Democrats Act: After months of internal politics, the House last night passed President Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure improvement and rebuilding bill. Thirteen Republicans voted in favor and six Democrats against, including New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar.

  Although seriously whittled down from its original form, the bill is a big win for President Biden and goes to him for signing. He said in a statement, “Generations from now, people will look back and know this is when America won the economic competition for the 21st century.”

  The money goes for things like water and power infrastructure, ports electric vehicles, broadband expansion, public transit, and more. 

Crowd Crush: Eight people died last night when the crowd of tens of thousands surged toward the stage at the Astroworld music festival. Two dozen were taken to the hospital and 300 treated at the scene. A 10-year-old child was among the critically injured.

  Police said they had no explanation yet for why the crowd pressed toward the stage.

On the Job: The US economy added 531,000 jobs in October, according to the Labor Department, outrunning economic predictions by 80,000. It’s a big bounce from September and an encouraging sign for the economy.

  Crowing about his own good news, President Biden said, “America continues to add jobs at a record pace. Our economy is on the move.”

  The unemployment rate declined from 4.8 to 4.6 percent. 

  Jobs were added in a broad array of industries from restaurants and bars to factories and offices. In another sign that the effects of the pandemic are passing, percentage of people who worked remotely at least part of the time last month fell to 11.6 from 13.2.

The Georgia Defense: Prosecutors in Georgia yesterday said three white men chased the black jogger Ahmaud Arbery for five minutes before killing him with a shotgun. Although Arbery was not armed, the three claim they acted in self-defense.

  “They assumed that he must have committed some crime that day,” prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said. “He tried to run around their truck and get way from these strangers, total strangers, who had already told him that they would kill him. And then they killed him.” 

  Arbery had been seen inside a house under construction last February 23^rd then jogged down the street.  Greg McMichael and his adult son, Travis, grabbed guns and went after Arbery in a pickup truck outside the port city of Brunswick, Georgia. Their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, joined the chase and recorded video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery three times.

  When Travis McMichael confronted Arbery with the shotgun, Arbery tried to grab the gun and McMichael killed him.

  “It’s tragic,” defense lawyer Robert Rubin said. “It’s tragic that Ahmaud Arbery lost his life. But at that point, Travis McMichael was acting in self-defense. He did not want to confront Ahmaud Arbery. He was only trying to stop him for the police.”

  That’s not the way the prosecution sees it. “All three of these defendants did everything they did based on assumptions — not on facts, not on evidence,” Dunikoski said. “And they made decisions in their driveways based on those assumptions that took a young man’s life.” 

Veritas: The Justice Department is investigating how the right wing Project Veritas got its hands on the diary of President Biden’s daughter, Ashley, The NY Times reports. 

  Dozens of pages from the diary were posted on a right wing website with possible connections to O’Keefe a week and a half before the 2020 presidential election. The diary had been reported stolen.

  Veritas’s leader, the political trickster James O’Keefe, confirmed that the homes of current and former Project Veritas employees had their homes searched. 

Intercepted: Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers confirmed he is unvaccinated against Covid-19 although he had previously said he was “immunized.”

  Rodgers complained yesterday during a satellite radio interview that, “I realize I’m in the crosshairs of the woke mob right now.” 

  The 37-year-old Rodgers said that if any reporter had followed-up he would have explained he’s “not an anti-vax flat earther,” but that he’s a “critical thinker.” Rogers said he has followed NFL protocols for unvaccinated players and been tested every day. 

  He also said he believes the testing rules are there to shame unvaccinated people. Actually it’s to identify players who have this highly contagious disease so the league can bench the guys who catch it, as they have with Rodgers. 

The Spin Rack: Retiring Ohio Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, one of only 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump, warned that he thinks  Trump will try to steal the next election. “He either wins legitimately, which he may do, or if he loses again, you just try to steal it,” he told CNN. Gonzalez is retiring because of the vitriol he’s faced for standing up to Trump. — Republicans claim to be warriors against voter fraud,  but officials in Fairfax County say the 17-year-old son of Virginia’s Republican Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin tried to vote in Tuesday’s election, twice. 

Toys in the Attic: Right-wing news network Newsmax distanced itself from one of its top reporters after she tweeted a bizarre claim that the COVID-19 vaccine contains a bioluminescent marker that enables tracking.

  The network’s White House correspondent  — yes they let her in the White House — Emerald Robinson tweeted: “Dear Christians: The vaccines contain a bioluminescent marker called LUCIFERASE so that you can be tracked. Read the last book of the New Testament to see how this ends.”

  Before you think the name was made up by Christian crazies, Luciferase is an actual bioluminescent although it is not named after the devil. It come from the Latin word lucifer, meaning ” lightbearer,” which is something you cannot accuse Emerald Robinson of being.

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