Trump Has Blamed Everyone for the GOP’s Midterm Meltdown—Except Himself and the Worst Member of His Staff

Out on the Weekend(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to the Last Post of the Week from the Blog's Favourite Living Canadian)Wake up, little Susie. The gravy train went off the tracks. From CNN:Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, is departing her role days after catastrophic Republican midterm losses in a seismic staff shakeup at the White House. She will be replaced by Stephen Miller, a longtime aide to President Donald Trump who orchestrated his hardline immigration agenda.The move is the first major personnel shuffling after the midterms, and came after Trump voiced fury at the strategy that led to Republicans decisively losing majorities in the House and Senate, people familiar with the matter said. Yet the decision to elevate Miller—one of the most powerful and controversial engineers of Trump’s second term—to the top staff position in the West Wing is a sign the president does not intend to fundamentally change his governing approach. Trump said Wiles would move to his political operation, adding that she “has done an outstanding job.” And as he departed the White House for an event in Florida Friday, he praised Miller.So, the president is a) in a rage because his party got annihilated after he bounced around the country telling everyone to pretend he was on the ballot, which millions of Americans cheerfully did, and b) his solution is to put the least popular primate in his employ in charge of the White House. I'm sure that this bodes well for his relationship with the incoming Congress, considering that any hearings about ICE and draconian immigration policies is bound to have Miller at a witness table.Trump, who initially appeared unfazed by the results of the Tuesday night midterms, has become angrier as he’s watched coverage of the historic losses, according to the people familiar with his response. That sour mood has spread throughout the West Wing, which has become increasingly factionalized in recent days. Trump made his displeasure with his political team known starting at a tense election night reception in the East Room, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. He vented that deep Republican losses were the result of their strategy. Wiles was among those Trump blamed for the Republican losses, the person said.He, of course, was not "among those" Trump blamed for the loss. He never is.We have lost some of the highest flying of the flying monkeys in the House of Representatives. Victoria Sparks? Gone. Scott Perry? Gone. Andy Biggs? Gone. Lauren Boebert? Virginia Foxx? Probably gone. However, the Republican reservoir of otherwise unemployable whackadoos remains bottomless. Meet Anthony Constantino, congresscritter-elect from that part of New York we like to call Baja Canada. Here he is, celebrating his victory."All you need to know is this evil media would not tell you what I did, even though I transparently expose my full financials," said Constantino. "They wouldn't tell you because they thought that would unfairly bias the relationship. Listen, you scumbags! Listen, you scumbags, telling people the truth is the right thing to do when I expose my full number just to say that, in fact, I had to listen to you ***holes say dairy farmer Blake Gendebien, he's not a dairy farmer. His parents were dairy farmers. All his neighbors told me this guy never gets on a tractor, ever. He doesn't show up. His parents did it. He can't even say what percent of the farm he owns. But you wouldn't say that because you're a bunch of ***king ***holes.""And to those of you in the evil media that aren't bad people, guess what? I got news for you. You're evil too, because you won't expose the bad ones amongst you. You all stayed quiet. Look at that ***hole right there. Him. Look at that guy. Take a picture of him. He was like, 'I'm not evil.' Did you ever expose any bad thing the other evil media was doing? ***hole. You didn't do anything. You're a bunch of ***holes."After spending several minutes berating members of the media, Constantino turned on WWNY's news reporter Garrett Domblewski and his photographer, ordering his security to escort them out."Do me a favor. This guy is, so he's looking at me. Kick him, kick him out. Just kick him out. Kick him out! Get him out of here. Kick him out right now! You're just, you're just a rude person. Get out of here. If you want to be tough on me. Get out. Go right now," yelled Constantino. "Kick him out! Look, he's not powerful anymore. He thinks he had a little bit of power, but it's all gone. It's all gone. Sorry. Bye-bye!" Constantino called Domblewski and fellow News Anchor Jeff Cole "***holes." He also criticized a reporter from a different organization.Ladies and gentlemen, your 2028 Republican National Convention keynote speaker.Ever since the Great Day of Reckoning dawned, I've been watching a number of interviews with the various new faces that have emerged. Specifically, I listened to James Talarico in Texas and Dr. Annie Andrews in South Carolina. and both of them laid out their wish list for congressional reform. Both of them want a ban on congressional stock trading, an improvement supported by an estimated 125 percent of the American population. They both also expressed support for ... wait for it ... term limits.Whoa, there, rookies. Kept that baby in your pockets, didn't you?As is well known around the shebeen, term limits are the third worst idea in American politics. (The first two are a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and the elected judiciary.) They are a poisoned placebo. You end up with legislators led around by the nose by battalions of lobbyists, who end up empowered as the legislature's institutional memory. And that's not to mention the fact that there ought to be no law or policy that tells me I can't vote for somebody for whom I want to vote, assuming they're not dead or incarcerated, and I'm willing to negotiate on the second one.On the Supreme Court, I'm all in favor of them. Those are appointed positions, not elected ones, and, back in the day, justices regularly returned to private life and their old clients back home. For example, Justice Benjamin Curtis was on the Court for six years, long enough for him to write his classic dissent in Dred Scott v. Sandford. He then quit over money and because he hated Chief Justice Roger Taney. (Good plan.) He went back to Boston and his previous client list.(In a very odd twist of fate, Curtis returned to Washington as lead counsel for President Andrew Johnson in the latter's impeachment trial before the Senate. He won that one.)So, no, Senators-elect, stay away from this cheap snake oil. It will make a legislature gag.WWOZ Pick to Click: "Peter's Break" (Willie Morris): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.Weekly Visit to the Pathé Archives: Here, from 1923, they're singin' in the rain, just singin' in the rain. And also playing the brass sections. They're testing the acoustics at the brand-new Wembley Stadium in preparation for the British Empire Exhibition, a propaganda event aimed at reminding the world who the king imperialists really were. Unsurprisingly, the brand new Irish Free State declined to participate.Discovery Corner: Hey, look at what we found! From ScienceDaily:Scientists have discovered all five essential nucleobases used in DNA and RNA in pristine samples from asteroid Ryugu, revealing that key ingredients for life existed in space billions of years ago. The remarkable finding adds to growing evidence from other asteroids and meteorites that these molecules were widespread throughout the early Solar System.Asteroid particles offer a glimpse into the chemical ingredients that may have helped kindle life on Earth. The Ryugu samples were returned from space in 2020 by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Hayabusa2 mission. In 2023, an international team reported they had found one of the nucleobases in these samples – uracil. Now, in a study published in Nature Astronomy, a team of Japanese scientists has confirmed all five nucleobases are present in this pristine asteroid material. This means these ingredients for life may have been widespread throughout the Solar System in its early years.Nucleobases are nitrogen-containing organic molecules that form the “letters” of genetic information in DNA and RNA. The five main nucleobases are adenine and guanine (known as purines), as well as cytosine, thymine and uracil (known as pyrimidines). These molecules combine with sugars and phosphates to yield nucleotides – the building blocks of genetic material. Without nucleobases, the genetic code that allows organisms to grow, reproduce and evolve would not exist.Maybe, at the beginning, we were nothing but intergalactic chemical hitch-hikers. Look at what we made of ourselves. Our molecular ancestors would be proiud.Hey, ScienceDaily, is it a good day for dinosaur news? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!Scientists have discovered chemically confirmed traces of ancient blood inside 115-million-year-old dinosaur bones, challenging assumptions about how long biological molecules can survive. The extraordinary preservation could unlock new clues about dinosaur physiology and even help scientists search for ancient life elsewhere in the universe...An international team led by Curtin University found fossilized red blood cells and chemical evidence of blood molecules in the remains of Aratasaurus museunacionali, a meat-eating theropod dinosaur discovered in northeastern Brazil. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also include amino acids associated with collagen, an important structural protein found in bones and other connective tissues.I’ll be back on Monday for whatever fresh hell awaits. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and wear the damn masks, and take the damn shots, especially the boosters and any New One. In your spare time, spare a thought forall the victims of our current epidemics, including the killer countertops, and for the victims of the horrific glacial collapse and flood in Nepal, and for Rep. Max Miller's wife and child, and for the Iranian people, and the Lebanese people and all the other people downrange in our newest war, and all the people in ICE detention, and the victims of ICE violence, and the Epstein victims, and Eric Swalwell's victims, and the victims of the storms in Hawaii, and the victims of the Canadian wildfires, and also the ones in Spain, and the victims of the floods all over the American in Missouri, and the victims of the heat domes, and those affected around the world by wildfires, and the victims of the Venezuelan earthquake, and for the victims of the earthquake in Japan, and the victims and their families in the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in Canada, and for the shooting victims in Austin, and for the families of the victims of the mosque shooting in San Diego, and in Michigan, and in Virginia, and in Louisiana, and for the victims and their families of the shootings in Wilmington, Delaware and Kansas City, and for the families and victims of the mass shooting in Midland, Texas, and for the brilliant journalists of The Washington Post, and for the citizens of the occupied city of Minneapolis and South Burlington, Vermont, and the victims of the floods in the southern and southwest of the United States, and for all the people recovering from Hurricane Isaiah, and the people and the people in the flooded areas of southern Africa, and in the flooded areas in Ireland, and in the flooded areas of Brazil, and the flooded areas of Nepal, and for the storm-clobbered, flooded areas of the upper Midwest, including my alma mater, and in Georgia, and for the people affected by the tornados in Mississippi, and for people suffering from the hantavirus outbreak on the Hondius, the plague outbreak in Siberia, the Ebola outbreak in the DRC, the outbreaks of measles, the Hegseth Flu down in Texas, the explosive diarrhea bug, and the Legionnaire's diseaseoutbreak in Harlem, and the victims of the heat wave in Europe, and for our LGBTQ+ citizens, who deserve so much more from this country than they're getting.