Rainy day tabs #12 & 35 …
🚨 HOLY CRAP: Democrat members of Congress– including Senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly– just released a video encouraging members of the military to defy orders from President Trump. The party of “NO KINGS” is now encouraging a military coup.
— CJ Pearson (@Cjpearson) Nov 17, 2025
Ed: What in the holy hell is this? Presumably, the next shiny-object distraction/demagoguery campaign when the Epstein files flop, or do too much damage to Democrats. It’s almost certainly another attempt to interfere with the enforcement of immigration laws.
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NY Post: Alleged Chinese mole Linda Sun brazenly forged then-Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signature in glowing missives sent to dignitaries from the Henan province, according to the feds and documents presented at her bombshell trial.
Jurors in Brooklyn federal court were shown copies of letters purportedly sent by Hochul on March 26, 2018, inviting a six-member delegation from the province in central China to a meeting with then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
But the letters bore clearly forged versions of Hochul’s signature — that featured “overly loopy” handwriting, her former chief of staff Jeff Lewis testified.
Ed: I’m a little surprised this has gone to trial. Even hostile nations usually attempt to cut a deal to get their agents out before too much public exposure, and in Western countries, the intel agencies usually prefer quieter resolutions. Maybe Beijing will cut a deal if Sun gets convicted, or offer a swap. This doesn’t appear to be going well for Sun, or for Hochul, at this point.
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Alleged China mole Linda Sun’s lavish life in $3.6M LI mansion with Birkin bag, Patek Philippe watch and Ferrari revealed during bombshell trial https://trib.al/40rxnLr
— New York Post (@nypost) Nov 17, 2025
Ed: Jeez … does no one respect tradecraft anymore? You’d expect a communist spy to be a little less into conspicuous consumption.
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Don Surber: Power Liner John Hinderaker said, “The point is that Epstein hated Donald Trump, probably because Trump had told him, years before, never to darken the door of Mar-a-Lago again. So the Democrats’ glee over the 20,000 emails comes down to this: Epstein had no relationship with President Trump, and hated him.”
The dopes were roped.
Once you know that, you can enjoy AP’s report late Friday, “At Trump’s urging, Bondi says U.S. will investigate Epstein’s ties to Clinton and other political foes.”
No one is above the law unless his name isn’t Donald Trump.
The story said, “Acceding to President Donald Trump’s demands, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday that she has ordered a top federal prosecutor to investigate sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Trump political foes, including former President Bill Clinton.”
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Question: Why should Americans trust you and House Democrats when Plaskett was texting Epstein during a hearing? Jeffries: *changes subject and waves hands around*
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) Nov 16, 2025
Ed: Small wonder Jeffries won’t address the subject. I wrote about Plaskett earlier today.
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Fox News: Conservatives are targeting a member of the House Democratic Caucus over her alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., introduced a resolution to censure Del. Stacey Plaskett, D-V.I., the Virgin Islands’ nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives on Tuesday. …
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., foreshadowed the resolution in comments to reporters earlier on Tuesday.
“I think she needs to be censured by the House and removed from the [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] for colluding with a convicted felon during a congressional hearing. That does not reflect well on the House of Representatives,” Harris said.
Ed: Supposedly, Democrats are going to whip against the resolution and try to kill it procedurally. That will certainly drench them in hypocrisy. What did they expect when they demanded the exposure of the Epstein files — no accountability for those connected to him?
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RE: Ragebait Look, people need to understand how this works. So I’m going to show you under the skirt. The below screen shot shows my last few X payouts. Full transparency. I don’t do this for a living, I have an actual full-time job that is not X, I never ragebait, I never engagement farm and I always just shoot straight with what I think is happening. I know ~250,000 followers sounds like a lot, but it’s really not. Not when you consider how many accounts have millions of followers. Now look at what they pay me and multiply that exponentially for the really big accounts who, BTW, are also raking in dough on YouTube, podcasts, TikTok, etc. So next time you get fed some theory about “I know who really killed Charlie Kirk” or “Trump is an Epstein pedo” or, really, anything else that is fringe and conspiratorialist and inflammatory, realize that those people really don’t care about you or the truth. They only care about the money. You have been warned. This is my public service message for the day.
— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) Nov 16, 2025
Ed: Yes, this is good reminder that there are financial incentives in play for trolling and ragebait.
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Politico: The Trump administration is implementing its widely telegraphed plan to shutter the Education Department by transferring critical responsibilities to other federal agencies.
Six department offices will be affected by plans to move operations to four separate agencies, according to a department official and two people familiar with the discussions who were granted anonymity to discuss the details.
Ed: Trump and McMahon can do some of this on their own, but they will have to get Congress to act in order to close down the department altogether. One source told Politico that this is more of a “proof of concept” to provide guidance for Congress to develop the necessary legislation. We’ll see how far that goes, but don’t expect the House to act in an election year. The time to do this was in 2025.
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“We have an entire faith that is being erased. One bullet at a time, one torched Bible at a time.” Thank you,@USAmbUN @NICKIMINAJ and others for raising awareness and taking action to stop the genocide of Christians in Nigeria.
— Tony Perkins (@tperkins) Nov 17, 2025
Ed: I’m glad to see Minaj stick to her guns on this issue. She began taking a lot of flak from her peers in the entertainment industry for supposedly siding with Trump. Minaj is siding with the victims of genocide. This is not about grubby partisan politics in the US, but the survival of millions of people in Nigeria and elsewhere.
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Evan Barker at The Free Press: My close friends blame me for everything that Donald Trump does.
One year ago I, a lifelong Democrat, wrote in The Free Press that I had just voted for Trump. I realized that my party had turned its back on working-class families like my own—in favor of identity politics, free trade, and open borders.
Many people warned me about publishing the essay. They told me the reaction would be brutal, and they were right. Strangers on the internet relentlessly harassed me. Death threats flooded my inboxes. People accused me of being a Russian asset.
Ed: This is well worth a full read. Barker has a new book coming out next year about the epiphany she experienced after the Kamala Harris switcheroo in the summer of 2024. It’s titled Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative, and it’s available for pre-order. Hopefully, I will get a chance to interview her for the Hot Air audience at some point.
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Wait so Hakeem Jeffries invited Epstein to a dinner to solicit money from him in 2013, AFTER Epstein was convicted for procuring a child for prostitution???
— Libs of TikTok (@LibsofTikTok) Nov 17, 2025
Ed: No wonder “Brooklyn’s Barack” is hemming and hawing now.
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Daily Wire: Texas will appeal a federal court ruling that blocked the state’s new congressional map, which would give Republicans an additional five seats.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown ruled Tuesday that Texas’s new map was likely unconstitutional, saying it should instead use its 2021 maps.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Tuesday that the maps were redrawn “to better reflect Texas’ conservative voting preferences — and for no other reason,” slamming the court’s “discriminatory” claims against the map as “absurd and unsupported by testimony offered during ten days of hearings.”
Ed: We’ll see if the Supreme Court wants to take up this can of worms. I suspect they will, as at least four justices seem pretty invested in undoing the special provisions of the Voting Rights Act.
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The reason @LHSummers Epstein story came and went is simply because he is a Democrat Icon and it counters the “Trump/Epstein” hoax the media and D’s are desperate to promote. @Harvard
— JohnOndrasik (@JohnOndrasik) Nov 17, 2025
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Everybody mocked Pence for never being around a woman who isn’t his wife by himself but here we see it was clearly this very policy that kept him from becoming just another notch on Olivia’s bedpost
— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) Nov 17, 2025
Ed: I never understood the scorn heaped on Pence for his policy of not meeting with women alone (important qualifier). He kept firm boundaries out of respect for his wife, not to burden other women. I don’t think Pence would have been seduced by Nuzzi, and I reject the idea that Nuzzi seduced RFK Jr either; Kennedy made his choices and is responsible for them. However, it still serves as an example of how boundaries and respect work to make everyone happier, or at least happier than they may be otherwise.
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