Normally, on a Friday following the end of a month, we would all be talking about the new jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics right about now. We can't do that today, because the report didn't appear on schedule. This was due to the government being shut down, of course.

Economists who closely watch such things (and track them using their own data) weren't expecting the numbers to be very good:

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Donald Trump has apparently realized he's going to have to bail out American farmers who have been hit hard by his tariffs and other economic policies. And, true to form, he's going to try to do it without getting Congress to approve the funding, according to an article in Politico today:

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So the shutdown has now begun. The blame game is being played by both sides. The news will be full of which government services have been halted, and which are still running (by employees who are not getting paid). And nobody knows when it is going to end, as both sides seem fairly dug in, at this point.

The Democrats' case is pretty easy to make: they are fighting to prevent people's health insurance premiums from skyrocketing on the first of January. And Republicans won't even talk to them.

The Republicans' case seems to be hinged on a huge misdirection: Democrats are fighting for taxpayer dollars to be used on free healthcare for illegal immigrants. This is actually not true, or at the very least you have to do several mental backflips to even understand what they are talking about. The other GOP case is that they offered up a clean budget resolution, which is what Democrats usually are for, so why are they being so obstructionist on this one?

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At the cost of untold millions of dollars, all the top generals and admirals in the United States military flew in from around the world to attend a meeting in Virginia today -- all so they could hear that there will henceforth be no more "fat generals" and that the military will be going to war against American cities. I wish that was some sort of bad joke, but sadly it is not.

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Eric Adams, the current mayor of New York City, ended his Democrat-turned-independent re-election campaign this weekend. This has scrambled the race somewhat, but only at the margins. Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, has such a big lead over the two remaining major candidates that even if one of them dropped out Mamdani would still be the frontrunner, possibly by double digits.

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The United States of America now seems to have officially become a banana republic. That's really the only conclusion one can draw, after the events of the past week (and the past eight months, for good measure).

The president is now openly using the Department of Justice as his own private law firm and police force. They will go after anyone Trump doesn't like, for whatever reason. Donald Trump gave a speech at the United Nations reminiscent of the days of Fidel Castro, where he spent most of the time patting himself on the back. He also told all the other nations on the planet that they were going to Hell. It was so bad one foreign diplomat texted a Washington Post reporter: "This man is stark, raving mad. Do Americans not see how embarrassing this is?"

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Donald Trump, true to form, just rolled out a surprise new federal policy -- which then caused immediate chaos for those affected by it. There was no warning and it took effect almost before the ink was dry, which created the immediacy. The White House then had to go through several iterations of what exactly it all was going to mean before that immediate chaos subsided somewhat. But the long-term effects of Trump's new H-1B visa policy could end up being rather significant. This could wind up being good news, but it could also wind up being no more than chaotic and counterproductive to Trump's own goals.

At the end of last week, Trump suddenly announced that H-1B visa holders (or their employers) were now going to be charged a $100,000 annual fee for the visa. The new rule was set to go into effect over the weekend. The language used was incredibly vague, which was what required the White House to adjust their policy on the fly (after chaos ensued).

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Last night, Jimmy Kimmel returned to the airwaves. Well, most of them, at any rate. Two corporate conglomerates of ABC affiliates refused to air the show, but with modern technology available, everyone can now watch his opening monologue even if you live in a television market where his show was pre-empted.

The official YouTube video of the opening of Jimmy Kimmel Live! has (as of this writing) 15.7 million views. If you haven't seen it yet, it is well worth watching. In fact, today we are pre-empting our own political column to present a full transcript of what Jimmy had to say last night in his opening monologue, because it is an important statement on free speech that stands on its own, and one that everyone who cares about free speech should either read or watch.

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We are now one week away from a government shutdown. At this point, the safe bet would be that one is going to happen. And as always in such situations, the blame game has already begun in earnest. While the center ring of the circus that passes for politics these days was today undoubtedly Donald Trump making a complete fool of himself on the world stage during his address to the United Nations' General Assembly, the shutdown sideshow seems to deserve more attention than parsing Trump's idiocy (which, if I had gone that route, would have prominently featured the phrase "tilting at windmills," just for the record).

There was a White House meeting scheduled today between Trump and the Democratic leaders in Congress (House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer). So far in all of the run-up to where we find ourselves now, the Republicans have been refusing to even talk to the Democratic leadership. This includes Trump as well as the GOP congressional leadership. So today's meeting would have been a rather monumental occasion.

But Trump chickened out. He did so (naturally) in a social media post where he insulted the Democrats, called them names, and tried to bully them into just rolling over and supporting his position. Which is all pretty much par for the course, for Trump.

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Disney, in the end, did the right thing. That's the big news today. And it is a clear victory for free speech.

Last week, Disney abruptly yanked Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show off the airwaves, after being pressured to do so (for purely political reasons) by the head of the Federal Communications Commission. Today, Disney apparently saw the error of their ways and announced that Kimmel will return tomorrow night.

This is good news for anyone who cares about the First Amendment and free speech. Because government officials should never be able to stifle free speech just because they don't like the politics of the speaker -- which is exactly what happened last week. That is just not supposed to happen in America, period.

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