How surprising.

From the Texas Tribune:

Since assuming office in 2015, Paxton has taken nearly 1,000 trips with a state-funded security detail, costing $3.3 million….

Records detailing the purpose of Paxton’s visits to 36 states and 19 countries do not appear to exist in most cases. These include a trip to a small town in Hawaii months before his family’s blind trust bought land there; 24 trips to Utah, where the trust owns five properties; and 53 trips to Florida, where Paxton and the trust have two houses and a townhome.

Moonrise at Sunrise

08 Oct 2026

Reminds me of elections in a Trollope novel

Per CNBC:

The Trump administration began sending $500 refunds¹ on Wednesday to more than 950,000 Obamacare enrollees… Recipients are largely those earning more than 400% of the federal poverty line…

¹Not really a refund; just a payment dictated by the WH.

In other words, a bribe to many folks who don’t need the money.

He’s also sending $90 checks to 20 million folks on Medicare. “Not eligible are … millions of … people with disabilities and low-income[s].”

When that $90 comes in, I’m sending it straight to the Talarico campaign.

Gilead

I finished reading Marilyn Robinson’s Gilead. I have tons of thoughts about this wonderful novel, but they’re jumbled. For now, I think I’ll leave them that way. It’s wiser simply to be with this book for a while than to dissect it.

Crazy thought

Even if the GOP barely keeps the Senate in November, is it possible that an impeachment trial in the next two years would convict Trump with some GOP votes, on the theory that kicking him out could help them in the 2028 elections?

Interesting Point About Trump’s CNN, et al., Ban

Someone on the PBS Newshour noted that Trump’s banning of news agencies he doesn’t like is of a piece with his gutting of government inspectors general. Anyone whose job is to hold him accountable is his enemy.

Spurs, here’s a reminder.

@frjonjordan, if this helps, I’m all for it.

Oh, boy.

Wendell Berry and Annie Dillard so close together. I am so grateful for both of them. May they rest in peace and rise in glory.

I’m a lamp.

I love the quiet humor of “Poorly Drawn Lines” by Reza Farazmand.

Benefits of Age

Jonah Goldberg:

I often roll my eyes when young people claim that older people “just don’t understand” this or that. We know what it was—what it is—like to be young; we just also know what it’s like not to be, too.

I’d say, “We know what it was like to be young when we were young. We know – in part – what it’s like to be young today”