Generally speaking, on the morning after the party in power in the White House suffers defeats across the board in state and local elections, elected officials of the president’s party seek to “distance” themselves from the president or make plain their “disagreements” with parts of the president’s “agenda.” We will see some of this.

What is different about this particular set of circumstances is the Trump White House expects and demands total loyalty to and compliance with Mr. Trump’s “agenda.” The Trump White House (meaning Mr. Trump himself) will threaten to punish those who waver. He will be eager to do so immediately, to intimidate others who might be (or are) wavering.

This will cause significant stress for the Republican leadership in Congress and GOP officer-holders across the country. They may think distance is necessary for survival (especially in purple-ish states and Congressional districts). They fear retribution. At some point, they will have to choose.

John Ellis New Items.

(This is especially noteworthy because (a) Ellis rarely editorializes on news items and (b) he is kin to the Bush family, with deep GOP roots.)

Those Democrat blowouts yesterday should give GOP redistrictors pause: the only way you create more GOP districts is by trimming the GOP margin in current safe districts. When the political winds are against you, you could easily see net losses in Congress.

Resolved: That my next book will be a re-read of this underrated gem:

America has … become less traditionally Christian across the last half century … But certain kinds of religious faith are as influential as ever … [T]o the extent that there’s an ongoing crisis in American culture, the excesses of the faithful probably matter more than the sins of unbelievers.

…

For all its piety and fervor, today’s United States needs to be recognized for what it really is: not a Christian country, but a nation of heretics.

Ross Douthat, Bad Religion

Sunday, November 2 – Tipsy Teetotaler ن

DST: Stayed up late for a Charity fundraiser and unwinding thereafter. Woke up according to when my biological clock said to.

Silver lining: an unusually relaxed Sunday morning schedule before Church duties.

Dissenting opinion: I’m more worried about an AI crash than I am about demonic super-intelligences (not that I make promiscuous use of it, or any use at all for personal advice).

Quantity is a quality of its own.

Shyam Sankar, CTO of Palantir, on the United States advantage in WW II. German stuff was engineered better, but we made up for it with more stuff, much more stuff.

(Via Ross Douthat’s Interesting Times podcast) (Gift link)

It’s the end of the month and I haven’t shared 10 New York Times articles yet this month. Fortunately, I’ve got a good one: David Brooks, Hey, Lefties! Trump Has Stolen Your Game

I couldn’t help but notice that the cost of the newly-completed largest Orthodox Cathedral in the world was less than the projected cost of the new White House ballroom. (The gold in the cathedral is more tasteful, too.)

Abandoned Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow. 📚I took no pleasure therein.

Reading Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul. Love it so far.

Pro Tip: If you start your unsolicited text to me with “‼️ URGENT‼️Woke Liberals in California …”, I’m likely to read it and (a) send no money and (b) do the opposite if I do anything at all.

It grieves me that we now have Lying Lawyers dominating the Department of Justice.

I’m weary of spitting into the wind. My latest “big blog” post is the better for it.

Finished Chesterton, The Wisdom of Father Brown. 📚

Reading Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow. 📚

Well that should be a “learning experience” for the #1-ranked Purdue Men’s basketball team. Solidly thumped by #9 Kentucky with their promising new faces proving largely feckless. (Kentucky may be underrated, too.)

I have two beefs with former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels:

1. Daylight Savings Time
   
2. Selling Indiana’s oldest radio station, WBAA, while Purdue’s President.

Otherwise, he’s a level-headed class act with a timely piece at WaPo today: Indiana Republicans, don’t cave to Trump redistricting pressure

A traveling one-man show about C.S. Lewis, Further Up and Further In, played Purdue University last night. Students $5; under 30, $30; geezers like me, $75.

I’ve read enough Lewis to take a hard pass and let them get on with evangelizing the young through preferential pricing.

I’m happy for Paul Kingsnorth that his new polemic, Against the Machine, is selling well. If you read it, do also read some critiques, such as ‘Unnatural’ Doesn’t Mean ‘Wicked’, by Tara Isabella Burton. @tinyroofnail @todd@social.lol

I’ve hit too many malfunctioning websites today to believe that AWS is really, fully repaired.

Title VII Suit Alleges Failure to Accommodate Religious Refusal to Work Alone with a Woman.

Billy Graham and Mike Pence both followed this practice, for reasons beyond pre-empting temptation. I suspect that this man will win his lawsuit, but he’s swimming against a strong current of public opinion.

Helpful: Juicy Ecumenism, Today’s Christian Political Tribes. This may not be exhaustive, but it identified and sketched more tribes than I had been thinking about.

Threw away all my 44” waist trousers today (plus one pair of 46”). I’m a 42” waist now, aiming for even smaller.

I really appreciate the reasoning (bolded), not just the Circuit Court outcome, in this case which will be binding precedent in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana:

Protesters have protested at an ICE facility a few miles west of Chicago for the past 19 years—with somewhat more intensity recently following the announcement of Operation Midway Blitz. A month after the announcement, the president federalized the Illinois National Guard. District court: Enjoined. Seventh Circuit: Just so. Political opposition is not rebellion, and a protest doesn’t become a rebellion merely due to a few isolated incidents of violence. Without that, none of the statutory predicates for federalizing the National Guard have been met.

Institute for Justice, Short Circuits for 10/17/25.

Much of the political opposition to Trump’s authoritarian surge having collapsed, disheartened, it’s good to see Federal Courts holding fairly firm.

Finished Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea. 📚 It may sound silly, but two evenings in a row I fell asleep reading it, so a 90 minute read took two days.

I think I’ll just spend some time with Auden’s Collected Poems (Mendelson) next. It has been too long.