Thursday's tabs have far to go ...
Q: “How are you getting the $700M to make the buses free if the Governor is not for raising taxes?”
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) November 20, 2025
MAMDANI: “Through the raising of the state's corporate tax.”
Q: “But she said no…”
MAMDANI: “The most important fact is that we fund it, not the question of how we do it.” pic.twitter.com/S1oDJj0W7Y
Ed: Ah, the magic of other people's money! Maybe Mamdani handles his personal expenses with this philosophy, but that's easy to do when mommy and daddy are backstopping you. This is going to be a painful four years for New Yorkers, and an instructive period for everyone else. On the other hand, it's not as if we haven't already had object lessons on the magic of OPM on the other coast ...
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Jon Fleischman: California is sliding into one of the worst long-term budget holes the state has ever faced — and it didn’t happen by accident or because “both sides” stumbled into bad decisions. One team in Sacramento marched us straight into this mess.
The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) now projects annual deficits of roughly $35 billion starting in 2027–28 in a scathing new report — a crisis created entirely under uninterrupted Democratic control.
Democrats hold every partisan statewide office and command supermajorities in both chambers. They write the budget, negotiate the budget, and pass the budget. And they do it while systematically shutting Republicans out of meaningful fiscal decision-making. What we are dealing with is not the product of bipartisan compromise; it’s the predictable outcome of one-party rule.
At the center of it is Governor Gavin Newsom. His administration brushed off warnings and kept layering on permanent commitments, acting as if high-revenue years would last forever.
Ed: Will we ever learn the lesson of OPM? There's only one way to teach that lesson – to refuse to bail out cities and states that rely on it. Fifty years ago, Gerald Ford essentially told New York City to 'Drop Dead' when they tried to force the federal government to provide the OPM. We had better be ready to do that again.
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The Zohran Mamdani voter base showed up at a synagogue to scream for intifada, because they know nothing will happen to them under their incoming mayor.
— 𝐍𝐢𝐨𝐡 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠 ♛ ✡︎ (@NiohBerg) November 20, 2025
This will only intensify, and every Jew who also voted for him should feel like a fucking idiot. pic.twitter.com/tS2hWS07p3
Ed: It's good to remember that Mamdani has more issues than just OPM. And a couple of them are far worse.
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New Jersey Globe: A 26-year-old Ocean City woman who claimed she was brutally assaulted because she worked for Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Ocean City) instead orchestrated the entire incident — paying a scarification artist to wound her and staging the scene with zip ties and “Trump Whore” written on her stomach and “Van Drew is a racist” on her back, federal prosecutors alleged today.
Natalie Greene, a Rutgers law student, allegedly concocted the hoax in July, with an accomplice making a late-night 911 call to report that she had been ambushed by three men on a nature trail in Egg Harbor Township. Police officers found Greene bound with black zip ties, her shirt pulled over her head, and the political slurs scrawled across her torso. She told police that her supposed attackers had a gun and threatened to shoot her, and struck her in the head.
Prosecutors say nearly every detail was fabricated.
Ed: Well ... I guess the hoaxes cut in both directions. Greene allegedly paid $500 to a "body modification artist" to get the messages cut into her body. The lesson here is that some people are toxic narcissists with a compulsion to be seen as victims for validation, and are willing to do anything to get it. It's worth noting that Trump's DoJ sniffed out this hoax and exposed it when it might have suited their purposes to let it slide.
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I believe Saudi Arabia will eventually join the Abraham Accords.
— Van Hipp (@VanHipp) November 20, 2025
This would mark a historic step toward lasting peace in the Middle East.
And it’s happening because of President @realdonaldTrump’s leadership—the kind that deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. pic.twitter.com/hwpL6uAsWl
Ed: Donald Trump could end every war in the world, and the Nobel committee would find a progressive to honor anyway. The only point of bringing up the Nobel prize is to highlight its utter and utterly earned irrelevance. A just peace is its own reward anyway.
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Greg Collard at Racket News: Plaskett now presented herself as a victim of government weaponization:
“They’ve taken a text exchange, which show no participation, no assistance, no involvement in any illegal activity, and weaponized it for political theater, because that’s what this is.
This is another trait of a good bullshitter: Imply your critics are doing something they’re not. No one accused Plaskett of doing something illegal by texting Epstein. It was just a way to deflect from her actions.
Fortunately, she’s not a voting member of Congress since she represents the Virgin Islands. Obviously, though, she still has a large platform. Who’s coaching her now?
Ed: Probably Alex Soros, or whoever is running Arabella's successor platform Sixteen Thirty. Be sure to read it all, if you can. Racket is really the only platform that's connecting the dots on Plaskett and Jeffrey Epstein.
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Absent the $15 million loan it took out, the DNC would have $3.25 million cash on hand remaining, which would be the lowest amount on record since January 2008. https://t.co/JpG8dVqSq7 pic.twitter.com/WFjW7d5lEn
— Rob Pyers (@rpyers) November 20, 2025
Ed: Without Arabella, without USAID, when the Marxists are taking over the party ... is anyone surprised?
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— B (@Allin4Freedom) November 20, 2025
Ed: The "No one is above the law" tweets from 2023-4 are just solid gold, baby.
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Noah Rothman at NRO: Whoever Dr. Jeffrey Epstein is has had his life turned upside down by the “reckless moron,” as our own Jim Geraghty aptly put it, Representative Jasmine Crocket. The representative knew when her staff “used Google” to track down the late pedophile’s supposed donations to Republican politicians that she was likely defaming a private citizen. In her efforts to defend herself, Crocket dug herself an even deeper hole, insisting that her own knowingly slanderous accusations should teach Republicans a lesson. You, too, could ruin an innocent person’s life if you’re as thoughtless, impulsive, and heedlessly ambitious as I am. There but for the grace of God, and all that.
Those who are inclined to excuse that behavior have indeed succumbed to a moral panic. But so, too, have the demagogues who insist that anyone who doesn’t demand the release of unredacted Epstein-related documents lacks the requisite concern for the safety of America’s children or the integrity of the federal government. ...
As Jasmine Crockett’s indiscretion indicates, if Schumer got his way, we can be certain that the names that would be released to the public would be permanently tarred by their association with Jeffrey Epstein, even if they had committed no crime, even if they were not even the target of an investigation. Those who care little about the collateral damage their zeal might produce are in the throes of hysteria.
Ed: This is why these files have not been made public in the past. However, both political parties have contributed to an environment where any redaction now will be seen as manipulation -- and as House Dems on the Oversight committee proved with the attempt to smear Trump last week, it may well be manipulation. Noah's right, but he's too late. Perhaps the two federal judges who control the seals on grand-jury testimony will choose more wisely when pressured to publish those. The grand jury transcripts are not covered in the House bill, because they are in control of the judiciary and not the executive branch.
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Rachel Maddow once described Dick Cheney as the "maestro of terror."
— Theo Wold (@RealTheoWold) November 20, 2025
Now, she sits proudly next to Anthony Fauci and James Carville at his funeral because he endorsed Kamala Harris.
It's an important reminder of what President Trump's meteoric political rise represented: A… pic.twitter.com/P5hEfXtS1t
It's an important reminder of what President Trump's meteoric political rise represented: A rejection of Maddow's liberal elitism and the old guard Republican Party of Bush and Cheney.
Donald Trump's very existence is a complete repudiation of them-- and they're now all on the same team because of it.
Ed: It's a very good demonstration of why voters handed him a second, non-consecutive term in opposition to the Uniparty elements.
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David Rose at UnHerd: The Spring Educational Group owns more independent schools in the United States than anyone else — 240 in total, across 19 states, from Montessori nurseries in California to STEM-focused elementary schools in Texas, as well as eight elite BASIS academies in Washington DC, New York and elsewhere. The schools’ websites are full of pictures of beaming children, from pre-school infants to high school seniors, with impressive claims about average SATS scores, elite university entries, and “Outstanding Mandarin Programs”.
You’d hope that the Mandarin programs would be good — given the ultimate owner of these schools is an ardent Chinese nationalist who goes by the nickname “Red Fred”. Of course, that’s not how he’s known in the international finance circles in which he moves. On his LinkedIn page, he’s Fred Hu, Chairman and Founder of Primavera Capital, a $20 billion private equity fund that owns the Spring Educational Group and its 29 school brands. His CV is blandly bluechip: spells at Goldman Sachs, the IMF and the World Economic Forum; seats on the Harvard University Global Advisory Council and the board of the Swiss bank UBS. Nothing unduly alarming to the parents of the 41,000 children who attend his institutions.
Ed: Some of this is paywalled, but it's worth the alert. They don't call Hu Zuliu "Red Fred" for no reason. This is worth watching. Between China and Qatar (and Saudi Arabia, for that matter), American education has been utterly sold out to foreign interests.
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“Trump is unpopular”
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 20, 2025
😂😂😂😂 https://t.co/MdYVM5TFpP pic.twitter.com/pa7vIY7NdH
Ed: Cool story, man. Hope it keeps you warm at night.
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i24 News: Iran’s expansive operations across Latin America, built through Hezbollah, drug-cartel alliances, and deep military cooperation with Venezuela, could suffer a major setback if President Nicolás Maduro is removed from power, according to Danny Citrinowicz, former head of the Iran branch in Israeli Defense Intelligence.
Speaking in an interview with i24NEWS' Ariel Oseran, Citrinowicz described Venezuela as “a logistical hub” that enables Tehran to recruit operatives, move weapons, and fund Hezbollah through drug-trafficking networks.
Citrinowicz, now a senior researcher at Israel’s INSS and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, detailed how Iran has leveraged Shia communities, criminal cartels, and state partners to embed itself across the Western Hemisphere.
“Wherever you find a Shia community in Latin America, you’ll find a religious center controlled by Hezbollah,” he said, noting that Lebanese-Shia migration has made Hezbollah, rather than Iran’s Persian-speaking envoys, the primary bridge to local populations.
Ed: This is why Trump is ramping up the pressure on Maduro. He wants Iran cut out of the Western Hemisphere – and China, too. And he wants to make an example of Maduro as a lesson to the rest of the region about tying themselves to either.
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— Jon Justice (@JonJustice) November 20, 2025
Ed: YGBFKM. Newsom has the worst social-media shop in the business, at least at this level. Newsom really wants to double down on "Sharp As a Tack™," eh?
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President Trump gives each freed Israeli hostage a presidential challenge coin. 🇺🇸
— David J Harris Jr (@DavidJHarrisJr) November 20, 2025
God bless them. 🙏🏽pic.twitter.com/tTLyj0IX0j
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