I needed a white karate gi for a Street Fighter Halloween costume, so I went to the local school and bought one, and while I was at it I bought a black one too, in case I ever wanted to be a ninja. Then I started wearing the black karate pants as pajamas.

That was over twenty years ago. Those same black karate pants are still my favorite pajamas. In-fucking-credible.

The fashion world is in a war on pockets, so they can sell more handbags. The fewer and smaller pockets we have, the more accessories we need to buy. First they came for women's pockets. Now they're trying to make cargo shorts unacceptable for the same reason.

"I want to smoke weed and not pay taxes and I lack basic empathy for anyone with problems worse than my own."

John Stark, one of the rescuers of the Donner Party.

In Summit Valley the remaining rescuers discussed what to do and took a vote to save only two of the children in Starved Camp. That might have been all they could manage. The others would have to stay behind.

John Stark, above, could not abide that. That meant that nine people, mostly children, would die on the mountain, exposed to the elements down in a very deep hole in the snow. John Stark decided he would save all nine, “Already shouldering a backpack with provisions, blankets, and an axe, he picked up one or two of the smaller children, carried them a little ways, then went back for the others. Then he repeated the whole process again and again and again. To galvanize morale, he laughed and told the youngsters they were so light from months of mouse-sized rations that he could carry them all simultaneously, if only his back were broad enough.” Once they were out of the snow he would eat and rest he said, but not before. He saved all nine. That is extraordinary and that is heroism. It was also heroism he never got contemporary credit for.

Imagine being JD Vance, looking at all of the people smarter and more experienced than him with their shattered careers after working for Trump, and thinking "But I'm the one who will figure out how to ride this tiger to my own advantage!"

Rudy Giuliani went from being "America's mayor" to being an absolute fucking laughingstock, a man so generally reviled that he couldn't sustain an appearance on The Masked Singer.

Anyone, literally anyone at any level, at this point who thinks that Trump won't throw them under the bus at his earliest convenience is just actively seeking their own destruction.

I counted at least twenty references to the "Harris administration," or "Harris' immigration policies," and one full-on "the Harris/Biden administration."

Sorry

Jesus, he went to Burlington VT? Was he trying to generate so much psychic dissonance that he summoned the angry ghost of Ethan Allen?

Just doing a tiny bit of research...

This is cool news. It's always great when politicians who think their jobs are secure get a reminder that voters really do get to decide who will represent them. That said...

• Sri Lanka has a form of ranked choice voting. It looks like it hasn't seen much use, with the two major parties trading the Presidency back and forth for some time, but it exists, and that's a lot better than first past the post, which a lot of us are stuck with for the time being. If you're trapped in America like me, then I definitely recommend agitating and organizing for voting reform, but until that happens, voting as if it doesn't exist yet, because it doesn't.

• This election had fewer total votes cast than the last California gubernatorial election. Major political upheavals like this can happen, but they are more likely to happen in smaller elections. If you care about outsider political parties, the best move is to organize at the local or state level, and build a respectable foundation. The next time I hear someone talk about voting third party at the US Presidential level, I'm going to have a Ralph Nader / Florida / Bush vs. Gore flavored aneurysm.

Sweet Jesus, I wish that Democratic voters and politicians were unified enough that if we had a solid majority in this country that we could be considered a one-party state. Even if we somehow did manage to finagle things such that we won the next election 60-40 or more, it's obvious to anyone with a brain that we would immediately celebrate by turning on each other like dogs. The neolibs can't stand the hippies. The hippies can't stand the tech liberals. Most of the people pushed left by identifying with one oppressed minority group or another are in a coalition approximately as stable as the Balkans in 1913.

Democrats' favorite activity is infighting. We like it more than winning elections. The times when we actually manage to get our shit together enough to win are the exception to the rule.

"Anyone can become President."

Me, thinking about Abraham Lincoln or Bill Clinton: "Yeah!"

"Anyone can become President."

Me, aware of Donald Trump, with Tucker Carlson waiting in the wings: "Oh no!"

I'm just imagining being the poor sap working for a foreign power trying to extract useful information from his cottage cheese brain.

"Do you have nuclear subs in the South China Sea?"

"We have to be extremely vigilant and extremely careful when it comes to nuclear. Nuclear changes the whole ballgame. ... The biggest problem we have is nuclear — nuclear proliferation and having some maniac, having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon. That’s in my opinion, that is the single biggest problem that our country faces right now."

"Where! Are! The nuclear! Subs! Deployed!"

"Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it's true! — but when you're a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that's why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it's four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible."