SAY WHAT? - Bigly loser, longtime grifter, "bloated tick" and inept, narcissistic, twice-impeached catastrophe of a former president Donald Trump, who after losing yet again threw a hissy fit, led a terrorist attack against the U.S. Capitol to overthrow our government and now faces a mountain of legal charges and investigations, has announced from the scene of his criminally stolen classified documents that he's again running for president in an apparent, desperate, surreal attempt to avoid prison. In an incoherent, half-hearted, lie-filled - with some real doozies - speech at Mar-A-Lago, where he evidently recycled the gaudy gold chairs from his daughter Tiffany's weekend wedding, Trump slouched as he declared his candidacy "in order to make America great and glorious again." In response, Liz Cheney celebrated a candidacy that made him "the first former president to run for staying out of jail." Reading dully from a teleprompter, Trump told the small fervent crowd, "Your country is being destroyed before your eyes," "I've gone decades without a war," and "The carters of power are ours, and we are coming to take those carters back." Before he spoke, a plane flew overhead with a banner reading, "You lost again, Donald"; it trailed a DeSantis hashtag.

SAY WHAT? - Last week - we apologize for tech delays - marked the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the infamous night in 1938 when German Nazis orchestrated a wave of violence against its Jewish citizens now widely deemed the start of a Holocaust that ultimately murdered over six million. Reports after the Nov. 9-10 "Night of Broken Glass" across Germany and Austria said 92 people were killed, about 7,500 homes and businesses were looted or burned, 267 synagogues went up in flames; today, historians say those numbers were much higher, with at least 1,300 people killed and over 1,400 synagogues, or most of them, destroyed. There is general agreement that 30,000 people were also arrested and sent to concentration camps in what was the first instance of Nazi state-sanctioned violence - though they long denied it - in a systematic effort to annihilate Europe’s Jews. The first anti-Jewish laws were passed soon after that night, which marked the end of the ability of Jews to lead public lives in Germany and the start of a massive exodus from Europe; of those who stayed, millions - two out of three - died in concentration camps.

SAY WHAT? - Whew. For now, the dreaded Red Wave has shrunk into a trickle, a dribble, a malignant puddle that more than one sage suggested had been just angry ketchup on the walls of Mar-A-Lago. "The Red Wave is off," rejoiced one observer, thanks to the steadfast work and hope of primarily women, young people and many others defiantly rejecting our descent into a kakotopia of hate, greed, fear, bigotry and totalitarianism. America to fascist theocracy: No thanks, not today, the best efforts of Mike Flynn et al notwithstanding. With final numbers still emerging, we don't know what the House or Senate will ultimately look like, other than, of course, hopelessly balkanized. We know only that Trump, GOP zealotry and the notion that ever-fickle women had "moved on" from Dobbs lost Tuesday. What won: Abortion rights, activism, equity, truth, the thoughtful prioritizing of real freedoms - to vote, choose, love, organize - over the cost of gas. "We killed the Red Wave," declared Michael Moore, who charged that "we were lied to for months by the pundits and pollsters and media" who claimed the GOP would win 60 more House seats because "simple" Americans cared most about crime and the price of milk. Instead, the people built "a blue wall to stop an ugly wave...It was their Democracy they came to fight for."

SAY WHAT? - This week, tearful but tenacious families of the 19 children murdered in their Uvalde classrooms at Robb Elementary School marked Día de Muertos, Day of the Dead, by marching on the Texas capitol to both honor their lost children and reiterate their (futile) months-long pleas for sensible gun reform from Gov. Greg 'Could-Have-Been-Worse' Abbott and his retrograde cabal of GOP lawmakers - a dauntless act, after so much anguish, one admirer likened to "the courage of a million gladiators." According to tradition, the souls of dead children descend from heaven at midnight on Oct. 31 to reunite with their families; the next day, the souls of dead adults - here, two teachers - come to visit. The Austin event, organized by the Mexican American Legislative Caucus of the Texas Legislature, featured a vigil and speeches at the Statehouse, followed by an eerily silent procession to the governor's mansion; en route, families carried a large ofrenda, or altar, adorned with Our Lady of Guadalupe, painted skulls, photos of the dead, foods they liked, and marigolds said to entice the souls of the dead. A note in front read, "Protect Our Children: 21 por 21" - a reference to their oh-so-minimal demand to raise the legal age to buy an assault rifle from 18 to 21 in honor of 21 lives lost. Ana Rodriquez, whose only daughter Maite was killed: "We should be choosing her Halloween costume together, but instead I'm making her an ofrenda."

SAY WHAT? - Oh look. Another woman has come forward - on-camera - to accuse serial fabulist, "warrior for God," and purported-when-politically-convenient "pro-lifer" Herschel Walker of coercing her to have an abortion, thus bringing his current number of (known) lies about his schooling, business, children and intrepid service on Paw Patrol to...8,472, we think. The vital, potentially Senate-flipping race for Georgia's Senate seat remains (WTF) too close to call. But Walker has pulled slightly ahead, never mind he's an incoherent, ignorant clown who embodies everything the party of alleged family values decries: He has an unseemly history of violent criminal behavior, he had often-abusive relationships with multiple women, he abandoned multiple children whose existence he tried to hide even as he preached about the evil of absentee Black fathers, and now he's apparently helped, per the GOP's fanatical, perfidious world view, murder at least two more of his children while persistently lying about it. He's also a longtime friggin' Texas resident, recruited by the GOP mostly for his deep tan; still, he told Fox News, he "always thought about Georgia," so there's that. Good thing the GOP is so laser-focused on preserving the patriarchal order, and they have no shame.

SAY WHAT? - Even as deaths mount from violent attacks by security forces sometimes firing live ammunition, tens of thousands of unwavering Iranians are still taking to the streets to protest the murder by Iran's "morality police" of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini - for the crime of improperly wearing her hijab - and, increasingly, to call for the end of their country's brutal regime. This week, huge women-led crowds again defied police to commemorate the 40th day since Amini's death, a key Shiite Islam tradition. As thousands traveled to her grave in her Kurdish hometown of Saqqez to grieve, pay their respects, and furiously chant "Death to the dictator!", Iranian forces fired both live rounds and tear gas at them. Six weeks after her death, similar scenes played out the same day across the country as police opened fire on massive crowds of protesters still there, still chanting, "We will fight, we will die, we will take back Iran."