Well, I wanted Gillum and Abrams to win, and that Georgia election was filthy and I hope the NAACP sues the state. And of course I wanted the Republicans to lose the Senate but I knew it wasn’t at all likely. States like Wyoming with fewer people than Seattle (and 30 other US cities) have as many senators as California with its 30 million; we have no business calling ourselves a democracy.

But don’t worry! There’s always chocolate!

To all my American friends: I hope you get the outcome you're hoping for today! But if not, remember that there are many things in life that are better than politics, such as art, beauty, nature, music, sex, food, exercise, friends, lovers, your kids, your connection with others.

— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) November 6, 2018

But good luck enjoying them if you have a chronic or life-threatening illness and can’t get health care, or if you’re accidentally pregnant and don’t want and can’t afford a baby but can’t get an abortion, or if you’re a recent immigrant and terrified Trump will change the rules such that you’ll be kicked out any moment, or if you were never even able to vote yesterday because the wait was 4.5 hours and your boss would fire you if you were away from work that long, or if the nature in your area burned to the ground last summer…and so on.

Yes, there are lots of good things in life that are not directly politics, but the freedom and health and flourishing needed to benefit from them are all rooted in political decisions. It’s wildly fatuous to think all those things just flow from the sky while we happily embrace them, while politics happens somewhere else with no connection to you and your kids and your friends. The point of politics isn’t how “good” it is, as in a tasting menu – the point isn’t aesthetic enjoyment. The point is that it sets the terms for how we live. It can set them such that a happy few get to revel in luxury in some Downton Abbey in the sky while everyone else slaves to support them, or it can set them more equitably. Claire Lehmann can eat all the brioche she wants but it won’t change that fact.

Fox News is shocked, shocked, at the way some of its “reporters” are out campaigning for Trump while posing as “reporters.”

On Tuesday, Fox News publicly rebuked Hannity and Pirro for appearing with Trump. “FOX News does not condone any talent participating in campaign events,” the network said in a statement to CNBC. “We have an extraordinary team of journalists helming our coverage tonight and we are extremely proud of their work. This was an unfortunate distraction and has been addressed.” Fox did not say, however, what actions it had taken to address the issue with two of its biggest prime time stars.

Let me guess. A mid-level executive told them, “Now Sean and Jeanine, don’t ever do that again” – and then all three had a damn good laugh.

In addition to the statement from Fox, Hannity said Tuesday that when he pointed at the pool of reporters and called them “fake news” at the rally, he did not mean the Fox News reporters who were among them.

We know. That is not, in fact, the issue.

Sure enough. Several of you mentioned a drone in the Shermer’s ursine childrearing advice post, which was news to me, but y’all were right. Ed Yong at the Atlantic:

The video was uploaded to the ViralHog YouTube channel on Friday, and after being shared on Twitter, it rapidly went viral. At the time of this writing, it has been watched 17 million times. The cub’s exploits were equal parts gif, nature documentary, and motivational poster. It had all the elements of an incredible story: the most adorable of protagonists, rising and falling action (literally), and a happy ending. It was a tale of tenacity in the face of adversity, triumph against the odds.

And a morality tale on the benefits of a sink or swim approach to childrearing as opposed to the horrors of not letting toddlers fall down steep mountainsides.

But when biologists started watching the video, they saw a very different story.

The video, they say, was clearly captured by a drone. And in it, they saw the work of an irresponsible drone operator who, in trying to film the bears, drove them into a dangerous situation that almost cost the cub its life. “I found it really hard to watch,” says Sophie Gilbert, an ecologist at the University of Idaho who studies, among other things, how drones affect wildlife. “It showed a pretty stark lack of understanding from the drone operator of the effects that his actions were having on the bears.” (It wasn’t just scientists, either; several drone pilots were also dismayed by the footage.)

The only information accompanying the video says that it was captured on June 19, 2018, in the Magadan region of Russia. No one knows who shot it, which drone was used, or how close it flew. But “it doesn’t matter how far away it was, because I can tell from the bears’ behavior that it was too close,” says Clayton Lamb of the University of Alberta, who studies grizzly bears in the Canadian Rockies and uses drones to map the area where they live.

The setting of the video is already suspicious, Lamb says. With a cub that small and vulnerable, it’s very unlikely that a mother bear would opt to traverse such a steep and slippery slope. “There’s no reason a female would normally accept that risk, unless they were forced into it,” Lamb says. Throughout the video, he notes, the mother is constantly looking up at the drone and clearly bothered by its presence. At some point, the footage zooms in, probably because the drone itself was swooping closer. That, Lamb says, explains why the mother unexpectedly swats at the cub, causing it to fall. She probably read the drone’s approach as a kind of attack and was trying to push her cub away.

But it’s ok, the drone pilot was doing the bears a favor, giving the cub a chance to toughen up and not look for handouts.

Wait just a damn minute here.

https://twitter.com/MunroeBergdorf/status/1057279031555641345

ON US? Why? How? Says who? Why is it more on us than it is on American White Men?

Oh well I know why, really. It’s because so many people just cannot give up the fun of hating on women, no matter how thin the pretext.

Mind you there was a follow-up to deal with potential objections.

https://twitter.com/MunroeBergdorf/status/1057290093524856832

But benefiting from systemic racism is not the same thing as voting for Trump. Yes of course I benefit from systemic racism, but I don’t benefit from systemic sexism. Why is Munroe Bergdorf yelling at white women instead of white men? I can’t help thinking it’s for the reason above: Munroe Bergdorf hates women and likes to seize chances to yell at us.

Fox News is out campaigning with Donald “President” Trump.

Monday morning Sean Hannity, Fox News’ most-popular personality, tweeted that, despite what you may have heard, he was not going to campaign with President Donald Trump.

“In spite of reports, I will be doing a live show from Cape Girardeau and interviewing President Trump before the rally. To be clear, I will not be on stage campaigning with the President. I am covering final rally for my show. Something I have done in every election in the past.”

Fast-forward to Monday night. And there, standing onstage with Trump in Cape Girardeau, was Hannity, campaigning with the president. Trump called him up during the rally (the interview took place beforehand), and of course, Hannity obeyed.

Of course he did – to disobey would be treason.

Guess what he said when he got there.

“By the way,” he said, pointing to the back of the hall where reporters were gathered, “all those people in the back are fake news.”

Ahh that’s nice. Star of right-wing Fox News calls other reporters “fake news” just like the sack of wind next to him. Maybe once the election is over Trump can start arresting them all?

Jeanine Pirro, host of “Justice with Judge Jeanine” on Fox News, also appeared onstage, exhorting the crowd to vote Republican.

Meanwhile Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow were campaigning for Beto O’Rourke, right? No? They weren’t? Well that’s weird.

There’s also Michael Shermer telling us that the right way to raise a child is to toss her onto a steep mountainside buried in deep snow, use crampons to rush up to the top yourself, and then stand there and watch while she slides down the slope repeatedly. Anything else is pathetic leftist pampering that turns the child into a tragic weakling.

In this (happy ending) video a baby bear grows stronger from adversity. If this were modern America child protection services would be called, the mother arrested for child endangerment & the baby bear hauled off to a foster home. @FreeRangeKids @JonHaidt @glukianoff https://t.co/KYdBBVWcm3

— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) November 4, 2018

He’s hilarious. I’ve spent quite a lot of time watching primate mothers with their babies and I can let you in on a secret: they don’t toss their babies down and watch while they risk injury and death. (Ok sometimes a new mother will put her baby down briefly when she gets fed up. I once watched a first-time-mother gorilla do that at the zoo I worked at. The baby went staggering after mama, and when she got close mama got up and moved farther off. She did this three times and the fourth time she got up baby let out such a scream that mama hastily picked her up again.) (But please note this was in a zoo on a balmy afternoon, not a snowy mountainside in winter.) They use their arms and hands and fingers (also legs and feet and toes) to help the baby out, and the baby has the ability to grip mama’s fur. (You know how infants instinctively grab a finger? It’s that.) The mother bear didn’t help the cub because she had no way to help the cub. Bear cubs have a very high mortality rate. The mother bear wasn’t doing an awesome job of raising a self-reliant cub, she was doing what she had the tools to do, which was stand at the top of the slope and watch until the cub made it. There was only one cub. Maybe all the others fell down the slope to their deaths.

Plus, also…why yes, actually, if a human mother took a toddler out onto a mountainside and then raced to the top while the toddler struggled to follow and slid down the slope repeatedly, child protection services would indeed be called and the mother would indeed be arrested for child endangerment. Sick burn, Shermer!

Even for a libertarian he’s a jackass.

Free speech:

For years, Oprah Winfrey’s campaign rally appearances and political endorsements have posed a difficult question for anyone who happens to be advocating for the candidate on the other side: How do you contend with the star power of a billionaire Queen of All Media who is also one of the world’s most influential people?

For one robo-call producer speaking into a microphone in what we can only assume is a dark basement, the answer is clear: an 11th-hour infusion of good old-fashioned racism.

“This is the magical Negro Oprah Winfrey asking you to make my fellow Negress Stacey Abrams the governor of Georgia,” the robo-call begins, before spewing nearly 60 seconds of racism coupled with a dash of anti-Semitism. Georgians began hearing the call last week, according to the Hill.

Free speech free speech.

The insidious tone of the poor-audio call was at odds with Winfrey’s words on the campaign trail.

She and Abrams are both black women from Mississippi, and the media titan spoke of the sacrifices their ancestors had to make to obtain the right to vote.

“Make your voice heard on Nov. 6. We have this incredible opportunity to make history. We have our inalienable right, because the one place that all people are equal is at the polls,” she told voters.

“And I’m here today because of the men and because of the women who were lynched, who were humiliated, who were discriminated against, who were suppressed, who were repressed and oppressed, for the right of the equality of the polls. And I want you to know that their blood has seeped into my DNA, and I refuse to let their sacrifices be in vain.”

And on the other hand, more racism.

If the voice and the overtly racist tone on the robo-call sound familiar, it’s because it’s from the same studio that stuffed a “We Negroes” robo-call down the throats of Florida voters, who are deciding whether they want Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum to be the state’s first black governor.

“Well, hello there,” that call begins, as the sounds of drums and monkeys can be heard in the background, according to the New York Times. “I is Andrew Gillum.”

“We Negroes . . . done made mud huts while white folk waste a bunch of time making their home out of wood an’ stone.”

Free speech.

Really? How much effort does it take to figure out that Trump’s racist campaign ad is racist?

NBC said on Monday that it would no longer air an immigration-themed advertisement approved by President Trump that CNN had refused to run after deeming it “racist.”

“After further review we recognize the insensitive nature of the ad and have decided to cease airing it across our properties as soon as possible,” NBC Universal said in a statement.

After further review – come on. That might pass if the people who approved the ad were all newly arrived from a distant planet, but otherwise, no.

But then of course NBC is the network that landed us with this monster in the first place.

The 30-second prime-time ad, paid for by Donald J. Trump for President, aired in the middle of a highly anticipated “Sunday Night Football” broadcast, stirred fear of a migrant caravan making its way through Mexico that is still hundreds of miles from the United States border.

Football and racism. It’s too bad NBC didn’t manage to figure it out before airing it in the middle of a football game.

It was a shorter version of an ad that the president shared on Twitterlast week, which falsely claimed about Mr. Bracamontes that Democrats “let him into our country” and “let him stay.” CNN dedicated substantial editorial coverage to the longer ad, sometimes showing clips as anchors and chyrons declared it “racist.”

The 30-second version run by NBC did not include the false claim about Democrats, but it still drew a direct connection from immigrants to crime, a tactic the president has repeatedly used. (Many studies have shown immigrants do not drive an increase in crime.)

Inch by inch by inch. Genocidal regimes don’t form overnight; it takes years of prep work. We’re in the prep work phase, and it’s not the least bit clear that we’re going to reverse course.

Updating to add: even Fox has stopped running the ad (after several days and only hours before the election).

So no one is running an ad from the president because it was too racist? https://t.co/JyoNSE7SLd

— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) November 5, 2018

Voter intimidation straight from the president of the US.

Law Enforcement has been strongly notified to watch closely for any ILLEGAL VOTING which may take place in Tuesday’s Election (or Early Voting). Anyone caught will be subject to the Maximum Criminal Penalties allowed by law. Thank you!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 5, 2018

Erm, what?

One billboard outside St Louis, Missouri:

A billboard on Interstate 170 near St. Charles Rock Road is catching drivers’ attention.

A large electronic billboard that features President Donald Trump with the bible verse, “The word became flesh”, can be seen along the southbound lanes of the highway.

Yes but which word?

Aw yeah, we’re a model for governments around the world that like to kill their people if they get too protesty.

The Nigerian Army, part of a military criticized for rampant human rights abuses, on Friday used the words of President Trump to justify its fatal shootings of rock-throwing protesters.

Soldiers fired this Monday on a march of about 1,000 Islamic Shiite activists who had blocked traffic on the outskirts of the capital, Abuja. Videos that circulated on social media showed several protesters hurling rocks at heavily armed soldiers who then shot fleeing demonstrators in the back.

If Trump can they can, yeah?

Human rights activists and many Nigerians were outraged at the military’s response, which echoed a similar confrontation in 2015, when soldiers killed nearly 350 protesters from the same group, the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, the largest and most recognizable face of Shiite Islam in the country. The group organizes frequent protest marches.

Early Friday morning, the military responded to the criticism.

The army’s official Twitter account posted a video, “Please Watch and Make Your Deductions,” showing Mr. Trump’s speech on Thursday in which he said rocks would be considered firearms if thrown toward the American military at the nation’s borders.

“We’re not going to put up with that,” Mr. Trump said in the clip. “They want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back.”

With guns and ammunition. Pow.

On Friday, John Agim, a spokesman for the Nigerian Army, said the initial posting of the video was a response to Amnesty International, which had criticized what it called the military’s use of excessive force.

“We released that video to say if President Trump can say that rocks are as good as a rifle, who is Amnesty International?” he said. “What are they then saying? What did David use to kill Goliath? So a stone is a weapon.”

“Our soldiers sustained injuries,” he continued. “The Shiites even burnt one of our vehicles, so what are Amnesty International saying?”

That you can’t kill people for burning a car?

Of course they have.

Gun-carrying civilian groups and border vigilantes have heard a call to arms in President Trump’s warnings about threats to American security posed by caravans of Central American migrants moving through Mexico. They’re packing coolers and tents, oiling rifles and tuning up aerial drones, with plans to form caravans of their own and trail American troops to the border.

Fantastic. Just what we need – Nazi-like paramilitary groups flooding the scene. Kristalnacht here we come!

The Texas Minutemen, according to McGauley, have 100 volunteers en route to the Rio Grande who want to help stop the migrants, with more likely on the way.

“I can’t put a number on it,” McGauley said. “My phone’s been ringing nonstop for the last seven days. You got other militias, and husbands and wives, people coming from Oregon, Indiana. We’ve even got two from Canada.”

Asked whether his group planned to deploy with weapons, McGauley laughed. “This is Texas, man,” he said.

Haha. Haha. So funny. Guns are hilarious, gun battles are uproarious, mass shootings are just the funniest things ever.

A puzzler:

One of the leading lights in British black theatre was wrestling with the question of what makes a person black last night — after it emerged that he has previously described himself as white.

Anthony Ekundayo Lennon has benefited from taxpayer support to aid his development as a black, Asian and minority ethnic (Bame) leader in the arts. But last week some black thespians expressed disquiet that an apparently white man had taken a black person’s place on a Bame scheme.

Lennon was named last year as one of four “theatre practitioners of colour” who had been awarded a paid two-year residential traineeship as part of an Arts Council England-funded programme. Recently he was an assistant director on Britain’s first all-black production of Guys and Dolls.

The thing is, though…he’s not actually “of colour.” The middle name “Ekundayo” is his own self-naming.

He wrote a book ten years ago.

In the book Photo ID, the blue-eyed thespian describes how he was born Anthony David Lennon in Paddington, west London, in 1965 to white Irish parents. His high cheekbones and curly hair set off gossip that his mother had had an affair, but when his brothers, Vincent and David, developed similar features, it became clear it was a family trait.

That’s a deeply weird claim – curly hair and high cheekbones set off gossip? There are no high cheekbones in Ireland? No curly hair? Maybe Paddington was just full of people with nothing better to do.

He claims he was taunted.

Owing partly to the taunts, the boy with the caramel skin had discovered his blackness. He started to wear a Rastafarian hat. “Up until the age of about 13, 14, I hadn’t really thought about it at all,” he later told friends.

His fictitious “blackness”; his “blackness” that wasn’t there.

In 1990 the 24-year-old Lennon appeared in a BBC Everyman drama documentary exploring race called Chilling Out. Viewers were told: “All of us in this programme are actors, but this is not a fiction. All of us are speaking as ourselves, and from our own experience.”

Pressed on his identity by black actors in the documentary, he said: “When I’m alone in my bedroom looking in the mirror, thinking about stuff I’ve written down, thinking about my past relationship-wise, pictures on the wall, I think I’m a black man. I’ve not said that to anyone. And I won’t say it outside.”

Lennon’s father, Patrick, who died in 1999, did not react well to this self- exploration. “He says to me I’ve got an identity problem, and the sooner I sort myself out, the better,” said Lennon in the film.

The actor Lennie James, later to become famous as a star of The Walking Dead, responds in the documentary by accusing Lennon of cultural appropriation. “Sometimes I feel like you are watching me. Watching me to say this equals a black man. Then you’re taking it from me, and sticking it on yourself.”

But Lennon got funding anyway.

Lennon’s residential traineeship is part of the Artistic Director Leadership Programme (ADLP) to help Bame creatives. Arts Council England provided a £406,500 grant to a consortium of theatres to “deliver a comprehensive programme of talent development for future Bame leaders”.

Lennon started as trainee artistic director at Talawa, a black-led theatre company in Shoreditch, east London. The scheme was advertised as “open to people of colour”. Lennon applied as a “mixed heritage individual”.

One black actor said: “When I discovered his background I thought it was unfair that a white man had taken a black person’s place on a Bame scheme.”

Everybody’s of “mixed heritage”; that doesn’t mean anything. Also, how “mixed” can it be when both his parents were Irish and white?

The consortium that awarded the funding said: “We received 113 applications . . . and 29 were appointed to the ADLP. Talawa were satisfied Anthony was eligible for the opportunity as a result of a relationship with him over a number years, in which he has identified as a mixed-heritage individual.”

Ah yes, the magic “identified as” – justifies everything, doesn’t it.

Queen Melania’s PR person is furious about reporting on the queen’s lavish way of spending our money.

First lady Melania Trump racked up an astonishing $95,000 tab at a Cairo hotel at the end of her African goodwill tour last month, according to federal records.

That was more than the taxpayer bill for President Donald Trump for a two-day stay with his entourage in Scotland after a visit this summer to England, noted Quartz, which was the first to report the first lady’s Cairo tab.

The first lady’s spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, was furious that the initial report — later picked up by The Hill — said Melania Trump spent the night at the Semiramis Intercontinental Cairo. In fact, she spent only six hours there, Grisham told both Quartz and The Hill in angry Twitter posts.