TAKE A BREAK FROM POLITICS: Whiskey Wednesday: From a River of Fire to a Phoenix in a Bottle.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
November 4, 2026
TO BE FAIR, MATT’S NEW HERE:
Remember when the GOP gave Elon Musk a standing ovation in front of the American people…
…and then only voted on 1 DOGE cut, didn't defund the Taliban, gave $315 MILLION to a far Left group that DOGE defunded, and NEVER passed the SAVE ACT?
I don't understand the GOP… pic.twitter.com/5lj2yIY7tE
— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) November 4, 2026
INDEED: Meh. 2008 Was Worse. “This morning, the customary bleating and gloating of the Democrats just isn’t bothering me as much as I thought it would. First of all, I learned long ago to stay off social media when something upsetting happens, and this is a great time to do that. And second, the narrative from the left-media is actually kind of hilarious, when you look at how hard they’re puffing themselves up.”
I WAS PROMISED ICE BLOODBATHS AT THE POLLING PLACES:
Weird how Democrats won despite us living under a fascist dictatorship.
I'm so confused.
— OutspokenSamantha (@Outspoken_Sam) November 4, 2026
HMM:Trump asking advisers if Hegseth should stay after midterm losses, sources say.
Getting rid of Hegseth would be a real win for the Swamp.
PERSPECTIVE:
HISTORIC? Grover Cleveland lost 110 House seats, Hoover lost 102, FDR lost 81 and 7 Senate seats. Truman lost 12 Senators, Ike lost 13. Clinton lost 9 Senators. Bush 2006 lost 6 Senators and 30 House. Obama lost 9 Senate seats in 2014, 63 in House.
So spare me all the HISTORIC.
— Michael Caputo (@MichaelRCaputo) November 4, 2026
But there’s also this followup from Caputo: “This Congress will be the most radical in American history. They will blow it, but a lot of innocent GOP families will be destroyed in the process.”
Buckle up.
ALL THE GROUNDLESS IMPEACHMENTS WILL LIKELY KEEP THEM BUSY: ‘Marvin, What Do We Do Now?’: Dems Wake Up to Their Bill McKay Moment.
MAYBE THE “NO FIRE, NO HIRE” PHASE IS FINALLY ENDING: Job openings posted big September gain in positive sign for labor market ahead of payrolls report.
In its monthly look at labor market slack and worker mobility, the BLS reported job openings at 7.52 million, up 333,000 from August and well above the Dow Jones consensus outlook for 7.15 million.
As a share of the total workforce, the rate of job openings increased to 4.5%, up 0.2 percentage point from the prior month, according to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. There are now some 414,000 more job openings than workers classified as unemployed, or about 1.05 openings to every available worker.
Openings rose in manufacturing (54,000) as well as state and local government (108,000) and professional and business services (106,000).
At the same time, the total of employees leaving their jobs spiked to 3.36 million, an increase of 321,000 from August and the highest level since March 2025. Quits are considered a barometer for worker confidence in finding new jobs after leaving their prior positions.
It hasn’t been easy, recovering from Bidenflation, further decoupling from China, and trying to re-shore manufacturing all at the same time.
GOOD STUFF AS USUAL FROM ALEX THE CHICK:
(Long tweet warning)
In which I anger everyone.
1. The Democrats won because the Democrat candidates persuaded more people that the Democrat positions would answer the problems that those people have. I can hear the instant but that's not true, those answers are not answers,…
— alexandriabrown (@alexthechick) November 4, 2026
Lots to chew on here, but this stands out: “The Republicans in Congress have failed, catastrophically so, to take any actions to implement the policies that those self same Republicans claim will improve matters. If those policies are so important and so good and so necessary, then why has legislation implementing those policies not been passed? The Democrats most decidedly are able to pass what the Democrats deem important. Why have the Republicans not done the same?”
MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, “THE POLLS ARE WRONG” IS A THIN REED: The Polls Were Wrong, All Right, Just Not the Way Republicans Figured It.
WELL, WHEN YOU PUT IT THAT WAY…:
Guy who broke the law to come to America now wants to use the law to punish his political enemies. Sounds about right. https://t.co/aIBLG8VQNj
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) November 4, 2026
And from the replies: “So it wasn’t lower gas and groceries huh?”
It never was.
EVERYTHING GETS HACKED: Binance says hackers used fake job interviews to pull off a $6 billion crypto heist.
According to Binance, the heist operation began in June when an engineer on its wallet infrastructure team downloaded a tampered version of an AI coding tool.
The company said its security team detected the issue, replaced the device, and changed all related credentials, but the employee’s role and those of his colleagues were exposed to hackers.
In September, one of Binance’s software engineers was contacted through what the company said was a “legitimate job-hunting platform by an individual posing as a Project Director.”
That employee had a profile on the platform that referenced his experience at Binance, the crypto exchange said.
“The purported Project Director arranged a first-round interview with a HR representative, followed by a second-round interview with an individual claiming to be the CEO of a fictitious company,” Binance said.
The Binance engineer completed a video interview with the fake HR rep, who shared a social media account with the employee filled with personal photos and videos “in order to build trust,” the company said.
During the second interview, which was conducted in a “popular social chat app,” Binance said the engineer was instructed to download an “assignment” that contained a “malicious code repository onto his work computer.”
None of this inspires much confidence in Binance.
THE POSTMORTEMS WILL NECESSARILY BE BRUTAL…:
Lots of Republican finger-pointing right now. I am not interested in circular firing squads, and would encourage my fellow conservatives to avoid participating in destructive blame games. We have actual enemies, and must rally to oppose them.
— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) November 4, 2026
…but let’s get those over with quickly and refocus on what’s important.
2026, MAN: It’s Almost Like American Gun Owners Knew What Was Coming. “The polls and the prediction markets in advance of the midterms were, for once, right. Beyond that, for those paying attention, the atmosphere during the run-up to Tuesday’s elections felt…ominous. Maybe that’s the reason that gun sales in October spiked the way they did.”
IT IS A GREAT COUNTRY:
Most of the takes today are wrong and you can ignore. What to know:
1. Reagan lost both houses and 8 Senate seats in 1986.
2. Bush did the Iraq surge *after* losing 2006 midterms.
3. Oversight won't be pretty but accountability is useful.
4. Have a good day. It's a great country.— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) November 4, 2026
Then again, the Dems seem less interested in accountability than in revenge.
SPACE: The two Escapade Mars orbiters are about to head to Mars, using a previously untried flight path.
On November 7, 2026 the two Escapade Mars orbiters that have been loitering in around Lagrange point 2 about a million miles from Earth since their launch in November 2025, will do the engine burn that will send them to Mars, but will follow a flight path never before used.
The graphic to the right, annotated to post here, shows the flight path the two orbiters have taken since launch. By flying out away from Earth and then coming back close, they multiply the effectiveness of that engine burn, allowing these relatively small and lightweight spacecraft to reach Mars.
Though NASA touts this mission as its own, all it really has done is pay for it. The spacecraft were built by Rocket Lab, they were launched by Blue Origin on New Glenn, and the mission is being operated by the University of California Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory (UC-Berkeley), a perfect example of capitalism in space.
I love capitalism in space! More of it here on Earth wouldn’t hurt, though.
REQUIRED READING FROM SALENA ZITO:
PITTSBURGH-In April 1894, a ragged column of unemployed men attempted to come through Pittsburgh on the way to Washington. They called themselves Coxey's Army. It was a protest march of jobless workers led by Jacob Coxey, an Ohio businessman, and they were marching on the… pic.twitter.com/yMphHdwVjZ
— ZitoSalena (@ZitoSalena) October 17, 2026
“When the House swings hard, it’s worth asking what the country is going through; the first place to look is what the Gilded Age voters were telling us then.”
Read the whole thing on Salena’s Substack.
THIS WILL FREE UP ISRAEL FROM AMERICAN BULLYING THE NEXT TIME WE’RE STUPID ENOUGH TO ELECT ANOTHER OBAMA OR BIDEN: Trump Says U.S. Will End $4 Billion in Direct Military Aid to Israel in Favor of a New Agreement. “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken in recent months about moving away from direct U.S. military aid. Democrats’ abandonment of a powerful and loyal ally made congressional authorization of any additional aid packages problematic.”
THE NEXT TWO-TO-SIX YEARS WILL BE THE DEMS TRYING TO UNDO THIS:
Trump was elected to do politically difficult but necessary things. Securing the border is ugly. Fighting Iran is costly. Taking on special interests upsets donors. Backing AI scares people. Tonight, Republicans paid the costs. The benefits will be with us for many generations.
— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) November 4, 2026
MICHAEL GOODWIN: How Trump reacts to this shellacking will determine his legacy.
HE MIGHT HAVE TO WEAR THAT THING DOWN TO A NUB:
Trump’s veto pen is now the only thing that stands between us and the complete Californication of America.
— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) November 4, 2026
DON’T TAKE THE BLACK PILL:
There is a very interesting mismatch between the elections for *candidates*, which effectively yielded a massive and historic sweep for the Democrats, and the *ballot initiatives*, almost all all of which yielded conservative outcomes, even in the deep blue states (but not VA).
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) November 4, 2026
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: CrowdStrike launches AI kill switch that it says can stop internal agents that go rogue. “The cybersecurity vendor on Tuesday launched an AI kill switch designed to let security teams stop internal AI agents that go rogue, block them from relaunching and cut off their enterprise network access. The tool is built into CrowdStrike’s Falcon Guardian platform, launched in September to secure AI agents. CrowdStrike also announced an integration with Anthropic’s Claude Cowork.”