This is from The New Republic: I knew the Orange Menace's administration was filled with miscreants, but the fact that the current health secretary used to put baby chicks and mice in a blender to show how fucked up he was stuns me. It seemed impossible that this was real. Then I found this (from the BBC):

I was driving around today and realized it's time for the Old Louisville Holiday Home Tour as I saw people lining up to go into houses that weren't theirs. Local TV has the details:

Our Thanksgiving holiday tempered by ICE appeasement (the reason we can't trust our elected officials), political candidates don't understand what offices they should seek, dealing with wealth and affordability, a pitch for college sports and how to show support for mutual aid. Information sources for this week's podcast include: Paul Krugman explains the affordability crisis in Kentucky. JCPS closures harm Black kids the most (as always)

An interesting bit of information in this. From Kentucky Lantern: The Kentucky Democratic Party has sold its longtime headquarters near Interstate 64 and plans to move to a new office in downtown Frankfort.  The state party, which has seen its power dwindle in recent decades, will move to an office on Ann Street Friday, Dec. 5, in hopes of being more accessible to lawmakers, advocates and reporters working at the state Capitol.

We have to deal daily with the insanity of MAGA morons whose leaders are taking away access to healthcare and followers who want to control what women do with their bodies. From Kentucky Lantern: Anti-abortion organizations and Republican elected officials are searching for more ways to prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving federal resources after congressional Republicans successfully cut off federal Medicaid funding until at least July 2026.

An interesting development in today's CJ: Former Kentucky State Representative and U.S. Senate candidate Charles Booker (pictured above) is considering another Senate run in 2026, according to a Nov. 26 social media post. In the Facebook post, Booker acknowledged calls for him to run for the Senate seat that U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Republican who was first elected to the office in 1984, 

I'm visiting part of the Acela corridor this Thanksgiving week, seeing relatives between the nation's capital and the Big Apple. During one visit, a discussion on Sundown Towns was an eye opener. What's a Sundown Town? The History and Social Justice website says: A sundown town is not just a place where something racist happened. It is an entire community (or even county) that for decades was “all white” on purpose.

Here's a Bluesky post from Mr. Spock. It's logical. We've been on Bluesky as an antidote to Elon Musk's (you know, the centibillionaire whose net worth rose $15 billion today to $475.5 billion) garbage dump, X. Anyone who has been on X knows it's a MAGA cesspool filled with far-right feces. And the Guardian tells us where the MAGAt posters live…

During our podcast this weekend, I was stunned by the realization that the four richest people in the world have a combined net worth of more than $1 trillion. As of today, according to the Forbes list of the world's real time billionaires, those four Americans (Elon Musk: $460.4 billion; Larry Ellison: $248.4 billion; Larry Page: $246.2 billion, and Jeff Bezos, $233.5 billion) have a combined net worth of $1.188 trillion, an amount so outrageously big, I have to hold the calculator on my iPhone on its side to see the entire number.

Traveling abroad and domestically, the effect of the UPS plane crash on the Derby City, the political impact of Mamdani and MTG, shortcomings of the Louisville education system and making a difference in the Bluegrass State. Full List of Democrats Voting to Condemn Socialism as Mamdani Comes to Town Roll Call 305 | Bill Number: H. Con. Res. 58 Kentucky secretary of state examines increasing national influence on Kentucky politics We Ain’t Buying It Target Companies

So, a big billionaire-owned corporate giant is paying out a penalty for ripping off consumers. According to the CJ: Amazon customers who are eligible to receive a portion of the company's $2.5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission have started receiving payments. In the first of two waves of payouts, Amazon began issuing automatic payments to some customers beginning Wednesday, Nov.

Here's the latest on the UPS MD-11 jet crash at Louisville's Muhammad Ali Airport, from the CJ: Just two weeks after the fatal Nov. 4 UPS crash left 14 dead in Louisville, a preliminary National Transportation Safety Board report found the left engine detached from the plane and caught fire. Additionally, the investigation found evidence of "fatigue cracks," among other issues.

Honestly, this doesn't appear to be a billionaire donation. But this is how huge financial gifts should be revealed in the news media: For the past few months, a petition has garnered hundreds of signatures in favor of updating the aging sprayground at Chickasaw Park. But thanks to an anonymous $5 million donation, the beloved park is getting so much more than that.

The NCAA Division I women's soccer tournament began this past weekend, and the opening round of Bluegrass interest was held here Saturday in Louisville. The opponents were what you would want in a match in the commonwealth: No. 6-seed Louisville vs. Kentucky. At the end of regulation, the score was 1-1. (If you were watching the game on ESPN, you would have seen me, my son and my grandson behind the net when Kentucky scored its goal, which isn't shown in this YouTube video.) A 10-minute overtime period was added and ended with no scoring.

I was looking through recent episodes of "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" and saw he did a segment that focused on a series I helped edit when I worked at the San Francisco Chronicle: The award-winning Chronicle series looked at the phenomenon of police chases well beyond the borders of the Bay Area and confirmed it was a nationwide scandal.

This development appeared on Kentucky Lantern this week: Louisville Democratic Rep. Al Gentry is stepping down as chair of the Kentucky House minority caucus. The Democratic Caucus elected Lexington Democratic Rep. Lindsey Burke as the new chair. She was previously the House Democratic whip, according to a press release. Her successor will be selected Friday. Gentry, who represents the 46th House District in Jefferson County, was selected as the caucus chair…

An interesting development today across the river, which will keep the State Senate chambers (pictured above) in Hoosier land vacant a little longer and may hold promise for the Bluegrass State (from WDRB): Lacking the votes to move forward with mid-cycle redistricting, the Indiana Senate will not reconvene in December. "Over the last several months, Senate Republicans have given very serious and thoughtful consideration to the concept of redrawing our state's congressional maps.

I'm not sure if this is the right interpretation for this, but this is the way the CJ presents it: Republican Rep. Thomas Massie's charge to release the Epstein files is making significant movement. A discharge petition spearheaded by Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-California, secured its 218th signature on Nov. 12, a crucial step to force a House floor vote on a bill that would compel the U.S.

Last year, this court ruling was made concerning the images at the top of this post: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently unanimously upheld the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s mandate for graphic health warning labels on cigarette packs and advertising. The graphic health warning labels show written statements with photo-realistic color images depicting some serious health risks of cigarette smoking.

We've had some good news on the family front. My niece is a documentary film producer who worked on the 2022 Academy Award winning documentary "Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)," about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, an event that rivaled Woodstock but was completely ignored by the mainstream media. Here's the trailer: Now, most people didn't know about the festival, because film shot during it was hidden in a vault for decades.

Today's the home opener for the University of Louisville women's basketball team, and one key person will be missing from the sidelines: Stephanie Norman made that announcement in April, but she isn't leaving the sport. She's returning home to Arizona State: Sun Devil Women’s Basketball alumna and a member of the A STEP UP Assistant Coaches Hall of Fame Class of 2024, Stephanie Norman returned to her alma mater as associate head coach and director of basketball strategy in April 2025.

Where's Kentucky's governor these days? Former President Joe Biden highlighted harsh economic realities facing American families under President Donald Trump. And Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear pitched a recipe for helping Democrats win in deep-red states. Both headliners for the Nebraska Democrats’ top annual fundraiser Friday rallied a downtown Hilton crowd of 630 people headed into next year’s midterm elections, in which the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District could play a crucial role.

Attica Scott, a former member of the Louisville Metro Council and former Kentucky state rep for the city, has a spot on view of the New York mayoral election (From Facebook): Mamdani’s win and what it means to me as a Black woman in the South As a Black woman living in Louisville, Kentucky, I’m saying: pay attention. Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has proven for years that it has its pulse on the people’s priorities.

The whole theme of the George Orwell novel "1984" is "Big Brother Is Watching You." Louisville cops are taking on the role of Big Brother, as you can see from the photo above (From Louisville Public Media): Law enforcement across the U.S. are sifting through a Louisville Metro Police Department database of vehicles captured by the city’s growing fleet of license plate reader cameras.