- How Trump is dismantling the American scientific research machine;
- And how Republicans are trashing decorum and civility;
- How Trump is deteriorating.
- Voting recommendations from John Scalzi: don’t vote for Republicans;
- Max Boot on why Hegseth should go;
- Tuck Carlson, demon hunter;
- California’s Prop 40, and Robert Reich’s take on it.
- From last week, a perspective on Trump’s utter failure.
Long article on today’s NYT front page.
NY Times, posted 31 Oct 2026: How Trump Is Dismantling America’s Scientific Research Machine, subtitled “The system that has driven life-altering discoveries and helped make the United States a superpower is now under intense strain.”
MAGA presumably doesn’t care. They have their Bibles. The one-time greatest nation in the world is being taken down.
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Also. They’ve abandoned all pretense of decorum and civility. While considering themselves the moral ones.
Also on today’s NYT front page: Led by Trump, Republicans Close Midterms With Ugly Personal Attacks, subtitled “Facing backlash over inflation and anger with the president, Republicans have turned to an onslaught of baseless claims about Democratic candidates.”
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And this, about Trump himself.
NY Times, yesterday 1 Nov 26: Threats, Gaffes and Men’s Posteriors: Trump’s Talk Gets Wilder, subtitled “A Times review of the president’s public speeches finds that he is more profane, more absolutist, longer-winded and less coherent than he was in 2016.”
A very long piece that appeared over multiple pages in print. A sample:
He can be forgetful and repetitive. He is more long-winded, more profane and more absolutist than when he ran for president a decade ago. His rambling speeches seem even more garbled at times. He makes comments that leave people wondering what he is talking about or that sound like he is saying something he is not. And even for a president who has never fully observed the norms of the office, he seems more willing to say things no other president would say.
He declared that at an unfenced construction site “only a Hispanic could survive that fall.” He wants to ban immigrants from Norway “because I didn’t get the Nobel Prize.” He says “I don’t give a damn” if he is seen as caring more about oil company profits than struggling workers. He mispronounces the Strait of Hormuz as the “Hormone Strait.” He has told supporters to “cheat like hell” in the Nov. 3 elections. He says military leakers “should be shot.” And then there is his baffling fixation with admiring men’s posteriors.
All of this, all of the past decade of American history, support my provisional conclusion that a significant portion of humanity (not just Americans), are simply not very smart, and are driven by simplistic tribal allegiance to a seemingly-powerful leader. This can’t last forever.
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Voting recommendations from a trusted source. These are obvious and noncontroversial for most people not stuck deep in MAGAland.
John Scalzi, Whatever, today: My Voting Recommendations, 2026
They are simple: For Christ’s sake, don’t vote for a single fucking Republican.
I don’t have to tell you why, you know why already, but I’ll go ahead and say it: Because the Republican party has a corrupt doddering fascist grifter at its head, who cares far more about lining his pocket than he ever did about the state of the nation, and he’s remade the entire political organization into his image. On his watch and with his approval we’ve gotten into a war we had no plan for, the cost of gas and groceries have spiked, measles and other easily curable diseases have come roaring back, a masked, internal secret police is snatching people from the streets without due process, white supremacy has shoved its way back into official policy, and he’s turned his back on long-standing allies to gleefully lick the boots of the worst authoritarians in the world.
Anyone in the GOP who had a problem with any of this is gone out of Washington and has been for years, replaced by simpering toadies. On the state and local levels, Republican politicians have gleefully raced to become mini versions of this wholly repugnant person. Those who haven’t, still accept what the GOP has become and do little if anything to stop it. The whole party needs to burn down to the ground, the ground needs to be salted and every current office holder in it, certainly on the national level, shamed out of public life.
Don’t say it–
“But the Democrats are just the same!” Man, shut the fuck up. No one with a mental acuity above being able to push a crayon through a dollar store activity book maze thinks that’s even remotely true. I’m not going to argue with you that the Democrats, each individual or the party as a whole, are a paragon of civic virtue, but this year the options are “actual fucking corrupt and lawless fascism” or not. I regret to say we have a two-party system where third parties act as spoilers, not legitimate competitors — there’s a reason why pro-GOP political action committees funded a huge mailer push for the socialist senatorial candidate in my state — and all the ways to fix that fact are beyond the purview of this particular election. Here in 2026, the most effective way to blunt the reach of actual corrupt and lawless fascism runs through the Democrats.
He does have a way with words.
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Another example. Max Boot is one of those traditional conservatives who is appalled by Trump and his toadies.
Washington Post, Max Boot, today: Hegseth just showed again why he needs to go, subtitled “The defense secretary richly deserves to be impeached or fired.”
He begins by wondering who the worst Cabinet official is. So many options. And settles on Hegseth.
Hegseth is good at one thing and one thing only: consolidating power in the Pentagon. He has not only ousted rivals such as Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, but also managed to maintain his standing with the notoriously mercurial Trump. Hegseth is still around, while Noem, Bondi and Gabbard are gone. Of course, it helps that Hegseth is a man; Trump fires women more readily.
To hold on to office, Hegseth has launched Queeg-like hunts to shut down unflattering leaks; he has even, for the first time in memory, ordered the polygraphing of dozens of senior officers. He also constantly posts videos of himself working out with the troops — as if his job were to be a personal trainer. He knows that in this administration, image counts more than substance. Thus, he calls himself the “secretary of war” because he thinks that sounds cooler than his actual title.
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Yet again: conservatives have a loose grip on reality.
Media Matters, 31 Oct 2026: Tucker Carlson: Demon Hunter, subtitled “Demons and the supernatural mentioned at least 644 times on Tucker Carlson’s show”
Nearly a quarter of episodes of Tucker Carlson’s online show feature claims about demons, alleged occult activity, and/or the supernatural, including discussions of “ritual killing” and people suffering from “demonic possession.” Supernatural themes have increased dramatically on Carlson’s show as he has reinvented himself as an independent power center on the right, vowing to “help build a third party,” releasing his 10-point vision for America, and fueling speculation about a potential third-party run.
This kind of thinking will not get us anywhere. The kind of thinking that has gotten us this far is being dismantled by the party of demon-hunters (see first item above).
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The most controversial issue in California is, perhaps, Proposition 40, the so-called “billionaires tax.”
There have been dozens of TV ads every day warning about the potential consequences. These ads, of course, are paid for by the billionaires, who think they can spend less on ads than they would have to pay under the new tax. Many of their arguments are slippery-slope arguments: if this happens, these other bad things might happen.
Here is Robert Reich’s take.
Robert Reich, yesterday 1 Nov 26: How to close the Muskrat Loophole, and a final word on Prop 40
Subtitled: Government contractors are barred from making campaign contributions, but Elon — one of the biggest of all government contractors — has poured a half-billion into the midterms. Here’s how to stop him.
Beginning:
Friends,
Did you know that government contractors are currently banned from making campaign contributions?
The law was enacted to prevent corrupt pay-to-play arrangements in which companies seeking federal contracts curry favor with legislators and officials who decide where those federal dollars go, by making massive campaign contributions to them.
But the law doesn’t doesn’t cover the executive officers or major shareholders of government contractors.
Call it the Elon Musk loophole.
Going on with how Musk has used it. Then:
Now, for California’s Prop 40.
It’s a one-time 5 percent tax on California’s billionaires, who have been pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into opposing it and trying to persuade Californians it’s a bad idea.
Their costly campaign against Prop 40 is another reason why Californians should support the measure. Otherwise, billionaire campaign spending makes it impossible for the broad public to be heard.
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My strong recommendation to Californians: Vote YES on Prop 40, and vote NO on the poison pills designed to kill it, Props 41 and 42.
Which I plan to do.
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From a week or so ago.
LA Times, opinion by Jackie Calmes, 22 Oct 2026: If you zoom out, Trump’s utter failure is even more embarrassing
I’ll let this story speak for itself, with just this quote:
Being far from the United States for a couple weeks, scanning news from home for just minutes daily over morning coffee, gave me a new appreciation for the metaphors about the clarifying view from 38,000 feet or seeing the forest and not just trees.
President Trump is perhaps best viewed at such distance. If anything, the big picture is less flattering still, ugly even.
