Donald Trump has called Barack Obama "not a smart guy" as he himself smarts at the former president's pinpoint mockery of his White House decor. Obama, 65, joked about the 80-year-old president's obsession with gaudy renovations during a campaign stop in Cleveland on the weekend. "What's up with the gold?" Obama asked. "He's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory, just gold everywhere." Read more
The U.S. national debt reached 100% of gross domestic product for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, hitting the triple-digit mark for the first time since 1946.
The New York Times article describes Trump's private dining room, which is located just off the Oval Office at the White House, where he watches television and makes phone calls. The publication says most of the space in the dining room is taken up by "printed-out news articles and documents," presumably Harp's handiwork. It goes on to reveal that an area of the room has been allotted to Harp and that she now uses the space to work when she is "not seated behind the president at his desk."
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's alleged girlfriend, Tracy Duhon, a religious influencer from Louisiana, has largely been kept from public view during his campaign for U.S. Senate. Until recently, the primary public glimpses of the pair came as they jetted off on vacation to Europe and appeared celebrating New Year's Eve with U.S. fugitives in Dubai. However, a Tuesday report by the New York Times reveals more details about the couple, including Duhon's registration as a Democrat in her home state of Louisiana. Unlike in Texas, voters register by party in the Pelican State.
Republican state Sen. Terry Williams of Rutland pleaded not guilty to a domestic assault charge Wednesday. In a packed courtroom, family watched on as Williams, 74, faced a judge, charged with one count of domestic assault. According to court documents, Williams hit his adult daughter in the face during an argument at his home in Poultney on Monday night. She has been living there with him since July. The victim told police Williams said, "I should have punched you 40 years ago," and then hit her with an open fist. Her face was scratched.
Flvio Bolsonaro declared himself the "true president" of Brazil after losing last Sunday's presidential election and fleeing to the United States. After landing on a private jet with his family in Miami, Florida, on Wednesday morning, the far-right senator published the claim in a letter " even though his own party has recognised the legitimate victory of Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, as have all of Brazil's institutions, and international observers who monitored and endorsed the vote. Brazil's three main newspapers " Folha de S.Paulo, O Globo and O Estado de S.Paulo " all described Bolsonaro's declaration as "coup-mongering".
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has pushed out the Pentagon's top planning officer as President Donald Trump weighs new strikes against Iran, a source familiar with the situation tells CNN. Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia, who held the role of director for strategy, plans and policy, also known as J5, for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is abruptly leaving the position, a spokesman for Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine confirmed. Read more
James O'Keefe, founder of the far-right Project Veritas and a mouthpiece for Trump's election hoax nonsense, has been charged alongside conservative influencer Cam Higby for two felony counts: unlawful voting and identity theft.
President Donald Trump's administration is quietly weighing a fresh concession to Moscow, one the Kremlin has pushed hard behind closed doors.
During this Sunday's NYC Marathon kicking off at 0940 HRS, WQXR-FM will play all nine of Beethoven's symphonies. Thanks to Senile Satan who cut federal funding for public broadcasting, WQXR-FM is now completely reliant on donors to survive. For those of us on budgets and don't want to spend money on SiriusXM, Spotify, premium packages on YouTube, cable TV, or Apple Music, WQXR-FM plays classical music 24/7 commercial free. Their curators, such as Lauren Rico (formerly at SiriusXM), do an excellent job. Preference of conductors for 1 Nov: Beethoven's Third: Arturo Toscanini; the Sixth: Aaron Copland or Leonard Bernstein; the Seventh: Kent Nagano or Seiji Ozawa; and of course for the Ninth, Herbert von Karajan.
One of the NYC marathon runners
Elon Musk is a "real genius", Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday after revealing the two are in "close" contact about satellite technology. The remarks came during the Russia-Africa Summit in Moscow, during which Putin discussed Russia's own satellite internet project Rassvet, which provides internet connections to people from satellites. Read more
The 50-page report, released Monday, contains testimony from 11 women who either accuse Trump of rape or sexual assault or say that they had been offered to Trump for sex by Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell, with most cases happening in the 1990s. Read more
Fortune
Pentagon orders bases to plan for 90 days without the grid as Britain urges families to stockpile food and water
October 26, 2026
The Pentagon wants every major U.S. military base to run for 90 days without outside help if a war cuts off power and supply chains. Across the Atlantic, Britain is telling families to keep canned food, bottled water, and cash on hand to get through three days of disruption.
The two efforts aren't known to be coordinated, and neither government has said a new war is imminent. But both are planning for disruptions that could leave homes and military installations without the services they depend on.
"The most striking aspect of discrete time liquids, both quantum and classical, is the idea that a discrete time crystal with a finite density of topological time defects can restore time-translation symmetry on average," write physicists led by Zuo Wang and Marios H. Michael of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Germany. Read more
The Securities and Exchange Commissions publication on Monday of Anthropic's S-1 form -- ahead of a heavily anticipated initial public offering -- has led to plenty of discussion of whether the company's quickly ballooning revenues will be able to overcome its even higher costs. ... After wading through Anthropic's book-length treatise on its greatest risks, we've narrowed the list to the seven most surprising, interesting, or thought-provoking potential problems. Consider this a far-from-comprehensive look at what potential Anthropic investors should keep in mind.
The morning after Donald Trump won re-election, investors fled renewable energy with remarkable speed. Solar stocks fell sharply, and so did those of wind developers. The conclusion seemed obvious enough. A president who derides wind turbines as cancer-causing, stalls the nation's first offshore wind permit and denies the urgency of climate change would surely become the industry's greatest obstacle. Yet markets sometimes focus on the headline without understanding the underlying story. This may prove to be one of those moments. Read more
