November 3rd 2026: GET THE VOTE OUT AMERICA

It's DAY OF ELECTION, America. GET THE VOTE OUT.

Me for the entire day:

I'M Completely Calm Katara GIFfrom I'M Completely Calm GIFs

Even If There's a Victory, There Is No Time to Relax

So amid all this dread, the crazy thing spiking a lot of it has been anxiety over the midterm results we're going to see this week. In a way, the hope of a major Democratic wave victory across the nation vs. the letdown that can happen because Gods help us trump's very existence defies not only the laws of humanity but also the laws of political physics.

Let's just say that things work out: The Democratic Party not only wins enough seats in the US House to ensure a genuine anti-trump anti-greed agenda, but also pulls off enough upsets among the US Senate races to ensure a +4 or even +6 majority - just in case Fetterman who turned into a MAGA-friendly critter decides to pull a Manchin - that can block any future judicial/executive appointments from trump.

While trump would rant and try to overthrow the results, odds are the courts - which haven't sided on trump's conspiracy fearmongering about voters since his first term - will strike that all down. Thing is, even with legislative wins for the Dems they're still confronting trump in the Oval Office; able to veto anything a Democratic Congress passes to undo all the damage - the illegal tariffs, the illegal deportations, the illegal wars, a destructive tax-cut bill the Republicans passed in 2025 timed to gut social services right after the midterms - trump still wants to inflict.

As much as the mainstream media is going to scream for "bipartisanship" and the need for comity - trying to talk the Democrats into letting trump and his corrupt allies off the hook - any victorious Democratic leadership in Congress has to realize they need to confront trump early and often - and with every criminal investigation tool at their disposal - in order to undo all the damage done to both the United States and the world at large.

That means - in spite of all the concern trolling and hand wringing by the punditry and the Far Right - a Democratic Congress needs to bring up impeachment charges on Day One.

There are numerous avenues worth pursuing for impeaching trump. Most obvious would be the unsanctioned and unwarranted and mismanaged war against Iran. There's the many times trump's administration withheld congressional funding from agencies, shutting them down without legislative input: That's impoundment. trump has openly abused his position in the presidency to enrich himself in blatant violation of the Emoluments Clause. trump has the Justice Department under his control refusing to release the Epstein Files in clear acts of Obstruction. Even trump's attempt to force the IRS to grant himself legal protections and pay himself damages crossed the line. (Congress could even go after trump for fcking up the reflecting pool and tearing out the East Wing without congressional input)

While impeaching trump in the House is the easiest part - all it takes is a simple majority - the problem is when it gets to the Senate to vote on removal. There's been two impeachments during trump's first term that ended up getting voted down because enough Republicans sided with their party their corrupt overlord. If the Democrats want any true success in holding trump accountable for his crimes and if they have majority control of the Senate, they're going to have to pass an internal regulation to make any impeachment vote a secret ballot. None of the GOP Senators are brave enough to cast a vote against the MAGA boss if they know they'll get crucified for it by the Far Right media outlets (if not attacked by the rabid GOP base): Making it so that only the Yeas and Nays are recorded would grant them the anonymity to reach the two-thirds majority needed to eject a bullying trump they despise behind closed doors.

If impeaching trump is out of reach, impeaching the equally corrupt members of trump's Cabinet - above all, the unpopular Secretary of Defense Hegseth who's getting rightly blamed for mismanaging the armed forces - would be possible. And with a Democratic majority, trump would not be able to fill those vacancies to his liking.

An incoming Democratic Congress is going to HAVE to clear out the blatant corruption of trump's regime before they can even get to work on the laws and reforms needed: Such as undoing the Medicare/Medicaid damages the Republicans created in their Big Beautiful Bill of Doom; undoing the damage of the DOGE cuts to staffing and budgeting of needed regulatory agencies; and effecting such acts as DC statehood and expansion of the Supreme Court to override the corrupt Far Right justices and prevent any further damage trump or any future power-mad president could attempt.

Granted, some of the needed reforms may have to be in amendment form - especially passing amendments spelling out the president or anyone else is NOT above the law, and an amendment reversing the political bribes allowed under the Citizens United ruling to keep billionaires from buying entire elections - that would need two-thirds in both parts of Congress anyway. But if enough voters show up for a Blue Wave to get Democrats to near those supermajorities, one can hope those amendments will pass and go to the states for ratifying.

This is why turnout matters, America. GET THE VOTE OUT THIS ELECTION DAY. Vote Democratic across the board: it will be the ONLY WAY to hold the corrupt Republican powers accountable.

These are just some of the things I'm hoping for coming 

Doing a Local Author Fair In Sanford FL This November 14th

Just letting people following this blog to know that I will be at an upcoming Authors Fair on November 14 2026 in Sanford FL!

The Florida Writers Book Fair is the first organized local authors events hosted by the Florida Writers Association. It's going to be outdoors for the most part with 118 participating writers (!), and they've got me on the corner of E 1st Street and Palmetto Avenue (a few blocks south of Lake Monroe).

IT'S GONNA BE BOOKTASTIC!

I don't have a working card reader anymore, but I will try to do direct Venmo transactions via tablet if needed, otherwise bring cash for the books - $10 a copy - I have on display.

Dreading This Again, The Uncertainty of How Dark This Can Get

The second thing about this midterms stressing me out is - gods help us - how horrific trump and his Republican lackeys are going to react one way or another. 

Bad enough to worry how the Far Right wingnuts will act if they win - especially if they beat the odds against all the polling telling us they're set to lose control of the House of Representatives at the least - by doubling down on the corruption, brutality, and idiocy. We have to worry about how the Far Right - the ones responsible for attacking the Capitol on January 6th, the ones who blew up federal buildings in the 1990s, and kept calling for 2nd Amendment solutions every time the Democrats held political control - under trump is going to react if they get pummeled by this 2026 midterms.

If I can quote from Ed Burmila the Gins and Tacos guy from his BlueSky skeet:

Ed doesn't allow for embeds, so I had to snip this.
If you can log into Patreon, you can read his article.

We know what the buffoonery will be: trump is going to have his minions at the Justice Department file thousands of legal claims that every election result in favor of Democrats had been "rigged". he's been filing those types of claims all year: They're the same kind of claims his people filed back in 2020 when he raced to overturn Biden's popular and electoral wins. Even when there's no damn proof of it (trump's argument boils down to "oh they are so good at cheating that you can't even see it, but trust me it's happening.")

The insanity is that trump keeps convincing himself that he can eventually gaslight the judges into believing his lies that Democratic wins are tainted, even though these judges - some of them appointed by trump - keep telling trump's lawyers then AND now they need to present evidence they don't have. trump's word - his delusions and vanity - isn't proof of any kind. And yet, we're going to see this madness play out in the courtrooms of every battleground state between November 4th to the end of eternity the point where trump exhausts all legal recourse.

It's that point I dread the next phase of what trump will do if there's a massive Democratic win this November, and the courts are clearly not giving him what he wants: he'll take the January 6th route of inciting his MAGA faithful to lash out. Except that this time he won't be calling out mobs: trump has threatened with executive powers of unleashing law enforcement - his thugs in Homeland Security, the FBI under the orders of his corrupt Justice Department, even the National Guard if not the US military itself - on every Democratic-led state, county, and city to nullify the results by force.

I know there's been a lot of other commentators out there on social media trying to deflate such concerns: That trump using those agencies will also get blocked by the courts - depending on which way Roberts' Supreme Court jumps - and nothing will come of it. I know that there's still a number of high-ranking officials that Hegseth hasn't purged yet from the Defense Department who will object to the violation of the Posse Comitatus laws preventing direct military action on U.S. soil (and that it could also convince the National Guard elements to stand down rather than attack their own states' citizenry).

But we honestly have no idea how all that will play out until it actually happens. There remains a dark possibility the military will obey even blatantly unlawful orders, because refusing presidential orders is unthinkable to the professional ranks in our armed forces.

For all this dread however, we must - I already have - refuse to cower in fear. In the face of trump's threats and demands, the American voters - not just Democrats but all of us - need to go to the polls and vote. If we're voting for Democrats across the board, so be it. trump will bluster and threaten and gods help us even act violently against such results, but we as honest citizens must be ready to stand up to defend our power to vote how we choose.

Stay safe. Get the vote out. Stand for each other. And let's fucking win this thing.

Dreading This Again, Because Living In The Darkest Dumbest Timeline Stresses Me Out

There are three things giving me sleepless nights heading into the 2026 midterms Election Day, and one of them is: For all the polling and all the news and all the anecdotal evidence that we're witnessing a Blue Wave bigger than 2018 about to wash away the Republican wingnuts, well... What If The Polls Are Wrong (the question asked by Emma Janssen at the New Republic)?

Most polls show Democrats winning the House and, potentially, the Senate—a possibility that seemed improbable even a few months ago. A new CNN poll on Thursday, for example, showed Abdul El-Sayed and James Talarico in strong positions. But the most critical toss-up Senate races are so tight that even a polling error of a few percentage points could shift the outcome from Democratic control to two more years of Republican leadership. FiftyPlusOne modeled how the election would look if polling misses matched those in the 2018 and 2022 midterms, or instead matched 2016, 2020, and 2024—presidential election years when Trump was on the ballot. “The polling errors have been much larger in presidential years than non-presidential years,” explained Guy Molyneux, a Democratic pollster and partner at Hart Research. 

If polling averages are off by roughly the same margins that they were in the Trump election years, seats like Michigan and Ohio—critical pickups for Democrats this year—could fall to Republicans. Senator Susan Collins could win Maine by nearly four points, and Senator Dan Sullivan could take Alaska by five. In that case, Republicans could keep the Senate. But if this midterm looks more like other midterms in terms of poll error, Democrats might even be able to pick up seats in red states like Iowa and Kansas.

Molyneux says he’s inclined to believe that this year’s polls will be closer in accuracy to the 2018 and 2022 polls, which would be good news for Democrats’ prospects. Most election-watchers predict that Democrats will take the House, but nobody is sure whether it will be a blue wave or a blue tsunami. If polling is roughly correct, Democrats could take 238 seats (218 seats is a majority), NBC News estimates. But Dems could potentially pick up some 260 seats or win as few as 220. That’s a majority, but a narrow one...

In the final stretch before Election Day, experts stress that voters should view polls as part of a larger picture, rather than overinterpreting any one number (remember J Ann Selzer’s Iowa poll in 2024, which predicted that Vice President Kamala Harris could win Iowa but was 16 points off?). “Both for accuracy and emotional health, I would urge people to focus mainly on the averages, and not the either scary or hopeful news of the day,” said Molyneux...

Look, as much as the numbers say one thing, actual vote counting is what matters. If the early turnout is pointing to larger Democratic support, that's great (it does beg the question what turnout on Tuesday November 3rd will be like to compensate).

The thing still haunting me is that in this insane Age of trump, political gravity doesn't work the way it's supposed to. The polls could be saying it'll be +2 or +5 for Democrats across the battleground states, but the polls can be skewed by either bad pollsters or deceptive responders. There's evidence that more Republican voters are refusing to answer polls at all, potentially hiding bigger GOP turnout than the experts are predicting. On the other side of that same coin, that refusal by Republican voters to answer could hide their disgust at their own party, and a potential shift of some GOP voters breaking ranks to vote Democrat. It's chaos.

The only solution to all this dread is simple: Every single registered Democrat has to get to the ballot boxes and VOTE your party ticket! Every single Independent voter has to get the ballot boxes and VOTE for Democratic candidates to deny the corrupt GOP any relief. Every single Republican voter angry at trump's tariffs, inflation, and immigration crimes has to, well, stay home and not vote so that the odds favor the Democrats, please and thank you.

Elections always matter, but THIS midterms it matters 100 percent: EVERYTHING is at risk now. Stop trump, stop his Republican allies. Save the United States.

The Idiocy of Gotcha Gropers

It's not so much ideology or insanity that drives these guys to pull these stunts, it's the idiocy (via Rachel Leingang at the Guardian (US)):

Two rightwing influencers have been charged with felonies in Minneapolis over attempts in the state’s election primary to disguise themselves in what they called “Muslim garb” and claim they were local voters.

James O’Keefe and Cam Higby went to polling places in Minnesota during the state’s August primary in an attempt to show vulnerabilities in the practice of “vouching”, where a registered voter from the same precinct can vouch for another voter’s eligibility.

The Hennepin county attorney, Mary Moriarty, announced the charges at a press conference on Wednesday, saying both would be charged with felonies for unlawful voting and identity theft. The two men entered multiple polling places and identified themselves using the names of registered Minnesota voters in those precincts, Moriarty said, thus intentionally misrepresenting their identities to election judges.

State law allows for vouching, which is rarely used; in 2024’s general election, less than 0.6% of votes used the vouching process, the Minnesota secretary of state’s website says, largely by people who needed to update their names or addresses in voter records.

Voters still need to have other ways to verify their identity, and vouchers have to sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury that they personally know the voter they are vouching for. A voter can vouch for up to eight others.

O’Keefe and Higby did not sign these affidavits or obtain ballots, Moriarty said. If they had signed those affidavits, it would have been perjury, she said. The affidavits are a safeguard of the vouching system.

The idiots knew better than to commit perjury - something that WILL involve jail time even if they pled out - but they should have known better to have pulled this stunt at all.

O'Keefe's entire career going back decades now has been to pull these kind of "Gotcha" moments under the excuse of "journalism", but muckraking or any other kind of investigative reporting doesn't go into the extremes - or even tries to cross the lines of legality - that he and his allies attempt. This has always been about "owning the libs" and humiliating - if not driving out of employment - any civil service worker or community volunteer for the sake of Far Right extremism ruling or ruining everything.

O'Keefe also commits a lot of self-owned failures in these "Gotchas," exposing himself as a sex offender and committing other acts of criminality - like spying on a sitting Senator! - that deserved serious jail time if it were anyone not White Male Upper Class Elite like himself.

More hilarious than O'Keefe attempting to dress up as a wingnut's idea of a Muslim jihadist is the punchline that yet again the Far Right's attempt to "prove voter fraud" proved the exact opposite. Our voting system across the states - designed by decades of law and proven processes - are working just fine. There IS no mass voter fraud happening, not by the voters themselves: Even if O'Keefe succeeded in this attempt, that Vouching system would have only allowed it to work eight times. It happens so rarely it's less than a percent across the state: Almost no election would be affected by the shift in results. You'd have to coordinate voter fraud involving hundreds if not thousands of people statewide on a scale ANYONE would see coming, and on a scale that would break down through simple human failings.

There would be too many moving parts in a conspiracy that vast, and the Far Right has never found the evidence even though they keep insisting there is one.

It is easier - and it's something Democrats and liberals do all the time - to organize voter turnouts and get individuals to the ballot boxes than it would be to fake voters. And that is something the Far Right - utterly convinced of their elite status, unwilling to let the dread Others vote under the Constitution - can never admit or allow.

And so O'Keefe and the other election denialists keep pulling these stunts, violating the laws already in place to make these elections work. At some point, these idiots deserve to sit in a jail cell to understand - to admit at long last - that it's not the voters at fault, it's themselves.

Whiskey Pete, Destroyer of Globes

Dear future historians: When writing about the horrors of the trump years, you don't have to worry about subtext you can just go straight to full text (originally with the Washington Post, but I'm sharing from Malcolm Ferguson at New Republic):

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s staff badly damaged former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s globe while moving it into his office.

The globe, which is now housed in the Pentagon, dates back to the 1930s and was reportedly used by Eisenhower during World War II, making it an extremely delicate artifact that needed to be handled with care. But a task that should have been delegated to archivists or museum professionals was instead handled by Hegseth’s own staff, who dropped the globe when they tried to move it to the defense secretary’s office early this year, The Washington Post reported.

That resulted in a gash “several inches wide” in the shell near Antarctica.

An Army spokesperson admitted to the damage, saying the globe was “detached from the metal mounting that allows it to rotate.”

Hegseth’s office did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.

One anonymous source attributed the gaffe to an “apparent lack of patience.” The mistake has become a source of humor both inside and outside the Pentagon, as the event is a perfect microcosm for the hypermasculine move-fast-break-things mentality that Hegseth has brought to the Defense Department—or the “War Department,” as he insists on calling it...

“Hegseth wants an Eisenhower totem to be like Ike, brilliant in war and peace,” retired brigadier general and former West Point military history professor Ty Seidule told the Post. “Hegseth is no Ike. The globe won’t give him Ike’s attributes of humility, intellect and judgment.”

That last bit should highlight the entire nightmare that is Hegseth's misrule over the armed forces.

When you consider Eisenhower - as commander of one of the greatest allied military forces the world ever saw in the Western European theater of World War II - you see his legacy as one of the calmer, more rational leaders we'd ever known. He acted judicious with other generals, looked to treat the soldiers under his command well, and focused on logistics and planning that became the foundations of the modern United States' armed forces ability to travel anywhere at any moment to engage opposing forces with the best gear, the best training, and tolerable food packs (MREs are never "best", and we just have to cope).

When you consider Hegseth - as Secretary of Defense obsessed with remaking the entire armed forces a reflection of his own delusions and ego - you see within two years of his leadership he is tearing down every last brick that Eisenhower placed to shape the U.S. military. Hegseth is gutting the upper echelons of the armed forces - firing generals, admirals, colonels, commanders, anyone who doesn't measure to his manhood checklist - with reckless disregard to any chain of command, sowing confusion and breakdowns in effectiveness. Hegseth displays no personal discipline or focus, acting on random impulses and reckless disregard for protocols or rules (see his mishandling of using Signal to subvert official email policies and failing the most basic security steps to prevent leaks). One of the more damaging acts under Hegseth's orders has been the removal of civilian workers from key Defense agencies, including the one overseeing logistics. 

We've seen Hegseth's results: Massive supply shortages especially with ammo and weapons used up bombing Iran without success; serious food shortages among our carrier fleets; prolonged deployments in war zones leading to anxiety and depression among our troops; and absolutely no sign from Hegseth himself that he is affected by these failings as he prances around stages defending his own twisted ideas on masculinity.

Can you even imagine Hegseth making the effort - finding the humility and grace - to write a Second Letter accepting all blame for a potential military disaster the way Eisenhower did on the eve of the Normandy landings? No, honest to God, Hegseth never would.

In all respects Hegseth is the Anti-Ike.

It should also be telling that in spite of Hegseth's efforts to stop leaks of bad news getting out of his office, the Pentagon is full of anonymous sources still leaking photos and reports anyway. 

There'd been other disgruntled military officials and insiders who've been unhappy with previous civilian leadership before, but I honestly cannot recall this disdain/disgust at such levels by the rank and file even during the Bill Clinton years. Hegseth is hugely unpopular: it's not even that he's firing colleagues left and right, it's the genuine incompetence upsetting the actual professional soldiers trying to keep their departments functioning.

It's a question of what the generals and admirals will do when the time comes that Hegseth gives orders violating the Constitution in ways that they understand will end the United States as we know it forever.

Ask yourselves this: What Would Ike Do?