Poetic Justice
Buck Banks | Nov. 24, 2025
After wandering away from D.C. for 54 days in the wilderness,
The House returned with some kind of collective mental illness.
They seem uninterested in legislating,
Focused instead on threats and censurings,
Leaving the nation to marvel in wonder at their childish pettiness.
Verbatim
“Relax. We are exactly on the trajectory of where we’ve always planned to be. Steady at the wheel, everybody. It’s gonna be fine. Our best days are ahead of us.”
— Speaker Mike Johnson, quoted by NBC News.
“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal. Without a war. An interesting achievement.”
— George Will
“What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service… You have two individuals and clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, were killed by the United States.”
— Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), quoted by CNN, after being shown the full video of the September 2 boat strikes.
Numerati
45 Minutes
The Intercept: Two survivors clung to the wreckage of a vessel attacked by the U.S. military for roughly 45 minutes before a second strike killed them on September 2. After about three quarters of an hour, Adm. Frank Bradley, then head of Joint Special Operations Command, ordered a follow-up strike that killed the shipwrecked men.
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17%
A new Pew Research poll finds just 17% of Americans now say they trust the federal government to do what is right “just about always” (2%) or “most of the time” (15%). Frustration has long been Americans’ dominant emotion toward the federal government and 49% say they feel frustrated. Another 26% say they are angry, and 23% say they are basically content.
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11.6 Million Voters
LAist.com: Voters notoriously do not show up for off-year elections in the same numbers, as say, a presidential election. But given how consequential Prop. 50 was, there was a lot of curiosity about how many voters would participate. The answer? About 11.6 million people — a turnout of 50% statewide. It’s not as high as California’s last special election in 2021 on whether to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom — turnout then was 58.4%. But it’s a solid showing for California, especially for an off-year special election. In fact, it’s on par with California’s 2022 midterm elections, which saw 50.8% turnout.
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$110 million
Donald Trump has golfed 79 days out of 317 days since returning to office (24.9% of the presidency spent golfing), according to didtrumpgolftoday.com. The estimated cost to taxpayers for Trump’s golf since returning to office: $110,600,000.
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470
Reuters: “At least 470 people, organizations and institutions have been targeted for retribution since Trump took office – an average of more than one a day. Some were singled out for punishment; others swept up in broader purges of perceived enemies.”
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