Dem
54
Ties
2
GOP
44
There's also a lot of news that isn't election results, but is worth a bit of attention from us. So:
A Monumental Failure, Part I: Donald Trump held his first press availability since the midterm shellacking, and the thing he spent nearly all of his time talking about was... his balls. He's heard the voters, and he's felt their pain, and he's decided that he has to really focus on what is important, namely the White House ballroom. In this way, his first post-election press conference parallels his last pre-election press conference, since he spent that one mostly talking about the Lincoln Reflecting Pool.
Our Take: There is no question that Trump is badly hurt, on an emotional level, by what happened on Tuesday. And there can be no doubt that he will search for some way to cope with that. Truth be told, his current coping strategy might be the very best option for the country. If he retreats to his happy place, and consoles himself with dreams of all the monuments to himself he is going to build, that is many orders of magnitude better than, say, attacking Iran or telling ICE to arrest the entire population of Texas.
A Monumental Failure, Part II: That said, Trump may have trouble indulging his monument-building fantasies. Yesterday, he got the good news that his handpicked board had approved the Arc de Trump. Hours later, however, a judge placed an injunction on the ruling, to give time to decide whether the approval was legal. Meanwhile, the administration also revealed that the structure will take 39 months to complete.
Our Take: There are about 25 months left in Trump's term. So, even if the injunction is lifted, and construction begins early next year, the Arc won't be close to completed by the time he leaves office. And what do you think the odds are that even one day of work is done on it after January 20, 2029? Trump's only hope, and it's slim, is that the Democrats somehow trade the Arc for Trump's signature on some key piece of legislation. Like, maybe the Arc de Trump can be built to celebrate his decision to sign off on
two more senators for the Democratsstatehood for Washington, D.C.
A Monumental Failure, Part III: In what would seem to be a tacit acknowledgment that the ballroom and the arc are iffy, Trump used his first post-election XO yesterday to create a different monument to himself. He has proclaimed that the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room of the White House are now "national monuments" and cannot be changed. Consequently, all his fake gold leafing must be retained forever.
Our Take: The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, according to the book of Job. The same basic principle applies to XOs. If Trump really thinks that his XO cannot be overruled by an XO from a future president, he really is losing his marbles.
A Monumental Failure, Part IV: This isn't directly Trump's doing, but the timing is poetic nonetheless. LIV golf, the rival to the PGA tour that was created for... reasons, and that held numerous events at Trump-branded courses, is no more. They announced yesterday that they would be ceasing options.
Our Take: Everything Trump touches turns to lead. This also does nothing to dissuade us from our theory that LIV was created as a way to funnel money to Trump, and that once doing that was no longer useful, the tour would disappear. Unfortunately, they forgot to give him the first ever LIV Peace Prize before shutting down.
Market Corrections: The market has been on quite a roller coaster ride. It was down in the hours after the polls closed. Then, on Wednesday, it had its best post-election day in 44 years, with stocks gaining an average of 1.5% in value over the course of the day. Then, on Thursday, investors realized that their current obsession, namely AI, is not popular with the American people, and the road ahead could be rocky. So, there was a huge sell-off, and the market lost $2.5 trillion in value.
Our Take: We don't have any idea what the market will do in the future, and we're not even going to try to guess.
Newsom Sort of Abolishes the Death Penalty in California: With his time in office winding down, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) announced yesterday that he was commuting the sentences of all 548 people on death row in California to life in prison. He can actually only do that unilaterally for the 200 or so inmates who are convicted of just one offense. All the other commutations have to be approved by the state Supreme Court.
Our Take: We have heard a rumor that Newsom is thinking about a presidential run in 2028, so this might be related to that. But, truth be told, we don't think so. California hasn't actually executed someone in 20 years, it's hard to get the needed drugs for lethal injections, and nobody wants a fiasco like what happened with Christa Pike in Tennessee. Our sense is that Newsom did it because he felt it was the right thing to do.
Murphy Sidelined: Over the weekend, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) had a stroke and was hospitalized. The stroke appears to have been fairly minor, and he is reportedly making a rapid recovery and will soon be back to 100%.
Our Take: Murphy has a reputation as a good guy, and he's certainly someone willing to roll up his sleeves and get to work doing his job (as opposed to, say, doing his sixth interview of the week for some cable news station). We send our best wishes on a speedy and full recovery, and imagine that the readers feel the same.
It's almost inconceivable we won't have another of these next week. Maybe two, since there is just so much out there right now. Today's blog posting began with a collection of something like 500 links. (Z & A)