Tuxedos And More November 6, 2026 An Aussie friend who lives here texted: “Any idea where I can buy a nice tux?! I have four weddings in Sydney.” He needed it before flying down under in a few days. “Like a nice luxury brand one?” Except that he has no money. I went to Cherry Pick, which is still in beta — though quite a bit enhanced since last plugged here — and searched for tuxedos. I found one that looked good and guessed that the size — 40L — might work. (He’s taller than I am.) I forget the name of the brand, but I’d heard of it. At $450 (new) it was hardly extravagant . . . but “worn four times” it was offered at $50 plus $6.25 shipping. A couple of clicks later it was on its way. Today, a week later, a selfie arrived from my Aussie with the caption, “It’s perfect.” I like perfect. Saving $400 on a $450 tux isn’t bad either. I have a bunch of suits I don’t wear (and ties! do you remember ties? I feel so bad for the people who make suits and ties and for my dry cleaner!) — not to mention three tuxes (38R) — and in sorting through them to decide which to give away, I came across, in the pocket of one, notes for a speech I must have given a long time ago. Included were two quotes that always make me stop and think. The first is from a letter Abigail Adams, snowbound in Massachusetts, wrote to John off in Philadelphia trying to found our democratic republic. “Posterity,” she wrote — meaning you and me — “who are to reap the blessings, will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors.” Every time I’ve come across that quote over the years, I stop to imagine her life — without electricity or hot showers or antibiotics or anything, really — and am reminded how incredibly much we owe our forefathers and mothers, and what a precious, precarious thing is this democracy it’s become ours to steward. And how much easier we have it than she. The second quote — I don’t know how it tied into the first or to what audience I was speaking — is attributed to St. Ambrose of Milan (339-397): “Wealth,” he wrote, “[should be] seen less for its own qualities than for the human misery it stands for. The large rooms of which you are so proud are in fact your shame. The poor man cries before your house and you pay no attention. There is your brother, naked, crying, and you stand there, confused over the choice of an attractive floor covering.” Every time I’ve come across that one, I think of a friend I asked for $10,000 when I was first starting out as DNC treasurer. “The whole Supreme Court could be at stake in this election,” I told him. “I’d love to help,” he said, but he had just put $80,000 on his American Express card for wall coverings for his pool house. (Not his beach house; the pool house of his beach house.) So he obviously couldn’t. Join the Patriotic Millionaires? And while I’m quoting things, St. Ambrose reminds me somehow of these famous lines from President Eisenhower‘s Cross of Iron speech: “Every gun that is made,” he said, “every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.” Enough with the quotes. Herewith: > The headquarters of Antifa (90 seconds). > Proof many Republicans are uncomfortable with people different from themselves (3 minutes). > Little Marco has some ‘splaining to do (90 seconds). > Former President Bill Clinton speaking in 2007 to a future senator (60 seconds). > Power to the people!!! (45 seconds). Enjoy.