Cup of Coffee: November 5, 2026

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

Still not believing it all happened, but I'll be damned it did.

The Daily Briefing

There was not a lot happening in the world of baseball yesterday, so let's do it roundup style:

• The Athletic reports that Albert Pujols will be interviewing for the Astros open managerial position this week. The guy doing the interviewing will be new Astros GM Randy Flores, who was Pujols' teammate in St. Louis for four years, so that's a good sign for him I'd say. Pujols has made no secret of his desire to manage. He interviewed for both the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Angels managerial openings last winter. He managed the Dominican Republic to a third-place finish during the World Baseball Classic last year and he has managerial experience in Dominican winter ball. If he gets the gig he'll be the best player to become a manager since Frank Robinson, I figure;
• The West Sacramento Athletics are hiring Brewers senior vice president of player development and performance Cam Castro as their new general manager. He’ll serve as second in command to the club's newly-hired president of baseball operations Taylor Smith. You could certainly do worse than using the Brewers' org chart as your candidate pool when looking to fill player development positions;
• Not long after the final out of the World Series, Brewers manager Pat Murphy was caught on a hot mic talking to first baseman Jake Bauers, saying, you're gonna be a rich fucker, but just remember when you were on that horseshit Yankees team and you guys were all playing for yourself, just remember, say, 'this is the way we used to do it.'" Murphy has now apologized to Brian Cashman of the Yankees, saying "I called Brian Cashman right away when I heard it got out. I picked up a phone and called Brian right away, and had a good conversation. And the best I could try to explain that I wasn't talking about the 2026 Yankees." But he was, it seems, talking about the 2023 Yankees for which Bauers played 84 games. Lol;
• The New York Mets are hiring former big league catcher A.J. Ellis for their coaching staff as major league strategy coordinator, which is apparently a thing. Ellis played nine of his 11 years with the Dodgers, primarily as the backup catcher and often as Clayton Kershaw's personal catcher. He also was notorious for being the guy who talked shit about certain teammates to the press, in exchange for which the press acted like he was one of the most important players on the Dodgers roster even though he was wholly disposable. I only mention all of that in case big drama unfolds in the Mets clubhouse next year and you're wanting to assemble a list of suspects for having loose lips; and
• Yesterday opening statements were held in the federal criminal trial against Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortíz. Early on the prosecution tried to show the jury how PitchCom system worked, but the battery was dead. Points for realism, but not a great start, fellas!

Other Stuff

Election Miscellany

I saw this post from Truth Social right when I woke up yesterday:

Which put me in mind of this:

Not that Trump seems too interested in acting like he has any real power. In his first public appearance yesterday Trump stood at the site of the White House ballroom, talking about the marble he ordered for the floor. This man is gonna completely check out of anything approaching governance for the next two years, lean into the creature comforts and superfluous parts of the job, spitefully attacking any Republicans he thinks are disloyal to him, and acting like he had nothing to do with any of this.

And now for some other observations and thoughts that have trickled in since we last met:

• The scale of the landslide is coming into focus, and it's most impressive. Per The Economist, the Democrats' popular vote margin, in terms of percentages, is the largest of any party's in any election since 1976, with their margin being 13% to the good as of yesterday;
• Pundit types are starting to wonder how Trump will deal with Democratic majorities in both houses. But a fun thing here is that we haven't even gotten to the part where surviving Republicans catch their breath, comprehend the new landscape, and accept that they now have to try to convincingly repudiate Trump if they want to survive politically. Once that dawning realization sets in life for Trump and his minions is going to be even harder and, for most of us, more hilarious;
• To that point: if you are the producer and/or host of a cable news program, start cuing up, today, the clips of Republican officeholders talking about their loyalty to Trump over the past several years, because you know damn well that they'll try to gaslight us and claim that they've always been their own men and women. We know better, but it'll be good to have the receipts at the ready;
• Based on his first substantive post-election social media post, J.D. Vance thinks he can thread some kind of needle to salvage his shot at 2028. I suppose it's medically possible to be more deluded than Vance is, but that's just theoretical. No one has actually seen that level of delusion in the wild;
• It's also worth noting that, for purposes of that post, Vance has dropped the snarky, MAGA edgelord patois he has been using for most of the past two years and is now trying to speak like some moderate Republican analyst. There is no need to try to figure out which is the "real" J.D. Vance, however, as such a thing does not exist;
• Assuming, quite safely, that Vance will be unable to create any daylight between himself and Trump over the next two years – indeed, I bet Trump will do everything he can to pull Vance closer to him out of pure spite – a funny thing that's gonna happen will beRepublicans talking themselves into Ron DeSantis for 2028, arguing that at least Florida held the line against the Blue Tsunami and forgetting that he's one of the most off-putting CHUD buckets going;
• I saw a lot of talk about Democrats "getting even" once they assume their majority power. Including some Democrats themselves saying "oh, no, we're not getting even." Don't listen to anyone who uses that phrase. Holding hearings, investigating wrongdoing, and eventually prosecuting people who have blatantly violated the law for the past two years is not an exercise in revenge or tit-for-tat politics. It's enforcing the law, not "getting even." I realize that may be difficult for people who have shown they care little about the law to understand, but it's true;
• For example, when Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., introduces a motion to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth next week, as he said yesterday that he would, it would be a proper use of the impeachment power because Hegseth is a criminal and is incompetent. It wouldn't be "getting even";
• Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said he will not run for House Minority Leader following the Republican wipeout. What's more, some are saying that while he, personally, won reelection from his district, he may resign from Congress altogether. That is causing speculation that Ohio's Jim Jordan of all people might run to be the GOP House leader. Folks, I don't know how much of Jim Jordan's whole deal you've witnessed, but he's so aggressively stupid and off-putting that if he is placed front-and-center in national politics on a daily basis for the next two years Americans might choose to usher in Full Communism in 2028.

Quite a couple of days it's been. Here's to watching Republicans tear themselves apart over all of this for the next several months.

Daniel Craig killed off M

It's long been known that it was Daniel Craig's idea to kill of James Bond at the end of "No Time to Die." Yesterday we learned that it was also his idea to kill off Dame Judi Dench's "M" at the end of "Skyfall." From The Guardian:

. . . according to Judi Dench’s new memoir Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?, it was also Craig’s decision to kill off M, too.

In it, Dench tells of the moment she learned that her character would be sent to the glue factory in Skyfall. “I was taken to the Wolseley restaurant by Barbara [Broccoli], Michael [G Wilson] and Sam [Mendes] – I don’t think Daniel Craig was there – and they outlined the plot and told me they were going to bump me off,” she writes.

“It was reported in the press that I’d cried when they told me I was being replaced,” she continues. “Of course I didn’t cry. Why on earth would I cry after 20 glorious years and eight Bond films – which, by the way, is one more than Roger Moore, the longest-running 007 to date.” However, the key detail is this: “Apparently, it was Daniel’s idea to have me killed.”

I think that Daniel Craig was a fantastic James Bond and that "Casino Royale" and "Skyfall" were the two best Bond movies in the entire series. But it's also pretty obvious that Craig either doesn't understand why people like James Bond movies or doesn't care all that much about James Bond movies. Or both. I'm not sure.

With God on Our Side

Meanwhile, in Rome . . .

It's like Raistlin meeting Par-Salian before the events of Time of Twins. If you know you know. If you don't, please stop giving me swirlies, I promise I'll try to be less of a pathetic nerd.

I think the posed photo is even funnier:

It's me taking my son school clothes shopping in 2018.

This wasn't even the first time Dylan has met a pope, by the way. The last time he did he played "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" for him. That's style, right there.

Things are different now that Dylan is in his 80s and the pope is younger than he is. Indeed, Leo is the perfect age and demographic to tell Dylan that, while "Slow Train Coming" had its moments, his Christian albums mostly sucked. I hope he took the opportunity to speak that sort of truth to power.

Have a great day everyone.