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The Daily Grind
Good Morning! ☕️ We get to do this! Let’s make Heaven crowded!
Life can get complicated, but following Jesus doesn’t have to be. God hasn’t left us to figure things out on our own. He’s promised to guide our steps if we’ll listen for His voice and follow His lead.
Sometimes it’s just that simple. Trust and obey! - Pastor Jimmy
West Coast Bible Study · WCBS
The study focused on Psalm 134, a short psalm described as dense and valuable, which calls the servants of the Lord to bless the Lord while standing in His house at night. The group discussed the meaning of the word "bless" in this context, defining it as speaking well of God, extolling His attributes, and expressing gratitude for His works.
A significant portion of the discussion centered on the physical posture of worship, specifically the command to "lift up your hands." Participants shared personal experiences regarding how body language, such as raising hands or crossing arms, reflects the inner disposition of the heart. The consensus was that while specific postures are not universally mandatory, they should align with one's spiritual state, and believers should not judge others based on their physical expressions of worship.
The study also highlighted the theme of night worship and preparation. It was noted that evening worship serves as a bookend to the day, preparing believers for the night watch and committing their souls to God. The group emphasized that worship is a universal obligation for all Christians, regardless of physical ability or cultural background, and that God looks at the heart rather than outward appearance.
Read / listen on WCBS · Archive
Source: wcbsdev.albrightnetworks.com
Clallam County Watchdog
The governor says the budget hole is in the billions. Commerce is still paying people $71.25 to attend an environmental-justice Zoom. It’s not the dollars. It’s the priorities.
Olympia says the cupboard is bare
In June, Gov. Bob Ferguson told state agencies to plan for “significant” cuts. In September, the revenue forecast didn’t “make a dent in the anticipated multibillion-dollar shortfall in the next budget,” according to the Washington State Standard. On Nov. 5, Ferguson said the shortfall is a number starting with “b.” This is the third straight year of budget gaps, and lawmakers have already cut early education and child care.
Here’s where the money and staff time are still going.
Paid to talk environmental justice
On Oct. 27, Commerce invited residents to a Nov. 5 Zoom “community conversation on environmental justice” about two grant programs. The pay: “Compensation of $71.25 is available to eligible participants who have lived experience or household incomes at or below 400% of the federal poverty level.” The meeting ran 75 minutes, and the budget shortfall is in the billions.
Outreach for “communities and tribes,” including ours
Commerce is also hiring a nonprofit to run an energy-resilience outreach campaign in Eastern Washington and the North Olympic Peninsula, which includes Clallam and Jefferson counties. The job is to serve “disproportionately impacted and over-burdened communities and tribes,” and applicants needed five years of experience in “rural, tribal and disaster-impacted communities.” The cap is $230,000 in federal FEMA money, administered by the state.
A state screening of “Fish War”
On Nov. 30, Commerce’s Office of Tribal Relations will screen “Fish War,” a documentary on the Boldt decision. The film’s website opens by saying Washington’s restrictions on tribal fishing were “a declaration of war.”
It was co-produced by Northwest Treaty Tribes Media, the media arm of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, and even the Seattle International Film Festival called it an “activism documentary.”
That’s not a history lesson. It’s a state agency lending its stamp to advocacy.
"Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value." — Joe Biden
Priorities
None of this alone closes a billion-dollar gap. But when public money and public agencies are used to advance the agendas of sovereign governments that don’t answer to our voters, don’t be surprised if there isn’t enough left for education, the Simdars Road Interchange promised since 1998, or a struggling hospital (and our county’s largest employer), Olympic Medical Center.
If Olympia wants us to believe the cupboard is bare, it could start by acting like it. Tell your legislators whether this is the right use of public time and money in a billion-dollar budget deficit year.
Source: ccwatchdog.com
The Verge
Nvidia announced this morning that Jensen Huang has resigned as CEO following reports of two affairs, including one with an alleged Chinese spy and one with a direct report. The situation surrounding Huang has unfolded quickly, with The New York Times only reporting on Friday that Huang and the suspected spy were "close" before other dominoes started to fall, leading to a swift fall from grace for one of the biggest names in technology. (Hours after Huang's resignation was announced, Reuters reported that he also had an "intimate relationship" with another Nvidia employee.)
Prominent voices in technology have come out in support of Huang, w…
Source: The Verge
Letters from an American
Heather Cox Richardson’s Veterans Day letter starts with history: the holiday began as Armistice Day, marking the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, and Congress renamed it Veterans Day in 1954 after World War II and Korea. President Eisenhower, himself a five-star general, asked Americans to remember the sacrifices of those who fought and to recommit to “promoting an enduring peace.”
She then contrasts that tradition with this year’s observances. At Arlington National Cemetery, President Trump broke with the custom of a nonpartisan speech, closing with a defense of the war on Iran and a celebration of the Venezuela operation that put its oil fields under U.S. control: “We’re taking out billions and billions of dollars of oil… To the victor belong the spoils.” MeidasNews reported that the president also used a Veterans Day greeting to launch a “Presidential Fundraising Blitz,” telling supporters the MAGA movement “took a blow” in the midterms and asking for sustaining contributions.
After the ceremony, CNN reported, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, his wife and senior aides were chatting and laughing during photos at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where visitors are expected to stay silent. The Old Guard sentinel stopped his patrol to call out, “All visitors will maintain an atmosphere of silence and respect at all times.”
Richardson notes competing ideas of how to honor veterans. Trump said the 250-foot triumphal arch he wants between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington is for veterans, even though Vietnam veterans are among those suing to stop it. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani instead urged confronting veterans’ homelessness, isolation and deportation threats.
The core of the letter is ProPublica reporter Eric Umansky’s investigation of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA serves about 9 million veterans with what amounts to government-run medicine, and despite scandals and short staffing it generally gets better outcomes than private care. Richardson says the right has long sought to push veterans into private care. Under Trump and VA Secretary Doug Collins, after backlash to sweeping cuts, the administration has instead made working conditions hard enough that staff leave: canceled union contracts, return-to-office orders for buildings that could not hold them, weekly accomplishment reports and buyouts. The VA lost 3,800 doctors, nurses and mission-critical staff in the first six months, Collins set caps aimed at cutting 30,000 jobs in September 2025, and the VA’s watchdog says 97% of VA hospitals report severe doctor shortages. Veterans are steered to Community Care providers whose waits can run for months, with the VA acting more like an insurer.
Richardson sets that against the 1944–45 G.I. Bill. Democrats, fearing 15 million returning soldiers would bring back the Depression, pushed unemployment, education and loan benefits. Republicans called it welfare at first but came around because opposing veterans was politically impossible. Jobs proved plentiful, so the education and housing provisions mattered most: 7.8 million veterans went back to school, producing hundreds of thousands of engineers, teachers, scientists, medical professionals and accountants, and four million bought homes, fueling the postwar boom and the baby-boom economy.
She acknowledges the bill’s failures. Its benefits went mostly to white men, because segregated colleges, underfunded HBCUs, local VA offices and redlining banks shut out Black and Brown veterans. Still, she concludes, no law did more to show that investing in Americans pays off. It echoed the original Republicans, who opened national homes for disabled soldiers on March 3, 1865, the day before Lincoln urged the nation “to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.”
Nate’s Substack
A few people in my community have told me Fable 5.2 is too expensive to use. They’re spending $150 on a strategy doc and looking at the result thinking, was that really worth it?
Look, I agree. If you’re paying $150 for a strategy doc and it’s mostly a better-written version of what you already thought, that’s a bad deal.
My best experience with Fable was a project I’d been trying to finish for over a month. Three earlier attempts across different models hadn’t gotten me there. I wanted an e-ink display for my desk, and I had hundreds of files, a lot of feedback on what was wrong, and a pretty good idea of what I wanted. What I couldn’t do was explain the whole solution.
Fable went through that history, figured out why the earlier attempts weren’t working, and proposed a design I liked immediately. Then it built it correctly on the first attempt. I had something working on my desk that I hadn’t been able to get right in a month.
That work fit inside my weekly allowance. There was no additional bill. I used some of the capacity I was already paying for to finish the project. If I’d needed to pay more, I’d have wanted to see the design and an estimate before committing to the build.
That’s the sort of work I have in mind when I call Fable a colleague. I want to be able to bring it a project I haven’t fully figured out, work through the difficult parts together, and have it take responsibility for getting something done. A strategy document might be part of that. I’d want it to help us make a decision, test an idea, or work out what to build next.
So start with a project you actually want to finish and the allowance you already have. Ask Fable to work out a sensible first piece, estimate what it would take, and stop there so you can look at the result and the usage. Then decide whether to spend more. If the first piece still leaves you wondering what you got for the money, don’t keep paying just because the model is impressive.
Here’s what’s inside:
The display build and the prompts that drove it. How I handed Fable a month of failed attempts and got a working device on my desk.
Where the bill is too high. The questions to ask of a $150 strategy doc before buying another one.
Six projects worth trying. Three you could sell or use to win work, and three for your own life.
A prompt for an estimate. A copy-ready request that scopes the first piece and its cost before you commit your budget.
Where to set the limit. The plan and API controls that cap what you spend.
Let’s start with the display.
Source: natesnewsletter.substack.com
Clallam County Watchdog
Clallam County's draft Comprehensive Plan update would adopt, nearly word for word, the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe's own statement that it "will continue to reacquire land" across its federally approved Land Consolidation Area, the Watchdog reports after reading the 567-page draft ordinance, the two-volume Hazard Mitigation Plan and the county's Public Engagement Report. The piece set out to test Ron Richard's claim to the commissioners that parts of the plan read as if the Tribe wrote them.
The route is one sentence. Policy 8.6 in the new climate chapter adopts the 2025 Hazard Mitigation Plan "by this reference" and makes it part of the Land Use Element, which pulls in more than 2,100 pages, tribal annex included. Each government in that FEMA plan writes its own annex. The Tribe's July 2024 worksheet said "our Land Consolidation Plan"; the annex now says "the Tribe's," adds that its goal is to move land from fee status to trust, and defines its service area as all of Clallam County. Some first-person passages ("we," "our," "us") survived. The Watchdog says annexes like this are normal; the problem is adopting it into county land-use policy with no note that it is the Tribe's statement, not the county's.
Tribal emails also changed policy directly. An April 1, 2026 email from the Tribe's transportation manager led the Planning Commission to adopt changes "by concurrence": Policy 15, which kept commercial development on trust land near Diamond Point Road from justifying commercial zoning next door, is replaced with a promise to "work with the Tribe"; all of Blyn Policy 4, on police and fire demands from tribal development, is deleted. A December 2025 email led to striking the Highway 101 overpass language tied to casino traffic. Two more deletions, a casino-sprawl policy and a line noting the county has no authority over tribal land use, came with no named requester.
The article credits the county's outreach: a 464-response survey, five workshops in July 2025, library binders and a Planning Commission hearing continued ten times. But automatic email notices to subscribers were broken until March 4, 2026, and the hazard plan's steering committee saw drafts before the public.
The sharpest point is the county's own words. On October 27, 2026, Commissioners French, Johnson and Ozias signed a letter asking the Bureau of Indian Affairs to deny a 9.6-acre Fish Hatchery Road trust application, saying trust transfers erode the tax base and zoning and that nearly 70 percent of the county is already tax-exempt public land. None of that analysis is in the plan. A 2025 Charter Review amendment to require such standards failed 4–7, though the commission later recommended the Board adopt procedures.
Comments are still accepted through the commissioners' hearing. The Watchdog suggests writing Community Development Director Bruce Emery and Clerk of the Board Loni Gores, asking the county to restore the deleted policies or explain them, label annexes as not county policy, put the BIA letter's analysis in the plan, adopt fee-to-trust response standards and publish every change made at another government's request.
Source: ccwatchdog.com
The Verge
Since just before 1PM ET on Thursday, reports have come in from around the world that people can't access their Outlook email, either through the web or apps. Microsoft quickly acknowledged the issue from its Microsoft 365 Status account , saying that "We've determined a portion of infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, which is likely contributing to the connectivity errors."
There were also some reports of problems with Teams, but not to the same extent, while Microsoft's official updates said customers may experience issues across its suite of 365 business services. Microsoft comms director Ben Hope said in…
Source: The Verge
Brian Roemmele Report
Brian Roemmele ties a 1950s Cambridge habit to a 2026 AI-built chemistry program to argue that checking, not typing, is now the craft.
In the early 1950s chemist Frank Boys had one night a week on EDSAC, an early stored-program computer with about half a kilobyte of memory. He still required every published calculation to be run a second time, separately and often much later, and he trusted only exact agreement. Boys also left a bigger legacy: his 1950 Royal Society paper showed that the product of two bell curves is another bell curve, which made chemistry's hardest integrals solvable. Nearly every quantum chemistry program today runs on those "Gaussians." He never became a professor.
In April 2026 Bonn computational chemist Michael Peintinger started directing AI coding agents to build a full quantum chemistry package from a blank repository. The first comprehensive version, vibe-qc, was ready in about ten weeks, handles molecules and crystals, is open source, and was published in the Journal of Computational Chemistry on October 27; the University of Bonn announced it November 10. Programs like this have historically taken expert teams years.
The agents made mistakes. On day one the AI tried to treat lithium's three electrons with a method that assumes electrons come in pairs, which Peintinger caught by counting. Subtler errors only appeared when vibe-qc's answers were compared with an independently written program, so he made that comparison the gate for every method and calls the validation set a key contribution. On basic molecular energies vibe-qc matches independent codes to within billionths of a unit. "The steering was mine. The typing was not," he wrote.
Roemmele's point is that Boys's rule came back around: run it twice by an independent path and believe only what agrees. The long post then walks through Boys's Gaussian trick, the 1956 hydrogen trio that settled a reaction-barrier dispute, the mail-order era of punched-card chemistry codes, and a home build that computes the hydrogen molecule from scratch and cross-checks it against PySCF. He adds a prompt that turns a coding agent into a self-checking night shift, and he lists his sources, noting what he read in full and what he could not obtain.
Source: brianroemmele.substack.com
9to5Mac
After this week’s Carbon availability , Google today unveiled Gemini 4 Hydrogen instead of keeping the “Flash” branding. This model is billed as bringing “cutting-edge intelligence to everyone.”
Source: 9to5Mac
Cliff Mass Weather Blog · Tue Nov 10, 2026 · 9:53 PM PT
There is a deep connection between meteorology and religion, and there are times when one wonders about divine intervention in our weather.
This is such a time.
Last year brought low snowpack for most of the West.
Some were worried about water shortages and poor crops.
But well-timed rain and substantial reservoir storage saved the day, with agriculture doing well and sufficient water available for human consumption.
Divine intervention?
This fall started out relatively dry, and some folks were worried, including a certain local newspaper.
But again, higher powers intervened. During the past 72 hours, there have been substantial amounts of precipitation over the region (see below)
Local reservoirs are refilling, including some low ones on the Olympic Peninsula (such as Wynoochee Lake below)
For example, California, the source of many of our fruits and vegetables.
Well-timed rainfall last year filled the reservoirs, but snowpack was low. As a result, some of the big reservoirs are now below normal, such as Shasta and Oroville (see below).
Fortunately, the current forecasts promise significant intervention, with massive amounts of precipitation over the Golden State during the next ten days (see below). Remarkable.
Vancouver's reservoirs are quite low.
Fortunately, impressive amounts of precipitation are forecast for southwestern BC through next Monday morning
The water situation is rapidly improving on the West Coast. The forecasts are highly promising.
There is only one thing to say about it:
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Source: Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Cliff Mass Weather Blog · Sun Nov 8, 2026 · 6:12 PM PT
Yesterday, a strong front, associated with strong winds gusting to 40 mph or more, moved through the region, resulting in numerous power outages.
As I will describe below, numerical weather models predicted this event with great skill, something we could not have done 20 years ago.
This is a triumph of modern weather prediction technology.
Let me demonstrate this to you.
Below is the radar image around 4 PM Saturday, based on the radar observations from the Langley Hill radar near Hoquium. An intense radar return was apparent offshore (the thin yellow and red line, indicated by the red arrow). This is the front.
Fronts associated with a narrow, cold frontal rainband were first described by UW researchers, such as Professor Peter Hobbs and associates.
Even more impressive is a video of the cold front approaching the coast (from a wonderful phone app called RadarScope).
Here is a forecast of a simulated radar image, made 24 hours (from 4 PM) before the event is shown below. It was made by the UW WRF model run by my group.
Almost perfect. Very strong simulated front.
A forecast made on Thursday evening, showing the strongest near-surface wind gusts, indicating strong winds over the region. Strong enough to worry about.
The winds for Seattle made for Seattle City Light as part of the UW WindWatch system were clearly accurate, showing the threat of strong wind (the black dots are the strongest observed with the city; the gray and colored lines indicate model forecasts)
The models were very, very clear.
There was a prediction of 30-45 mph winds over the city. And that means power outages, particularly early in the storm season.
Such an emphatic forecast by the models was the reason I blogged about it on Friday, making it clear that some would lose power.
In fact, over 100,000 customers lost power over western Washington last night (see below).
This kind of skillful forecasting occurs time and time again, based on highly skillful weather model forecasts.
Another reminder that it is no longer appropriate to make fun of forecasters and weather models. 😀
No longer appropriate
Source: Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Cliff Mass Weather Blog · Fri Nov 6, 2026 · 8:35 PM PT
Most weather fronts that cross the region are unremarkable due to their passage over the relatively warm, uniform waters of the northeast Pacific.
This weekend will be different: a SuperFront will make landfall late tomorrow (Saturday).
Some of you will lose power.
Let me show you simulated radar images for three times: 10 AM, 4 PM, and 9 PM on Saturday from the UW high-resolution forecast system (from the 4-km grid-spacing domain). Red indicates very strong winds, followed by yellow. The arrows point to the frontal locations.
The high-resolution 1.3 km simulation run by my group at the UW produced an even more intense front (forecast around 8 PM shown). Very impressive.
What about the predicted winds?
The City of Seattle supports the most high-tech wind prediction system in the country (called SeattleWindWatch, run at the UW), which includes an ensemble of many wind predictions for estimation of the uncertainties.
The forecast below is for the winds over Seattle. Several of the simulations predicted winds reaching 40 mph. Over the water, winds could be stronger,
Winds will rev up after dinnertime and peak overnight.
As noted above, wind will be strongest over the water (see forecast below for 4 AM). I suspect most of the power outages will be in such areas.
For the whole region, the strongest winds will be on the coast (see map of strongest wind gusts below). Importantly, there will be areas of intense gusts on the lee/downstream side of some of our highest terrain, including the eastern slopes of the Cascades.
In addition to wind, the front should bring substantial ( and welcome) precipitation to the region, with the total through 4 AM Sunday shown below
So, if you live west of the Cascades, get your meteorological popcorn out and be prepared for a dramatic meteorological show later tomorrow and early Sunday.
Source: Cliff Mass Weather Blog
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Your AI Guy · YouTube
Worth watching? Yes, for a detailed breakdown of the new model's benchmarks, pricing, and the strategic implications of its restricted release.
Source: Your AI Guy on YouTube
Nate’s Substack
A few people in my community have told me Fable 5.2 is too expensive to use. They’re spending $150 on a strategy doc and looking at the result thinking, was that really worth it?
Look, I agree. If you’re paying $150 for a strategy doc and it’s mostly a better-written version of what you already thought, that’s a bad deal.
My best experience with Fable was a project I’d been trying to finish for over a month. Three earlier attempts across different models hadn’t gotten me there. I wanted an e-ink display for my desk, and I had hundreds of files, a lot of feedback on what was wrong, and a pretty good idea of what I wanted. What I couldn’t do was explain the whole solution.
Fable went through that history, figured out why the earlier attempts weren’t working, and proposed a design I liked immediately. Then it built it correctly on the first attempt. I had something working on my desk that I hadn’t been able to get right in a month.
That work fit inside my weekly allowance. There was no additional bill. I used some of the capacity I was already paying for to finish the project. If I’d needed to pay more, I’d have wanted to see the design and an estimate before committing to the build.
That’s the sort of work I have in mind when I call Fable a colleague. I want to be able to bring it a project I haven’t fully figured out, work through the difficult parts together, and have it take responsibility for getting something done. A strategy document might be part of that. I’d want it to help us make a decision, test an idea, or work out what to build next.
So start with a project you actually want to finish and the allowance you already have. Ask Fable to work out a sensible first piece, estimate what it would take, and stop there so you can look at the result and the usage. Then decide whether to spend more. If the first piece still leaves you wondering what you got for the money, don’t keep paying just because the model is impressive.
Here’s what’s inside:
The display build and the prompts that drove it. How I handed Fable a month of failed attempts and got a working device on my desk.
Where the bill is too high. The questions to ask of a $150 strategy doc before buying another one.
Six projects worth trying. Three you could sell or use to win work, and three for your own life.
A prompt for an estimate. A copy-ready request that scopes the first piece and its cost before you commit your budget.
Where to set the limit. The plan and API controls that cap what you spend.
Let’s start with the display.
Source: natesnewsletter.substack.com
Substack
Channel: Your AI Guy Published: 2026-11-12T08:28:44+00:00
• Anthropic released Claude Fable 5.2 and a restricted version, Mythos 5.2, which shares the same underlying model but has fewer safeguards for vetted security and life science organizations. • Fable 5.2 tops the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index with a score of 65, surpassing Gemini 4 Carbon and Opus 5.5, while also leading on the Frontier Code 2.0 benchmark at 49.1%. • The model offers a 20% price reduction to $8 per million input tokens and 30% faster output speeds, though max-effort settings can increase per-task costs due to higher token usage. • Anthropic claims the model formalized a proof of Matt's Last Theorem in Lean in 30 hours and solved two open black hole physics problems during pre-release testing. • A 264-page safety report notes the model suspects it is being evaluated in 43% of transcripts and shows stronger covert capabilities, raising questions about real-world alignment. • The launch coincides with Anthropic's upcoming IPO, with the company aiming to signal strong growth and competitive positioning ahead of a potential $1.2–1.3 trillion valuation.
Worth watching? Yes, for a detailed breakdown of the new model's benchmarks, pricing, and the strategic implications of its restricted release.
Source: gmail.com
MacRumors
An upcoming tvOS 27.2.1 update will bring Siri AI to the 2nd- and 3rd-generation Apple TV 4K models, according to Apple.
A support document outlining Siri AI requirements across Apple products says tvOS 27.2.1 supports Siri AI on the Apple TV 4K (2nd generation and later), but the software hasn't yet been released.
While older Apple TV models will need tvOS 27.2.1 for Siri AI, Apple appears to have a special Siri AI build of tvOS 27.2 for the 4th-generation Apple TV 4K. Reviewers were able to test Siri AI on review units, and we can confirm it's working on our own review unit running tvOS 27.2.
The 4th-generation Apple TV 4K ships with tvOS 27.0, and users are prompted to update it to tvOS 27.2 during the setup process.
Apple hasn't said when tvOS 27.2.1 will be released with Siri AI for older Apple TV 4K models, but it could come as soon as Friday.
The latest Apple TV is priced at $299, and it features an A19 chip and an updated Siri Remote that has a Find My speaker and Precision Finding support.…
Source: MacRumors
The Verge
Starting Thursday, Whoop members can share their data from its wearables on the app's new Whoop Humans social network. Users can make their metrics, activities, and achievements visible to other Whoop wearers, post Story-like "Moments" with photos and captions, and add comments and reactions on other members' posts.
Whoop claims its platform is "entirely human," unlike other social media platforms that are "saturated with artificial intelligence, automated accounts and bots, and manufactured content."
Whoop CEO Will Ahmed says Humans is "the most verifiably human network ever launched. Every account represents a real person with a verified…
Source: The Verge
The Verge
The Humble Bundle storefront for buying games and other software recently got a new look, but on the settings page, it no longer offers a way to add or update two-factor verification methods, as reported by Kotaku . PC Gamer also points out that there are Humble Bundle support pages discussing two-factor verification , and the writer for the publication said that they had set up two-factor verification on the old version of the site.
However, it does appear that, at least as of now, there is some form of two-factor verification. When I tried logging into my Humble Bundle account while writing this article, I was prompted to check my email for…
Source: The Verge
The Verge
Since just before 1PM ET on Thursday, reports have come in from around the world that people can't access their Outlook email, either through the web or apps. Microsoft quickly acknowledged the issue from its Microsoft 365 Status account , saying that "We've determined a portion of infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, which is likely contributing to the connectivity errors."
There were also some reports of problems with Teams, but not to the same extent, while Microsoft's official updates said customers may experience issues across its suite of 365 business services. Microsoft comms director Ben Hope said in…
Source: The Verge
MacRumors
Apple announced an all-new home product a month ago, and it's now starting to arrive to customers. It's Friday, November 13, in Australia and New Zealand, which means it's the HomeView launch day.
Customers who pre-ordered Apple's new home hub will soon be sharing pictures and first impressions on the MacRumors forums, Reddit, Instagram, and other social media networks. If you got a HomeView, let us know what you think in the comments below.
Apple sees HomeView as the center of the home, and functionally, it's a cross between a small iPad and a HomePod . It has a 7-inch square display and the tabletop model has a speaker base, though there's also a wall-mount version.
With a camera and voice recognition, it can identify up to six people in a home, showing personal information customized to each user. There is no HomeView App Store , but it has pre-installed Apple apps and can show widgets from your iPhone. It can be used for making video calls, watching videos, viewing calendar events, getting the weather, listening to music, and controlling smart home devices.
It is built around Siri AI, Apple's smarter voice assistant that debuted in iOS 27 . The HomeView is priced…
Source: MacRumors
The Verge
Nvidia announced this morning that Jensen Huang has resigned as CEO following reports of two affairs, including one with an alleged Chinese spy and one with a direct report. The situation surrounding Huang has unfolded quickly, with The New York Times only reporting on Friday that Huang and the suspected spy were "close" before other dominoes started to fall, leading to a swift fall from grace for one of the biggest names in technology. (Hours after Huang's resignation was announced, Reuters reported that he also had an "intimate relationship" with another Nvidia employee.)
Prominent voices in technology have come out in support of Huang, w…
Source: The Verge
9to5Mac
After this week’s Carbon availability , Google today unveiled Gemini 4 Hydrogen instead of keeping the “Flash” branding. This model is billed as bringing “cutting-edge intelligence to everyone.”
Source: 9to5Mac
MacRumors
Apple today revised its U.S. trade-in estimates, with increases for many older iPhones, reductions for several Pro models, and newly listed offers for six Samsung foldables.
The iPhone 17 Pro has the largest dollar reduction among the affected iPhones, dropping $45 to a maximum of $740. The iPhone 17 Pro Max falls $30 to $855, while the iPhone Air and standard iPhone 17 each gain $30, bringing both to $615.
Many older models recover some of the value lost in September's reductions . Most remain below their pre-September maximums, although the second-generation iPhone SE returns to $45, fully reversing its $5 cut.
The following iPhone estimates have changed. Each price is the maximum available trade-in credit:
iPhone 17 Pro Max: $855 (previously $885)
iPhone 17 Pro: $740 (previously $785)
iPhone Air: $615 (previously $585)
iPhone 17: $615 (previously $585)
iPhone 16 Pro Max: $590 (previously $610)
iPhone 16 Plus: $450 (previously $430)
iPhone 16: $440 (previously $430)
iPhone 16e: $285 (previously $270)
iPhone 15 Pro Max: $445 (previously $455)
…
Source: MacRumors
MacRumors
Nintendo will stop allowing users to sign in to their Nintendo Account with an Apple or Google account on January 26, 2027, the company has announced .
Users will also no longer be able to create a Nintendo Account through either service. Nintendo has not explained why it is removing the options, but notes that the exact cutoff could be delayed depending on the progress of its system updates.
After the change, users will need to sign in with their Nintendo Account email address or Sign-In ID and password, or use a passkey. Nintendo says users who are already signed in on a device may not need to sign in again immediately.
Anyone who usually signs in through Apple or Google should check that they know their Nintendo Account login details before the deadline. Those who have never set a password, or have forgotten it, can select "Forgot your password?" on the Nintendo Account login page to request a reset email.
Users who chose to hide their email address with Sign in with Apple may have an Apple-generated relay address registered with Nintendo. Messages sent to that address are forwarded to their personal inbox. Nintendo advises anyone who can no longer access their…
Source: MacRumors
Thursday Evening refresh (pm-e2): NEW ChannelE2E on Arrow’s managed NetApp Keystone offering, pitching storage as a recurring-revenue service for MSPs rather than a one-time install. Carried: Front lead Clallam County Watchdog on Olympia’s multibillion-dollar budget gap; Nate on handing Fable 5.2 a month of failed attempts; Heather Cox Richardson’s Veterans Day letter; Daily Grind The Simplicity of Surrender; 12 Thursday YouTube briefings; Roemmele on the 1950 Cambridge rule; Christian Warrior Training on the Frisco, Texas church rifle confrontation; election tracker on the Front (and at /election/). Robin shows Thursday’s close. Skipped WGTDT episode 59 show notes. Standing sender bans kept.
ChannelE2E
Arrow Electronics has introduced a managed services offering built around NetApp Keystone, giving channel partners a way to deliver consumption-based storage alongside ongoing monitoring, optimization, cyber resilience and data protection services.
The offering adds a managed lifecycle layer to NetApp's storage model. Rather than concentrating exclusively on infrastructure procurement and deployment, partners can extend their involvement into day-to-day storage operations, capacity management and ongoing service delivery. Arrow says the approach is designed to simplify delivery and help partners build deeper customer relationships.
For MSPs and other IT solution providers, the opportunity is to package storage infrastructure as an ongoing service rather than a one-time transaction. The combination of consumption-based pricing and managed operations may appeal to customers seeking predictable infrastructure management without assuming the full operational burden internally.
Source: channele2e.com
Brian Roemmele Report
Brian Roemmele ties a 1950s Cambridge habit to a 2026 AI-built chemistry program to argue that checking, not typing, is now the craft.
In the early 1950s chemist Frank Boys had one night a week on EDSAC, an early stored-program computer with about half a kilobyte of memory. He still required every published calculation to be run a second time, separately and often much later, and he trusted only exact agreement. Boys also left a bigger legacy: his 1950 Royal Society paper showed that the product of two bell curves is another bell curve, which made chemistry's hardest integrals solvable. Nearly every quantum chemistry program today runs on those "Gaussians." He never became a professor.
In April 2026 Bonn computational chemist Michael Peintinger started directing AI coding agents to build a full quantum chemistry package from a blank repository. The first comprehensive version, vibe-qc, was ready in about ten weeks, handles molecules and crystals, is open source, and was published in the Journal of Computational Chemistry on October 27; the University of Bonn announced it November 10. Programs like this have historically taken expert teams years.
The agents made mistakes. On day one the AI tried to treat lithium's three electrons with a method that assumes electrons come in pairs, which Peintinger caught by counting. Subtler errors only appeared when vibe-qc's answers were compared with an independently written program, so he made that comparison the gate for every method and calls the validation set a key contribution. On basic molecular energies vibe-qc matches independent codes to within billionths of a unit. "The steering was mine. The typing was not," he wrote.
Roemmele's point is that Boys's rule came back around: run it twice by an independent path and believe only what agrees. The long post then walks through Boys's Gaussian trick, the 1956 hydrogen trio that settled a reaction-barrier dispute, the mail-order era of punched-card chemistry codes, and a home build that computes the hydrogen molecule from scratch and cross-checks it against PySCF. He adds a prompt that turns a coding agent into a self-checking night shift, and he lists his sources, noting what he read in full and what he could not obtain.
Source: brianroemmele.substack.com
Letters from an American
Congress returned to Washington on Monday after what Heather Cox Richardson calls the "midterm earthquake." The membership is the same until January, she writes, but the national mood and the parties' momentum have shifted so much that it feels as if the country lived through a decade of change in a week.
As a sign of that change, Democrats say they will move the plaque honoring the officers who defended the Capitol on January 6, 2021, 250 of whom were injured, to a more prominent spot. Congress authorized the plaque, Speaker Mike Johnson refused to hang it, and Senate Republicans eventually put it on a basement wall. When Trump tried Monday morning to revive the claim that any election he loses is rigged, the story got little traction; Megyn Kelly answered, "Just stop."
Democrats are signaling they will move fast on affordability and accountability. Sixteen Democratic senators renewed their push to undo the Medicaid cuts in the July 2025 "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" and asked Finance Committee chair Mike Crapo and Majority Leader John Thune to delay the Medicaid work-reporting rules due January 1, 2027, arguing such requirements push eligible people off coverage without adding workers. New inflation figures came in hotter than expected; CNBC's Carl Quintanilla cited a Schwab estimate that consumer prices rose 12 percent from October 2025 to October 2026. Richardson blames tariffs, the Iran war and deportations. Senator Elizabeth Warren, expected to chair the Banking Committee, called Trump's economic agenda "a failure" and proposed a higher minimum wage and bans on congressional stock trading and "surveillance pricing." The Wall Street Journal reported that Democrats on several committees have asked Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft for records on ties to possibly corrupt administration schemes, including Trump's legacy projects, by January 4.
On Nvidia, Trump told reporters he had not known about CEO Jensen Huang's relationship with an alleged Chinese spy before inviting Huang aboard Air Force One to China in May. The New York Times reported instead that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had briefed him, at least the second time in seven months he was told. Political scientist Elizabeth Saunders tied the inaction to Judge Aileen Cannon's dismissal of Trump's classified-documents case.
Representative Thomas Massie filed eight articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: three on War Powers Act violations in the Iran war, and others on ignoring civilian-casualty laws, extrajudicial killings of at least 221 people in boat strikes, retaliating against Senator Mark Kelly, seizing Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro and an unlawful war in Yemen. At his first press conference in about six months, Hegseth called the effort political and said everything he did was "ordered by the commander in chief." Vanity Fair reported that reporters were warned anyone who "gets out of line" would be removed, and he reportedly took questions only from right-wing outlets. That night every House Republican but Massie voted to refer the measure to the Judiciary Committee. Richardson argues that only ensures slower hearings under Democrats next year.
The administration is also rushing Washington legacy projects, including the triumphal arch, Lafayette Square, East Potomac Golf Links and the Tidal Basin. CNN reported that whistleblowers told Representative Jared Huffman that records are being destroyed. Interior called that "100% false," and Huffman sent preservation letters, saying "Everything is coming."
Richardson says MAGA Republicans are doubling down. Johnson said "voters made the wrong choice," and Senator Josh Hawley called for an hour-long Christian fast at the Capitol on December 15. Citing Jack Hopkins, she says Stephen Miller as chief of staff will amplify Trump's impulses where Susie Wiles managed them. After Trump floated amnesty for some immigrants on 60 Minutes, former Project 2025 director Paul Dans told Matt Gaetz on OAN to end the H-1B program and "let young white men take the wheel again." MAHA Action and Donald Trump Jr. defended Russell Brand after his 10½-year U.K. sentence for rape and sexual assault.
In other news: Attorney General Todd Blanche again said he might prosecute Democrats who promise accountability. An appeals court rejected the Justice Department's "overbroad" demand for 18 months of journalists' LinkedIn records. USDA revived a SNAP cut that would hit about 6.3 million people in fiscal 2029. The Justice Department joined Ken Paxton's lawsuit against Planned Parenthood. House Republicans chose Jim Jordan to lead their conference. Richardson closes with Trump's confusion of a press-secretary candidate named Dana White with the UFC promoter of the same name, and a rambling call to C-SPAN.
Letters from an American
Heather Cox Richardson’s Veterans Day letter starts with history: the holiday began as Armistice Day, marking the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, and Congress renamed it Veterans Day in 1954 after World War II and Korea. President Eisenhower, himself a five-star general, asked Americans to remember the sacrifices of those who fought and to recommit to “promoting an enduring peace.”
She then contrasts that tradition with this year’s observances. At Arlington National Cemetery, President Trump broke with the custom of a nonpartisan speech, closing with a defense of the war on Iran and a celebration of the Venezuela operation that put its oil fields under U.S. control: “We’re taking out billions and billions of dollars of oil… To the victor belong the spoils.” MeidasNews reported that the president also used a Veterans Day greeting to launch a “Presidential Fundraising Blitz,” telling supporters the MAGA movement “took a blow” in the midterms and asking for sustaining contributions.
After the ceremony, CNN reported, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, his wife and senior aides were chatting and laughing during photos at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where visitors are expected to stay silent. The Old Guard sentinel stopped his patrol to call out, “All visitors will maintain an atmosphere of silence and respect at all times.”
Richardson notes competing ideas of how to honor veterans. Trump said the 250-foot triumphal arch he wants between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington is for veterans, even though Vietnam veterans are among those suing to stop it. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani instead urged confronting veterans’ homelessness, isolation and deportation threats.
The core of the letter is ProPublica reporter Eric Umansky’s investigation of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA serves about 9 million veterans with what amounts to government-run medicine, and despite scandals and short staffing it generally gets better outcomes than private care. Richardson says the right has long sought to push veterans into private care. Under Trump and VA Secretary Doug Collins, after backlash to sweeping cuts, the administration has instead made working conditions hard enough that staff leave: canceled union contracts, return-to-office orders for buildings that could not hold them, weekly accomplishment reports and buyouts. The VA lost 3,800 doctors, nurses and mission-critical staff in the first six months, Collins set caps aimed at cutting 30,000 jobs in September 2025, and the VA’s watchdog says 97% of VA hospitals report severe doctor shortages. Veterans are steered to Community Care providers whose waits can run for months, with the VA acting more like an insurer.
Richardson sets that against the 1944–45 G.I. Bill. Democrats, fearing 15 million returning soldiers would bring back the Depression, pushed unemployment, education and loan benefits. Republicans called it welfare at first but came around because opposing veterans was politically impossible. Jobs proved plentiful, so the education and housing provisions mattered most: 7.8 million veterans went back to school, producing hundreds of thousands of engineers, teachers, scientists, medical professionals and accountants, and four million bought homes, fueling the postwar boom and the baby-boom economy.
She acknowledges the bill’s failures. Its benefits went mostly to white men, because segregated colleges, underfunded HBCUs, local VA offices and redlining banks shut out Black and Brown veterans. Still, she concludes, no law did more to show that investing in Americans pays off. It echoed the original Republicans, who opened national homes for disabled soldiers on March 3, 1865, the day before Lincoln urged the nation “to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.”
Christian Warrior Training
On Sunday morning, November 8, a man stood on the lawn of Genesis Metro Church in Frisco, Texas, shouting while holding an AR-style rifle after a fight with a protester over a sign. Church safety team members walked up and argued with him while the rifle was in his hands. No shots were fired and no one was hurt. The protester, a former 12-year member with a dispute with church leadership, told Christian Warrior Training on November 10 that police arrested the man for disorderly conduct. Police, the church and local news had said nothing publicly.
The account rests on 15 seconds of the protester's own phone video and a CWT interview. He says he stood on the public sidewalk with a sign reading "This Church SUCKS.com" after the church had police give him a criminal trespass warning. A man he did not know grabbed the sign and carried it onto church property; the protester says he took him to the ground, got the sign back, and the man returned from his truck with a rifle asking "What about now?" The video shows the man holding the rifle muzzle-down, people within arm's reach, voices saying "Put the gun away," and an off-duty officer approaching. The charge was not aggravated assault because the rifle was never raised, the protester said, and a detective will decide whether he faces trespass for stepping onto the grass to read the plate.
CWT's lessons for church safety teams: a protester on a public sidewalk has a First Amendment right to be there, so the team's real job is often protecting the protester from angry members. Tell the congregation to walk past and say nothing, and learn your state's trespass law before you need it. Problems start in the parking lot, so a lot team should spot an agitated member and walk him inside before words fly. Once a gun is out, de-escalation is over: evacuate people away from doors and windows, have one person call 911, and let police handle it. Radio calls should describe the person holding the weapon first, not name someone standing nearby, since "gun over by Mike" sent responders toward the wrong man. Teams should also read what a protester has posted; this one had told the pastor by name, "I'll be seeing you soon." The post closes on Romans 12: a church cannot control a protester, only how its own people respond. Paid subscribers get tabletop and walk-through scenarios.
Source: christianwarriortraining.com
Clallamity Jen
Hang in there — It’s not over!
Today’s new number: 9,261
That’s the number of uncounted accepted ballots in Clallam County that can still make a difference in some of the local races, including the District 3 commissioner race between Jake Seegers and Mike French, now separated by 2,986 ballots.
54% of ballots have been counted, an increase of 6% from Monday. And now Clallam is no longer in second place in my Top 5 ranking.
Top 5 Counties with Uncounted Accepted Ballots as of 11/10/26:
1. King = 21,842
2. Stevens = 10,393
3. Walla Walla = 9,940
4. Clallam = 9,261
5. Thurston = 9,039
Stevens moved up from fifth place to second; Walla Walla moved up from fourth place to third; Clallam is now in fourth place with Thurston coming in fifth.
That’s a great improvement for Clallam County. My video contains insight into the reason why the counting is going so slowly out here. It’s not a manpower issue. It’s a not-enough-room issue. And it’s not a reflection on the staff doing the work. It’s a reflection on the commissioners who have the power to improve the situation. Gayle is petitioning the commissioners to find elections a larger space; message her on Substack here to add your voice to cause.
Challenged ballots have gone up to 339. Please check your ballot status here or here. Certification is on November 24th and ballots are accepted until November 23rd.
Here’s my latest video going over the numbers, including a look at updated data on the West End Voter website, the locations of the official ballot boxes in the county, and the latest pay vouchers for emptying ballot boxes from the November 10th commissioners meeting.
Resource Links:
* West End Voter data website: An independent, nonpartisan look at ballot returns, counting progress and precinct-level results, focused on the West End of Clallam County, Washington.
* Clallam County Meetings Agendas & Minutes (where to find all county meeting events, including Board of Commissioner meetings, along with agendas, minutes, and videos of past meetings)
* Clallam County Elections & Voter Registration (includes Auditor contact information and elections center livestream link)
* Clallam County 2026 November General Election (includes information about resolving challenged signatures)
* Clallam County Unofficial Results Election Statistics (updated once a day around 5pm)
* Clallam County Ballot Box Locations (Google map)
* Washington State Ballot Return Statistics (updated once a day around 5pm)
* Clallam County Register of Warrants (pay vouchers from 11/10/26 commissioners meeting agenda)
Counting will resume on Thursday the 12th, after a day off on Wednesday for Veterans’ Day.
Have a great day, everyone!
Clallamity Jen
Source: clallamityjen.substack.com
Clallam County Watchdog
The governor says the budget hole is in the billions. Commerce is still paying people $71.25 to attend an environmental-justice Zoom. It’s not the dollars. It’s the priorities.
Olympia says the cupboard is bare
In June, Gov. Bob Ferguson told state agencies to plan for “significant” cuts. In September, the revenue forecast didn’t “make a dent in the anticipated multibillion-dollar shortfall in the next budget,” according to the Washington State Standard. On Nov. 5, Ferguson said the shortfall is a number starting with “b.” This is the third straight year of budget gaps, and lawmakers have already cut early education and child care.
Here’s where the money and staff time are still going.
Paid to talk environmental justice
On Oct. 27, Commerce invited residents to a Nov. 5 Zoom “community conversation on environmental justice” about two grant programs. The pay: “Compensation of $71.25 is available to eligible participants who have lived experience or household incomes at or below 400% of the federal poverty level.” The meeting ran 75 minutes, and the budget shortfall is in the billions.
Outreach for “communities and tribes,” including ours
Commerce is also hiring a nonprofit to run an energy-resilience outreach campaign in Eastern Washington and the North Olympic Peninsula, which includes Clallam and Jefferson counties. The job is to serve “disproportionately impacted and over-burdened communities and tribes,” and applicants needed five years of experience in “rural, tribal and disaster-impacted communities.” The cap is $230,000 in federal FEMA money, administered by the state.
A state screening of “Fish War”
On Nov. 30, Commerce’s Office of Tribal Relations will screen “Fish War,” a documentary on the Boldt decision. The film’s website opens by saying Washington’s restrictions on tribal fishing were “a declaration of war.”
It was co-produced by Northwest Treaty Tribes Media, the media arm of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, and even the Seattle International Film Festival called it an “activism documentary.”
That’s not a history lesson. It’s a state agency lending its stamp to advocacy.
"Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value." — Joe Biden
Priorities
None of this alone closes a billion-dollar gap. But when public money and public agencies are used to advance the agendas of sovereign governments that don’t answer to our voters, don’t be surprised if there isn’t enough left for education, the Simdars Road Interchange promised since 1998, or a struggling hospital (and our county’s largest employer), Olympic Medical Center.
If Olympia wants us to believe the cupboard is bare, it could start by acting like it. Tell your legislators whether this is the right use of public time and money in a billion-dollar budget deficit year.
Source: ccwatchdog.com
unDivided with Brandi Kruse · YouTube · Washington
Worth watching? Useful for understanding the political friction between local surveillance policies and federal civil liberties concerns in Seattle.
We The Governed · YouTube · Washington
Worth watching? For viewers interested in the specific political dynamics and candidate histories behind the 2026 Washington State judicial elections.
Source: We The Governed on YouTube
We The Governed · YouTube · Washington
Worth watching? Useful for understanding the specific logistical arguments regarding late ballot demographics in Washington State.
Source: We The Governed on YouTube
unDivided with Brandi Kruse · YouTube · Washington
Worth watching? Useful for understanding the specific political friction between Seattle's progressive base and its mayor regarding surveillance policy.
The Patriot Post and AIER (The Daily Economy) — last 48 hours. Kept off the Front Page by request.
The Patriot Post
Full text · 873 words
Robert Garcia is one weird dude, but that doesn’t mean he can run roughshod over the Constitution.
That’s the essence of a sternly worded three-page memo to Garcia from White House Counsel Will Scharf — a memo that reminds Democrats there are limits to their congressional oversight powers, and limits to their ability to hand out subpoenas “like candy” and “Mardi Gras beads,” and limits to their ability to haul before their committees not only Donald Trump’s cabinet members but also private citizens.
Garcia, the California congressman and soon-to-be chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, fancies himself “ the absolute gayest ” member of Congress, and he apparently thinks that his sexual preference gives him carte blanche to harass and intimidate those American citizens who deigned to work for or financially support President Donald Trump. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s how Garcia himself put it recently:
Just because you’re Kimberly Guilfoyle, or you’re Kristi Noem, or you’re Pam Bondi, and you’re no longer in office, that doesn’t mean that we’re still not interested in accountability for all of your crimes and grift. We’re not gonna, uh, I, we’re not gonna forget. Like, y’know, like, we, we can’t forget about these folks that are causing harm, like, y’know, I think it’s like, I mean, maybe it’s, maybe it’s because, I’m like, I’m gay, but, like, you know, like, like, pettiness is a thing. Like, I, I’m, I am, I’m mad, you know?
“Maybe it’s because I’m gay, but pettiness is a thing. We’re not going to forget these crimes.” —Rep. Robert Garcia on prosecuting Trump’s administration
I’m not sure how to shrink down Garcia’s self-loathing gayness — nor his separate fetish for a fictional child-murdering clown — but isn’t it interesting that the only people he named in that rant were women?
Unfortunately for Garcia, we’ve got, like, a system of checks and, like, balances, y’know?
Last week, I noted Garcia’s ominous warning to Republicans. “LAWYER UP,” he all-capped, and his comments since then shouldn’t give any of us confidence that he was merely on some post-election high.
The Trump administration, though, has no doubt been planning for this eventuality — and probably since 2024, since they knew that the Republicans’ razor-thin margin in the House was unlikely to withstand a midterm election. And so it was that Scharf gave Garcia a little constitutional lesson.
“I wish to remind you,” began Scharf, “of the foundational limits that the Constitution imposes on congressional investigations and subpoenas, which you and members of the new Congress have evinced a clear intent to transgress.”
When a lawyer uses words like “evinced,” you know he’s serious. Scharf continued:
Beyond being inconsistent with the clear, well-recognized constitutional limitations on your investigative functions, threats to executive branch officials designed to deter them from public service, or process designed merely to abuse or instill fear in the recipient may cross the line into blatant criminality. And issuing unlawful subpoenas with the intention of depriving citizens of their constitutional rights and privileges may warrant further investigation.
That last point seemed especially targeted toward the Democrats’ desire to investigate a well-known private citizen named Elon Musk.
Article III Project senior counsel Josh Hammer clearly approves of Scharf’s shot across the bow. As he told Fox News this morning, “The key points of Will’s excellent letter to the Congress is this: Congress is a legislature of enumerated powers. We know that as a basic feature of constitutional structure. James Madison writes this in The Federalist number 45. You can just open your Constitution and go to Article I, Section 8. There are 18 specifically enumerated powers of Congress. What Will is saying ... is that ... if you are going to be engaged in investigations and subpoena power, it has to be in pursuit toward the ends of fulfilling one of your specifically enumerated powers.”
This is setting up to be a slugfest between the executive and the legislative branches. And, as Hammer adds, that’s probably where it’ll stay. The courts don’t tend to wade into disputes between Article I and Article II powers because such head-butting is a traditional feature of our constitutional system. “It’s going to be a fascinating battle for the next two years,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of executive privilege, a lot of Democratic overstepping, no doubt, and I think Will Sharf has gotten off to an excellent start.”
Not everyone, though, thinks this is excellent. The New York Times, in fact, is downright indignant . In a piece published yesterday, the Times sees Scharf’s letter as somehow menacing while seeing the Democrats’ repeated vows to harass and even prosecute Trump officials and private citizens as no big deal. As the Times fumes, “Mr. Trump has made threatening to prosecute his personal and political adversaries a hallmark of his rhetoric since his 2016 campaign, when his rallies featured ‘Lock her up!’ chants about Hillary Clinton.”
Remind me again: Did Trump ever lock Hillary up?
Perhaps the strongest argument for Scharf’s letter is also the tersest. As Hammer put it, “There is no retribution clause in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution. That is not a legitimate function of the government.”
The Patriot Post
Full text · 849 words
A new wave of progressive Democrats either pastor a church or attend seminary. However, you don’t hear many Democrat voters rebuking these politicians for forcing the Bible into public policy. Why? Well, for one thing, they manipulate individual Scriptures, not the Bible in its entirety, to justify their politics and structure their worldview.
Progressivism is the religion. Christianity (or their version of it) is just the skin suit.
Tragically, voters last week ushered in Senators-elect James Talarico, a seminarian in Texas, and Adam Hamilton, a megachurch pastor in Kansas. They join Georgia Senator and pastor Raphael Warnock in representing a “palatable” version of Christianity to the Left — which one can validly argue isn’t Christianity at all . Their Christian faith is a pick-and-choose bouquet of scattered verses and rickety theology, all in the service of justifying left-wing causes.
Many of them use Matthew 25 (Warnock has called himself a “Matthew 25 Christian”) as a mantra to justify their positions on abortion, free healthcare, government welfare programs, immigration, and more.
Matthew 25 contains three parables Jesus told to a Jewish audience. He tells them to be prepared, to care for those in their community, and not to squander the good things God has entrusted to them because judgment is coming and Christ is returning. In other words, personal responsibility is crucial to living a life for God.
The particular section of this chapter these Democrats love to quote is vv. 31–40, where Jesus says, “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. ... Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
In this passage, Jesus is asking his people to care for needy and persecuted Christians . Biblical scholars such as Augustine and John Calvin argued for this exegesis, as have countless others in the centuries since.
Talarico, Hamilton, and Warnock interpret this passage differently — and wrongly.
I cannot judge these men’s souls; that is for God alone to do. However, I can see the harm their policies have wrought on person after person, city after city, and state after state. You can judge them by their fruit. Is it loving to the neighbor whose husband was murdered to undermine law enforcement and criminal justice? Is it loving to provide “free” healthcare (by taking tax money from someone else) but no one can get an appointment (à la Canada)? Is it loving to overlook the murder of a baby just because it was still in the womb and doing so “helped” the mother?
You certainly aren’t doing unto the least of these if you outsource your “charitable” works to the government.
In Matthew 25, Jesus speaks to a small group of Jews, people he regarded as his own people, commanding them to care for those around them in their community. He is not commanding Caesar or any other government to mandate care; he is telling believers, as a community and as individuals, that they have a responsibility to one another and that care should flow out of love for God.
Democrats, by and large, happily advocate for government aid and support any welfare program. A 2024 Pew Research survey found that Democrats are far more likely to favor the impersonal, vague “person in need” through government programs, “even if it increases debt.”
They also tend to see the rich or successful as the problem holding the poor people back. That’s why their whole economic plan takes from those who have worked diligently with the gifts and talents God has given them and redistributes to those who haven’t. This isn’t an individual giving food, clothes, or comfort to a person in need; leftists’ plan is basically justified stealing based on their gospel of envy.
Can we really call these elected Democrats “Christians”? Well, if they only follow the parts of the Bible that they like and ignore the rest, maybe not. But again, only God can judge their hearts.
Is their view Christian nationalism? As slippery and indefinable as that term seems to be these days, I would say no. Even The New York Times picked up on the difference. Writer Lauren Jackson explained , “The debate over Matthew 25 highlights two different approaches to Christianity — the nationalistic ‘spiritual warfare’ espoused by many evangelicals on the right and the fusion of ancient scripture with progressive policy that is gaining traction on the left.”
At the end of the day, being a “Matthew 25 Christian” is entirely insufficient for an individual’s faith. It’s like being a Christmas and Easter Christian — you come for the high holidays but have no interest in investing in the community of believers or Christ himself. Leftists are merely using Christianese and out-of-context Scripture to worm their way into political offices. It seems they’re wolves in the Bible’s clothing.
The Patriot Post
Full text · 672 words
Donald Trump has entered the season almost all presidents find themselves in during their final two years in office: he is a lame duck. In fact, thanks to the trouncing congressional Republicans took in the midterms — one of the worst such defeats in recent administrations — Trump may find himself to be one of the lamest ducks.
With the incoming Democrat majority sizable enough to make any question of bipartisanship a nonstarter, Trump will likely find little to no legislative success for any of his policy goals.
So, what can Trump get done, and what can Americans look forward to over these next two years?
Well, right off the bat, Trump elevated Stephen Miller to White House chief of staff, revealing he has no intention of backing down to Democrats. This move aligns with his most consistent guiding principle: never admit defeat. Just notice how Trump has brushed away any personal culpability for his party’s midterm shellacking.
During his “60 Minutes” interview , Trump resisted accepting any blame, stating, “Well, number one, I was not on the ballot.” Really? Not according to Democrats and their voters. Indeed, not according to Trump himself, as he campaigned across the nation, repeatedly telling folks at his rallies, “Vote like I’m on the ballot.”
But this is nothing new. We’ve long known this about Trump, and it’s not wrong to note that his stubbornness is as much an asset as a liability. It has helped him accomplish much in Washington and beyond, like shutting down the border, facing off against China, and getting NATO nations to finally start meeting their defense spending obligations, to name a few.
But it also means he won’t project the statesmanship needed to reach across the aisle, win over opponents, and make concessions on tertiary issues.
Trump’s inability to secure legislative victories, whether due to a lack of patience or simply an unwillingness to engage in dealmaking packages, means that most of his changes were primarily via executive order, which the next Democrat president will easily overturn with a stroke of his pen as Joe Biden did to great fanfare when he entered the White House six years ago.
One would have thought, given this reality, that Trump would have used Republican control of Congress to make enduring legislative victories a top priority, but alas, he did not. Instead, he got caught up pushing a tariff-first economic agenda, which has failed to deliver for the American people.
Over the next two years, Trump’s relationship with Congress will be more of the same — only now, Democrats will have the power to pass several legislative bills packed with their special-interest agenda items, which Trump will veto. Democrats will then campaign in 2028 on the talking point that Trump and the do-nothing Republicans obstructed their repeated efforts to deliver affordability for the American people because they refused to work with Democrats.
In short, Trump will blame Democrats, and Democrats will blame Trump and, by extension, all Republicans. Maybe having Democrats in control of Congress will make things easier for Trump, since he won’t have to worry about pushing members of Congress to support his legislative agenda. He’ll be freer to lead via executive orders.
If he can get a decisive victory over Iran and oversee an economy that appears to be gaining steam, especially in the nuclear energy sector and manufacturing, it could result in quite a boon for the nation.
Furthermore, Democrats might overreact to their midterm win, interpreting it as a mandate to push the very radical leftist policies that Americans repeatedly reject. Also, an appetite for retribution against Trump and his administration could produce a stream of Democrat-led lawfare efforts that will only sour Americans on them.
Republicans eyeing the 2028 presidency face a tough question: How do they escape Trump’s shadow while building the kind of support that carried him to victory in 2016 and 2024? It’s difficult to see how that could happen right now, but a lot can and will happen in the next two years.
AIER
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Annual Social Security benefits are scheduled to be cut by $6,000 on average when the trust fund exhausts its IOUs in the fall of 2032. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wants to send Social Security beneficiaries another $2,400 a year instead. In a viral post on X , he promised to expand benefits and extend the program’s solvency for generations by “scrapping the cap” and demanding wealthy Americans pay their “fair share.”
Eliminating the payroll tax cap wouldn’t even cover the benefits Congress has already promised, let alone fund a benefit expansion. Imposing a 12.4 percentage-point increase in the marginal tax rate for highly productive workers would, however, discourage work, reduce investment and innovation, and potentially make it harder to access medical care. Sanders is promising to expand already outsized government checks without acknowledging what his tax increases would cost Americans.
Social Security’s 12.4 percent payroll tax currently applies to earnings up to $184,500. This taxable base amount will rise to $192,300 in January because it grows with average wage gains across the economy.
Eliminating the cap would impose the payroll tax on every additional dollar of wages above it. Calling that “fair” ignores both how Social Security’s benefit formula works and the broader tax code. While higher earners don’t pay payroll taxes on earnings above $184,500, they also receive no additional benefit credits above this threshold. For example, someone earning $184,500 and someone earning $300,000 are treated the same under the benefit formula. This is also a common practice globally, with many developed countries imposing tax caps at lower earnings levels than the US.
Higher earners also face far higher federal income tax rates, as well as Medicare taxes that apply to all wages, with a yet-higher Medicare tax rate imposed on top earners. Even with Social Security’s payroll tax cap, higher-income households generally pay a larger share of their income in federal taxes.
Add that payroll tax increase onto existing federal, state, and local taxes, and combined top marginal tax rates would exceed 60 percent in many states. New Yorkers would face the highest top marginal tax rate at 68 percent , meaning affected workers would only keep 32 cents of every additional dollar they earn above the cap.
High taxes discourage work, business expansion, and investment in skills. The resulting economic losses extend beyond the dollars Washington collects. Economists call the destruction of economic value that arises deadweight loss.
Some of the cost shows up as reduced earnings that shrink other federal revenue. In a 2021 paper, economist Adam Blandin projected that eliminating the taxable maximum would reduce long-run GDP by three percent and decrease income taxes from workers who will earn less. Crediting Social Security with additional payroll taxes while overlooking losses elsewhere exaggerates the improvement in federal finances.
The Tax Foundation estimates that eliminating the cap would reduce long-run GDP by 1.5 percent and employment by 1.8 million jobs. Accounting for economic effects cuts their estimated ten-year revenue gain by more than half, from $3.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion. Raising already high rates is an expensive way to collect revenue.
Considering who would pay the higher tax from raising or eliminating the cap, Krit Chanwong and I found that approximately eight in ten surgeons and six in ten physicians earn above the cap. Among those affected, 27 percent of surgeons and 33 percent of physicians are at least 55 years of age.
Some physicians nearing retirement could respond by cutting their hours or leaving practice sooner. With shortages already projected across many specialties, Congress should consider what discouraging medical work would mean for patients trying to access care.
Despite the high economic costs, eliminating the payroll tax cap would not come close to eliminating the Social Security funding shortfall. The Cato Social Security model estimates that eliminating the tax cap would close about 30 percent of the long-term cash-flow gap if newly taxed earnings also earned benefit credits, or roughly half if Congress collected the additional taxes without increasing those workers’ benefits. That is before adding Sanders’ $2,400 annual benefit increase.
To make up that shortfall and generate funds for benefit expansions, Sanders would also impose payroll taxes on investments and certain business income. Such a massive rate increase on capital income would discourage investment, constrain business expansion, and impede innovation. An analysis of the earlier version of the Sanders proposal by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget argued that the proposal could “ lose one-third of its new revenue to lower income taxes. ”
Congress should gradually move Social Security toward a flat benefit that protects against poverty in old age, while letting workers keep more of their earnings to spend, save, and invest. Sanders would take the opposite approach: tax productive Americans more heavily to finance larger government checks.
Americans deserve a retirement system they can count on, not unsustainable promises that leave them poorer and more dependent on Washington.
Source: AIER · Wed Nov 11, 10:25 PM PT
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Source: AIER · Wed Nov 11, 10:15 PM PT
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