Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The election results are clearly bringing a type of musical chairs to the District. What we don’t know is whether this means real policy change or the kind of kick-some-ass moves we need. I’m not making any predictions given that Hegseth escaped his duly earned boot out the door. I’m hoping we get more than a change of faces. The real change may come at the state level. That’s worth investigating, as it may signal how things progress at the national level.
This is an interesting look at the drastic changes in some states. Michael Grunwald has this Guest Opinion piece in The New York Times. “The Swingiest State Has Gone Very Red.”
Democrats around the country are now asking the question weird-crime aficionados and real estate analysts have been asking for years: What is happening in Florida?
The anti-Trump stampede that trampled Republicans in blood-red bastions like Kansas, South Carolina and Texas on Nov. 3 somehow missed President Trump’s adopted state, where Republicans held on to a U.S. Senate seat, the governor’s mansion and every other statewide office. The Democratic candidate for governor, David Jolly, came just over one heartbreaking percentage point of breaking the G.O.P.’s 27-yearlock on Tallahassee.
Now the finger-pointing has begun, with Florida Democrats blaming suboptimal candidates, dubious strategies and especially the national donors who in recent years stopped investing in this former super-swing state. Florida was once the ultimate expression of America’s 50-50 politics, with eight races for governor, Senate and the presidency decided by roughly a point or less from 2000 to 2018, and frustrated Democrats believe their latest razor-thin losses prove that it can be again.
But that deep-purple Florida is gone, and it isn’t coming back anytime soon. The simple reason Democrats lost here last week is that an awful lot of Republicans have moved to Florida since the Covid pandemic, and those newcomers really like the way Republicans are running it. Gov. Ron DeSantis has remained quite popular, despite Mr. Trump’s struggles, and his vision of a “Free State of Florida” — where taxes are low, vaccines should be optional and masks are for woke losers — has become a magnet for some of the nation’s most reliable G.O.P. voters.
Does this imply there will be a flight of Republicans or Democrats in to once what were traditionally swing states but now seem to be firmly rooted in one party or the other? Will there be new states, once reliably one party or the other, that now become the new swing states? It seems like we’ve entered a timeline where old predictions and assumptions may have changed. I think it might be interesting to figure out why. The idea that Republicans are now flooding Florida is an interest one. I’d like to see similar analysis of Georgia. Will it become reliably blue? I know that many of the Hurricane Katrina Diaspora wound up in Texas and Georgia and stayed put. Are there other diasporas that may be changing those states or is it just an overall evolution? Will all this settle down or will it represent another example of “It’s the economy stupid.” Oh well, too early to tell but I’m going to keep my ears and eyes open as the patterns of the Blue Tsunami become more statistically significant.
Well, let’s catch up with what’s been happening with the musical chairs game. It definitely will be a catch-up for me as I’ve had a rough few days. First, I get this double whammy of my hands burning and my feet itching for several days and all day yesterday I had to fight off a weird attack on my computer and phone which really crippled my ability to communicate on line and otherwise. I spent the morning cleaning things out since I was having to do work arounds to get student time functional.
I still believe that AI is about the worst thing that could ever happen to us. But, my question is what will the decision-makers do as Hal continues to rewrite algorithms and reality? Jensen Huang has resigned as Nvidia CEO despite Orange Caligula’s fulsome begging for him to ride it out. This crystal ball peering is from CNN’s John Towfighi. “The AI boom was built around Jensen Huang. Now what?” Oh, and the stock market is down today. Let’s see if Trump’s stock goes down too.
Jensen Huang’s resignation from Nvidia in scandal leaves the company without its visionary leader. It also leaves a major void for the AI industry, where Huang was kingmaker in inking deals to support the tech boom.
Under Huang’s leadership, Nvidia became more than a chipmaker: It guaranteed deals for data centers, invested heavily in AI startups and even backed the companies that bought its products.
Huang put Nvidia at the core of AI financing, and the CEO himself championed some of the industry’s biggest deals. His departure puts a spotlight on whether the ecosystem he crafted could fracture — and whether that would spell trouble for the AI boom that has helped prop up the US stock market and become a driving force of economic growth.
“It’s hard to overstate his personal role in all of this,” said Neil Wilson, a strategist at investment bank Saxo.
“Huang was key in Nvidia being the backer of last resort across the AI ecosystem, really underpinning a lot of the financing and infrastructure guarantees,” he said.
Nvidia backstopped deals, like committing $105 billion in August for an OpenAI data center. The company has a major equity stake in the neocloud CoreWeave, emerging as an important financial backer and confidence booster. Nvidia is expected to take a $10 billion stake in Anthropic’s initial public offering.
Nvidia makes the graphics processing units that power AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. But the company has also been “the central bank of AI,” Jay Goldberg, senior analyst at Seaport Research Partners, told CNN.
The company also functions like a venture capitalist, Goldberg noted, investing in companies to fuel their growth and help them get ahead in an industry that requires massive amounts of capital.
“Circular financing” has emerged as a term to describe Nvidia’s financial agreements, because the company is backing the companies that, in turn, buy its products. Goldberg said a more accurate term would be “very aggressive vendor financing.”
I have to say I see research possibilities in that last bit. Guess it’s time to search out the data and boot up my statistics programs. This might be another “Greed is Good” moment in the making accompanied by a sizable market correction. Most of us always called this another bubble. I guess we will all see that and if the entire industry can actually prove it has merits other than financing tricks.
Sally Jenkins, writing for The New Republic, shows just what a grifter Little Marco has been. It’s nothing knew in the Orange One’s administration but this one may sink any future dreams of greatness for him. “The Shamelessness of Marco Rubio. The secretary of state has spent more than $1.2 million in taxpayer funds on personal flights—including taking military jets to football games.” We have a lot of reconstruction to do on oversight in the Executive Branch.
Next to all of the take-Americans-for-nitwits scams perpetrated by the Trump administration, the news that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been using taxpayer-funded military jets to fly to college-football games doesn’t amount to that much. Still, as evidence of degraded ethics and an emperor-like feed-me-another-grape sensibility, it holds its own. Rubio has defended his flights by saying that the events are important to his family—his son is a senior running back for the Gators. But he’s really Saturday joyriding to big-ticket events, and the message he’s sending is This administration doesn’t serve you. You serve it.
Rubio’s son Anthony may be a very nice young man. What he isn’t, arguably, is a college-football player worth flying in to watch—because he barely ever plays. He is a walk-on, a scout-teamer, which means that his primary role is not to play in games but to be a body for his teammates to scrimmage against during practice. It’s a valuable job, from which he’s no doubt learned a lot. But he has made it onto the field for exactly three rushing attempts this season. Yet Rubio, a Florida alum, has flown to at least 10 Gators games. The cost of his personal flights since he became secretary of state, according to reporting by The Washington Post, has been more than $1.2 million.
When asked about the trips, Rubio said, “I have and will continue to try and make it to as many events that are important to me personally and to my family as possible,” implying that he just wants to encourage his kid. Now, Anthony’s last appearance was for one carry in a 52–3 hammering of the Campbell University Fighting Camels, back in mid-September. He has not set foot on a game-day field since. And still, Rubio flew in for the October 31 marquee matchup with top-ranked Georgia, and for a game on November 7 against Oklahoma. Both were broadcast live on national TV. Apparently, it is personally important to Rubio to use Americans’ tax dollars to wave school colors while watching his kid’s back as he wears a numeral on the sideline.
“Flying by pricey military jet, Rubio rarely misses a Florida football game.” Noah White and Rick Maese share the lede.
Rubio’s personal travel, through nearly two years on the job, appears to significantly outpace that of his predecessors, former State Department officials said. And it’s adding up: The flights have cost the government more than $1.2 million, The Post found, using rates published by the Defense Department.
Like the defense secretary and the directors of the FBI and CIA, Rubio is barred from flying commercially for security reasons and is required, when traveling for personal reasons, to reimburse the government the equivalent of an economy-fare ticket. Officials’ reimbursements are rarely made
Rubio and the State Department declined to say how much he has reimbursed the government, but they defended the trips.
“I have and will continue to try and make it to as many events that are important to me personally and to my family as possible,” Rubio said in a statement, in response to questions from The Post.
Assistant Secretary of State Dylan Johnson said Rubio uses military aircraft to “ensure continuity of operations, continuity of government and access to secure communications at all times. And he will continue to do so.”
Government ethics experts said that while Rubio’s travel complies with federal rules, it raises a question about stewardship of public money. The handful of government officials who aren’t allowed to fly commercially have little choice in how they travel, they said, but they retain control over how frequently they take personal trips.
Let’s see if this influence his little Marco wet dream of being President. I can’t help but think that the Taxpayers have had it with corruption and he’ll be retired to Florida where he can watch as many football games that hey can still afford the tickets for. Meanwhile, Aaron Rupar has this tasty interview with Tim Snyder published at Public Notice on the Grifter-in-Chief. ‘In conversation with Tim Snyder. “It’s important to think not about what he’s going to do to us, but what we’re going to do to him”.’ This interview came before the elections so it’s excellent insight on both prediction and results level.
Aaron Rupar
One of the reasons the midterms that are coming up are so important is because it gives Americans an opportunity to register their dissatisfaction with things like the trade war with Canada. I sometimes think about this election as being possibly our last chance to pull the emergency brake on the GOP’s drive toward authoritarianism. Do you agree with that characterization, and how are you thinking about the stakes?
Tim Snyder
My general view about this is the opposition party, the Democrats, has a once in a lifetime chance to claim both houses of Congress and to begin transformative systemic change. If they lose — which they won’t — but if they do, this opportunity won’t come around again.
Right now we’re in this unusual situation where corruption is very salient and also people think Trump is more corrupt than other presidents. And that’s really important because we’re in a country where basically everybody thinks the system is broken, but now people think, “Yeah, it’s broken, but Trump is worse.” That means the Democrats, when they win, have an opportunity to get on the right side of that issue.
They have to make the most of that opportunity because if they don’t come out in November and January and do serious things — have ostentatious investigations, pass laws to get money out of politics — then by next spring, we’ll be back in a country where people say, “Everybody is corrupt.” In that environment, Trump can survive. His whole thing is, “Yeah, everybody lies, everybody’s corrupt, but look at me — I’m better at it. I’m more charming about it.”
As far as an emergency brake, I agree with you. I would just say you pull the emergency brake and then you jump out of the car and you get another one because the task is not fixing what we have at this point. The task is building something different.
I’m thinking a lot on this statement. ” If they lose — which they won’t — but if they do, this opportunity won’t come around again.” I do wonder if this is a one in a lifetime opportunity to just clean up a lot of things. Of course, there’s talk of eliminating the Electoral College again and other drastic changes. But, what if, we could actually do it? But more importantly, what if we don’t?
People don't want data centers polluting their cities.They don't want masked thugs terrorizing their neighbors.They don't want more forever wars.They want a living wage. They want healthcare. They want to be able to afford a home. They want their basic needs met.Dems must seize this moment.
— Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) 2026-11-13T18:45:04.051996Z
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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