Today is Friday, November 21, 2025. Yesterday Elliot and I hosted one of our adopted “nieces,” “Rebecca” and her fiancé “Taylor,” who arrived at our door at precisely 7. We expected them to arrive later, but they surprisingly didn’t. So we hied to the living room where we sat for a little while hoping to see Atticus. Eventually, he did come up from the bedroom to make an appearance in front of Rebecca and Taylor. Taylor tried to pet him and it seemed as if he liked it. We discussed going to dinner and Taylor and Rebecca mentioned that they wanted to go to Tuscan Hills, the Italian restaurant only about five minutes away.

What distinguished this dinner with Taylor and Rebecca was Taylor’s insistence to pay for our meal. We couldn’t believe it, but Taylor freely expressed the reason why: that we have been very generous to them in the past and that they wanted to repay that gesture. So the meal was quite good anyway, even if our young charges didn’t cough up the money to pay the bill. We chose two appetizers: Fiori di Zucca (zucchini flowers filled with cheese over marina sauce and olives) and calamari fritti. For my main dish, I ordered the melanzane alla parmigiana. This was quite good. For a change, we eschewed dessert and coffee or tea.

We invited both Taylor and Rebecca back to our house for coffee or tea and our chocolate fudge cake which we still have since last week. It still got high marks from both of our guests which made us quite pleased. We talked for a little while longer and by about 10, Taylor and Rebecca started to leave. Taylor called an Uber and we hugged and kissed goodbye. Taylor accompanied me last year when I went to the New Yorker for the Big Apple Comic Show, but sadly, this year, he had to bow out since he’s leaving for Pennsylvania today. So, I will be going tomorrow to the show by myself.

As for what to focus on during this chaotic news cycle, it’s hard to concentrate on one salient story. So much is thrown at us daily that it’s hard to grasp what’s going on and to breathe, even. I am just hearing tonight that former Dump loyalist and QAnon believer Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is actually resigning as of January 5, 2026. This comes as a shock to me. No one saw this coming, I can tell you! I wonder what her motivation truly is for resigning here. Could that explain her defiance displayed recently of her Supreme Leader over the Epstein matter? Because she always intended to resign and she doesn’t now give a fuck, basically. In an extensive announcement of her resignation, she says that repugnicans will probably lose in the midterms. I hope she is totally correct here! She also says that Democrats – should they win the House and even the Senate – will conduct impeachment proceedings against Drumpf and here she’s correct again.

I was going to write about the Orange Turd’s recent pronouncement concerning the six Democrats who made a video telling military personnel not to obey illegal orders which was definitely directed toward Dump’s recent spate of unlawful commands directed to the military. This enraged the despot in the White House who called their actions “seditious” and “treasonous.” He then said they should be put to death. Can you believe this shit? This recent story is covered in an MSNBC online opinion by Zeeshan Aleem entitled “Six lawmakers warned the military about Trump – and then he proved the point.” The six brave Democrats who released the video are Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA), Rep. Maggie Woodlander (D-NH), and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA). All of these senators have served their country in the military and they know what they were speaking of.

The reaction from the right was unsurprisingly extreme, as the president’s deputy chief of staff, or really, the true president, Stephen Miller, wrote on social media that “Democrat lawmakers are now openly calling for insurrection.” The cowardly speaker of the House couldn’t condemn Drumpf’s terrible words; he just said that the president was simply “defining the crime of sedition.” What a jerk!

Of course, the Democratic lawmakers were not seditious at all. The Orange Turd was enraged just because they were telling the truth. And this didn’t prevent his regime from responding in a very unhinged way.

This newest insane barrage of comments coming from the Alzheimer’s patient in the White House is just an example of the kind of rhetoric he engages in to stir people to political violence. Look what he ultimately did on January 6, 2021. After this insurrection, he issued pardons for its participants. Mark Esper, who served as defense secretary during Drumpf’s first term, wrote in his memoir that as protesters gathered near the White House after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, Drumpf asked him: “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

The Democratic lawmakers were engaged in protected speech and were not calling for a violent overthrow of the government. But this madman has chosen to suggest that they should be incarcerated or murdered for expressing themselves. Aleem concludes, “Trump’s response – seemingly calling for violence in response to free speech – only confirms that lawmakers are right to be concerned about whom this president would deploy the military against.”

As I indicated earlier, tomorrow I will be attending the comic book show at the New Yorker and if I’m not exhausted from it, I might see a play via TKTS. If I do that, I’ll be absent from this page until Sunday. I won’t know until later in the afternoon tomorrow.

Have a good weekend.

And so it went!