Cheryl Hines does a fabulous job of establishing rapport with Bill Maher right at the beginning of this Club Random podcast.

I'm listening to the whole thing, but only 26 minutes in.

She's fascinatingly skillful at personal interaction... and he appreciates it. He raises the dumb subject of wearing orange — because it's "right before Halloween" — and somehow she's got him talking about women in "blood red" lingerie and how he doesn't want to be touching a woman wearing leather in the middle of the night....

They talk about Bobby and Trump too. Watch it for yourself.

"Life is not so easy. For anybody... I wanna reward the people who showed up without a lotta nonsense, without a lotta talk."

🚨 JUST IN: President Trump DOUBLES DOWN — promises to give $10,000 bonuses to Air Traffic Controllers who didn’t call out “sick” during the shutdown

Good. They deserve it.

“I’ll get [the money] from someplace.”

Don’t bet against 47. He’ll make it happen. pic.twitter.com/jo2ZbCBgGt

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) November 11, 2025

Where will Trump get the money to hand out $10,000 bonuses to air traffic controllers who showed up for work while the pay was not flowing?

"I don't know. I'll get it from someplace. I always get the money from someplace."

Sunrise with steam fog — 6:39, 6:48, 6:51, 6:52.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

Bonus western view — at 6:47 — with a special pinkness of its own:

"As people increasingly turn to A.I. chat tools as confidants, therapists and advisers, we urgently need a new form of legal protection that would safeguard most private communications..."

"...between people and A.I. chatbots. I call it 'A.I. interaction privilege.'... At present, most digital interactions fall under the Third-Party Doctrine, which holds that information voluntarily disclosed to other parties — or stored on a company’s servers — carries 'no legitimate expectation of privacy.' This doctrine allows government access to much online behavior (such as Google search histories) without a warrant.... To leave these conversations legally unprotected is to invite a regime where citizens must fear that their digital introspection could someday be used against them. Private thought — whether spoken to a lawyer, a therapist or a machine — must remain free from the fear of state intrusion."

Writes the historian Nils Gilman, in "If You Tell ChatGPT Your Secrets, Will They Be Kept Safe?" (NYT).

"We’re spending a lot of money, so I cannot set forth a plan right now that takes money out of a system that relies on the fares of the buses and the subways...."

Said NY Governor Kathy Hochul, quoted in "Hochul slams brakes on Zohran Mamdani’s free NYC bus plan: ‘Takes money out of a system that relies on fares'" (NY Post).

The cautious bus route outlined by Hochul is the latest split the moderate Democratic governor has had with Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, since she endorsed him in September.... [B]ut she has balked at much of his actual agenda — notably, taxing the rich to pay for $10 billion in freebies such as no-cost child care and buses without fares. 

The governor’s guarded approach could spell problems for Mamdani, as his grand plans largely require support from both Hochul and lawmakers in Albany.... 

Mamdani’s supporters have taken notice of Hochul’s hesitancy and twice recently chanted “Tax the rich”at her, clearly irking the governor. “The more you push me, the more I’m not going to do what you want,” Hochul told a SOMOS crowd....

"This is an embarrassing deal, a deal to basically settle for nothing. It’s particularly galling..."

"... since it comes only days after Democrats crushed Republicans in races across the country. Election Day not only showed that Democrats had payed [sic] no price for the shutdown. It also confirmed the already abundant evidence that it has been deeply damaging for Donald Trump. But even with all this, I think the overall situation and outcome is basically fine [because]... Democrats fought. They held out for 40 days.... And that’s a big deal... It’s a big change in the direction of the fight we need in the years to come that just didn’t go far enough. Yet."

Writes Josh Marshall, in "A Quick Take on Team Cave's Big Win."

"The deference and servility to [Ghislaine] Maxwell have reached such preposterous levels that one of the top officials at the facility has complained that he is 'sick of having to be Maxwell’s bitch.'"

Says a letter to Trump from Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, quoted in "Democrats reveal whistleblower details of Ghislaine Maxwell prison 'luxuries'/In a letter to the president, House Democrats say Maxwell’s treatment as she prepares a clemency request makes the convicted sex offender look like a 'guest at a Trump hotel'" (MSNBC).

What are these luxuries? We're told there are "customized meals personally delivered to her cell, after-hours time in a private exercise area and access to a service puppy.... private meetings with visitors arranged by the warden, complete with snacks...." 

"Still, the justices’ consideration of Ms. Davis’s petition had set off alarms among gay Americans, who were already reeling from the Trump administration’s targeting of programs and funding that benefit L.G.B.T.Q. individuals."

"Gay Americans and their allies had been on alert since the Supreme Court’s conservative majority eliminated the nationwide right to abortion after 50 years, showing a willingness to undo longstanding legal precedent. In that decision, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote separately to urge reconsideration of the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, which recognized gay marriage nationwide."

From "Supreme Court Denies Request to Revisit Same-Sex Marriage Decision/Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses, had asked the court to reconsider its landmark 2015 opinion" (NYT).

I'm glad to see this precedent left alone. There's so much reliance on it.

"I no longer can bear to be restrained by what judges can say publicly or do outside the courtroom."

Writes Mark L. Wolf, 78, who has been on senior status as a federal judge since 2013. He's stating a downside of being a judge.Wolf's column, in The Atlantic, is called "Why I Am Resigning/A federal judge explains his reasoning for leaving the bench" (gift link). It begins:

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed me as a federal judge. I was 38 years old. At the time, I looked forward to serving for the rest of my life. However, I resigned Friday, relinquishing that lifetime appointment.... When I became a senior judge in 2013, my successor was appointed, so my resignation will not create a vacancy to be filled by the president. 

Despite being a Reagan judge at the time of appointment, Wolf handed the power to appoint the next judge to President Obama. Wolf is sloughing off senior status to gain a power for himself, the power to speak freely. And what he wants to talk about is Trump's "assault on the rule of law." He ends the column by quoting RFK Sr. — "Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope" — and the poet Seamus Heaney — the “longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme.”

ADDED: For more detail on that Seamus Heaney line, here's Bill Clinton:

"If it was mentioned that ‘identity’ is aware of this or ‘identity’ say they’re looking at it — that was enough to stop anybody else going anywhere near it."

Said Cath Leng, quoted in "'I was forced out of BBC News over gender critical views'/Cath Leng claims younger LGBT reporters acted as ‘gatekeepers’ on trans stories and gender critical coverage was censored" (London Times).

"Identity" refers to the "learning and identity" desk, which acted as "gatekeepers" on trans stories according to Leng, who said "These people were treated as experts simply because they were believers in the idea of gender identity. The reason they were considered to have expertise is of course because nobody else understands it. So they’re allowed to spout this gobbledegook and they’re treated as experts when it comes to which language to use."

When one of her gender critical pitches was accepted at a news meeting because it was a “great story”, Leng said that fellow journalists were so fearful they could only express support in secret. She said: “Somebody who was present slipped me a card as we were all leaving this session. It just said on the back, ‘you’re right, keep going’. She felt she couldn’t tell me directly. It was like a secret, masonic handshake.”..

In other BBC news: "BBC in crisis: why did Tim Davie and Deborah Turness resign? Director general and head of news quit amid accusations of bias over Trump and trans issues at broadcaster" (The Guardian).

"Six Takeaways From the Senate Deal to End the Shutdown."

Headline at the NYT. Free-access link: here. The 6 things (paraphrased unless in quotes):

1. Democrats lost their unity.

2. The health care matter was left out.

3. "Trump’s pressure tactics worked.... The group of people affected by the shutdown grew with each week" — from the thousands of federal workers going without pay to the millions who expected food-buying assistance and the millions who were hoping to travel by plane.

4. Trump did not participate in talks with Democratic Party leaders. He was, conspicuously, at an NFL game when the deal coalesced last night.

5. Republican leaders Mike Johnson and John Thune also withheld participation.

6. Democrats at least have "some concessions in their fight against the Trump administration’s concerted effort to reconfigure and diminish the federal government." That's not about health care. It's about rehiring those who were laid off during the shutdown and barring further layoffs until January 30th.

ADDED: Will Trump gloat? Should he? He hasn't put anything up on Truth Social since his display — 13 hours ago — of Air Force One flying over the football stadium. And at X, 9 hours ago:

 

The most EPIC flyover of the season 🇺🇸🦅 pic.twitter.com/WYJtg7AHcW

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) November 10, 2025

Sunrise — at 6:37 — with a blustery wind that almost blew my iPhone out of my hand.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"In your last lie detector test, you said you think everyone hates you. Do you still believe that?"/"Yes."

"Why?"/"I don't know why anybody wouldn't hate me. I can't think of one reason. I mean, my kids, 'cause they have no other option. I'm their only mother.... I don't think they hate me. Yet."

Scroll to 7:22 for the quoted text.

"Zoran Momani has been elected.... So what?... What's the big deal? Obviously he was going to win.... You can just leave...."

"But there are people out there who... are finding it increasingly difficult to afford New York City. Those people — the paint-by-numbers/pin a ribbon on me/I did all of the right things/I have all of the right views/I post all of the right things on social media.... They're normies.... They're just boring and vapid and surface and dull and pointless.... and their concerns are so small and petty.... That is the coalition that Zoran has. He has a coalition of angry, boring, mediocre people that have done the right things and have gotten very little for it....

"Sure, even I get caught up in the romantic notion that a life exists beyond the grueling 9-to-5 of our capitalist society. A simple life, baking bread and caring for children..."

"... bestows a sense of comfort. But the promise of a tradwife is nothing more than fiction. And the idea of a womanhood that’s 'natural' has been completely determined by a white, male-centric society. Tradwife content allows young women to shrug off any sense of self-blame or responsibility for their role in society.... Tradwives get so caught up in their echo chambers that protecting the nuclear family seems like safeguarding existence itself, and they become completely insulated from what they deem 'unnatural': queerness, diversity, difference of thought. Without this exposure, they are unable to strengthen their sense of empathy.... They become so segregated from the rest of the world that they begin to believe that they will never achieve more—should not achieve more—than the conservative 'natural' role of womanhood.... Starting an article with the headline 'Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?' does nothing more than appeal to those who try to keep lower-income women oppressed and drive young people into a tradwife future that keeps them caged."

Said Kenneal Patterson, one of the participants in a Vanity Fair conversation called "Women of Vanity Fair Consider Ross Douthat’s Question: Did Women Ruin the Workplace? Today, The New York Times published a conversation between the conservative columnist and two writers about just how bad ladies have screwed up corporate culture with their presence. We felt we should engage."

"Today" was a few days ago. We talked about the Ross Douthat piece here, 3 days ago (and that post has a gift link to the provocatively titled Douthat conversation).

"Capes that flowed into skirts, coats on top of denim jackets and socks worn over tights.... layers were bright sweaters or cozy scarves... many people were covered up [or] wearing shorts, high-slit skirts or other layers...."

In case you want to feel as though it will be perfectly fashionable to throw on as many oversized comfortable layers of whatever you happen to find in your closet, look at the photographs at "Layers Upon Layers of Lively Fall Fashion/Capes that flowed into skirts, coats on top of denim jackets, socks over tights — and don’t forget scarves and sweaters" (NYT)(free-access link).

The article is by Simbarashe Cha, who works in the tradition of the much-missed Bill Cunningham. Scanning the photographs, I get the feeling he was working on sets that didn't pan out. One unrealized set is "twins" (2 individuals out and about while dressed somewhat like each other). Another is the double breasted jacket. Those pictures are tucked into fashion's biggest catch-all: layers.

I was reminded of the famous advice attributed to Coco Chanel: 

"And I’m never going to call somebody fat because they’re fat. I’m going to call you fat if you called me Hitler."

"And the best part about that is it hurts them. It hurts them more than if they were to call me Hitler because they have to look in the mirror every day. I know I’m not Hitler. They know they’re fat."

Said Greg Gutfeld, in "The Interview/Fox News Wanted Greg Gutfeld to Do This Interview. He Wasn’t So Sure" (NYT).