The fact of the matter is that Wyoming now has a real cadre of wimps and oddballs in D.C. John Barrasso rose all the way to Majority Whip. My guess his days of being useful to the GOP are over. He won't run again, and he shouldn't. He's as old as dirt now. Hageman is just going to be malignant, a bit of her specialty. Chuck, well who knows. He probably hoped that his beloved, Donald Trump, would pick him for something.
The blame game is going on in the GOP right now, which is interesting. No singular blame has been decided on, but some Republicans are speaking the truth. Trump killed his party. It's all Trump's fault, and that of the ideologues and sycophants surrounding him.
A couple of people surrounding him have begun to run away from him. J. D. Vance immediately blamed the defeat on the war against Iran which he was always against. That implicitly suggest that Trump listened to dumb ass advice and the dumb ass is Pete Hegseth. As of this morning, it looks like Marco Rubio, who like Vance was just riding in the wagon to get through the country and hopefully into the Oval Office, is getting ready to bolt.
Senior Justice Department official Harmeet Dhillon, who led the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office, and oversaw investigations into universities, voter rolls and alleged violations of religious freedom, bolted.
That's interesting. She surely has a reason to be doing so.
Rumors have it that Pete Hegseth is going to get fired. If that's the case, it has to happen soon as once the 120th Congress is seated, no new Secretary of Defense, and that's what it will be, not Secretary of War, will be confirmed.
One thing we're seeing big time now is Donald Trump's mental decline. As we noted yesterday:
November 5, 2026.
Donald Trump is fading fast.Frankly, he's becoming a child and is playing with his binkies.
Yesterday he went to his sandbox, the ballroom, and babbled. The event was putting up the last steel beam on what is admittedly a massively built structure. The amount of steel going into this, and reinforced concrete (I'll wager it's' badly done, given the time involved) is massive. Workers signed the beam, forever memorializing their descent into fascism for all time. They'll always be remembered as fascist stooges. Trump signed it too, thereby putting his signature on a temporary government structure in addition to pubic hair representations for Jeffrey Epstein.
How charming.
Today he tried to make the gilded shit, which is a kind description, at the White House some sort of national memorial.
It won't work. A stroke of the pen will erase it, just like it did Federal land designations in Utah.
The White House designation will fail.
It's really hard for people to waste anything that's been built, and that's the challenge with the ballroom. Trump knows that. And in spite of all the soft headed Democrats who just say "rename it", no renaming will do what needs to be done. The next administration needs to obliterate it.
And rapidly.
It needs to come down so fast that if it destroys things near it, including the White House, so be it.
And, for goodness sakes, invoke the 25th Amendment.
We're likely to see more and more of this. People like Paula White and Franklin Graham aside, Trump has no real concept of religion and probably figures that any immortality he can obtain has to be in stone. He's desperate to be remembered. He'll become more and more fixated on this.
Indeed, fwiw, I've noticed this in older people who lack a concept of the existential. Some physical thing, or a business, becomes their "legacy".
Trump, deep down, know that his legacy is a vile one. Everything associated with this administration, including the ballroom and the arch, if its built, and the gilded crap will be tossed out like the trash of an all night party on Epstein Island, and smell just as bad. . .a and weird. He can't accept that.
He'll get worse.
cont:
Ted, who of course is from Texas which saw a major Democratic insurgency:
I will say to every elected Republican: We need to listen to what the voters' said, listen to their frustration, and be working to lower gas prices, food prices, interest rates. Help people succeed and provide for their families.
Ted Cruz.
Cruz showed signs of breaking away the last several months. Now he's openly doing so. He's also campaigning for 2028.
In Colorado, Boebert's campaign claims they are investigating "unusual voting patterns".
You have to admit that, by definition, voting for Boebert demonstrates an unusual voting pattern. The pattern would be profound idiocy. They need to find them so they can get help, or relocate to Tommy Tuberville's house.
cont:
Over the past few days I've received an exposure to the MAGA mindset, some from people I know very well, and then one from somebody I don't.
One very well educated person I know, but who has an exceedingly narrow focus on things, is now all verklempt about socialism. I.e., he's convinced the Democrats are going to Karl Marx up everything.
That's flat out absurd.
One of the interesting things about that sort of view is that the same people are so blind to how National Socialist, i.e., Nazi the Republican Party had become under Trump. People are so focused on the racial evil the Nazis espoused (and MAGAs get into that territory themselves) that they don't realize that the Nazis had an economic theory the endorsed, autarky.
The Trump regime has really combined autarky with state capitalism, economic theories that don't work, and theories associated with fascism.
Anyhow, some people apparently seriously believe that there will a Gastronom coming to your neighborhood soon. That's freakin' absurd.
Another set of people I know very well are now all concerned they need to buy gold to hedge against a Democratic caused economic collapse. The funny thing about this is that I knew other people buying gold to hedge against a Republican caused economic collapse. During COVID I knew people who were buying gold to hedge against a COVID caused economic collapse.
Gold's nifty. Buy it if you want, but there's not going to be an economic collapse no matter how much people enjoy dreaming of one.
Another person talked to me in a panic after the election. Funny thing there is that its a case of somebody assuming that I have the same political views as they do.
I'm often amazed by that. It's based, I think, on being a semi rural person and a Wyoming native. That must mean, they figure, that I think the same thing they do, if we're both in Wyoming.
As an aside here, I'll note that I've been accused of TDS here before. I don't worry much about it as Trump is demonstrably demented, and everybody know it at this point. But where TDS may be asserted about me for sure in the ballroom.
It has to come down as soon as possible.
It's a really strong human instinct not to waste things. That's why people save piles of crap. It's why old people begin to hoard thing. And it's why there are all sort of proposals now to "well, we can rename. . ."
You can rename the Trump ballroom to whatever you want, but it'll be the Trump ballroom forever. Far better that it be a memory than an existing fascist monument.
Removing monuments is demonstrably difficult. The aged Confederates and their children put up monuments to their racist rebellion all over the place in the 1910s, and a lot of them are still up. Madrid decided to quietly start taking down Francoist monuments in 2016 and people who hated Franco were upset about it. And big buildings are another thing yet. Occasionally some old big building is the topic of removal and "Save the old big ugly building" will get rolling as a movement.
And this thing is expensive. It'll be expensive to remove it.
Spare no expense and blow the sucker to the ground is my demand to the next President. That's a fitting official memorial to Trump.
For that matter, and this is extreme, I'd look at filing suit against every company involved with this project. It's illegal. They know its illegal. It's a largescale act of vandalism, and as they're damaging things, they should be sued.
The ballroom has really become Trump's binkie. It's pathetic. He stated yesterday that it will be "the best in the world".
Nobody in the US gives a rusty rat's ass about ballrooms anymore. The MAGAs who say "we need it" have probably never been in one. If Trump claimed that he need a giant latrine on the grounds, they'd say "we need it".
Also, fwiw, I don't think that the next administration should wait for anyone to approve taking it down. It went up illegally, and therefore is an illegal structure. The way demolition typically works for a large structure is such that it can be removed before anyone says anything about it.
Cont:
Josef Goebbels, um Stephen Miller, is replacing Susie Wiles as White House Chief of Staff. Wiles position has been on the line for awhile, but this is a seriously moronic move. Miller is potentially the only political figure on the planet hated more than Trump.
That's a signal that Trump is going to double down on delusion.
John Eisenberg, who headed the DOJ's National Security Division, and Jason Reding Quiñones, who pursued probes into the past criminal investigations of Trump, have resigned. The DOJ is clearing out.
November 3, 2026
An absolutely laughable op ed in the Cowboy State Daily, posted on election day, but before the election results:
Hageman goes into the Senate as a freshman Senator and will receive an assignment to the toilet bowl committee. She's not going to achieve squat for at least four years.
She also posted this screed somewhere on social media:
The people of Wyoming have hired me to do a new job. I am grateful, and I will not let you down.
Four years ago, you gave me the honor and responsibility that go with serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, and I have worked hard every day to defend your Constitutional rights and look out for your interests in every way possible. I will now move across the Capitol to the Senate, where I will again put my shoulder to the wheel and be the champion Wyoming wants in Washington, D.C.
We are about to engage in a battle for the future of this nation, and as we all recognize, the looming fight with the left is about much more than just policy differences. It’s about the very survival of this country as it has been and as we know it. Are we a capitalist nation, or will we slide precipitously into communism? The left hates our founding principles of freedom, just as they hate our strength and prosperity. A strong United States of America embarrasses them, so they aim to tear it all down. And I aim to stand in their way.
We must keep taxes low, prioritize defending property rights, and produce as much domestic energy as we can. We must protect our borders and enforce immigration laws for those already inside the country. We must aggressively defend freedom and capitalism, or the rabid left and their weak dupes in the Democratic Party will usher in soul-crushing communism.
Wyoming has a great deal at stake in the coming years as we know the forces of the left will stop at nothing to prevent us from safely accessing our own natural resources. Wyoming leads the nation in coal production, has the most uranium reserves, and is prominent in oil and natural gas as well. We must defend America’s energy independence and block all efforts to punish the lawful production of domestic energy. Not only does our economy depend on it, so does the very existence of the United States of America.
As always, I am grateful to President Trump for his continued support. I thank our two current U.S. Senators, Sen. John Barrasso and Sen. Cynthia Lummis, whose retirement was the only reason I decided to run for this seat. And, most of all, I thank the people of Wyoming.
I can’t wait to join the Republicans in the Senate in January to fight these battles ahead.
This puts Hageman back into the liar category. The Democrats are not communists and she knows it.
What she might not know is that capitalism is not part of the American political and economic heritage. It was heavily disfavored in the early republic and should be now, with true free markets being favored.
An increasingly interesting aspect of the last election:
cont:
I should probably make it a seperate thread, but the meaning of Stephen Miller being appointed Chief of Staff cannot be underestimated.
Democrats don't have six weeks to come up with a plan to address Trump. And Republicans who wish to save themselves better do it right now.
A couple of views, but which I think miss what's about to occur.
Stephen Miller Will Drag the GOP Further Into the Electoral Abyss
We don't know what happened in the White House in the immediate aftermath of the election. Trump seemed at first to accept it, and he hasn't said that he hasn't. Susie Wiles was let go very quickly however. We know that there's some discussion of letting Hegseth go, and we know that Hegseth is going to be impeached come the 120th Congress.
But we're not in the 120th Congress. The 119th is still in session.
Trump is obsessed with his legacy and fears it'll be torn down. And for good reason, it will be. Come the next two years, and the advance of old age and dementia will contract that two years, Trump will try to rule through executive order and ignoring the law. The bloom is coming off that rose, however. The Democrats know they can't let him do that and will do everything they can, much of it in the courts, to keep that from happen.
What Trump really has is the next six weeks.
In the next six weeks Trump is going to do everything possible to cement a far right legacy that he himself probably doesn't believe in, but which has become, in his narrow minded way of thinking, the only legacy he has. A more intelligent person would try to be like Truman, and turn a mid term defeat into a sort of victory by adjusting to the circumstances.
He's not that smart.
And he doesn't have that much time either.
There are persistent rumors about his health, and his mind is clearly going.
The first effort along these lines was are on his binkies, the ballroom and the gilded crap in the Oval Office. Trump can't believe that anyone following him would tear the ballroom down (which is exactly why it needs to be). This is why, the day after the election, he's out signing the binkie. After he's dead, he thinks, people will look at the binkie and love him. Indeed, his declining number of fans keep repeating the "it'll be there for future presidents" line.
No, it won't. Trump has made it so it cannot be.
Same with the gold crap. Trump signed an order which he believes will preserve it for the future in its current form.
That didn't work for Grand Staircase Escalante, did it?
These are minor things, as they're easy to reverse. What's coming in the next six weeks won't be.
It should be clear that Trump is, at this point, Miller's vehicle as much as Miller is Trump's. Miller has a far right wing agenda. Of all the people in the administration, he is by far the most fascist. All evidence is that he's a genuine fascist as well, not one of convenience.
Over the next six weeks we're going to see a hardcore push on the wackiest of Trump ideas. New tariffs will come in. Real hostility will develop on foreign nations. The US will sell Ukraine down the river. We might invade Cuba.
Why?
Because there's only six weeks to do it and this is what the far right in Trump's orbit wants. If we betray Ukraine, that'll be hard to fix. If we invade Cuba, we're in a war in Cuba. If we impose new tariffs it will take weeks to unring that bell.
It's their last chance.
November 8, 2026
President Trump has offered the job of Press Secretary to Dana Frederick White Jr., the president and chief executive officer of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Figures, it helps toss a bone to the White Trash in MAGA.
Last edition:
Labels: 119th Congress, 120th Congress, 2020s, 2026 Election, 2026 Election Post Mortem, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Fascism, Politics, Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, The Second Trump Administration 
