Setting an auto alert to re-up this quote on November 4.

Slashing rural healthcare, picking tariff wars that decimate US soy exports even as you bail out Argentinian producers and blocking wind energy are all bad politics in Iowa. Which is only surprising if you also didn't notice that Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/22/us/politics/iowa-farmers-republicans-trump.html

6. At the end of the day the Trumps and their spouses are bullies and grifters. The people around them are weak-willed sycophants. Neither succeeds without the other and both are equally responsible for this moment. Our country can't afford let either of them off the hook. /fin

5. The instinct that lets you look the other way and/or encourage putting Kushner in charge of Middle East negotiations is the same that puts Betancourt in the middle of the theft of Venezuelan oil. https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-venezuela-oil-agreement-terms

4. I make this about Rubio et al because the issues created by Rubio's character are not limited to Kushner. It's the same culture in the WH that let Hegseth, Walz, et al share classified intel on non-secure channels and never once step in to shut down the signal chat.

3. I will grant that Rubio is quite smart. But that's not why he got his job. He got it because Trump knows that he is a coward who will roll over for him all day long - even at the cost of US secrets and a destabilized global order.

2. The fact that they sat silently (at best) or advocated (at worst) to put THAT GUY in charge of middle east peace negotiations given all those conflicts speaks to their utter absence of character, spine and patriotism.

1. Let's give them all the benefit of the doubt and assume they knew nothing about this hack until Vanity Fair reported it. They still knew that Kushner was the son of a convicted felon, had no official job nor security clearance and had $2B given to him by the Saudis for his PE fund.

This is UNBELIEVABLY damning on Jared Kushner but don't lose sight about what this says about Rubio, Ratcliffe and the rest of Trump's senior diplomatic and intel team. https://www.vanityfair.com/story/jared-kushner-hacked-phone-secret-negotiations

This, in a nutshell is why Reagan said that the day we stop welcoming immigrants to our shores is the day we give up our position of leadership in the world. https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2026/10/21/haitians-face-deportation-springfield-ohio-is-losing-jobs-business/

This is all very consistent with Jared Huffman's recent in-depth analysis in No Prophets - worth reading. https://wwnorton.com/books/no-prophets

"We have a pro-democracy, reality-based majority, and a discrete radical minority [of] white Christian nationalists that holds views the rest of the country find abhorrent... the latter group dominates one major party." https://www.contrariannews.org/p/america-is-a-decent-country-with

Kiley is not an independent and he's not going to win his election. But kudos to his comms team for placing this story.

I've maintained for some time that the Republican party won't heal until the rank and file denies any connection to the Trump brand and his grandchildren are embarrassed to bear his name. We ain't there yet... but this is what the start down that road looks like. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/19/us/politics/trump-midterms-republican-political-ads.html

11. And if nothing else, perhaps a 7th grader at LaGrange Highlands will someday end up going to U Chicago and standing on the shoulders of the giants who have come before to build the social movement that builds the political will to repeal this law. :) /fin

10. But it is charming and amusing to see these bunch of students from U Chicago who have decided to move the Onion Overton window with their (mass?) mobilization outside the CME this week. https://www.instagram.com/reel/Desd3z7Tu_Q/

9. And so back to the question those middle school students asked: why do we keep those laws on the books? Because politically, no one really cares. No one is going to win an election based on their commitment to repeal this law. But you might lose one if you dedicated your time to that effort.

8. Is it a good law? Objectively, no. Does it make much difference in our life? Again, no. But is it a dead letter law? No. You can trade corn futures, soy futures, wheat futures. But thou shalt not trade onion futures.

7. And so, then Representative, not-yet-President Gerald Ford introduced the Onion Futures Act to ban the trading of any onion futures. Eisenhower signed it into law in 1958. To this day, onions are the only agricultural commodity for which you cannot buy or sell futures contracts.

6. Seen from today's level of grift and fraud, this has a certain charming-rascal aura to it. You could see this as a Coen Brothers, funny heist movie. But at the time, people were pissed and there was a bunch of political uproar to do something to prevent this from happening again.