Poetic Justice
Buck Banks | Oct. 9, 2026
In the diplomatic ranks, trained professionals toil,
To keep the peace and tamp down foreign turmoil.
But for Greek ambassador,
Trump picked an artful dodger —
The grifting, drunken blackmailer Kimberly Guilfoyle.
Verbatim
“One woman at a rally in New Jersey told me last week that she was ‘nauseously optimistic.’ That may capture a lot of people’s last-minute jitters.”
— Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), quoted by Axios, on what Democrats feel ahead of the midterm elections.
“I think Congress made a mistake not protesting turning the Rose Garden into what looks like the entrance to Liberace’s bathroom.”
— Former President Bill Clinton, quoted by The Wrap.
“Boy, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. It feels like a real desperation play to me, because it has got zero basis in the law.”
— Republican election law expert Ben Ginsberg, quoted by Politico, on the Trump administration’s effort to invalidate Alaska’s election results.
Numerati
3,824
A record number of women are running for state legislative seats this November, more than two-thirds of whom are Democrats, reports Florida Phoenix. Across the 46 states with legislative seats on the ballot, a total of 3,824 women are running — up from 2022’s previous record of 3,621 women candidates, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Women make up 35.5% of all state legislative candidates this cycle. Currently, women hold about one-third of state legislative seats across the country — a record level of representation but nowhere near parity.
Comment »
$1.4 billion
“Prediction markets about the 2026 midterm elections have surpassed $1.4 billion in trading volume as Election Day fast approaches,” CNN reports. “This year has seen massive growth in the prediction industry, where people can bet on real-world events like sports, entertainment and the weather. While small-scale election markets have been around for a while, they gained traction before the 2024 presidential election and have seen huge numbers for the 2026 midterms.”
Comment »
-35 points
G. Elliot Morris: “Low-knowledge 2024 voters say they backed Trump by 8 points, according to our poll. Today they give him a net job approval of ?27, a 35-point shift. Compare that to Trump’s approval rating among voters who got both questions right: These voters backed Harris by 1 point and now give Trump a net ?24 approval, a 23-point shift. … Low-information voters have moved against Trump at a higher rate than high-information voters, by 12 points.”
Comment »
31%
President Donald ?Trump’s approval rating fell to a record low as Americans worried about high gasoline prices and appeared ready to punish his Republican Party in the November 3 congressional elections, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Monday. Some 31% of Americans approve of Trump’s ?performance in office, down a percentage point from two weeks earlier and the lowest level in ?either of his presidential terms, the four-day poll showed.
Comment »
63% to 38%
KFF Poll: “With the 2026 midterm campaigns in full swing and early voting about to begin, there is a wide enthusiasm gap between partisan voters, with Democratic voters 25 percentage points more likely than Republican voters to say they are ‘more motivated’ than usual to vote (63% vs. 38%).”
Comment »



Paladino needs to sit his azz down and STFU. As a retired teacher who taught and loved gay and lesbian students along with the rest of the kids who passed through my classroom for 33 years, I find ignorant people like Paladino get on my last nerve. It makes me angry that they call themselves Christians while hating others they don’t understand/approve of.
They never stop to think that although there are others that differ from themselves, they’re just as human as they are, they have feelings, and they’re entitled to the same constitutional rights as they are. If it were left up to Paladino and the rest of the far right Christian nuts, there would be special zones where certain people would be forced to live, similar to the internment camps for Japanese Americans during WWII. The saddest thing is that none of these so-called Christians would object to having this happen. I would probably be assigned to one of these camps, not because I’m lesbian, but because I would stand against these fools for wanting to pull a stunt like this. Having spent the first 18 years of my life under segregation here, I never underestimate these kinds of people. They are the reason I changed from a yearly donation to the ACLU to a monthly donation. They’re also the reason I donate to Public Citizen and support the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (Mikey Weinstein,) PFLAG, and People For the American Way, along with any other organization that protects the rights of all citizens. I’m an unabashed liberal. Anyone on the right can attack me for my affiliations. I don’t care. I remember what it was like growing up African American in 1950s and 1960s America, and my plan is to make sure what happened to me doesn’t happen to any other American.