First, though: Maine shooter  Robert Card is dead , self-inflicted. Are we headed to war with Iran?   The Hamas-Israel War and Syrian incidents were all orchestrated by Iran.  What about Russia and China? Before you go to sleep Saturday night, turn back your clock one hour.  By a  63% to 16% majority , Americans don't like to do this, and statistics show these two changes/year are just not good for society.  Congress is attempting do something, and, if anything, will keep it always at daylight savings time.  Hawaii, and a few other locations in the U.S., don't make any changes. When is Halloween Night?  Every year it is observed on October 31, which is a Tuesday this year.  The celebration marks the day before the Western Christian feast of All Saints, or All Hallows Day, from where comes Halloween.  Goes back to the Celts and the festival of  Samhain , mentioned in the earliest Irish literature from the 9th century. Not much to say...

News of the day. No break in the search for Robert Card in Maine.   Follow live updates here. Looks like  Israel  has increased war-like activity in the Gaza Strip.   Time  magazine can only discuss four bad options. Earlier this week Jimmy Kimmel indicated that  Donald Trump will go to jail .  Clearly, Kimmel also doesn't like new Speaker Mike Johnson.   Watch him say the followin g: Johnson, he noted, backed   Donald Trump ’s plot to overturn the 2020 election results and remain in power despite losing. “Also anti-gay, anti-choice, pro-conspiracy theory, he seems terrific,” Kimmel snarked. “Not only is he not the best choice for speaker, you can’t even definitively say Mike Johnson is the best Mike Johnson they could’ve chosen.”   Kimmel then ticked off a list of better Mike Johnsons, from chefs to athletes to yodelers. “You could go to the middle of the phone book and pick any of the hundreds of Mike Johnsons. Each one ...

Cable news channels are mostly covering today the  shootings in Maine where 18 people were killed .  Considering that there are typically around 20 firearm deaths in the entire state annually, this is consequential.  However, something like a staggering  150 suicides by gun yearly occur in Maine . This is the 565th mass shooting ( at least 4 deaths/event ) in the U.S. this year.   In 2021 , there were 48,830 gun-related deaths in the country.  54% were suicides ( 26,368 ) and 43% were murders ( 20,997 ).  Has the time finally come for gun control?  Nope.  There is something about the right to own guns and the efforts of the National Rifle Association that overcome any kind of common sense.   Any chance for some kind of ban on assault weapons?  Well, a  quarter century ago  when President Joe Biden was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Congress passed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Prote...

Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana was elected speaker of the House today.  He got every Republican to vote for him.  That was a minor miracle.    Who is he? He was born in Shreveport, Louisiana 51 years ago, 1972. I was then completing my PhD in biochemical engineering at LSU.  Nearly four years of living in that state was most experienceful. Johnson's father was a firefighter, and Mike indicated that he was the first in his family to go to college.  In 1995 he too graduated from LSU in business administration.  In 1998, a law degree from LSU. Won a House seat in 2016, and has easily won re-elections. In 2021 was one of the architects in a vote to overturn the 2020 election results. Voted against forming the House Commission to investigate the 6January2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol. Became Speaker of the House today, and has the shortest House membership tenure of any Speaker in 140 years. What does he represent? Member of the Christian right...

Seventeen days into the Hamas attack into Israel, one of the core goals was an insurance policy to protect them from wholesale retribution.  Found was a  Hamas abduction manual  detailing instructions on how to take civilian hostages.  That is page one to the left.   No releases today, but more should be coming if Israel continues to delay their military plan to enter the Gaza Strip to eliminate the Hamas.  As long as this prospect remains, and there is no serious participation of the Hezbollah to the north, the next few weeks could well be driven by these hostage negotiations.   Donald Trump's reputation and effectiveness are as good as already lying in a coffin with daily events hammering more and more nails for his permanent doom.  In a New Hampshire speech, he compared himself to Nelson Mandela.  He just might be right and could well spend a good portion of his life in jail.  The following developments certainly are condemn...