Friday, November 06, 2026

Election? What Election?

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Thursday, November 05, 2026

School Vouchers. “Sharia Law.” Corruption. Book Bans In School. ICE.

Oh, and data centers. That did a lot of it.

I’m currently in the Davis Mountains, just north of Big Bend. If you look at the area southeast of El Paso on that map, I’m in the biggest county there. Big Bend is at the bottom of the county, on the Rio Grande. As far east as Del Rio (also on the river, roughly southwest of San Antonio), I was seeing printed posters protesting the wall through Big Bend National Park.  I see the signs everywhere in the communities here (Marfa, Alpine, Ft. Davis). The pundits haven’t noticed, but it’s a flashpoint issue here. I’ve seen a lot of signs for Talarico and Hinojosa, too. The latter because of a huge data center proposed outside Alpine (the biggest city in the county, and the county seat). Those two issues are a flashpoint in this region, and I guarantee it brought out a majority vote for Democrats. Even the State Board of Education, which picks school textbooks, is now controlled by Democrats. That’s not just because Talarico had coattails. Straight party voting is now longer allowed in Texas (gone are the days when I could tick one box). People had to choose the Democratic candidates, one by one. I’m pretty sure they chose party rather than knowing every candidate on the ballot.

This was a cleansing of the Augean stables election. I suspect the other “secret” is that urban Democrats (who outnumber rural Republican voters, but don’t vote) turned out in big numbers, and the border communities voted on ICE and the border wall and data centers. And I think they voted against the hegemony of GOP, which is increasingly driven by the crackpot Texas base who preferred Paxton over Cornyn. I think the people have had enough of that, too, and have shaken them off. I hoped Hinojosa would win, I was sure Talarico would. I had no idea Texas government from the governor down to the Texas House would flip.

Now they gotta do right by it. 😸
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PLEASE PICK SCALISE OR JORDAN!🙏

MacFarlane on 2028: Republicans don't have weeks or months to figure this out. They have days to figure this out because they have to choose their next House leader soon.

That's an existential question they need to answer now. These types of decisions now pave the trajectory for the next congress, but also communicate this is what we want.

They're going to have to reckon with this, like this weekend.
PLEASE!🙏 
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Copious Copium

Biden did it, edition.
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Wednesday, November 04, 2026

Just Needs To Include Any Arch in D.C.

Next CR needs this rider:

“None of the funds made available by this or any other Act may be obligated or expended to plan, design, demolish, construct, furnish, secure, operate, or maintain a ballroom at the White House or on the White House grounds, including any salaries or expenses of federal personnel supporting such work and any costs of accepting or administering private donations for it.”
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I MEAN, HOLY SHIT!!!!!💩

BREAKING: Democrats seized control of the Texas House in Tuesday’s midterms for the first time in more than two decades, capping a night in which voters ousted Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and left Republicans reeling in a state that has long anchored national GOP politics.
💩💩💩💩💩💩
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HOLY SHIT!!!💩

 HOLY SHIT!!!

HOLY SHIT!!!!

Sorry, that’s all I’ve got time for.


HOLY SHIT!!!!

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Tuesday, November 03, 2026

Talk Amongst Yourselves

 I’m in Shanghai-La for the week. Which is to say, the Davis Mountains ⛰️, with VERY limited internet access.

Look for me no more!

Well, until Sunday. Good Lord willin’ and the creeks don’t rise.

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Monday, November 02, 2026

Last Day Before Election Day

And in Iowa, where Trump held a rally, the advance team ordered a tarp cover this mural: The city told the building operator (the city owns the building) to take the tarp down. 

Later today Trump will go to the Reflecting Pool to rant, again, about the vandalism-that-wasn’t. We all know it, and we all know it means the Emperor-wannabe has no clothes.

Only the courtier press continues to pretend he is wrapped in the robes of regal office.
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Well, Somebody Finally Said It

New in PN: How Trump destroyed his own dictatorial ambitions

"The US is about to enter a foreboding final period in the already catastrophically failed Trump presidency. It is difficult to anticipate what further outrages the frustrated, and increasingly feeble-minded, failed dictator will attempt to unleash on the country he purportedly leads.

But one somewhat reassuring thing is already clear — Trump’s ongoing assault on the US government will continue to sap his already eroding power."
With examples: He really likes some of these.
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Big, Strong Preachers…

... with tears in their eyes. 👀 
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January Can’t Come Soon Enough

Vietnam being the war he refused to participate in. Afghanistan being the war that went on all four years of his first term, ending after his term with a disastrous agreement he negotiated and left Biden bound to 

So, sure…
The Secret Service must have LOVED! that. 🙄
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Sunday, November 01, 2026

Lunchtime In High School

Any day of the week, Michiganders care more about the price of gas or groceries than the daily political drama or the last-minute moves by politicians for the TV cameras.

I was knocking doors in Sterling Heights yesterday and to a house, those folks were hyper-focused on how expensive everything in their life seems to be, and they’re desperately worried — often in tears — about the future for their kids.

And it is for that reason that I have avoided commenting on the actions of Congresswoman Haley Stevens until now.

But there is simply too much at stake. We have to be focused on the mission at hand. That mission is to put a check on President Trump in the U.S. House and Senate, and do the hard work of saving the middle class.

So anyone who makes an election this important about themselves, and not Michiganders and our democracy, should think hard about whether they are serving the greater good.

People outside of Michigan sometimes have a hard time understanding our politics. And in moments like these, I get it.

But here’s the simple truth: The election on Tuesday is bigger than any one person. It’s about who we are as a country and the values that most represent us.

Michigan elects fighters, and we will elect @AbdulElSayed on November 3.
Voters care about their lives. Reporters care about the gossip. “Did you hear what she said? I wonder what that means? Whatd’you think they’ll do?” 

Nobody cares, but this is what we have to listen to.
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In America…

Racism is only allowed to run from white people to non-white people. White people determine what “non-white “ means, and how much non-white people must apologize for what white people perceive as racism. 

This rule does not apply to people perceived to be of a lower socioeconomic class, no matter their skin color. They are just racist because we already look down on them.
QED.
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For All Saints Day

"After this, our Lord reminded me of the longing I had for him, and I saw that nothing kept me from him but sin, and I saw that this is so with all of us. And I thought that if sin had never existed, we should all have been pure and like himself, as God made us; and so I had often wondered before now in my folly why, in his great foreseeing wisdom, God had not prevented the beginning of sin; for then, I thought, all would have been well. I ought certainly to have abandoned these thoughts, but nevertheless I grieved and sorrowed over the question with no reason or judgment. But Jesus, who in this vision informed me of all that I needed to know, answered with this assurance: 'Sin is befitting, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.'

"With this bare word 'sin' our Lord brought to my mind the whole extent of all that is not good, adn the shameful scorn adn the utter humiliation that he bore for us in this life, and his dying, and all the pains and suffering of all his creatures, both in body and in spirit--for we are all to some extent brought to nothing and shall be brought to nothing as our master Jesus was, until we are finally purged: that is to say until our mortal flesh is brought completely to nothing, and all those of our inward feelings which are not truly good....

"But I did not see sin; for I believe it has no sort of substance nor portion of being, nor could it be recognized were it not for the suffering which it causes. And this suffering seems to me to be something transient, for it purges us and makes us know ourselves and pray for mercy; for the Passion of our Lord supports us against all this, and this is his blessed will. And because of the tender love which our good Lord feels for all who shall be saved, he supports us willingly and sweetly, meaning this: 'It is true that sin is the cause of all this suffering, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.' These words were said very tenderly, with no suggestion that I or anyone who will be saved was being blamed. It would therefore be very strange to blame or wonder at God because of my sin, since he does not blame me for sinning.

"And thus our good Lord answered all the questions and doubts I could put forward, saying most comfortingly, 'I may make all things well. I can make all things well and I will make all things well and I shall make all things well; and you shall see for yourself that all manner of things shall be well.

"And I wondered greatly as this revelation, and considered our faith, wondering as follows: our faith is grounded in God's word, and it is part of our faith that we should believe that God's word will be kept in all things; and one point of our faith is that many shall be damned--like the angels who fell out of heaven from pride, who are now fiends, and men on earth who die outside the faith of Holy Church, that is, those who are heathens, and also any man who has received Christianity and lives an unChristian life and so dies excluded from the love of God. Holy Church teaches me to belive that all these shall be condemned everlastingly to hell. And given all this, I thought it impossible that all manner of things should be well, as our Lord revealed at this time. And I received no other answer in showing from our Lord God but this: 'What is impossible to you is not impossible to me. I shall keep my word in all thing and I shall make all things well.'

"...the more anxious we are to discover [God's] secret knowledge about this or anything else, the further we shall be from knowing it...."

From chapters 27, 29, 32, and 33, Reflections of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich.
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All Saint's Day 2026


All Saint's Day (Nov. 1) is a day to honor the saints, mainly those who don't otherwise have a feast day. All Soul's Day (Nov. 2) remembers all who have died in Christ who are not considered saints.  (In Mexico, these 2 days are the Dias de Los Muertos; the first day for returning spirits of children; the second for returning spirits of adults.) Protestants don't necessarily observe the day, but for those who do the "saints" mean the clouds of witness who we believe surround us in time and across time, as well as across space.  According to most accounts the Irish holy day Samhain was one of the "thin places" on the calendar, when the dearly departed were yet close at hand, not as ghouls and ghost and goblins, but as family. That’s the supposed connection between All Hallows Even and Samhain, anyway.  Nowadays the idea is to honor the saints, in the Roman Catholic tradition; or to honor the clouds of witness, in many Protestant traditions.

The German Protestant church observed the Tötenfest, the remembrance of the dead, the faithful who had died in Christ in the past year.  They marked that occassion not on a calendar date, but on the last Sunday of Pentecost, the liturgical season that begins roughly 50 days after Easter Sunday, and runs until the Sunday before Advent.  Don't get your calendars out, the last Sunday is easy to calculate.  Advent begins four Sundays before December 25th, so the last Sunday of Pentecost is a week before the first Sunday of Advent.  Because days on the Gregorian calendar move about, while Christmas has a settled date, and Hallowe'en, too, the last Sunday of Pentecost and first Sunday of Advent change their dates every year.  This year the last Sunday of Pentecost is November 22nd.  I'll mark the Totenfest that day again this year.  

It's all about death and resurrection.  Although those terms might not mean what you think they mean. You're thinking it's about death, so it's gloomy.  But it's about hope and a redeemed creation.  It's one of the few times a year on the church lectionary you can be guaranteed a reading from the Revelation (Apocalypse, or "revealing") to John.  Which despite it's reputation and use by some to predict eternal punishment for others, is actually bout both of those topics (hope and redemption for all of creation).

The following prayer is from the (German) Evangelical Book of Worship.  I'm not certain precisely when they used it in the church year, but I find it useful for Tötenfest, or, in this case, for All Saint's Day.

Almighty and everlasting God, before whom stand the spirits of the living and the dead; Light of lights, Fountain of wisdom and goodness, who livest in all pure and humble and gracious souls.

For all who witnessed a good confession for thy glory and the welfare of the world; for patriarchs, prophets, and apostles; for the wise of every land and nation, and all teachers of mankind,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For the martyrs of our holy faith, the faithful witnesses of Christ of whome the world was not worthy, and for all who have resisted falsehood and wrong unto suffering or death,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For all who have labored and suffered for freedom, good government, just laws, and they sanctity of the home; and for all who have given their lives for their country,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For all who have sought to bless men by their service and life, and to lighten the dark places of the earth,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.
For those who have been tender and true and brave in all times and places, and for all who have been one with thee in the communion of Christ's spirit and in the strength of his love,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For the dear friends and kindred, ministering in the spiritual world, whose faces we see no more, but whose love is with us for ever,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For the teachers and companions of our childhood and yough, and for the members of our household of faith who worship thee in heaven,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For the grace which was given to all these, and for the trust and hope in which they lived and died,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

And that we may hold them in continual remembrance, that the sanctity of their wisdom and goodness may rest upon our earthly days, and that we may prepare ourselves to follow them in their upward way,

WE BESEECH THEE TO HEAR US, O GOD.

That we may ever think of them as with thee, and be sure that where they are, there we may be also,

WE BESEECH THEE TO HEAR US, O GOD.

That we mave haev a hope beyond this world for all they children, even for wanderers who must be sought and brought home; that we may be comforted and sustained by the promise of a time when none shall be a stranger and an exile from thy kingdom and household;

WE BESEECH THEE TO HEAR US, O GOD.

In the communion of the Holy Spirit, with the faithful and the saints in heaven, with the redeemed in all ages, with our beloved who dwell in thy presence and peace, we, who still serve and suffer on earth, unite in ascribing:

THANKSGIVING, GLORY, HONOR, AND POWER UNTO THEE, O LORD OUR GOD.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,

AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING, IS NOW, AND EVER SHALL BE, WORLD WITHOUT END. AMEN.

The Revised Common Lectionary provides these scripture readings for All Saints 2024.

Isaiah 25:6-9

25:6
On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.

25:7
And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the covering that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.

25:8
Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken.

25:9
It will be said on that day, "See, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation."


Psalm 24

24:1
The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it,

24:2
for he has founded it on the seas and established it on the rivers.

24:3
Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place?

24:4
Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false and do not swear deceitfully.

24:5
They will receive blessing from the LORD and vindication from the God of their salvation.

24:6
Such is the company of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Selah

24:7
Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in!

24:8
Who is the King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle.

24:9
Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in!

24:10
Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah


Revelation 21:1-6a

21:1
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

21:2
And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

21:3
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God;

21:4
he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."

21:5
And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true."

21:6
Then he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End..

John 11:32-44

11:32
When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

11:33
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.

11:34
He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see."

11:35
Jesus began to weep

11:36
So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!"

11:37
But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"

11:38
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.

11:39
Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days."

11:40
Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?"

11:41
So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me.

11:42
I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me."

11:43
When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus come out!"

11:44
The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him and let him go."

If you skipped all those readings, I don't blame you. I won't belabor them here.  I just want to point out the thematic reason for them, the thread that runs through them:  death and resurrection, and how even the dead are alive to God.

None of which are simple concepts, although we oversimplify them constantly, imagining either a painless passage from death to "after life," or maybe we complicate it with a Final Judgement and the separation of the sheep and the goats.  But these verses are not abstract speculations on unknown things.  They are far more concrete than that.

I said I wouldn’t belabor them, but let me run through them quickly.

Isaiah promises a vision of renewal and redemption that will follow the Babylonian Exile.  It will be a time when Israel is so faithful to God (which doesn't mean observing the "right" rituals in worship or daily life, but following the "law of God," in Micah’s famous tripartite version:  do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.  There's a whole set of lessons in that verse alone, but that's for another day).  It's an apocalyptic vision, by which I mean not death and destruction and the end of all things, but the final revelation showing the truth of all things.  And what is this apocalypse? It is when death is swallowed up forever, and every tear is dried. The true end, as in purpose but also conclusion, of history.

Doesn't seem very solidly concrete; but the Psalm is a song of the saints, of "Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false and do not swear deceitfully/They will receive blessing from the LORD and vindication from the God of their salvation./Such is the company of those who seek him.” Not so very different from Isaiah’s vision.

And the revelation to John, in the original Greek the "apocalypse" of John, where it is declared that 'Death will be no more," and because of that "mourning and crying will be no more."  It's one of the passages I've used most often at a graveside service, to try to comfort the mourning.  Notice it's not a Platonic statement about an immortal soul slipping off its mortal coil.  It's about resurrection, a return to life, a reversal at the end of history.

Finally, the story of Lazarus., which is also a story of reversal. This is an interesting story in John, because it's one of the semeia, the signs, Jesus performs.  In the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke), the "miracles" are "dunamis," or acts of power.  In John, they are signs; and any modern semiologist (if they're still around) will tell you the distinctive character of a sign is that it points to something beyond itself, like a stop sign points to the power of government to punish you if you don't obey the sign.  So the resurrection of Lazarus is a sign; but it's also one of the most concrete passages in John, where Jesus literally talks for three chapters in the upper room on the night before his crucifixion. Jesus talks a lot in John. So much so the person often disappears behind the abstractions. Except for washing his disciples feet, there's no time in the narrative of his last night to eat or drink or to give the cryptic message about the meal.  But in the story of Lazarus Jesus doesn't talk, he merely acts.  And he overcomes death, he reverses death in favor of life, a real death of a truly dead person (Nikos Kazantzakis uses this story in his novel The Last Temptation of Christ, and notes that Lazarus sits in his sisters' house still stinking of the grave. Verisismilitude, indeed.)

Death and resurrection; concrete and visionary; real and metaphorical.

For all the saints.  From all the saints.

The semeia here is rather remarkable in John, because John's is not an inclusive gospel; it is almost a gnostic gospel. Those who know, know; those who do not, are Nicodemus; imagining that they know, but understanding nothing. Never mind; they are saved in the end. In the end, Nicodemus is one of those who recovers the body after the crucifixion. Or maybe that is John's joke again, since the body was never Jesus in the first place; since it only appeared to be Jesus.  But John is brutally direct here:  like God speaks Creation into existence, Jesus speaks Lazarus back into life.  We are meant to see this clearly, not through a glass darkly.  Lazarus was dead.  Lazarus is alive.  Wiping the tears from the eyes, at least, of his sisters; and, I suppose, from the eyes of Jesus, too.  Jesus is so abstract and talkative in John's gospel he practically disappears behind the verbiage.  Here, he cries; like a real person; like a caring human being.

God wept.

Rather like the saints, a few centuries later.  Saints are people, flesh and blood, body and bone.  They are no ideals and plaster and just metaphors.  Metaphors are powerful, ideas are powerful, but they are not real, and plaster especially is just a man-made product.  Saints are human. Saints are real.  Saints are made by their faith; and by God.  And the blessings of God announced in these four passages, are real; and concrete.

So say the saints:  The blessings are here. The blessings are now, and they are real. The blessings are pronounced, right now, and being pronnced, they become real. They take affect here; for you. Now.

The language of this day all sounds like language of what will come, will happen, will be seen one day; but not now.  We hear those words, or read those words,  and we think: "Yes. Yes!" And we want them to be true now; but we know they are not true. We know they cannot yet be true.

But the saints admonish us. The saints tell us, remind us, wave their hands before our blind eyes, shout into our deaf ears: "The time is now! The blessing is now! The great ordeal is over and the throne of the Lamb is in front of you right now! The shepherd guides you now! The springs of water wash your feet right now! God is wiping your tears away now, now, even now! Oh, won't you open your eyes and see?! Won't you open your ears and listen?!" And then they weep for us, the saints; the clouds of witness who surround us and know what we know and know what we refuse to know. They surround us and weep and try once again to get our attention, to make us listen, to make us see, to get us just to notice.

Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in!

Who is the King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle.

Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in!

Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah
Lift up your heads, and open the gates of your mind and soul; then you would see, then hear, then you would know! Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. The lives of the servants of the Lord are redeemed! And they are redeemed right now! That is what the saints tell us, and they know! They know, because they are human. They know because they are just like us. They know, because they are saints. And they surround us; and they are here, now.

Samhain is what the Irish once called this time. It was their new year, and the ancestors came back to see them for a celebration. It was when time itself was a "thin place," and the spirits could communicate with the living, and the veil between the two worlds was thin enough to allow communication. For them, the spirits were as real as flesh and blood family members, and their return was a blessing.  As I get older and lose more family members to time, I see more and more what a blessing that would be. For us, perhaps even the saints don't seem quite real. The saints seem like the blessed ones, and their blessings seem to have come long after they could enjoy them in this life. But they know what we forget: that the blessings are for life, not for death. Blessings that only come as rewards in the end, are no blessings at all. Blessings that are not for this life, are only cruel promises. The saints know that God is the God of the living, not the dead; and that in God’s sight, all are alive. Which is why this time of year is still a time of celebration, not of mourning. Which is why the great ordeal has passed, and the lamb is with us now. And why the ones who seem so little, and have so little, and struggle to be merciful and make peace and keep pure hearts, are blessed right now, and not later, not as a reward for being stubborn or persistent or for simply hanging on. The struggle has passed. Blessed are we; right now. That is what the saints know.

The saints are flesh and blood and bone, as Jesus was; and they know what our struggles are, as Jesus did, and they know what our hope is; and that is what sets them apart from us. But not for long; never for long; and they don’t want to be set apart, they want to be with us, they want us to be with them. They are here, now, in this “thin time” they are as near as our next breath, and they know: the blessings on the merciful, and the mourning, and the pure in heart; on the peacemakers and the meek and the ones who are so hungry and thirsty for righteousness they are sure they can just taste, and if only they could be satisfied! They know, the saints, the wise and humble and loving saints, that we are with them, right now; and that we are blessed. Right now. And they want us to know it, too. For all the saints. God willing, we’ll see that we’re ones, too.

Because that’s what it means, to be children of God. The saints look just like you. Have hands, and hearts, and eyes, and ears, and mouths, shaped just like yours. And that is your blessing, now, and evermore. Because you are merciful. Because you are meek. Because, whether you know it or not, your heart is pure. Because you will never stop being hungry and thirsty for righteousness. Because you know it is there, that it will come, that it will be done. Because you know, the great ordeal is no ordeal at all. Because you know, that you want everyone else to know this; and to know they are blessed.

For all the saints. And you are one, too.

Amen.
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Saturday, October 31, 2026

Looking Forward To Wednesday

JAMIE RASKIN SENDS A MESSAGE ahead of the midterms:

“There's no power to shut down the election.”

“There is no power just to come in and seize ballots. There's no statute that permits that.”

Raskin explains why state election officials are preparing to defend the vote against potential federal interference.
There is no road to the seizure of election rolls, ballots, machines, what have you, that doesn’t run through the courts. 

Declaring “national security” is not a declaration of martial law, mainly because you can’t do that under the constitution (and thereby suspend both Congress and the courts). So it’s not a “King’s ‘X’ that lets the POTUS do as he pleases. Trump may tell federal agents to seize machines, but the actual act will violate state laws in every state, and those crimes can’t be pardoned by the POTUS. And his claimed authority will be challenged in almost 50 states at once. So, again, a non-starter.

All roads after Tuesday lead to the courts. That’s how we resolve these issues. Period. Lawyers and law makers should run table top simulations to prepare strategies, but Trump sending in ICE agents on his own authority will just provoke conflict with state police authorities. The President has no role in Congressional elections. He can’t challenge them en masse; he certainly can’t seize voting records en masse. The very demand of the DOJ of states to preserve those records (already required by law), cuts against any claim of emergency. The records aren’t going anywhere. And without evidence of actual falsification of results in specific races (not just a hand waving “We know Iran did something!”), Trump won’t get any further than he did in 2020.

And all of that had to go through the courts, too.

Besides, Trump already did this in Fulton, Georgia. (And no, he won’t be able to get hundreds of search warrants nationwide. Those would be challenged, too.) If they found anything, they never revealed it. And the Cyber Ninjas in Arizona went looking for more votes for Trump, and just ended up finding more votes for Biden.

Trump can’t do shit to prevent the election of a new Congress.



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New Hallowe’en Costume: Secretary of Racism

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🎶Seems Like Old Times

Good thing Trump is gonna rename the Strait, huh?
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Chattering Tongues

And they know it. Be careful what you ask for. It is a frightful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Especially when your guy is Ken Paxton. At that same rally. In Michigan: But Haley Stevens is upset that El Sayed won’t denounce an ad he had nothing to do with, an ad that doesn’t say Israel is the bestest ever!, and therefor is anti/semitic (BTW, if I read aloud the condemnations of Israel by God through the prophets, is that anti-Semitic?), so we must hear about it! Which candidate?
Q: Do you believe Haley Stevens is hurting the ticket?

El-Sayed: I have much respect to the congresswoman. We had a hard fought primary. That primary ended in August. I'm focused now on beating Mike Rogers. I hope that every Democrat, frankly, I hope that everybody who's worried about the state of our democracy, worried about the ability to afford gas and groceries, worried about ending illegal wars or ending tariff wars is with me in that fight.
It’s really just gossip. That’s what the political press thrives on. I mean, if we’re gonna talk about gossip….
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DST 2026

And there is no beauty in it 

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; 
When I behold the violet past prime, 
And sable curls all silver’d o’er with white; 
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves 
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, 
And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves 
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard, 
Then of thy beauty do I question make, 
That thou among the wastes of time must go, 
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake 
And die as fast as they see others grow; 
And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence. 


And daylight savings time still sucks. I lived too many years (the whine of the old; but it will be you one day🫵)  on God’s time, and I don’t like what DST does to it. I always want to just suspend time on the first day DST ends.

And there are people who want to make the damned thing permanent. Why? Why not just eliminate it permanently? Then again, I’m more aware than ever that time is going to take me hence. Sooner now than later was then. 

I just hope it’s on DST. 😈
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SMH 🤦‍♂️

CNN: Did it impact your vote at all?

Alaska Voter: Not a bit.

CNN: Can you tell who's who here?

AV: Absolutely. You've got Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. and then you have Sullivan Dan, who's a registered Republican and incumbent. And I don't even have my glasses on. It's pretty clear it's in black and white. It's very clear.
Okay, now did this have an impact? The federal judge has given the DOJ until noon Friday .(Alaska time) to respond to Alaska’s motion to dismiss, and Alaska until noon tomorrow to respond to the DOJ’s filing. Alaska is asking for the case to be dismissed before Election Day. That may happen.

Separately, the Justice Department — as part of a lawsuit it filed last week — asked a judge to order that state elections officials isolate ballots ranking Dan J. Sullivan to investigate potential voter "confusion" with the senator. The owner of a boat dealership in the candidate's hometown of Petersburg who had donated to his campaign told The Associated Press that an FBI agent visited the business and wanted to know whether he had been misled by Dan J. Sullivan's candidacy. He said he had not and that "Everybody knows who the incumbent is."
Evidence of “confused” voters will be a factor in criminal, or civil, cases. And about that civil suit:
Justice Department attorneys in the Alaska case said there is a "substantial risk" that Dan J. Sullivan's candidacy "will mislead voters and ultimately result in an electoral process that lacks integrity."

"To guard against this danger, the United States seeks an order directing Defendants to preserve and segregate all ballots ranking Daniel J. Sullivan for the purposes of investigating whether such ranking was the product of voter confusion, should such an investigation become necessary," the filing states. It requests a decision by Monday.

Attorneys for the state in response questioned how segregation would be possible, writing that voters' ballots are commingled in the ballot box on Election Day and that election workers couldn't segregate ballots ranking Dan J. Sullivan without violating ballot secrecy protections. Ballots segregated or not wouldn't reveal any voter's reason for voting for Dan J. Sullivan, they said.

They have asked a judge to dismiss the case and said Alaska elections officials already took steps to distinguish the two Sullivans on the ballot. The senator is listed as Dan S. Sullivan, Republican and incumbent, while the challenger is listed as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., with no party affiliation. That's also how they appeared on the August open primary ballot.

Attorneys for the state also have argued that Alaska's ranked voting system further addresses concerns about potential confusion by allowing voters to rank both Sullivans.
Especially because of the ranked voting system, I don’t think DOJ ever gets what it’s asking for.
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He Has A Very High IQ

"Where was I? Oh, yeah…” Fitting.
  He has a very high IQ.
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Closing Arguments

Ken Paxton’s former top cop on why he’s voting for James Talarico:

I spent 2 hours with James Talarico. Number one, I saw no deception. He answered all my difficult questions. He didn’t dodge anything. He hit it head on.

I have been around politicians my entire life. I served 5 governors, I’ve met 4 presidents… And James Talarico is so different than other people I’ve encountered.

I think he’s the man who needs to go to Washington DC, and Ken Paxton needs to go home.
Sure looks like it. And how much did Elmo pay a political consultant to come up with that one and post it on the last day of early voting? Does he imagine this is outreach? How many people has Paxton ever gathered at one time? A tweet three days before Election Day is not likely to change the course of the election. 😈
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Is He Talking About Trump?

Miller, I mean.
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🎃🐈‍⬛🌾🥮👻 🎄?

 Well, yeah, kinda:

No social plans tonight but I might head out onto the balcony in a bit and start screaming "DID YOU KNOW HALLOWEEN IS IRISH ORIGINALLY?" as loud as I can
The connection between Samhain and All Hallow’s Even is a tenuous one, at best. 

AND I WARNED YOU THIS WOULD TAKE MANY WORDS TO EXPLAIN! 👻

I’ve already quoted the history of All Saints Day. The idea was floated as early as the late 4th century.  But Gregory III finally did something about it in the 8th century.Well, again, I’ll just quote the pertinent language:
Gregory III (731-741) consecrated a chapel in the Basilica of St. Peter to all the saints and fixed the anniversary for 1 November. A basilica of the Apostles already existed in Rome, and its dedication was annually remembered on 1 May. Gregory IV (827-844) extended the celebration on 1 November to the entire Church. The vigil seems to have been held as early as the feast itself
Alright, three things there. 1 May in Ireland was Beltane, about 6 months prior to (or after; either way) Samhain, on 1 November.  These were the two most important holy days on the Irish Celtic calendar. And yet no one ever argues the Roman Catholic dedication anniversary was connected to Ireland. Mostly because no one remembers it anymore, but the connection is as solid as the connection to All Saints. Which is to say, not solid at all. Besides, All Saints displaced Samhain to the vigil, or eve. And Gregory III set the date on November 1, but Gregory IV made it a date for the entire church almost 100 years later. At which point is it clear when the Church acted in response to the Irish holy day? Which was important in Ireland, but not really in Europe? 

The best information I can find indicates observance of Samhain was connected to stories of gods and heroes not dissimilar from the tales in the Elder Edda. But we don’t associate those stories with ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night, so, again, the connection to contemporary Hallowe’en (“contemporary” as of Robert Burns) is suspect. Well, except for the date.

Stick with me, I do have a point, and it’s not to rehash the Hallowe’en/Samhain confusion a third time. I’m actually interested in the connection between All Hallow’s Even and Christmas Eve, and what it tells us about our celebrations. For that, we need to dig down to the roots.

I’d read this book before*, so I must have forgotten this reference from the late 16th century. The reference is to the “Lord of Misrule” being chosen on All Hallow’s Eve, for a celebration that extended to Candlemas (February 2nd, observance of the presentation of the Christchild to Simeon at the Temple). This connects more with the reason the Puritans banned Christmas in the New World than with Ireland per se. The “Lord of Misrule” indicates a raucous Christmas celebration probably like the “Feast of Fools” on the Continent. You may have noticed this makes Hallowe’en the gateway to Advent and Christmas, as well as nearly a month of Epiphany. (Candlemas was not a small thing. The tradition in England persisted for centuries that the Yuletide greenery could not be removed until Candlemas, lest demons beset you. Come back on Candlemas. I have poems about it.) The gateway because raucous celebrations were a common feature of British Xmastide (the famous “12 Days of “). With idle time on their hands and most of the food going up to the lords, singing assaults on fine houses expecting a treat in recompense became a social pacifier. The Lord of Misrule was part of that. If it started around All Saints, and continued until Candlemas, All Hallows Eve opened door in October that didn’t close until February. At least not in the British Isles. 

Raucous celebrations may have Irish roots, too, but especially at year’s end, they’ve been popular in many European cultures that long ago abandoned the Feast of Fools. My father was old enough to remember when the emphasis in “Trick or Treat” was on the trick, not the treat. Hallowe’en was a sanctioned day for tricks, not unlike Christmas Day (come back in Advent and you’ll see what I mean). I heard stories of tricks and treats in my childhood, but by then Hallowe’en was entirely domesticated. This is just a reminder it wasn’t always so.

Is Hallowe’en still Samhain? Except for the dates, it’s hard to say so. Some think Gregory III set the date to take over Samhain. But it was almost 100 years later before Gregory IV made the date “universal.” Was the church indifferent to Ireland and its holy days before then? Well, maybe; but there’s no record of it. Gregory III was probably looking at the Church Calendar, not the Irish one. Gregory IV was just as likely thinking of the Church, not Ireland alone. So the date is as likely to be coincidental as intentional. Besides, Samhain didn’t disappear; it just changed dates (unlike Brigid, who was utterly transformed into a saint of the Church; as a Celtic goddess she disappeared until the recovery of Irish folklore in the 20th century). And looking at the church calendar in Gregory III’s day, is it really so hard to see the connection to the Christ Mass, which eventually gave us Xmas Eve?

Samhain became more associated with the Lord of Misrule than ghosts or Celtic heroes, before it became a holiday for children seeking candy. The Feast of Fools was finally banned in England (and on the Continent) in the 1600’s (the Puritans hated its remnant: raucous Xmas celebrations, which involved a lot of drinking.). Hallowe’en persisted as the Eve of All Saints, though Henry VIII and Elizabeth I both tried to suppress it because it was a “papal holiday” (they had their own, non-Puritanical, reasons). But it was a witch trial under James I (the same fervor that jumped the pond to Salem), linked to an alleged incident on Hallowe’en night, that connected the day to witches thereafter. And then the Victorians using the Romantics interest in folklore (as the Industrial Revolution swept that world away) to take new interest in ghost stories, well…

So, is that Irish? It’s more a series of accidents of history, but it didn’t wipe out the celebration, as the Burns poem shows (the Scots have more in common with the Irish than the English). It just added witches to it; and other thing later on (via James I, albeit accidentally). The celebration of the holiday, mostly along the lines Burns memorialized, continued in the British Isles, mostly excluding England; but the festivities in England and Europe shifted to Michaelmas (12 November) and the slaughter of livestock as part of the festival, for the winter. No candy, though. The Scots and the Irish did bring Hallowe’en to America in the second half of the 19th century, with the diaspora brought by the potato famines. (How the Irish saved civilization. Again.) But it was received as a celebration for children, which probably explains how we ended up with the holiday we have today.

The interesting contemporary part is that, again, it’s an eve celebrating a Christian holiday. Granted, these days more of us think of Dias de Los Muertos than think of All Saints Day. But we have three holiday eves on our civic calendar, and Hallowe’en is the first of them. It is the beginning of the revelry that once carried from this celebration through to at least Candlemas in England, and Ash Wednesday in Roman Catholic Europe. It’s our dour Puritan heritage that makes us denounce it as demonic, or relegate it to children; and then lament more recently that the celebrations of our childhood are gone, and adults have turned it (back, historically) into drunken revelry.

Or is everything old just new again? And rather than complain about Xmas overtaking Hallowe’en, maybe we could recognize the 10 weeks or so of holidays that are trying to return, if only because in order to rejoice, we need to construct something upon which to rejoice; and that something doesn’t need to be too much of an abstraction.

Hallowe’en does have an Irish root, if only in the keeping of it to the 19th century. But the celebration we observe today (and, ironically, sent back to Europe), wouldn’t be recognizable in pre-Christian, or even Christian, Ireland. Which is not to discount the Celtic connection; but it’s hardly an observance that’s come down to us unchanged through the ages, only lately bastardized by candy merchants. Though I am intrigued by that reference in New Advent to the vigil being attached to the feast day almost from the beginning. Was Ireland that influential in Europe in the 8th century? And for the centuries between the 8th century and the 12th (when the Feast of Fools began to appear), what was that vigil like? 👻 What is it about these multiple eves, anyway?

Maybe we’re trying to find out. We’ve certainly been keeping them long enough, even long after Protestantism removed the Roman Catholic connections. Maybe we should look at the reasons for that more carefully, and perhaps construct new reasons to rejoice, if we need them. Or find a few good old ones, for all of that.

After all, Christmas and Hallowe’en are our two holidays when we especially want to do things as they’ve always been done. And they’re both meant to be for fun.



*Aside from the link, I relied on Trick or Treat; A History of Hallowe’en, Reaktion Books, 2019, by Lisa Morton, for much of this post.




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