Been a weird week. The midterms were a disaster, but I’ve been too busy mailing out books from my most recent Lame Excuse Books catalog to worry too much about it, which is probably just as well. And given the wall-to-wall coverage of the midterms, I don’t think they require too much rehashing here.
Wall Street sees a wave of red ink in the wake of the blue tsunami, More California fraud, more scammers stealing taxpayer money,
Also, a quick update on the new template. Everything works, but there are difference between how the old and new handled certain things, especially unordered lists. I didn’t use to use the <ul> tag before because bulleted lists looked better without it. That’s not the case for the new template, so bulleted lists in the old template are going to look weird for, well, a long, long time. I’m way too busy to even think about fixing 17 years of posts, so only expect changes on an ad-hock basis.
- Markets drop nearly $3 trillion in reaction to Democrats winning the midterms.
The Democrats ran on shutting down data centers and more tech regulation.
The stock market responded on Thursday with nearly $3 trillion wiped out in just a few hours.
After the Tuesday election, there was a brief rally in the market, but investors pulled sharply out of tech stocks on Thursday to move their funds into safer portfolios.
From CNBC:
The Nasdaq Composite declined 4.7% and dipped into correction territory, trading more than 10% below a record set last month. The S&P 500 was down 3.7%, heading for its worst day since April 2025. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 1,531 points, or 2.9%. The Dow erased about all of its advance from Wednesday’s massive postelection rally. The small-cap Russell 2000 index decreased 4.5% and also entered a correction.
Stocks related to the artificial intelligence trade, particularly those linked to the chips industry and data centers, slid for a second day. Investors fear that a Democratic sweep of both chambers of Congress as well as victories in key gubernatorial races could decelerate the data center buildout.
- “DHS revokes status of 2.2 million migrants that Biden let into the country.” The misspelled “illegal aliens.”
2.2 million immigrants let in under President Biden are now eligible for deportation.
Here’s the Business-Standard:
President Donald Trump’s administration has taken actions to revoke or terminate the status of 2.2 million ‘illegal aliens’ since he returned to the White House in January 2025, a US agency has said, marking the scale of the country’s immigration crackdown.
The figure, reported by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on October 29, is nearly seven times the number of comparable actions taken during the final two years of the Joe Biden administration, according to the agency.
‘Since Jan. 20, 2025, USCIS has carried out immigration enforcement actions to revoke or terminate the status of approximately 2.2 million illegal aliens,’ the agency said on Thursday.
There are certain categories of migrants, like “refugees,” where the courts are holding up progress tremendously, but there are other areas where the Trump admin can push to get things done.
AKA exactly what we voted for.
- The welfare state fraud problem is everywhere.
Over the past 10 days, I became the digital Nick Shirley.
Using public & private records my AI agent swarm found ~$787 million in government billing that made absolutely no sense.
Thread 🧵
One physical therapist billed Medicare for 9,006 hours of treatment in a year that only has 8,760 hours.That’s 30 hours of therapy. Every. Single. Weekday.
A single mall parking lot claimed over 1 million summer meals served in one August.That’s more than half the entire state’s summer breakfast claims… from one parking lot.
They went from 7,688 meals the year before to a $4.9 million payday.
A lab presented itself as a COVID testing site.Then billed Medicare $6M+ for genetic tests on 1,433 seniors, including 50% of all cystic fibrosis tests given to Medicare patients in America.
Average age: 76.
Seven Florida suppliers filled 99.6% of all the hip braces Medicare paid for nationwide in 2024. All billed from suppliers in one state.Orders came from 2,066 doctors across 41 states. Florida doctors combined only wrote 165.
A lab’s federal certificate says it runs ~600 tests a year.In 2024 it billed Medicare for 105,977 genetic tests.
Including 816 tests for Rett syndrome (a childhood diagnosis) on patients averaging 73 years old.
Medicare paid them $43 million in two years.
Someone excluded from every federal health program after a fraud plea is still listed as:
– Administrator of 3 Medicare home health agencies
– 100% owner of two othersOne of those home health agencies got certified four months after the ban started (!!)
Two Chicago labs claimed they only ran 10–15k COVID tests a year.Medicare got billed for 90k and 157k.
One lab averaged 27 PCR tests per patient.
They collected $23.7 million… then both dissolved in 2025. 🤔
Two doctors billed Medicare for remote patient monitoring that would have required 87 hours and 44 hours of their own time every single day of 2024.No face-to-face visits. Just pure time that does not exist.
One doctor billed Medicare $23.6 million for skin substitutes on just 89 patients. - “DOJ Uncovers $29M More In Minnesota Benefits Fraud, Calls State ‘Epicenter For Fraud In America.'”
Between Sept. 30 and Oct. 30, the DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division and the District of Minnesota charged, convicted, or sentenced 13 individuals for proven or alleged schemes that caused nearly $83 million in intended losses to the federal government.
The DOJ said in an Oct. 30 statement that it uncovered $29.1 million in fraud in newly charged cases, which is part of the total $83 million.
The targeted benefits programs include Minnesota’s Medicaid program, the Federal Child Nutrition Program, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Some are accused of engaging in bribery as part of carrying out their schemes.
In one case, Shaakir Mohamud Ibrahim, 54, of Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, is facing wire fraud and money laundering charges for being part of a scheme to defraud the Federal Child Nutrition Program through the nonprofit Feeding Our Future.
Ibrahim and his co-conspirators are alleged to have falsely claimed to be serving thousands of meals to children every day for four months. The department alleged he used this fake meal distribution to collect more than $1.1 million in reimbursements through the nonprofit.
In another case, the DOJ said it charged Feisal Mohamed Elmi, 46, of New Brighton, Minnesota, with 11 counts related to health care fraud in an $8.2 million scheme that targeted the state’s Medicaid program.
- “Ex-School Board President Indicted In Alleged $1.3 Million Kickback Over $2.7 Million COVID-Funded Air Purifier Deal.”
A federal grand jury in Chicago has indicted Annette Johnson, the former president of the East Aurora School District 131 Board of Education, on charges that she entered the district into a $2.7 million air purifier purchase in 2021 in exchange for a $1.3 million payment. Johnson, 63, of Aurora, faces two counts of honest services mail fraud and one count of honest services wire fraud, each punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois said. She remains a member of the board.
Prosecutors say that Johnson, then board president, voted for the purchase, and that the district paid for the purifiers with COVID-era federal grant money. Unbeknownst to the other board members, they say, Johnson and the vendor had agreed that the vendor would pay more than $1 million of the sale proceeds to a company owned by her boyfriend, where she served as chief financial officer.
Within days of a board vote in which Johnson participated and approved payment, prosecutors say, the vendor mailed a $1.3 million check labeled “commission” to that company. Later, she allegedly pushed the board to approve a $201,077 payment to the vendor in 2023 for an “extended warranty” on the purifiers.
- “Yaroslavl Oil Refinery Hit Very Hard By Drones: Multiple Impacts and Fires.”
- “Big Drone Strikes on Samara LPDS Oil Tanks (Multiple Hits).”
- “Wildberries Warehouse Hit Again! + Ryazan Oil Refinery Hit Hard.”
- “Kstovo Oil Refinery Hit Hard By Drones: Third Oil Refinery in Three Days!”
- “Ukraine Attacks Moscow With Balloon Drones: Possible Oil Storage Hit.”
- “Big Drone Strike on Hvardiyske Air Base in Crimea, Two Likely Impacts. Possible Ammo Storage Hit?”
- “Ozon Warehouse Hit By Drones! In Adygeysk.”
- “Excellent JDAM Strike On Drone Operators, Filmed From Very Close Range By Attack Drone.” This is north of Bakhmut, some 15 miles behind the front lines, suggesting that Ukrainian successes against Russian anti-aircraft units have been effective enough to give their aircraft more range for attack.
- Drone takes out Russian Mi-8 helicopter.
- A look at a Ukrainian all-UGV offensive operation north of Lyman that failed. Interesting for a glimpse of the different UGVs Ukraine is using.
- “Trump Taps Stephen Miller as Chief of Staff in Post-Midterm Shakeup.” Strangely, Democrats don’t seem thrilled at the move…
- “DOJ Civil Rights Chief Harmeet Dhillon Resigns.”
- Democrats immediately reveal that their top priorities are disarming the law abiding and protecting Haitian illegal alien scammers. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
- “California High-Speed Rail CEO Resigns After Reporter Confronts Board Over Consultants’ Nightclub And Cigar-Lounge Tabs.”
Ian Choudri, the CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, resigned late Wednesday, telling the board in an emailed letter that he needed to focus on ‘important personal and family priorities,’ CalMatters reported. The board named Joe Stephenshaw, the state’s Department of Finance director since July 2022, to replace him Thursday morning after a closed session. Board chair Steve Kawa said the resignation took effect immediately.’
The exit came in the middle of a two-day board meeting. CBS News California investigative reporter Julie Watts wrote that Choudri skipped the meeting, where the board was set to approve the long-delayed train contract.
The authority had stopped answering her requests for comment, Watts said, so she put her questions to the board directly.
Her questions went to consultant spending. She asked whether the board would let its chief counsel review every consulting contract signed in the past two years and seek clawbacks, and noted that taxpayers are paying roughly a quarter of a billion dollars over two years to consultants who are “not laying track or building trains.”
The state inspector general had already put a number on part of it. Consultants at four firms (KPMG, Nossaman, AECOM-Fluor and SYSTRA/TYPSA) billed nearly $600,000 in travel the inspector general called questionable, including trips to a nightclub, a tiki bar, a cigar lounge, an escape room and a gym, CalMatters reported. Investigators found consultants flew first class and hired premium rides, many trips went to Folsom, where Choudri has a home, and some were made at his request. One legal consultant billed $86,500 in “travel time” and $40,800 in reimbursements for 30 Denver-to-Sacramento trips in one year, according to CalMatters’ earlier report. The firms have since repaid nearly $1.3 million in reimbursements.
Earlier this month the board voted 7-2 to strip Choudri of his sole authority to sign and manage contracts under $25 million, sending them through in-house counsel. At that meeting Kawa said, “Not one dollar of California taxpayer dollars should be misused.” The board had been weighing further discipline, including possible termination, an anonymous source told CalMatters, and Choudri’s compensation this year exceeds $534,000.
The entire point of California’s high speed rail is to shove money into the pockets of consultants, but Choudri committed the cardinal sin of getting caught.
- So how’s that rigging the election to toss Spencer Pratt off the ballot working out for you, Karen Bass? “Incompetent, Uneducated Boob and Socialist Nithiya Raman Has been Elected the Final Mayor of the City Formerly Known as Los Angeles.”
- Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: “Charity Founder Gets Eight Years For Embezzling Millions.”
The founder of a charity that helped low-income workers cover emergency bills has been sentenced to eight years in federal prison for spending millions of dollars in donations on himself. Keith Taylor, 59, of New York, founded Modest Needs around 2002, and U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Rochon sentenced him, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced Wednesday. He pleaded guilty in August 2025 to defrauding the charity and its donors and to evading more than $1 million in federal income taxes.
- “A federal indictment announced Wednesday accuses six people tied to one Mobile, Alabama, tax shop of filing more than 9,000 false returns that sought more than $177 million in refunds, about $81 million of which the IRS actually issued, prosecutors say.”
Prosecutors say Jennifer Beverly, 47, owned and ran JB Accounting Tax Service LLC in Mobile from roughly 2022 through 2024. Five of her employees are charged alongside her: Jadasha Bowman, 28; Kennedy Lawrence Stovall Winston, 42; Solida Lucille Green, 36; Paris Lovett, also known as Paris Johnson, 30; and Shermeka Benjamin, 38.
The indictment alleges the scheme ran from about 2021 through 2024. The returns allegedly carried false Schedule C statements, COVID-19 credits, fuel tax credits, credit repayments, estimated tax payments, Schedule A and Schedule 3 statements, and education credits. Spread across 9,000 returns, the refunds claimed come to more than $19,000 apiece, and the roughly $81 million issued is about 46 percent of the $177 million sought.
All six are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Beverly also faces 63 wire fraud counts, Bowman 11, Winston five, Green 11, Lovett 11 and Benjamin four, 105 counts between them. If convicted, they face penalties that include prison, supervised release, fines and restitution.
- Long-running garbage far left, pro-pedophile website Salon finally shuts down.
It’s been a rough couple of years for liberal rags, and this week, the digital pile of liberal media carcasses grew just a little taller.
On Thursday, Salon announced that it was “ceasing publication” after 31 years. The company cited the changing “business realities of independent digital journalism” and an unsustainable publishing model as its reasons for calling it quits.
Snip.
In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Salon branded the GOP a “terrorist group” and suggested that “MAGA and Christian nationalism” presented a greater threat than “Hamas could ever be.” It also pushed characterizations of President Donald Trump and his allies as Nazis.
Salon blogger Chauncey DeVega claimed in a Sept. 26, 2024, piece that “Donald Trump and his surrogates are continuing to channel and amplify Nazism and Adolf Hitler. This is not random or happenstance. It is part of a strategy.”
DeVega, writing in the wake of multiple attempts on the president’s life, further claimed that Trump was planning “to turn America into a type of Fourth Reich” and planning an “ethnic cleansing.”
While keen to smear Republicans as terrorists and Nazis, Salon did its apparent best to humanize pedophiles.
In September 2015, Salon published an article titled, “I’m a pedophile, but not a monster,” with the sub-headline, “I’m attracted to children but unwilling to act on it. Before judging me harshly, would you be willing to listen?”
The article by self-identified American pedophile Todd Nickerson characterized pedophilia as a sexual orientation and pedophiles as victims who “suffer in silence”; insinuated there might be good things about having that particular “sexuality”; and called on readers to “be understanding and supportive.”
Like its article mocking Warmbier and its article titled “‘Genetic sexual attraction is normal, and very real’: A woman describes the reality of parent-child incest,” Salon’s pedophile article was later scrubbed from its website. Salon’s article defending humans having sex with dolphins is, however, still up on its website.
The demise of Salon — which was valued at $107 million when it went public in 1999 — was generally well-received.
Hopefully anyone involved in that rag will never be allowed to work in media ever again.
- The Bulwerk’s TDS turns into MDS with a side-effect of acute communism.
The first step to conserving conservatism: seizing the means of production for the state
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 3, 2026
(Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
- UK comedian/actor/podcaster Russell Brand found “guilty on one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault. He was found not guilty on two other rape charges and not guilty of attempted indecent assault.” “In the rape case, the assault took place in 2009 when a woman who met with Brand to have sex was, according to her accusations, forced to go further than she planned. The assaults Brand was convicted of took place in the 2000s as well.”
- Oil rig off Gabon collapses and sinks.
- Are Samsung TV’s listening to you?
- Tesla to wind down cybertruck production in favor of Cybercabs.
Gigafactory Texas, located outside of Austin, is the only known Tesla facility used to manufacture the Cybertruck’s components. Musk did not specify whether Cybertruck production will be moved to another facility or phased out entirely, but he said the “Cybertruck fleet will be around for a long time” in response to a user on his social media platform.
Tesla’s decision comes after years of poor sales for the Cybertruck model, which faced intense political backlash when Musk associated himself with President Donald Trump. Over 20,000 Cybertrucks were sold in the United States last year, down 48% from nearly 39,000 units in 2024. For the first three quarters this year, over 11,500 units were sold, per preliminary figures.
For an “unsuccessful” truck, I sure see a lot of them on the road.
- “Utah man tells friend he can dodge a bullet. Friend pleads guilty to manslaughter.”
- Fulton County auctions off land that doesn’t exist.
- Adam Savage geeks out at the Library of Congress. Including the Thomas Jefferson draft of the Declaration of Independence corrected by John Adams and Ben Franklin.
- Jeremy Clarkson on cycle lanes: “They can all fuck off. All of them.”
- Critical Drinker raves about Widow’s Bay.
- He also liked Godilla Minus Zero, albeit not as much as Godzilla Minus One. I need to see both of them…
- Consumer news you can use: How to tell if your Lamborghini odometer has been tampered with.
- What does one buck get you at the laundromat?
- The Slow-Mo Guys play with generating sparks in the dark. Some of the shots are profoundly beautiful.
- “Idiot King Forgets To Cancel Election.”
- “Russell Brand Convicted In UK Court On Charges Of Raping While Not Muslim.”
- Weird looking senior dog rescued from under a Houston bridge.
I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.


