Not a Surprise

It appears that Trump officials at the Department of the Interior are frantically shredding documents related to the ballroom and other building programs. 

Gee, who could have predicted that? 

House Democrats are demanding that the Interior Department retain documents related to President Donald Trump’s construction projects around Washington after whistleblowers warned that key paperwork has already been destroyed before Democrats take power, congressional sources tell CNN.

The warnings come as the Trump administration is signaling it will accelerate plans for moving ahead with the projects — a key part of what the president sees as his legacy — to lay as much groundwork as possible before the Democrats take over Congress in January.

On Tuesday, the top Democrat in the House Natural Resources committee, which has oversight of the agency that has helped fast-track many of Trump’s projects, plans to issue letters to the Interior Department as well as other federal agencies and private companies, requesting that they “preserve all records and data responsive to oversight” the congressional panel oversees.

………

Multiple credible whistleblowers have approached Huffman’s committee in recent weeks to voice concern that the Interior Department is getting rid of records in anticipation of forthcoming scrutiny, the sources told CNN. The agency oversees much of the national parkland Trump wants to use for his projects.

………

Among the other recipients of the preservation letters are the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, which are part of Interior.

Letters are also being sent to the Agriculture Department and companies like Lockheed Martin and John Deere that are known to have donated to Trump’s projects. CNN has asked them for comment. Whistleblowers did not say these entities had destroyed documents.

However, all letter recipients must reply to certify their compliance, which requires efforts to “preserve existing records collections and productions,” as well as “Identify and recover any deleted information” and “suspend any destruction and deletion practices.”

We are going to need a special jail just to accommodate all of the miscreants from this administration in 2029. 

Why Yes, Hakeem Jeffries is Incompetent

The vote in the House to bury with the impeachment of Pete Hegseth won (211 to 204) yesterday because 11 Democrats could not be bothered show up for the vote.

There are 2 Dems whom I will give the benefit of the doubt, Lou Correa, (D-CA) who was under doctor's orders not to travel as he recuperates from a heart attack, and Steven Horsford, (D-NV) who had a personal emergency.  (I'd like details on the latter though)

As to the other 9, 8 of them were delayed because they were at a fundraising event for a political PAC, and Nancy Pelosi was in California getting (I'm not making this up) a lifetime achievement award.

If those 9 of them had shown up, the impeachment would have proceeded.

Remember this in the 2028 primaries. 

If there is one ability central to the role of Speaker of the House, it is the ability to count votes.

Hakeem Jefferies cannot count votes. 

House Democrats are facing a furious backlash after eleven members did not show up to block the Republican move to kill the Pete Hegseth impeachment vote.

Several complained they were stuck in traffic after attending an event celebrating Democratic Party women.

They were attending a a fundraising appetizer event run by the Elect Democratic Women PAC. 

They were too busy doing a fundraiser to show up for the f%$#ing Vote. 

The Daily Beast contacted all eleven missing members to collect their excuses.

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie’s effort to impeach the defense secretary was blocked on Tuesday evening when GOP members united on a procedural motion.

The vote came down 211 to 204, with 18 members not voting. Massie was the only Republican to vote to proceed to impeachment.

Democrats had been riding high after their blue tsunami in the midterms delivered a sharp rebuke to Donald Trump and his administration, but they’re now facing intense criticism over the botched first major impeachment attempt.

The eleven Democrats who did not vote were Reps. Julia Brownley, Lou Correa, Laura Gillen, Steven Horsford, Jonathan Jackson, Brittany Pettersen, Haley Stevens, Melanie Stansbury, Marilyn Strickland, Frederica Wilson, and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi.

………

Unlike the members who were stuck in traffic or faced other delays, Pelosi returned to San Francisco before the vote to attend the Swords to Plowshares’ 30th Annual Veterans Day Celebration honoring local veterans, where she was set to receive the Lifetime Advocate for Veterans Award as she retires at the end of her term. 

Being at a fundraiser is no excuse, neither is ditching the vote to get a meaningless trophy. For a vote like this, you show up early, and the Speaker should have been riding their asses about getting there on time hours before the scheduled vote.

I am so sick of incompetent Democrats, particularly among the party leadership.  

House Republicans Vote to Make Sexual Abuse Protector Their Leader

Yeah, the House Minority Leader will be Jim Jordan, who has been credibly alleged with turning a blind eye to widespread abuse from a sports doctor while he was coaching at Ohio State University.

I'm beginning to think that ties to sexual abuse are a requirement for leadership positions in the Republican party.

What Bernie Said

The distinguished gentleman from Vermont has announced that he will not support Chuck Schumer for Majority Leader of the Senate.

Heck, I wouldn't support Chuck "Strongly Worded Letter" Schumer as leader of Cub Scout troop 153. 

Opposition to Senator Chuck Schumer’s return as party leader burst into the open on Capitol Hill on Tuesday as Senator Bernie Sanders said he would not support him and other Democrats questioned whether he should remain at the top after their huge wins last week.

“If this campaign was about anything, it was about change, and the need for the Democratic Party, in my view, to move in a new and bold direction,” Mr. Sanders, a progressive Vermont Independent who aligns with Democrats, said at a news conference following a private party meeting. “I will not be supporting Chuck to be re-elected as the Democratic leader.”

Despite Mr. Schumer serving as the architect of an extraordinary Democratic victory that could end up gaining the party as many as nine seats and the Senate majority, he has run into resistance from progressive groups.

"Architect of an extraordinary Democratic victory?"  are you f%$#ing kidding me?

This is the guy who went all in on Janet Mills and Haley Stevens.

That the US Senate was retaken happened in spite of Schumer, not because of him. 

Giving him credit for the election results is like giving Jim Carrey's "Fire Marshall Bill" credit for your house not burning down.

Good to See Newspapers to Run Headlines Like This

Unfortunately, the paper running the headline, "Stephen Miller, reactionary ideologue and white supremacist, promoted head of Trump administration," is Le Monde English, not a US newspaper.

If a newspaper cannot be bothered to describe Stephen Miller (יִמַּח שְׁמו) for what he is, I cannot be bothered to subscribe or not block your f%$#ing advertisements.'

A majority of Americans punished Donald Trump during the midterms for his strategic choices and authoritarian exercise of power. In response, the American president chose to double down and promote his most extreme and most loyal adviser on Friday, November 6: Stephen Miller. The White House's reactionary ideologue will replace Susie Wiles as chief of staff.

"Stephen has been with me from the beginning," Trump told the press. "He gets it; very good politically. He’ll do a great job. Great manager." However, the president did not give any real explanation. "Sometimes you change," he simply said. The change in question is a headlong rush, a retreat into the inner circle of loyalists without qualms, ready to do anything for their leader. It shows just how much Trump sees the final two years of his term as the fortification of a bunker against the attacks of a Democratic-controlled Congress and the continuation of a unilateral presidency, without consultation.

At least one person was pleased with the appointment: Steve Bannon, who served as Trump's special adviser during his first term and has been an indefatigable promoter of national populism. Speaking to Le Monde, he said that Trump's decision was a "f%$# you to the Republican establishment and to democratic socialists." He described Miller as an uncompromising MAGA ideologue.

(%$# mine) 

H/t Mike the Mad Biologist.

As Much as it Pains Me to Speak Approvingly of a Republican

Reporter: “Pete Hegseth says you want to see him in prison.” Rep. Thomas Massie: “ There’s no way that I would go to visit him”

— They murdered Renée Good (@Youtalkingtume) November 9, 2026

Thomas Massie (R-KY) just won this whole election cycle.

Hello, police?  I'd like to report a murder.

Yes:  Any shred of remaining dignity of Pete Hegseth. 

What?  I need to go to a judge?  Why?

Because there is a dispute as to whether Hegseth ever had any dignity?

Oh, now I get it. 

Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Elon Musk's AI, Grok, is is calling out the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ for palling around with Nazis.

Well duh, you don't need to be super-intelligent to know that.

A week after a humiliating midterms, Elon Musk is back to his old habits: flirting with Nazism.

Perhaps Musk really didn’t intend to perform back-to-back salutes that suspiciously looked a lot like a Sieg Hiel at a Trump inauguration party nearly two years ago, but you have to admit that he has quite the track record when it comes to espousing white supremacist conspiracy theories and interacting with people who wouldn’t hesitate to describe themselves as outright Nazis.

This time, his racist run-in was even called out by his own chatbot, Grok. On Sunday night, Musk responded to a supremacist meme posted by an account called @VladTheInflator railing against “white guilt” by downplaying the Atlantic slave trade in a way reminiscent of Holocaust denialism, while also perpetrating racist myths about slavery in Africa. Musk tagged Grok to ask if the meme’s claims were true, which the AI assessed to be “mostly accurate.”

This questionable interaction didn’t get overlooked by other users on the site, though, one of whom turned Grok back on its creator by asking the “maximum truth-seeking” AI to confirm if Musk was replying to a Nazi account.

“Yes,” Grok responded, seemingly atoning for all the times it called itself “MechaHitler.” “VladTheInflator has posted that being called a Nazi ‘feels like a compliment,’ that ‘Nazis are sounding better by the day,’ and that ‘Everything Hitler said about Zionists was true,’ plus explicit racial hierarchy claims.”

Grok explained in a helpful followup that Musk and the Nazi account go back. “Elon has replied to and retweeted VladTheInflator multiple times before this,” it said.

It’s not just that one account, either. Musk has an extensive history with promoting racist talking points and endorsing those posted by other far right figures, including a debunked conspiracy theory about “white genocide” in his homeland of South Africa.

 I did Nazi that coming.

Headline of the Day

Maybe Telling Americans They're Useless Eaters Who Must Perish for the Glorious AI Revolution Was a Bad Idea: Midterm Thoughts

Faine Greenwood, on the thumping that the AI tech bros took on election night.

To quote George Bernard Shaw, Playwright ans Great Wit, "One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't."

These guys were never geniuses.  They were guys who parlayed white privilege, luck, and a great crime (to paraphrase Honore de Balzac) into fortunes.

If they had a mind when they started, their decades as pampered princelings have destroyed that. 

Americans really, really, really hate data centers.

Lest you harbored any residual doubt about this, the midterm elections just proved it. Take a gander at these apocalyptic numbers for data center advocates, as compiled by Redbud Consulting:

Or consider NBC's exit poll data, which currently shows that solid majorities 1. think that AI will do more to hurt society than to help it (57%), and 2. oppose the construction of data centers in their community (76%):

Bye, Felecia Lauren

Following days of  an increasing vote gap between Eileen Laubacher and Lauren Boebert, CNN has declared the election for the Democrat.

About the only people who will mourn this are the writers for the Daily Show, for whom the Colorado moonbat was an endless source of material.

Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-Windsor) may continue to rage against the dying of the light that is her political career, but the end is near here.

As CNN reports:

Retired Rear Adm. Eileen Laubacher, a Democrat, will flip Colorado’s 4th District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, ending conservative firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert’s tenure in Congress.

Boebert’s loss comes after she elected to run in a more conservative district last cycle in an effort to preserve her political future. But Laubacher, who served more than three decades in the Navy, capitalized on the national headwinds against the GOP and focused her campaign on affordability issues.

Good Riddance

In what is hopefully a trend marking the end of the reactionary podcast ecosystem, professional bigot Laura Loomer (יִמַּח שְׁמו) is pausing her podcast.

It could also be that the poster-child for failed plastic surgery is a victim of her own personal corruption. 

Right-wing influencer Laura Loomer announced she is taking a “brief hiatus” from her Loomer Unleashed podcast just hours after a Trump administration adviser exposed her for being paid to post some of her manic, hateful content.

It all started on Thursday, when Alex Bruesewitz, who is behind much of Trump’s digital media strategy, took aim at conservative social media influencers following the GOP’s massive midterm election loss. 

“Believe it or not attacking Democrats over their relationships with a streamer (Hasan Piker) wasn’t an effective hit,” Bruesewitz posted, not mentioning Loomer by name. “GOP candidates probably shouldn’t take messaging advice from fringe right-wing ‘influencers’ moving forward.”

Loomer took the bait.

“But they should take their advice and meetings with @TuckerCarlson instead?… It’s completely reasonable for people to be appalled with Democrat candidates campaigning with a guy who said America deserved 9/11. Hasan Piker regularly makes comments in support of jihadi groups,” she wrote. “What wasn’t helpful was your friend Tucker Carlson essentially endorsing Abdul El-Sayed over Mike Rogers and using his show to tell people to not support Rogers just a few weeks out from an election. But we all know you will never condemn your buddy Tucker.”

………

Loomer took offense to that, claiming that she was not an influencer and criticizing Bruesewitz for his association with Omeed Malik, a conservative venture capitalist and major Republican donor.

“I’m a journalist and an opposition researcher Alex. What are you? What is it that you do for Omeed Malik exactly? He’s a Muslim right? Half Iranian and half Pakistani if I’m not mistaken,” Loomer fired back. “Is that why you have such an issue with the things I say about Islam?”

“Okay lol. But is it common for journalists to get paid for their opinions and tweets?”

“You say ‘Okay lol.’ Not sure why you are laughing. I recall last year your company X strategies reached out to me asking me for help. Do you deny that? What is so funny? I guess I don’t get the joke,” Loomer said, admitting that she was indeed paid to tweet. “You loved sharing my journalistic reports during the 2023/2024 DeSantis-Trump primary too. What changed?”

“No I don’t deny that. I’ve paid you for tweets before. I haven’t for at least a year though,” Bruesewitz wrote back. “I also know you still get paid by others for tweets so I do think it’s fair to refer to you as an ‘influencer.’ What percentage of your tweets are paid for?”

………

Hours later, Loomer announced a “one to two month show hiatus.”

Sauce for the Gander

Amid concerns about timecard fraud in his local police department, the mayor started tracking officers.

The entire police department resigned in response. 

Police love Flock stalker cameras when they use them on the general public, but not when its used on them.

If there’s one thing the rising surveillance dragnet has exposed throughout North America, it’s that cops really don’t like to taste their own medicine. In fact, the experience drove police employed by the town of Milner, Georgia to resign in tandem in late October, after their boss admitted to tracking the police chief’s work truck during an investigation.

According to local channel WSB-TV Atlanta, Milner Mayor Craig Timmons called a last-minute city council meeting to distribute copies of an investigation report containing allegations that the police chief was committing some sort of payroll fraud. Basically, Timmons alleged that police chief Lamar Bunn was not working the hours indicated on his time sheets.

In addition to tracking his truck, Timmons told local reporters he’d set up a surveillance camera pointed at the chief’s office.

………

To retaliate against the mayor and signal their support for Bunn, the entire department tendered its resignation on the spot, something Milner told WSB-TV he did not anticipate. The police chief denied the allegations, saying that it’s “very common” for Milner officers to work off-hours as well as outside the city. 

Yeah, working at the cop bar or your mistress' apartment is, "Very common." 

Regardless of the validity of the investigation, the mass-resignation exposes the hypocrisy of Georgia police, who have access to perhaps the largest public-private surveillance operation in US history. As the home of controversial surveillance company Flock Safety, the state of Georgia has nearly 10,000 automatic license plate readers in operation, which are increasingly used by police departments throughout the country to surveil civilian movement without probable cause. 

Indeed. 

The Problem is the Business Model

Houston, we have a problem

The National Library of Medicine has stopped indexing articles from Scientific Reports after excessive fraud in its articles.

Call me a pinko, but the problem here is as a result of the aggressively for=-profit academic publishing industry. 

If you are being paid thousands of dollars for each article published, there is no incentive to aggressively pursue fraud, because that is lost sales.

The National Library of Medicine has stopped indexing articles from Scientific Reports in MEDLINE because the journal’s inclusion in the world’s largest biomedical library is under review, Retraction Watch has learned. 

“Following its significant growth in recent years, Scientific Reports is currently being reviewed by the US National Library of Medicine (NLM),” the journal’s chief editor Rafal Marszalek wrote in an Oct. 20 email we have seen. “We have been informed that during this period, indexing of newly published content in MEDLINE and archiving in PubMed Central (PMC) are paused, and will not appear in PubMed.”

Marszalek did not say why NLM is reviewing Scientific Reports, which is the largest journal in PubMed in terms of articles indexed. But according to MEDLINE’s policies page, NLM re-evaluates journals if “there are significant changes to a journal,” noting the library monitors journals “for changes in publication practices, such as annual publication volume or primary article content types.”

………

The anomaly was discovered by Tom Lahey, a self-described “independent, self-funded researcher with an interest in public health and research.” Lahey maintains a set of tools based on PubMed data, including a page showing journals ranked by total articles in PubMed. Scientific Reports has had the most articles indexed in PubMed each year since 2019, by Lahey’s count. He is familiar with the typical delays in data processing, but when he noticed lower-than-usual numbers for Scientific Reports for two months in a row, he opened a support ticket with NLM to inquire why. The PubMed team suggested he contact the publisher, which he did. Marszalek replied to him on October 20 revealing NLM was reviewing the journal.  

The insertion of the for-profit operators into academic publishing has been an unmitigated disaster.  (more details in the video)

Headline of the Day

Trumpism Is Failing Because It Is Very, Very Stupid

—The New Republic, on the election results.

I think that there is an element of whistling past the grave yard here, when one says, that MAGA is destined to fail because it is too stupid, one is way too optimistic.

The 2026 midterms are over, which means that the 2028 presidential election is now underway. President Donald Trump occasionally jokes that he would run for a third term despite the Constitution’s two-term limit. The reality is that Republicans will need to find a new front-runner over the next two years.

This will be a fraught moment for their coalition. Trump’s approval ratings are in the low 30s. The Iran war remains insoluble. Trump cannot achieve victory through conventional strength of arms. He lacks the credibility and temperament to reach a permanent agreement with Tehran. The Iranian government, for its part, seems content to watch high oil prices choke the life out of the American economy.

There will be a temptation for Republicans to propose doing Trumpism the right way, to achieve their goals without the errors that beset Trump’s second term. This is a fool’s errand. Trump’s mistakes were not a deviation from Trumpism; they were Trumpism. His political movement is, at its core, based on a rejection of knowledge and expertise. As a result, it is inherently self-destructive.

The question is not whether this will eventually fail, the question is whether it will fail before irreparable harm is caused.

Update on Nichémat

They are fine.

They spent about 4 hours in the ER being observed, and are still a bit out of it today, but at no time were they at risk of something serious.

No Blog For You!

My eldest is on the ER with an anaphylactic reaction to corn.

They are sensitive enough to the cereal that the smell of popcorn triggered the anaphylaxis. 

They should be fine, but I am cooling my heels in the waiting room waiting for them to be released.

Posted via mobile.

Musk Ends Production of the Edsel Swasticar

So much winning.

After what is arguably a worse product introduction that Ford's nororious Edsel, the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is throwing the towel in on his miserable excuse for a pickup truck.

Musk created a car with the style sense of a Trabant, the reliability of a Chevy Vega, the allure of the AMC Pacer, and the practicality of the Landmaster from the movie Damnation Alley.

Musk seems to think that the future for his care company is fully autonomous taxicabs, which, even if Tesla did not have the worst self-driving technology out there, (no radar, no lidar) would be insane.

I expect to see a shortage of Cybertruck spare parts within 3 years. 

Being Replaced by Something More Bizarrely Inexplicable

In this case, it is the replacement of Susie Wiles by Stephen Miller (יִמַּח שְׁמו) as Trump's Chief of Staff.

Well, I can say with certitude that Trump has selected the worst possible person to manage the White House.

We Are All Paraguay

A digital bank with close ties to the Paraguayan President just collapsed taking the bulk of the savings of about half of the Latin American nation's with it.

The President, Santiago Peña, who aggressively pushed the bank for years, has resigned, though the legislature rejected this, and the lower house voted to impeach him.

Gee, a dodgy bank run by a bunch of tech bros implodes and leaves the rest of us holding the bag.

Why does this sound familiar?

Paraguay’s rightwing president, Santiago Peña, resigned on Thursday after a political and financial crisis collapsed the South American country’s banking system in recent days.

At the centre of the crisis is Ueno Bank, which in just a few years under Peña went from an obscure digital bank to one of the country’s largest lenders, claiming to have about 60% of Paraguay’s adult population as customers.

Last Monday, the central bank ordered Ueno into resolution over insolvency, freezing the deposits of 3 million customers, leaving hundreds of thousands of families without access to money for food and basic daily expenses. Bank executives were arrested, and people took to the streets in massive protests.

In power since August 2023 and with a term running until 2028, the 47-year-old economist was already facing impeachment proceedings that had broad support.

………

Ueno Bank began as a finance company in the 1970s and, in 2021, was bought by Grupo Vázquez, one of Paraguay’s largest business and industrial conglomerates. At the end of 2023, it received authorisation from the central bank, already under Peña’s administration, to operate as a digital bank.

The bank rapidly expanded its operations, attracting customers with generous cash-back offers on groceries and sponsoring Paraguay’s national football team. On Wednesday, the players released a letter “demanding” a “forceful response” from the government and the justice system.

The bank came to manage between $800m and $850m in deposits from state and pension entities, including retirement funds, prompting criticism over conflicts of interest because of Peña’s previous shareholding ties to Ueno Holding.

Just to refresh your memory, Elon Musk wants to make Ecch (formerly Twitter) a bank just like Ueno.

(Update, November 6)

Peña has been convicted in an impeachment trial by the Paraguayan Senate and arrested by the police.

The significance of the Impeachment result is that it means that he loses any sort of legislative immunity.

We Are F%$#ed

Have you ever heard of an El Niño atmospheric river?

Well, you are about to. 

The weather is dry for the moment, but signs across the atmosphere are painting a clear picture for when the first atmospheric river will bring rain to California.

As El Niño begins to lock into the atmosphere, it will continue to set up patterns like the one we will see next week, with lower pressure just offshore and a lingering dome of high pressure across the central United States.

Patterns like this that hold in place for a week or more are exceptional at squeezing out oceanic moisture in the form of atmospheric rivers – strings of the jet stream that become saturated with relentless rain. And the first of the season for Central California is taking shape for next week.

………

The next seven or so days look quite dry. A stable atmosphere overhead will make for a wonderful week of high temperatures in the upper 60s and low 70s across most of the Golden State.

The trouble comes when this stability moves east. With low pressure already spinning away in the Gulf of Alaska, any stable atmosphere that moves east will pull that Gulf of Alaska low south, where it will quickly be saturated with extra moisture from El Niño and form an atmospheric river.
 A clear signal for lower pressure across the atmosphere west of California is expected late next week, setting up likely rain events for the western United States. The Sacramento Bee

It is too early to say which day these long-lasting rains could ring out over California, but the probable window is approximately Nov. 11-16, with rain likely only lasting for a day or two.

Atmospheric river rains can be substantial, especially with extra fuel to work with thanks to El Niño. Many areas could quickly see a month's worth of rain in just a few days.

We are in for a world of hurt. 

Good News Everyone!

I invented a device that makes you read this in your head using my voice!

Following Tuesday's elections, we now have a very real possibility that the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact will be passed, rendering the Electoral College irrelevant.

The NVPIC is a proposed agreement that states would allocate electoral votes int he Presidential election according to the national popular vote totals.

If the states entering the agreement have a total of more than 269 electoral votes, then the winner will always be the candidate who gets the most votes.

Tuesday’s wave election swept Democrats into power in Congress. But the most seismic result for American politics and democracy may come out of the battleground states where Democrats just won trifecta control by taking both state houses and the governor’s mansion: Come January, Democratic legislators will have the votes to elect the next president by the popular vote.

State lawmakers could circumvent the Electoral College by enacting what’s known as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Under the current system, each state gets a set number of electors, and the candidate who wins enough states to accumulate at least 270 electoral votes becomes president. This system allows the winner of the popular vote to lose, as Al Gore did in 2000 and Hillary Clinton again in 2016. But the NPVIC would bypass the Electoral College, with each state that enacts the compact awarding its electors to the winner of the national popular vote. The compact would only take effect once states representing a majority of electoral votes sign on, ensuring that the winner of the national popular vote becomes president.

In April, Virginia became the 18th state to join the compact, bringing the total number of electoral votes pledged under the proposal to 222. On Tuesday, Democrats took trifecta control of state governments in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada. That’s 61 electoral votes. Add in Alaska, where late-arriving votes are still being counted, and that’s 64. With Virginia on board, only 48 more votes are needed for the compact to reach 270 votes and take effect. The emerging math means there is a real chance that the next president is selected based on the national popular vote.

On the Always Deplorable and Frequently Entertaining Brandon Herrera

He will not be going to the US Congress in January, as he lost by 7 points in Tuesday's blue wave.

Katy Padilla Stout won the race for Texas’ 23rd Congressional District on Tuesday against Republican YouTuber Brandon Herrera, flipping the seat formerly held by Republican Tony Gonzales.

The Associated Press called the race for Padilla Stout, a San Antonio attorney and former teacher. The 23rd Congressional District, which includes a significant portion of the Texas-Mexico border, covers most of West Texas between El Paso and San Antonio, including the Big Bend region.

………

It was one of several victories in a historic night for Texas Democrats. Two Democratic representatives, Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar, held seats that were redistricted to favor Republicans. By late Tuesday night, Republicans had conceded three of the five seats their new congressional map was designed to flip.

The 23rd Congressional District, left largely untouched by the mid-decade redistricting efforts, voted for President Donald Trump by a 15-point margin in 2024.

Padilla Stout’s victory is the first time a Democrat has won the West Texas seat since 2012, when former Rep. Pete Gallego won the seat back from Republicans before subsequently losing his reelection bid.

………

Herrera sparked controversy throughout the campaign as Padilla Stout and others highlighted derogatory comments he has made on his YouTube channel and social media about women and jokes about the Holocaust.

Gonzales resigned from the seat in March amid scandal over an affair he had with a staffer who later died by suicide. Days before his resignation, Gonzales had been forced into a runoff in the Republican primary by Herrera, a staunch gun rights activist, by less than 1,000 votes.

Let's go Brandon, I guess.

I Approve

A group calling themselves the Capytistas has announced that they will be releasing the addresses of American oligarchs and their enablers.

Not generally a big fan of doxxing, but in this case, I will make an exception. 

An underground activist group says it plans to start openly doxing billionaires as part of a phased campaign against what it calls the American oligarchy—beginning this month with a release that maps the homes of Elon Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Tesla’s board, alongside investors and suppliers that keep the corporation afloat.

Two of its members, interviewed by WIRED on the condition of anonymity, say they spent the past year constructing dossiers on billionaires—and one trillionaire—and the people they consider their top lieutenants, using nearly every method available to a private investigator, and some that are not.

The pair say the group is international and includes grassroots activists, researchers, journalists, and artists, including some who received top honors in print, television, and digital media in their former careers. For security, many work in “silos” and do not know each other’s names. Through its connections, the group says it has raised more than $1.2 million from “a heartening number of wealthy class traitors” who share in the view that concentrations of extreme wealth and political power pose an “existential threat.”

In a press release Monday, the group says it intends to publish in coming releases more than 150 home addresses, most of them previously unreported. It also promises more than 3,500 records on people with a combined wealth of about $1.4 trillion, plus reporting on what the group alleges are “criminal exploits and security lapses.”

That last bit, revealing how oligarch bend and brek the law to their advantage is called, "Journalism."

………

Pressed on whether its strategy amounted to doxing, the Capytistas members agree that it does, saying they have no qualms with describing their efforts that way. The group has even taken as its creed an adapted quote from the late folk singer and labor organizer Utah Phillips: “Democracy is not dying, it’s being killed,” they say, “and those who are killing it have names and addresses.”

Most of the Capytistas’ work involves digging up property records, court filings, and the LLCs and trusts that wealthy people use to buy real estate. The activists say they turn occasionally, but far less often, to physical surveillance, human infiltration, and advertising intelligence, the location and profile data bought and sold through online ad markets.

To remain profitable, one of the Capytistas argued, the businesses billionaires operate need to continuously collect people’s personal information, often nonconsensually, even as their owners and executives enjoy relatively private lives—entire fortunes built around “doxmaxxing.”

A copy of the Musk dossier seen by WIRED sorts its subjects into tiers and contains 32 home addresses tied to Musk and his executives. Musk is the “primary target.” Tesla’s board members and top executives—among them board chair Robyn Denholm and Kimbal Musk—are “secondary targets.” Each profile pairs a critical biography, drawn from court rulings, labor board decisions, and securities filings, with a home address. Investors such as Vanguard and BlackRock and nearly 40 suppliers are considered “tertiary targets,” listed only by corporate office, factory, or mine.

………

The Capytistas say doxing gives them one thing above all: a sense among those targeted that someone is watching. Some, they hope, will simply fold under the sheer weight of that attention. For the rest, the group wants the public to make its displeasure well known, hoping for protests outside homes and on golf courses—confrontations with those who buy their way into government in the very places they go to escape all the outrage.

Privacy is the one thing that the group believes billionaires, and now trillionaires, value that activists can take away. “The Capytistas intend to level the playing field,” it says, “by giving oligarchs a taste of the invasions of privacy they commit, and monetize, every day.”

The Capytistas argue that by giving people the knowledge to protest the evil doers, they are actually making them safer, because the alternative is Luigi Mangione style violent vigilantism. 

As for me, I think, "Why not both?" 

Moar Election Updates

TIL that Johnson composed the music for 67 episodes of Dragonball Z.

[image or embed]

— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein.bsky.social) November 4, 2026 at 10:00 PM

This is actually true


Yeah, the Democrats swept statewide office in Texas

First, we need to note that Lauren Boebert is going down in Colorado's 4th Congressional district. (Cue Stephen Tyler of Aerosmith thinking, "Hah, hah, hah.")

Regarding the US Senate, the Democrats have at least 54 seats, with 2 races, Alaska and Mississippi (!) still too close to call.

In Texas, in addition to the Dems sweeping the statewide offices, the Texas House of Representatives now has a Democratic majority.

Also, the new Texas AG won't be pursuing out of state abortion and abortion medication providers.  Elections have consequences.

State legislatures have flipped to Democrats in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and possibly Arizona.

Also, at least 5 governors flipped. 

I'm bummed that Prop 40 (the billionaire tax) appears to be going down to defeat in California. 

America's Finest News Source

Chuck Schumer Delivers Victory Speech To Previously Enthusiastic Crowd

—The Onion

Chef's kiss. This is perfect.

Quick Election Update

I'm going to sleep, but it appears almost certain that the Democrats will take control of the House and Senate.

In Texas, it appears that Greg Abbot has been turfed out as Governor of Texas, and Ken "The Most Corrupt Motherf%$#er in Texas" Paxton has lost to James Talerico, and the Democrats have won pretty much all of the state wide elections there.

And Kansas. Hoo boy!  First Democratic Senator from Kansas since the Roosevelt administration. 

Also it looks like Susan "I'm very concerned" Collins has lost in Maine, Abdul El-Sayed has won in Michigan, and Dems flipped 2 Senate seats in the Carolinas, 

W00t! 

Of Course It Didn't Save Money

It appears that Mike Huckabee's efforts to merge smaller school districts and shut down schools to save money actually cost more money.

I'm not sure if McKinsey was involved with this, but it's certainly a McKinsey result. 

When Mike Huckabee was the Arkansas governor in 2004, he wanted government to be more efficient. He signed a law to shut down tiny school districts with fewer than 350 students.

Over the next decade, 85 school districts merged with others, triggering the closure of 105 schools, most of them high schools.

Families and teachers protested. Some students had bus rides so long that they couldn’t participate in sports and other after-school activities. A 2022 study found that the mergers had accelerated depopulation in rural communities and depressed property values; that same year another study found almost no academic gains.

At least there was one potential payoff: saving taxpayers money.

What economic sense does it make to maintain a superintendent and a district office to serve just a couple hundred students? Consolidating tiny districts seemed like an obvious way to eliminate administrative overhead.

But a surprising new analysis by researchers at the University of Arkansas finds that the savings never materialized. Reductions in administrative overhead were offset by rising costs for transportation and instructional staff.

The study, presented Sept. 26 at the annual conference of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness in Baltimore, followed the finances of Arkansas school districts for two decades. It found no overall cost savings from consolidation — not immediately after districts merged and not more than a decade later.

………

So where did the savings go?

Administrative costs did fall. The researchers estimate that consolidation reduced administrative spending by as much as $138 per student, on average, according to their preliminary, unpublished calculations. Some instructional costs, including spending on education technology and textbooks, also declined, by as much as $92 per student.

But those savings were eaten up by higher costs elsewhere.

Transportation costs rose $24 per student initially and continued climbing over the years, growing to an additional $63 per student annually. Instructional staff costs — including teachers and aides, as well as math and reading coaches — rose by as much as $179 per student. Pupil-support costs, including guidance counselors and social workers, rose by as much as $61 per student.

The basic problem is that merging two districts doesn’t eliminate the need to educate the same number of children. And larger districts may create new layers of management or add more support staff, such as instructional coaches, counselors and aides.

Also money spent on consultants, I'm sure.

Interesting Historical Data Point

During WWII, and for a few years after, sugar supply was tightly restricted in the UK.  It turns out that the people who grew up under this regime achieved significant health benefits.

Obviously, correlation is not causation, but this definitely bears more research. 

They were born into a Britain still recovering from the hardships of war. Though the air-raid sirens had fallen silent, many everyday foods remained rationed, including sugar. Adults were restricted to about 3 tablespoons (40g) a day to stretch between cups of tea, baking and desserts; children were limited to less than a tablespoon. Babies and very young children were expected to have little or no added sugar.

Then, in 1953, the brakes came off. Separate restrictions on sweets and chocolate were lifted in February, followed by sugar in September. By the second half of 1954, average sugar consumption had almost doubled.

The lifting of postwar sugar rationing inadvertently created a natural experiment, whose consequences scientists are only beginning to unpick. A flurry of recent studies suggests that spending the first 1,000 days of life under sugar rationing may have left traces on people’s health more than seven decades later.

“What makes the end of sugar rationing particularly interesting is the nature of the exposure,” said Dr Jiazhen Zheng at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Guangzhou, China, who worked on several of the recent studies. “In September 1953, sugar availability changed quite abruptly at the population level, largely because of policy rather than individual choice. In a sense, history created an experiment that we could never deliberately run over a human lifetime.”

The first of this recent wave of sugar rationing studies was published in the journal Science two years ago. Dr Tadeja Gračner at the University of Southern California and her colleagues used data from the UK Biobank to compare the health of people born shortly before and after sugar rationing ended in the UK. Some had been exposed to this low sugar environment only during their time in the womb; others remained exposed for months or years, while those conceived once rationing ended were not exposed at all.

Gračner found that the longer people had spent under rationing, the lower their risk of developing type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure in mid- to later life: those exposed throughout their first 1,000 days had a 35% lower risk of type 2 diabetes and a 20% lower risk of high blood pressure than those who had never experienced rationing.

This might explain Keith Richards' longevity. 

BB Rating?

Anthropic is expected to receive junk bond status following its IPO.

I believe that the term here is, "Dead Man Walking," not $2,000,000,000.00 initial public offering.

Anthropic expected to receive high ‘junk’ rating from credit agencies following IPO, FT report says

Anthropic is expected to receive a high “junk” rating from credit rating agencies following its initial public offering, according to a report from the Financial Times.

The FT says the investment giant Blackstone, the anchor investor in a recent $63 billion deal to finance Anthropic’s chips, told investors in the deal that it expects the AI lab to receive a “high” junk rating after its IPO. Previously, the FT notes, Blackstone had said the opposite: that the Claude maker would receive an investment-grade rating (indicating low risk for lenders) before 2027 rolls around.

Now Blackstone expects double B range rating, the top tier of speculative “junk” grade, according to the reporting.

Is it too early to call a Lehman moment?

 

Headline of the Day

Defund Musk!

—Robert Reich, explaining how the biggest welfare queen in history should not be allowed to feed at the taxpayer trough.

Works for me. 

Yeah, I've Always Been Tinfoil Hat About This

When the FBI declared case closed in the Anthrax mailer case following Bruce Ivins' suicide, I was dubious.

It appears that ProPublica (and McClatchy and Frontline) has similar doubts.

Months after the anthrax mailings that terrorized the nation in 2001, and long before he became the prime suspect, Army biologist Bruce Ivins sent his superiors an email offering to help scientists trace the killer.

Already, an FBI science consultant had concluded that the attack powder was made with a rare strain of anthrax known as Ames that's used in research laboratories worldwide.

In his email, Ivins volunteered to help take things further. He said he had several variants of the Ames strain that could be tested in “ongoing genetic studies" aimed at tracing the origins of the powder that had killed five people. He mentioned several cultures by name, including a batch made mostly of Ames anthrax that had been grown for him at an Army base in Dugway, Utah.

Seven years later, as federal investigators prepared to charge him with the same crimes he'd offered to help solve, Ivins, who was 62, committed suicide. At a news conference, prosecutors voiced confidence that Ivins would have been found guilty. They said years of cutting-edge DNA analysis had borne fruit, proving that his spores were “effectively the murder weapon.”

To many of Ivins’ former colleagues at the germ research center in Fort Detrick, Md., where they worked, his invitation to test the Dugway material and other spores in his inventory is among numerous indications that the FBI got the wrong man.

What kind of murderer, they wonder, would ask the cops to test his own gun for ballistics?

To prosecutors, who later branded Ivins the killer in a lengthy report on the investigation, his solicitous email is trumped by a long chain of evidence, much of it circumstantial, that they say would have convinced a jury that he prepared the lethal powder right under the noses of some of the nation’s foremost bio-defense scientists.

PBS' Frontline, McClatchy and ProPublica have taken an in-depth look at the case against Ivins, conducting dozens of interviews and reviewing thousands of pages of FBI files. Much of the case remains unchallenged, notably the finding that the anthrax letters were mailed from Princeton, N.J., just steps from an office of the college sorority that Ivins was obsessed with for much of his adult life.

But newly available documents and the accounts of Ivins’ former colleagues shed fresh light on the evidence and, while they don't exonerate Ivins, are at odds with some of the science and circumstantial evidence that the government said would have convicted him of capital crimes. While prosecutors continue to vehemently defend their case, even some of the government’s science consultants wonder whether the real killer is still at large.

Prosecutors have said Ivins tried to hide his guilt by submitting a set of false samples of his Dugway spores in April 2002. Tests on those samples didn’t display the telltale genetic variants later found in the attack powder and in sampling from Ivins’ Dugway flask.

Yet records discovered by Frontline, McClatchy and ProPublica reveal publicly for the first time that Ivins made available at least three other samples that the investigation ultimately found to contain the crucial variants, including one after he allegedly tried to deceive investigators with the April submission.

I do not know if Ivins did it, but in any case, this was not the slam dunk that the DoJ said that it was.

When the Experts Warned Us About a Cyber Apocalypse

Not one of them said a word about comically poorly protected freezers in supermarkets.

The internet of sh%$ strikes again.

Dozens of supermarkets across seven European countries have been hit by a cyber-attack affecting their refrigerators and freezers.

Around 40 Delhaize supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg were affected, while a smaller number of shops were hit in Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland.

Sabcobel, a Belgian company that manufactures some of the affected refrigerators, said the units' evaporators were switched to defrost mode, causing them to warm up, in what is believed to be the same method used in last month's incident that hit hundreds of French supermarkets.

Millions of euros worth of food had to be thrown away in October, local media reported at the time

Internet connected appliances are a bad thing. 

.

Damn

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) has been hospitalized for a stroke.

Sen. Chris Murphy is being hospitalized following a stroke, an aide to the Connecticut Democrat said Sunday.

“Yesterday afternoon, Senator Murphy started experiencing numbness in his arm while at his son’s hockey game. He was taken to a local hospital, where it was discovered he had experienced a stroke,” Allison Herwitt, Murphy’s chief of staff, said in a statement.

“He was transferred to Johns Hopkins for further monitoring and is responding well to treatment. The doctors are encouraged by his progress, he is awake and alert, and we are optimistic he will make a full recovery,” she added.

Go Utah?

Normally, I am not a fan of the state government of Utah.

Generally, when something newsworthy comes from Salt Lake City, it is bone-headed reactionary bullsh%$.

That being said, I approve of Utah going postal on Kalshi for illegal gambling in the state.

Utah is escalating its legal battle with prediction market platform Kalshi.

Utah Attorney General Derek Brown filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Kalshi, several of its subsidiaries, and two financial trading firms that work with the company, accusing them of violating the state’s anti-gambling laws.

In the lawsuit, the state compares Kalshi to a “back-alley gambling den,” arguing that the company facilitates bets and takes a percentage of the money that’s bet on its platform.

Utah is asking a court to block Kalshi from offering wagers in the state. It also wants the company to use a court-approved geolocation service to prevent Utah residents from placing bets on the platform. And the state is seeking to recover millions of dollars the company allegedly made from illegal gambling. According to the lawsuit, Kalshi has collected an estimated $30.6 million to $61.2 million in fees from wagers placed by Utah users.

Utah is the latest state to take legal action against Kalshi as the company and rival Polymarket face a growing wave of lawsuits over allegations that they are operating illegal gambling businesses. 

………

The Trump administration, meanwhile, seems to be backing prediction markets, with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) pushing back against states trying to regulate the industry.

………

In Utah’s case, the state argues there is little difference between Kalshi’s event contracts and traditional gambling. 

More of this.

I Like This

Turn About is Fair Play

At a city council meeting, someone opposing the construction of data centers played the loud noise emitted to the council members, who found this noise unbearable, but since they won't live next to the data center, they are still likely to approve the projects.

A fiscal court meeting in Carroll County, Kentucky grew contentious when local residents started playing the sound of a data center to county officials. Spoiler: they didn’t seem to like it.

As local news station WHAS11 reported last week, Carroll County is the planned location for two separate data center projects, each of which will likely be around 800 megawatts and will overtake hundreds of acres of Kentucky land. At that size, the data centers are considered hyperscalers.

“I believe they talked about 800 megawatts, so it is a hyperscale unit,” Scott Nab, a magistrate on the fiscal court, told WHAS11 of one of the projects. “It’ll be multiple buildings. It’ll spread over 1,000 acres when completed.”

As the news station notes, a data center of that size would consume the equivalent of 560,000 average homes.

Nab is among the data centers’ proponents, arguing that data is the industry of the future. Local residents of the rural region, however, are pushing back. One of their strategies? Subject county officials to the horrible, 24/7 screech that large data centers emit. 

This is not a bad 

Vote Blue No Matter ……… Never Mind

So the losing candidate in the Michigan US Senate Democratic Party Primary has endorsed the Republican in the race because she wanted the winner, Abdul El-Sayed, to condemn an ad that he had nothing to do with.

In related news, the bulk of her congressional staff resigned and condemned her.

Congresswoman Haley Stevens, who lost the Michigan Democratic Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed, endorsed his Republican rival, Mike Rogers, in an extraordinary rebuke of her party’s nominee on the eve of the midterm elections.

Her endorsement came in a video posted to X after she attended an event with Rogers at the predominantly Black Perfecting church in Detroit on Sunday. Stevens’s endorsement was the culmination of an escalating feud between the former primary rivals – primarily over support for Israel – that has roiled one of the most fiercely contested Senate contests of the cycle.

The endorsement was met with immediate pushback from Democrats, who condemned Stevens for her “betrayal”.

Actually, that was noted Israel-hater Chuck Schumer, who called her endorsement a, "Despicable betrayal."

It appears that this was precipitated by members of the Michigan Democratic Party establishment, most notably Debbie Dingell, told her to stop grand-standing and STFU. 

Best Day of the Year

Is tomorrow, November 1 this year, because we go back to standard time from Daylight Savings Time, which sucks like 1,000 Hoovers all going at once.

I hate Daylight Savings Time. 

 

Headline of the Day

Google Eats Its Own Tail (and Profits) With AI Summaries as Stock Price Plunges

—Gizmodo, discussing how Google f%$#ed itself and its revenue through its embrace of AI.

Engineer, meet petard.

Big tech firms have poured an infinite amount of money into artificial intelligence development and rolled out tools without any consideration as to whether consumers actually want them or not, all based on the theory that eventually they’ll figure out how to turn a profit. Instead, early returns seem to suggest they’ve simply figured out a way to eat their own profits without an obvious way to replace that revenue stream.

That is at least the case for Google, which, on a Wednesday earnings call, revealed that its “AI Mode” has cut into its traditional search and advertising business. Philipp Schindler, chief business officer at Google, said that the AI-generated responses that Google now overwhelmingly serves to users whenever they search for anything have made it more difficult for Google to monetize results, cutting into its usually extremely profitable advertising business and contributing to the company missing its revenue projections in its latest earnings call.

When even Google cannot generate revenue from AI, it's game over.

Since I've Already Voted, as Is My Duty

Can I go and live in a cave for the next week?

I am so f%$#ing sick and f%$#ing tired of the f%$#ing elections. 

Elon Musk, Sooper Jenius!

It looks like Elon's rather bloated concept for a lunar mission is running into the laws of physics like a Cybertruck using full self driving.

NASA does not have, nor want, nuclear weapons. But when it comes to a particular metric that is part of the Artemis Program to land people on the Moon, NASA guards a particular number like it is trying to prevent outsiders from cracking nuclear codes.

I am speaking of the number of Starship launches required to fuel a Starship-based lunar lander in low-Earth orbit such that it can fly out to the Moon, land there, and return to lunar orbit.

………

On Thursday, the NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel held its quarterly meeting, during which panel member Charlie Precourt (a former NASA astronaut) spoke about risks associated with the Artemis Program and landing humans on the Moon.

“With respect to Artemis IV, however, we’ve got a large number of firsts that reduce the likelihood of mission success,” Precourt said. “We need to keep our eyes on numerous required fuelings for the lander. I think the last estimate is around 22 flights.”

Precourt did not name Starship, but he could only be referring to the SpaceX vehicle. NASA’s other lunar lander for human missions, Blue Origin’s Blue Moon, will not be using orbital refueling as part of its initial mission design. The safety panel almost certainly would have obtained this estimated number of refuelings, 22, from discussions with NASA officials as part of its deliberations during quarterly meetings.

After I posted Precourt’s estimate on social media site X, SpaceX founder Elon Musk replied that NASA’s safety panel estimate was not accurate. “That’s way too high,” Musk said. “Actual number will be more like 6 to 8.”

6 to 8 is too many, but I would be willing to bet that 22 is closer to reality.

Musk's landing module weighs north of 100 tons, and the whole thing returns to lunar orbit.  

This contrasts with the Apollo LM which on descent weighted 16 tons, and the separate ascent module weighted less than 2 tons.

This is what happens when engineering choices are made by someone who gets their technical ideas from Tom Swift children's books. 

New GDP Figures

And the economy grew 3.4 annualized rate in the 3rd quarter, even if it doesn't feel that way.

As Dean Baker notes, the overall picture is nowhere so rosy:

1) Investment growth is almost entirely an AI story;

2) Consumption growth is strong, but is driven by stock gains;

3) The trade deficit is soaring due to AI-related imports;

4) Housing construction continues to fall;

5) The Iran War is leading to double-digit growth in military spending;

6) State and local government spending is stagnating.

The AI boom is as close to a real-world example of Keynes' (snarky) thought experiment as I've ever seen.

If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing. 

The numbers belie the lived experiences of most of us.

U.S. economic growth was robust over the summer, as businesses poured money into artificial intelligence and consumers kept spending despite high prices that have soured their mood ahead of midterm elections next week.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced in the country, increased at a 3.4 percent annual rate in the third quarter, adjusted for inflation, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday.

That was an acceleration from the 2.2 percent rate in the spring, and was the fastest growth in a year. Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of economic output, grew at a 3.8 percent rate.

The strong spending and growth figures contrast with the poor marks that many voters are giving the economy as they head to the ballot box for next week’s midterm elections. Polls consistently show that Americans are frustrated with the high cost of living and hold President Trump and congressional Republicans responsible for failing to deliver on their promises to improve affordability.

Those frustrations are grounded in reality. Consumer prices were up 3.5 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, driven in part by high gas prices that are the direct result of Mr. Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran. Americans are increasingly dipping into their savings to keep up with rising costs. Households, in the aggregate, saved just 4.1 percent of their after-tax income in the third quarter, the lowest rate in nearly four years. After-tax income, adjusted for inflation, rose in the third quarter as a whole but fell in September.