“While the leadership of the House and Senate is changing, the fundamentals of American politics have not. In all the finger pointing that will ensue over the coming weeks, some things should already be clear. Regardless of where the last ballots fall, the basic principles of American politics remain the same. Voters still respond to the same things they always have. As Republicans look to 2028, they must double down on the basics of campaigning that stand the test of time. 1.) Candidate quality matters. Fielding the better candidate is not optional. … 2.) Results must be felt. A majority is judged by outcomes people can feel, not by legislative talking points. … 3.) Volume is not a strategy. Too much money is spent on strategies with too little value, often in ways that simply annoy voters….” (11/04/26)
“Have Americans gotten the loyalty business all wrong? Are we grasping the ‘second rate’ when we rely on politics to lift us? We are the ones, not politicians, who will build an America we are proud of.” (11/04/26)
“In the wake of the Democratic blowout in Tuesday’s midterms — South Carolina, Kansas, and Texas have gone blue — beware the preachers of holy complexity bent on obfuscating the obvious: President Trump and the GOP broke their pledge of peace, launched an ill-conceived war with Iran, and thus exacerbated an affordability crisis they’d been elected to solve. To be sure, other failures marked the first two years of the Trump administration: the chaotic tariff regime, the grotesque corruption, the performative cruelty of ICE, Trump’s own descent from mere reality-TV vanity to ballroom-obsessed, Neronian caprice. But the Iran war — given both its inflationary effects and galling betrayal of one of Trump’s core pledges — looms largest. The preachers of holy complexity have good reason to avoid this bare truth.” (11/04/26)
“Ever since England’s first written quasi-constitution—the 1653 Instrument of Government which created Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate but lasted only four years before being superseded—there have been documents that might have evolved into genuine constitutional frameworks. Yet even those that have acquired permanent symbolic status, such as the 1689 Bill of Rights, are still subject to the interpretative vagaries of the zeitgeist. This is, of course, true of the US Constitution, too, as the Supreme Court’s decisions in recent years have cast a new light on doctrines such as the separation of powers or the efficacy of checks and balances. A written constitution does not necessarily guarantee stability, let alone certainty. But in the British case, the absence of definitive rules is integral to the character, even the existence, of the state, which has always prided itself on its flexibility.” (11/04/26)
“The much-anticipated U.S. midterm elections—so consequential, in fact, to President Donald Trump that he promised Americans $5,000 in cash if Republicans prevailed—have drawn to a close. As of writing, the much-discussed ‘blue tsunami’ has become a political reality: Democrats have seized control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, delivering a stunning repudiation of a president whose second administration has been nothing short of disastrous. The political ramifications are immense. Although Democrats lack the two-thirds Senate majority necessary to convict and remove Trump following impeachment, they will soon possess something they have been deprived of for two years: the institutional power to investigate his administration, subpoena witnesses, compel testimony, and expose the inner workings of a political machine that has operated with extraordinary impunity.” (11/04/26)
“Those who are confident about the safety of vaccines have before them an easy route to shore up public confidence and completely shut down the anti-vaxx movement. They could open the data to what’s called the Vaccine Safety Datalink or VSD. Right now and for the past quarter century, access is severely restricted to only a handful of people at the CDC and the employees of the National Center for Health Statistics Research Data Center, which has the impossible acronym NCHSRDC, in Hyattsville, Maryland. No one can buy the database or access, not the public, not researchers at NIH, not statisticians at universities nor medical doctors at hospitals. … In effect, the VSD is among the most secretive services in the entire government, comparable to Fort Knox, the Federal Reserve, and the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency. It’s the real Puzzle Palace” (11/04/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Prior to the midterms, there were indications that President Trump might initiate another intense bombing campaign in Iran after the elections. I’ve got a better idea for the president. In light of the tsunami-like rejection of his presidency at the hands of American voters — owing partly to his illegal and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran — this would be a great time for him to do a complete reset with respect to not only Iran but also Cuba and Venezuela. Rather than bomb Iran again, Trump should order an immediate exit of all U.S. troops from the Middle East. … Lift the brutal decades-old U.S. economic embargo and the U.S. oil blockade. Leave the Cuban people alone …. It’s the same with Venezuela. Leave that country to the Venezuelan people. Stop cooperating with and making deals with Venezuela’s socialist-communist regime and Marxist ruler.” (11/04/26)
“The MAGA people appear to have been laboring under a number of delusions. First, they seem to be genuinely surprised by the fact that they suffered a crushing defeat in the midterm elections. In fact, polls, forecasts, and prediction markets had all been calling a Democratic victory for months now. But a lot of MAGA types appear to have believed that America always has some big hidden reservoir of shy Trump supporters out there that everyone always misses, and that this silent majority would ride to the GOP’s rescue and prove all the pollsters and forecasters wrong, as they did in 2016. To put it mildly, that did not happen.” (11/04/26)
“Over the last year, a common narrative has circulated through conservative commentary about Latin America’s political shifts. Washington dismantled the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the argument goes, and conservative candidates began winning because American taxpayers stopped subsidizing their opponents. This narrative is misleading once placed under the microscope. But that has not stopped prominent figures on the MAGA right to spin a narrative.” (11/04/26)
