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Good evening, everyone! It has turned off quite cold here and we even have snow! Let’s bask in the comfort of the Shade for a bit. 💙
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I was really pulling for an Aftyn Behn win in TN-07, but there is no doubt she overperformed significantly. This continues our good news, and the trends can’t be ignored. Still, I will never understand how anyone could have voted for the guy who campaigned on taking away their health insurance. Sometimes, you can’t fix stupid, no matter how hard you try.
This is satisfying:
Republican and Democratic super PACs flooded the airwaves in the home stretch, with GOP groups outspending Democratic ones $3.1 million to $2.3 million.
Let that sink in. In a district the felon won by 22 points a year ago, Rs are spending more than Ds to hold it.
🎩 to Seraph4377 from a comment in last night’s Shade:
How votes compare with Trump vs. Harris
The map below shows how votes cast in the Seventh District compare with votes cast in the 2024 presidential election in the same area. Only areas that have reported almost all of their votes are shown.
How votes compare with 2024
| County |
Margin |
Shift from 2024 presidentialShift from 2024 pres. |
Votes |
Percent of votes in% In
|
| Montgomery |
Van Epps +8 |
10 pts.10 points more Democratic |
43,111 |
>95% |
| Davidson |
Behn +56 |
20 pts.20 points more Democratic |
42,396 |
>95% |
| Williamson |
Van Epps +23 |
7.1 pts.7.1 points more Democratic |
27,693 |
>95% |
| Robertson |
Van Epps +43 |
7.5 pts.7.5 points more Democratic |
17,740 |
>95% |
| Dickson |
Van Epps +41 |
11 pts.11 points more Democratic |
13,111 |
>95% |
| Cheatham |
Van Epps +34 |
12 pts.12 points more Democratic |
11,944 |
>95% |
| Hickman |
Van Epps +53 |
7.8 pts.7.8 points more Democratic |
5,110 |
>95% |
| Humphreys |
Van Epps +44 |
12 pts.12 points more Democratic |
4,247 |
>95% |
| Wayne |
Van Epps +70 |
6.9 pts.6.9 points more Democratic |
2,849 |
>95% |
| Decatur |
Van Epps +60 |
9.3 pts.9.3 points more Democratic |
2,483 |
>95% |
| Benton |
Van Epps +56 |
8.8 pts.8.8 points more Democratic |
2,228 |
>95% |
| Houston |
Van Epps +47 |
12 pts.12 points more Democratic |
1,935 |
>95% |
| Perry |
Van Epps +55 |
15 pts.15 points more Democratic |
1,660 |
>95% |
| – Show fewer |
|
Note: Tennessee’s Seventh District encompasses partial areas of Benton, Davidson and Williamson counties. For these areas, The New York Times produced estimates of the 2024 presidential election results using precinct-level data.
|
Behn is a great candidate. I hope we see more of her.
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We won in GA last night!
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People are finally understanding that “the epstein class” is ruining everything and they are furious about it.
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While millions of families struggle to put food on the table Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos & Mark Zuckerberg own more wealth than the bottom HALF of Americans.
That’s what oligarchy is about. That’s what a rigged economy is about.
Is it any wonder that people in this country are angry?
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— Senator Bernie Sanders (@sanders.senate.gov) December 3, 2025 at 3:51 PM
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This is a good start.
From the flutter…
Starbucks will pay about $35 million to more than 15,000 workers in what officials are calling the largest worker protection settlement in New York City history — after the company allegedly denied thousands of workers stable schedules and cut their hours arbitrarily.
The agreement, announced Monday, could mean thousands of dollars for many Starbucks employees, with checks coming in the mail this winter. It calls for most hourly workers employed by the company in New York City from July 2021 through early July 2024 to get $50 for each week worked. An employee who worked for a year and a half during that period would get $3,900, according to a city announcement. ✂️
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You think the felon can go no lower and then comes word the so-called peace plan is just another grift. Omg. This man is going to hell if ever anyone did. Who even thinks like this?
This is from the daily Dworkin Report, so if you’d like to click the link there are several other news snippets there.
Senator Mark Kelly Doubles Down On Warning Troops Against Illegal Orders, As Veterans In Congress Launch Bipartisan Probes Into Hegseth For War Crimes, and The Regime’s Ukraine “Peace Deal” Grift Exposed
The Wall Street Journal published a blistering report, titled: “Make Money Not War: Trump’s Real Plan for Peace in Ukraine.” In it, they reveal that the Trump regime is using the guise of these “peace talks” to conduct personal business.
The article reveals that this has never been about making peace—it’s about how Trump can grift off of war and the suffering of millions of people.
According to the WSJ, national security officials across Europe were even given a report containing “details of the commercial and economic plans the Trump administration had been pursuing with Russia, including jointly mining rare earths in the Arctic.” This is absolutely criminal.
Heather Cox Richardson highlighted the same story with more details. I’ll put the link here:
November 30, 2025 - Letters from an American
On Friday evening, the Wall Street Journal published an article about the Trump administration’s negotiations with Russia over Ukraine that illuminated the administration’s approach to the world at home, as well as overseas. Authors Drew Hinshaw, Benoit Faucon, Rebecca Ballhaus, Thomas Grove, and Joe Parkinson explained that the administration’s plan for peace was a Russian-led blueprint for joint U.S.-Russia economic cooperation that would funnel contracts for rebuilding Ukraine, extracting the valuable minerals in the Arctic, and even space exploration to a few favored U.S. and Russian businessmen.
Many of those business leaders have close ties to the White House.
“Russia has so many vast resources, vast expanses of land,” Trump envoy Steve Witkoff told the journalists. “If we do all that, and everybody’s prospering and they’re all a part of it, and there’s upside for everybody, that’s going to naturally be a bulwark against future conflicts there. Because everybody’s thriving.”
On ABC’s This Week this morning, Representative Don Bacon (R-NE), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, said to host Jonathan Karl: “Putin’s the invader, he’s the dictator, he’s murdered all his opponents. But I just don’t see that moral clarity coming from the White House. We saw that Wall Street Journal article yesterday that many people around the president are hoping to make billions of dollars—these are all billionaires in their own right—from…Russia, if they get a favorable agreement with Ukraine. That alarms me tremendously. I want to see America being the leader of the free world, standing up for what’s right, not for who can make a buck…. I don’t want to see a foreign policy based on greed. I want to see it based on doing the right thing.”
There is far more at stake here than morality, although that is clearly on the table.
The Trump administration is replacing American democracy with a kleptocracy, a system of corruption in which a network of ruling elites use the institutions of government to steal public assets for their own private gain. It permits virtually unlimited theft while the head of state provides cover for his cronies through pardons and the uneven application of the law.
It is the system Russia’s president Vladimir Putin exploits in Russia, and President Donald J. Trump is working to establish it in the United States of America. ✂️
As always, she does a fantastic job distilling the day’s news into a thorough summary.
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More grifting.
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Right before Thanksgiving, Trump secretly commuted the sentence of David Gentile—a Ponzi schemer who stole over $1 billion from his clients—freeing him from prison after just *12 days.* This is another grotesque abuse of the pardon power that should outrage all Americans. youtube.com/shorts/xXNA1...
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— Liz Oyer (@lawyeroyer.com) December 1, 2025 at 10:40 AM
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They keep sinking lower and lower. Someday, our national nightmare will be over and we will rejoice. Honestly, as bad as this is, I wonder if we had to experience it in order for the masses to wake up and decide to take back our democracy. Like Al Gore said, in An Inconvenient Truth, frogs will be boiled to death by sitting in water that is slowly heating up. We have been slowly robbed of our rights and freedoms over the past 45 years and now that this regime is acting with reckless abandon, we are deciding to jump from the boiling pot. It’s about time!
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Devastating. Trump admin selling off historic public art to the highest bidder. "It is a tragic irony that murals meant to represent the contract between the government and its citizens would be sold to the highest bidder rather than preserved for posterity." www.alternet.org/trump-destro...
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— 🟧 🟦Laurie Hosken, PHR, SHRM-CP (@lauriehosken.bsky.social) December 2, 2025 at 12:39 AM
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Not much would please me more than for scummy steve bannon to spend the rest of his life behind bars. This next article is eye-opening, to say the least. We all know he’s a creep, but good grief.
Steve Bannon Was Epstein’s Comeback Consultant. Where’s the Uproar?
✂️
While sometimes casting doubt on the QAnon conspiracy, at other times he fed the flames. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was a frequent guest on his podcast; she could be counted on to denounce the Democrats as the “party of pedophiles.” At the height of the 2020 election, Bannon acknowledged that he had sometimes laughed at QAnon, but then pivoted: “The elephant in the room is, people say they’re crazy, I’m just leaving that—put a pin in it. But when they look at the facts of this, how are they not, at least an aspect of their argument, at least appears directionally to be correct.” So while privately telling Epstein that the stories about his pedophilia were a “sophisticated op,” he was encouraging the public to believe that child abuse conspiracies were “directionally . . . correct.”
And earlier this year, addressing Turning Point USA, Bannon offered that “Epstein is a key that picks the lock on so many things. . . . Not just individuals, but also institutions. Intelligence institutions, foreign governments, and who was working with him on our intelligence apparatus and in our government.”
Well. The released emails show that one of those who was working most closely with Epstein, up to and including attempting to scrub his public image, was Bannon himself. Whatever else Larry Summers may be, he is not one of the principal authors of the MAGA movement who stoked conspiracies about the “deep state” and gave oxygen to the most unhinged beliefs in circulation. Summers’s involvement has been treated as the highest-profile revelation. But it’s not even close: Steve Bannon, the man millions of MAGA fans trust to tell it like it is, stands revealed as one of the most cynical liars ever to mar this country. ✂️
The whole article is worth a read.
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When logic meets the war criminals…
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It's wild but not surprising that last week the White House was leaning into "these seditious Democrats dared suggest that troops were receiving illegal orders!!!" and this week they are scrambling to figure out who to blame for issuing illegal orders.
— Philip Bump (@pbump.com) December 2, 2025 at 11:00 PM
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I debated putting this in, but how can any decent person watch this and not be overwhelmed with disgust that there are people out there who think this way? And she’s saying it out loud and with witnesses!
😬
You know who I’d like to see suffer? Sheesh.
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Every one of these people associated with this regime needs to be held accountable for the crimes they are committing daily. LOCK THEM UP!!!
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1. Jared Kushner's trip to Moscow yesterday was not just unethical; it was illegal.
You cannot accept tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments and simultaneously conduct high-level diplomacy for the federal government.
It says it right in the Constitution.
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— Judd Legum (@juddlegum.bsky.social) December 3, 2025 at 8:45 AM
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MORE Breaking on MS NOW: Pete Hegseth refused an interview request for the Pentagon Inspector General's investigation into Signalgate, according to two sources who read and were briefed on report.
Hegseth would not turn over his phone, a source who read the report told MS NOW.
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— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1.bsky.social) December 3, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Can you imagine the investigations into all of these cabinet members? It will take YEARS to unravel the mess they will leave behind.
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Apologies for all the flutters, but there’s so much breaking this afternoon!
I hope they can find just 4 Rs with spines. I’m not holding my breath.
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Marc Elias is on it! If you live in a blue state, call or write your reps and demand this! We have to be ready for all the shenanigans the desperate Rs will throw at us.
The article offered examples I had never considered. We absolutely MUST prioritize Voting Rights when we get majorities in both Houses and a competent Democratic president in the White House.
Seven Voting Laws Every Blue State Should Enact Right Now
The fight of our generation is the struggle to protect our democracy. Each day brings more news about how Donald Trump and the GOP are rigging maps, enacting new voter suppression laws, and preparing to subvert honest election results.
Understandably, people focus on what the Trump administration and red states are doing to undermine free and fair elections. While the voting laws and rules in red states can pose serious challenges to voters, we cannot fail to look at the entire picture.
Many states controlled by Democrats also have barriers to voting and insufficient protections against bad actors at the local level. Rather than play defense, these states should embrace reforms that will enfranchise voters and provide strong safeguards against election deniers.
I am often asked what laws I would recommend blue states adopt. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach, there are seven changes every state could adopt right now, for virtually no cost or administrative burden.
At the link, he lists 7 things Democratic states must do to protect voters and voting. There is also a video and he gives us a bonus # 8. I enjoyed listening to him while I did other things. If anyone is interested, here is that video:
It runs 39 minutes.
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The outrage over this is gaining momentum and I’m here for it. The thing is, the felon is doubling down on his cabinet lackeys, like a spoiled child who refuses to admit he did wrong.
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DebtorsPrison’s latest is here:
Nonfiction Views: Franklin the Turtle vs Hegseth, plus the week's notable new nonfiction
I’m thrilled to see pushback from Franklin’s publisher who is based in Canada. As always, thank you for publishing these, DP!
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chloris creator has a new diary up!
News the felon and GOP don't want us to see! Dec 3, 2025 edition, with poll
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Today is
The International Day of People With Disabilities is an annual occasion designated to join together to support people with disability in our communities, and raise awareness of the importance of creating a future where people with disabilities experience equal opportunity and face no barriers in all aspects of their lives— whether it be going about their day-to-day lives with adequate accessibility in their communities, joining the workforce, or being able to showcase their abilities and reach their goals without facing barriers.
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December 3rd, is the International Day of the Basque Language, also known as Euskara Eguna! It's a fantastic opportunity to celebrate one of Europe's oldest and most mysterious languages.
If you've never heard of Basque, you're in for a treat. This day is dedicated to recognizing the resilience, uniqueness, and vibrant culture surrounding the Basque language, which is spoken in the Basque Country, a region spanning parts of northern Spain and southwestern France.
While most European languages belong to the Indo-European family (think English, Spanish, French, German), Euskara stands completely alone. Linguists have been puzzled by its origins for centuries, and its ancient roots are thought to predate the arrival of Indo-European languages in Europe. This makes it a living relic, a window into a past that has otherwise vanished.
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On December 3rd each year, this is a day to create awareness about homelessness in the USA. As winter starts to bite, this marks the start of the worst time to be without a home, and each night spent outside creates significant health risks.
Homelessness is a significant issue in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), on a single night in January 2021, there were an estimated 567,715 people experiencing homelessness.
Homelessness affects people of all ages, races, and backgrounds, but some populations are particularly vulnerable, including veterans, people with disabilities, families with children, and individuals who have experienced domestic violence or trauma. The problem is complex and multifaceted, and addressing it requires a coordinated effort from government agencies, non-profits, and the private sector.
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I have the perfect small gift idea for anyone wanting to add a personal touch to a package or to use as a gift in itself. I always welcome ornaments for the tree, and this is a really fun project. I’ve made at least a dozen of these with different color hats and scarves.
😊
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According to Nanny in last night’s Shade, today is Let’s Hug Day and National Green Bean Casserole Day! I did not have those on my calendar, but I’m more than happy to highlight them here!!! I don’t make green bean casserole, but I love green beans. 💚 And I’m very willing to participate in Let’s Hug Day!!! 🥰
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I love cookies!
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Welcome to the comments, Shady people! 😎
