I start with a simple truth: nobody knows what the midterm election results will be. I don't know, you don't know, and the people who get paid to tell you they do also don't know. Of course, this is always true -- nobody can perfectly accurately predict the future -- but it used to be that politics was at least somewhat predictable. Polling would show what the voters were thinking, and it usually played out on Election Day.

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President Joe Biden made an announcement today that few people probably watched, but which will nonetheless help tens of millions of American families out in the future. This is all part of an ongoing effort (the president's "Competition Council") to end abusive practices in pricing by corporations and other businesses. Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced a new rule which will ban banks from charging two "junk fees" that are particularly insidious.

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In a number of races in the midterm elections, an extraordinary thing is happening. Both Democrats and Republicans are backing candidates which are not from their own party. Republicans are endorsing Democrats. Democrats are endorsing Republicans or Independents who lean Republican. Each case, so far, is fairly individual. So this isn't yet a big trend or anything, but it is interesting nonetheless because it shows that in the right circumstances politicians still exist who are willing to put "country above party" -- in other words, supporting candidates they feel would be the best for America's future rather than blindly backing their own party's candidate.

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Next week, millions of students and former students are on track to have $10,000 to $20,000 of their student debt wiped off the books. Republicans are incensed and are desperately fighting to halt this debt forgiveness before it can happen. It is a perfect example of the ideological divide between the two parties -- one of whom is trying to help millions of people while the other fights against it tooth and nail.

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Republicans have always had a good chance of winning at least one house of Congress in the upcoming midterms. As things stand, it looks a lot more likely that they'll take control of the House, but they could also win the Senate. So what would they do if they did win control of either one or both houses? Probably not a whole lot, in terms of substantive legislative goals, since Joe Biden will still be sitting in the White House (with a veto pen at the ready). But Republicans aren't really campaigning on substantive legislative issues much anymore, because they have followed the lead of their base and are much more interested in style over substance. What we can definitely expect from a Republican Congress is spleen-venting, and lots of it.

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Maybe he'll actually take the bait, who knows?

Maybe Donald Trump's planet-sized ego and rampant unbridled narcissism will convince him that there just is no possible downside to testifying in front of the January 6th House Select Committee. This isn't just idle speculation, as hours after yesterday's hearing New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman posted the following (which has since been similarly reported in multiple media outlets):

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The House Select Committee investigating January 6th presented the ninth in their series of televised hearings today, although (as we were informed at the start by Chair Bennie Thompson) this was not technically a hearing, but rather a business meeting for the committee. The reason for this change became evident at the end, when the committee voted publicly and unanimously to subpoena the testimony of Donald John Trump.

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The moral divide between the two major American political parties has become pretty stark. On the one hand, you have a party which stands for respect, inclusiveness, diversity, and multiculturalism; and on the other you have a party which no longer even feels the necessity to cloak its racist language in "dog whistles" anymore. Dog whistles are so passé, at least over on the Republican side of the aisle today. All manner of bigotry (including racism) is now not something for the GOP to condemn or punish or even be ashamed about, instead it is to be either enabled (by saying nothing) or actually celebrated in front of throngs of cheering crowds.

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We were reminded of an old political saying this week: "Only Nixon could go to China." Only a president who was long known as a staunch anti-communist warrior could open up American relations with communist China in the depths of the Cold War, without being painted as some sort of pinko/commie back home. This week's update might read: "Only Biden could pardon weed crimes." Joe Biden, before he became Barack Obama's vice president, had spent much of his life in the Senate being the biggest, baddest drug warrior around. He actually coined the term "drug czar" and worked with the Reagan administration to make the Office of National Drug Control Policy a reality. He's never been pro-legalization in any way, a fact that didn't exactly help him in the 2020 Democratic primaries. But there he was yesterday, taking the first steps away from the War On Weed that any U.S. President has ever taken.

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We've long thought that America is at her best when disaster strikes. We've thought this since the massive 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, in fact, which we rode out in San Francisco. And we saw firsthand that when life is disrupted, it is disrupted equally. Everyone is affected, so everyone puts aside all their differences and just pitches in to help in the immediate aftermath. Maybe this is a rosy-tinted view, but it still holds mostly true.

Case in point is Hurricane Ian, which just devastated Florida and seems on its way to devastate the Carolinas next. Ian has been one of the biggest hurricanes in American history already (fifth-largest, from one news report) and we haven't even begun to comprehend the scope of the damage or how long it will take to recover from it. The damage isn't even over yet, and most of the East Coast will at least get some heavy rains before Ian disintegrates.

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