It’s so friggin hot/humid in South Florida – almost every overnight low has been a record high this month – the candy is gonna melt.

People I know in Chicago and Wisconsin are costuming in snow suits this year.

And most of California is pre-occupied with a real scary situation.

Trump or Treat.

Van Drew didn’t even sign on to support impeachment. (I checked last night, after reading some of his remarks.) He really should be primaried.

I want to post a remembrance for sports (and more) site deadspin.com, which has essentially been killed by the private equity group that bought it.

Jim Spanfeller, the owner, and manager Paul Maidment tried to pull of a classic private equity move when they bought Deadspin and sister sites, including Gizmodo and The Onion from Univision. They cut staff and tried to drive up revenue, clearly with the goal of sellling it for a profit.

But Spanfeller and Maidment were incompetent and too arrogant to listen to anyone else. They abruptly shut down the politics-focused site Splinter months before 2020, and issued an edict that Deadspin had to only cover sports.

What’s more, they signed a contract to carry awful autoplay ads, based on impossible to meet viewer targets, The Wall St Journal has detailed how the deal was a scam, and the ad sponsor has cancelled the deal, leaving Spanfeller and Maidment with a huge drop in readership with no revenue to show for it.

Deadspin had always covered all kinds of things in addition to sports — food, child rearing, poop jokes, dogs, and politics, usually from a liberal point of view. When the staff refused to follow the edict, the top editor was fired. Almost every writer has now quit.

Deadspin, Splinter, Gizmodo and of course The Onion had been profitable and heavily trafficked before Spanfeller bought them. But his hatred of liberal politics and his inept management drove, or is driving, them into the ground. It is an astonishingly inept, tragic story of awful incompetents run amok, shooting everyone including themselves, in the foot, back, and other body parts.

Trump has gone all in with the seasonal flavor: punkin’ spies

Apparently Trmp has filed the paperwork to make his official residence (for voting and taxes) Mar-al-Ego. It’s probably because Florida doesn’t have state income taxes – but I wonder if he thinks it will make it easier to get Ivanka into the VP slot next year?
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/10/31/1896422/-Trump-is-not-smart-enough-to-commit-crimes-now-declares-himself-Florida-Man

We had quite a time, didn’t we, writing to our assorted U.S. Representatives to nudge them toward opening the impeachment process? And maybe all our letters and phone calls made a difference. Well, here is a new idea to pass along, this time to your U.S. Senators. It won’t ever really come to pass, but it should become part of the national (and congressional) conversation. The bottom line is that Moscow Mitch’s ads promising to stop the impeachment process/prevent the President’s conviction mean, literally, that he is unfit to serve on the Senatorial “jury” for the trial. We should be raising hell about this. Before hearing any evidence, he has decided the case – not kosher. For what it’s worth, following is the text of the letter I sent to my Senators yesterday.

Dear Senator X,
I am writing with regard to the trial of President Trump in the Senate which is likely to take place early next year, assuming the House of Representatives continues in its present course. Naturally this is a juncture of historic importance.
My specific concern is not with the guilt or innocence of the President. I have an opinion on the matter, but in the end it is a matter for the Senate to decide, as you will be the jurors weighing the evidence and rendering a verdict. Naturally, this means that each and every U.S. Senator should be willing to carry out this momentous responsibility.
My concern is with the fact (and I use the word “fact” advisedly) that one of your number has made it clear that he will not do so – that he will, indeed, do everything he can to prevent conviction irrespective of the evidence. This has been made clear not only in conversations with journalists (where a person may misspeak) but in carefully produced campaign-related advertisements. I refer, of course, to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
As you are well aware, during the ordinary process of voir dire jurors will be disqualified for cause if they exhibit a strong bias for or against a defendant, much as a judge will recuse him- or herself from a case in which judicial objectivity is impossible. It seems clear that Mr. McConnell should not be allowed to vote with his peers on the matter of the President’s guilt or innocence.
I am aware that there is no established process by which a Senator may be excluded from this process, and that the Senator in question commands considerable power and respect. But the question of his ability to judge should be raised publicly and often, unless and until he agrees to recuse himself – as Senators serving on committees often do when they have a conflict of interest with regard to a particular matter.
Thank you for your consideration of this admittedly unusual and perhaps provocative request.
Sincerely,

Sorry about that, too many conversations with my nutty family.
How about a peace offering…
The Intelligence Community has a different set of rules than what is covered by most federal laws, (which as you pointed out are mainly concerned with protection from retaliation and job loss.)
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/R45345.pdf
10 Section 7(b) of the Inspector General Act of 1978 (5 U.S.C. App.) provides for the identity of an employee making a complaint, such as a whistleblower, to remain undisclosed to the extent practicable:
The Inspector General shall not, after receipt of a complaint or information from an employee,
disclose the identity of the employee without the consent of the employee, unless the Inspector General determines such disclosure is unavoidable during the course of the investigation.

As for spies in the white house, I always assumed the people that gathered the intelligence that keeps our country safe already walk among us, even more so at high risk locations.
I don’t know if I am correct but to me it’s reasonable to believe that there is a (legal) protocol that could put an asset in the white house.
Just like all the other allegations the save the Trump team are making about this whistle blower (and others) claiming he is a spy can’t be processed logically; why would someone who’s job is to collect information, write reports and move on to the next assignment stand up and throw themselves smack in the middle of a legal and political battle?