Thursday, November 12, 2026

Mississippi-ing The Point

 I…ummm..hmmm…

President Trump reacted Thursday to Sen.-elect Scott Colom’s (D) upset victory in the Mississippi Senate race, giving credit to the Democrat for his efforts to win over Republican voters.

“I don’t know the gentleman, but I give him credit,” Trump told sports commentator Stephen A. Smith in an interview at the White House. “I had a rally there, and we had lines that went 10 miles long, and he campaigned on that line — telling everybody in the line what a good job he did. I give him a lot of credit for that.”

Colom’s campaign released a now-viral video on social media of him at Trump’s rally in Corinth, Miss., just days ahead of Election Day, in which he approached voters waiting to get into the president’s event and asked them which issues mattered most to them.

In the clip, many supporters cited high prices as key issue impacting their choices at the polls, though some openly expressed opposition to Trump’s war in Iran and tariffs.
🤨
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What Does Lindell Think Is Going To Happen Now?

From a lawyer’s point of view, only the courts can reverse an election, and that’s simply not going to happen (the explanation is long and tedious and depends so much on the facts Lindell might think he has (“change the facts, change the outcome”) that it’s ridiculous to entertain legal objections to his foolishness.)

The primary factor is: the people of Texas are okay with it. Abbott is working with Hinojosa; Paxton is out of the country:
(Must be nice to be rich); and soon to be former Lite Guv Dan Patrick wants the Texas Senate to take away all the powers they gave him, so his successor doesn’t have them. It not clear that’ll happen, but everyone always knew Patrick was a dick.

The Texas AG’s office is dropping cases it was pursuing for years, mostly MAGA friendly cases, and Paxton doesn’t give a shit. Patrick is determined to be a shitstain. He’ll be remembered that way.

Which means no one in Texas (besides Patrick) is clamoring to reverse the election. We’ll accept it, and we’ll see how it goes. That’s what we do in America. In Texas. That’s what we’ve always done.

Lindell is a looney.
Good. Like Lindell’s messages from Mars coming in through his fillings, it’s a reminder of what we rejected. We can use the foil to our advantage.
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Keeping The Elephants 🐘 Away

When the “caravans” never show up, she’ll say Trump did it.

They don’t think we saw through this. Or they don’t know what else to do. 
Their playbook really is exhausted.

Either way: 😹
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Good Times

It can’t believe Mamdani is for real.😳  He shouldn’t wait. He may not be as popular in 2 years.

Or a member of the Knesset.
Stay for the “MAGA After Midterms.”
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Hercules And The Stables

INCOMING:
Jain: After the 2024 election, a lot of donors told me I think we have got to nominate a white straight male as the next Democratic nominee because we cannot afford what happened to Kamala Harris.

I said if you are focused on that, you're definitely going to lose. There is not really any evidence anywhere in all of the analysis we have done in any cycle to suggest that minorities are less electable or women are less electable.

Women did better than men in battlegrounds. Anytime you hear of a sex scandal, it’s very rarely a woman politician in trouble.

Crowd Member: Boebert

Jain: So yes, Boebert, and she lost. Point proven.
Talarico: On election night, as I was delivering my victory speech, I noticed a woman up front. The lights were bright, so I couldn’t see her face, but I was struck by her attention, how closely she was listening, how much this moment meant to her.

As I finished speaking, I looked down again, and she had made her way to the front of the stage. I bent down to shake her hand, and I realized who she was.

She looked me in the eyes, and she said, “I’m so glad you have my father’s job.”

Lucy Baines Johnson was there to see another public school teacher take her dad’s Senate seat.
Talarico: The American people cannot wait two years for change, so we must work with President Trump. If President Trump wants the same plaques and portraits as LBJ, we can help make that a reality. We should make the final two years of his presidency the most productive of any American presidency
🤠
Abdul El-Sayed absolutely destroys Donald Trump.

Q: You recently called President Trump the dumbest effing guy who ever was president.

AES: True.

Q: You've also said Democrats should drop the decorum and treat the president as the unserious fool that he is.

AES: True.

Q: Why are you taking that approach?

AES: Because he's a bully alongside being a narcissist. And the only way you deal with bullies is to stand up to them. Bullies don't bully you because they necessarily care for the thing you have. They bully you because they like to bully you because it makes them feel strong. And the way you take on a bully is to bully back. Because then they learn that this does not make them feel strong. It makes them feel weak and they don't like to feel weak. So they back off. And the more you let a bully get away with bullying, the more they signal to everybody else that this person cannot be stood up to. And so I think it's important for us to stand up to him.
El Sayed also recently publicly told Trump that he would name Medicare For All “Trumpcare” if that’s what he needed. El Sayed is not wrong in the interview, and he’s not wrong there 👆. But neither is he a rigid absolutist. The attitude of the incoming Democrats seems to be: “Whatever it takes.”

And that doesn’t mean “Whatever it takes for the Republicans to like us.” There aren’t any Clinton Democrats here.
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FAKE NEWS!

I cover Mexico for The New York Times, and there is no such "invasion."

About 1,500 people recently began walking north from the southern tip of Mexico — weeks away from the United States — and very few, if any, will reach the northern border.

Over the past two years, the Mexican government has repeatedly broken up these small caravans within days of them starting. And there have been far fewer of them since Trump took office.

The reality is the number of illegal border crossings remain near historic lows.
And when the mass of people don’t wade the river, Trump will credit his threat of tariffs. If he remembers that threat; and the caravans.

Trump continues to work relentlessly to keep the elephants away. 🐘
Hardest working man in Washington. His staff said; before Election Day. Since then? Well, why bother?
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The Children’s Hour

Hand to God, the first time I saw that photo, I wondered: “What the FUCK is that man wearing?”

I’m still waiting for Derek Guy to get off Huang’s shoes and explain the place of this jacket in history of Western menswear.

It’s gotta be a lulu.

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In Defeat, Truth

That would be the Texas GOP primary voters. Notoriously MAGA. (And Abbott’s push for school vouchers and data centers didn’t help, either. He was right below Paxton on the ticket, and clearly serving wealthy interests.) Clearly he’s become a RINO. 🦏
Republican Chip Roy attacking Republican redistricting: We passed a great bill, didn't campaign on it immediately turned towards our own political interest in passing redistricting plans across the country, including Texas. Spent our time trying to focus on political power rather than focusing on the people who send us here to represent them.
I’ve always thought the same thing about mattress stores in strip centers. Nobody’s ever in them. How do they stay in business?

Or, in defeat, just more blundering stupidity and denial:
IOW, we’ve lost so many attorneys we had to go to the hustings to find one to threaten a U.S.Congressman doing his job.
"Trump told us to.” 😈 This man has the nuclear codes. 🤦‍♂️ And bugs in his brain.

I had to look it up. Pratt ran in the El “A” mayoral election, got 25.5% of the vote, and didn’t advance to general. I have no idea what he was supposed to protest, aside from whinge about losing.

 In victory, hope:
"This is a new day for Mississippi and for mothers in Mississippi who so many of us have great dreams and hopes for our children. For a lot of us, that means that maybe you you hope your kids leave and that they find a better place to be where there isn't the hatred ... I think Scott will be a leader that reverses the brain drain in Mississippi."
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The Appearance Of…

Does he know who he works for?
Trump is having a full-blown meltdown: "Here we go again! With the perceived loss by the Republicans in the Midterms - I WAS NOT ON THE BALLOT- the INVASION of our Country is taking place again. Huge CARAVANS are forming and beginning their illegal march through Mexico. Many of the people in these Caravans are those that various countries don’t want - 'Send them to America,' they say - But they will not be accepted! MEXICO MUST STOP THEM, NOW, and if they do not do so, the Tariffs on Mexico will be IMMEDIATELY DOUBLED. MEXICO, THE GOVERNOR OF TEXAS, THE VERY LIBERAL NEW GOVERNOR OF TEXAS, OUR GREAT BORDER PATROL, & ICE, HAVE BEEN SO INFORMED. There will be no leniency! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP"
Nope. He hasn’t a clue.
Rep. Dave Min: "I read the letter from the White House counsel. I's embarrassing. It's laughable. And I looked this guy up, Robert Scharf or William Scharf or whatever his name is, just to see who this jackass was. Apparently, he's a Harvard law school graduate. And as a fellow Harvard law alum, I'm embarrassed on behalf of our alma mater."
I remember being embarrassed by people I met in graduate school, because I knew they’d get the same degree I would; and they were meatballs. (I was embarrassed by some of my professors, too; which is why I took my MA and ran. The program was aimed at making PhD’s of us, but they convinced me I didn’t want that fate.) It’s not Harvard, it’s Trump. He is truly a pernicious influence. And besides, he doesn’t hire people with integrity. Good luck with that. This is normal for Trump. This is even normal for Emmer. But the elections...
NN: You're all in for Marco Rubio, but he's tied to the Iran War. So if you think the war cost you the election, how is he the fix?

STUTZMAN: If we could've performed in Iran and taken out the IRGC, kept away any nuclear threat, and gas prices not go up, I don't think we'd have a problem today related to that. I think he'd be a tremendous candidate.
... broke some GOP brains. Maybe it’s seeing that circus tent coming down.

Of course, some of them are just more obviously out of step. Or simply in denial:
Tom Emmer suggests Minnesota elections are rigged: "Either fraud doesn't matter, or our election process in Minnesota is corrupt to the core. I'll let you decide ... something is wrong with the election process in Minnesota, which I think we're gonna hear more about in the future."
🎶Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow!🎶 (Somebody tell Emmer tomorrow arrived on the first Tuesday of this month.)

Still, credit where it is due:
Rep. Mike Lawler: "I'm a big believer in 'humble in victory, gracious in defeat.' And when you lose, you need to be gracious. And one of the things that's important to me is a smooth transition. So we sat down yesterday ... and really had a great conversation ... we can be adults and engage in a civil transfer of power."
Mike Lawler... ... and Cindy Hyde-White are showing the way out from under Trump’s shadow.
Trump, who is lunatic posting this morning, is back to lying that the midterms were stolen: "In order to deflect from MASSIVE BLUE STATE CORRUPTION & CRIME, they are at it again, illegally threatening Republicans with knowingly false accusations and charges. Other than cheating, this is how they won the Midterms - But we won’t let our Country go to hell!"
Even as Trump tries desperately to prove he still has one.

I’ve just gotta end this with Emmer crashing out as badly as Trump. Must be something in the air today:
Emmer: "He came in dressed as a Somali imam. You can only see the eyes -- which, by the way, that's gotta end. I want to see what you're wearing, I want to see what you're carrying, and I want to know who the heck you are. It's a matter of safety and security, it's not a matter of your personal beliefs. This is something that's gotta end."
Armed ICE agents could not be reached for comment. They were too busy shooting people and running around.
BENNY JOHNSON: Would you be in favor of a burka ban here in America, or at least in Minnesota?

TOM EMMER: There should be no burkas. There should be nothing like that allowed. It's pure stupidity to say 'this is what they believe.' Really? Over 80% of this population is on welfare programs.
Non-sequiturs ‘R’ Us. Emmer’s NSFW erotic fantasy. Ladies and gentlemen, the new House Minority Whip. 😎 (‘Cause with Gym Jordan and Emmer in charge, future’s so bright, I gotta wear…)
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In Memoriam

House Republicans just jammed through a bill to CUT veterans benefits on Veterans Day. Plenty of money for tax giveaways for billionaires and corporations, but they have no problem slashing veterans’ benefits.

I will keep fighting this betrayal of my fellow veterans and right-wing efforts to gut and privatize the VA.
VFW:
On a day dedicated to honoring America's veterans, the House of Representatives took the reprehensible step to quickly pass the so-called Take Care of America's Veterans Act (H.R. 9237), advancing legislation that the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States considers the largest net benefit cut since the Great Depression, setting a dangerous precedent that would allow Congress to cut veterans' earned benefits to finance unrelated federal spending.

The circumstances surrounding the House's action make this vote even more troubling. After conducting a lengthy recorded roll call vote on another matter, the House moved to a voice vote on TCAVA, with the chair quickly declaring that the yeas had prevailed without the opportunity for a roll call, while House Veterans Affairs Committee Ranking Member Mark Takano was called off the floor to discuss amending the bill.

If that sequence is confirmed, veterans and the American people deserve an explanation for why members of Congress were not required to go on the record on legislation that could affect millions of veterans and their families. Veterans deserve to know where their elected representatives stand. They deserve more than procedural maneuvering that leaves the public questioning whether their representatives were willing to accept accountability for their votes.

“It is an insult to America's veterans that Congress would advance legislation threatening their earned benefits on Veterans Day, the very day our nation is supposed to honor their service and sacrifice,” said VFW National Commander-in-Chief Cory Geisler. “And if congressional leaders believed this proposal was worthy of passage, they should have had the courage to let every member's position be recorded for the country to see. Playing political games with veterans' benefits while avoiding public accountability is cowardly and dishonorable. Those who have worn the uniform are watching, and we are more than disappointed – we feel dishonored and disrespected for our service. This proposal should be dead on arrival in the Senate, sending an unmistakable message to every American serving in harm's way that this country will honor its commitments to those who defend it.”

The VFW has repeatedly raised concerns about Section 108 of the legislation, which would, for the first time ever, write changes to the VA disability rating schedule into law to generate budget savings. Beyond its immediate implications for veterans' disability compensation, the VFW believes this approach creates a roadmap for future Congresses to target veterans' earned benefits as a budgetary gimmick or to cut benefits out of political convenience.

The timing of today's vote carries particular significance. As American service members continue to serve in harm's way around the world, Congress has advanced a proposal that raises serious questions about the promises made to those who volunteer to serve.

"Our all-volunteer force is built on the promise that when Americans step forward to defend this country, this country will stand behind them,” said Geisler. “We cannot tell young Americans that their service is indispensable while simultaneously treating the benefits earned through that service as a convenient way to cut spending. We must honor the contract, not rewrite it when the bill comes due."

More than 150 VFW volunteers converged on Washington this week to make their voices heard, joining thousands more who called and emailed their legislators from communities across the country. Their message was consistent: Veterans' earned benefits should never be used as a congressional piggy bank to fund other projects or as leverage in budget negotiations.

With the legislation now heading to the Senate, the VFW's concerns are stronger than ever after the political trickery in the House. The organization maintains that Congress can pursue meaningful improvements to veterans' benefits without financing them through reductions to other veterans' compensation or establishing a precedent that threatens future generations of service members.

The VFW has historically fought against benefit cuts like those included in TCAVA, and we will continue to fight these kinds of dangerous proposals to the end – especially when legislators seek to avoid accountability. VFW will continue to monitor the legislation and communicate its concerns about the potential consequences for veterans, military families and the nation's all-volunteer force, ensuring our nation's leaders Honor the Contract.
According to the GOP, our responsibility doesn’t even begin when they come home.
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Happening At The Same Time

Coincidence? I think not. And deep in the recesses of the White House: But still not a word from the White House about this: "Mississippi? How you even spell that?”
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“Parting Easily Two/Who Were Never Joined”

Is he expecting the Pope to call him? 🤙
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Wednesday, November 11, 2026

Closing Time

So, don’t act like Republicans?🤷‍♂️ Note to self: never shake hands with Sen. Kennedy. (And I do NOT want to know what the context of that statement was, either.) Uh-huh. Does it involve suspending the 5th and 14th Amendments? ‘Cause they already tried that. Otherwise it goes through the courts, and the DOJ has a piss poor track record in cases where the defendant has competent legal counsel, in an Art. III court. The job of the White House Counsel is to give legal counsel to the Office of the President. Not the person holding that office; she/he needs their own lawyer with a duty to their client. White House Counsel doesn’t represent the Office in court, either. When the office is a defendant in a civil suit, DOJ represents the office. (Hence the tremendous conflicts of interest when Trump tried to settle a suit he had filed against the government.)

Scharf is so out of line here it’s not funny. He has no role to play, and no authority, not even the “color of law” around him. In the vernacular, his mouth is writing checks his ass can’t cash. It’s almost funny that he just wants everyone to “follow the rules.” Like Trump, that means only the rules that favor Trump.

Nice work, if you can get it.

I’m not sure he isn’t putting his law license in jeopardy. He’s certainly being a braying ass.

On the other channel, a palate cleanser.
SENATOR-ELECT SCOTT COLOM: We all know that prayer is only a part of our Mississippi faith tradition. You need faith. And I'll tell you, throughout this campaign, there were many times where I had to have faith. There were times that I couldn't get donors to answer the phone. They did not believe a moment like this was possible, but I kept the faith….

There's so many people that have faith in Mississippi at times where it seemed impossible. People like Medgar Evers. I can't help but think about Medgar Evers on Veterans Day. A moment like this, where he served his country and came home to Mississippi when they wouldn't let him vote. But he had faith that Mississippi could make progress. He had faith that one day everybody would have the right to vote. He had faith that a day like this was possible
SENATOR-ELECT COLOM: I've been telling everybody that we're going to win this election. I was saying it 8 or 9 months ago. But every time I said it, I pointed out that people were going to give me too much credit for it because it's not something that I did. It's something that we did.

All I did was have the courage to imagine a night like this. I had the courage to believe in Mississippi. I had the courage to understand that we could show the country that Mississippi matters.
Sen.-Elect Colom: But I want to have a final word to every Mississippian: the ones that voted for me, the ones that didn’t vote for me, and the ones that didn’t vote.

My commitment to you, each and every one of you, is that, first, I’m going to treat your children like I want my children to be treated. I’m going to treat your parents the way I want my parents to be treated. I’m going to treat your future the way I want my future to be.

My commitment is to be someone that continues to stay in prayer, continues to have faith, and continues to work to make every Mississippian’s life better.

That’s what you’re getting.

I make a solemn commitment to each and every Mississippian: In every decision I make, I will never forget: The most important thing is Mississippi matters.
Does that sound “woke” to anybody?

Me, neither.
Military families ERUPTED in anger at a Navy town hall after learning their loved ones fighting Trump's Iran war won't be home for the holidays.

Families described broken equipment, worsening conditions, and a mental health crisis. One spouse said her husband had contemplated suicide FOUR TIMES and was denied help.
The blockade of Iran is hardly costing us anything. 

Closing thoughts: Good night Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea. 🌊 
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The Unitary Executive Madman Theory

Do they think they are going to court on this? Do they think the Sinister Six will side with them? Trump’s only power over the Court is to appoint Justices with the advice and consent of the Senate. Congress can eliminate their funding (save their salaries), and render them chamberless (as they were for much of their first 100 years). Congress can alter their jurisdiction. Congress can fuck them over. Hard.

And even a first year would know there’s no 1st Amendment issue here.

The Sinister Six can’t order Congress to give them a building, or fund their staff. And they dare not tread on the separation of powers by ruling on what actual limits there are to legislative oversight and investigation. That would just invite Congress to set limits on the jurisdiction of the Court.

These people should quit now. They can’t intimidate the Congress, they can’t win in court, and Trump won’t say “Well, you tried.” (Ask Harmeet Dhillon).

This is Trump going down in flames.🔥 And taking everybody in the Administration with him. Which, yes, is a problem for the rest of us. Oh, Trump can go to hell. It’s the institutions, like the DOJ, I’m worried about. We’re going to suffer those damages long after Trump is drooling into his sippy cup.


(Let me address the elephant in the room: Trump v. US. Yes, Roberts gave the President immunity, but of a limited kind. It rests on the President’s execution of “official duties.” But what are those? That is a bone the Court left to the lower courts to chew on. The immediate effect of the ruling was to gum up the federal prosecutions. Roberts could not have foreseen, as a fact, that Trump would win reelection. His aim (misguidedly) was to protect the office. The effect was not to give Trump immunity in the cases; but to add a whole new burden to the legal fight, one that would keep the cases in court for a decade or more. A very bad decision, but not an ending to the prosecutions. Trump’s election did that.

And yes, Roberts has given the office an excess of powers; but not the power to tell Congress to fuck off and leave the President a monarch. Even Alito and Thomas know their limitations.

Presidential immunity was made up out of whole cloth; and like the “unitary executive,” it’s a terrible concept which needs correcting with a constitutional amendment (well, both do). But it didn’t give Trump an automatic get out of jail free card. He might still be spending his (much smaller) fortune defending those cases had the 2024 election gone another way. So, would the Court tell Congress to leave the President alone and let him do as he damn well pleases? And, by the way, quit sending out letters because, you know, 1st Amendment?

Not likely. The reasonable response to Trump v. U.S. is to amend the Constitution. The reasonable response to a Court that accepts the arguments in the tweets above, is to remind them who literally, under Article III, made the Court and set it up in business. And still has the power to undo it.)
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😎

And not a peep from Trump. Maybe nobody told him about it.
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To William Scharf, White House Counsel

Lawyer up.
In the letter, which was first obtained by Punchbowl News, Scharf warned Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), who is in line to become the next chairman of the House Oversight Committee, that his office is monitoring “the abusive and capricious threats” from Democrats “who seek to abuse the legislative process to intimidate and interfere with the lawful functioning of government.”

“You and your congressional colleagues have asserted they will issue subpoenas to harass, threaten, and deter dedicated members of the administration from further service,” Scharf wrote. “Several have compared their subpoena pledges to handing out ‘candy.’”

Scharf further warned that “threats to executive branch officials designed to deter them from public service... may cross the line into blatant criminality” that could warrant prosecution.
You really should know better:
Raskin: Somebody should tell Todd Blanche and his team to get a Supreme Court decision called Steffel v. Thompson, which says it’s legally actionable to bring an injunction action against the government if the government is trying to scare you out of exercising your First Amendment rights and your constitutional rights.

In our case, it’s not just that these members were exercising their constitutional rights; they were exercising their constitutional duties. We have a duty, as the Article I preeminent branch of government, to conduct oversight operations of the entire government, as well as the economy and other things happening in society.
The statute of limitations is five years. Unless Trump thinks of you very specifically, there is no valid pardon in your future. Keeping Trump happy is not a sound career path. I like her more and more.
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Veteran’s Day 2026

‘Tis a mystery why the country turned against the GOP. I honestly think this would be the impeachment count that gets him removed. It’s far too easy to understand.
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God Only Knows

Did God bless this, too? Now he probably wants to call it “America’s Day.”

It’s a solemn day, so…
Raise money. (For what? There aren’t any elections for two years, he held onto most of his campaign slush fund, and he can’t run again.) A solemn day, indeed. (That soldier knew who he was speaking to. God bless him.)
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Words Are A Stain On The Silence

Wherever they were. The rapid descent is on full display.
Trump on Iran War: Under this administration, and it was about time, somebody fought back. All of us fought back. We fought back. And we seriously fought back. And we won. Just a question of when we want to end it.

We want to make sure we have a total victory. Not a 93% victory. It's got to be total.

Hopefully, we won't have to destroy any more of that country. Got a lot of work to do to put it back.
Trump: The Vietnam War lasted 21 years and we lost 60,000 people. Iraq went on for eight years and we lost more than 4,400 people. Afghanistan was almost 20 years and we lost 2,500 service members and got very little from any of these wars. In our case…

We had Venezuela where we're taking out billions and billions of dollars of oil, and all sorts of other things. Be hundreds of billions very soon. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. To the victor belong the spoils. They used to say. But you can say it again with us under this leadership.
That’s enough of that.
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The Second Coming

"The ceremony of innocence is drowned...."


Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
 Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
World War I ended on this day, 108 years ago. Yeats wrote this poem in January following the first Armistice Day. Criticism of the poem usually focuses on Yeats’ mythology, because it created the structure of his reinvention as a poet in roughly the last quarter of his life. His theory of history; the importance of the “gyres;” his mystical visions; all important stuff in Yeatsian studies. But I think this poem is also a reaction to the war that turned Europe into a charnel house, and created the “Lost Generation” of poets and writers who came on as Yeats was becoming an eminence grise. I’m not advocating a grand new critical theory for reading Yeats. I’m just pointing out this famous poem has a temporal, as well as canonical, location.

Strip away the theory of history, and you have a response to the horrors of that war. It certainly loosed “the blood dimmed tide” on Europe and England (Yeats lost no love for the English, but no one could set aside the slaughter of a generation of young men); “the ceremony of innocence” was certainly drowned. Ask the “Lost Generation.” They thought it so awful that they wondered if, indeed, a revelation was at hand: a disclosure, a revealing, of the true way of things. They thought it did; that’s why they were “lost.”

And the vision out of Spiritus Mundi of the rough, rude beast, may be a metaphor of apocalypse; or it may be a recognition of the loss of European civilization which had seemed so orderly and stable until July, 1914. The Lost Generation thought it an irretrievable loss, too. But Yeats connects it to history in what doesn’t have to be a mystical interpretation of history; just an acknowledgment of cause and effect. In Yeats’ cyclical theory of history even the cycles are not inexorable forces of a mad clockwork, but a product of causation, in this case the reaction of evil to the presence of good. So “twenty centuries of stony sleep” are “vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle.” Or July, 1914 was not sui generis, but the result of causes that exploded into war. And while Yeats couldn’t have foreseen it in 1919, Armistice Day 1918 would only postpone the conclusion of “The Great War” and its causes, with the punishment of Germany the “rocking cradle” that only a quarter of a century later was the next, and even worse, rough beast, that slouched across Europe to be born. Born with even more terrible consequences. Evil and good are not so easily separated, and good conquering evil may leave the world better than it might have been; but it also leaves consequences that may take twenty centuries to recognize. Arguably, that conflict has just shifted continents; but the blood dimmed tide has yet to go back out.

Every act, especially those we deem acts of history, has consequences. That, too, is a lesson of the poem; and of Armistice Day. Not because of the day; but because of how we kept it. At least for the first 25 years. And how have we kept it since?
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Armistice Day 2026


It's funny how conservative you get over time. I've come to prefer "Armistice" to "Veteran's" to label the day, maybe because "Memorial Day" has been taken over as another day to have a spasm of declaring ourselves free because we resemble Rome (with its standing army) more than we resemble Athens (with its citizen soldiers called to battle only when the need arose).

Paths of Glory is the story for today. The story of a French general ordering a suicide charge by his own troops, and then issuing a order to shell his own troops to get them out their trenches and into the fusillade of machine gun fire that would surely cut them down like so many blades of grass.

That's the movie for today.

 "A voice says, 'Cry!" And I say: "What shall I cry? All flesh is grass...."

And grass is the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may
         see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.


"Call the names. Call the names. Call the names."


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Preserving “Armistice Day”

"The ceremony of innocence is drowned...."


"The blood swept lands and seas of red...."

Kurt Vonnegut, b. November 11, 1922, d. April 11, 2007.

I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

"The sudden silence was the Voice of God."

 Precisely so. It should always be remembered that way.  Only people start wars.  Only people stop wars.  Aside from Twain's observation that man is the only animal that blushes; or needs to; the distinction of being warriors is also ours alone.

And we never remember what it costs.
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⛽️🙀

Yup:
A month after President Donald Trump announced a controversial deal with Vladimir Putin to bring Russian diesel to the U.S., not a single barrel has arrived, the Wall Street Journal reported, as tankers headed for American ports turned around due to a lack of willing buyers.

Trump pitched the Russian fuel as a way to bring down soaring diesel prices, which pushed up consumer costs ahead of the midterm elections. But "U.S. oil companies are reluctant to handle the cargoes of Russian diesel because of the potential legal and reputational consequences," industry executives and lobbyists told the Journal.

...

Three other tankers turned back last week, according to Kpler data cited by the Journal. Two are headed to Brazil, and a third has arrived in Egypt. All three had listed U.S. East Coast destinations when they left Russia’s Primorsk port last month.

The U.S. doesn’t need the fuel, the Journal noted. Domestic refiners produce more diesel than the country uses and export more than 1.5 million barrels a day. Still, tight global supplies tied to the Middle East conflict have pushed the average price of diesel to $6.16 a gallon, up from $3.75 before the war.
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💃🏾 Dancing With The One What Brung Ya

You mean like Medicare. Or the healthcare Congress gets.

Yeah, marketing was your downfall.
Emmer’s preferred marketing has been too successful. Voters overwhelmingly opted for a serious change. Just a reminder, this 👆 is the marketing that worked. Even in Texas. Rick Scott thinks we need to double down on American imperialism and gunboat diplomacy. Florida, man. Same energy. Right down to the peninsula. Aside from the ones leaving (like Dhillon) who couldn’t give Trump the results he demanded because the law kept getting in the way. (She lost 75% of her staff  because she was ideological, nuts, and incompetent.) But there’s still plenty of chaos to go around. And staff retention efforts are picking up. The nation will be picking up the pieces for years to come.
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Aristotle Has Entered The Chat

OJEDA: I'm not here to become a millionaire. There's not one person in my district voted for me so that I could come here and play stocks and become a multimillionaire. They sent me here to fight for them, and that's what I'm going to do. I didn't come here to learn politics. I came here to teach these people who the hell they work for.
Aristotle would teach you that politics is how people corporately work out how they live together, and get things done for the common good.

And the 534 men and women in Congress will tell you they didn’t come to D.C. to be your students.
OJEDA: These are people that should be impeached and then prosecuted for what they have done. People have been snatched off the streets, given no due process and have ended up in gulags someplace. For what? Because they wanted to come to the United States of America and create a better opportunity for their children. This is unacceptable. That's not American. Immigrants make this country great, you know, for what you do to the least of my brethren, you do unto me. Jesus did not tell you to hate the stranger. Jesus told you to love the stranger. And that's what we need to do. And that's not what we're seeing right now.

I want Hegseth and them prosecuted for what they have done.
While I agree with the critique, Jesus didn’t teach us to fight fire with fire. The last thing we need on our side is a mini-Trump demanding everyone we disagree with be locked up or taught a lesson. 🤦‍♂️
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