone else.

Credit cards have become lifelines. “Buy now, pay later” schemes are treated like budgeting tools. An unexpected bill — a car repair, a medical emergency, a layoff — can set off a chain reaction that ends in eviction. The margin between comfort and crisis has all but disappeared.

Bessent’s concern centers on the Federal Reserve’s refusal to lower interest rates. The Fed keeps rates high to fight inflation, but that very cure could soon kill the patient. High borrowing costs are suffocating small businesses and freezing homebuyers out of the market. Even modest families who once dreamed of owning a home are locked out by mortgage rates that feel like bad punchlines. Housing is stuck in limbo: sellers can’t sell, buyers can’t buy, and renters can’t catch a break. For millions, the American Dream now looks like an overdraft notice.

This recession, when it lands, will not be a repeat of 2008. The dangers are different — and in some ways, more permanent. In past crises, job losses came from factories shutting down or banks imploding. This time, layoffs are happening in sleek glass towers and corporate boardrooms. Artificial intelligence has given companies a new way to cut costs. No need for pink slips or awkward meetings — just one software update and an entire department disappears. The human cost is invisible but immense. People aren’t just losing their jobs; they’re losing their purpose. And this time, there’s little guarantee those jobs will return.

For decades, Americans were told that education was the insurance policy against economic despair. Get a degree, specialize, stay adaptable. But AI is rewriting that promise. Algorithms are encroaching on white-collar work — writing reports, analyzing data, even producing art and code. The recession ahead won’t just shrink paychecks; it will shrink relevance.

The political consequences will be explosive. Economic pain has always bred anger, but this time the anger is already here. It’s been simmering for years — over lockdowns, over borders, over identity and ideology. Add a recession to that volatile mix, and something breaks. When people lose jobs and hope, they stop trusting everything else — governments, banks, media, even neighbors. The next financial crash could trigger not just protests, but full-scale social unrest. America’s patience is stretched to breaking point. One more round of layoffs could tear it apart....>

Not to worry: Scott Pissant and his band of merrye dolts will save us.

<....Bessent’s comments about interest rates sound technical, but the stakes are enormous. Keep them high and you crush the middle class; cut them too fast and inflation comes roaring back. The Fed is trapped in a paradox of its own making, trying to control a storm with a thermostat. Meanwhile, Washington is more focused on election cycles than economic cycles. The political class is too divided to plan, too addicted to denial to act. When the downturn comes, they’ll blame one another while ordinary people bear the cost.

There’s a bleak irony here. The same technology that promised prosperity now threatens stability. Automation has made companies lean but society brittle. Efficiency looks good on spreadsheets but disastrous in real life. What economists call “productivity gains” often translate into human losses — fewer jobs, less security, and a country where the lucky few build rockets while the rest clip coupons.

And yet, for all the data and debate, recessions are ultimately emotional. They are about fear — fear of losing what little we have, fear of not being needed anymore, fear that the future is slipping away. When that fear spreads, spending stops, trust collapses, and the economy follows. It’s not just money that disappears; it’s confidence. And once confidence dies, no stimulus check can resurrect it.

Bessent may prove to be the reluctant prophet of a downturn already underway. The cracks are already visible: shrinking factory output, rising credit defaults, retail sales that look eerily calm before the storm. Economists call this a “soft landing.” But when a plane runs out of fuel mid-flight, there’s no soft landing — only impact.

The next recession will be remembered not for its depth but for its disillusionment. It won’t just drain savings; it will drain faith — in markets, in technology, in leaders, in society itself. It will show us, once again, that the line between growth and greed is perilously thin.

We’ve built a society where millions live on borrowed money and borrowed time, and dare to call it normal. The recession ahead may finally expose that illusion. And when illusions die, revolutions stir.>

<Political text messages are a dime a dozen, helping campaigns and political action committees (PACs) raise funds, promote candidates, or denigrate their opponents.

But few go as hard as an intimidating message urging Missouri voters to remove their names from an anti-gerrymandering petition “before it’s too late.”

The manipulative text, sent out last week, is just the latest tactic Republicans are using in their madcap effort to prevent Missourians from putting the GOP’s gerrymander plans to a statewide referendum. And unlike many such political texts, this one came directly from the national Republican Party.

Referendum supporters are calling it a “blatant attempt to confuse and intimidate voters.”

“Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins has declared TENS OF THOUSANDS of petition signatures IMPROPERLY COLLECTED. Did you accidentally sign this? Text back or call 417-612-9044 to withdraw your signature before it’s too late,” the message reads.

It came to public attention after Elad Gross, a former Democratic candidate for Missouri Attorney General, received the text and published a screenshot on Facebook. Soon, other Missourians responded saying they had also received it.

The ad was paid for by the Republican National Committee (RNC), according to a disclosure accompanying the text.

Missouri is one of three states that moved to gerrymander its congressional map this year solely at the behest of President Donald Trump, who is demanding GOP-controlled states redraw to win more Republican seats in 2026.

But unlike in Texas and North Carolina, the Missouri Constitution gives voters the power to stop the gerrymander by collecting signatures and putting a veto referendum on the ballot.

To do that, People Not Politicians, the advocacy group leading the referendum effort, must gather over 106,000 signatures within 90 days after the state legislature’s special session on redistricting adjourned. That deadline is coming up on Dec. 11.

If they accomplish that, the new map will be suspended until Missourians have the opportunity to vote on the measure.

Republicans are now pulling out all the stops to block the referendum. They are challenging it in federal court, proposing deceptive ballot language for the measure, creating administrative delays, attempting to reject tens of thousands of signatures, delaying the courts from weighing in on the rejected signatures, and even falsely warning Missourians that signing the petition is a crime.

In an Oct. 15 press release, Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins announced he would reject the 90,000 signatures organizers collected during the first month of the 90-day period. He also threatened the Missourians who had already signed the petition, stating: “Under Missouri law, no signatures gathered before this approval date are valid, and doing so constitutes a misdemeanor election offense.”

Hoskins, an elected Republican, reversed course the next day, admitting that signing the referendum isn’t illegal. But he informed voters that it is a criminal offense to sign the same measure more than once.

People Not Politicians filed a lawsuit in state court challenging Hoskins’ rejection of the signatures.

Republicans then tried to convince a judge to delay their hearing by requesting discovery. When that failed, they rescheduled the hearing twice by repeatedly demanding a different judge.

The GOP’s legal delays are spearheaded by the Put Missouri First PAC, a committee formed in October and funded by two $50,000 contributions from the National Republican Congressional Committee and the RNC.

The intimidating text message went out on Friday, as Republicans were once again attempting to change judges and delay the case — a move that would also prolong the public’s confusion over whether their signatures count.

Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians, told Democracy Docket that the messages are part of a desperate attempt to stop the referendum.

“The RNC doubled down on [Secretary of State] Denny Hoskins’ illegal and inaccurate statements regarding signature collection in a blatant attempt to confuse and intimidate voters,” he said. “Politicians are terrified that Missouri voters will get the last say in their unpopular gerrymander and are desperately trying to stop it.”>

<The Justice Department on Wednesday admitted that the operative indictment against former FBI Director James Comey was never presented to the full grand jury — a procedural error defense attorneys say should bar the prosecution.

The admission came under sharp questioning from U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff, after several judges overseeing parts of the case had raised concerns about the government’s presentation and an apparent discrepancy in the grand jury record.

Instead of presenting a new indictment to the full panel after it rejected one of the counts, interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan gave the grand jury’s foreperson an updated version — not seen by the other grand jurors — to sign.

Nachmanoff asked the government several times whether he understood correctly that the operative indictment was never shown to the entire panel.

“Yes, that is my understanding,” Tyler Lemons, an assistant U.S. attorney, said.

The judge called Halligan up to the lectern to answer additional questions, as she was the only prosecutor who made the government’s case to grand jurors for an indictment.

“Am I correct —” the judge began.

“No, you’re not,” Halligan interrupted, clasping her wrists behind her back.

She said that the grand jury foreperson and a second grand juror were present in the magistrate’s courtroom, recalling the proceeding. The judge said he was familiar with the transcript and directed her to sit down.

Michael Dreeben, an attorney for Comey, told the judge that the apparent error calls for dismissal because “no indictment was returned.”

That means the statute of limitations on the false statements and obstruction charges Comey faces, stemming from 2020 testimony he gave Congress, has lapsed, he contended.

The judge made no immediate ruling but ordered prosecutors to address the matter in court filings by the end of business hours Wednesday.

The revelation took over the intended focus of the hearing — Comey’s bid to dismiss his case on the grounds that he’s the target of a selective and vindictive prosecution at the hands of President Trump’s Justice Department.

A core claim used to undercut the prosecutions of President Trump’s foes, the vindictive prosecution argument on Wednesday faced its first real test in court.

Though the narrative of Trump’s retribution campaign against his political enemies has become pervasive, Nachmanoff must decide whether Comey was unfairly singled out and his charges should be dropped.

Comey, an outspoken critic of the president since leaving his first administration, contends that Trump’s “personal spite” was the impetus of a two-count indictment stemming from 2020 testimony he gave Congress, brought just days before the statute of limitations was set to expire.

As proof of the deep-seated rivalry, Comey in court filings pointed to a 60-page record of grouses and gripes between him and Trump in the media and online, spanning nearly a decade.

Dreeben contended the record is “crystal clear” that Comey’s prosecution would not have occurred without Trump’s apparent vendetta against him.

Though Trump’s irritation toward Comey may have justified his 2017 firing, “it is not a justification for bringing the full weight of the criminal justice system down on him,” the defense attorney said.

Nachmanoff questioned how Halligan fits into the picture and whether the defense sees her as a “stalking horse” or “puppet” for the president, to which Dreeben said her role was to do what she was told...>

<....The government refuted the notion that Halligan’s prosecutorial decisions came at Trump’s direction, resoundingly rejecting both descriptions.

“Ms. Halligan was not directed to seek this prosecution,” Lemons said. “It was her decision and her decision only.”

The Justice Department has urged Nachmanoff to reject Comey’s bid to dismiss the case, contending that to do so would risk impairing a core executive function. In response to his motion, prosecutors said Comey used news reports, social media posts and speculation to “weave a tale” of constitutional violations.

Selective and vindictive prosecution claims, two separate but related defenses, are challenging to prove. That’s primarily because prosecutors retain broad discretion as to whom to charge.

To prevail in a selective prosecution claim, defendants must prove they were unfairly singled out for prosecution, where others similarly situated have not been. They must also show that the government’s selection was based on an unlawful reason, such as race, religion or constitutionally protected conduct.

In vindictive prosecution claims, defendants must show that the government harbored “genuine animus” toward them, such that they would not have been prosecuted otherwise.

Comey said his is the “rare case” that fits the bill.

His lawyers noted that Trump publicly called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue charges against Comey specifically, which Dreeben said is “effectively an admission that this is a political prosecution.”

The call for charges came even as the top prosecutor in the district, Erik Siebert, expressed reservations about the case. Amid the pressure, Siebert resigned, and Bondi appointed Halligan to fill the role, a former White House aide with no prosecutorial experience who was handpicked by the president for the job.

Nachmanoff pressed the Justice Department over whether a formal declination memo deciding against charges for Comey exists. But Lemons said the Deputy Attorney General’s office had directed him not to disclose the matter either way.

Comey’s attorneys also raised the abrupt firing of Comey’s daughter, Maurene, from her role as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, suggesting the attack on his family showed “unequivocal objective evidence of personal animus.”

The bid to dismiss the case for selective and vindictive prosecution is just one prong of the defense’s efforts to make sure it never gets to trial.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie heard arguments over Halligan’s appointment, which both Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) have challenged. They contend that she never had the authority to bring charges in the first place, rendering her signature on their indictments void and requiring dismissal.

The judge, who usually sits on the federal bench in South Carolina but was selected out of district to consider the matter, seemed skeptical that Halligan is lawfully serving as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and said she would rule before Thanksgiving.

A magistrate judge on Monday also granted a defense request for access to typically secret grand jury material after finding a “disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps” in the record. That ruling is on pause until the Justice Department can raise objections, and until Nachmanoff weighs in, but could prompt further endeavors.

If all those efforts fail, Comey will stand trial on Jan. 5. He has pleaded not guilty. >

<[Event "94th US Open"]
[Site "Philadelphia PA"]
[Date "1993.08.12"]
[EventDate "1993"]
[Round "6"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Kreiman, Boris"]
[Black "Abbasi, Nasser M"]
[ECO "B53"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]