Hi everyone,

Welcome back!  Come on in, have a seat.  Before we get going, we'd like to apologize for an error yesterday.  We invited everyone over to watch the Chicago Med/Fire/P.D. fall finales last night but then later realized that those episodes were last week.  Awkward.  We'll try not to make such an egregious mistake again.  The guys made you some coffee to make up for it, so grab yourself a nice medium DD, and let's clear out some Thursday Clutter.

It looks like Nancy Pelosi has secured her spot as speaker of the House next year.  Pelosi shut down the remaining dissenters by agreeing to hold the position for no more than four years.  The agreement still needs to be finalized by the House Democrats, but after Tuesday's performance against Donald Trump, any Democrat who objects to having Pelosi as their leader right now should be treated by a mental health professional.

Donald Trump's friends continue to bail on him.  This time, the National Enquirer's parent company made a deal with Michael Cohen's prosecutors and admitted to paying former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal during the 2016 presidential race to stay quiet about her alleged affair with Trump.

More trouble for Donald Trump.  (pic via ctvnews.ca)

Rudy Giuliani wants Robert Mueller to put Trump out of his misery.  Sounds like the never-ending bad news is getting to Rudy.

British Prime Minister Theresa May survived the Conservative no-confidence vote against her last night.  However,  she only got 63% of the vote from her own party, so she may now be vulnerable to a larger vote from the entire Parliament.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) bought stock in Raytheon after he successfully lobbied for increased defense spending.  Inhofe's office says he cancelled the transaction once he "became aware of it," by which we assume he means, "once he realized the media became aware of it."  The deal looks like a clear conflict of interest, but given that the GOP doesn't care about Donald Trump being an agent of Russia, something like this doesn't seem likely to grab their interest.

Former Baylor University frat president Jacob Walter Anderson is only getting three years of probation in a plea deal after being charged with sexually assaulting another student.  His plea deal also means the man doesn't even have to register as a sex offender, which means he's received no punishment whatsoever.  It's another outrageous, although unfortunately not surprising, failure by the judicial system to handle these kinds of crimes.

A Washington Post editor named Gillian Brockell highlighted one of the many downfalls of user data collection on social media this week.   Brockell wrote an open letter to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Experian blasting them for sending her baby-related ads after her child was stillborn.  Brockell concluded her letter by saying,

"If you're smart enough to realize that I'm pregnant, that I've given birth," she wrote. "Then surely you're smart enough to realize that my baby died, and can advertise to me accordingly, or maybe just maybe, not at all."

The only real question the 2019 Boston Red Sox have on the field at the moment is if Dustin Pedroia will be back at second base after dealing with knee issues for the past few years.  Surgery cost him most of the 2018 season, and it's still unclear if he'll be on the field next year.  The Sox won a World Series without him, but they're a better team if he can even come close to returning to form.

On the pitching side of things, it sounds like Joe Kelly is off to the Los Angeles Dodgers.  It's not confirmed yet, but if it does indeed work out that way, we thank Kelly for his playoff run this year, but it shouldn't be hard to find someone to replace him.

Steph Curry now claims he was "obviously" joking about not believing the moon landing was real.  Raise your hand if you think the more likely story is that someone on Team Curry told him to nip this in the bud before it hurt his shoe sales.

John Winchester is coming back!  That's right, Jeffrey Dean Morgan is finally returning to Supernatural for the show's 300th episode.  Winchester was a major character in the first two seasons before he died, and fans have been calling for his return ever since.  Seems like he's been busy for a while with some other show.  No word yet on how he'll make his appearance, but the Supernatural folks know what they're doing, especially when it comes to the "big" episodes, so we are confident it will be memorable.

Okay kids, that's going to do it for now.  Christmas is getting closer, so it's time for us to start pulling some of our favorite holiday tunes out of the vault.  Here are the Dropkick Murphys to kicking things off with what may be the most honest Christmas song of all-time.  Here's  "The Season's Upon Us," for today's, "Song of the Day."

Thanks for stopping by, everyone.  It was great to see you, as always.  We apologize again for yesterday's confusion, but if you want to come back later and listen to BDH and Little Buddha read their new book, they'd love to have an audience.  Otherwise, enjoy the rest of your day, be good, and we'll catch up with you again soon.  Until next time, that's today's Clearing out the Clutter, and we are outta here.