Shutdown Wishful Thinking

🚨 BREAKING: Sen. Markwayne Mullin has just learned Democrats are plotting to reopen the government likely WEDNESDAY or THURSDAY, after communist Zohran Mamdani wins

"They're telling us they plan to open it up probably Wednesday or Thursday, after the election. After they elect… pic.twitter.com/MksN3k02HH

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 1, 2025

As of this past Wednesday, a writer at Semafor predicted,

Senators in both parties — below the leadership level — are starting to see an unmistakable shift that they hope leads to a bipartisan agreement to end the shutdown, perhaps as early as next week, according to more than a dozen sources.

. . . There’s no sign yet that Democrats are willing to support the House GOP’s stopgap bill on Thursday, when it’s next scheduled for a Senate vote, but Semafor confirmed a noticeable thaw in the shutdown dynamics among members and aides across the aisle.

On the other hand, Aaron Blake at CNN argues,

Democrats would seem to have relatively little reason to back down — and plenty of reason to stick with their demands that Republicans come to the table on extending the enhanced Obamacare subsidies. Imagine a situation in which they have these seeming political advantages and they throw in the towel anyways. It’s not difficult to see that reigniting a backlash on the left.

And in case that danger wasn’t clear, witness a newly released Pew Research Center poll. It asked Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who expressed frustration with the party what the main reason for that was. Far and away, the most-cited reason was not fighting hard enough against the Trump administration, which 41% cited.

At this point, the Republicans are no more willing to back down than the Democrats:

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned Sunday that flights across the country could be delayed or even canceled due to the ongoing government shutdown as staffing shortages at air traffic control facilities spread nationwide.

Speaking with ABC News' "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz while a ground stop was in effect at Newark Liberty International Airport, Duffy said "We will delay, we will cancel, any kind of flight across the national airspace to make sure people are safe" amid the shortages.

There's also the unresolved question of whether the asdministration must continue to make SNAP payments:

One day after ordering the Trump administration to continue funding food stamps during the shutdown, a federal court gave the government a choice. It can either make full payments by Monday, or partial payments by Wednesday, to spare low-income Americans from hardship.

. . . But the thrust of the judge’s order raised logistical questions. The SNAP reserve totals about $5 billion, less than the roughly $8 billion needed to pay full SNAP benefits each month. Even if they used the money, officials at the Agriculture Department had also warned they might have to slash benefits by more than half, and that it could take weeks to pay them out because of technical constraints.

. . . It remained unclear how the Trump administration might proceed — or, potentially, if it might appeal the ruling. The Justice Department appeared to signal the mere possibility in a late Friday filing with the court, hinting that it was “considering whether any emergency relief is required.”

One thing I've noticed for a long time about media, both legacy and alt, is that reporters and analysts see a bunch of holidays building up -- in the spring, there's spring break, followed by Memorial Day, followed by Juneteenth, then the Fourth of July, at which point they leave on summwr vacation, and there's no serious news between spring break and Labor Day. But then, after Labor Day, up comes Columbus Day, then Halloween, then Veterans Day, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas, and there's no serious news until after Martin Luther King's birthday.

So the only semi-serious analysis of the court orders over SNAP I've seen is this -- nothing from, say, Jonathan Turley or maybe Alan Dershowitz:

A court has just concluded that a federal program must operate in the absence of current appropriations. That’s…an interesting choice.

. . . Judge Talwani orders the executive branch to pay for current operations despite the absence of current appropriations. She just limited the reach of the government shutdown, routing ongoing spending around the absence of a budget or a continuing resolution.

If that door is open, at least try to walk through it. The courts are demanding that the Executive Branch spend available money without worrying about current congressional appropriations for federal operations. Take them up on it, and see how committed they are to the principle.

Looks like nobody could find an actul constitutional lawyer to weigh in -- it's the Halloween weekend, after all, and next week is Veterans Day, and after that, Thanksgiving. . .

There Are Two Conflicting Theories Of The January 6 Pipe Bombs

A little over a week ago, I posted on what amounts to the dominant theory of the pipe bombs that were placed near both the Republican and Democrat National Committee headquarters buildings in Washington prior to the January 6, 2021 demonstration at the Capitol. This theory, supported by video evidence, proposes that an individual, slight in build and wearing both a hoodie and a face mask, left the bombs in the evening hours on January 5.

The FBI posted the video evidence and requested more information from the public as early as October, 2021. However, other than slightly more additional video covering the same suspect's path through the area, no additional imformation has come to light despite increasing rewards. A second theory is emerging, made more credible given the lack of new information on the video suspect, but it contradicts the idea that the bombs were planted the evening before.

In this version, a woman who lived in the area, Karin Younger, discovered one of the bombs near the Republican National Committee as she walked thnrough an adjacent alley to visit a laundromat.

“As I was going back into the alley that’s when, by sheer luck, that’s when I looked down and see this piece of metal debris, that I thought was a metal piece of recycling or something,” Younger said. “That’s when I looked down and I really had trouble processing what I could possibly be looking at.”

She looked at the object and wondered what it was.

Is that a pipe? Are those wires? This has got to be a joke. There’s just no way that this is possibly what it looks like.["]

. . . Younger alerted a nearby security guard who called law enforcement. Once police arrived, Younger and her neighbors were evacuated from their homes and were told they could go back inside once police left.

This story was reported soon after the January 6 episode, but it subsequently faded. The biggest issue in her accounts of what she saw was a kitchen timer connected to the device that was somehow set to "20". These accounts vary in details.

Of all the details Younger shared with authorities and reporters, the “20-minute” timer arguably fed the most important part of narrative related to the pipe bombs, or at least the one at the RNC—the bomb was set to detonate at 1:00 p.m., the exact time Congress convened to debate the outcome of the 2020 election and certify Joe Biden as the winner.

In at least one interview, Younger acknowledged that the timer was in perfect sync with the start of the historic proceedings about to begin just a few blocks away at the U.S. Capitol. “I couldn’t think that there might be some connection here,” Younger said days after the incident. “There has to be. The timing was too coincidental.”

But although the kitchen-type timers were in fact found attached to both bombs, there's some question about whether they could actually have detonated the bombs as accounts have surmised. Even more important, at the same link,

In a June 2023 congressional interview, Steven D’Antuono—the former head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, who oversaw the pipe-bomb investigation—admitted that “whoever discovers the device is somebody you need to talk to because they could be the one that planted the device in the first place. You know, so that’s just investigation 101.”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) asked D’Antuono if Younger “was ruled out as a suspect or an unwitting accomplice to somebody?” to which D’Antuono answered, “I don’t know.”

As I noted in this post, D'Antuono left the FBI in late 2022 following apparent disagreements with Director Wray and Attorney General Garland. In fact, little new has emerged about the bombs since 2021, but new discrepancies have kept emerging about what we think we already know. In an interview, Rep Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), Chairman of the New January 6 Select Subcommittee,

revealed that the FBI’s own lab report confirmed there were explosives in the devices found near the RNC and DNC — but the story of when and how those devices were planted keeps changing.

According to Loudermilk, Secret Service bomb-sniffing dogs swept the DNC grounds the morning of January 6 — the day after the FBI claims a bomb was planted — and the dogs did not detect any device.

This was a routine sweep prior to Vice President Harris's arrival at the Democrat headwuarters, but it was before Karin Younger discovered the bomb at the Republican headquarters.

“Either it was inert — which according to the FBI it wasn’t, it had explosives in it — or it wasn’t there,” Loudermilk said. “But we have video of it being placed, so now we need to know — was it placed and picked back up and then put back out again? If so, why? Why did they go to that extent?”

My own reaction to the video footage that was posted by the FBI was that the individual in the mask and hoodie seemed disorganized -- this didn't seem like a professional focused to carry out a particular mission. It's entirely possible that the individual was so conflicted that he or she placed the bombs, removed them, and placed them again, although there ought to be additional video from later on January 5 and the morning of January 6 that would confirm this.

There were also frequent comments following the recent re-posting of the video saying the slightly-built person about 5'7" tall who wore a face mask and hoodie could easily be a woman, or at least a trans male -- but this wouldn't rule out Karin Younger herself. In any case, this all reinforces the idea that the bombs may have been planted by a disorganized amateur, not a professional terrorist.

UN.Warns US Attacks on Cartel Drug Boats ‘Unacceptable’

Via Breitbart News:

U.S. military strikes against cartel drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean journeying from South America are “unacceptable” and must stop, the U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk warned Friday.

Türk, an Austrian-born career U.N. bureaucrat, called for an immediate investigation into the strikes against narco terrorists in what is the first such condemnation of its kind from the globalist organization.

The problem is that the previous strategy for stopping drug traffic via sea routes has been clearly identified, and although supported by existing law, completely ineffective. According to a September article at the US Naval Institute,

For decades, the United States has relied on the Coast Guard’s unique legal authorities, backed by Navy support, to interdict drug shipments on the high seas. Those operations follow a predictable pattern: warning shots, disabling fire, boarding, seizure of evidence, and arrest. A patchwork of bilateral agreements ensures suspects face extradition and trial in U.S. federal courts.

This strike marks a sharp departure from that process. Instead of a law enforcement interdiction, the U.S. military conducted an operation that could be perceived as executing suspected criminals without trial or even due process. There are several pressing legal questions: Was the strike legal? Was this an extrajudicial killing in violation of the Geneva Convention? Does the executive branch have the authority to carry out this type of strike without congressional oversight, even at the risk of embroiling the United States in armed conflict?

However, according to a February report by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General,

The United States Coast Guard (Coast Guard) was not able to consistently interdict non-commercial vessels smuggling drugs into the United States. From fiscal years 2021 through 2023, the Coast Guard interdicted an estimated 421.9 metric tons of cocaine but fell short of its total cocaine removal goal of 690 metric tons. This occurred, in part, because the Coast Guard did not always have cutters available to perform the counterdrug mission and did not have a contingency plan to address the cutters’ unavailability. We found Coast Guard cutters were unavailable for 2,058 cumulative days over a 3-year period. Using the Coast Guard’s formula, we calculated that the Coast Guard could have interdicted an additional 57 to 89.1 metric tons of cocaine had these cutters been performing the counterdrug mission.

However, the same report says that for the years 2021-2023, the average amount of cocaine flowing into the US via non-commercial vessels was about 2500 metric tons each year. This means that even the most optimistic Coast Guard goal, which it's been unable to reach, 690 metric tons, would interdict only 20-25% of the cocaine coming in by sea. Despite this, the Coast Guard has consistently claimed a 90% success rate with interdictions.

The US Naval Institute link repeats this claim without skepticism:

In the late 1990s, the Coast Guard created the Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron (HITRON) to improve its ability to stop high-speed vessels. HITRON employs armed MH-65C Dolphin helicopters that apply graduated force against suspect vessels. Aircrews begin with sirens, loudspeakers, and hand signals to compel compliance. If ignored, they escalate to warning bursts across the bow from mounted machine guns. Should the vessel continue flight, precision rifle fire—typically from a .50-caliber sniper rifle—is directed at the outboard engines to disable propulsion.3 The approach works: By the early 2000s, HITRON boasted interdiction success rates of more than 90 percent.

But if the Coast Guard has a 90% interdiction rate, than the only conclusion we can draw is that at least 75-80% of the cocaine coming into the US completely escapes the notice of the Coast Guard -- in other words, the Coast Guard only tries to interdict 20-25% of the smuggling attempts. That in turn means that the cocaine that's successfully interdicted amounts to just an overhead expense to the traffickers. So why are we doing this? The USNI link continues,

This model reflects a deliberate policy choice to preserve life and capture suspects for prosecution rather than destroy vessels and kill crews. The approach lends itself to building criminal cases against organizations and their leaders, rather than taking out low-level operatives. It also allows careful management of relationships with countries known or believed to support narcotics trafficking. The model historically has resulted in high rates of efficient and successful criminal prosecutions.

Great! Every few years, we put another cartel head in jail! We finally caught El Chapo! And El Mayo too! El Nini! Los Quinis! But the drugs keep coming in, by the inspector general's estimate, a consistent 2500 metric tons a year by sea, no visible decline at all. The USNI link continues,

It is precisely this longstanding framework that makes the 2 September strike so remarkable. The operation bypassed the Coast Guard’s established procedures of warning, disabling, and boarding in favor of immediate lethal force, foregoing any notion of protecting the due process rights of the individuals involved.

But the Coast Guard's established procedures amount to nothing but rounding up the usual suspects. The link continues,

Earlier this year, the State Department designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization, citing its involvement in human trafficking, extortion, and drug smuggling across South America and the Caribbean. By designating the gang as terrorists, the administration created a bridge from law enforcement to military action: Narcotics smugglers are criminals, but terrorists are legitimate military targets. However, the legal authority for conducting a strike under these circumstances is questionable, despite the target being designated a terrorist.

But it isn't that simple. The Trump administration is moving toward the position that the various cartels and gangs that import the drugs operate either under the direct control, or with the tacit consent, of governments, including Venezuela, Colombia, and Mexico. For instance,

[I]n a roundtable promoting his aggressive anti-drug campaign, US President Donald Trump took aim at Mexico, implying that Sheinbaum is not in control of her country.

“Mexico is run by the cartels,” Trump told reporters. “I have great respect for the president, a woman that I think is a tremendous woman. She’s a very brave woman. But Mexico is run by the cartels, and we have to defend ourselves from that.”

If the cartels are effectively enabled by their governments, even if it's only via under-the-table payments or even just threats, we're entering the arena of international policy, which in turn can ultimately involve military force. This is clearly the direction Trump is moving -- but if the threats are big enough, this may be the only effective solution.

Was J B Pritzker Thrown Out Of The Family Business?

Trump: Then I will look at New York in a little while… If we need to we'll do the same thing in Chicago. We have an incompetent Governor there. Pritzker is incompetent. His family threw him out of the business pic.twitter.com/1zw5PIWLvX

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 11, 2025

I asked Chrome AI mode, "Was J B Pritzker thrown out of the family business?" It answered,

Reports from trusted news outlets contradict the claim that J. B. Pritzker was "thrown out" of the family business. While his family restructured its assets, he was a successful entrepreneur who co-founded his own private equity firm, Pritzker Group. A social media post from August 2025, which falsely claimed he was thrown out, appears to stem from comments made by Donald Trump.

. . . After the death of his uncle, Jay Pritzker, in 1999, the family underwent a planned and highly publicized restructuring of its assets. J. B. Pritzker and his cousins chose to divide the family fortune among themselves to pursue their own business ventures.

The second part of the quote is clearly inaccurate: the Pritzker family restructuring was neither planned nor highly publicized, which throws the whole answer into question. Via Forbes Magazine in November 2003,

On a recent fall morning Liesel Pritzker shows up for a meeting wearing a simple black top and slacks. Her face free of makeup and brown hair down, this sophomore at Columbia University is all ingenue. But history may record her as the heiress who helped tear apart one of America's most storied and wealthy families. "This is the last thing I wanted to do," she says. She could be referring to either her first interview with the press--or the ruckus she has caused among the Pritzkers. The suit "is not how I want to define myself," says the 19-year-old actress.

It's been nearly a year since she launched a $6 billion lawsuit against her father, Robert, and 11 older cousins, accusing them of looting her trust funds and those of her brother, Matthew, 21. (Matthew joined the battle, filing suit five months later.) The action focused unwanted attention on deep divisions tearing apart this obsessively private family. It has also shed more light on a plan, which FORBES first reported in September 2002, to carve up the $15 billion fortune that took the Pritzker forebears a century to build. The aftermath of the suits has parted the curtain on the shadowy financial underpinnings of this empire--a vast network of domestic and foreign trusts designed to minimize, if not eliminate, taxes.

Via The Chicago Tribune in 2011,

This weekend the Pritzker family reaches the end of a tumultuous 10-year effort to divide its $19 billion fortune, one of the nation’s largest.

. . . Their paths already have diverged. Some of the cousins are focused on the world of corporate finance. Others have decided to use their wealth primarily to pursue philanthropic and creative interests, such as movie-making, music and history.

In the business camp are Tom, Penny, John, Anthony, J.B., Nick and Matthew. While also philanthropic, they are actively involved in trying to turn their billions into more. But they aren’t necessarily working together. That complicates matters for people seeking to do deals or raise money from a Pritzker. If they do a deal with one, does that exclude them from dealing with another?

So as of 2011, J B was in the "business camp". He and his brother Tony founded the Pritzker Group in 1996 as an investment firm. However, by 2017, J B Pritzker announced his intention to run for governor of Illinois, and when he took office in 2019, he promised to put his assets into a blind trust. According to Chrome AI mode,

Pritzker formally left his role as managing partner of the Pritzker Group in April 2017.

. . . His resignation was to "devote himself full-time to a run for the Illinois governorship," according to Crain's Chicago Business.

However, accordinmg to Wikipedia, Pritzker had dabbled in politics at least since the late 1990s, including an unsuccessful 1998 primary campaign for the Illinois 9th congressional diatrict. Also,

Governor Rod Blagojevich appointed Pritzker to chair the Illinois Human Rights Commission. He held that position from 2003 to 2006.

. . . In May 2017, the Chicago Tribune published an 11-minute FBI wiretap of Pritzker and Blagojevich in 2008 discussing campaign contributions and options for Pritzker to be appointed to statewide office. At the time, Pritzker was described as a "businessman with political ambitions". On the tapes, Blagojevich asked Pritzker if he would like to be appointed state treasurer, to which Pritzker, who has a background in finance, responded, "Yeah, that's the one I would want."

Exactly who does what in the Pritzker family appears to be a closely guarded secret. The public position, via Chrome AI mode, is that while earlier generations of the Pritzker family had more centralized control, the family fortune was divided into separate trusts in the 2000s. On one hand, one of those trusts was The Pritzker Group, in which both J B and his brother Tony were at least nominally managing partners. The Pritzker Group itself has been reorganizing itself on a more or less constant basis as well, and it's difficult to know which of the brothers is still directly involved. However, according to Wikipedia, Tony has been far more active in business than J B:

From January 1993 to December 1994, he was president of the Fenestra Corporation. From 1995 to 1996, he was a group executive at the Marmon Group and directed operations at Arzo, MD Tech, Micro-Aire, Oshkosh Door, and Fenestra. From 1996 to 1998, he was the Regional Vice President of Operations in Asia for Getz Bros. & Co. In 1998, he was appointed by the Marmon Group to oversee Stainless Industrial Companies. From 2000 to 2004, he was the President of Baker Tanks. He is managing partner of Pritzker Group. He is on the board of directors of Halcyon Ventures, Glenayre, Evercore Partners, and the Signicast Corporation. From 2004 to 2007, he was chairman of AmSafe Partners.

It's plain that J B Pritzker had been pursuing a political career for much of his adult life in both appointed and elected office, as well as donating heavily to the Democrat Party. It's hard to avoid the impression that J B, although only marginally successful at politics until he ran for governor in 2018, always had politics as his primary interest, and the family, or at least his brother, was happy enough to see him leave The Pritzker Group if he didn't work actively to ease him out.

So I'm inclined to rate Trump's claim that J B was in some way thrown out of the family business as more likely than not. The family business history has in any case been tumultuous for the last generation.

Tim Donaghy Drops A New Name

In Sunday's post, I mentioned Tim Donaghy, a former NBA referee who in 2007 pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to transmit wagering information across state lines. After his inbitial plea in 2007 but before his sentencing in 2008, he made a number of allegations regarding overall corruption in NBA refereeing. According to Wikipedia,

On June 11, 2008, Donaghy alleged in a statement through his lawyers that several series in the NBA Playoffs had been improperly refereed according to the NBA's instructions. He alluded specifically to a playoff game where "personal fouls [resulting in obviously injured players] were ignored even when they occurred in full view of the referees" because "it was in the NBA's interest to add another game to the series." . . . Donaghy also referred to a playoff series where "Team 3's Owner alleged that referees were letting a Team 4 player get away with illegal screens. NBA Executive Y told Referee Supervisor Z that the referees for that game were to enforce the screening rules strictly against that Team 4 player." . . . Federal authorities investigated Donaghy's claims and found no evidence to support them.

In the context of the new NBA scandal, in which similar allegations have been raised about players and coaches relaying insider information to organized crime, which in turn uses it to bet on games, Donaghy has made several public appearances, in which he renews claims that both the NBA and the Justice Department covered up evidence that the 2007 scandal was much wider than represented. At 3:45 in the video embedded above, he says,

You know, I think David Stern [then-NBA Commissioner] was basicaslly able to put a lid on it and paint me as one bad apple, the only guy involved, and nobody else did anything but me, and we're gonna move on from it. The FBI said that there was six or seven other people that they wanted to indict, and this got shut down from the highest level. And then I find out, after I go to jail, a guy by the name of Greg Andres, who was the head of the Eastern District of New York, took a job at a law firm and all of a sudden got all the outside legal counsel work for the NBA, so it was a situation where David Stern really ran that whole investigation, and it got shut down by the highest level people.

When he says "this got shut down from the highest level", it may refer also to David Stern, but Stern had no authority to shut down an investigaion. Robert Mueller, who was FBI Director at the time, did have this authority "at the highest level". According to Wikipedia,

Greg Donald Andres is an American attorney, who most notably served as an Assistant Special Counsel for Russian interference in 2016 United States elections under Robert Mueller. He rejoined the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell in June 2019.

. . . Andres previously served as . . . an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, where he rose to be Chief of the Criminal Division, and a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell.

According to Davis Polk's website, during the period Donaghy refers to, Andres was

Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice, 2010-2012

Chief of the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York, 2007-2010

Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, 2009-2011

Deputy Chief, Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York, 2006-2007

Although Andres is variously listed as leading several significant prosecutions during this period, including of the Bonnano crime family, the Donaghy gulty plea apparently hasn't been one of his major cases. But it's also reasonable to infer that he got to know Robert Mueller, who was FBI Director from 2001 to 2013, during this time. Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate Russian election interference in May, 2017. Andres left Davis Polk in 2017 to work for Mueller as an Assistant Special Counsel, where he led the prosecution of Paul Manafort.

According to Wikipedia,

The FBI reportedly began a criminal investigation into Manafort in 2014, shortly after Yanukovych was deposed during Euromaidan. That investigation predated the 2016 election by several years and is ongoing. In addition, Manafort is also a person of interest in the FBI counterintelligence probe looking into the Russian government's interference in the 2016 presidential election.

. . . Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed on May 17, 2017, by the Justice Department to oversee the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and related matters, took over the existing criminal probe involving Manafort. On July 26, 2017, the day after Manafort's United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing and the morning of his planned hearing before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, FBI agents at Mueller's direction conducted a raid on Manafort's Alexandria, Virginia home, using a search warrant to seize documents and other materials, in regard to the Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

. . . The Trump–Russia dossier, also known as the Steele dossier, is a private intelligence report comprising investigation memos written between June and December 2016 by Christopher Steele. Manafort is a major figure mentioned in the Steele dossier, where allegations are made about Manafort's relationships and actions toward the Trump campaign, Russia, Ukraine, and Viktor Yanukovych.

. . . On October 30, 2017, Manafort was arrested by the FBI after being indicted by a federal grand jury as part of Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign.

. . . Manafort was jailed from June 2018 until May 2020. . . . On May 13, 2020, Manafort was released to home confinement over COVID-19 concerns. On December 23, 2020, Trump issued Manafort a full pardon.

Why would a white-shoe law partner leave his firm to work as an assistant special counsel? I have no ides, but there must have been a really, really compelling reason. In 2019, Andres returned to Davis Polk, making this statement:

In an interview, he declined to discuss any aspect of his work with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's team, other than to say, “I’m proud of the special counsel office’s work, and it was truly a professional privilege for me to work with the men and women of the FBI and IRS and Department of Justice, and obviously I have a great deal of respect for Director Mueller.”

However, by the time of Mueller's 2019 congressional testimony, it had become clear that he had undergone significant mental decline:

“It was a painful reminder that age catches up to all of us,” one unnamed House Democrat who questioned Mueller said, according to the Washington Examiner. “Here you have this Vietnam hero and this post-Sept. 11 FBI director. You could tell he was having a hard time hearing, and it was like, ‘Ugh! This is not how I want him to be remembered.'”

It's hard not to surmise that Andres during this period was able to act in Mueller's name with near-complete discretion, and he must have been fully aware of Mueller's condition. Nor is it difficult not to conclude that from the NBA to the Russia investigation, Greg Andres has been knee-deep in covering up shady enterprises. I suspect his name will pop up again.

Dems Ditch Labor. Nothing New.

Yesterday, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees posted on the AFGE website:

This week, Congress pushed our nation into the fourth week of a full government shutdown – an avoidable crisis that is harming families, communities, and the very institutions that hold our country together. Both political parties have made their point, and still there is no clear end in sight.

Today I’m making mine: it’s time to pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today. No half measures, and no gamesmanship. Put every single federal worker back on the job with full back pay — today.

Illinois Sen Dick Durbin, the Senate Democratic Whip, who is second in leadership to Sen Schumer, replied with a rambling and equivocal statement:

“It has a lot of impact, and they’ve been our friends and we’ve worked with them over the years,” Durbin told reporters on Monday, adding that he has talked to representatives with the union and recognizes that they’re in “a terrible mess” representing so many federal employees who are missing paychecks and facing threats to their jobs.

Still, Durbin told CNN, “I’m not seeing any change in position at this time” as Democrats continue to oppose a bill to extend current funding levels through November 21.

Further,

Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who represents a large population of federal workers, said of the union’s statement, “I work very closely with them. That matters to me. But the issue that I’ve always been focused on, that I’ve shared with y’all is, is a deal, a deal? And the AFGE would not want us to cut a deal and then have Trump fire a bunch of people next week. If we cut a deal and then he did that, they would come to us and say, ‘What the hell were you guys thinking?’”

The real issue, of course, is that the shutdown isn't about federal workers at all, it's about Schumer's poll numbere, AOC, Zohran Mamdani, and who controls the Democrats.

"Chuck Schumer is trading off his polls. What's different than when he passed a clean CR in the spring? It's his polls," says @SecScottBessent on the Democrat Shutdown.

"We're starting to eat into muscle here... I don't know what the purpose is. I'm not sure they do." pic.twitter.com/Bt0ej6d8yF

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) October 26, 2025

For whatever reason, the Senate Democrat leadership has closed ranks with Schumer, even though prospects for his continued career grow dimmer and dimmer:

The Brooklyn Democrat brought in just $133,000 during the three months ending Sept. 30 – while facing a potential primary challenge from “Squad” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Bronx and Queens), 36, who raised $4.5 million during the last quarter for her House reelection campaign.

. . . Schumer’s haul was less than half of the $337,000 he brought in during the equivalent period of his 2022 election — his October 2019 report. Senators serve six-year terms and typically ramp up fundraising as their race nears.

He actually spent more on his political operation than he raised from July through September, shelling out $322,000, his latest campaign filing reveals.

The message that's being sent here is something I've been saying about the Democrats for a while: the interests of the working class are no longer a priority, because the Democrats have become an alliance of the upper class and Marx's Lumpenproletariat, once defined as the urban underclass of street criminals, vagabonds, pimps, and prostitutes, but which might now be expanded to include the homeless, drug addicts, illegal migrants, and sexual deviants.

I said during the 2024 campaign that Kamala Harris was the best possible avatar of the new alliance, a woman who dressed in upper-class clothing and accessories while speaking in condescending street argot -- and it was utterly inauthentic; it simply didn't work. This has me scratching my head at the sociopolitical economy of the alliance: many of the modern Lumpenproletariat are ineligible to vote, because they aren't citizens, but whether or not they vote, they don't have the money to donate to candidates.

Unions like the AFGE both vote and donate to campaigns. The trouble is that ever since 1972, labor has been edging away from the traditional Democrat coalition:

As George Meany summoned labor's executive council to decide whether to endorse George McGovern, two national union presidents said today that they would support President Nixon for re‐election because Mr. McGovern's Democratic platform was “unacceptable and repulsive.”

The endorsements of Mr. Nixon by Kenneth T. Lyons of the, 232,000‐member National Association of Government Employes and Jesse M. Calhoon of the 10,000‐member National Marine Engineers Beneficial Association were the first by the heads of any major unions.

The AFL-CIO itself adopted a neutral stance and did not endorse McGovern in the 1972 election. The Teamsters made a similar decision to remaion neutral in the 2024 election. The AFGE is in a similar spot, because on one hand, the government shutdown is delaying paychecks for many of its members, while on the other, its membership covers many traditionally white-collar job types like physicians and administrators.

But the explanations we see above from Sens Durbin and Kaine for why they won't support the members of a major union simply aren't clear -- what, in fact, are they supporting instead? Unspoken is what appears to be the major factor; they're supporting Minority Leader Schumer's wish, however unrealistic it may be, to run for reelection in 2028. But by implication, Schumer will be runnning against AOC and the future of the party, while Sen Schumer is 74, and Dick Durbin is 80.

In effect, the current Democrat leadership is going to age out no matter whether it supports labor or doesn't, but it's likely that the replacements for Schumer and Durbin will resemble AOC and Mamdani more than traditional members of the old Democrat coalition. But the new Democrat alliance of the upper class and the Lumpenproletariat isn't the same majority coalition. This is going to leave the AFGE in a bad spot no matter what.

But here's yet another sign of Trump's political instincts: the shutdown is reaching a point where AFGE members expect the union to work with the Democrats to protect their interests, when the Democrats -- astotishingly short-sighted -- are putting the interests of the upper class and the Lumpenproletariat above the interests of the workers, which will benefit neither the Democrats nor the workers -- and the workers are staring to see it. Right now, it looks like the shutdown is going to kill the Democrat party.

Retrospective Takes On The No Kings Demographic

Over the weekend, I saw two conflicting versions of the demographic at the No Kings rallies on October 18. The most common was that those who attended were retirees accompanied by a smaller contingent of younger, male "furries" dressed in animal suits. This essay from a retail store manager serving protesters stocking up on poster board goes into more depth:

[O]nce we got so busy that I needed to jump on a register to help move the lines along, I was able to speak with a 60-something lady with a yellow cap (covering the proverbial “Karen” haircut) about the meaning of all the yellow. She shared with me that yellow was the color of “resistance” . . . . she was a walking stereotype of the retired Boomers that made up a large portion of the people who were participating in these protests. Boomers who like Bruce Springsteen [want] to relive their “glory days” when they protested the Vietnam War or marched for civil rights.

Let's recall that the civil rights demonstrations, like the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches, took place in the mid-1960s. The 1967 March on the Pentagon was a bit later, while the Kent State shootings took place in 1970, the same year as the first Earth Day celebrations. People who turned 18 in 1965 would have been born in 1947, which means that this year, they are 78. People who turned 18 in 1970 would have been born in 1952, making them 73 now. So the essayist was a bit off when he surmised that a 60-something lady wanted to relive her glory days, if those glory days were between 1965 and 1970. Someone 60-something now would have been born past the end of the baby boom in the early 1960s. The actuarial fact is that the baby boomers are already dying off. But let's look at another take on the No Kings demographic:

A psychotherapist has explained why many attendees of last week's No Kings protests were educated white women in their forties.

Jonathan Alpert, a New York City-based mental health counselor, told Fox News that '40-something women are probably the biggest demographic of consumers of mental health services. Probably twenties to forties'.

People in their twenties to forties aren't baby boomers, they're the children and grandchildren of baby boomers, but I'm not sure if there's an actual conflict here if these are the same people but just in different age cohorts. When I look back on the women I dated in the 1970s, after I got out of college, I see trends that align with the New York psychotherapist, even though these ladies are now in their late 70s if they're still around.

First, they definitely were consumers of mental health services. They would talk extensively on dates about their visits to their therapists. One in particular was proud of the fact that her therapist talked with her about his own problems, and he apparently told her she was helping him more than he was halping her. Another talked about her struggles to find the right therapist, but it was essential that whatever else, the therapist be a feminist.

It's worth pointing out that by the 1970s, when I dated these women and others, political rallies had changed, at least in California. In the 1960s, the demonstrators posed as outsiders. By the 1970s, those inclined to demonstrate were in fact joining mainstream political campaigns, the McGovern presidrential campagin in 1972 and Chicago Seven radical Tom Hayden's primary campaign for the US Senate in 1976. Both of these women attended those campaign rallies, but other than expressing general sympathy for the overall goals of the campaigns, they never seriously engaged with the issues.

Instead, they were completely open about seeing campaign events just as hookup venues, opportunities to connect with men whose perspectives on life matched their own. There can be no question that this was a formula that could only reault in unhappy outcomes, but these were unhappy ladies, which was why they were going to therapy. Let's go back to the insights of Jonathan Alpert, the New York psychotherapist:

'The No Kings protests, from what I've seen in person and on TV, it seems to me like a big venting session. It's almost like a big group therapy. So, people get stuff off their chest and they feel better in the moment, but it doesn't necessarily bring about any sort of positive change,' he said.

He said that rather than actually effecting change, many of them are simply craving community or validation, which he said 'can be addictive'.

'A lot of times people are unhappy in their own lives,' he told Fox. 'They may have anxiety or anger, and they project that onto others. That's partly what we're seeing play out at these rallies.'

This has the ring of truth. But Alpert recognizes that the women who attended the No Kings rallies are the children and grandchildren of the women who attended McGovern and Hayden campaign events, not boomers themselves -- or if there were in fact boomers in their late 70s and 80s, they were the ones who stayed for an hour or two and went straight home.

It's also worth pointing out that the other big demographic Alpert cites, in addition to being 20-to-40 years old and major consumers of mental health services, is that they're college-educated. What does this tell us about the value of a college education? We can certainly be sure that the education the ladies at either the Hayden and McGovern rallies or the No Kings rallies received, or at least absorbed, was never any sort of exposure to principles of thinking or of life that would lead to happier outcomes.

But this is a generational problem. If a college education was dysfunctional in the 1960s, it's even more so now. The overall problem must at least be reflected in the US educational system, or at least the system as it applies to the prosperous middle class, the Starbucks target market, many of whom we may be sure attended No Kings rallies.

I started out thinking about how the women I used to date seem to have been the sort who'd now attend No Kings rallies, but now I've started to think about the professors I got to know when I was in graduate school back in the day. This may apply as well, but I need to think more about it.