Exceeding expectations, on Friday Hamas released a group of 25 hostages, including 12 Thai civilians, more than the original 13 it had committed to let go, the New York Times reports per an account from the Egyptian government.  Although the identities of the other non-Thai hostages have not been released, a three-year-old American-Israeli girl is expected to be among one of the first group to be released by Hamas, CBS News reports.

Scores of the passengers who booked a first-of-its-kind three-year, round-the-world cruise on a luxury liner set to take off next week from Amsterdam were informed that the voyage had been canceled a week before its planned departure, leaving many of them without homes to return to because they sold their houses or canceled leases to save money.

According to CNN, customers are furious to learn that the company had not even secured a ship to take on the voyage for the Life at Sea Cruises’ inaugural voyage, which was supposed to depart Turkey on November 1st, but then was rescheduled to leave Amsterdam on November 30th.  Dozens of planned passengers remain in Istanbul, having traveled to Turkey to start their adventures early after having paid tens of thousands of dollars in advance, stranded because they had given up their residences to spend the next 1,000+ days on a floating hotel.

But apparently none of the passengers vetted the company.  Life at Sea Cruises intended to purchase the AIDAaura, a Carnival Cruise ship retired by the line this summer, and refurbish it to accommodate about 200 luxury suites, but they never secured the ship and it was just sold last week to a different cruise line.  Still, the CEO of Life at Sea Cruises did not announce the cancelation of the cruise until the day after the sale to the rival cruise line, never explaining how the company intended to redesign, refurbish and staff the ship in weeks.

Both sides adhered to the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel that started at 7 a.m. Israeli time/midnight Eastern time, waiting until the first groups of hostages are to be released later Friday, with Hamas expected to release 13 Israeli women and children, with Israel releasing 39 Palestinians it holds.

According to the Washington Post, aid truck from Egypt started moving immediately after the ceasefire was confirmed, moving vital supplies including food, water, fuel and medical supplies into Gaza.  Nearly 80% of the population of Gaza, about 1.7 million people, have been displaced since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th.

Texas businessman Ryan Binkley will join seven other Republicans whose names you’ve actually heard before on the ballot for the March 2024 Florida GOP presidential primary, the state Party announced Wednesday, according to Politico.  Polling consistently at zero and with less political experience, Binkley shows that the GOP will bend over backward to indulge the whims of the rich, no matter the detriment to the integrity of the political process.

Binkley’s companions on the GOP Florida primary ballot:  North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, bro dick Vivek Ramaswamy and man who could go from a Florida rally to a Florida court hearing if he scheduler works hard, Donald Trump.

Self-funding his campaign, Binkley has been making appearances in early primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire, but he hasn’t garnered any interest from local voters or the media with his campaign focuses on national debt, inflation, health care spending and immigration.

Trump aide Jason Miller–the one accused of slipping an abortion pill to a lover he got pregnant–has now been accused by fellow Trump aide A.J. Delgado of rape, the Daily Beast reports.  Miller had an extra-marital affair with Delgado that led to her giving birth to the couple’s son.  Miller, who was Delgado’s boss at the time of their affair, has reportedly stopped paying child support.

Although she had previously said in interviews that their two-month relationship was “a really nice, sweet relationship,” Delgado has accused Miller of rape, claiming Miller took advantage of an intoxicated Delgado during a conference in Las Vegas.   In a lawsuit, Delgado described their relationship as “a cycle of sexual coercion, rape, sexual assault, abuse, battery, sexual harassment, and sex trafficking.”

Police say a “lunatic, hooligan faction driven by a far-right ideology” took to the streets in Dublin, Ireland to violently protest after two five-year-olds and a six-year-old, as well as a 30-year-old adult, were stabbed early Thursday, the BBC reports.  An unnamed 40-year-old man, also reportedly injured, was taken into custody, and police say there is no danger to the public.

At around 6 p.m. local time, gangs of right-wing adherents driven by unsubstantiated rumors online about the background of the suspect, reported by authorities to be an Irish citizen who has lived in the country for 20 years.  For around three hours, the gangs roamed streets in Dublin, damaging and setting fire to buildings and cars.

A video captured by a South Korean astronomy lab recording observations of the night sky Tuesday night shows a North Korean rocket launch, reportedly to place an alleged spy satellite into orbit, in the lower left corner of the video, with a bright flash around the 0:25 second mark exploding in the sky.  Pundits believe the video shows the intentional destruction of the first stage of the rocket after it separated from the second stage, a believed planned detonation to prevent the rocket from being examined by Japanese or US intelligence agencies.  The launch was the third North Korean attempt to put the satellite in orbit; the rockets that took the first two satellites didn’t yield much intelligence given they exploded mid-flight.  And wreckage from one of the previous attempts showed the claimed “spy satellite” to have little military value.

Flat Rock, Michigan Police Department Sergeant Brian Tetreau has been ordered to turn in his badge and gun for the last time after being unable to hold his liquor on the job, showing up to a crime scene shitfaced and puking when he was supposed to be holding it down, WXYZ reports.

Tetreau had been on thin ice after a similar episode in February in which he was similarly hammered while responding to an active shooter incident wearing Crocs despite 20-degree temperatures, haphazardly aiming his gun under a house where there was no sign of the suspect. Then in September he violated the department’s social media policy by writing “FUCK WXYZ” in the comments under a Facebook post linked to the local ABC affiliate’s story about his troubled career.

On the plus side Tetreau now has all the time in the world to get wasted and post on Facebook.

A massive this is somehow Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s fault derailed and caught fire in Eastern Kentucky late Wednesday, spilling molten sulfur and prompting evacuations from nearby towns affected by the preplanned act of white genocide against rural conservatives, AFP reports.

Gov Andy Beshear declared a state of emergency after the this never would’ve happened if Trump was still president, with his office issuing a statement saying “response efforts for the incident are ongoing, and local officials are encouraging those in the town of Livingston to evacuate.”

“We said, ‘What, what, what about Thanksgiving?'” evacuee Cindy Bradley told a local CBS affiliate as she sat in a shelter because the gay leftist Buttigieg probably even timed this to ruin the traditional family holiday. “It is scary. Unpredictable. We don’t know how long we are going to be here, what is going to happen. Our homes are empty. Holidays. It makes you want to cry.”

“All because of a stolen election,” Bradley did not add but definitely thought.

The government of Qatar, acting as an intermediary between Israel and Hamas, said the Palestinian terrorist group will release thirteen civilians it’s holding on Friday at 9 a.m. Eastern Time, assuming a ceasefire begins at midnight Eastern Time (7 a.m. local time) as planned, NBC News reports.  The government of Israel reports it has already received the names of the individuals to be released and has been in contact with their families.

A Hamas statement said that it will release “prisoners, women and children” Friday, with Israel promising to release three Palestinians it holds for every Israeli released.  As long as the exchanges continue, the two sides agree to allow up to 200 trucks carrying humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip on a daily basis.

Shocking that the man who has lost the popular vote in two elections, dropped seats in Congress during his term, lost dozens of election legal challenges, blew an anticipated “red wave” in 2022, and now faces loss after loss after loss in the judicial system doesn’t recognize the 4.9% GDP growth, the lowering inflation, or the 13 million new jobs as victories. But then, the only victories he cares about are his, not the American people’s.

We’ve all heard the story about how settlers in Plymouth, Massachusetts were saved from starvation by local Native Americans who shared their bountiful harvest of corn and stuffed turkey with pumpkin pie desserts, learning that this was the genesis of the modern Thanksgiving feast.

But as with most American history–even that taught outside Florida–it seems the story is wrong.  Historians widely agree that a gathering fourteen years before near Phippsburg, Maine, the Popham Colony was the spot of the original “Thanksgiving dinner” after more than 40 Wabanaki natives paddled up in canoes to a European settlement, whose residents entertained the guests with “meat and drink” and presented them with gifts of copper beads and knives when they departed.  It marked the first recorded gathering of native and European peoples in North America.

One of the reasons Maine doesn’t want that initial Popham visit memorialized:  those colonists were dicks.  Two of the Natives who attended the meeting were already victims of European colonialism:  they had been kidnapped by settlers and taken back to Europe as oddities.  The Europeans hoped the kidnapped individuals would serve as emissaries and trade negotiators with their home tribes.

The Qatari Foreign Ministry interlocutors in the Israel-Hamas shitshow on Thursday confirmed that the ceasefire between the two sides will begin at 7:00 AM local time on Friday with the first group of women and children hostages to be released at around 4:30 PM, Bloomberg reports.

In a series of late-night pre-holiday court filings–we highlighted his attempt to dismiss the DC federal case about his attempt to undermine the 2020 election based on “selective and vindictive prosecution” earlier–Donald Trump filed two additional motions to dismiss, one based on constitutional grounds and one on statutory grounds.

Along with the standard attempt to argue the First Amendment allows him to defraud the United States and obstruct official proceedings, Trump’s team also makes the obviously flawed argument that Trump cannot be charged because he’s covered by double jeopardy due to the Senate’s acquittal of him in his second impeachment.  (Among the “anti” arguments:  1. An impeachment isn’t a criminal trial; double jeopardy doesn’t apply. 2. The Founders provided for criminal liability on top of impeachment trials. 3. He was not impeached for the charges he faces in DC federal court.)

On the statutory grounds, the arguments are just as specious, including claiming that Trump didn’t actually do anything criminal–that is, take an actual action–even if he did know about, say, the plot to submit slates of fake electors in an attempt to force a suspension of certification of the election.  They also make a reference to their claimed “presidential immunity,” something that doesn’t actually exist.

“This was irresponsible reporting.  This was reckless reporting, and by all accounts, it was inaccurate reporting.  We now know that the governor is saying that there’s no indication that there was a terrorist attack, but that is not what Fox ‘News’ [quote mark added] initially reported and reported for hours,” Oliver Darcy, CNN’s media reporter, noted as he displayed headlines from Fox, including a news alert declaring, “NY vehicle explosion is attempted terror attack, sources tell Fox News.”

Welp, when Donald Trump starts citing reports in the Washington Post and the New York Times–the cornerstones of the Fake News he so frequently rails against–in his pre-Thanksgiving court documents for his DC federal trial as accurate representations of fact, you know we’re in for some fun discussions on Thanksgiving:  “The Fake News, you say, Uncle Chad?  Donald Trump just said in court the Washington Post and New York Times are fair and accurate.  So are you wrong, or is Trump?  Now pass the yams.”

If the “career prosecutors” in this case wanted to dispute the content of those reports, there was a straightforward way to do so: submit declarations by firsthand witnesses denying the operative facts under oath. If, for example, the New York Times falsely reported that President Biden told others that President Trump “should be prosecuted,” then why not give the Court and the public peace of mind through the submission of competent evidence, rather than a blustering brief that is full of venom but deflects on the core facts?

The answer is simple. The media reports are accurate. Thus, despite all of the Special Counsel’s self-aggrandizing comments about the supposedly unprecedented nature of his manufactured allegations against President Trump, the truly unprecedented aspect of this case is that a sitting president successfully urged the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) to try to take down his chief political rival and, now, the leading candidate to be the next president. […]

“It means that our borders need to be secure.  We shouldn’t be living in fear, but that’s what the cluelessness in DC is forcing us to do,” Fox host and overpriced turkey purchaser Jason Chaffetz whines after his “news” network spent the entire day hyping a terrorist attack on the northern border only to find it was an entitled rich American Gen X’er late for a concert.  “It’s having dire consequences on the safety of our nation and the psyche of the average American.”  Of course, Chaffetz doesn’t look inward to assess his, his network and his Party’s role in stoking people’s fears irrationally, but the GOP is no longer Reagan’s “Party of Personal Responsibility,” not that it ever was.

Timed perhaps to fall after most people have left for Thanksgiving trips to see relatives, the head of Ron DeSantis’s Super PAC handed in his resignation on Wednesday, leaving the Florida Republican governor short of leadership heading into the holiday weekend.

Chris Jankowski, the head of Never Back Down PAC, the main Super PAC backing DeSantis, called his position “untenable” in a statement to Reuters, hinting at internal division about strategy and spending.  “Never Back Down’s main goal and sole focus has been to elect Gov. Ron DeSantis as President. Given the current environment it has become untenable for me to deliver on the shared goal and that goes well beyond a difference of strategic opinion.”

Law enforcement officials tell CNN the vehicle that hit the Niagara border crossing was a $300,000 Bentley driven by a 58 year-old American on his way to a KISS concert and not a terrorist.

Discussions between Israel and Hamas on the release of civilians held by each side continue, meaning the release will not happen before Friday, Tzachi Hanegbi, Israel’s national security advisor said late Wednesday, the Associated Press reports.

Under the agreement as it stands now and has been approved by both parties, a four-day ceasefire will begin Thursday morning, after which Hamas will begin to release 50 of the estimated 240 hostages it’s holding over the remaining three days of the truce and Israel will release some Palestinian prisoners.  There are provisions to extend the ceasefire, which will be the first break from attacks for Palestine’s civilian population in Gaza, since Hamas’s October 7th attack.

While initial reports of the hostage release talks included a provision that could extend the truce for as long as the two sides continued releasing civilians they hold, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told President Joe Biden that Israel intends to resume attacks in Gaza after the initial four-day truce ends.