Greetings, and welcome to Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. Happy 251st birthday to the United States Marine Corps. Veterans Day is tomorrow, so this week is a good time to thank the people who kept this country free long enough for the rest of us to argue about it. The October inflation numbers also come out this morning, so keep an eye on the gas line.
My calendar says it’s Marine Corps Birthday, Forget-Me-Not Day, and Vanilla Cupcake Day. Wish a Marine a happy birthday, and if one is buying, don’t turn down the drink. Pin on a forget-me-not in honor of the veterans the day was created to remember. And grab a vanilla cupcake, because some days nothing fancy is required.
By the way, the CPI report is due out today at 8:30 a.m. You may want to be watching for that.
Today in History:
1775: The Continental Congress authorizes two battalions of Marines, and recruiting begins at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia.
1871: Journalist Henry Morton Stanley finds missionary David Livingstone near Lake Tanganyika and greets him with the famous line, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”
1928: Hirohito is enthroned as emperor of Japan.
1938: Kate Smith sings Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” on her radio show for the first time.
1951: Long-distance customers make the first direct-dial coast-to-coast phone call, from Englewood, N.J., to Alameda, Calif., with no operator needed.
1954: President Dwight Eisenhower dedicates the Marine Corps War Memorial, based on the Iwo Jima flag-raising photograph, in Arlington, Va.
1969: Sesame Street premieres on public television.
1975: The ore freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks in a storm on Lake Superior, taking all 29 crew members with her.
1975: The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution declaring Zionism a form of racism. It’s revoked in 1991.
1982: Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev dies after 18 years in power.
Birthdays Today include: Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant Reformation; Claude Rains, actor from Casablanca; Richard Burton, actor from Cleopatra and Becket; Roy Scheider, actor from Jaws; Tim Rice, lyricist for Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita; Donna Fargo, country singer from “The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A.”; Greg Lake, singer and bassist with Emerson, Lake & Palmer (“Lucky Man”); Sinbad, comedian; Tracy Morgan, comedian and actor from 30 Rock; and Miranda Lambert, country singer from “The House That Built Me.” If today’s your birthday, too, happy birthday from all of us here.
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The next two years are going to be an interesting time in American politics.
Several folks, including some of my colleagues here at PJ Media, have noticed the attitude of the newly minted Democrat majority. These people are chattering like schoolgirls at the prospect of going after anyone in America who stands to the right of Fidel Castro. They can hardly wait to start "investigating" the Trump administration, and people outside government too, like Elon Musk. Or, executing them, in some of the more bizarre comments.
They aren't hiding it, either. Before a single vote was cast, House Democrats were planning a "vast oversight agenda", with investigations of President Donald Trump, his family, and his administration, and they openly said impeachment was "an option." Now that they've won both chambers, the third-impeachment chatter is back in earnest.
The thing is, that isn't what voters sent them to Washington to do.
Look at the exit polls. The economy topped the list at 39%, and 89% of voters called the cost of living a crucial or major factor in their vote. Before the election, a Fox News poll asked voters to name the country's biggest problem in their own words. Cost of living won in a walk at 34%, more than double the economy and jobs combined with anything else on the list. Republicans, Trump, and MAGA, as a complaint, managed just 7%.
Voters want relief at the grocery store. They don't want subpoenas, show trials, or a third impeachment.
Even Democrats know it. Hakeem Jeffries, the incoming speaker, has spent months deflecting impeachment questions by insisting his party's focus is "to make life more affordable for the American people." Sherrod Brown, who just won back his Ohio Senate seat, put it flatly: "I would not support an impeachment of Trump." Smart men. Their caucus may not listen. A lot of their voters certainly will not.
And here's the part of the affordability story Democrats would love for everyone to forget: how prices got this high in the first place.
In March 2021, Joe Biden signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco later concluded that pandemic spending may have added about 3 percentage points to inflation by the end of 2021, and they noted that U.S. inflation had pulled ahead of the rest of the developed world. Even Axios, hardly a right-wing outlet, eventually called it "Democrats' $1.9 trillion bet that blew up." By June 2022, inflation hit 9.1%, the highest in more than 40 years, and grocery prices were up 12.2% year over year.
Inflation slowed eventually. Prices never came back down. Every American who walks into a supermarket today is still paying the Biden markup, with today's increases stacked on top of it. Democrats spent four years building that baseline, and now they've campaigned on fixing it. I think we have a working definition for Democrat chutzpah. See also, gall, brass, and stones.
So can they fix it? Oh, heck no. Not without the votes, and they simply don't have them.
Democrats will hold roughly 248 House seats and about 54 in the Senate. Overriding a veto takes two-thirds of both chambers: 290 in the House and 67 in the Senate. They're nowhere close to either. Trump, meanwhile, has already threatened to "veto everything" and celebrated the loss by posting a red cap with "VETO" stitched across the front.
Do the math. Democrats can pass bills in the House. They might even push some through the Senate. Anything with real teeth dies on the president's desk. We can thank the good Lord for that. Given the damage they did under Biden, one need not use much imagination on how much worse it would be if they actually had the votes again. What's left is the one thing a congressional majority can do without anybody's signature: hold hearings. Lots of them, with cameras.
So the next two years will be grandstanding and little more. Subpoenas, press conferences, fundraising emails, and maybe impeachment votes that go nowhere in the Senate. Grocery bills will keep climbing the whole time. So will voter frustration, among people who have seen this play out before. In 1994, Republicans took Congress, overreached, and Bill Clinton cruised to reelection two years later. In 2010, the Tea Party wave swept the House, and Barack Obama won again in 2012. A majority that spends its time chasing the other side's scalps, rather than solving the problem it was hired to solve, tends to hand the next election back to the people it was chasing. Or, to quote the old saying, you won't get ahead by spending all your time getting even.
Mark me on this, gang. Democrats were elected to lower costs. If they spend two years on show trials instead, which seems likely given their lack of numbers to do anything more substantial, they'll get a lesson in the price of ignoring voters, and that lesson's going to come in the form of a MAGA comeback.
Thought for the Day: Since today is the birthday of the Marine Corps, it seems appropriate to note their motto is Semper Fidelis, Latin for “always faithful.” Washington could use a few more people who know what that means.
VIP members: Your turn. Let us know what you think.
Take care today, gang. See you here tomorrow.
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