tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23421004217569145972024-03-25T11:51:29.950-04:00The Weekly SiftMaking sense of the news one week at a time.Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.comBlogger747125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-86473506432710349902024-03-25T11:50:00.003-04:002024-03-25T11:50:45.686-04:00Public Investment<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>The great improvement in health that high-income countries experienced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was not a result of better medicine -- as William McNeill claimed -- or even economic growth per se. It was, rather, the consequence of political decisions to make massive investments in drinking water, sanitation, housing and poverty reduction. </em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- Jonathan Kennedy, <em>Pathogenesis: A history of the world in eight plagues</em></p>
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<p>This week's featured posts are "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/03/25/is-donald-trump-still-rich/">Is Donald Trump Still Rich?</a>" and "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/03/25/what-republicans-want/">What Republicans Want</a>". The two posts together are quite long, so I'll be a little terser than usual in this weekly summary.</p>
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<p>I intend the quote above as a general comment on the House Study Committee's report on its FY 2025 budget proposals (the subject of "What Republicans Want"). If 19th century leaders had demonized "spending" the way the HSC does, we'd still be having cholera epidemics. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about Trump's finances</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.ajc.com/opinion/mike-luckovich-blog/mike-luckovich-032124-grab-him/QVCPH4OOIZBGJO7YJRBNRUFQQM/"><img src="https://www.ajc.com/resizer/ZCQUfz2KCiL8HB29UYvk35Lc7Ho=/850x480/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ajc/KXQUXUTHJ5BEHILC2WVQHB2AO4.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>At the last minute, the NY Appeals Court <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2024/mar/25/trump-hush-money-trial-fraud-bond-deadline-latest-updates">lowered Trump's bond to $175 million</a> and gave him ten more days to pay. My take on the Trump-bond issue is in <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/03/25/is-donald-trump-still-rich/">one of the featured posts</a>.</p>
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<p>The other Trump-related thing happening today is a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/03/25/1240619833/trump-hush-money-trial-bond-payment">hearing on his New York criminal case</a>, the one concerning the fraudulent business records that hid his payoff to Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 election. What most observers expect to come out of today's hearing is a trial date in April.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and funding the government</h3>
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<p>We finally have an FY 2024 budget. <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/23/biden-signs-1point2-trillion-spending-package.html">President Biden signed a keep-the-government open bill</a> Saturday morning. </p>
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<p>House conservatives are of course unhappy that the government is going to keep governing. Marjorie Taylor Greene <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-files-motion-oust-mike-johnson-house-speake-rcna134385">filed a motion to recall Speaker Johnson</a>, but did it in such a way that it won't immediately come to the floor. She's being coy about exactly what would cause her to force a vote. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Gaza</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.reformaustin.org/political-cartoons/famine-in-gaza/"><img src="https://www.reformaustin.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/RA.031824.Famine_In_Gaza-1068x853.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>The UN Security Council <a href="https://apnews.com/article/un-gaza-ceasefire-resolution-vote-ramadan-b7985fede65e5477aba2c8d2e62a6632">passed a resolution calling for a Ramadan ceasefire</a>. The US abstained. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/23/politics/israel-us-proposal-palestinian-prisoners/index.html">Israel agreed to a US proposal</a> to exchange prisoners for hostages, but Hamas says there are still issues to be resolved.</p>
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<p>An excellent <a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/03/21/at-a-moment-of-military-might-israel-looks-deeply-vulnerable">Economist article</a> outlines the problems Israel faces.</p>
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<p>There is still narrow path out of the hellscape of Gaza. A temporary ceasefire and hostage release could cause a change of Israel’s government; the rump of Hamas fighters in south Gaza could be contained or fade away; and from the rubble, talks on a two-state solution could begin, underwritten by America and its Gulf allies. It is just as likely, however, that ceasefire talks will fail. That could leave Israel locked in the bleakest trajectory of its 75-year existence, featuring endless occupation, hard-right politics and isolation. Today many Israelis are in denial about this, but a political reckoning will come eventually. It will determine not only the fate of Palestinians, but also whether Israel thrives in the next 75 years.</p>
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<p>If you are a friend of Israel this is a deeply uncomfortable moment. In October it launched a justified war of self-defence against Hamas, whose terrorists had committed atrocities that threaten the idea of Israel as a land where Jews are safe. Today Israel has destroyed perhaps half of Hamas’s forces. But in important ways <a href="https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/03/21/the-war-in-gaza-may-topple-hamas-without-making-israel-safer">its mission has failed</a>.</p>
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<p>The left wing of the Democratic Party has been skeptical of Israel for some while now. So it's not surprising that <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2024/03/24/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-israel-hamas-gaza-genocide-humanitarian-crisis-sotu-vpx.cnn">AOC told Jake Tapper yesterday</a> that Israel had "crossed a threshold" that justifies use of the very serious term "genocide". Most progressives are reluctant to consider Israel's post-Holocaust mission as a special case, and instead see the Palestinians as just another victim of Western colonialism. (Among European nations, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/03/14/1233395830/ireland-pro-palestinian">Ireland in particular identifies with Palestine</a>, casting Israel in the role England played in Irish history, right down to <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2019/01/genocide-teaches-palestine/">causing a famine</a>.)</p>
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<p>What's new is that the Netanyahu government has alienated such committed pro-Israel Democrats as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/14/politics/chuck-schumer-israel-election-comments/index.html">Chuck Schumer</a>. It seems determined to alienate President Biden as well, as it announced an <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240322-israel-unveils-big-west-bank-land-seizure-as-blinken-visits">expansion of West Bank settlements</a> (which the US regards as <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/biden-administration-restores-u-s-policy-calling-israeli-settlements-illegitimate-under-international-law">illegal</a>) during a recent visit by Secretary of State Blinken. In a policy shift, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/21/us-un-ceasefire-gaza">US recently backed a ceasefire resolution in the UN Security Council</a>, only to see it <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147856">vetoed by Russia and China</a>. </p>
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<p>A recent <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/2024/03/21/majority-in-u-s-say-israel-has-valid-reasons-for-fighting-fewer-say-the-same-about-hamas/">Pew Research poll</a> found Americans marginally supporting Israel's conduct of the war, with 38% finding it either completely or somewhat acceptable, compared to 34% who found it completely or somewhat unacceptable. This is a remarkably small margin given Americans' longstanding sympathy with Israel, and it could quickly vanish if the famine that the World Food Programme calls "<a href="https://www.wfp.org/news/famine-imminent-northern-gaza-new-report-warns">imminent</a>" becomes a reality that Americans regularly see on their TVs.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/19/jared-kushner-gaza-waterfront-property-israel-negev">Jared Kushner</a> is thinking about Gaza's "valuable waterfront property" that might become available for development after Israel moves current residents to the Negev Desert. (Plans for such a move have not been announced. So far, I think, this is just Jared's fantasy.)</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Moscow terrorist attack</h3>
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<p>Armed men <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/25/moscow-concert-hall-attack-russia-isis/">attacked a shopping-and-entertainment complex in Moscow</a> Friday while a concert was underway. So far 137 people are known to be dead. An offshoot of ISIS has claimed responsibility, but <a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2024/3/23/24109865/moscow-crocus-city-hall-theater-terrorist-attack-russia-isis-vladimir-putin-ukraine-war">Putin really wants to link Ukraine</a> to the attack. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/14/2229270/-Cartoon-Tom-the-Dancing-Bug-takes-a-look-into-the-future-in-the-New-York-Times-newsroom"><img src="https://images.dailykos.com/images/1281375/story_image/1677ckCOMICnytnewsroom.png?1710358389" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>North Carolina Republicans have gotten a lot of bad press nationally for their loony candidate for governor, <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/24092798/mark-robinson-north-carolina-governors-race-2024">Mark Robinson</a>. But the <a href="https://politicsnc.substack.com/p/and-you-thought-mark-robinson-was">rest of the ticket</a> is pretty far out too. Their nominee for State Superintendent of Public Instruction is Michele Morrow, who defeated the incumbent Republican Catherine Truitt in the GOP primary.</p>
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<p>She called public schools “<a href="https://x.com/_stand_firm/status/1317197793866514432?s=20">socialist indoctrination centers</a>” and <a href="https://www.morrow4nc.com/pedophiles-in-the-classroom">accused Truitt of allowing pedophiles to flourish in schools</a>. ... Morrow <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/14/politics/kfile-gop-nominee-north-carolina-public-schools-michele-morrow-executing-democrats/index.html">grabbed national attention last week when CNN ran a story highlighting her social media posts </a>that advocated executing prominent Democrats, including Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Instead of trying to equivocate, <a href="https://x.com/MicheleMorrowNC/status/1768409927112970310?s=20">she doubled down with a tweet accusing Obama of committing treason </a>for drone attacks on “hundreds of innocent Muslims in Yemen.”</p>
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<p>North Carolina is not that red a state any more. Due to gerrymandering, its legislature has a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina_General_Assembly">substantial Republican majority</a>. But the state also has a two-term Democratic governor (Roy Cooper, who can't run for a third term), and Trump carried it in 2020 by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_North_Carolina">less than 75K votes</a> out of more than 5 million.</p>
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<p>Facing attention from Congress (particularly Bernie Sanders), a couple big drug makers (AstraZeneca and Boehringer Ingelheim) <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/astrazeneca-cap-us-out-of-pocket-costs-inhalers-35-2024-03-18/">cut the price of their inhalers to $35 per month</a> from as much $645. The other two major suppliers (Teva and GSK) so far have not responded.</p>
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<p>There's a lot of competition to be the wackiest red-state legislature, but Tennessee is definitely in the running. </p>
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<p>Last Monday, the Tennessee Senate has passed SB2691, including an <a href="https://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default.aspx?BillNumber=HB2063">amendment</a> "to prohibit the intentional injection, release, or dispersion, by any means, of chemicals, chemical compounds, substances, or apparatus within the borders of this state into the atmosphere with the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight". According to <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/2024/03/20/tennessee-senate-passes-bill-banning-chemtrails-what-to-know/73027586007/">The Tennessean</a>, the amendment is based on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemtrail_conspiracy_theory">chemtrail conspiracy theory</a>, which holds that the contrails of airplanes contain chemicals "sprayed for nefarious purposes undisclosed to the general public".</p>
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<p>But don't worry, good citizens of Tennessee, your legislature is on the case. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something unexpected</h3>
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<p>Once in a while, days don't go the way you planned. <a href="https://www.buzzerilla.com/en/days-didnt-go-planned?abtv=28dd374c-0e81-47bb-bdd6-50cc5247fc05">Buzzerilla</a> collects a few examples.</p>
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<!-- /wp:image -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-29727824125390532722024-03-18T12:43:00.000-04:002024-03-18T12:43:15.746-04:00Fantasies<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>Strongman rule is a fantasy. Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be <em>your</em> strongman. He won't. In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance. The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing. We get abused and we get used to it.</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- Timothy Snyder "<a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-142669610">The Strongman Fantasy</a>"</p>
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<p>This week's featured posts are "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/03/18/the-other-reason-im-optimistic/">The Other Reason I'm Optimistic</a>" about the 2024 election and "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/03/18/the-bloodbath-statement/">The 'bloodbath' statement</a>". </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about bloodbaths</h3>
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<p>I was going to summarize the controversy over Trump's prediction of "a bloodbath" if he doesn't get elected, but the length got out of hand, so I made it a <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/03/18/the-bloodbath-statement/">featured post</a>. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Florida</h3>
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<p>Ron DeSantis suffered <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/03/15/1238272873/desantis-woke-dont-say-gay-florida-stop-woke">two major defeats</a> this month in his war on woke. The first was two weeks ago, when a federal appeals court blocked enforcement of one provision of his Stop-Woke law. The <a href="https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/202213135.pdf">opinion</a>, written by a Trump appointee, lays things out pretty clearly. </p>
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<p>Here's a short version: Among other things, the law bans employers from having mandatory meetings where they promote certain notions that state doesn't like about discrimination, diversity, and so forth. On its face, this sounds like a violation of the employers' freedom of speech, but the DeSantis administration claims it's really a limitation on conduct (holding these meetings), not speech.</p>
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<p>The judge rightly points out that mandatory meetings are only banned if certain ideas are presented, so there's no way to know ahead of time whether a meeting is banned without knowing what people are going to say. That makes it a limitation on speech. </p>
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<p>The second defeat was the <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/11/desantis-lbgtq-groups-claim-victory-in-parental-rights-lawsuit-settlement-00146380">settlement of a lawsuit</a> against DeSantis' Don't Say Gay law. The worst thing about Don't Say Gay has been the vagueness of it. Nobody knew exactly what ideas the law banned from Florida schools, so teachers and administrators who wanted to be safe just wouldn't say anything at all about non-traditional gender roles or sexuality. </p>
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<p>Under the agreement, the state must clarify the law’s scope to schools across the state, ensuring that, among other things, it does not prohibit references to LGBTQ+ persons, couples, families, or issues in literature or classroom discussions.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Trump trials</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2024/mar/15/justice-tfp/"><img src="https://wehco.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/img/photos/2024/03/15/240316_Justice_t800.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>The trial that we thought was on track fell off track, and another one got rolling again. </p>
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<p>The New York state trial for the pre-2016-election cover-up of the Stormy Daniels payments was supposed to start next Monday, but it's <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/15/politics/trump-hush-money-trial/index.html">delayed into at least April</a>. At issue are some documents that just got released by the US Attorney's office, and whether the defense has had adequate time to review them.</p>
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<p>In the Georgia RICO trial, the judge has <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-georgia-fani-willis-whats-next-rcna143608">allowed Fani Willis' office to go forward</a>, after removing Willis' ex-lover from the prosecution team. If the judge had disqualified Willis, it's not clear when or whether the case would have proceeded. No trial date has yet been set.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">but I want to call your attention to two books</h3>
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<p>One of my favorite observers of the intersection of technology and society is Cory Doctorow. He currently has two new books out, one fiction and one non-fiction.</p>
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<p>The novel is <em><a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/thelostcause">The Lost Cause</a></em> which takes place in a late-2030s California dealing with a much-advanced climate crisis, as well as the residue of our current political polarization. The country has had 12 years of Green New Deal administrations, and is now going through a backlash that includes a lot of old white guys in MAGA militias. To me, it's ambiguous whether the "lost cause" in the title is the MAGA effort to maintain white male privilege or the Green New Deal effort to save the world itself.</p>
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<p>Two things stand out: Climate-change futurism tends to bifurcate simplistically into we-save-the-world or we-don't-save-the-world. I found it enlightening to spend time in a world where a lot of bad things have happened, but the struggle goes on. There's a lot in this novel that is dystopian and a lot that is hopeful. </p>
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<p>Second, I think Doctorow is right about where MAGA is headed with regard to climate change. Right now, the MAGA consensus is to ignore the problem. (Trump wants to be a dictator on Day 1 so that he can "<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2023/12/11/donald-trump-dictator-one-day-reelected/71880010007/">drill, drill, drill</a>".) But in Doctorow's future, they turned on a dime from "it's a hoax" to "not everybody is going to make it, so we have to make sure our people do". Climate change has become one more justification for anti-immigrant fascism.</p>
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<p>The nonfiction book is <em><a href="https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con">The Internet Con: how to seize the means of computation</a></em>. He emphasizes that the current tech and social media giants are not natural outcomes of the free market, but stem from changes in the laws, especially antitrust enforcement and copyright laws.</p>
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<p>It's not that there was one magical generation of entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, et al, but that the leading corporations at a particular moment in history were allowed to cement themselves into place and insulate themselves from competition. </p>
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<p>For example, your email app doesn't own your email files, but Facebook owns your Facebook posts, which you'll lose if you close your account. As a result, you can change email clients whenever you want, but switching from Facebook to some other social media platform is much more arduous. You can send email to people who use other email apps, but you can't see X/Twitter messages on BlueSky. </p>
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<p>The result is what Doctorow has elsewhere called the "enshittification" of the internet. Companies can implement policies for their own advantage rather than yours, and there's little you can do about it.</p>
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<p>The book is full of suggestions for how to turn this around. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p>The House passed a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-ban-house-vote-china-national-security-8fa7258fae1a4902d344c9d978d58a37">ban/forced-sale of TikTok</a>, which is owned by a Chinese company and heavily influenced by the Chinese government. What will happen next is unclear.</p>
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<p>Trump abruptly <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-tiktok-ban-reversal-china-jeff-yass-why.html">switched his position</a> on this issue: He tried to ban TikTok by executive order when he was president, but now he's against the legislative ban. The flipflop closely followed a meeting with conservative financier Jeff Yass, who is heavily invested in TikTok.</p>
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<p>Have I mentioned that Trump needs a lot of money?</p>
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<p>I really enjoy <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1icuNYgEXI">this Biden ad</a>, especially the last few seconds.</p>
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<p>Russia held its version of an election, and you'll never guess what happened: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/17/kremlin-vladimir-putin-claim-landslide-russian-election-victory">Putin was reelected</a> to a fifth term as president with 87% of the vote. There were other names on the ballot, but only the ones Putin allowed to be there. No candidate was vocally anti-Putin or against the Ukraine War. </p>
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<p>Supporters of Alexei Navalny (who wanted to run against Putin, but instead died in prison), staged a subtle protest by all showing up to vote at noon. The long lines at the polling places were, in effect, Navalny demonstrations.</p>
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<p>Russian prosecutors threatened any voters who took part in the “noon against Putin” action with five years in prison. In the southern city of Kazan, police detained more than 20 voters who had joined the protest, according to the independent rights monitor OVD-Info. Arrests were also reported in Moscow and St Petersburg.</p>
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<p>It will be interesting to see what, if anything, the government finds to charge these people with.</p>
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<p>When we talk about climate change, we usually focus on rising air temperatures. But maybe we should be paying more attention to <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/why-is-the-sea-so-hot">how fast the oceans are heating up</a>. </p>
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<p>A rule change could make it much harder to go "<a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2024/3/12/24098760/supreme-court-matthew-kacsmaryk-judge-shopping-republicans-judicial-conference">judge shopping</a>". </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something backwards</h3>
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<p>Tim Blais is one of those people whose collection of talents seems unfair. He's musical, does great videos, and also knows a lot of science. His <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTev4RNBiu6lqtx8z1e87fQ">A Capella Science</a> YouTube channel has some amazing stuff, like a Billy Joel parody "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6rVHr6OwjI">The Arrow of Entropic Time</a>". </p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-20411257375763277222024-03-11T12:40:00.002-04:002024-03-11T12:40:51.602-04:00Core Values<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>I know I may not look like it, but I’ve been around a while. When you get to be my age, certain things become clearer than ever. I know the American story. ... My lifetime has taught me to embrace freedom and democracy, a future based on core values that have defined America — honesty, decency, dignity, and equality — ; to respect everyone; to give everyone a fair shot; to give hate no safe harbor.</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- President Joe Biden, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/state-of-the-union-2024/">2024 State of the Union</a></p>
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<p>This week's featured post is "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/03/11/biden-met-the-challenge/">Biden Met the Challenge</a>". </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about the State of the Union</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://claytoonz.com/2024/03/09/sotu-2024/"><img src="https://claytoonz.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/cjonesrgb03122024.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>They were also talking about Katie Britt's disastrous Republican response. The <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/03/11/biden-met-the-challenge/">featured post</a> covers both. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Super Tuesday</h3>
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<p>As expected, Trump locked up the Republican nomination and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nikki-haley-republican-trump-super-tuesday-losses-95ab56b68a8eefbbf04ef90f2f00ef29">Nikki Haley withdrew</a>. She didn't immediately endorse Trump, but I have to believe that's coming. She sees what he is, but she's going to bend the knee to him anyway.</p>
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<p>On the Democratic side, Biden was not seriously challenged. In fact, Biden has done quite well in the primaries: His vote totals <a href="https://twitter.com/billscher/status/1765213108526596418?s=46&t=V7VfS2X8f7Tb8bB5srchIg">compare favorably with the percentages Obama got</a> when he ran for reelection in 2012. </p>
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<p>So here we are: a Biden/Trump rematch in the fall. It's time for everybody to stop fantasizing that they'll get some other choice and decide whether they want a democratic future or a fascist one.</p>
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<p><a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-142356654">Jay Kuo</a> points out an aspect of Super Tuesday that hasn't gotten much coverage: <em>Polls appear to have a pro-Trump bias.</em> Kuo means "bias" in the statistical sense, not the conspiracy-theory sense. In every state but North Carolina, Trump's margin of victory was smaller than the polls predicted. Kuo doesn't accuse pollsters of <em>trying</em> to promote Trump, but apparently something in their technique makes them more likely to include Trump voters in their samples. Kuo links to University of Michigan Professor <a href="https://twitter.com/justinwolfers/status/1765260529294246108">Justin Wolfers</a>:</p>
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<p>By my count Trump's actual margin in the primaries has underperformed that predicted by the polls by: 0-5%: AL, IA, TX </p>
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<p>6-10%: CA, ME, NH, SC </p>
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<p>10-15%: MA, MI, OK, TN, UT </p>
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<p>16-20%: - </p>
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<p>20% or more: MN, VA, VT (an astonishing 34%)</p>
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<p>In Vermont, Trump was <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-r/2024/vermont/">supposed to win by 30%</a>, and instead <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4511258-nikki-haley-donald-trump-vermont-primary/">he lost</a>. Kuo draws the obvious conclusion:</p>
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<p>If the national polls are overestimating Trump’s strength at anywhere near the levels that the primary polls did, then Biden would be leading Trump in all of them.</p>
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<p>Super Tuesday also included downballot candidates. North Carolina nominated right-wing crank <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/24092798/mark-robinson-north-carolina-governors-race-2024">Mark Robinson</a> for governor, giving Democrats a serious chance to hang onto that office as Governor Roy Cooper term-limits out.</p>
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<p>In another widely watched race, Democrat Adam Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey (the baseball player) advanced to the November election for Senate in California. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the NYT</h3>
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<p>For weeks I've been harping on the NYT's coverage of Biden: Whatever he says or does, the story is about his age, and no good news about Biden can be presented without "balancing" it with negative possibilities. Biden regularly gets a higher percentage of primary votes than Trump does, but Trump is portrayed as romping to victory while Biden's results are ominous. </p>
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<p>Well, this week the chorus of NYT-critical voices swelled. <a href="https://www.salon.com/2024/03/05/there-is-something-at-the-new-york-times/">Salon columnist Lucian Truscott</a> wrote "There's something wrong at The New York Times".</p>
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<p>I don’t want to bring up <em>but her emails</em>, but for crying out loud, why is the New York Times so clearly making the same mistakes of bias and emphasis they made in 2016 covering Hillary Clinton all over again? ...</p>
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<p>There are no scandals with the name Biden attached to them, unless you consider the lies Russian spies supplied the so-called impeachment committee with. So The New York Times has apparently devoted half a floor in its Eighth Avenue headquarters to a search for bad news about Biden, and then they reserve a space nearly every day above the fold on the front page for whatever grain of grim shit the Biden hunters have managed to come up with. They’re probably working on a story on how Biden is losing the pro-choice vote as we speak, while pointing out the wild success of Trump’s “move to the middle” on abortion with “centrist” voters.</p>
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<p><a href="https://presswatchers.org/2024/03/why-is-new-york-times-campaign-coverage-so-bad-because-thats-what-the-publisher-wants/">Dan Froomkin</a> critiqued an interview with NYT's publisher, and "translated" the underlying message to the NYT's reporters and editors:</p>
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<p>One: You will earn my displeasure if you warn people too forcefully about the possible end to democracy at the hands of a deranged insurrectionist.</p>
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<p>And two: You prove your value to me by trolling our liberal readers.</p>
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<p>That explains a lot of the Times’s aberrant behavior, doesn’t it?</p>
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<p> And you can always count on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/andyborowitz/posts/967387414755821/">Andy Borowitz</a> to get to the heart of the issue:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>POLL: A majority of Americans now believe that The New York Times, which was founded 172 years ago, is too old to be an effective newspaper.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p>It looks like a government shutdown has been <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/08/senate-sends-six-bill-funding-package-to-biden-00146131">kicked down the road for another few weeks</a>.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.garthtoons.com/"><img src="http://weeklysift.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/ad086-img_3416.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>After <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/judge-denies-trump-request-time-pay-damages-carroll-defamation-case-rcna142368">pleading to the judge</a> that the bond he needed to post was too high, Trump <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-posts-bond-e-jean-carroll-case-91-million/">posted the $91 million on Friday</a>, secured by an insurance <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/179692/idiot-back-trump-bond-e-jean-carroll-trial-evan-greenberg">subsidiary of the Chubb Group</a>. Chubb chairman Evan Greenberg had been on an advisory committee during Trump's administration. The bond was required in order for him to proceed to appeal the verdict.</p>
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<p>Now he needs to come up with <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-james-appeal-bond-fraud-new-york-3093352e94274f9daba3d84f0c43467e">$454 million</a> by March 25 to appeal his civil fraud case. </p>
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<p>Where exactly Trump gets this money should be a political issue, because we probably won't know where it came from or what promises Trump made to get it. I suspect, though, that these questions won't get the attention they deserve.</p>
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<p>Last week I talked about the Nazi tactic of dehumanizing a group by treating their crimes as special, and in particular, how that tactic is being used against undocumented immigrants by presenting the Laken Riley murder as something uniquely horrible.</p>
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<p><a href="https://twitter.com/andover_gary/status/1766114071475044778">Gary Andover</a> makes that point more sharply than I did:</p>
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<p>Republicans are very concerned about one woman who was killed by a migrant. If she had been killed in a mass shooting by an American citizen with an AR-15 they wouldn't give a shit. Their response would be to loosen up gun laws even more.</p>
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<p>And <a href="https://twitter.com/fred_guttenberg/status/1766618292028911844">Fred Guttenberg</a>, father of Jaime Guttenberg who was murdered in the Parkland school shooting, makes it personal:</p>
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<p>To all MAGAT's using Laken Riley, where were you when my daughter was killed by a teenage American male? Where were you when Trump lied about the Parkland murder? You don't give two f-cks about Laken or her parents, just as you don't about victims of gun violence by Americans.</p>
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<p>I'll tell you exactly where Marjorie Taylor Greene has been: Here's a video of her <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/27/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-david-hogg-video/index.html">harassing Parkland survivor David Hogg</a> with false accusations.</p>
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<p>A couple insightful articles about anti-Semitism. Franklin Foer says "<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/04/us-anti-semitism-jewish-american-safety/677469/">The golden age of American Jews is ending</a>", and Daniel Drezner responds with "<a href="https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/the-state-of-american-jewish-anxiety">The State of American Jewish Anxiety</a>". </p>
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<p><a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-orban-hungary-conservatives-autocrats-biden-97d6998f747d3543f2f1df069b0f9165">Trump met with Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán</a> at Mar-a-Lago Friday. In his remarks, Trump painted Orbán's government as something worth aspiring to here.</p>
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<p>He’s a non-controversial figure because he says, "This is the way it’s going to be," and that’s the end of it. Right? He’s the boss.</p>
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<p>One of the ways Orbán has achieved this lack of controversy is that his government and its political allies now <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2024/02/13/i-cant-do-my-job-journalist/systematic-undermining-media-freedom-hungary">own all the major news outlets</a>, and he has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/world/europe/hungary-viktor-orban-judges.html">stacked the judiciary</a> so that it's useless to take him to court. He has reorganized the legislature into <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/04/02/a-wild-gerrymander-makes-hungarys-fidesz-party-hard-to-dislodge">gerrymandered districts</a> that his party can easily control with a minority of voter support.</p>
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<p>Orbán is a hero to American conservatives. He has <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/8/5/23292448/orban-cpac-dallas-2022-speech-trump">spoken at the CPAC conference</a> here and <a href="https://www.hungarianconservative.com/articles/current/cpac_hungary_2024_budapest_viktor_orban/">held CPAC conferences in Budapest</a>. Tucker Carlson has described Hungary as a "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/20/viktor-orban-cpac-republicans-hungary">signpost to a better way</a>".</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something hollow</h3>
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<p>I am filled with curiosity about <a href="https://www.wilson.com/en-us/explore/basketball/airless-prototype?ef_id=Cj0KCQiAoeGuBhCBARIsAGfKY7wQrFwBXCuoZVMjP2Hzw9atucOgcYJF-OQtoP7R8kWrcvVvbKXjVjkaAsijEALw_wcB:G:s&s_kwcid=AL!8492!3!!!!x!!&CMPID=Google-wilson_baseball_sn_g_shopping-pmax---c--&gad_source=1">Wilson's new airless basketball</a>, which is 3D-printed and designed to have the exact weight and bounce of an NBA ball. Unfortunately, the prototype currently goes for around $2500, so I think I won't get my hands on one for a long time. </p>
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<p>But Marques Brownlee did get to play with one, and here's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cShtHM7cFR0">what he reports</a>. </p>
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Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-50587342173055877432024-03-04T11:54:00.000-05:002024-03-04T11:54:39.549-05:00Failing<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>In some ways, all this is no surprise. Trump the businessman and politician is to a great degree a creation of the American judiciary. Early in his career, <a href="https://prospect.org/power/2023-03-27-trump-deserves-to-be-indicted/">he figured out</a> that the legal system was acutely vulnerable to someone with money and total shamelessness. He learned that if he categorically refused to admit defeat, clogging up the proceedings with endless motions and filings, he could rip off his contractors, repeatedly default on his debts, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-tax-schemes-fred-trump.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">seemingly cheat the IRS out of millions in inheritance taxes</a>, and get away with it just about every time. If you’re a star, they let you do it.</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- Ryan Cooper "<a href="https://prospect.org/justice/2023-12-20-american-judiciary-failing-trump-test/">The American Judiciary is Failing its Trump Test</a>"</p>
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<p>There is no featured post this week.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about the Supreme Court helping Trump</h3>
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<p>It would be easy to write at length about this, but I refuse to do it. I would just rant, and plenty of people are <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/-the-fix-is-in-coup-trial-delay-reveals-supreme-court-in-cahoots-with-trump-205146693530">ranting</a> <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/-this-is-b-s-maddow-shreds-cravenness-of-supreme-court-delaying-trump-trial-205144645897">already</a>. </p>
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<p>Here's the gist: Wednesday, the Supreme Court put its thumb on the scale in Donald Trump's favor, virtually guaranteeing that the most significant case against him -- the federal case in DC arising from his plot to stay in office after losing the 2020 election -- will not reach a verdict by election day.</p>
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<p>Their vehicle for aiding Trump is his absurd claim that ex-presidents are immune to prosecution for any actions they took in office, unless they've first been impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. Basically, this means that a president who retains the support of 34 senators can break any law without fear of facing consequences (including consequences from the voters, because he can break any law to make sure he stays in office). During the oral arguments before the appellate court, Trump's lawyers had no answer when asked if a president could have the military assassinate his rivals. </p>
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<p>If such immunity exists, the trial against Trump cannot progress. So everything has been on hold. Judge Chutkan's original calendar called for the DC trial to begin today. But Trump's lawyers <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/trump-argues-presidential-immunity-shields-2020-election-interference-rcna119070">filed their immunity claim back in October</a>, and Judge Chutkan rejected it on December 1. When Trump appealed, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-january-6-justice-department-90b93eeb663ebaf67a2e0bc266390fa0">take that appeal immediately</a> and decide it quickly. The Court refused.</p>
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<p>So there was an appellate hearing, resulting in a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-capitol-riot-presidential-immunity-appeal-46c2d7fc7807cd3262764d35e47f390e">unanimous ruling rejecting Trump's claims</a> on February 6. Trump appealed again, but because the appellate ruling was complete and unanimous, many observers felt there was nothing for the Supreme Court to resolve. It could have refused the case and let a trial start in May or June.</p>
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<p>Nonetheless, the Court sat on Trump's motion for seven weeks, and then Wednesday announced that it will hear arguments April 22, which presumably will lead to a ruling near the end of their term in June. </p>
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<p>Judge Chutkan's schedule still has about three months for pretrial activities, so if the Supremes take as long as they appear to be doing, the earliest jury selection could begin is the end of September. From there, it would be no trick for Trump's lawyers to delay the verdict until after the election.</p>
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<p>No one thinks the Court will agree that Trump is immune from prosecution, which continues to be an absurd idea, rejected by every judge who has considered it. But they don't need to. Trump's strategy has never been to argue his innocence in court, because <em>the evidence clearly says he's guilty</em>. Instead, he hopes to delay, get reelected, and then tell his Justice Department to withdraw from the case. Even if there is a verdict against him in November or December, he can appeal. And if the Justice Department refuses to fight the appeal, the case dies.</p>
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<p>Wednesday, the Supreme Court signed on to Trump's strategy. It did this because it is even more corrupt and partisan than I had previously suspected. </p>
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<p>But I refuse to rant.</p>
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<p>Just this morning, the Court released its <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-rules-trump-cannot-kicked-colorado-ballot-rcna132291">opinion on the 14th Amendment case to disqualify Trump</a>. It sided with Trump, ruling that states do not have the power to invoke the Amendment's insurrection clause. The decision reserves that power to Congress.</p>
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<p>I haven't had time to analyze the decision yet, but it's worth noting that no justice addressed Colorado's conclusion that Trump did indeed engage in insurrection against the United States.</p>
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<p>The other 2020 election case, the state RICO case in Georgia, is also on hold while the judge decides whether Fani Willis should be disqualified as prosecutor. Disqualification would almost certainly delay the trial until after the election, and could scuttle the case completely.</p>
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<p>Hearing on that matter <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/-fani-willis-misconduct-closing-arguments-judge-scott-mcafee-rcna140688">concluded Friday</a>, with the judge saying he should rule in two weeks. Unquestionably, Willis' affair with another prosecutor looks bad, but the question is whether the issue reaches the rights of the defendants: Did Willis have some conflict of interest that compromises the defendants' rights to a fair trial? I think not, but we'll see.</p>
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<p>The Trump-appointed judge in the Mar-a-Lago case continues to favor Trump in any way possible. Friday she <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/01/trump-mar-a-lago-documents-case">denied Jack Smith's request for a July trial date</a>, which she called "unrealistic". When the trial will actually happen is anybody's guess.</p>
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<p>The only case that is on track to produce a verdict before election day is the NY state false-business-records case. According to the indictment, Trump Organization business records were falsified to hide Trump's reimbursement of Michael Cohen for paying off Stormy Daniels, so that voters would not learn about his affair with Daniels before the 2016 election.</p>
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<p>The trial date is <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-hush-money-case-new-york-trial-hearing/">March 25</a>, and the heart of the matter -- whether the records are false -- is pretty much uncontested so far. So if the case reaches a jury, Trump will probably be convicted. The way he could get off is through technicalities: If the crime should have been charged as misdemeanor falsification rather than felony falsification, then the statute of limitations has expired.</p>
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<p>Meanwhile, we're all wondering about Trump's finances. He says he's appealing both the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/01/26/trump-must-pay-e-jean-carroll-83-million-for-defamation-jury-rules/?sh=78cf28b15c8e">$83.3 million</a> judgment against him in the second E. Jean Carroll case and the <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/ap/ap-politics/ap-454-million-judgment-against-trump-is-finalized-starting-clock-on-appeal-in-civil-fraud-case/">$454 million</a> judgment in the NY civil fraud case. The rules around appeals require that he post some bond to guarantee that the people who won the judgments will get paid if his appeals fail. Appeal, in other words, is not a way to hang onto money longer.</p>
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<p>Judgment in the E. Jean Carroll case was finalized on <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/08/politics/e-jean-carroll-judge-affirms-verdict/index.html">February 8</a> and in the NY civil fraud case on <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/ap/ap-politics/ap-454-million-judgment-against-trump-is-finalized-starting-clock-on-appeal-in-civil-fraud-case/">February 23</a>. So if I count 30 days right, Trump needs to guarantee the $83 million on Saturday and the $454 million on March 24. (That's a Sunday, so I might be a day off. <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-james-appeal-bond-fraud-new-york-3093352e94274f9daba3d84f0c43467e">AP</a> says NY Attorney General Letitia James could seek enforcement -- like seizing property, for example -- on March 25.)</p>
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<p>In spite of his frequent boasting about his wealth, Trump doesn't have that kind of money available. So he's been treating the judgments against him as if they were negotiable: The court has made its claim, then he makes a counteroffer, and so on. (You should try this the next time you get a traffic ticket. "I know the ticket says $50, but how about I give you $15 and we call it even?") In the Carroll case, he offered that the court should just take his word that he's good for the money. (Carroll's <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/03/01/trump-has-one-week-to-pay-833-million-to-e-jean-carroll-and-shes-expressing-very-strong-concerns/">responding court filing</a> described his offer as "the court filing equivalent of a paper napkin signed by the least trustworthy of borrowers".) And in the fraud case he offered $100 million. Both motions were <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-asks-allowed-post-100-million-bond-ny-fraud-case-instead-impossi-rcna140934">denied by the judges</a>.</p>
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<p>I guess we'll see what happens by next Monday.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Mitch McConnell</h3>
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<p>The Mitch McConnell Era in the Senate will <a href="https://apnews.com/article/mitch-mcconnell-senate-republican-leader-stepping-down-ba478d570a4561aa7baf91a204d7e366">end this November</a>. Most liberal commentary on McConnell's retirement has balanced two thoughts:</p>
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<li>McConnell has done terrible damage to the Senate, the judiciary, democracy, and the country as a whole.</li>
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<li>Whoever replaces him as leader of the Senate's Republicans will probably be worse. </li>
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<p><a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/mitch-mcconnell-some-thoughts-on-mastery-destruction-and-minority-rule/sharetoken/EmGBlEmXgFam">Josh Marshall</a> (I'm trying out a feature that allows me to share a members-only article; I hope it works) attempts to give the Devil his due like this: "McConnell was great at doing political evil."</p>
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<p>Mitch McConnell’s great legacy is the thorough institutionalization of minority rule in U.S. politics, especially at the federal level. ... These days you often hear reporters and commentators saying matter of factly that legislation requires 60 votes in the Senate. This is truly McConnell’s greatest accomplishment. People say this like it’s in the Constitution, like the two-thirds requirement for conviction at impeachment or to approve a treaty. But it is a novel development and it has radically altered U.S. politics. It transforms the federal Senate into a genuinely Calhounian body in which minority factions exercise a de facto and permanent veto over the majority.</p>
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<p>It’s what creates gridlock, the breeding ground of political disaffection and extremism. It also lays the groundwork for McConnell’s other great accomplishment, the corrupted federal judiciary and especially the corrupt Supreme Court.</p>
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<p>DailyKos staffer Joan McCarter lists "<a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/2/28/2226395/-The-17-worst-things-Mitch-McConnell-did-to-destroy-democracy">The 17 worst things Mitch McConnell did to destroy democracy</a>". She recalls his refusal to hold hearings on Merrick Garland's Supreme Court nomination (because it was months away from the 2016 election) combined with his steamrolling Amy Coney Barrett's nomination through (mere weeks before the 2020 election); his unwillingness to regulate either guns on the streets or money in politics; turning the debt ceiling into a permanent political hostage; and his vote to acquit Trump despite admitting that he was guilty.</p>
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<p>That last was McConnell's biggest miscalculation: He thought Trump was finished after January 6, and figured he didn't need to tick off Trump's supporters by convicting him. And so he surrendered the old Reagan Republican Party to the new MAGA fascists.</p>
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<p>Maybe the deepest critique of McConnell comes from a 2018 NY Review of Books essay by Holocaust scholar Christopher Browning (which is behind a paywall). Browning <a href="https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/holocaust-expert-sees-mitch-mcconnell-as-america-s-gravedigger-of-democracy-1">compared McConnell to the Weimar Republic's conservative president Paul von Hindenburg</a>, who paved the road Hitler walked to power. Similar to the way Hindenburg hoped for a restored monarchy but wound up with Hitler, McConnell envisioned a plutocratic conservative ascendancy, but wound up enabling populist authoritarianism.</p>
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<p>To me, McConnell is a villain who in the end was not quite villainous enough to win out.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Gaza</h3>
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<p>Despite continuing rumors that a ceasefire agreement may be immanent, there's still no agreement. Naturally, each side blames the intransigence of the other.</p>
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<p>Meanwhile, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-02-29-2024-f9b5a62a80d8b83eac4946d3c85af58b">AP</a> reports this incident:</p>
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<p>Israeli troops fired on a crowd of Palestinians racing to pull food off an aid convoy in Gaza City on Thursday, witnesses said. More than 100 people were killed in the chaos, bringing the death toll since the start of the Israel-Hamas war to more than 30,000, according to health officials.</p>
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<p>Israel said many of the dead were trampled in a chaotic stampede for the food aid and that its troops only fired when they felt endangered by the crowd.</p>
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<p>It's telling, I think, that the <em>Israeli</em> account says that the situation in a part of Gaza its troops control has become so dire that people are trampling each other to get food. Also, the US has begun <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/03/02/1235485952/gaza-aidrops-us-military-humanitarian-aid">airdropping food aid into Gaza</a>. To me, that points to an extreme level of frustration with the border crossings. Airdropping aid is well-known to be extremely inefficient.</p>
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<p>The NYT's Megan Stack wrote an article about children without food in Gaza, but I bet she didn't choose the headline: "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/opinion/gaza-israel-palestinians-starvation.html">Starvation is Stalking Gaza's Children</a>", as if "starvation" were an abstract force that no one is responsible for. </p>
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<p><a href="https://www.972mag.com/israeli-settlers-gaza-outpost-erez-crossing/?utm_source=972+Magazine+Newsletter&utm_campaign=32ca9ec910-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_12_2022_11_20_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1fe821d25-32ca9ec910-320830489">+972 Magazine</a> (a Palestinian/Israeli journalistic consortium named for an <a href="https://www.972mag.com/about/">area code</a>) reports that Israeli settlers have begun reoccupying Gaza. The first "symbolic" settlement is unauthorized by the government, but soldiers did not interfere.</p>
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<p>Israelis are protesting for a variety of reasons: Police broke up a fairly large <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-hope-for-a-deal-fills-hostages-square-chaos-erupts-at-nearby-anti-netanyahu-rally/">anti-Netanyahu demonstration</a> Saturday. But <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240219-israeli-protesters-block-aid-convoys-bound-for-gaza">other protesters</a> are trying to block convoys of food, water, and medicine from reaching Gaza. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the continuing IVF fallout</h3>
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<p>The Alabama legislature is working on bills to get the state's IVF clinics open again. The state senate passed a <a href="https://www.legislature.state.al.us/pdf/SearchableInstruments/2024RS/SB159-int.pdf">bill</a> whose official summary says:</p>
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<p>This bill would provide civil and criminal immunity to persons providing goods and services related to in vitro fertilization except acts or ommission [sic] that are intentional and not arising from or related to IVF services.</p>
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<p>The house is working on a similar bill, and presumably they'll work something out. If this gets passed, the official position of the State of Alabama will be that a frozen embryo is a human being and disposing of an embryo is murder, but murder is OK in this particular circumstance. </p>
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<p>This is the kind of thing that happens when religious zealots get control of a state. </p>
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<p>Alabama gets all the recent attention, but things may be <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/03/03/louisiana-ivf-embryos-law-alabama/">even worse in Louisiana</a>:</p>
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<p>The majority of Louisiana’s fertility clinics have been shipping patients’ embryos out of state for years, with some ending up in Florida and others as far away as Nevada. The time-consuming and costly process is a result of a 1986 state law that banned the destruction of embryos created during IVF.</p>
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<p>Don Moynihan put his finger on precisely <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-142118252?selection=744aa4a5-5ed4-42e9-a9d8-5c6d92f262b1#:~:text=Christian%20nationalism%20is%20not%20just%20about%20religious%20beliefs%2C%20but%20a%20fusion%20of%20Christian%20and%20nationalist%20identities">why IVF is such a wedge issue for MAGA extremists</a>:</p>
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<p>a constraint upon a service used primarily by <a href="https://rbej.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12958-020-00672-2">wealthy White couples</a> — IVF treatments run between $15,000-$20,000 for a single cycle — went too far. The logic of the judicial decision — if life begins at conception, embryos must be people — fails against the logic of Christian nationalism — that White people need to reproduce to avoid being replaced.</p>
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<p>So if your fundamental mindset is racist, you love IVF because it makes more White babies. But if your fundamental mindset is sexist, you hate IVF because it gives women more control over their lives. If you're racist and sexist in equal measures, your head explodes. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the polls</h3>
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<p>This week a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/02/us/politics/biden-trump-times-siena-poll.html">poll</a> showed Trump leading Biden by 5% among registered voters and 4% among likely voters. OK, that's a real thing that happened. But for some reason, the NYT put this poll at the top of its online news page for more than 24 hours, and fleshed it out with articles about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/02/upshot/poll-biden-trump-2024.html">how concerned Democrats are about Biden</a> and how many people <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/03/us/politics/biden-age-trump-poll.html">think he's too old</a>.</p>
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<p>I'm old enough to remember last week, when a <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3890">major poll showed Biden ahead</a>, and the Times barely mentioned it. I find myself agreeing with <a href="https://substack.com/@justinrosario/note/c-50805887">Justin Rosario</a>:</p>
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<p>The SECOND those polls reverse, they will, I promise you, stop talking about them.</p>
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<p>Some of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/03/us/elections/times-siena-poll-registered-voter-crosstabs.html">crosstabs</a> of the Times-hyped poll look weird, to use a technical poll-watching term. They says the race is even among women, Trump leads among Hispanics, and that he's getting around 1/4th of the Black vote -- about double what any Republican has gotten in a general election since Gerald Ford got 16% in 1976. There are two ways to analyze this: </p>
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<li>Biden is in trouble among core Democratic constituencies.</li>
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<li>Maybe we shouldn't trust this poll. </li>
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<p>The Times went with the first interpretation, but <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-142243207?selection=be849700-1f62-4566-b229-be2044ed03c8#:~:text=In%20order%20for%20Trump%20to%20get%20a%20lead%20over%20Biden%20a%20poll%20had%20to%20find%20that%20Trump%20would%20double%20his%20support%20with%20black%20voters%2C%20Biden%20would%20lose%20his%20lead%20with%20women%20voters%2C%20and%20that%20virtually%20every%20single%20Trump%20voter%20in%202020%20will%20cast%20the%20same%20vote%20in%202024">Sarah Jones and Jason Easley</a> went with the second.</p>
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<p>I have an in-between interpretation: The issues in the headlines right now -- Gaza and the border -- are ones that split Democrats. Everybody to my left is absolutely horrified that Biden is letting/helping Israel do what it's doing in Gaza, and that Biden backs a border bill that gives Trumpists a lot of what they want (even if they refuse to take it). Consequently, many liberals are not willing to tell a pollster that they will vote for Biden.</p>
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<p>However, I think a lot of these voters will come home in November. They may not have gotten any happier with a few Biden policies, but they'll look at the choice and realize that <em>even on those issues</em> a second Trump administration would be infinitely worse. (How much do you think Trump cares about children starving in Gaza?) And then there are the issues of democracy and climate change, which Trump links like this: "You know why I wanted to be a dictator? Because I want a wall, and I want to <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4352607-trump-doubles-down-on-dictator-remarks/">drill, drill, drill</a>."</p>
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<p>The first campaign I have clear memories of was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_United_States_presidential_election">1968</a>. That year, liberals opposed the Johnson administration's policies in Vietnam and were also angry about how they had been treated at the Democratic Convention. In August, polls showed Richard Nixon beating Johnson VP Hubert Humphrey in a landslide, with margins as high as 16%. But most of those voters came home, and the November election wound up being one of the closest in history.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p>Maybe it's a coincidence that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/03/florida-measles-outbreak-preventable">Florida has both a measles outbreak and an anti-vax state surgeon general</a>. Or maybe it's not.</p>
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<p>A lot of people on social media are calling attention to <a href="https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1764438742046061054">Trump saying this</a> in Richmond on Sunday. But it's barely been mentioned in <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/03/03/trump-supporters-identify-economic-woes-as-driving-factor-for-support-2024-election-virginia-biden/72825567007/">major media</a>. </p>
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<p>And I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate.</p>
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<p>Critics point out that every state, including Virginia, has vaccine mandates. But I haven't seen enough context to know if he really meant ALL vaccines, or just the Covid vaccine. That's the benefit Trump gets from his sloppy way of speaking. There's always room for supporters to say: "He didn't really mean that." (Usually right after they claim "He tells it like it is.") And he never does an interview with a journalist persistent enough to pin him down. </p>
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<p>The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy <a href="https://itep.org/corporate-tax-avoidance-trump-tax-law/">analyzed the results of the Trump Tax Cuts</a>. Their study covered "the largest profitable corporations from 2018 through 2022", 342 of them in all. Ostensibly, the law lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, but in fact the average company studied paid only 14.1%. One out of four paid a single-digit tax rate, and 23 paid <em>no tax at all</em> "in spite of being profitable every single year". </p>
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<p>Companies paying less than 5 percent include T-Mobile, DISH Network, Netflix, General Motors, AT&T, Bank of America, Citigroup, FedEx, Molson Coors, Nike, and many others.</p>
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<p>Brad DeLong does a <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-142149213?selection=05a42616-015c-4a20-bbe4-0b6da83a82f7#:~:text=And%20we%20also%20have%20two%20really%20pissed-off%20blueies%E2%80%94pissed%20off%20because%20they%20falsely%20believe%20that%20their%20opportunity%20%20that%20was%20rightfully%20theirs%20by%20the%20rules%20of%20the%20meritocratic%20system%20has%20been%20stolen%20from%20them%20by%20SOCIAL%20JUSTICE%20WOKEISM">simple thought experiment defending affirmative action</a>, and explaining why some members of the dominant group will falsely believe that they have been denied something they "earned".</p>
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<p>Sometimes (not today) I think the weather in New England is bad. But we never get <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/04/tumbleweeds-utah-south-jordan-eagle-mountain">buried in tumbleweeds</a>, as some towns in Utah have been lately. And here's something I didn't know: Tumbleweeds may be icons of the Western countryside, but they're an invasive species -- the Russian thistle. </p>
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<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/tom-cotton-new-york-times/677546/">Adam Rubenstein</a> writes about having been a conservative editor at the NYT. Mainly he's telling the sad tale of how the higher-ups scapegoated him when the NYT faced a serious backlash for publishing a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protests-military.html">Tom Cotton op-ed</a> (calling for Trump to send the military into US cities to put down the sometimes violent protests after police murdered George Floyd). Scapegoating is something I can sympathize with, but Rubenstein is hoping for a more general stranger-in-a-strange-land kind of sympathy, which I can't offer him. </p>
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<p>Rather than create sympathy, his essay underlines exactly why conservative points of view are shunned in many reputable newspapers: <em>because they're based on bullshit</em>, and you can't publish them without promoting bullshit. Like this:</p>
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<p>I often found myself asking questions like “Doesn’t all of this talk of ‘voter suppression’ on the left sound similar to charges of ‘voter fraud’ on the right?” only to realize how unwelcome such questions were.</p>
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<p>Well, maybe such questions are "unwelcome" because Republicans' incessant claims of voter fraud are <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/analysis/Briefing_Memo_Debunking_Voter_Fraud_Myth.pdf">never backed up by any evidence</a>, while voter suppression smacks you in the face. (Can you name a rural White community where people have to stand in line for hours to vote? Or an acceptable form of voter ID that non-Whites are more likely to have than Whites?) Or think about climate change: Can you publish a conservative view without giving a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/offshore-wind-whales-deaths-trump-5158af7f5bf0f5ef9e1530564ff791a9">platform to bullshit</a>? It would be quite a trick.</p>
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<p>This week's particular conservative bullshit is "migrant crime", sparked by the death of <a href="https://www.redandblack.com/developing/uga-mourns-community-unites-for-laken-riley-and-wyatt-banks/article_084aa39e-d5f0-11ee-9117-9b46af89f9fe.html">Laken Riley</a>, a nursing student in Georgia who was murdered, apparently by a <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-news/laken-riley-case-man-charged-in-uga-campus-killing-wont-seek-bond/JIATNV635NHFFBURWSAQNDAYNE/">Venezuelan who entered the country illegally</a>. </p>
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<p>Riley was indeed murdered; that much is true. What's false is the "<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trumps-claims-migrant-crime-wave-are-not-supported-national-data-rcna140896">migrant crime wave</a>" invented by Donald Trump and echoed ad infinitum by Fox News. </p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>An NBC News review of available 2024 crime data from the cities targeted by Texas’ “Operation Lone Star,” which buses or flies migrants from the border to major cities in the interior — shows overall crime levels dropping in those cities that have received the most migrants.</p>
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<p>Overall crime is down year over year in <a href="https://www.phillypolice.com/crimestats/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Philadelphia</a>, <a href="https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/1_PDFsam_CompStat-Public-2024-Week-7.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Chicago</a>, <a href="https://denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Offices/Agencies-Departments-Offices-Directory/Police-Department/Crime-Information" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Denver</a>, <a href="https://www.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-en-us-city.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New York </a>and Los Angeles. Crime has risen in <a href="https://mpdc.dc.gov/node/197622" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Washington, D.C</a>., but local officials do not attribute the spike to migrants.</p>
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<p>“This is a public perception problem. It’s always based upon these kinds of flashpoint events where an immigrant commits a crime,” explains Graham Ousey, a professor at the College of William & Mary and the co-author of “Immigration and Crime: Taking Stock.” “There’s no evidence for there being any relationship between somebody’s immigrant status and their involvement in crime.”</p>
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<p>Trump and Fox are using an old <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/writing-the-news">Nazi tactic</a> that can dehumanize any group. The Nazi newspaper <em>Der Sturmer</em> loved to publish articles about sensational Jewish crimes. Some of the crimes the paper made up or exaggerated, but probably not all of them. After all, Jews are people, and people occasionally commit crimes. If your ideology calls for making "Jewish crime" a special thing, you can.</p>
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<p>Same thing here. Migrants are people, and people occasionally commit crimes, including murder. That doesn't mean "migrant crime" is a significant issue.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://thismodernworld.com/archives/10035"><img src="https://thismodernworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/TMW2021-04-21colorXL.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>The Atlantic's Ian Bogost says <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/02/4k-tv-resolution-lie/677586/">TV resolution has gotten out of hand</a>: HDTV was a noticeable improvement over the previous standard. But you won't sit close enough to your 4K TV to tell the difference from an HDTV. And now 8K is coming!</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something edifying</h3>
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<p>I suspect that the difference between good science education and bad science education is bigger than just about any other educational field. Bad science education quickly becomes tedious, while good science education has a mind-blowing oh-wow effect.</p>
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<p>Take a look at the videos at <a href="https://branch.education/">Branch Education</a>, where I've been having a number of oh-wow experiences lately. Some are explanations of fundamental scientific devices, like <a href="https://branch.education/#/how-do-electron-microscopes-work/">How Do Electron Microscopes Work?</a>, while others undo some popular misconception or answer a question you'll wonder why you never thought to ask.</p>
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<p>In the popular misconception category: We all understand the inaccuracy of the sound effects in movie battles between starships, because you wouldn't actually hear explosions in space. Sound is a wave traveling through a medium. And deep space is a vacuum, so it should be totally silent. Except <a href="https://branch.education/#/do-explosions-in-space-make-sound-yes/">when it's not</a>. </p>
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Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-65419751163775192822024-02-26T12:43:00.000-05:002024-02-26T12:43:00.359-05:00Sliding<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>If you don’t think this country is sliding toward theocracy, you’re not paying attention.</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/21/opinion/alabama-ivf-trump-biden.html">Charles Blow</a></p>
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<p>This week's featured post is "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/02/26/sweet-home-gilead/">Sweet Home, Gilead</a>". </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about IVF in Alabama</h3>
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<p>The Alabama Supreme Court's ruling that frozen embryos are children for the purposes of wrongful death lawsuits is covered in the <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/02/26/sweet-home-gilead/">featured post</a>. </p>
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<p>Just after I pushed the Post button, I saw that <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-142064472">Jay Kuo</a> had written about his personal IVF story. His IVF child is currently in a surrogate mother's womb. (Since I subscribed to Kuo's substack blog, I've been linking to it almost every week.) He includes a photo of a frozen embryo, so we know what we're talking about.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4a7e8d05-bd64-4c83-a4be-313a6eb26d79_551x421.png" width=580 alt="" /></figure>
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<p>The bottom line is that the GOP can’t support IVF <em>and</em> support the idea that an embryo is a “person” entitled to full protection under our laws. Supporting IVF means understanding how it actually works and being comfortable with the idea that intended parents must create more embryos than we ultimately need. And clinics cannot be on the hook for <em>murder</em> should anything happen to them. No clinic coul survive with that threat hanging over it.</p>
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<p>Neither of those two principles can be truly supported by Republicans so long as their party adheres dogmatically to the “life begins at conception” notion. Politicians who claim to support IVF must repudiate these kinds of fetal personhood laws, or their public backing of IVF means exactly nothing.</p>
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<p>In my post, I tried not to treat the Alabama court's position with all the contempt it deserves, so I resisted the temptation to include the "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzVHjg3AqIQ">Every Sperm is Sacred</a>" scene from Monty Python's <em>The Meaning of Life</em>.</p>
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<p>In other religious-right news: The campaign to overturn the Obergefell same-sex marriage decision <a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/tennessee-marriage-equality-challenge">begins in Tennessee</a>, with a law allowing state officials to refuse to solemnize same-sex marriages.</p>
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<p>This law wouldn't <em>block</em> same-sex marriages, because same-sex couples could still get a marriage license and find somebody other than a judge or other government official to play the celebrant role. But it does relegate them to a second-class status, which this Supreme Court will probably think is fine. This is exactly the kind of chipping-away that states did on Roe v Wade until it was reversed. </p>
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<p>Personally, I judge these things by applying a racial analogy: What if a judge refused to marry an interracial couple to express his personal disapproval? Of course, Justice Alito is unmoved by this analogy. Recently <a href="https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4479539-alito-renews-criticism-of-supreme-courts-same-sex-marriage-ruling-in-rejecting-missouri-jury-case/">he wrote</a> that his dissent in Obergefell was prescient in foreseeing</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>that Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be ‘labeled as bigots and treated as such’ by the government.</p>
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<p>Of course, if you want to deny the full rights of citizenship to people your religion disapproves of, and you believe that government officials should be able to treat them with official disrespect, you <em>are</em> a bigot. Conservative political correctness may not let people say so, but it's not even a close call.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Russia, Russia, Russia</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.ajc.com/opinion/mike-luckovich-blog/mike-luckovich-022524-credible-sources/RAIJFLWN6JFDVLSIT6MCTOPWBQ/"><img src="https://www.ajc.com/resizer/o5bImJb0xKrHj9VKk8oIKaWkD_w=/850x480/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ajc/HDRYBCTRRJDW5BWBPZM5ZC37SM.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>Last week we learned that the Biden impeachment case -- which had always been flimsy -- had fallen completely apart: The star witness for the bribery story Republicans wanted to tell, Alexander Smirnov, had been <a href="https://www.justice.gov/sco-weiss/pr/grand-jury-returns-indictment-charging-fbi-confidential-human-source-felony-false">indicted for making the whole thing up and lying to the FBI</a>. Another prospective witness, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/biden-indicts-whistleblower-gal-luft-charges-b2372949.html">Gal Luft</a>, had been indicted last summer for arms trafficking and being an unregistered Chinese agent.</p>
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<p>This week we found out <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/20/politics/biden-former-fbi-informant-russian-intelligence/index.html">it's worse than that</a>: Smirnov now says he got his anti-Biden stories from Russian intelligence. </p>
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<p><a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-141895779">Jay Kuo</a> (him again) lays out the pipeline by which Russian disinformation found its way to the Trump Justice Department and from there to Republicans in Congress (Jim Jordan, James Comer, Chuck Grassley) who pushed it out to the country.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>These GOP leaders are at best hapless dupes. They should have known and understood the games Russia was playing with them. But we shouldn’t discount the possibility that they were well aware that the Smirnov claims were false and may have originated from Russian intelligence… and then went along with them anyway.</p>
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<p>Indeed, we should now actively investigate this possibility.</p>
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<p>In a <a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/can-dc-reporters-overcome-their-trumper-shock-training">members-only newsletter on TPM</a>, Josh Marshall wonders if the mainstream press is up to covering this story.</p>
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<p>Donald Trump and his MAGA legions have spent years shock-training reporters not to bring up anything else about Russian disinformation programs aimed at helping Donald Trump. But they’re real. They’re continuing. They’re actually working. And that remains the case no matter how many times Donald Trump says “RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA” on Truth Social. Reporters have been conditioned to ignore the clear implications of what we’re learning.</p>
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<p> So what does he think the real story is?</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>[W]e now see that almost all of 2023 was dominated by a legal/political story that was not only bogus but — according to prosecutors’ filings and the discredited source’s own admission to federal authorities — was a plant by the Russian intelligence services. That’s real. That requires an explanation as to how that was ever allowed to happen.</p>
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<p>... The story here isn’t that the “Biden Crime Family” nonsense didn’t pan out. That was always transparently bogus. The story here is how the U.S. again got bamboozled by transparent foreign manipulation and how the U.S. political press bought into it pretty much whole hog. That doesn’t mean they accepted all the claims. But they treated it as reasonable, worthy of a presumption of seriousness, a serious story to be covered as such. Even with the veritable forest of red flags.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Trump trials</h3>
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<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/23/trump-penalties-new-york-fraud-case">Judge Engoron officially filed his judgment against Trump Friday</a>, with the disgorgement-plus-interest standing at $454 million. This sets the clock running: Trump has 30 days to appeal. But appealing doesn't mean he gets to delay coming up with a substantial amount of money. </p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Trump has two options to meet the state’s demand: to pay the amount in full, or secure a $35m bond against his assets, which might include the Fifth Avenue Trump Tower, 40 Wall Street, his Mar-a-Lago estate, or a number of golf courses in the US.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://claytoonz.com/2024/02/23/sneaky-collateral/"><img src="https://claytoonz.files.wordpress.com/2024/02/cjonesrgb02252024.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>The WaPo examines the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/02/26/trump-money-bonds-engoron-carroll/">difficulties Trump faces raising cash</a>.</p>
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<p>“If the guy can give phony financial statements, he can give phony information to the bonding company,” [attorney Mark C.] Zauderer said, referring to Engoron’s finding in the case that the Trump Organization submitted false information to banks to obtain loans. “A bonding company who is going to put up several hundred million dollars here is not, in my opinion, going to do it easily.”</p>
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<p>Those Carroll and NY state totals face very different prospects on appeal. The Carroll money is mostly punitive damages, which was a judgment call made by the jury; an appeals court might make its own judgment and find that excessive. But the NY State money is based on disgorgement of specific ill-gotten gains. To reduce them, an appeals court would need to rejudge Engoron's conclusions: It would have to find either that Trump did not commit fraud, or that the fraud was not connected to these particular gains.</p>
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<p>I'm not going to put a lot of effort into making fun of Trump's branded sneakers, because it's shooting fish in a barrel. But I will pass on one nickname they have picked up: Aryan Jordans. And one suggested slogan I heard: "Fast. Faster. Fascist."</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/01/07/bramhall-editorial-cartoons-january-february-2024/"><img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.nydailynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/TOON022024.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and media malpractice</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.nj.com/opinion/2024/02/bothsidesism-is-hard-to-pronounce-sheneman.html"><img src="https://www.nj.com/resizer/jMDw_hZ8NS_mHy5Zl6lHSo5nMqw=/800x0/smart/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/advancelocal/P3C4JG33QBCDNPHZWMHZHEUGB4.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>I already mentioned Josh Marshall's doubts that the mainstream media is up to covering the Smirnov story. But that's just part of a much larger failing.</p>
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<p>This week, a new Quinnipiac poll had Biden ahead of Trump 49%-45%. So of course Politico's headline was "<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/21/biden-age-concerns-poll-00142481">Poll: Nearly 70 percent of voters say Biden is too old to serve again</a>". There's no such thing as good news for Biden.</p>
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<p><a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-141824274">Jeff Tiedrich</a> recalls "the Clinton rules" </p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>basically, Bill or Hillary would do something that every other politician in the entire history of the world does — something as simple as holding a fundraiser, or giving a speech — and the press would report it in hushed tones and describe it as if it were some new kind of dastardly scandal.</p>
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<p>Well, the same thing is happening with Biden: Whatever he does -- even if every other politician in the world does it -- is evidence that he's too old. Tiedrich links to The Daily Mail, which has discovered the latest evidence of Biden's senility: <em>He uses note cards!</em></p>
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<p>Mark Jacobs raises a significant question about the NYT: "<a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-141826576">Is the New York Times neutral on the future of democracy?</a>" He calls out all the doubts I have about whether the Times deserves my subscription: They regularly give a platform to known liars. They cover politics as "an amusing game", analyzing everything as strategy without discussing the consequences. They write headlines that hide horrible things Republicans say (like when Trump's "vermin" comment was simply "a very different direction" for a Veterans Day speech). And they find "balance" for every terrible thing Republicans do. (Trump is facing criminal charges? He encourages Putin to invade our allies? Yeah, but Biden is old. Biden's age is filling the same "balancing" role that Hillary's emails played in 2016.)</p>
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<p>The Times' best work is very, very good. But I continue to wonder whether it's a net positive or negative for American journalism. One change you may have noticed on this blog: I used to subtly encourage my readers to subscribe, but I no longer do. So I'm only linking to NYT articles if there is something unique about them. If I can get the same information from The Guardian or CNN, I will. </p>
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<p><a href="https://twitter.com/DougJBalloon/status/1760726604475683087">The New York Times Pitchbot</a> suggests an angle for the Times to take in the future: </p>
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<p>Given the fact that Trump and Biden have 91 felony counts between them, it's no wonder that so many Americans are considering voting third party.</p>
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<p>Last week I linked to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/opinion/ezra-klein-biden-audio-essay.html">Ezra Klein's call for Biden not to run</a>, and for the Democrats to hold an open convention. This week many people pushed back on that idea. <a href="https://www.editorialboard.com/a-convention-fight-is-a-pure-pundits-fantasy/">Lindsay Beyerstein</a> called attention to Biden's success at unifying the divergent wings of the Democratic Party, and predicted that party unity would dissolve in an open convention.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>In 2024, a contested convention would become an arena to settle every score from Gaza to Medicare for All. A free-for-all would shatter the fragile Democratic coalition that Joe Biden so carefully knit together.</p>
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<p>Several pundits made the same observation: No alternative candidate is doing better than Biden in the polls against Trump. (Current polls show the race more-or-less even.) You can claim that's a name-recognition problem and they'll do better after they're nominated, but that's a leap of faith.</p>
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<p><a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/no-ezra-klein-is-completely-wrong-heres-why">Josh Marshall</a> writes:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>The right answer to anyone making these kinds of open-ended statements of concern is to say, tell me specifically what course of action you’re advocating and, if it’s switching to a new candidate, how you get there in the next few weeks? ... Klein’s argument really amounts to a highly pessimistic but not unreasonable analysis of the present situation which he resolves with what amounts to a deus ex machina plot twist. That’s not a plan. It’s a recipe for paralysis.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the wars</h3>
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<p>As Israel prepares its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/25/gaza-death-toll-set-to-pass-30000-as-israel-prepares-assault-on-rafah">ground operation against Rafah</a> (the southern-Gaza town where refugees have gathered), it still has no goal beyond the vague and unachievable "destroy Hamas". For an analysis of how everything arrived at this state, I recommend Zack Beauchamp's Vox article "<a href="https://www.vox.com/24055522/israel-hamas-gaza-war-strategy-netanyahu-strategy-morality">How Israel's War Went Wrong</a>". </p>
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<p>In <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/my-familys-daily-struggle-to-find-food-in-gaza">The New Yorker</a>, a Palestinian who escaped to Egypt describes how the relatives he left behind are scrambling for food.</p>
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<p>Biden continues to back away from Netanyahu very, very slowly. Friday, the administration restored a legal finding the Trump administration had reversed, saying that the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/biden-administration-restores-u-s-policy-calling-israeli-settlements-illegitimate-under-international-law">West Bank settlements are against international law</a>.</p>
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<p>Tomorrow's Michigan primary will be a test of how much Biden's Israel policy is costing him, as Palestinian activists are <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/26/politics/michigan-primary-uncommitted-biden-gaza/index.html">campaigning for Democrats to vote "uncommitted"</a> rather than for Biden. </p>
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<p>We just passed the two-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/experts-analyze-state-of-ukraine-war-2-years-into-russias-invasion">PBS Newshour</a> gathered some experts to summarize.</p>
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<p>My two-years-in observation is about the politics of the Ukraine War in the US: It resembles the politics of January 6. At the beginning, Americans responded the way human beings would. They sympathized with a country trying to get out of the orbit of Putin's fascist Russia when Putin's forces invaded to pull them back in. (I've since read all kinds of explanations about how either Ukraine or the West provoked Russia, and I just don't see it. There was never a threat to invade Russia through Ukraine. Anything less is a problem for diplomacy, not justification for an invasion. The typical answer to that point is to bring up the US invasion of Iraq, which was also unprovoked. But I have no trouble admitting that the Iraq invasion was wrong too.)</p>
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<p>That initial gut response wasn't controversial in America. In the early days of the war, <em>everybody</em>, regardless of political party, was rooting for the underdog Ukrainians and wondering what we could do to help. That's how the situation was similar to January 6: In the beginning, everybody who wasn't actively involved in the coup reacted with horror to Trump's brownshirts attacking the Capitol to try to keep him in power by force. Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, and just about the whole GOP establishment united with Democrats in their initial rejection of what Trump had done.</p>
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<p>But then the MAGA media machine and the MAGA social-media conspiracy theorists got to work on reversing the natural human instincts of the people under their sway, and today both Ukraine and January 6 are partisan issues. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the dysfunctional House of Representatives</h3>
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<p>Ukraine aid isn't the only thing House Republicans are stalling. Speaker Johnson has recessed the House until Wednesday, with a partial government shutdown looming Friday and the rest of the government running out of money a week later. The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/26/how-house-members-are-trying-circumvent-johnson/">WaPo</a> reports that "talks have slowed" on a compromise to prevent a shutdown.</p>
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<p>The four appropriations bills set to expire Friday — agriculture; military construction-VA; energy and water and transportation; housing and urban development — are the easier ones. On March 8, funding runs out for more controversial bills for which the far right is demanding even more explosive policy riders around abortion, LGBTQ rights and border security.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p>South Carolina's Republican primary was Saturday, and Trump won over Haley, 59%-39%. How you read that result depends on the question you're asking. If you're focused on whether Trump will be nominated, this is a very solid positive result. If Haley is 20 points down in her home state, she really has no chance. </p>
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<p>But if your question is whether Trump will be able to unite the Republican voters in the fall, this is a weak showing. Voters went in knowing Trump was the almost certain nominee, but 39% refused to get in line behind him. </p>
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<p>Democracy is returning to Wisconsin. For many years, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Legislature">Wisconsin legislature</a> has been gerrymandered to guarantee Republican control, independent of the will of the voters. <a href="https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-redistricting-republican-democrat-9c2677a09e48152df323fbf5c55611ef">AP</a> reports that Democrats have won 14 of the last 17 statewide elections, but somehow those same elections have yielded a Republican supermajority (22-10) in the state senate and a near supermajority (64-35) in the state assembly.</p>
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<p>Nonetheless, the voters of Wisconsin still had access to a few levers of power. Last April, Janet Protasiewicz won a <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Wisconsin_Supreme_Court_elections,_2023">55%-44%</a> victory to gain a seat on the state supreme court, flipping the court to liberal control. In December, the court ruled 4-3 to <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wisconsin-supreme-court-redistricting-new-maps/">throw out the Republican-drawn legislative maps</a>. Forced to negotiate with Democratic Governor Tony Evers (another winner of a statewide election), the Republican legislature produced a relatively fair map, which Evers signed into law last Monday. </p>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2024/02/19/interactive-explore-wisconsins-new-electoral-maps/72664708007/">Milwaukee Journal Sentinel</a> reports:</p>
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<p>Under the new state Assembly map, the districts are more evenly split. The new map has 46 districts that lean Republican and 45 districts that lean Democratic. The eight districts left are likely to be a toss-up between Democratic and Republican candidates. ...</p>
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<p>Under the new state Senate map, 14 out of 33 districts are Democratic-leaning, while 15 are Republican-leaning. Four districts are competitive, where either party has a fair chance of winning them.</p>
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<p>However, the Wisconsin congressional maps are still gerrymandered, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_delegations_from_Wisconsin">Republicans hold six of the eight seats</a>. Democratic voters are packed into the other two districts (containing Madison and Milwaukee), which they won by 19 and 25 points.</p>
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<p>The NYT reports on "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/26/opinion/constitutional-law-crisis-supreme-court.html">The Crisis in Teaching Constitutional Law</a>". What's the crisis? The clearly partisan nature of the current conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court. The older generation of professors once shared a faith that interpreting the Constitution is a meaningful activity transcending politics. Justices might have philosophical differences that lead to diverse conclusions, but fundamentally they are all making a good-faith attempt to understand what the law means. Recent Supreme Court decisions -- like the <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2022/06/27/three-supreme-court-decisions-with-long-term-consequences/">Bruen gun control decision</a> -- have shaken that faith, to the point that law professors don't know what to teach their students. </p>
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<p>Whatever rationale or methodology the justices apply in a given case, the result virtually always aligns with the policy priorities of the modern Republican Party. ...</p>
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<p>Stanford’s Professor McConnell recalled a recent exchange in one of his classes. “I said something to the effect of, ‘It’s important to assume that the people you disagree with are speaking in good faith.’ And a student raises his hand and he asks, ‘Why? Why should we assume that people on the other side are acting in good faith?’ This was not a crazy person; this was a perfectly sober-minded, rational student. And I think the question was sincere. And I think that’s kind of shocking. I do think that some of the underlying assumptions of how a civil society operates can no longer be assumed.”</p>
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<p>I don't know how many times I've heard that "the stock market always goes up in the long run". Well, sometimes the long run is a very long time indeed. If you bought Japanese stocks at their peak in 1989, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/22/japans-nikkei-hits-all-time-high-on-reforms-robust-corporate-earnings.html">you finally turned a profit this week</a>.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with some musical training</h3>
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<p>I've heard lots of versions of <a href="https://laughingsquid.com/pachelbels-canon-performed-on-train-horns/">Pachebel's Canon</a>, but never before one based on train whistles.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-44905001860727293672024-02-19T12:02:00.000-05:002024-02-19T12:02:32.391-05:00The World Stage<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>The presidency is a performance. You are not just making decisions, you are acting out the things people want to believe about the president. </em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnsCxDOIqcA">Ezra Klein</a></p>
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<p>This week's featured post is "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/02/19/a-big-week-in-the-trump-trials/">A Big Week in the Trump Trials</a>". </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about the Trump trials</h3>
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<p>$355 million, Fani Willis testifying, a trial date for the Stormy Daniels case, presidential immunity goes to the Supremes, and more: It was hard to keep track of which case any particular news story applied to. I sort it out in the <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/02/19/a-big-week-in-the-trump-trials/">featured post</a>. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Putin's Republican sympathizers</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.uticaod.com/story/opinion/cartoons/2015/10/22/beeler-cartoon-putin-gop/33225629007/"><img src="https://www.uticaod.com/gcdn/authoring/2015/10/22/NOBD/ghows-NY-2279ac9e-b60c-019e-e053-0100007fb222-db70870b.jpeg?width=660&height=468&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>Putin critic and political rival <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/alexei-navalnys-death-what-do-we-know-2024-02-18/">Alexei Navalny died in an arctic prison on Friday</a>. Navalny is an inspirational fighter for democracy who Putin has <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/alexey-navalny-has-the-proof-of-his-poisoning">tried to kill before</a>. Prison authorities attributed the death first to "sudden death syndrome" and then to a pulmonary embolism.</p>
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<p>The New Yorker's <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/postscript/the-death-of-alexey-navalny-putins-most-formidable-opponent">Masha Gessen</a> (my favorite Russia-watcher) pulls a number of themes together:</p>
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<p>Putin appears to be feeling optimistic about his own future. As he sees it, Donald Trump is poised to become the next President of the U.S. and to give Putin <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/trumps-threat-to-nato-is-the-scariest-kind-of-gaffe-its-real">free rein in Ukraine and beyond</a>. Even before the U.S. Presidential election, American aid to Ukraine is stalled, and Ukraine’s Army is starved for troops and nearing a supply crisis. Last week, Putin got to lecture millions of Americans by granting an <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/tucker-carlson-promised-an-unedited-putin-the-result-was-boring">interview to Tucker Carlson</a>. At the end of the interview, Carlson asked Putin if he would release Evan Gershkovich, a <em>Wall Street Journal</em> reporter held on espionage charges in Russia. Putin proposed that Gershkovich could be traded for “a person, who out of patriotic sentiments liquidated a bandit in one of the European capitals.” It was a reference to Vadim Krasikov, probably the only Russian assassin who has been caught and convicted in the West; he is held in Germany. A week after the interview aired, Russia has shown the world what can happen to a person in a Russian prison. It’s also significant that Navalny was killed on the first day of the Munich conference. In 2007, Putin chose the conference as his stage for declaring what would become his war against the West. Now, with this war in full swing, Putin has been excluded from the conference, but the actions of his regime—the murders committed by his regime—dominate the proceedings.</p>
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<p>Meanwhile, Ukraine withdrew from the city of Avdiivka in Donetsk. AP attributes the withdrawal to <a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-avdiivka-war-063ab1bd47a500ad4a815b12f3d1386d">lack of artillery</a>.</p>
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<p>One reason for that lack is Speaker Mike Johnson, who still <a href="https://apnews.com/article/speaker-mike-johnson-ukraine-aid-congress-bc5971165a83b9d0807bf40ce25ec7be">refuses to bring Ukraine aid to a vote</a> (because it would pass). Johnson says he won't be "rushed" into voting on aid that President Biden asked for in September. Russian forces may be gaining ground and Ukrainian soldiers may be dying, but what's the hurry?</p>
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<p>The elephant in the room here is Trump, who won a narrow victory in 2016 <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/21/senate-intel-report-confirms-russia-aimed-to-help-trump-in-2016-198171">with Putin's help</a>, and has been in Putin's pocket ever since. (<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/16/opinions/clinton-trump-puppet-opinion-hossain/index.html">Hillary Clinton</a> correctly observed in a 2016 debate that Trump would be Putin's puppet, to which Trump made a typical playground response: "No. You're the puppet.") Trump single-handedly torpedoed the Ukraine/Israel/border bill that the Senate had negotiated a few weeks ago, and was just about the last political figure in the US to make any comment on Navalny. As usual, Trump did not criticize Putin, and instead made his comment <a href="https://twitter.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1759575588409426284">mainly about himself</a>. </p>
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<p>"The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country," Trump posted, and then the rest is about himself and his troubles. </p>
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<p>I'm sure both the beleaguered people of Ukrainian and Navalny's grieving widow take great comfort from that. </p>
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<p>While we're talking about Tucker, he followed his Putin interview by going to a Moscow supermarket to show his viewers <a href="https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1758115980759253306">how great conditions are in Russia</a>. </p>
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<p>Lots of people pointed out that things usually are cheap in poor countries, which Russia is at this point in spite of its vast natural resources and educated population. In 2021, Tass reported that <a href="https://tass.com/society/1314425">sixty percent of Russian citizens spent at least half their income on food</a>. For context, in 2022 Americans spent <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending/">about 11.3%</a> of their income on food, and the poorest quintile of American society spent 31.2% of its income.</p>
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<p>But The Atlantic's <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/tucker-carlson-trip-russophilia-putin-interview/677488/">Graeme Wood</a> has travelled in Russia and went deeper. Yes, there are some things that are better in Moscow than in New York.</p>
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<p>Carlson’s videos never quite say what precisely he thinks Russia gets right. Moscow is in many ways superior to New York. But Paris has a good subway system too. Japan and Thailand have fine grocery stores, and I wonder, when I enter them, why entering my neighborhood Stop & Shop in America is such a depressing experience by comparison. Carlson’s stated preference for Putin’s leadership over Joe Biden’s suggests that the affection is not for fine food or working public transit but for firm autocratic rule—which, as French, Thais, and Japanese will attest, is not a precondition for high-quality goods and services. And in an authoritarian state, those goods and services can serve to prolong the regime.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and another Democratic election victory</h3>
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<p>Democrat Tom Suozzi <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/13/politics/santos-seat-tom-suozzi-mazi-pilip/index.html">flipped George Santos' House seat</a> in a special election Tuesday. Suozzi won by 7.8%, almost exactly reversing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_New_York%27s_3rd_congressional_district_election">Santos margin in 2022</a>. </p>
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<p>One <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/15/democrats-immigration-border-2024-election-tom-suozzi">lesson from the election</a> appears to be the mistake House Republicans made by giving in to Trump and scrapping a bipartisan compromise on the border. Suozzi was able to flip the script on the GOP in this race: Democrats tried to do something about the immigration problem, but Republicans blocked them.</p>
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<p>The election followed a long string of recent Democratic victories since the Supreme Court ditched Roe v Wade. The great political mystery of recent months has been how polls show Democrats in trouble, but then Democrats win elections anyway. </p>
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<p>You might think that another Democratic victory would be good news for other Democrats, like Joe Biden, but you wouldn't guess it from reading the New York Times. In the Times, <em>nothing</em> is good news for Biden. </p>
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<p>This is a regular theme in the humorous Twitter account New York Times PItchbot, which suggests how the Times should frame various stories. Tuesday afternoon before the polls closed <a href="https://twitter.com/DougJBalloon/status/1757469465334141203">the Pitchbot tweeted</a>:</p>
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<p>If Democrats win today's special election in NY-3, it's further proof that special elections don't mean anything. But if they lose, it's very bad news for Biden in November.</p>
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<p>And that turned out to be more-or-less exactly what the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/14/upshot/special-election-democrats-new-york.html">NYT's Nate Cohn</a> wrote Wednesday morning.</p>
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<p>As we’ve written recently, it’s hard to glean much from special elections. ... If anything, one could advance the idea that the results were slightly underwhelming for Democrats, given all of the aforementioned advantages than Mr. Suozzi seemed to possess. Either way, a single special election result like this one is entirely consistent with polls showing Mr. Biden and Democrats in a close race heading into 2024.</p>
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<p>While we're talking about Biden and his prospects in November: In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnsCxDOIqcA">this 25-minute podcast</a>, Ezra Klein makes the most convincing Biden-shouldn't-run argument I've heard yet. <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/02/12/about-bidens-age-and-memory/">Last week</a>, I wrote about my strong belief that the Biden-is-too-old-to-be-president argument is misguided, and how his occasional use of the wrong word should not raise worries that he isn't up to the job. I still believe all that.</p>
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<p>But Klein makes a subtly different argument. He acknowledges that Biden has been an excellent president, and says that everyone he talks to who has observed Biden's performance in decision-making meetings agrees that he is still quite sharp. But Klein points out that <em><strong>running for president is different from being president</strong></em>. Yes, the Republic would be in good hands if Biden were president for an additional four years. But is the Democratic Party in good hands with Biden at the top of the ticket in 2024?</p>
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<p>Klein thinks not, and says that the kinds of people who run campaigns -- unlike the kinds of people who run governments -- are deeply worried about Biden's reelection. </p>
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<p>In the final section of the podcast, he paints an upbeat picture of an open convention choosing candidates the way old-time conventions did: Imagine younger Democrats like Gretchen Whitmer, Kamala Harris, and Gavin Newsom giving speeches that actually mattered, as they tried to convince delegates to pick them. Maybe there could even be a boom for a dark horse like Andy Beshear, who has managed to convince red Kentucky to elect and reelect him as governor. Contrast that with MAGA lackeys kissing up to Donald Trump in the Republican Convention.</p>
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<p>I will need to consider that convention fantasy, which could also go wrong in any number of ways. And I'm not sure I'm ready to change my mind, but Klein's podcast definitely gives me a lot to think about.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and two right-wing conspiracy theories collapsed</h3>
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<p>For years, Fox News talking heads like <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/study-how-sean-hannity-helped-build-gops-collapsing-hunter-biden-impeachment-case">Sean Hannity</a> have been talking about "the Biden crime family", and House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer has been implying that he had evidence of a bribery scheme where money flowed through Hunter Biden to his Dad, who then did something-or-other in a quid-pro-quo sort of way. This has been the basis of House Republicans' so-far-unsuccessful effort to impeach President Biden.</p>
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<p>The evidence for this story was always kind of thin, and depended heavily on the testimony of one guy, Alexander Smirnov, who Hannity and Comer touted as a "trusted FBI informant". But in fact the FBI didn't trust this informant or his story, which is why the investigation never went anywhere, even during the Trump administration. </p>
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<p>This week we found out just how much DoJ doesn't trust Smirnov: The special prosecutor handling the Hunter Biden investigation just <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/special-counsel-charges-fbi-informant-lying-bureau-hunter-joe-biden-rcna139091">indicted Smirnov</a> for making up his story, including inventing meetings with people who were provably somewhere else at the time. <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-141733637">Jay Kuo</a> has a good summary. </p>
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<p>If the Republican effort to impeach Biden were based on anything more substantive than seeking revenge for Trump's well-deserved impeachments, it would fold now. But I bet it won't.</p>
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<p>If election-deniers still show up in your social media feeds, you are bound to have heard about Dinesh D’Souza's 2022 film <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Mules">2000 Mules</a></em>, which presents a conspiracy theory about </p>
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<p>unnamed nonprofit organizations supposedly associated with the Democratic Party [who] paid "mules" to illegally collect and deposit ballots into drop boxes in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin during the 2020 presidential election.</p>
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<p>The film's methodology and conclusions have been <a href="https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-covid-technology-health-arizona-e1b49d2311bf900f44fa5c6dac406762">widely debunked</a> ever since it came out nearly two years ago. But if you really want to believe that Democrats stole Donald Trump's "landslide", you can ignore all that. </p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>The movie ... uses research from the Texas-based nonprofit True the Vote, which has spent months lobbying states to use its findings to change voting laws.</p>
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<p>The group filed claims with Georgia's secretary of state's office, which then launched its own investigation into ballot-harvesting. You'd think that would be the whole point of filing complaints, but True the Vote was strangely uncooperative and refused to give Georgia the evidence it said it had collected. Eventually, Georgia officials lost patience and got a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/georgia-elections-true-vote-ballot-stuffing-199113b47bc2df79c63fdf007cd23115">court order</a>.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>A Fulton County Superior Court judge in Atlanta signed an order last year requiring True the Vote to provide evidence it had collected, including the names of people who were sources of information, to state elections officials <a href="https://apnews.com/article/georgia-election-board-true-vote-ballot-harvesting-a6669b44107201e2485b15d8f5b2a45f" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">who were frustrated</a> by the group’s refusal to share evidence with investigators.</p>
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<p>This week, True the Vote reported to the judge: It has nothing.</p>
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<p>This has been the pattern for all of Trump's Big Lie claims, going back to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related_to_the_2020_U.S._presidential_election">court cases it filed immediately after the election</a>: Tell the rubes who believe Trump that they have bountiful evidence of election fraud, and then, when challenged in court, produce nothing. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Super Bowl parade shooting</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://www.ajc.com/resizer/AS0-yribdXXAp2KkKLWKvVSLXfQ=/850x480/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ajc/F6ZOJAB34JARZLN4YHT4MXVUEY.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></figure>
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<p>At the parade celebrating the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl win, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Kansas_City_parade_shooting">23 people were shot</a>, including 11 children. One person died. </p>
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<p>If you're just talking about deaths or even injuries, this event doesn't rank high on the list of recent mass shootings. But I think it will have a huge impact on the national psyche. Like the <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2022/07/11/the-right-has-an-immature-notion-of-freedom/">4th of July shooting in Highland Park</a> in 2022 and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting">2017 shooting at a Las Vegas music festival</a>, it reinforces the idea that in America, it's not safe to be outdoors in a crowd -- not unless the area has been locked down by police and you had to go through security to get in (like at an inauguration). If you do go to a big outdoor event, you'll have a hard time not wondering whether the people around you are armed, or looking for snipers in the tall buildings.</p>
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<p>Being armed yourself is no answer. In Kansas City, there were 800 armed police assigned to the parade area. All those "good guys with guns" couldn't stop this from happening. </p>
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<p>Other countries are not like this. The NRA rhetoric about guns "protecting our freedom" has it exactly backwards. We are <em>less</em> free than the citizens of other countries because we live under the tyranny of guns.</p>
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<p>Remember those pro-Jesus He-Gets-Us Super Bowl ads? We now have a better understanding of what that's about, thanks to <a href="https://baptistnews.com/article/he-gets-us-is-feeding-massive-amounts-of-data-to-cambridge-analytica-and-conservative-political-groups/?fbclid=IwAR1G3k0CCbMzkwSja4WN2vwSYUgFCSOIWI3uh8p4_hMCiVAhwGF_re2zddk">Kristen Thomason at Baptist News</a>. The effort is funded by shadowy conservative political groups that are trying to get churches to partner with them, helping churches with their outreach to local people looking for a church. The political goal is to gather enough information to make personal profiles of people who might be persuadable (through targeted marketing) to support conservative causes.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p>The NYT thinks it has identified <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/us/politics/trump-abortion-ban.html">Trump's abortion position</a>:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Former President Donald J. Trump has told advisers and allies that he likes the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban with three exceptions, in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother, according to two people with direct knowledge of Mr. Trump’s deliberations.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/glenn-youngkin-united-virginia-republicans-15-week-abortion-ban-pushed-rcna119199">Other Republicans</a> have tried to run on this "moderate" position recently, but <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/11/07/news/democrats-keep-control-of-virginia-senate-in-rebuke-to-glenn-youngkin/">without much success</a>. That's probably because it doesn't satisfy the anti-abortion zealots, but it still has the logic flaw that the stricter abortion bans have: When you allow <em>any</em> exceptions, you're admitting that the issue is not simple. Even after N weeks, there are still hard cases where difficult decisions need to be made. And then you're assigning those decisions to <em>the government</em> rather than to the people who are actually involved and understand the details of the situation. It doesn't make a lot of sense.</p>
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<p>Here's a scenario every ban-supporter ought to run through their exception protocols: A pregnant woman past the ban deadline discovers a cancerous tumor that is currently small but of a very aggressive type. Statistics indicate that if she has an abortion immediately and goes straight into chemotherapy, she has a 90% chance of survival. But if she waits a few months, delivers the baby, and then goes into chemotherapy, she has only 40% chance of survival. She and her husband decide to seek an exception because they really want her to live, and figure they can try again to have a baby later. What happens? Do they get the exception or not?</p>
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<p>Can you imagine being in such a situation knowing that <em>somebody else</em> was making that decision for you?</p>
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<p>Late to the party: I just noticed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYtxBRSoJbM">this episode</a> of NYT's "The Daily" podcast from December. If you have no idea what the whole phenomenon of Taylor Swift and Taylor Swift fandom is about, this would be a half-hour well spent.</p>
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<p>Joe Manchin has announced that <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/16/politics/joe-manchin-president/index.html">he won't mount a third-party run for president</a>. </p>
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<p>Trump has a new explanation for <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4469054-trump-says-purposely-conflated-pelosi-haley-hard-to-be-sarcastic/">why he repeatedly said "Nikki Haley"</a> when he was talking about Nancy Pelosi: He meant to do that. He was being "sarcastic". (I don't think he actually understands what that word means.) </p>
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<p>As I've said often before, we all knew people like Trump when we were six years old: They were never wrong. Anything they did was something they meant to do. Any game they didn't win was rigged, and anybody who beat them cheated.</p>
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<p>Maintaining such childish character traits into his late 70s is far scarier than saying the wrong name occasionally.</p>
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<p>Vox explains the rush in several states to <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2024/2/14/24069722/political-ban-cell-cultivated-lab-grown-meat-plant-based-labeling-laws">ban lab-grown meat</a>, which barely exists yet, and is nowhere near being a marketable product. The associated politicians may give all kinds of reasons, but what this effort comes down to is protecting the meat industry as it currently exists.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>The proposed bans are part of a longtime strategy by the politically powerful agribusiness lobby and its allies in Congress and statehouses to further entrench factory farming as America’s dominant source of protein. ...</p>
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<p id="AqctRC">The cell-cultivated meat bans and the plant-based labeling restrictions represent one side of agribusiness’s policy coin: proactive measures to weaken upstarts that could one day threaten its bottom line. The other side of that coin is <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/8/31/23852325/farming-myths-agricultural-exceptionalism-pollution-labor-animal-welfare-laws">sweeping deregulation</a> that has made meat abundant and cheap, but at terrible cost to the environment, workers, and animals.</p>
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<p id="kcqQhg">Agriculture is exempt from the federal Animal Welfare Act, and most farms are exempt from the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, loopholes that have resulted in <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21437054/chickens-factory-farming-animal-cruelty-welfare">awful conditions</a> for animals and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs/docs/understanding_cafos_nalboh.pdf">widespread pollution</a>.</p>
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<p>Family farmers (like my Dad once was) are the poster children of this effort, but the money and political clout comes from the giant corporations that are pushing family farms into extinction.</p>
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<p>I imagine that someday we'll get lab-grown meat figured out, and some future generation will be able to enjoy all our favorite dishes without slaughtering sentient creatures. Probably they'll look back on this era the way we look back on slavery, and be appalled that so many people worked so hard to hang on to their gory practices.</p>
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<p>Speaking of animal welfare: One of the week's stranger stories concerns plans for a 200-acre "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/16/georgia-monkey-animal-testing-facility">mini-city of monkeys</a>" in Georgia. The proposed breeding facility would house up to 30,000 long-tailed macaques for use in medical research. The plan faces protests from two sides: Residents of nearby Bainbridge (human population 14,000) are afraid the macaques will be bad neighbors, and animal rights activists oppose the cruelty of using such intelligent creatures for research.</p>
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<p>Medical researchers argue back that they need primates precisely because they are so similar to humans. Without primate research, the first round of human tests of some possible medical advance would be far more dangerous.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>About 70,000 monkeys a year are still used across the US in tests for treatments to infectious diseases, ageing and neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s, with researchers <a href="https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2023/05/gaps-in-the-systems-that-support-nih-funded-research-using-nonhuman-primates-are-undermining-u-s-biomedical-research-and-public-health-readiness-says-new-report">warning</a> that the US is <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/supply-monkeys-research-crisis-point-u-s-government-report-concludes">running low</a> on available primates for tests.</p>
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<p>I am reminded of some hard-won wisdom from a friend who studied psychology in graduate school: If a lemur gets loose and finds its way into a suspended ceiling, it's almost impossible to catch.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with a question</h3>
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<p>Usually, my closings are little amusing snippets, and if you're looking for one, the story above about the "city of monkeys" is pretty close.</p>
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<p>But today I want to ask a question, which I invite you to answer in the comments. First, some background: Last Monday, when <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/02/12/about-bidens-age-and-memory/">I was defending Joe Biden's mental competence</a>, Paul Krugman was taking a step back and reacting to the whole national conversation on that issue in "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/12/opinion/biden-trump-america.html">Why I Am Now Deeply Worried for America</a>".</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>[W]atching the frenzy over President Biden’s age, I am, for the first time, profoundly concerned about the nation’s future. It now seems entirely possible that within the next year, American democracy could be irretrievably altered.</p>
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<p>And the final blow won’t be the rise of political extremism — that rise certainly created the preconditions for disaster, but it has been part of the landscape for some time now. No, what may turn this menace into catastrophe is the way the hand-wringing over Biden’s age has overshadowed the real stakes in the 2024 election.</p>
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<p>I've talked before about why I think Biden will beat Trump in the fall, but like Krugman (and like most of you, I suspect), I have moments when I just can't believe where the national conversation has gotten to, and I get a vertiginous feeling in my stomach that says I don't really know what can happen. </p>
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<p>There's something paralyzing about that fear, and I think we need to talk openly about it so that we can support each other these next several months. And even if we're not paralyzed, actions taken out of fear are usually not effective. We're going to do a better job saving the country if we have faced our fears and found our courage.</p>
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<p>So here's my question: If you have those moments of paralyzing or reactive fear, what do you do? Does it help? Do you have any insight in how to push through fear and come out the other side?</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-82460887338047552162024-02-12T12:02:00.000-05:002024-02-12T12:02:17.111-05:00Transformations<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>For the purpose of this criminal case, </em><br><em>former President Trump has become citizen Trump.</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cadc.40415/gov.uscourts.cadc.40415.1208593677.0.pdf">US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit</a></p>
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<p>This week's featured post is "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/02/12/about-bidens-age-and-memory/">About Biden's Age and Memory</a>". Short summary: Everybody calm down.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about Biden's memory</h3>
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<p>That's the subject of the <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/02/12/about-bidens-age-and-memory/">featured post</a>. One of the things I learned during my father's final years was the difference between aphasia (inability to find the right words) and dementia (inability to grasp situations). Biden's occasional flubs look completely verbal to me, so they don't seem worrisome. He knows what's happening and is thinking clearly about it, even if he sometimes calls something or someone by the wrong name.</p>
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<p>Trump makes similar mistakes all the time (probably as often as Biden) but the media doesn't cover them the same way. I guess I understand why: It seems silly to worry about Trump saying the wrong words when the words he <em>intends</em> to say are so reprehensible. What if, when he wanted to call Democrats "<a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/11/17/1213746885/trump-vermin-hitler-immigration-authoritarian-republican-primary">vermin</a>", or accuse immigrants of "<a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/12/30/trump-poisoning-the-blood-racism">poisoning the blood of our country</a>", he had accidentally said something else? Would that be worse?</p>
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<p>Just this weekend, he <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nikki-haley-donald-trump-michael-haley-d76d4f858a92c0fedfc0723655195319">taunted Nikki Haley</a> by asking about her spouse.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone. He knew. He knew.</p>
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<p>I haven't seen a clear explanation of what Trump imagines Michael Haley knows. But where Haley has gone is no mystery: He's a major in the South Carolina National Guard, and has been deployed to Africa since June. The Republican Party used to respect military service, but apparently it no longer does. Wherever Major Haley is, though, he has access to the internet, because <a href="https://twitter.com/WMichaelHaley/status/1756442971908550891">he tweeted back</a>:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>The difference between humans and animals? Animals would never allow the dumbest ones to lead the pack.</p>
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<p>And then there was <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-says-russia-whatever-hell-want-nato-countries-dont-pay-enough-rcna138256">this</a>:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Former President Donald Trump said Saturday he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” if it attacked a NATO country that didn’t pay enough for defense.</p>
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<p>When he says that kind of stuff on purpose, who has time to cover his misstatements?</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Trump trials</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.ajc.com/opinion/mike-luckovich-blog/mike-luckovich-020824-ex-presidential-crime-spree-ends/UPCICFWUB5G3XEU6MOD4XG64TI/"><img src="https://www.ajc.com/resizer/w2i2uBaprzM2tzxWHu54qZIoMnc=/850x480/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ajc/ICHOHFZA7BHH3HFDWGKMRV7GYY.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>The big news from early in the week was the <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cadc.40415/gov.uscourts.cadc.40415.1208593677.0.pdf">DC Appeals Court ruling</a> against Trump's claim of "absolute presidential immunity". The court rejected Trump's arguments across the board, summing up its opinion like this:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.</p>
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<p>For weeks, observers have been speculating about what was taking the court so long -- nearly a month -- to rule, and their opinion validated most of that speculation: The three judges were ironing out their differences so that they could write a single opinion in the name of the court. It seemed obvious from the beginning that none of the three agreed with Trump's lawyers' arguments, but if they had disagreed about <em>why </em>Trump was wrong, they would leave issues for the Supreme Court to resolve. As it is, the Court has the option to refuse Trump expected appeal and let the lower court decision stand.</p>
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<p>Trump is expected to file his appeal to the Supreme Court today, because the appellate court's stay on his DC trial <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/12/us/politics/supreme-court-trump-immunity.html">runs out today</a>, leaving Judge Tanya Chutken free to restart proceedings. <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-141462006">Jay Kuo</a> explains:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>But here’s a fun fact: While it only takes four justices to agree to hear a case, it takes <em>five</em> justices to issue a stay. And a stay is what Trump really, really needs to keep running out the clock.</p>
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<p>I feel like commentators are doing the public an injustice when they observe that Trump is trying to "run out the clock", as if that were a natural thing to do. An innocent candidate for office would want to get his cases settled before the election, but Trump wants to delay past the election <em>because he is guilty</em>. His only hope to stay out of jail is to regain the presidency and use its powers to obstruct justice, so that no jury ever sees the evidence against him. </p>
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<p>Thursday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in another Trump case, the one about whether the 14th Amendment bans him from office as an insurrectionist. The questions asked by almost all the justices were skeptical, and most observers have concluded that the Court really doesn't want to be the reason Trump doesn't become president again. </p>
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<p>Slate's Dahlia Lithwick discusses what she finds "<a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/02/supreme-court-trump-ballot-arguments-alito-yikes.html">The Most Galling Thing About the Supreme Court’s Trump Ballot Arguments</a>": taking seriously the idea that finding for Colorado would open a can of worms, as red states would then start throwing Democratic candidates off their ballots. The assumption behind this argument is that our justice system is incapable of distinguishing frivolous cases from well-founded cases. </p>
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<p>Remember when Trump said <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/23/464129029/donald-trump-i-could-shoot-somebody-and-i-wouldnt-lose-any-voters">he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue</a> and not lose support? Well, imagine if he did and the State of New York charged him with murder. Trump could then argue that the prosecution shouldn't be allowed, because otherwise red states would start charging Democrats with murder. </p>
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<p>Does that make any sense? I don't think so, and I don't think a similar argument in this case makes sense either.</p>
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<p>We're still waiting for a verdict in Trump's New York civil fraud trial.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Gaza War</h3>
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<p>Since the ground attacks on Gaza started, Israel has been pushing the civilian population south, towards Rafah. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/12/middleeast/israel-airstrikes-rafah-ground-offensive-looms-intl-hnk/index.html">CNN</a> estimates that 1.3 million of Gaza's two million people are now taking refuge there. The only place further south is Egypt, which is not accepting refugees.</p>
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<p>Over the weekend, airstrikes on Rafah began. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society claims that over 100 people have been killed, but says the exact death toll is hard to know because people may still be trapped under rubble. </p>
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<p>Last night, an Israeli raid into Rafah rescued two Israeli hostages.</p>
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<p>There is beginning to be some daylight between the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government. In the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/02/08/remarks-by-president-biden/">press conference</a> where President Biden responded to the Hur report, he characterized the Israeli response to the October 7 attacks as "over the top" and said</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying, and it’s got to stop.</p>
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<p>Secretary Blinken has been trying to negotiate a ceasefire. The most recent <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-mediators-search-final-formula-israel-hamas-ceasefire-2024-02-07/">Hamas proposal</a> was for</p>
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<p>a ceasefire of 4-1/2 months, during which all hostages would go free, Israel would withdraw its troops from Gaza and an agreement would be reached on an end to the war.</p>
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<p>Prime Minister Netanyahu described this proposal as "delusional" and instead pledged to push on for "total victory" over "all of Hamas".</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the failed Mayorkas impeachment</h3>
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<p>Something about the conservative mindset that's been true for a long time: They'd rather focus on good and bad people than good or bad policy. So a scapegoat or a savior is more important than a plan to make things better. (You can see this happening in the presidential campaign: The point is to glorify Trump and promise that everything will be better after he's back in power. But what will he do differently than Biden? Don't worry about that.)</p>
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<p>Case in point: The border. The Senate negotiated a tough bipartisan compromise to try to improve things at the border, but then Trump and his minions rejected it without any alternative proposal beyond "Elect Trump". Simultaneously, House Republicans tried to impeach the secretary of Homeland Security, Aleyandro Mayorkas, for not solving the problems at the border. So: We don't need new policies or new funding, we just need to punish somebody we don't like. That'll fix everything.</p>
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<p>There are really <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2024/2/6/24059709/alejandro-mayorkas-impeachment-house-republicans">no grounds for impeaching Mayorkas</a>: no criminal activity, no personal scandals, etc. He's just overseeing a badly broken immigration system that Congress has been refusing to fix for decades. All the problems would still be there if he were gone. </p>
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<p>Not to worry, though, because in the end Speaker Johnson counted his votes wrong, and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/06/alejandro-mayorkas-impeachment-immigration-republicans">impeachment failed 214-216</a>. This kind of thing never happened to Nancy Pelosi: If she brought something to the floor, she had the votes to pass it.</p>
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<p>Republicans are going to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/11/mayorkas-impeachment-vote-scalise-00140851">try again</a>, though, because Rep. Steve Scalise may return soon from cancer treatment, and because they have nothing else to do.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.ajc.com/opinion/mike-luckovich-blog/mike-luckovich-020624-his-savior/66OBHKOQCRHZBBLH2NELMP7US4/"><img src="https://www.ajc.com/resizer/kIO-CRfSoUbM5OGET4jgf4fYRDI=/850x480/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ajc/NIYSOONVW5BMBNKG3L3RI73TIM.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>Meanwhile, the Senate is trying to repair the damage done when Trump turned against the border/Israel/Ukraine compromise that was set to pass. Originally, the parts of the bill dealing with the border were put in because Republicans demanded them as a price for Ukraine aid. (Otherwise, they seem content to let Putin take over Ukraine. One fascist hand washes the other, I suppose.) But then Trump decided that solving a problem (which his party keeps saying is an existential crisis for our country) would give Biden a victory and help him claim that he is actually governing. Can't have that, so <a href="https://apnews.com/article/congress-ukraine-aid-border-security-386dcc54b29a5491f8bd87b727a284f8">the bill had to die</a>. </p>
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<p>So a bill with just Israel and Ukraine aid is <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/12/politics/senate-foreign-aid-bill-ukraine/index.html">moving through the Senate</a>, having jumped a couple of procedural hurdles this week. (Bizarrely, Lindsey Graham wants to add amendments with border funding, creating a Groundhog Day causal loop.) It might move faster, but Rand Paul is blocking the unanimous consent necessary to vote sooner.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p>Yesterday, two pro-Christian Super Bowl ads promoted the slogan "He gets us" -- "he" being Jesus. This campaign has been around for a while, but it seems that many people noticed it for the first time yesterday. The leftist magazine <a href="https://jacobin.com/2023/02/christian-super-bowl-ads-he-gets-us-servant-foundation-abortion-gay-rights">Jacobin</a> traced the money. It comes from the billion-dollar Servant Foundation, which also has contributed $50 million to the Alliance Defending Freedom. The "freedoms" ADF defends are the states' right to take over women's healthcare decisions, and businesses' right to discriminate against LGBTQ people.</p>
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<p>So maybe the "us" in "He gets us" isn't as all-encompassing as the ads make it sound.</p>
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<p>Meanwhile, my social media feed was blowing up with the observation that If Jesus had that many millions on hand, he would probably use it to feed the poor rather than to buy Super Bowl ads. It does seem like a rather mysterious way for the Lord to work. </p>
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<p>It was widely reported before the game that Tucker Carlson threatened to kill himself if Taylor Swift's boyfriend's team won the Super Bowl. (The claim appears to be <a href="https://www.sportskeeda.com/nfl/news-fact-check-did-tucker-carlson-claim-he-d-take-drastic-measures-chiefs-won-super-bowl-validate-taylor-swift">false</a>.) Yesterday, Travis Kelce's Chiefs did win, starting a Tucker death watch. </p>
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<p>Speaking of Tucker, he <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/tucker-carlson-promised-an-unedited-putin-the-result-was-boring">interviewed Russian dictator Vladimir Putin</a> for two hours and posted the video to the web. </p>
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<p>Unfortunately for Tucker's career, which has gone into eclipse since Fox News sacked him, Putin did what dictators often do: gave a long boring speech that few Americans will be interested in. Putin has this theory of history, going back to the Middle Ages, saying that Ukraine is not really a country and has no right to exist separate from Russia. </p>
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<p>It's not hard to imagine King George making a similar speech about his 13 American colonies, so Americans are unlikely to be persuaded. To Americans, nationhood is a covenant between people, and is not based on some essentialist theory about race, language, and culture. If a bunch of people get together and declare themselves a nation, who are you to tell them they're not?</p>
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<p>Anyway, it appears that the point was to impress Russians with how seriously Putin's ideas are taken by Americans, and not to actually convince American viewers of anything. It was an internal propaganda victory similar to the victory Kim Jong Un got by meeting with Trump. </p>
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<p>Prior to the interview, Tucker put out a video defending his decision to do it. I have no real argument with the points he was making, but I think he was making them in bad faith: Yes, Americans should hear from voices that the American mainstream paints as villainous, but those people should be asked hard questions, challenged when they lie, and fact-checked afterward. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/08/media/vladimir-putin-tucker-carlson-interview-reliable-sources/index.html">Tucker did none of that</a>. </p>
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<p>Also, I suspect he won't apply his reasoning evenly. For example, the same logic would lead him to interview the leaders of Iran and the Taliban, something I suspect he won't do. He interviewed Putin not for any noble journalistic reason, but because he supports Putin.</p>
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<p>Climate scientist Michael Mann <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/08/climate/michael-mann-defamation-lawsuit.html">won his defamation lawsuit</a> against two conservative critics. He was awarded only $1 from each in compensation, but one of the two was hit with $1 million in punitive damages.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something in bad taste</h3>
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<p>Everybody who tries to cook has had the experience: You look at a recipe, have high hopes, and then something else happens entirely. In the end, you see that the outcome was completely predictable, but somehow that wasn't obvious beforehand.</p>
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<p>Well, you can always laugh. The Tasty Area website has collected <a href="https://www.tastyarea.com/en/funny-kitchen-fails-that-will-make-you-feel-like-an-iron-che?">extreme kitchen fails</a> that will make you feel brilliant by comparison. My favorite is the guy who cooked his pasta from both ends at once.</p>
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<!-- /wp:image -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-50336538459729088112024-02-05T12:19:00.002-05:002024-02-05T12:19:53.616-05:00Power and Restraint<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men the most.</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- misattributed to <a href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thucydides#Misattributed">Thucydides</a></p>
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<p>This week's featured post is "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/02/05/gazan-lives-matter/">Gazan Lives Matter</a>".</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about the widening war</h3>
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<p>This feels like one of those recurring nightmares where you know what's going to happen, but can only watch as it does. Biden responded to last week's attack on a US outpost in Jordan by <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/yemens-houthis-vow-response-after-us-british-strikes-2024-02-04/">hitting Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria</a>, as well as continuing to bomb Houthi rebels in Yemen. It is simultaneously impossible to imagine (1) the US government doing nothing after American soldiers are killed, and (2) our counterattacks achieving anything. </p>
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<p>On the one hand, Biden would surely be facing a political firestorm even bigger than the current one if American soldiers died and he did nothing. But I can't imagine that the groups we're striking are saying, "Wow, we need to stop what we're doing." A third alternative would be to hit the source, Iran, but that looks even worse to me. </p>
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<p>In a different century, the great powers would get together in some <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Congress-of-Vienna">grand conference</a> with everything on the table. I'm not sure why that couldn't happen now.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and sabotage in Congress</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.ajc.com/opinion/mike-luckovich-blog/mike-luckovich-020424-the-plan/IPCD6YK4FBGE7D6TIBDJ64ZRBU/"><img src="https://www.ajc.com/resizer/9V0ZETqprz7oRkX_WXofEC4YuSY=/850x480/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ajc/ABPIBFITLNCUNCWHBA3MNBXOY4.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>When Democrats run against Republican congressmen in the fall, their hardest task is going to be convincing voters that the Republicans really did what they're doing right now. A lot of voters will listen to a true account and just say, "No. Surely not. You must be exaggerating."</p>
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<p>So Ukraine, which is fighting for its life against an invasion by Trump's buddy Putin, needs weapons from us to defend itself. At first, supplying them was a bipartisan priority, with only some extremists like Matt Gaetz holding out. Then about half of the Republican conference turned against Ukraine aid, and Speakers McCarthy and then Johnson decided Ukraine aid was a hostage they could get Biden to pay some ransom for. Their rhetoric paired Ukraine with our own problems at the Mexican border (something like "Why are we paying for Ukraine to protects its borders when we're not protecting our own?"), even though the two really have nothing to do with each other.</p>
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<p>The result was a three-part package including Ukraine aid, aid to Israel, and money to better protect the border. Republicans decided that wasn't enough, so they insisted on policy changes in addition to money. The Senate negotiated a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/05/us/politics/senate-border-ukraine-deal.html">bipartisan compromise</a>, which included most of what Republicans had been asking for. </p>
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<p>But then Trump turned against it, because passing any border legislation at all would allow Biden to say that he has done something about the border. So: It's a terrible, terrible crisis, but let's not do anything about it, because any problem that gets solved (or even addressed) while Biden is president will make it harder to unseat him in November.</p>
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<p>In other words: The border is just a talking point for Republicans. They don't actually want to do anything about it.</p>
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<p>Even with Trump's opposition, a majority of the House probably supports this Ukraine/Israel/border bill. So Speaker Johnson has decided <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/02/05/senate-border-bill-house-republicans-kill-vow">not to hold a vote on it</a>. Instead, the House will vote on a stand-alone Israel-aid bill.</p>
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<p>Even after Trump is out of office, Putin continues to reap benefits from helping him get elected.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://claytoonz.com/2024/01/29/yo-quiero-frontera-abierta/"><img src="https://claytoonz.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/cjonesrgb01312024.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>With all the border rhetoric, it's hard to sort out what is really happening and how serious it is. <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-141279836">The Big Picture blog</a> does a good job with that. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Biden's South Carolina victory</h3>
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<p>Remember how "nobody really likes Biden" and "nobody wants to see a Biden-Trump rematch"? Well, Saturday in South Carolina, actual Democratic voters got a chance to cast a protest vote against renominating Joe Biden. They didn't. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-primary-elections/south-carolina-president-results">Biden got 96.2% of the vote</a>, with Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson splitting the remainder. </p>
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<p>Now, you can say that those aren't real candidates, not like Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer or whoever your favorite Democrat might be. But if you wanted more choices in the election, the way to ask for them was to vote against Biden. Not many people did.</p>
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<p>If Phillips and/or Williamson had gotten 30-40% of the vote, we'd be having different conversation, as the Democrats did in 1968. (LBJ won the New Hampshire primary <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/mccarthy-nearly-upsets-lbj-in-new-hampshire-primary-march-12-1968-220521">48%-42%</a> over Gene McCarthy, but he looked at the level of resistance he was facing and dropped out.) The press would be approaching other prominent Democrats asking "Are you sure you don't want to step in?" But the electorate seems to have no real appetite for that.</p>
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<p><a href="https://fallows.substack.com/p/election-countdown-276-days-to-go">James Fallows</a> reviews the long series of "Biden is doomed because ..." narratives mainstream media has given us, and how they've fared.</p>
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<p>We're at a point where the polls will tell you whatever you want to hear. Want to believe Biden is in trouble? CNN has <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/01/politics/cnn-poll-trump-biden-election-2024/index.html">Trump ahead</a> 49%-45%. Want to believe Biden is doing fine? Quinnipiac says <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3889">Biden is ahead</a> 50%-44%.</p>
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<p>Personally, I <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/08/21/why-im-optimistic-about-2024/">remain</a> optimistic, though I won't fully relax until I'm listening to Biden's second inaugural address. My general impression is that public sentiment is more-or-less even right now, but that Biden has a better story to tell going forward: The economy is doing quite well, and was in terrible shape when Trump left office. (You don't have to blame Trump for the pandemic shutdown to realize that Biden was handed a tough situation.) </p>
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<p>Biden will protect a woman's right to make her own health-care decisions, and Trump won't. Biden has <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-inflation-reduction-act-has-transformed-transportation-decarbonization-with-major-implications-for-epa-vehicle-standards/">taken action against climate change</a>; in a second term he would do more, while <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/28/far-right-climate-plans-00107498">Trump would undo what Biden has already done</a>. Biden has strengthened the NATO alliance, which Trump had nearly wrecked. Biden has fulfilled some of the same promises that Trump made but couldn't deliver on: He got Congress to approve money for <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/build/">rebuilding our infrastructure</a>. He got us out of Afghanistan. He has <a href="https://www.investors.com/news/inflation-reduction-act-chips-fuel-construction-boom-with-intel-tsm-and-samsung-key-players/">made investments to help American industry compete with China</a>.</p>
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<p>Plus, he has achieved some noteworthy liberal goals: The percentage of <a href="https://blogs.cdc.gov/nchs/2023/08/03/7434/">Americans without health insurance</a> is at an all-time low. The expansion of the child tax credit in Biden's 2021 American Rescue Plan <a href="https://blogs.cdc.gov/nchs/2023/08/03/7434/">reduced the childhood poverty rate</a> to an all-time low. (Biden tried to make the credit permanent, but Congress wouldn't go along, so the rate <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/9/21/23882353/child-poverty-expanded-child-tax-credit-census-welfare-inflation-economy-data">rebounded after the credit expired</a>. The pending bipartisan tax bill would reinstate it at a lower level.)</p>
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<p>And that's even before you start looking at Trump's personal issues: It's been <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-rape-carroll-trial-fe68259a4b98bb3947d42af9ec83d7db">established in court</a> that he is a sexual predator. His <a href="https://robertreich.substack.com/p/what-about-trumps-age">mental lapses</a> (and general tendency to babble) is far worse than anything Biden has shown. Who knows how long he (and the judge he appointed) can delay the trial, but the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-indictment-explained-summary-federal-charges-documents/">evidence in the Mar-a-Lago case</a> -- that he took classified documents he had no right to, stored them sloppily, showed them to people not authorized to see them, and lied to the government when it asked for them back -- is quite strong, and Trump has offered no credible explanation for it. (If his indictments were really the politically-motivated nonsense he claims, wouldn't he be eager to get a jury of ordinary Americans to rule on them?) His effort to stay in office after clearly losing the 2020 election (the subject of another federal case as well as the Georgia RICO case) is one of the worst things any American president has ever done. </p>
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<p>I think that for now a lot of Americans are withholding judgment about whether Trump is actually guilty -- he is -- or whether the charges are all politics, as he claims. As the cases proceed and the election gets closer, I think a bunch of those voters will turn to Biden.</p>
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<p>One additional thing makes me hopeful: There will be a Republican Convention this summer. People will watch, and the MAGA folks will be scary. They can't help themselves, because they believe their own propaganda that says they represent the real American majority. </p>
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<p>Trump does have one outstanding talent that we have to watch out for: He's very good at claiming credit and avoiding blame. Why is the stock market at a record high? Because <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/4444199-trump-stock-market-thriving-because-they-think-im-going-to-be-elected/">investors are anticipating his return to office</a>, of course. He doesn't need to have a policy for dealing with the Gaza situation, because Hamas would be behaving itself if he were president, so <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/4244748-trump-says-hamas-attack-on-israel-war-in-ukraine-would-not-have-occurred-if-he-were-president/">the whole situation wouldn't have come up</a>. Ditto for the Ukraine War; it wouldn't have happened if he'd been re-elected (which he still says he was), and <a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2024/1/21/24046304/donald-trump-2024-gop-presidential-race-election-joe-biden-republican-chicago-crime-ukraine-violence">he could solve it in 24 hours</a> now, through some negotiating method that he needn't elaborate on. Any claims he makes about "the Trump economy" conveniently ignore the fourth year of his term, when millions of jobs were lost and the deficit skyrocketed. A large part of what he is selling is a magical return to 2019; Covid was a bad dream that he will wave away with his amazing powers.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Taylor</h3>
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<p>I had a Swift picture in last week's Sift and didn't really want to write about her again, but it's hard not to. Last night <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/grammys-2024-list-of-winners-004520877.html">she won the Album of the Year grammy</a>, her fourth, a record. </p>
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<p>Most of this week my social media feed was full of articles about the Right going nuts over Taylor and her boyfriend Travis Kelce, who will play in the Super Bowl Sunday as a star of the Kansas City Chiefs. I had a hard time deciding whether the Right was broadly going nuts, or if a few Trump cultists were going nuts and the liberal side of the media couldn't resist a story that makes the Right look this bad. </p>
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<p>It's a little in between, I think. Apparently, the anti-Taylor reaction is <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/donald-trump-more-popular-taylor-swift-maga-biden-1234956829/">a real thing in Trump's inner circles</a>, even though <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/for-the-love-of-god-taylor-swift-is-not-a-joe-biden-psyop/">some conservative news sources</a> recognize how crazy it is. And never-Trump-Republican Steve Schmidt raises a good question: <a href="https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1752738763988430878">How would you break the news to Trump that he's not as popular as Taylor Swift?</a></p>
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<p>A related story I should have covered when it came out two weeks ago was the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/31/opinions/taylor-swift-deepfakes-ai-segall/index.html">AI-generated porn images of Swift</a>, which circulated across various social-media platforms before most (but probably not all) of them were taken down. (I can't tell you how easy they are to find now, because I've resisted the urge to look for them. Please don't post links in the comments.) I don't think anyone knows exactly who distributed these images or why, but it seems hard to believe that the timing is a coincidence: Swift runs afoul of MAGA, and then fake porn images of her circulate. Attacking the sexual reputation of a troublesome woman is a tactic as old as time. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/31/taylor-swift-ai-pictures-far-right">Jill Filipovic</a> observes:</p>
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<p>Swift is also a person who many on the right seek to humiliate, degrade and punish – the same aims as the creators of deepfake porn.</p>
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<p>Undoubtedly we'll see more of this, as AI-assisted image-processing tools get into more and more hands. The popular ones supposedly have safeguards against being used this way, but I don't think it takes much know-how to circumvent those protections. We need to start thinking about how ordinary junior-high girls are going to fend off these kinds of attacks. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">but here are some interesting articles to think about</h3>
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<p>The NYT Magazine has a thoughtful article about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/21/us/an-atheist-chaplain-and-a-death-row-inmates-final-hours.html">an atheist chaplain counseling an atheist inmate</a> as he waits on death row for his execution.</p>
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<p>There is an adage that says there are no atheists in foxholes — even skeptics will pray when facing death. But Hancock, in the time leading up to his execution, only became more insistent about his nonbelief. He and his chaplain were both confident that there was no God who might grant last-minute salvation, if only they produced a desperate prayer. They had only one another.</p>
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<p>Personally, I am not an adamant there-is-no-God atheist, but I'm also not anticipating any particular afterlife. I've watched both believers and non-believers face the reality of death, and I can't see that it makes any real difference in how well they deal with the experience. One misperception I think a lot of believers share, though, is that idea that unbelievers <em>could </em>believe if they just wanted to. I don't think it's that simple. Some things, to some people, are just unbelievable.</p>
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<p>I will add that I would much rather go to a nonsectarian funeral than one based in a religion with a lot of dogma. Too often, church funerals are more about propping up the dogma than about the life of the deceased. If we're just going to talk about Jesus and Heaven and God's plan, it could be anybody in the casket.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/31/opinion/covid-2020-recovery-society.html">Eric Klinenberg</a> previews some ideas from his forthcoming book on 2020 "the year everything changed", by claiming that we're not fully appreciating what the pandemic did to us: It isn't just that people died and the rest of us missed out on a lot of experiences. More fundamentally, the pandemic shook our faith in our whole society.</p>
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<p>I’ve come to think of our current condition as a kind of long Covid, a social disease that intensified a range of chronic problems and instilled the belief that the institutions we’d been taught to rely on are unworthy of our trust. The result is a durable crisis in American civic life. ... [L]oneliness was never the core problem. It was, rather, the sense among so many different people that they’d been left to navigate the crisis on their own. How do you balance all the competing demands of health, money, sanity? Where do you get tests, masks, medicine? How do you go to work — or even work from home — when your kids can’t go to school?</p>
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<p>The answer was always the same: Figure it out. Stimulus checks and small-business loans helped. But while other countries built trust and solidarity, America — both during and after 2020 — left millions to fend for themselves.</p>
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<p>Last year, Mary Wood got reprimanded for teaching Ta Nahisi Coates' book <em>Between the World and Me</em> in her AP English class in Chapin, SC. This year, she has read all the relevant rules, checked all the boxes, and is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/02/01/south-carolina-teacher-racism-lesson-revised/">trying again</a>.</p>
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<p>To me, Wood represents a living refutation of the "Great Man" theory of history. When big waves wash across society, like the anti-woke movement of the last few years, lots and lots of ordinary people either resist or submit. And that's what determines how it all shakes out.</p>
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<p>Remember when rising healthcare spending was going to swamp our whole economy? Something happened right about the time ObamaCare kicked in -- claiming cause-and-effect is probably a bit much at this point -- and <a href="https://cepr.net/declining-healthcare-costs-the-good-economic-news-keeps-getting-better/">healthcare's percentage of the economy leveled off</a>. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p>The Trump trials are still mostly on hold while we wait for judges to decide things. Reporters keep telling us that something could happen any minute on a variety of topics, but I'm going to wait until something actually happens before I comment again.</p>
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<p>Ukrainian drones <a href="https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/02/1/7439888/">sunk a Russian guided-missile corvette</a> in the Black Sea a few days ago, and released some amazing video afterward. </p>
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<p>Idaho was trying to repeal its ban against public subsidies for religious schools, and then a <a href="https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/a-proposed-satanic-school-helped">spokesman for Satanic Idaho</a> spoke in favor of the bill. </p>
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<p>I look forward to the opportunity to be able to start a Satanic K-12 performing arts school, and being able to have access to the same funds that any other religious school would have.</p>
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<p>Apparently the proposal is on hold now. God alone knows when we'll get to see that Satanic performing-arts school.</p>
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<p>Pregnancy from rape has long been a headache for the anti-abortion movement. If some man forces you to have sex, you get pregnant, and then the government forces you to spend nine months turning your rapist's DNA into a baby -- that doesn't sound much like "freedom", does it? And even if the man eventually gets sent to jail, his genes have already won the struggle to survive for another generation. So the government has validated rape as a viable evolutionary strategy.</p>
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<p>Over the years, forced-pregnancy defenders have dealt with this problem in a variety of ways. Back in 2012, US Senate candidate <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2012/08/akin-legitimate-rape-victims-dont-get-pregnant-079864">Todd Akin</a> just denied it altogether: Rape pregnancies don't really happen, he claimed, because</p>
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<p>If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.</p>
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<p>Sadly for him, that appeal to biological wishful thinking didn't go over well, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_Senate_election_in_Missouri">he lost a very winnable seat</a> in Missouri to Claire McCaskill by 15%.</p>
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<p>Also in 2012, Senate candidate <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/republican-senate-candidate-says-rape-pregnancies-are-gift-god/322172/">Rich Mourdock</a> of Indiana confronted the challenge in more religious terms:</p>
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<p>I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God, and I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.</p>
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<p>But that didn't fly either. PIcturing rape as just another one of God's mysterious ways, and even implicitly suggesting a woman ought to be grateful for a "gift" that bears an unfortunate resemblance to her worst nightmares -- it was too much of a stretch, even in a heavily Evangelical state like Indiana. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_Senate_election_in_Indiana">Mourdock lost to Democrat Joe Donnelly by 6%</a>, and the Republicans missed their shot to control the Senate.</p>
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<p>By 2021, then, Republicans had learned a few lessons. So after a six-week abortion ban with no rape exception took effect in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott came at the issue from a different angle, one more in line with the GOP's tough-on-crime image: Forced pregnancy wasn't going to be a problem for much longer, because <a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-texas-dallas-laws-greg-abbott-3717a0258b598eba06bb1baf90b645f4">Texas was going to eliminate rape</a>. How could any feminist be against that?</p>
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<p>Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them</p>
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<p>So how's that been working out? According to a <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2814274">study published in the medical journal <em>JAMA Internal Medicine</em></a>, not so well. <a href="https://www.kxan.com/news/texas-abortion/researchers-claim-texas-leads-country-in-rape-related-pregnancies-after-dobbs-decision/">Austin TV station KXAN</a> explains:</p>
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<p>According to their study, 26,313 rape-related pregnancies occurred in Texas during the 16 months after the state legislature banned abortion. That figure comprises nearly 45% of all such pregnancies estimated to occur among the nine ban states that did not make a legal exception for rape.</p>
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<p>That's 26K Texas women who have had their most basic freedoms taken away from them.</p>
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<p>Here's a suggestion for Governor Abbott: How about trying this in the opposite order? Eliminate rape <em>first</em>, and then the grateful women of Texas might be ready to listen to your ideas about abortion.</p>
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<p>While we wait for the Supreme Court to rule on Trump's eligibility for office, consider the <a href="https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/politics/2024/02/01/republican-legislators-walked-out-barred-from-running-in-2024-measure-113-oregon-supreme-court/72413764007/">legislator-eligibility case in Oregon</a>: The rules of the state senate require a 2/3rds quorum to do any business, which means that a minority of senators can delay any bill they don't like by just not showing up. </p>
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<p>Republicans have been the minority in Oregon for some while, so walkouts are seen as a partisan tactic. <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-141313785">Jay Kuo</a> notes</p>
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<p>Republicans in Oregon began walking out in 2019 and didn’t really stop. They did it again in 2020, and again in 2021. By summer of 2023, they had walked out a total of seven times in four years.</p>
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<p>In 2022, voters overwhelmingly passed <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_Measure_113,_Exclusion_from_Re-election_for_Legislative_Absenteeism_Initiative_(2022)">Measure 113</a>, which says that legislators with 10 or more unexcused absences are ineligible for reelection. But in 2023, Republicans shut down the senate for six weeks to stop an abortion-rights law. As a result Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade ruled ten of the 11 Republican senators ineligible to appear on the 2024 or 2026 ballot. </p>
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<p>The Republicans sued, and Thursday the state supreme court unanimously upheld the exclusion. So it can happen. As Kuo notes, there's no reason some other Republican couldn't win one of those 10 seats. </p>
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<p>But it might give serious pause to any <em>future</em> senator thinking about walking out but actually planning to stay in office longer than one term.</p>
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<p>Judd Legum's Popular Information blog documents just <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-141258102">how far off the deep end Moms for Liberty have gone</a> and how crazy the response has been in Florida. The Indian River County school district has begun drawing clothes onto naked characters in children's books, including Maurice Sendak's <em>In the Night Kitchen</em>. The book was published in 1970 and was named a Caldecott Honor Book, but apparently it's been corrupting Indian River children for the last half century. The whole article reads like parody, but I don't think it is.</p>
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<p>While we're talking about Florida, the state where American freedom goes to die, Gov. DeSantis is <a href="https://flvoicenews.com/desantis-backs-bill-to-crack-down-on-lab-grown-meat-in-florida-you-need-meat/">backing a law to make lab-grown meat illegal</a>. A senator promoting the bill, <a href="https://flvoicenews.com/sen-jay-collins-talks-agriculture-farmer-tax-breaks-banning-lab-grown-meat/">Jay Collins</a> of Tampa, gives this odd justification:</p>
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<p>Let’s look at what you’re doing here. You’re growing cells in a cultivated petri dish and creating protein to eat. There are many ethical boundaries that this steps in and frankly, over.</p>
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<p>I mean, if you believe cattle-raising is an important industry that state government ought to protect from competition, that's at least a coherent thought that reflects certain political realities. But the whole point of lab-grown meat is for people to be able to eat a hamburger without participating in the death of a conscious being, and (one hopes) without the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/meat-greenhouses-gases-food-production-study">strain our meat habit currently inflicts on the environment</a>. And that's <em>unethical</em>? Plus: Of all the lab-produced things that wind up in our food, <em>this</em> is the one that bothers you?</p>
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<p>The group that got the Supreme Court to outlaw affirmative action in civilian universities now has a lawsuit challenging affirmative action at West Point, the Army's primary officer-training institution. Students for Fair Admission has been seeking a restraining order that would stop race-based admission practices at West Point until the lawsuit could be resolved. Friday, the Supreme Court <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/02/justices-turn-away-west-point-admissions-challenge/">denied that request</a> in a <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/020224zr1_2b35.pdf">terse order</a> saying that "the record before this court is underdeveloped", and giving no hint as to its views on the merits of the case. <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2024/2/2/24058287/supreme-court-affirmative-action-west-point-military-harvard">Vox' Ian Millhiser elaborates</a>.</p>
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<p>the Supreme Court has historically shown a great deal of deference to the military. As the Court said in <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=16268127249131160503&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr"><em>Gilligan v. Morgan</em></a> (1973), “[I]t is difficult to conceive of an area of governmental activity in which the courts have less competence” than questions involving “the composition, training, equipping, and control of a military force.” ... So there’s a real chance that this Court, despite its recent opinion in <em>Harvard</em>, could decide that the judiciary’s long tradition of deferring to the military on personnel and related matters should continue to hold in the <em>West Point</em> case.</p>
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<p>The military has long been a bit ahead of the rest of the country on racial issues. For example: An <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/executive-order-9981.htm">executive order from President Truman</a> in 1948 said:</p>
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<p>It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.</p>
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<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education">Brown v Board of Education</a>, the Supreme Court case that struck down "separate but equal" public schools, didn't happen until 1954, and segregation in public accommodations (i.e., businesses open to the public) wasn't banned until the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964">Civil Rights Act of 1964</a>.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something cool</h3>
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<p>I have no idea when or whether the <a href="https://invest.aptera.us/">Aptera solar-powered car </a>will hit the market. But it's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAjlskP8gs4">fun to look at</a>.</p>
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<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>As Trump left the courtroom after his testimony, he remarked loudly, “This is not America. Not America. This is not America.” The bad news for the former president is that it is. This is the America where the rule of law still holds and where he too is required to abide by it.</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-141050735">Joyce Vance</a></p>
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<p>There is no featured post this week.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about E. Jean Carroll</h3>
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<p>Friday, after about three hours of deliberation, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/26/e-jean-carroll-damages-trump-defamation-trial">a New York jury ordered Donald Trump to pay E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million</a>: $7.3 million for the emotional distress Trump caused her, $11 million for the damage to her reputation, and $65 million in punitive damages. The punitive damages are there because Trump just won't shut up about Carroll; a previous case that cost him $5 million hasn't discouraged him from continuing to attack her in his rallies and on social media. Maybe, the jury figured, $65 million will be more effective.</p>
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<p>I can't quite imagine what audience Trump thought he was playing for in this trial: <a href="https://fortune.com/2024/01/18/trump-threatened-ejection-new-york-courtroom-loud-remarks-witch-huntas-e-jean-carroll-testifies/">muttering during Carroll's testimony</a>, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/lawyers-have-final-say-in-e-jean-carroll-defamation-trial-a-day-after-trump-testifies">stomping out during her attorney's summation speech</a>, <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/i-would-love-it-trump-courts-controversy-in-e-jean-carroll-trial-responds-to-judges-threat-with-defiance-681028">jousting with the judge</a>, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2024/01/22/trump-attacks-e-jean-carroll-in-more-than-40-posts-on-truth-social/?sh=3775c3d25250">obsessively continuing the defamation over Truth Social</a> during the trial, and so on. Obviously, this behavior didn't impress the jury or endear him to the judge. I've got to think that most female voters are thinking: "He sexually assaults this woman, repeatedly drags her reputation through the mud, inspires his cultists to harass and threaten her for years ... and he thinks <em>he's</em> the victim." I suppose some men might be happy that some other man is finally standing up to all the uppity women in the world, but I doubt they're a winning political coalition.</p>
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<p>And of course, the main thing Trump's antics did was draw attention to the case, which (to put it mildly) does not cast his image in the best light. He has reminded us not just of <a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/donald-trump-assault-e-jean-carroll-other-hideous-men.html">Carroll's accusations</a> (which now, in the State of New York, legally have to be considered facts), but also of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/women-accused-trump-sexual-misconduct-list-2017-12">all the other women</a> who have told similar stories about him and stuck by them, and of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_Access_Hollywood_tape">Access Hollywood tape</a>, where he bragged that he can grab women by the pussy and get away with it. </p>
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<p>I mean, if you want to badly enough, I suppose you can believe that all 26 women (who have no apparent connection other than being women) are lying, and that Trump's taped confession was just "locker room talk" to impress Billy Bush. But seriously. After you've tied your brain into a knot like that, can you do anything else with it?</p>
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<p>In his first response to the verdict on Truth Social, Trump posted: "THIS IS NOT AMERICA!" <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-141050735?selection=53c565a3-c35b-4531-9a34-3e9843d9b2a3#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThis%20is%20not%20America">Joyce Vance</a> has the right response:</p>
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<p>The bad news for the former president is that it is. This is the America where the rule of law still holds and where he too is required to abide by it. I look forward to more of this.</p>
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<p>Lots of people are wondering whether Carroll will ever see this money or if Trump will ever pay it. What you may not realize is that <em>those are two different questions</em>. Consider the $5 million a jury awarded Carroll last year. Trump is appealing that verdict, so Carroll hasn't gotten the money yet. But <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/23/politics/trump-e-jean-carroll-5-5-million/index.html">Trump has had to pay it</a>: He posted the money to a court-controlled account that will be distributed to Carroll after Trump runs out of appeals, assuming none of them succeed.</p>
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<p>So no matter how long Trump strings out this $83.3 million verdict, he's going to have to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/26/nyregion/trump-carroll-pay-83-million.html">put up a big chunk of the money</a> fairly soon.</p>
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<p>I often point out when Fox News ignores some story that breaks its preferred narrative, so I have to give it credit here. Shortly after the verdict was announced, I flipped over to <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/video/6345663234112">Bret Baier's show</a>, where famous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_Memos">torture-memo lawyer</a> John Yoo commented:</p>
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<p>The whole point of this unprecedented damages is to tell Donald Trump to shut up. ... It's not just that he should stop insulting Jean Carroll, but he has to stop disrespecting the justice system.</p>
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<p>Their take wasn't terribly different from the one I was hearing on MSNBC and CNN.</p>
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<p>I can't believe I'm writing this, but we're waiting on judges to rule in two <em>more serious</em> Trump cases. I mean, any other politician in the country would be ruined by the jury verdicts in the Carroll case, but that case is less "serious" because it only concerns Donald Trump's behavior as an individual, and doesn't directly affect the institution of the presidency or the rule of law in the United States. </p>
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<p>In the Carroll case, I stand at a distance and reflect on one man's shameless lack of any moral code. But Trump's sweeping claim of presidential immunity could determine whether I continue to live in a democracy. That claim arose in an attempt to delay Trump's federal January 6 trial, previously scheduled to being in March. The case can't proceed until the legal system decides whether Trump can be tried at all.</p>
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<p>At first, it looked like the appeals court wanted to get this done quickly. They held a hearing on January 9, and all three judges <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-jan-6-special-counsel-immunity-appeal-64eec975e6a602949eb4b90315239318">seemed skeptical</a> of the whole immunity idea. But nearly three weeks have gone by without a ruling. <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/deadline-legal-january-26-rcna135915?icid=latestpost_bot">MSNBC legal blogger Jordan Rubin</a> speculates what might be going on: The court would like to present one unanimous opinion, with agreement on the justification and not just the outcome. That would make a clearer statement to the public and stand up better if it's appealed to the Supreme Court. But the judges are having trouble ironing out their differences.</p>
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<p>The other judge we're waiting on is Arthur Engoron, who is expected to make a ruling on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_civil_investigation_of_The_Trump_Organization">New York civil fraud trial against the Trump Organization</a> sometime in the coming week. As in the Carroll trial, Trump's guilt has already been established in a summary judgment, and the recent trial was just to assess damages. The NY attorney general is asking for a $370 million payment and restrictions on the Trump family's ability to do business in New York.</p>
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<p>As noted above, Trump can still appeal a judgment he doesn't like, but he can't avoid putting up a large sum of money while appeals play out.</p>
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<p>Also pending is whether or not Trump is disqualified from holding the presidency again by the 14th Amendment's insurrection clause. The case has made it to the Supreme Court, which will hearing arguments on February 8.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/supreme-court-trump-january-6-accountability/677244/">Deborah Pearlstein</a> urges the Court to give the country a clear answer to the hard questions, rather than find an easy way out.</p>
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<p>No matter what the Court does next, its popular legitimacy will be sorely tested. Tens of millions of Americans are going to believe that it got the answer wrong, and that the result of the 2024 election is at best unfair because of it. Punting will only make already bad matters for American constitutional democracy worse. For there is no legitimacy, or democratic stability, in governing institutions that do nothing but race to see who can avoid taking responsibility for the hardest issues for the longest time. ... In an era of rising antidemocratic sentiments in the United States and around the world, constitutional democracies have to be able to show that they are capable of fulfilling the most basic functions of governance. In this case, at the very least, that means deciding to decide.</p>
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<p>She makes this interesting observation: The legal arguments for the various outcomes run counter to the justices' political leanings. (For example: Conservatives typically favor an "originalist" reading of the Constitution, which would <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/25/supreme-court-originalism-trump-ballot-eligibility-00137666">disqualify Trump</a>.) So it would look very bad for the Court if the decision fell along the usual 6-3 partisan lines. </p>
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<p>I heard on TV that the initial note from the Carroll jury used the abbreviation M, which they had to explain meant "million". I was reminded of an exchange in the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Colouringpast/videos/2693505424199206/">opening episode</a> of <em>The Beverley Hillbillies</em>. Jed is explaining to his skeptical cousin Pearl that some city guy has bought his swamp for between 25 and 100 of "some new kind of dollars". When Pearl protests that "There ain't no new kind of dollars", Jed asks: "What'd he call 'em Granny?"</p>
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<p>And Granny says, "Milly-an dollars."</p>
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<p>News channels occasionally <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2024/01/27/alina-habba-trump-e-jean-carroll-trial-parlatore-src-vpx.cnn">interview Trump's former lawyers</a> about what's going on with his cases. Sometimes they are still on his side and sometimes not. But the networks never tell us a central piece of information for evaluating the lawyer's opinion: <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/giuliani-notes-trumps-unpaid-legal-fees-in-bankruptcy-filing">Did Trump pay his legal bill or not?</a> Is the lawyer talking about a paying former client or a deadbeat former client? Seems like that would make a difference.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Gaza War</h3>
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<p>The International Court of Justice made a <a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240126-ord-01-00-en.pdf">preliminary ruling</a> in the genocide case that South Africa has brought against Israel. <a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2024/1/26/24051839/icj-south-africa-genocide-case-israel-gaza">Vox</a> has a good summary.</p>
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<p>The ICJ is the body specified by the Convention Against Genocide (a treaty signed by both Israel and South Africa) for adjudicating disputes about whether the parties are fulfilling their treaty commitments. As such, the ICJ ruled that it has jurisdiction to hear this case and that South Africa has standing to file it. Israel had asked the ICJ to dismiss the case without further investigation, which it declined to do. Instead, the ruling finds the South Africa's claims "plausible". Any final judgment will require a more detailed investigation and could be years away.</p>
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<p>The ruling describes the dire conditions inside Gaza, and says</p>
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<p>[T]he catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is at serious risk of deteriorating further before the Court renders its final judgment.</p>
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<p>South Africa had asked for an injunction requiring an immediate ceasefire, which the court did not provide. It did place a number of limitations on Israel's Gaza campaign, "to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip", and instructed Israel to preserve all evidence that could be relevant to a genocide investigation.</p>
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<p>The immediate practical effect of the ruling is likely to be small, because ICJ rulings are enforced by the UN Security Council, where the US can veto any substantive penalties against Israel. But the ruling further isolates Israel and the US from world opinion.</p>
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<p>Israel has charged that <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/27/middleeast/unrwa-israel-hamas-october-7-allegations-intl/index.html">staff members of the main UN agency providing relief to Palestinian refugees were involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks</a>. The exact claims have not been made public, but several employees were fired in response. The US and a number of other donor countries have paused their funding of the organization, further complicating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The agency, UNRWA, has about 13,000 employees.</p>
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<p>The war continues to ooze outward, with a rising risk that the US will get drawn into a larger conflict with Iran. A drone hit a US outpost in Jordan early Sunday morning, killing three US soldiers and wounding more than 30. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68125186">BBC</a> summarizes the situation:</p>
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<p>Since mid-October, US military installations in Iraq and Syria have repeatedly come under attack by Iran-backed militias, injuring a growing number of US soldiers. The US has repeatedly retaliated by striking targets in both countries.</p>
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<p>Iran has denied involvement, but a group it supports, Islamic Resistance in Iraq, has claimed responsibility. President Biden has pledged to "hold all those responsible to account".</p>
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<p>The outpost is called Tower 22, and is in the far north-east corner of Jordan, near the border with both Syria and Iraq. It is part of a deployment of around 30,000 US troops in the region, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-01-28-24/index.html">mapped by CNN</a>.</p>
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<p>Trump is saying the kind of stuff he always says: Bad things wouldn't happen if he were president, because he is "strong" while Biden is "weak". But he hasn't specified what he would do differently. He alternately sounds isolationist and like he would strike back harder. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the border</h3>
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<p>This week House Republicans have been demonstrating why it's so hard to work out any compromise with them: They don't actually want anything other than power. Their apparent policy positions are just postures they strike for Fox News and for their base voters.</p>
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<p>The Biden administration actually does want something: more military aid to Ukraine, which is fending off an invasion by Trump's pal Vladimir Putin. Originally, Biden hoped to get that aid included in <a href="https://time.com/6319570/ukraine-u-s-aid-republicans/">budget deal at the beginning of the fiscal year</a> (October 1). Most Senate Republicans and about half of House Republicans claim to back Ukraine aid, but it didn't make the first FY 2024 continuing resolution. Or the <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-signs-temporary-spending-bill-aid-for-ukraine-israel-is-stalled/7359219.html">second one</a> in November. </p>
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<p>Back in October, Biden repackaged Ukraine aid with Israel aid, figuring that strong Republican support for Israel would put it over the goal line. But no deal. He included money for increased enforcement at the Mexican border, because Republicans appeared to care about that. No deal: Republicans said they wanted policy changes, not just more money.</p>
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<p>OK, then. Biden and Senate Republicans have negotiated <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/28/politics/chris-murphy-immigration-border-deal-cnntv/index.html">policy changes</a> that cause Democrats some real heartburn: </p>
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<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/politics/senate-deal-shutdown-border/index.html">Components of the deal</a> include a new authority that allows the president to shut down the border between ports of entry when unlawful crossings reach high levels, reforming the asylum system to resolve cases in a shorter timeframe, and expediting work permits.</p>
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<p>Under the proposed deal, the Department of Homeland Security would be granted new emergency authority to shut down the border if daily average migrants crossing unlawfully reach 4,000 over a one-week span. Certain migrants would be allowed to stay if they proved to be fleeing torture or persecution in their countries.</p>
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<p>It’s impossible to close the border to asylum seekers because of current law, despite multiple attempts by Trump to do so while he was in office.</p>
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<p>Republican senators like <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-republicans-warn-house-wont-get-better-immigration-deal-trump-rcna134348">Lindsey Graham</a> are telling their colleagues in the House that this is a better deal than they are likely to get if Trump takes office in 2025, because Democrats would likely filibuster. (But of course Trump is going to be a dictator in his second term, so why should Republicans worry about what Congress will or won't do?)</p>
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<p>But there's still a problem: Republicans don't want to <em>do</em> something about the border, they want to have the worst possible situation so that they can blame Biden for it. Trump wants the border as a campaign issue. If the situation were to improve, that would be bad news for him. (In general, good news for America is bad news for Trump. He is openly rooting for an <a href="https://thehill.com/business/4401101-trump-biden-economy-recession-inflation/">economic crash</a>, and seems downright cheerful while predicting a "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmYOTMu5nBg">major terrorist attack</a>". The fact that the <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-s-p-500-futures-wilt-after-record-setting-run-as-pce-data-looms/card/u-s-stocks-march-higher-as-s-p-500-heads-for-sixth-straight-record-close-KKq7rs8kdlBmCX7huiMJ">stock market continues to set records</a> is an unfortunate development for him.)</p>
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<p>So Trump instructed Speaker Johnson to <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/01/29/trump-republicans-border-deal-senate-immigration">torpedo any border deal</a>, no matter what is in it. "It's not going to happen, and I'll fight it all the way." <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/mcconnell-doubt-ukraine-aid-immigration-border-deal-trump-republicans-rcna135626">Mitch McConnell</a> said: "When we started this, the border united us and Ukraine divided us. The politics on this have changed.</p>
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<p><a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/romney-trump-immigration-border-senate">Mitt Romney</a>, who still has one more year in the Senate, made a moral critique:</p>
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<p>The fact that [Trump] would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling. Someone running for president ought to try and get the problem solved as opposed to saying, "Hey, save that problem, don’t solve it, let me take credit for solving it later."</p>
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<p><a href="https://twitter.com/brianschatz/status/1751425249420198159">Democratic Senator Brian Schatz</a> of Hawaii commented:</p>
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<p>I think if Democrats were holding up funding for the defense of three allies unless we got an unrelated thing, and then we said no to the very thing we demanded because our nominee told us to kill it, that the media would justifiably go thermonuclear on us.</p>
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<p>Speaking of the border, <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2024/1/27/24051657/supreme-court-texas-border-immigration-greg-abbott-biden-invasion">what's going on in Texas</a> is truly outrageous. (And <a href="https://twitter.com/froomkin/status/1751026651943587846">Dan Fromkin</a> wants to know why the major media outlets are ignoring it. ) Texas has recently taken a variety of actions that essentially claim that it -- and not the federal government -- controls its border with Mexico.</p>
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<p id="3Zz7JR">Texas erected razor wire barriers along a river in Eagle Pass, Texas, that physically prevented federal Border Patrol agents from entering the area, processing migrants in those areas, or providing assistance to drowning victims. According to the DOJ, the Border Patrol was unable to aid an “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23A607/294669/20240102145055112_23A%20DHS%20v.%20Texas%20app.pdf">unconscious subject floating on top of the water”</a> because of these barriers.</p>
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<p id="8PZaBa">Federal law, moreover, provides that Border Patrol agents may “<a href="https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:8%20section:1357%20edition:prelim)">have access to private lands</a>, but not dwellings, for the purpose of patrolling the border to prevent the illegal entry of aliens into the United States.” So Texas claimed the power to use razor wire to prevent federal officers from performing their duties, in direct violation of a federal statute.</p>
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<p>Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in the federal government's favor, but only 5-4. The <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/012224zr_fd9g.pdf">order</a> was very terse, so we have no idea why Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh weren't on board. Do they really want to reinterpret the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_Clause">supremacy clause</a> of the Constitution?</p>
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<p>Even so, you might think a 5-4 Supreme Court decision would end the matter, but <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/texas-doubles-down-in-unprecedented-border-dispute-with-federal-government/">apparently not</a>. </p>
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<p>On Monday the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/supreme-court-texas-razor-wire-case-us-mexico-border/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Supreme Court said the federal government has the authority to remove razor wire</a> that Texas installed at the southern border. Homeland Security said Texas had until Friday to give federal authorities access to Eagle Pass. But Governor Abbott is doubling down saying he'll increase state patrol of the border, adding more barriers and more razor wire. </p>
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<p>Texas has two related disputes with the federal government: The feds want to remove a floating barrier Texas has put in the Rio Grande, and a Texas law (set to take effect in March) would give state judges the power to issue deportation orders.</p>
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<p>On his excellent blog Popular Information, <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-141136473">Judd Legum</a> goes into more detail, explaining how Governor Abbott is recreating the nullification crisis from the Jackson administration.</p>
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<p>I forget where I first heard this suggestion, but if we simultaneously let Texas secede and admit Puerto Rico, we don't have to change the flag.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the 2024 campaign</h3>
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<p>The Democratic side of the New Hampshire primary was muddled, because the DNC wants South Carolina to be the first primary. So NH was unofficial, Joe Biden was not on the ballot, Biden did not campaign in NH, and a bunch of Democratic-leaning independents probably voted on the Republican side for Haley. Nonetheless, Biden's write-in campaign got <a href="https://apnews.com/hub/ap-new-hampshire-election-2024-results">64% of the vote</a>, easily beating back challenges from Rep. Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson, whose campaigns <a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/01/09/rep-dean-phillips-zero-supporters-new-hampshire-challenge-biden-falters/">never caught fire</a>.</p>
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<p>Biden also got good economic news of two types: The economy continues to perform quite well, and the media is finally starting to take note of it. Both trends are captured in the WaPo's "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/01/28/global-economy-gdp-inflation/">Falling inflation, rising growth give U.S. the world’s best recovery</a>". </p>
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<p>I forgot to mention last week that the general public is also starting to catch on: <a href="http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/">consumer sentiment</a> has jumped in recent months. </p>
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<p>After losing in New Hampshire, Nikki Haley has just one possible winning strategy (other than hoping that some court takes Trump out of the race; see above): Her continued presence in the race annoys Trump, and if she needles him enough he might act out in ways that even his supporters will have to see as crazy. </p>
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<p>This week she characterized Trump's notably ungracious victory speech in New Hampshire as a "<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/01/27/haley-calls-trump-unhinged/72384809007/">temper tantrum</a>" and called him "unhinged". She's also alluded to his apparent cognitive decline: "<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4424884-haley-on-trump-weve-seen-him-get-confused/">We've seen him get confused.</a>"</p>
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<p>For some time I've been pointing to the media magnifying symptoms of Biden's age while minimizing Trump's far more serious mental glitches. Apparently they <a href="https://www.thedailypoliticususa.com/p/now-that-a-republican-has-said-something?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2">needed some Republican's permission</a> before they could raise Trump's cognitive issues.</p>
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<p>If I were running Haley's campaign, I would want her to hammer on the point that he won't debate because he's not up to the challenge. Make it a real playground put-up-or-shut-up thing. I double-dog dare you to debate me.</p>
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<p>Since Trump's New Hampshire victory made his nomination seem inevitable, news-network talking heads have been speculating about his VP choice. What's weird to me is that hardly anybody is saying the obvious: Trump thinks he made a mistake picking Mike Pence, because Pence eventually realized he had a moral code and a responsibility to America. So he didn't help Trump stay in office after losing the 2020 election. Like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27d_Do_Anything_for_Love_(But_I_Won%27t_Do_That)">Meat Loaf</a>, Pence would do anything for Trump, but he wouldn't do that.</p>
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<p>Trump doesn't want to make that same mistake again. So what he is mainly looking for is someone with no moral code, no loyalty to America, and no will of his or her own that might conflict with Trump's will. </p>
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<p>In <em>All the King's Men</em>, the Boss explained his choice of the comically unctuous Tiny Duffy as lieutenant governor: "You get somebody somebody can trust maybe, and you got to sit up nights worrying whether you are the somebody. You get Tiny, and you can get a good night's sleep."</p>
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<p>So: <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-141078486">Elise Stefanik</a>, then.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p>If you've ever wondered where those media takes on "real Americans" come from, <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/1/18/2217897/-Cartoon-Diner-Journalism">Tom the Dancing Bug</a> explains:</p>
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<p>It looks like Taylor Swift is headed to the Super Bowl. Apparently some fans are annoyed with how often the cameras show us Swift in a luxury box at Kansas City Chief games, but I'm amused. From what little I know of Swift's biography, she missed a lot of typical schoolgirl stuff while she was working to make it in the music business. Now, in her 30s, she finally gets the quintessential high school experience of rooting for her boyfriend's football team and wearing his team jacket. I'm happy for her.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://www.abc27.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/55/2024/01/24014018393033.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></figure>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something eponymous</h3>
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<p>What happens when <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1JmOEWzOHQ">an actual penguin interns at Penguin Books</a>?</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-40219661195153116102024-01-22T11:43:00.002-05:002024-01-22T11:43:37.500-05:00Patterns of Stereotypes<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>The orthodox theory holds that a public opinion constitutes a moral judgment on a group of facts. The theory I am suggesting is that, in the present state of education, a public opinion is primarily a moralized and codified version of the facts. I am arguing that the pattern of stereotypes at the center of our codes largely determines what group of facts we shall see, and in what light we shall see them</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- Walter Lippmann, <em>Public Opinion</em> (1921)</p>
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<p>This week's featured post is "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/01/22/monkeywrenching-the-regulations-that-protect-our-lives/">Monkey-wrenching the Regulations that Protect Our Lives</a>".</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about Iowa and New Hampshire</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://wehco.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/img/photos/2024/01/18/240121_The_Primary_Ballot_t800.jpg?90232451fbcadccc64a17de7521d859a8f88077d" width=580 alt="" /></figure>
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<p>The <a href="https://apnews.com/hub/ap-iowa-election-2024-results">Iowa caucuses</a> happened last Monday, with Donald Trump getting a little over 50% of the Republican vote. How you interpret that depends on how you frame Trump's role in the GOP. If you think of him as a presidential candidate among other presidential candidates, it's a very strong result; he has more support than all his rivals combined. But if you frame him as the incumbent leader of the party, it's a rather weak result. Imagine, for example, how the press will cover Biden if a Democratic primary is held somewhere, and he barely clears 50%.</p>
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<p>In any case, nobody should attach too much importance to the result, because we're talking about very few people. Just <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iowa-caucus-turnout-2024/">110K Iowa Republicans turned out</a>, out of 752K registered Republicans statewide and <a href="https://independentvoterproject.org/voter-stats/ia">over 2 million</a> total registered voters. That was down from 187K Republican caucus voters in 2016.</p>
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<p>Last week I said that if DeSantis finished third in Iowa, he should drop out. He finished second, and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ron-desantis-250c8ed4b49843350e258f0c2754c8ba">dropped out yesterday</a> anyway. His withdrawal doesn't seem all that consequential because he didn't have a lot of support anyway (that's why he's dropping out), and it's not clear which way his voters will go. If they supported DeSantis because they liked Trump's policies but realize that the man himself is a threat to democracy, they'll go to Haley. But if they just wanted a younger Trump, they'll go to Trump.</p>
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<p>I would interpret the Iowa result this way: If you were hoping for the Republican Party to reject Trump on their own, you need to accept that it's not going to happen. </p>
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<p>We should see that confirmed tomorrow in New Hampshire: <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/21/politics/new-hampshire-primary-poll-trump-haley-desantis/index.html">Trump is leading in the polls</a>, but New Hampshire is a tricky state to predict, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna22551718">as Barack Obama discovered in 2016</a>. So while a Haley victory isn't likely, it is possible.</p>
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<p>But even that outcome wouldn't lead to a broader Trump defeat. NH is ideal terrain for Haley, and many Biden-leaning independents may cross over to vote for her. But that's not a winning formula going forward.</p>
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<p>There really is only one scenario where a NH loss leads to Trump's undoing, and that depends on him: Everybody will be watching him, so if he responds to an unexpected loss with a racist, sexist, and generally unhinged temper tantrum, even Republicans might begin to wonder about his sanity.</p>
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<p>Speaking in Concord, NH on Friday, Trump <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-confuses-nikki-haley-pelosi-talking-jan-6-rcna134863">mixed up Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley</a>, claiming that Haley was in charge of security on January 6. (His usual lie assigns that role to Pelosi.) But we're supposed to worry about Biden's mental acuity.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/01/07/bramhall-editorial-cartoons-january-february-2024/"><img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.nydailynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/TOON011724.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>The other Trump news is all legal: The second E. Jean Carroll defamation trial got underway. The judge, following proper legal procedure, is not letting Trump re-argue something <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-rape-carroll-trial-fe68259a4b98bb3947d42af9ec83d7db">already decided by a previous jury</a>: that Trump really did sexually assault Carroll.</p>
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<p>Trump's "defense", if you want to call it that, is to replay the greatest hits of toxic masculinity. A standard claim to throw at rape victims is "Didn't you actually enjoy it?" Well, <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-opening-arguments-struck/">CNN's Joey Jackson</a> summarized the Trump attorney's opening statement: You weren't <em>injured</em> by Trump's defamation, you <em>benefited </em>from it.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>It was sort of like hey, listen, be thankful Trump made you famous, right? The reality is that what do we have to do with social media and mean tweets that you get on social media. If you take on a person apt to be the president, guess what? You're in the position you want to be. You're on TV all the time. Emotional pain and damages, what are you talking about?</p>
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<p>When Trump was in the courtroom, he kept muttering and commenting loud enough for the jury to hear, until <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/01/17/trump-e-jean-carroll-trial">the judge threatened to remove him</a>. On the campaign trail and on social media, he keeps repeating the remarks that the previous jury had determined were defamatory.</p>
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<p>Trump's behavior underlines the need for substantial punitive damages, over and above Carroll's emotional suffering and loss of reputation. The point of punitive damages is to make the defamation stop, which the $5 million original award has failed to accomplish.</p>
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<p>In addition to the Carroll trial, we're awaiting the judge's decision in the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/live-blog/trump-fraud-trial-live-updates-rcna131890">NY state fraud trial</a>. We're also waiting for an appeals court to rule on <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-awaiting-ruling-says-presidents-must-complete-total-immunity-rcna134483">Trump's claim of presidential immunity</a>, and for the Supreme Court to hear arguments about <a href="https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4416828-trump-urges-supreme-court-to-put-swift-and-decisive-end-to-14th-amendment-challenges/">whether the 14th Amendment disqualifies him from being president again</a>. </p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://jensorensen.com/2024/01/19/pundits-trump-insurrection-ballot-cartoon/"><img src="https://jensorensen.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/punditspave600.png" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>This moment in the Trump trials reminds me of the period between the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 and the first ObamaCare insurance policies in 2014. The program was deeply unpopular then, basically because Republicans could say whatever they wanted about "death panels" or whatever, and ordinary people didn't have any experience that could prove them wrong. Today, though, if you talk about repealing ObamaCare, millions of people understand that they would lose their health insurance. At its nadir in late 2013, only 33% of Americans had a <a href="https://www.kff.org/interactive/kff-health-tracking-poll-the-publics-views-on-the-aca/#?response=Favorable--Unfavorable&aRange=all">favorable opinion of ObamaCare</a>, while 59% do now.</p>
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<p>Similarly, today everybody knows that Trump has been indicted, but since the cases haven't gone to trial (largely due to Trump's stalling tactics), he can say whatever he wants about the evidence, the prosecutors, and the judges. </p>
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<p>If you live in the Fox News echo chamber, you've heard Trump's claims, but you know nothing about the seriousness of the crimes he's accused of or the strength of the evidence against him. It's all just a witchhunt, a "weaponization" of the Justice Department and the legal system. He didn't do anything wrong. If he did do something wrong, everybody does it. And if everybody doesn't do it, there would still be "bedlam" if he were ever held to account.</p>
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<p>But despite Trump's stalling, at least one case is likely to go to trial before the election, and probably result in a conviction. That will be harder to spin away.</p>
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<p>BTW: Think about that stalling. If Trump really believed that he had done nothing wrong and the indictments were all a coordinated political witchhunt, he'd be eager to go to trial so he could poke holes in the flimsy evidence against him. When a jury found him innocent after some minimal deliberation, he could crow about being vindicated. But in the real world, Trump knows he's guilty and that the government has the goods on him, so stalling until he's president again (and has the tools to obstruct justice) is his best bet.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Gaza War</h3>
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<p>The shock of the October 7 attacks by Hamas welded together a lot of people with divergent views. In Israel, a unity government was formed, a startling departure from recent years when Netanyahu has hung on by finding allies to cobble together narrow majorities in the Knesset, and a new election is needed every year or two. The Biden administration also signed on to the coalition, and has stood with Israel whenever it has been challenged in the UN and elsewhere. </p>
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<p>But this week we began to see cracks in that coalition. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/20/netanyahu-defies-biden-insisting-theres-no-space-for-palestinian-state">Netanyahu is increasingly hostile to the Biden administration</a>, and <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-783168">Israel's internal political divisions are re-emerging</a>. </p>
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<p>The war is increasingly becoming a slog, which is causing the world to forget Israel's October 7 suffering and focus instead on the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Meanwhile, military operations are failing to find and rescue the hostages, and the goal of eradicating Hamas seems ever more distant. Polls indicate that Netanyahu's goose is cooked once elections are held, which the government doesn't want to hold during wartime. And that makes critics wonder how committed the prime minister is to ending the war.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and something you probably didn't know you should care about</h3>
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<p>Probably the words "Chevron doctrine" make your eyes glaze over. But they shouldn't. In the <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/01/22/monkeywrenching-the-regulations-that-protect-our-lives/">featured post</a>, I try to explain why the Supreme Court's looming revision of Chevron means that six corporate-tool foxes are about the seize control of the agencies that regulate all of America's hen houses.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p>This week's hopeful take on climate change comes from <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/why-is-this-happening/2023-turning-point-climate-robinson-meyer-podcast-transcript-rcna133778">Chris Hayes' interview with climate journalist Robinson Meyer</a>. Near the end of the interview, Meyer talks about about lowering carbon emissions sector by sector:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>We used to think the power sector was really, really hard. The power sector was the biggest source of [carbon] emissions in the US. Then cheap wind and solar happened (and we switched from coal to natural gas) and very rapidly power emissions fell. </p>
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<p>And then ... transportation became the most polluting sector of the US economy. But what's about to happen in the next few years [as EV prices drop] is that transportation's about to fall to second place, and industry will be the most polluting sector of the economy. </p>
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<p>And what I suspect will happen is, just as happened with the power sector and the transportation sector, is that once industry is the most polluting sector of the economy, and people really start to focus on it, we're going to see all these easy-to-abate emissions, that we just haven't really noticed yet. And we're going to get rid of them really quickly. And so, to some degree steel, chemicals, [agriculture], these are huge, challenging problems. On the other hand, they're challenging problems because we just haven't paid attention to them yet.</p>
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<p>Meanwhile, there's one fossil-fuel-reducing project that has bipartisan support: ethanol made from corn. If only it weren't <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/178242/ethanol-inefficient-climate-policy">such a bad idea</a>. If, rather than fueling internal-combustion-engine cars with ethanol, we charged EVs with solar energy, one acre of solar panels could power as much transportation as 100 acres of corn. At least that's what 200 science faculty at 31 Iowa colleges and universities think.</p>
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<p>Reportedly, climate change is "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/18/climate/davos-puts-climate-on-the-back-burner.html">on the back burner</a>" for the plutocratic overlords at Davos this year. Also, they're <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/21/jpmorgan-ceo-jamie-dimon-defends-trump">sanguine about Trump regaining power</a> and continuing to cut their taxes and deregulate their businesses. I'm reminded of <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-big-business-bailed-out-nazis">Krupp and I. G. Farben in the early 1930s</a>.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://media.newyorker.com/cartoons/65aa6f2a202acb471d3d48ec/master/w_1600,c_limit/A28624.jpg" width=580 alt="" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><em>"Everyone on this stage is committed to a future of net-zero income tax payments."</em></figcaption></figure>
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<p>Did you hear that Biden has decriminalized crime? That's one of the many things you don't know because you don't watch Fox News. Fortunately, <a href="https://twitter.com/abughazalehkat/status/1748430583737294942">Kat Abu does</a>.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something fake</h3>
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<p>When you work hard to get things right and not be fooled by misinformation, once in a while it feels good to revel in complete fraud. Kueez.com has collected <a href="https://www.kueez.com/en/photos-everyone-real-not?ly=native_one&abtv=2aefe460-6a81-414a-b529-a9fa1f83a124">viral photos that weren't all they appeared to be</a>. Some are amusing, some are head-shaking, and others are laugh-out-loud funny. Probably my favorite is a water-surrounded rock and a castle getting photoshopped together.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://posts-cdn.kueez.net/tnGQT5MirZKddMsx/image-cjyyOcCbGuQoao1K.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></figure>
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<p>The actual rock is in Thailand and the castle in Germany, but the combination has the single quality all successful misinformation must have: You look at it and you want it to be real.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-11955981812444654132024-01-15T12:19:00.001-05:002024-01-15T12:19:53.574-05:00Love and Justice<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>Now, we got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best, power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. And this is what we must see as we move on.</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- Martin Luther King <br>"<a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/where-do-we-go-here">Where Do We Go From Here?</a>" (1967)</p>
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<p>This week's featured post is "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/01/15/the-corruption-of-the-evangelical-movement/">The Corruption of the Evangelical Movement</a>", which is my review of Tim Alberta's <em>The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory</em>.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about the Yemen attacks</h3>
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<p>Thursday, the US and the UK, supported by a number of other allies, launched <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/11/politics/us-strikes-houthis-yemen/index.html">air attacks on the Houthi rebels in Yemen</a>. If you responded to that news by asking "The Who rebels Where?", I sympathize. Yemen is a pretty much godforsaken place south of Saudi Arabia, where the Red Sea turns a corner and becomes the Gulf of Aden. You probably don't own anything imported from Yemen. It has few resources, it's running out of water, and its people are desperately poor. </p>
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<p>Yemen also has a <a href="https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/war-yemen">civil war</a> that's been going since 2014, because no matter how poor a nation is, it can always afford more guns. There's a Sunni government backed by the Saudis, and the Shia Houthi rebels are backed by Iran. <a href="https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/01/12/the-houthis-have-survived-worse-than-americas-and-britains-strikes">The Economist</a> reports:</p>
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<p>The <small>UN</small> estimates that 223,000 people have died from hunger and lack of medical care since the war began. 80% of the population now lives in poverty.</p>
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<p><a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/01/08/catching-up-on-the-gaza-war/">Last week</a> I talked about terrorist strategy, where sometimes it makes sense to provoke someone much stronger than you in hopes that their over-reaction will win you international sympathy and new recruits. That seems to be what is happening here. The US doesn't want to get involved in the Yemen war, where there really are no good guys. But for weeks the Houthis have been using Iran-supplied drones and missiles to attack ships in the Red Sea, which is one of the world's busiest and most important trade routes. (More geography: The Suez canal sits at the other end of the Red Sea, so the Red Sea is the most efficient way for ships to pass between Europe and India or East Asia. It's also how oil tankers from the Persian Gulf get to Europe.)</p>
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<p>The Houthi attacks were starting to have a significant effect on world trade, so the Biden administration felt like it had to do something. </p>
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<p>But the attacks are unlikely to end the Houthi rebellion, or even to deter it much. The Houthis have already endured much worse at the hands of the Saudis. At best, we have destroyed a chunk of their offensive capacity, so their attacks on shipping will have to die down until Iran can resupply them. <a href="https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/01/12/the-houthis-have-survived-worse-than-americas-and-britains-strikes">The Economist</a> again:</p>
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<p>Conflict with the West could have other benefits for them. Their supposed blockade of Israel has already won them new admiration across the Arab world, tapping into pro-Palestinian sentiment at a time when Arab states are feckless bystanders to the war in Gaza. Being targeted by America, while anti-Americanism is running high because of Mr Biden’s support for Israel, will add to their popularity.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the looming government shutdown</h3>
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<p>The observation that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it is attributed to <a href="https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/those-who-do-not-learn-history-doomed-to-repeat-it-really/">Santayana</a>, and the underlying idea goes back to <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/18978-to-be-ignorant-of-what-occurred-before-you-were-born">Cicero</a>. Usually when we quote that, we're talking about things that happened decades or centuries ago, but in the current situation "history" is what happened in <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/30/government-shutdown-live-updates-congress-faces-funding-deadline.html">September</a> and <a href="https://www.nlc.org/article/2023/11/17/federal-update-government-shutdown-averted-again-no-fy24-budget-in-sight/">November</a>, which we are now repeating.</p>
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<p>The short version is that Republicans have a small majority (down to <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4385589-house-gop-majority-to-shrink-to-2-with-ohio-lawmakers-early-resignation/">two seats</a> now) in the House, while Democrats control the Senate and the White House. In order for the government to spend money (which it needs to do to keep the doors open), all three have to agree. MAGA radicals in the House believe that this position should allow them to dictate large cuts in federal spending (which are popular in the abstract, but unpopular when implemented). Democrats disagree, believing that the public will blame Republicans for any pain caused by a government shutdown. So they're not inclined to roll over and accept the MAGA-demanded cuts, which probably can't even pass the House.</p>
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<p>In September, Speaker McCarthy saw this reality and negotiated a continuing resolution which more-or-less left federal spending intact until November. That act of rationality could not be allowed to stand, so MAGA Republicans forced McCarthy out. After much turmoil, he was replaced by Speaker Mike Johnson, whose conservative bona fides are much stronger than McCarthy's were.</p>
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<p>But reality is reality, so Johnson had to make a similar deal in November, cutting the federal-spending can into two pieces and kicking them to different points on the calendar. The first can comes up Friday, and reality still has not changed. </p>
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<p>Last night, Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/15/politics/congress-government-shutdown-deadline/index.html">released the text of a continuing resolution</a> that would kick both cans into March. The House "Freedom" Caucus is outraged again, but what it will do is unclear.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Trump trials</h3>
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<p>Trial season is gearing up, and it's hard to tell the players without a program. Closing arguments in New York State's civil fraud trial against the Trump Organization happened last week. It's a bench trial, so now we're <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/11/trump-fraud-trial-closing-arguments-in-new-york-court.html">waiting on the judge</a> rather than a jury. Judge Engoron has already issued a summary judgment that the Trumps committed fraud, so the trial was largely to assess damages. </p>
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<p>Engoron will consider whether to grant the attorney general’s request to fine Trump $370 million, ban him from the state’s real estate industry for life and bar him from serving as the officer or director of a New York corporation.</p>
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<p>Engoron knows Trump is looking for grounds to appeal, so he will be very careful in how he justifies his judgment. Observers are predicting a decision in "weeks" rather than days or months.</p>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/14/donald-trump-return-court-e-jean-carroll-defamation-damages">second E. Jean Carroll defamation trial </a>starts tomorrow. Basically, Carroll says Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in 1995. Trump met those charges (in a book Carroll wrote) with insults, so Carroll sued him for defamation. The statute of limitations had passed for accusing him of the original assault, but New York changed the law in 2022. So she sued for damages from the assault and for insults he made after he left office. She won a $5 million settlement, which Trump is appealing.</p>
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<p>Now <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/14/donald-trump-return-court-e-jean-carroll-defamation-damages">the original defamation suit is coming to trial,</a> having been delayed by all sorts of wrangling about when presidents can be sued. The judge is refusing to let Trump relitigate issues resolved in the first trial, such as whether the assault happened and whether his comments were defamatory.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/01/07/bramhall-editorial-cartoons-january-february-2024/"><img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.nydailynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/TOON011024.jpg?fit=1280%2C9999px&ssl=1" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>We're waiting for a federal appeals court to weigh in on <a href="https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-court-hearing-immunity-01-09-24/index.html">whether presidential immunity prevents the government from trying Trump on January 6 charges</a>. They are unlikely to agree with Trump on this, but how exactly they refute his claim of immunity will be important. Also important: how long they take to rule and how much time they allow for an appeal to the Supreme Court. </p>
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<p>The Supreme Court has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-hear-trump-appeal-colorado-ballot-disqualification-2024-01-05/">agreed to review</a> the Colorado Supreme Court's decision that Trump is disqualified from the presidency by the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment. Oral arguments are scheduled for February 8. It's hard to imagine this Court kicking Trump off the ballot, but it's not clear how exactly they'll get around the text of the 14th Amendment.</p>
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<p>Meanwhile, Trump threatens "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/10/donald-trump-bedlam-criminal-cases">bedlam</a>" if court decisions don't go his way. And <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/bomb-threat-targeted-home-judge-trumps-civil-fraud-trial-rcna133416">Judge Engoron suffered a bomb threat at his home</a>. Judge Tanya Chutkan was the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-judge-trumps-election-case-subject-apparent-swatting-incident-2024-01-08/">victim of a "swatting" incident</a>, in which a false emergency call sent armed police to her home. </p>
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<p>Elected Republicans almost universally ignore all this. It's just become accepted that Trump will goad on his violent supporters, and that crossing Trump will entail physical risk. It's the modern version of the Nazi brownshirts. </p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2024/jan/13/thumbs-up/?fbclid=IwAR2GQS2ZYfDZrrm3n4QT2VV_aSGWeLARgC_yQKXilKZDq3BXqzx5VRbscw0"><img src="https://wehco.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/img/photos/2024/01/11/240114_Thumbs_Up_t800.jpg?90232451fbcadccc64a17de7521d859a8f88077d" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">but I wrote about the Evangelical heresy of Christian Nationalism</h3>
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<p>Or, more precisely, Tim Alberta wrote about it, and <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/01/15/the-corruption-of-the-evangelical-movement/">I reviewed his book</a>.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p>The Iowa Caucuses are tonight. I can't remember the last time these were a smaller deal. Democrats aren't having one, and Trump will obviously win the Republican caucuses. The only suspense is whether Nikki Haley can finish second. If she does, Ron DeSantis should drop out.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://claytoonz.com/2024/01/12/marjorie-frees-willy/"><img src="https://claytoonz.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/cjonesrgb01142024.jpg?w=600" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>The Hunter Biden circus continues. Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee debated citing Hunter Biden for contempt because he refused a subpoena to be interviewed behind closed doors and insisted on testifying in public. Who should show up for this hearing but Hunter himself?</p>
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<p>The debate went forward, underlining what a farce it all is. Republicans would say that the American people deserve answers from Hunter, and Democrats would respond: "There he is. Let's ask him", which the Republicans would refuse to do.</p>
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<p>I'm adding this Oversight Committee Democrat, Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, to my list of politicians I would pay money to hear. Watch <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/rep-crockett-gop-s-hunter-biden-spectacle-is-about-pleasing-trump-201720389886">this clip</a> from Wednesday night's Chris Hayes show. </p>
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<p>Friday, Hunter announced <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/12/hunter-biden-agrees-to-deposition-as-congress-moves-to-contempt-resolution.html">he would appear for non-public testimony</a>.</p>
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<p><a href="https://apnews.com/article/world-court-israel-genocide-gaza-south-africa-774ab3c3d57fd7bcc627602eaf47fd98">South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel</a> to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, and is seeking an immediate order to stop the military campaign in Gaza.</p>
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<p>A decision on South Africa’s request for so-called provisional measures will probably take weeks. The full case is likely to last years.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/24019720/south-africa-israel-genocide-case-gaza-hamas-palestinians">Vox</a> explains:</p>
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<p>Under international humanitarian law, proving allegations of genocide is incredibly difficult. And even if South Africa does prove that Israel is committing genocide — or that it is failing to prosecute incitement to genocide or prevent genocide from occurring — ICJ decisions aren’t necessarily easy to enforce. But these initial arguments aren’t yet entering that complicated territory.Instead, they’re about whether the ICJ will issue a preliminary order for Israel to stop its onslaught in Gaza immediately; the court will rule on that issue after hearing arguments from South Africa and Israel Thursday and Friday. Though Israel could ignore that ruling if it’s issued, it could make Israel’s allies less inclined to support the war.</p>
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<p>Despite the difficulties, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/12/opinion/israel-icj-genocide-south-africa.html">NYT contributor Megan Stack</a> says the charges deserve serious consideration. </p>
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<p>The word “genocide” rings loudly in our imagination. We think of Rwanda, Bosnia, the Armenians, the Trail of Tears and, of course, the Holocaust. I have heard many people balk at the suggestion that Gaza could be experiencing genocide. The Holocaust, after all, wiped out over 60 percent of European Jews. Israel’s war — instigated, no less, by the murder of Jews — has killed about 1 percent of the Palestinians in Gaza. One percent is terrible, of course, but <em>genocide</em>?</p>
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<p>Under the genocide convention, though, the term describes an intent to wipe out a defined group of people and taking steps to achieve that end. There is no threshold of death, or proportion of death, that must be reached. It is possible to kill a relatively small number of people, but still commit an act of genocide.</p>
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<p>Saturday, the people of Taiwan <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/13/asia/taiwan-presidential-election-results-intl-hnk/index.html">shrugged off Chinese threats</a> and elected another president from the Democratic Progressive Party.</p>
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<p>The result shows voters backing the DPP’s view that Taiwan is a de facto sovereign nation that should bolster defenses against China’s threats and deepen relations with fellow democratic countries, even if that means economic punishment or military intimidation by Beijing.</p>
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<p>It is also a further snub to eight years of increasingly strongarm tactics towards Taiwan under Xi who has vowed that the island’s eventual “reunification” with the mainland is “a historical inevitability”.</p>
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<p>The New Yorker lays out the case that <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/01/15/abortion-high-risk-pregnancy-yeni-glick">a Texas woman died because of that state's abortion laws</a>. This case gets to the heart of how tricky life-of-the-mother exceptions really are. </p>
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<p>Yeniifer Alvarez was an uninsured woman living in a part of central Texas without good health care, particularly prenatal care. She was overweight, diabetic, and had a history of pulmonary edema "in which the lungs fill with fluid, that strains the heart and can be fatal". </p>
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<p>Her pregnancy was obviously risky, and a wealthier or better-insured woman would have been under constant observation. In a state with different laws, a precautionary abortion might have been performed, under the theory that the risks were too high. When the crisis came, it took too long to get her to a hospital capable of handling her case, and she died in an ambulance.</p>
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<p>Life-of-the-mother exceptions in abortion laws tend to assume binary choices: She gets the abortion or she dies. The less solid notion of unacceptable risk just doesn't enter the picture.</p>
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<p>Here's <a href="https://twitter.com/abughazalehkat/status/1745898136193655271">Kat Abu's weekly recap of Fox News</a>.</p>
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<p>Josh Marshall makes an unpopular point that I happen to agree with: Bad as the execution looked at the time, <a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/biden-was-right/sharetoken/WjCE2Xr45aeT">Biden was right to get us out of Afghanistan</a>.</p>
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<p>I made a New Year's resolution to highlight more positive news about the climate and efforts to cut carbon emissions. In that vein, the Dutch company Elysian is trying to develop the first practical <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/91008965/this-electric-plane-is-the-first-one-that-could-actually-replace-commercial-flights">electric airliner</a>. Previous electrical plane designs have carried few passengers relatively small distances, but Elysian is picturing a 90-seat plane that can go nearly 500 miles on a charge.</p>
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<p>For comparison, New York to Boston and New York to D.C. are each a little over 200 miles. </p>
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<p>The New York Times Magazine raises an interesting question: Could an engineering project <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/06/magazine/glacier-engineering-sea-level-rise.html">divert warm-water flows away from a Greenland glacier</a> and prevent it from sliding into the ocean and melting? If that idea is feasible, how big an expense would it justify?</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something adorable</h3>
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<p>The young of just about any species can be cute. But baby rhinos? Yes, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaSZaDvrTN0">baby rhinos</a>.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-77221561909162619282024-01-08T12:40:00.001-05:002024-01-08T12:40:28.627-05:00Endings and Beginnings<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780191826719.001.0001/q-oro-ed4-00006743">John Locke</a><br>Two Treatises on Government (1689)</p>
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<p>This week's featured posts are <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/01/08/catching-up-on-donald-trump/">Catching Up on Donald Trump</a> and <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/01/08/catching-up-on-the-gaza-war/">Catching Up on the Gaza War</a>.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about disqualifying Trump</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://claytoonz.com/2023/12/26/stinky-racist-disqualified/"><img src="https://claytoonz.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/cjonesrgb12282023.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>That, and a bunch of other Trump news, is covered in <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/01/08/catching-up-on-donald-trump/">one featured post</a>. Something I forgot to mention in that post was <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-presents-interesting-theory-magnets-155136264.html">Trump's weird rant against magnets</a>.</p>
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<p>On the subject of magnetic elevators, Trump said, "Think of it, magnets. Now all I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that's the end of the magnets.</p>
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<p>In the inspiring words of the <a href="https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=insane+clown+posse+miracles+lyrics">Insane Clown Posse</a>: "Fuckin' magnets, how do they work?"</p>
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<p>But, you know, it's Biden whose mind we are supposed to worry about.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Gaza War</h3>
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<p>which is covered in the <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2024/01/08/catching-up-on-the-gaza-war/">other featured post</a>. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and January 6</h3>
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<p>In the immediate aftermath of Trump's failed coup, the GOP establishment and conservative commentariat almost universally recognized 1-6 for what it was: un-American, over the line, terrorism, etc. Over the last three years, they have completely changed their tune. Rep. Elise Stefanik, chair of the House Republican conference, is typical: Sunday she referred to those who have been tried, convicted, and sentenced for crimes committed on January 6 as "<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/07/politics/elise-stefanik-january-6-prisoners-liz-cheney/index.html">hostages</a>".</p>
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<p>I believe we’re seeing the weaponization of the federal government against not just President Trump, but we’re seeing it against conservatives.</p>
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<p>She refused to commit to certifying the 2024 election.</p>
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<p>We will see if this is a legal and valid election. What we’re seeing so far is that Democrats are so desperate they’re trying to remove President Trump from the ballot.</p>
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<p>Of course, President Trump will only be removed from ballots if the conservative majority on the Supreme Court finds that the Constitution disqualifies him. "Democrats" can do nothing on their own.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and 2023 becoming 2024</h3>
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<p>2023 was another great year for jobs. The economy <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/05/us-economy-inflation-jobs-report-december">added 2.7 million jobs</a> during the year, bringing the 2-year total to 7.5 million new jobs. The unemployment rate held steady at 3.7% in December, and has stayed below 4% for <a href="https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000">23 consecutive months</a>. The Trump administration's longest streak below 4% was 13 months.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/12/17/which-economy-did-best-in-2023?utm_campaign=r.the-economist-sunday-today&utm_medium=email.internal-newsletter.np&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=12/17/2023&utm_id=1835747">The Economist</a> combined "inflation, inflation breadth, <small>GDP</small>, jobs, and stock market performance" into a single index to rank 35 "mostly rich" countries' economic performance in 2023. The US came in third, behind Greece and South Korea, and I might quibble about ranking us that low: Greece's advantage is mainly in its stock market, which was up 44% compared to the US' 4.3% gain. </p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://weeklysift.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/graph_globalavgsurfacetemp.png"><img src="https://weeklysift.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/graph_globalavgsurfacetemp.png?w=1024" width=580 alt="" class="wp-image-39025" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><a href="https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature">https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature</a></figcaption></figure>
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<p>2023 was the hottest year on record by a wide margin, as global warming teamed up with an unusually strong El Nino. As anyone who follows sports knows, that's how records get set: a trend gets topped off by special factors. (For example, Barry Bonds' 73 home runs in 2001 was the best season of the best hitter in the home-run-happy steroid era. Between 1998 and 2001, three hitters posted <a href="https://www.espn.com/mlb/history/leaders/_/breakdown/singlepost/sort/homeRuns">six seasons of 63+ home runs</a>, a figure no one else has reached before or since.)</p>
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<p>The El Nino is expected to continue into this year, so 2024 could be equally hot or hotter. But it might not be, and by 2025 we can expect some regression to the mean. (In other words: Outliers are typically followed by something less outlying. For example, Shaquille O'Neal is 7'1", but <a href="https://www.essentiallysports.com/nba-basketball-news-shaquille-oneals-younger-daughters-height-at-just-15-years-of-age-will-stun-nba-fans/">his son is only 6'10"</a> -- tall, but not as tall as Dad.) What that would mean in this case is that 2024 or 2025 will be hot, probably hotter than the average of 2018-2022, but probably not as hot as 2023. When we look back from 2030 or so, the upward trend will continue to be clear, but 2023 will probably stick up above the trend line.</p>
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<p>1998 was a year like that: significantly hotter than any year before, but also hotter than several years after. And you know what we saw? Climate-change-denying authors writing that <a href="https://geographyfieldwork.com/GlobalWarming.htm">global warming ended in 1998</a>. You can guess what they did: If you start your graph at 1998, it looks like global average temperature <a href="https://ossfoundation.org/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/global-warming-stopped/">goes sideways</a> for several years. (The two graphs here aren't tracking precisely the same things, so they don't perfectly match up.)</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://ossfoundation.org/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/global-warming-stopped/"><img src="https://ossfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Trend-1998-2008.png" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>Warming trend? What warming trend?</p>
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<p>So don't be fooled over the next few years if you see articles claiming that the danger has passed, because global warming peaked in 2023 or 2024. It won't have passed; the trend will just be catching up to a year with some special circumstances.</p>
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<p>Kat Abu, who watches Fox News so we don't have to, announced her <a href="https://twitter.com/abughazalehkat/status/1742166492764889100">Fox News predictions for 2024</a>. A few highlights:</p>
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<ul><!-- wp:list-item -->
<li>Greg Gutfeld is going to say the N-word.</li>
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<li>If Trump is found guilty of anything this year, Sean Hannity will start his show with the words "Today, all of America was found guilty."</li>
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<li>A host will overtly call for the assassination of Joe Biden.</li>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Governor DeWine's veto</h3>
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<p>On December 18, the Ohio legislature passed a <a href="https://search-prod.lis.state.oh.us/solarapi/v1/general_assembly_135/bills/hb68/EN/05/hb68_05_EN?format=pdf">Substitute House Bill 68</a>, which included this:</p>
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<p>Sec. 3129.02. (A) A physician shall not knowingly do any of the following: (1) Perform gender reassignment surgery on a minor individual; (2) Prescribe a cross-sex hormone or puberty-blocking drug for a minor individual for the purpose of assisting the minor individual with gender transition; (3) Engage in conduct that aids or abets in the practices described in division (A)(1) or (2) of this section, provided that this section may not be construed to impose liability on any speech protected by federal or state law. ...</p>
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<p>Sec. 3129.05. (A) Any violation of section 3129.02, section 3129.03, or section 3129.06 of the Revised Code shall be considered unprofessional conduct and subject to discipline by the applicable professional licensing board.</p>
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<p>So, Ohio doctors who provided gender-affirming care for minors (with or without parental consent) would lose their licenses.</p>
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<p>On December 30, Governor DeWine, a Republican, announced that he was <a href="https://www.cnn.com/politics/ohio-dewine-transgender-house-bill-68/index.html">vetoing this bill</a>. He said:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Were I to sign Substitute House Bill 68 or were Substitute House Bill 68 to become law, Ohio would be saying that the State, that the government, knows what is best medically for a child rather than the two people who love that child the most, the parents.</p>
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<p>In other words, the people <em>who are actually involved in the specific case</em> should make the decision, not the government. I wonder when DeWine or any other Republicans will grasp that this is also a reason to oppose abortion bans at any number of weeks. In some particular cases, you may not agree with the decision made by the people on the ground, but on the whole they'll do better than the legislature.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p>the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/nyregion/lake-luzerne-library-drag-story-hour.html">sad story of a public library in upstate New York</a>. When the library scheduled a Drag Queen Story Hour, protests erupted, and the event was never held. You might think the anti-LGBTQ side would say, "Yay, we won!" and be happy. But no. Next they went after all the queer-themed books in the library. They harassed the librarians until they resigned. Several trustees also resigned (leaving the board without a quorum to hire new staff), and the library has been closed for four months.</p>
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<p>As so often happens, the minister leading the anti-library charge accuses the librarians of pushing an "agenda" on the town, when in fact he is the one pushing an agenda. The librarians saw their mission as serving <em>everyone</em> in the town, while the minister wants the library to serve people only to the extent that they are like him. </p>
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<p>Wednesday, the quack doctor that Ron DeSantis made Florida's surgeon general <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-surgeon-general-covid-vaccines-fda-claims-misleading/">called for a halt on the use of mRNA Covid vaccines</a> (like Moderna's and Pfizer' vaccine's), because of the claim that such vaccines can contaminate a recipient's DNA. If you're curious, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-covid-mrna-vaccines-wont-damage-your-dna/">Scientific American</a> explains the alleged risk and why it's not worth worrying about.</p>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/08/world/ula-vulcan-centaur-rocket-peregrine-launch-scn/index.html">first American moon mission since 1972</a> launched this morning. It's supposed to land on the Moon on February 23. There are no astronauts, though.</p>
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<p>Carbon offsets can be kind of an iffy thing. The credits that get bought to offset carbon emissions are often from, as Grist puts it, "distant and <a href="https://grist.org/regulation/carbon-offsets-are-riddled-with-fraud-can-new-voluntary-guidelines-fix-that/">questionable</a>" projects. But there is at least <a href="https://grist.org/energy/in-juneau-alaska-a-carbon-offset-project-thats-actually-working/">one offset program Grist likes</a>: the Alaska Carbon Reduction Fund, which offsets emissions from local eco-tourism by paying for Juneau residents to replace fossil-fuel-powered furnaces with electric heat pumps.</p>
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<p>Another environmental development worth watching: JAC Motors, a Chinese automaker backed by Volkswagen, as about to launch an <a href="https://www.engadget.com/the-first-ev-with-a-lithium-free-sodium-battery-hits-the-road-in-january-214828536.html?fbclid=IwAR0WqVP0jNL8vTIzl46O2CE8HhA7S_7nB2s7KERcz3kGF6B58VXtH-wtmbk&guccounter=1">EV with sodium-ion rather than lithium-ion batteries</a>. Mining lithium is one of the major environmental trade-offs of EVs.</p>
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<p>January 1 is a typical time for new laws to take effect. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/01/04/state-minimum-wage-increases/">This year</a>, </p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Twenty-two states and more than three dozen cities and counties increased their minimum wages in January, providing a boost to millions of the country’s lowest-paid workers.</p>
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<p>The increases will bump wages for about 9.9 million workers, according to an <a href="https://www.epi.org/blog/twenty-two-states-will-increase-their-minimum-wages-on-january-1-raising-pay-for-nearly-10-million-workers/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">analysis from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI),</a> a Washington-based think tank.</p>
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<p>Washington state has the highest minimum: $16.28 per hour. Just about the entire South has stuck with the federal minimum of $7.25. We can think of this as an almost-controlled experiment. Eastern Washington sits right next to the Idaho panhandle, where $7.25 is still the standard. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something cold</h3>
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<p>Over the weekend, my town had its first real snow of the year. So in honor of the beauty of winter, here's a <a href="https://amateurphotographer.com/iconic-images/the-best-winter-photographs/">contest-winning photo</a>.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://amateurphotographer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2022/02/%C2%A9Cristiano-Vendramin-Wildlife-Photographer-of-the-Year-LR.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></figure>
<!-- /wp:image -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-20852645677863705012023-12-18T12:12:00.001-05:002023-12-18T12:12:24.340-05:00Selective Outrage<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p><strong>No Sift articles will appear on Christmas or New Years. </strong><br><strong>So the next new articles will post on January 8. </strong></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>This is an opportunity that my Republican colleagues denied us in 2017, when committee Democrats called for a hearing six years ago on campus discrimination, when white supremacists marched through the University of Virginia grounds shouting “Jews will not replace us.” We didn’t — couldn’t get a hearing back then.</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- Rep. Donald Norcross (D-NJ) <br>at the "<a href="https://edworkforce.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=409777">Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confront Antisemitism</a><strong>"</strong> hearing</p>
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<p>This week's featured post is "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/12/18/those-university-presidents/">Those University Presidents</a>".</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about university presidents</h3>
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<p>That's discussed in the <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/12/18/those-university-presidents/">featured post</a>. At the risk of appearing to be soft on genocide, I take the presidents' side over Elise Stefanik's.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and COP28</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://cartoonmovement.com/cartoon/cop-28-meetings"><img src="https://s3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/cartoons-s3/styles/product_detail_image/s3/charge20231129B_0.jpg?itok=sz6L-Ij4" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>Pretty much across the board, the story of the world's response to climate change is simple: We're doing the right things, we're just not doing them fast enough. The COP28 agreement is more of that trend. So you can spin it positively (it represents progress over all previous international anti-climate-change agreements) or negatively (nations don't commit themselves to the kind of transformation we really need). </p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>The text of the agreement “calls on” countries to “contribute” to global efforts to reduce carbon pollution. It lists a menu of actions they can take, including “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems … accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050.”</p>
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<p>What the agreement doesn’t do is require a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/06/climate/fossil-fuel-phase-out-cop28/index.html">“phase-out” of fossil fuels</a>. That ambitious language was supported by more than 100 countries, including the United States and European Union, but was fiercely opposed by fossil fuel states such as Saudi Arabia.</p>
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<p>The agreement also calls for a tripling of renewable energy capacity and a doubling of energy efficiency, both by 2030.</p>
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<p>Of course, none of that constitutes binding commitments.</p>
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<p>Fundamentally, the problem is that governments are not going to get too far ahead of their people, and people's willingness to sacrifice to stop climate change is not increasing as fast as it needs to. We can see that happening right here: If Biden imposes too much sacrifice on the American people, he'll lose the 2024 election. And then Trump won't just stop future progress, he'll undo the things Biden has managed to get done. </p>
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<p>The best we can realistically hope for is that governments won't be too far <em>behind</em> their people, which can easily happen when special interests have too much influence. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Rudy</h3>
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<p>If you watched the January 6 Committee hearings in the summer of 2022, you have to remember Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman, the daughter/mother pair of Georgia election workers who were hounded by MAGA yahoos after Rudy Giuliani (and others) made up a lot of nonsense about them stealing massive numbers of votes from Donald Trump, who otherwise would have won Georgia.</p>
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<p>How they supposedly accomplished that feat was never precisely spelled out. Maybe they had <a href="https://www.ajc.com/politics/smoking-gun-video-now-evidence-against-trump/J6ORVROLMRBPZHK2DYALIZJ624/">suitcases of fake ballots</a>, or maybe they did <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/georgia-poll-workers-targeted-trump-cleared-false-election-fraud-claim-rcna90350">something with a USB drive</a> and those crooked Dominion Voting Systems machines (the ones <a href="https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trial-trump-2020-0ac71f75acfacc52ea80b3e747fb0afe">Fox paid $787 million</a> for lying about). </p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image alignright size-large is-resized"><img src="https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2023/08/23/rudolph-giuliani_custom-6bc07dcaceb82a3f006a7601f8e39bb2e3f77204-s1600-c85.webp" alt="" style="width:309px;height:auto" /></figure>
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<p>What isn't in dispute is that their lives were turned upside down. They got death threats, people came to their homes, and (in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/kanye-west-publicist-pressed-georgia-election-worker-confess-bogus-fraud-charges-2021-12-10/">one particularly disturbing video</a>) Trevian Kutti pressured Moss to "confess to Trump’s voter-fraud allegations, or people would come to her home in 48 hours, and she’d go to jail."</p>
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<p>Well, Friday a jury ruled that <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/15/politics/rudy-giuliani-verdict-pay-defamed-election-workers/index.html">Rudy owes Moss and Freeman $148 million</a> for defamation, emotional distress, and punitive damages. Of course, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/16/politics/will-georgia-election-workers-collect-148-million-rudy-giuliani/index.html">Rudy doesn't have $148 million</a>, but now he's going to have nothing, probably for the rest of his life. Fortunately for Rudy, he won't go homeless, because the State of Georgia is <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/08/23/1195305201/rudy-giuliani-arrest-georgia-fulton-county">offering him room and board for many years to come</a>.</p>
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<p>Sadly, this verdict means that Rudy won't have the money to pay <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/15/rudy-giuliani-lawsuit-noelle-dunphy-sexual-assault">Noelle Dunphy</a>, who probably will also win a million-dollar settlement.</p>
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<p>Giuliani's refusal to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/30/judge-orders-default-judgment-sanctions-against-rudy-giuliani-in-election-workers-lawsuit.html">participate in the judicial process</a> or <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/rudy-giuliani-wont-testify-defamation-trial-georgia-poll-workers-2023-12">testify in his own defense</a> is the latest example of a pattern in Big Lie trials: In the media, MAGA folks talk big about the evidence they have and the claims they can prove. (Rudy is <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12866105/Jury-reaches-VERDICT-Rudy-Giuliani-defamation-case-Americas-Mayor-waits-hear-damage-pay-two-Georgia-election-workers.html">still making such claims</a>.) But when it's time to provide solid evidence in court, they offer nothing. That was the story in <a href="https://time.com/5914377/donald-trump-no-evidence-fraud/">nearly all of the 60 cases Trump lost after the 2020 election</a>. That's what happened in the Fox/Dominion defamation trial. Fox could have saved itself 3/4 of a billion by making a plausible case that Dominion's machines actually were faulty, but they decided not to.</p>
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<p>Just for a moment, I'm going to put aside any sense of journalistic responsibility and approach this situation as a fiction writer: If Rudy were a character in a novel, he'd be found dead in a hotel room in a month or two. We'd all be left to wonder if he had committed suicide, or if he just miscalculated how many sleeping pills or pain killers you can take with that much alcohol. And a few conspiracy theorists would say he had been murdered.</p>
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<p>I'm not predicting that or wishing it. I'm just saying that's the story arc he's on. Story arcs are not fate, but they can develop momentum.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Kate Cox</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2023/dec/11/the-prescription-121223-tfp/?fbclid=IwAR2VDIsDgs4_z7iAqvsV8NhFZaVnitVLz2Hk7ZYQ7OnO8QTxseMzOF50Un0"><img src="https://wehco.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/img/photos/2023/12/11/231212_The_Prescription_t800.jpg?90232451fbcadccc64a17de7521d859a8f88077d" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>Kate Cox is a married mother of two who wanted to have another baby. She got pregnant, decided not to have an abortion, and looked forward to her due date. But then <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/13/texas-abortion-lawsuit/">something went wrong</a>. </p>
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<p>The amniocentesis confirmed her fetus was developing with full trisomy 18, an extreme chromosomal abnormality. If her child was born alive at all, they would survive only minutes, hours or days outside of the womb.</p>
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<p>The bad news was not just for her fetus, but for her as well: She was making multiple trips to the emergency room, and doctors told her that delivering this baby could affect ability to have children in the future. All things considered, she wanted to have an abortion.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>“I do not want to put my body through the risks of continuing this pregnancy,” she said. “I do not want to continue until my baby dies in my belly or I have to deliver a stillborn baby or one where life will be measured in hours or days.”</p>
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<p>But there was another problem: Her family lives in Texas, which has outlawed nearly all abortions. When the law was being debated, its proponents said not to worry, because <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/11/texas-abortion-law-birth-control-what-you-need-to-know/">it contained exceptions</a>.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Texas’ laws have narrow exceptions only to save the life or prevent “substantial impairment of major bodily function” of a pregnant patient.</p>
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<p>Those exceptions have two problems: (1) They're vague. (2) A doctor who interprets those exceptions too loosely might <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/17/opinion/kate-cox-abortion-texas-exceptions.html">face severe consequences</a>.</p>
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<p>The <a href="https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/HS/htm/HS.170A.htm#_blank" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">penalties for abortion providers</a> who violate the state’s law include a decades-long prison sentence, a $100,000 fine and the loss of a medical license. When one misinterpretation of the law could mean the loss of your vocation and freedom, it’s no wonder that the legislation has had a chilling effect on doctors in the state providing any abortions at all.</p>
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<p>So Kate's doctors wouldn't proceed without a court declaration that her abortion was legal. (Picture the situation: You're in and out of the ER with a difficult pregnancy, you're dealing with tragic news, and you need to scramble to find a lawyer and go to court.) Fortunately, a court agreed with her.</p>
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<p>OK, then, you might think; the law is cumbersome, but it works. But then Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton stepped in, asking the Texas Supreme Court to countermand the lower court's decision -- which it did. </p>
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<p>The end result was that Kate had to leave the state to get treatment in a strange city from doctors she didn't know. Her lawyers won't announce where she went, but they say that she got the abortion and she's doing fine.</p>
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<p>A few observations: </p>
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<li>Her story has a not-as-bad-as-it-could-have-been ending because she has means. A less well off woman wouldn't have been able to go to court and travel the way she did.</li>
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<li>The exceptions in abortion bans aren't worth as much as you might think. Pregnancy includes lots of nebulous possibilities, and doctors are not going to risk jail time on anything but a clear-cut case. </li>
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<li>The reason Kate had somewhere to go is that some states still protect women's rights. If Congress passes a national abortion ban, as some Republicans have proposed, women like Kate will face a much more difficult problem. (Imagine waiting for the State Department to process your passport, and trying to guess how you'll do during the plane flight.)</li>
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<p>This case underlines a point I and others have been making for some while: It may sound reasonable to have an abortion ban after some number of weeks -- 15, 20, 30, whatever. And you may think that such a law can have exceptions that avoid all the really bad possibilities.</p>
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<p>But fundamentally, what such a law says is that past some point in pregnancy, the government will make better decisions than women can. And cases like Kate's demonstrate that it won't.</p>
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<p>That's why I'm against <em>all</em> abortion bans. People will say, "You want to allow abortions right up to the moment of birth?", but that question misses the point. Women are not going to choose to carry a pregnancy for nine months just so they can abort at the last minute for no reason. In the real world, those late-term abortion decisions are complicated, and they need to be made by the people who are present, not by distant legislatures or judges.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.nj.com/opinion/2023/12/the-gop-doing-putins-dirty-work-sheneman.html"><img src="https://www.nj.com/resizer/C6gS6b2WQ16wc1jhmu2fsT_ZVbo=/1280x0/smart/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/advancelocal/6PKZ6QZBSFFPVDG4Q4P7QHG2YQ.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/17/politics/border-policy-negotiations-ukraine-israel-aid/index.html">Ukraine aid is still in limbo in Congress</a>, as Republicans tie it to changes in immigration policy that the Biden administration doesn't want. In the usual Republican logic, Biden's failure to surrender is what's holding everything up. As Senator Cornyn put it: "This is a catastrophe, and it’s a result of the Biden open border policies."</p>
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<p>This of course makes no sense, because there is no logical connection between our immigration policy and whether Ukraine should be sacrificed to Russia.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/12/republicans-congress-ukraine-aid-trump/676374/">David Frum</a> comments:</p>
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<p>Supposedly, all leaders of Congress are united in their commitment to Ukraine—so the new speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kyLtiAd67o">insists</a>. Yet somehow this allegedly united commitment is not translating into action. Why not?</p>
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<p>The notional answer is that Republicans must have a border-security deal as the price for Ukraine aid. But who on earth sets a price that could stymie something they affirmatively want to do? Republicans have not conditioned their support for Social Security on getting a border deal. They would never say that tax cuts must wait until after the border is secure. Only Ukraine is treated as something to be bartered, as if at a county fair. How did that happen?</p>
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<p>Ukraine’s expendability to congressional Republicans originates in the sinister special relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.</p>
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<p></p>
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<p>Meanwhile, Putin's other major ally, Hungarian strongman and <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/04/viktor-orban-cpac-00049935">CPAC heart-throb</a> Viktor Orban, is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/17/world/europe/hungary-ukraine-eu.html">blocking Ukraine aid from the EU</a>.</p>
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<p>National Review's <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/a-reality-check-on-the-trump-as-dictator-prophecies/">Jim Geraghty</a> thinks we're all over-reacting to the whole Trump-as-dictator thing. America has checks-and-balances, you know.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Because if our existing checks and balances under the Constitution aren’t strong enough to stop abuses of power by Trump . . . why would you think that they’re strong enough to stop abuses of power by Joe Biden or anyone else?</p>
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<p>If Joe Biden wanted to be dictator, if he had already tried to overturn an election he lost, and if he was the center of a dedicated personality cult willing to act on his word in spite of laws or facts, then I'd also be worried about him. Geraghty's essay seems insane to me. But I thought you should see the argument. </p>
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<p>Mothers for Democracy have made a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M876_FfJ3MQ">powerful ad</a> attacking the thoughts-and-prayers reaction to mass shootings. A mother prays to God to save her drowning child, and numerous others -- including a couple sunbathing in the same swimming pool -- offer their support, but don't do anything. The ad concludes with: "Thoughts and prayers are meaningless when you can act."</p>
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<p>I'm sure right-wingers will argue that this is a typical liberal diminishing of religion, but I think plenty of religious people will see the point: Why would you expect God to do something if you choose to do nothing?</p>
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<p><a href="https://jasher.substack.com/p/crime-in-2023-murder-plummeted-violent">More evidence</a> of how bad things have gotten under Biden:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Murder plummeted in the United States in 2023, likely at one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded. What’s more, every type of <a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement">Uniform Crime Report Part I crime</a> with the exception of auto theft is likely down a considerable amount this year relative to last year according to newly reported data through September from the FBI.</p>
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<p>It looks like murder blipped up during the 2020-21 pandemic and then went back down. It doesn't seem to be Trump- or Biden-related.</p>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/12/13/dow-jones-stocks-record-high-interest-rates">stock market hit record highs</a> last week. This caused a number of people to recall Trump bragging about the stock market's performance during his term, and <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/donald-trumps-old-stock-market-091517272.html">predicting that it would crash</a> if Biden were elected. </p>
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<p>Now, the stock market is not the same as the economy, and the majority of American citizens benefit little or not at all when stocks go up. However, a rising market does mean that people with money believe the economy is going in the right direction. Joe Billionaire doesn't buy stocks if he thinks a depression is coming. </p>
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<p>One reason I love following Rep. Jeff Jackson is the level of insight he gives into the workings of Congress. Maybe you learned how a bill becomes law by watching Schoolhouse Rock or something. But <a href="https://jeffjacksonnc.substack.com/p/a-bill-actually-became-a-law">Jeff's experience trying to get parental leave for fathers in the National Guard</a> was a little more complicated than that. </p>
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<p><a href="https://www.salon.com/2023/12/15/know-isnt-joking-with-his-dictator-remarks-its-why-they-love-him/">Amanda Marcotte</a> attempts to answer the "Are Trump supporters evil or stupid?" question and comes down on the side of evil.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Trying to convince Trump's loyal supporters that he's a fascist is not worth your time. They know — it's why they like him.</p>
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<p></p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something scientific</h3>
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<p>You have probably seen scientific analyses proving that Santa Claus cannot possibly deliver presents to all the world's good children in one night: the speeds involved, the amount of energy necessary to achieve them, and so on. According to <a href="https://www.daclarke.org/Humour/santa.html">one calculation</a>, the wind resistance alone would vaporize the lead reindeer in 4.26 thousandths of a second.</p>
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<p>However, it turns out that this only proves that a Newtonian Santa can't exist. Things work much differently if you apply the superposition concept from quantum mechanics, which allows an object to be in many places at once, but only probabilistically. (This is the principle that allows a <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/quantum-computers">quantum computer</a> to do arbitrarily many calculations simultaneously.) <a href="https://twitter.com/Bastett/status/1735255122349842758">Bastett</a> explains:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Santa is a quantum being. His probabilistic nature means he can be in every house at the same time on Christmas. This is why it's vitally important no one sees him. If he's observed, the probabilities collapse and only one house gets presents.</p>
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<!-- /wp:quote -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-51587294014287451222023-12-11T12:35:00.000-05:002023-12-11T12:35:39.000-05:00Eyes Open<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>Doctor, my eyes tell me what is wrong. </em><br><em>Was I unwise to leave them open for so long?</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- <a href="https://genius.com/Jackson-browne-doctor-my-eyes-lyrics">Jackson Browne</a></p>
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<p>This week's featured post is "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/12/11/more-questions-than-answers/">More Questions than Answers</a>", a collection of opinions I'm holding tentatively. The opening quote above is in honor of all the people who just don't feel like they can watch the news any more. I feel your pain.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about Gaza</h3>
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<p>The war is back on, and no one seems to have any idea how it ends. Friday, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-un-resolution-ceasefire-humanitarian-6d3bfd31d6c25168e828274d96b85cf8">the US vetoed a resolution</a> in the UN Security Council calling for a cease fire. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Trump's dictator remark</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.ajc.com/opinion/mike-luckovich-blog/1210-mike-luckovich-a-frightful-vision/XSMU4P4AARD5HDYI7NUU7QPDMA/"><img src="https://www.ajc.com/resizer/awYMNuyLhm7jVqMd_CxWUIy9k4U=/850x480/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ajc/PJYNITVQFNG5PFKIZN5ESEEUC4.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>As I've been chronicling the last few weeks, major media outlets are beginning to call attention to the alarming authoritarian rhetoric of the Trump campaign and its plans for a second Trump presidency. This week, The Atlantic devoted a whole issue to "<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/01/donald-trump-second-term-policies/676176/">If Trump Wins</a>". <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/01/donald-trump-reelection-second-term-agenda/676119/">David Frum</a> writes:</p>
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<p>In his first term, Trump’s corruption and brutality were mitigated by his ignorance and laziness. In a second, Trump would arrive with a much better understanding of the system’s vulnerabilities, more willing enablers in tow, and a much more focused agenda of retaliation against his adversaries and impunity for himself. When people wonder what another Trump term might hold, their minds underestimate the chaos that would lie ahead.</p>
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<p>Apparently <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4344365-5-takeaways-trumps-town-hall-sean-hannity/">Sean Hannity</a> thought it would be a good idea to calm down such talk, so in his town-hall interview with Trump, he laid a red carpet down an off-ramp: "They want to call you a dictator. To be clear, do you in any way have any plans whatsoever, if reelected president, to abuse power, to break the law, to use the government to go after people?"</p>
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<p>At first Trump gave a whatabout answer: "You mean like they’re using right now." But Hannity circled back: "Under no circumstances — you are promising America tonight. You would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?"</p>
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<p>"Except day one. ... I love this guy, he says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator are you?’ I said no, no, no, other than day one. We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator."</p>
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<p>As we all know from history, leaders who achieve dictatorial power for even a day almost never lay it down voluntarily. So like an alcoholic's "I'll quit after one drink", Trump's "no, no, no" isn't a credible denial. He gave this answer as if it were a joke, but that's how bullies always talk: It's a joke until it isn't.</p>
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<p>So what does that answer mean? </p>
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<p>Hannity was clearly hoping for Trump to say something reassuring, like: "This dictator talk is silly, and is just evidence of how desperate the Deep State and its media allies have gotten. They'll say anything."</p>
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<p>But Trump steadfastly refused to reassure anybody. What should we make of that?</p>
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<p>Mainly this: Trump <em>likes</em> the dictator talk and doesn't want to shut it down. His cultists love the idea that he'll be dictator, so he wants to feed that fantasy. Conversely, his enemies and potential rivals are frightened, and he wants them to stay frightened. Don't fight back too hard against Trump, because what if he becomes dictator?</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Taylor Swift</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://claytoonz.com/2023/12/07/tuberville-time/"><img src="https://claytoonz.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/cjonesrgb12092023.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>Time named Taylor as 2023's Person of the Year, which surprised a lot of people, but in retrospect makes a certain amount of sense. Remember how Time defines the PotY: "the individual who most shaped the headlines over the previous 12 months, for better or for worse". The PotY list includes "fourteen U.S. Presidents, five leaders of Russia or the Soviet Union, and three Popes"</p>
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<p>Swift is none of that, but <a href="https://time.com/6342816/person-of-the-year-2023-taylor-swift-choice/">Time's explanation</a> portrays her as a ray of light in a year that was otherwise full of darkness. If not Swift, then the news focus of the year is either people arguing about whether Trump belongs in jail, or Israel and Hamas killing each other's civilians. Or maybe it's all the weather disasters as climate change really started to take hold. Taylor Swift may not be the Person of the Year we deserve, but she's definitely the one we need.</p>
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<p>Personally, I'm not a Swifty -- not because I dislike her or her music, but because I mainly hear current music when I'm in a shopping mall. I intend to sit down and listen to a few of her biggest hits someday, and I'm sure I'll recognize some when I do. But at the moment nothing is labeled in my mind as a Taylor Swift song. </p>
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<p>Anyway, the <a href="https://time.com/6342806/person-of-the-year-2023-taylor-swift/">Time article</a> makes a good case for her: her fame, her wealth, her larger-scale cultural and economic impact, and so on. One thing that surprised and impressed me is her regimen:</p>
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<p>In the past, Swift jokes, she toured “like a frat guy.” This time, she began training six months ahead of the first show. “Every day I would run on the treadmill, singing the entire set list out loud,” she said. “Fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs.” Her gym, Dogpound, created a program for her, incorporating strength, conditioning, and weights. “Then I had three months of dance training, because I wanted to get it in my bones,” she says. “I wanted to be so over-rehearsed that I could be silly with the fans, and not lose my train of thought.”</p>
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<p>I'm reminded of the professionalism of athletes like Tom Brady or LeBron James. There was a time when athletes were just guys blessed with talent, who would gain weight in the off-season and get back in shape during training camp. After 30, they'd develop a Babe-Ruth-style paunch, and then they were old-timers by 35. But in this era, being an athlete is a full-time job. Apparently, being a pop star is too.</p>
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<p>I feel like Time made too little of her political impact, which <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2023/09/27/taylor-swift-influence-election-voters-2024/70971810007/">USA Today</a> described like this: </p>
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<p>Sept. 19 was National Voter Registration Day. With one Instagram post, Swift helped the nonprofit group <a href="http://vote.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Vote.org</a> register <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2023/09/22/taylor-swift-register-to-vote/70928578007/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">more than 35,000 new voters</a>, a nearly 25% increase over the same day last year. The group also saw a <a href="https://twitter.com/AndreaEHailey/status/1704611674299179068" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">115% jump in 18-year-olds registering to vote</a>. One day. One Instagram post.</p>
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<p>Conservatives are seeing some <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/177385/republicans-weird-taylor-swift">vast liberal conspiracy</a> in the Taylor/Time team-up. <a href="https://twitter.com/StephenM/status/1732540747809796267">Stephen Miller</a> tweets: </p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>What’s happening with Taylor Swift is not organic.</p>
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<p>Here's what cracks me up most: The party likely to make a reality-TV star its presidential nominee for the third straight time is now horrified that media celebrities have political influence. Trump co-conspirator <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffClarkUS/status/1732514242287350125">Jeff Clarke</a> tweets:</p>
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<p>If we reach the point where Dwayne The Rock Johnson and Taylor Swift run for office together we will have truly reached full-on Idiocracy</p>
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<p>I've got some bad news for you, Jeff. Your party has been there since 2016.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">but we need to talk a little about crime</h3>
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<p>Crime as a political issue operates in a weird way: Obviously, if you feel less safe in your neighborhood -- or worse, if you've been the victim of a crime -- that's a huge issue to you, as it should be. But a great deal of the political impact of the crime issue consists of people's impressions about <em>crime in general</em>, or even <em>crime in places totally unlike the places they live</em>. </p>
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<p>Media plays a huge role in creating those impressions. In particular, if you live in rural or small-town America, but you watch Fox News, you've seen countless stories about how crime is spiking in those big Democrat-run cities. Joe Biden's America, you may think, is a lawless place that needs a new sheriff. And if you believe that visiting any big city means taking your life in your hands, of course you won't do it. So you won't have the experience of walking down Michigan Avenue in Chicago -- as I did a few weeks ago -- and feeling perfectly safe.</p>
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<p>Friday, the NYT <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shoplifting-retail-crime-theft-retraction.html?searchResultPosition=1">debunked a big piece of that panic</a>: the supposed "shoplifting epidemic" that allegedly was lowering retail profits and causing companies like Walgreens to close some high-crime stores. The National Retail Federation got a lot of coverage for its claim that "organized retail crime" was responsible for half of all the "shrink" in the industry. ("Shrink" is the industry term that covers all forms of lost inventory, including stuff that gets misplaced or stolen by employees.) Heads of big retail chains testified before Congress, demanding action. </p>
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<p>The claims have been fueled by widely shared videos of a few instances of brazen shoplifters, including images of masked groups smashing windows and grabbing high-end purses and cellphones. But the data show this impression of rampant criminality was a mirage.</p>
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<p>In fact, <a href="https://www.retaildive.com/news/retailers-crime-problem-numbers/699107/">shrink has been fairly flat over the last eight years</a>, bouncing between 1.3% and 1.6% of sales. External theft of all sorts is only about 1/3 of that number. And organized retail theft, it turns out, is a tiny fraction of that: around .07% of sales. </p>
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<p>The NTF has since backed off its claim, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shoplifting.html">so has Walgreens</a>. The NYT continues:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>In fact, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/briefing/shoplifting-data.html">retail theft has been lower this year</a> in most of the country than it was a few years ago, according to police data. Some exceptions, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/nyregion/shoplifting-arrests-nyc.html">including New York City</a>, exist. But in most major cities, shoplifting incidents have fallen 7 percent since 2019.</p>
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<p>So do you think Fox will retract its stories, or that your uncle out in the farm country will notice if they do? Probably not.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p>Senator Tuberville's <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/05/politics/tommy-tuberville-releases-holds/index.html">blockade on military promotions</a> has ended. In terms of policy, he got exactly nothing for dropping his opposition. But he did get a lot of attention and raised a lot of money, so maybe he feels good about the whole episode.</p>
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<p>New Republic has an article on a topic I hadn't seen before: <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/176854/republican-red-states-brain-drain">The Red State Brain Drain</a>. </p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Republican-dominated states are pushing out young professionals by enacting extremist conservative policies. Abortion restrictions are the most sweeping example, but state laws restricting everything from academic <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/texas-governor-signs-ban-on-college-diversity-programs-into-law/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tenure</a> to transgender <a href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/attacks-on-gender-affirming-care-by-state-map" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">health care</a> to the <a href="https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/lawmakers-introduced-measures-against-critical-race-theory" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">teaching</a> of “divisive concepts” about race are making these states uncongenial to knowledge workers.</p>
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<p>The precise effect of all this on the brain drain is hard to tease out from migration statistics because the <em>Dobbs</em> decision is still fairly new, and because red states were bleeding college graduates even before the culture war heated up. The only red state that brings in more college graduates than it <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/09/films-assigned-college/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">sends</a> elsewhere is Texas. But the evidence is everywhere that hard-right social policies in red states are making this dynamic worse.</p>
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<p>A big piece of the current sustainable-future vision is electric vehicles, which is why <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/12/a-million-electric-vehicles-sold-this-year-is-a-problem.html">people are debating the significance of the latest EV sales figures</a>: They're up 25% from 2022, so 2023 is the first year when a million EVs will be sold. Sounds good, right?</p>
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<p>Well, maybe not. EV sales doubled from 2020 to 2021, and doubled again from 2021 to 2022. So up 25% looks like a loss of momentum. Maybe it's a glitch, caused by Elon Musk's image problems bleeding into Tesla, or people waiting for the new models promised for 2024, or some other passing problem. Or maybe there's a more serious problem.</p>
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<p>BTW: It doesn't look like the industry can count on <a href="https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2023-11-30-tesla-cybertruck-dumbest-thing/">Tesla's new cybertruck</a> to turn things around. </p>
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<p>With anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish hate speech rising online, you might expect to find it's a tit-for-tat situation: Jews abuse Muslims because they're sick of Muslims abusing Jews, and round and round forever.</p>
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<p>But no. Actually a better explanation is "Haters gonna hate". <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-same-extremists-target-both-muslims-and-jews/">Right-wing extremists abuse either group</a>, depending on what the current headlines are. The rise in hate speech of all kinds actually tracks the rise in right-wing extremism, rather than any escalation of Muslim/Jew conflicts.</p>
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<p>Contemporary discourse often pits Muslims and Jews against one another. But our research demonstrates that a large amount of seemingly disconnected hateful rhetoric about both—at least in 2017—originated from the same far-right extremist communities.</p>
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<p>Speaking of far-right extremist communities, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/10/elon-musk-says-x-will-reinstate-alex-jones-account-after-poll-of-users">Alex Jones</a> is back on X/Twitter.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/2023/11/01/bramhall-cartoons-november-2023/"><img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.nydailynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/TOON12073.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p><a href="https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/norman-lear-dead-dies-tv-legend-all-in-the-family-1235823995/">Norman Lear</a> died Tuesday at the age of 101. If you weren't alive during the run of the hits he created, especially <em>All in the Family</em> (1971-1979), it's hard to grasp his impact. </p>
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<p>Before <em>All in the Family</em>, TV sitcoms were escapist entertainment, centering on either absurd characters (like the Clampetts from <em>Beverly Hillbillies</em>) or ideal families dealing with a series of homespun problems that were easily solved. Children (like Opie Taylor of <em>The Andy Griffith Show</em>, the role that made Ron Howard famous) never ran into a problem that was too big for their parents to sort out by the end of an episode. Authority figures were good, systems worked, and adults always had children's best interests at heart.</p>
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<p>Lear's shows changed all that. AitF centered on a young liberal couple forced by economic stress to live with the wife's conservative parents. Episodes dealt with racism, war, and even rape. </p>
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<p>That much you can understand by streaming AitF now (<a href="https://deadline.com/2023/12/norman-lear-tv-shows-streaming-1235658704/">if you can find it</a>). What you can't grasp is the influence AitF had on the national conversation. At the time there were three major networks, no streaming, and no way to record a show: You either watched a show at the same time everybody else did or you missed it. </p>
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<p>Picture what that meant: If you watched some popular show, you could go to work or school the next morning expecting that maybe a third to a half of the people you met had seen it too. So whatever argument Archie Bunker and his son-in-law had been having might well continue among your friends or coworkers.</p>
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<p>Nothing fills that role today.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something to pass the time</h3>
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<p>Roadtrips -- I've been on a couple lately -- are a chance to try out new podcasts. I've recently found two you might want to try.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.howgodworks.org/">How God Works</a> by David DeSteno examines the intersection of science and spirituality. A meditation teacher, for example, might tell you to focus on <a href="https://www.howgodworks.org/podcast/season-5/every-breath-you-take">your breath</a>, or breathe in a different pattern. Physiologically, what does that do? Or what do various spiritual traditions from around the world tell us about <a href="https://www.howgodworks.org/podcast/season-5/from-two-spirit-to-bissu-gender-diversity-has-deep-roots">gender diversity</a>? </p>
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<p>If you're looking more for entertainment than information, check out "<a href="https://www.welcometonightvale.com/">Welcome to Night Vale</a>". Night Vale is a small desert town that either has an exceptional level of weirdness, or is being covered by a very weird local radio reporter.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-79116389067670711152023-12-04T11:38:00.000-05:002023-12-04T11:38:02.739-05:00Accountability vs. Immunity<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>Defendant's four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens.</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- <a href="https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2023cr0257-171">Judge Tanya Chutkan</a></p>
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<p>There's no featured post this week.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about the war in Gaza</h3>
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<p>Which is back on. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67589259">Fighting resumed on Friday morning</a>, with each side blaming the other. </p>
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<p>During the seven-day ceasefire, Hamas agreed to release 110 people from Gaza, including 78 Israeli women and children. As part of the deal, 240 Palestinians were also released from Israeli jails. They had been accused of a range of offences, from throwing stones to incitement and attempted murder. ... It is estimated that about 140 Israeli hostages remain in captivity in Gaza.</p>
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<p>Israel has resumed bombing, and its forces have begun <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67607243">moving into the southern part of Gaza</a>. Hamas is again firing rockets into Israel.</p>
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<p>Thursday, the NYT revealed that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-had-a-blueprint-of-the-oct-7-attacks-a-year-ago-officials-dismissed-it.html">Israel had the Hamas attack plan for over a year</a>. Israeli officials apparently ignored the plan, which Hamas "followed with shocking precision" on October 7. </p>
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<p>The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials.</p>
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<p><a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/about-that-big-israeli-intel-story-in-the-times">Josh Marshall</a> adds:</p>
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<p>Very recently, ground-level analysts monitoring video surveillance of activity in Gaza saw evidence that Hamas was war-gaming and running drills for attacks that looked like components of Jericho Wall. One analyst repeatedly pressed the issue with higher-ups, but her effort to raise the alarm was again disregarded.</p>
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<p>His column doesn't identify a source for that information.</p>
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<p>Politically in the US, the Gaza War has been bad for Biden, but not for the reason a lot of people think. He is undoubtedly losing votes on the left for being too pro-Israel, but he would probably lose more votes if he were more critical of Israel. ("Biden is siding with the terrorists!") </p>
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<p>Biden will lose votes whatever he does, because Israel/Palestine is a wedge issue that splits Democrats, but not Republicans. Republicans would probably be happy with anything Israel did, even to the point of an actual genocide. (Aside: Whatever you think of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, it's <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2023/11/10/how-the-term-genocide-is-misused-in-the-israel-hamas-war">not genocide</a>. <em>Genocide</em> is too important a word to ruin through misuse.) </p>
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<p>Similarly, the Ukraine War is a wedge issue that splits Republicans, but not Democrats. Democrats are united behind Ukraine. Meanwhile Putin remains a hero to many MAGA Republicans, even as establishment Republicans agree with Democrats in supporting Ukraine. </p>
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<p>I know it's too much to expect that people will take a step back and think rationally about an issue, but if they did, they'd see that the Gaza War validates a liberal rather than conservative view of how to maintain peace. In its simplest form, the conservative idea is peace-through-strength: If we're strong enough and tough enough, no one will attack us because they'll know they will suffer more than we will.</p>
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<p>The liberal vision is peace-through-justice: If everyone is getting a square deal, they won't want to risk it by going to war.</p>
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<p>In their purest forms, both visions are naive; real peace requires both strength and justice. But I think liberals understand that, while I don't think conservatives do. The Hamas attack exposed the folly of the Netanyahu peace-through-strength policy. If people feel aggrieved enough, they won't care that a war will hurt them more than you. They'll risk their lives to bite your ankle.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Trump trials</h3>
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<p>Trump' claims of presidential immunity were denied by two different D. C. federal courts Friday. A three-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals <a href="https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4337301-appeals-court-rules-trump-doesnt-have-immunity-from-civil-suits-over-jan-6-riots/?fbclid=IwAR2KGDRBH5w0QTxvX-FKokTRMYMtrgzVpCNErzZDADOewhgkFrjVOuQT2cI">rejected his motion to dismiss a civil lawsuit</a> filed by two U.S. Capitol police officers and several Democratic lawmakers against Trump and a few other individuals and groups they want held responsible for the January 6 violence. And District Judge Tanya Chutkan <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/01/trump-election-subversion-not-immune-00129730">rejected his motion to dismiss Jack Smith's election interference indictment</a>.</p>
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<p>Nothing in the Constitution explicitly immunizes a current or former president from legal processes. However, certain kinds of immunity have been recognized by the courts: Presidents are immune from lawsuits against the consequences of carrying out their duties. And longstanding DoJ policy, based on a <a href="https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blaw/olc/sitting_president.htm">memo</a> by its Office of Legal Counsel, says that a sitting president can't be indicted. (That doctrine has never been tested in court.) And courts have recognized a vague principle that at some point, legal harassment of a president might reach the point that it violates the separation of powers between the executive and judicial branches of government. </p>
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<p>In his motions, Trump was asking the courts to expand that immunity to vast proportions. His arguments were slapped down in both cases. </p>
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<p>Both motions were for dismissing the cases without a trial. Dismissal motions have to clear a very high bar, because they're claiming that a trial can't possibly reveal anything that would matter. So the judge has to assume that the claims made by the prosecutors or plaintiffs are true, and conclude that no penalty would apply anyway. </p>
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<p>The appeals court <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cadc.38510/gov.uscourts.cadc.38510.2029472.0.pdf">ruled</a> that the civil case against Trump needs to go forward, because it's not obvious that Trump's actions related to the January 6 riot were part of his job. </p>
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<p>The President, though, does not spend every minute of every day exercising official responsibilities. And when he acts outside the functions of his office, he does not continue to enjoy immunity from damages liability just because he happens to be the President.</p>
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<p>This kind of compartmentalization has never registered with Trump. In his mind, there was no separation between his person and his presidency. If <em>the president</em> had some power, then <em>he</em> had that power, to wield as he saw fit, independent of whether he was carrying out some official duty.</p>
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<p>Judge Chutkan <a href="https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2023cr0257-171">ruled</a> similarly: Committing crimes is not part of a president's job, so crimes allegedly committed while in office can be prosecuted. (Whether those crimes were or were not committed should be decided at trial.) And she need not settle the presidential-indictment question here, because Trump is not president.</p>
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<p>Whatever immunities a sitting President may enjoy, the United States has only one Chief Executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong “get-out-of-jail-free” pass. Former Presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability. Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction, and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office</p>
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<p>Chutkan also denied a motion claiming that the Smith indictment should be dismissed because it criminalizes speech protected by the First Amendment. </p>
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<p>[I]t is well established that the First Amendment does not protect speech that is used as an instrument of a crime, and consequently the Indictment—which charges Defendant with, among other things, making statements in furtherance of a crime—does not violate Defendant’s First<br>Amendment rights.</p>
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<p>The question of whether Trump's false claims about the 2020 election were part of a criminal plot has to be decided at trial.</p>
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<p>While Defendant challenges that allegation in his Motion, and may do so at trial, his claim that his belief was reasonable does not implicate the First Amendment. If the Government cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt at trial that Defendant knowingly made false statements, he will not be convicted; that would not mean the Indictment violated the First Amendment.</p>
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<p>Meanwhile, there are the gag orders. WaPo keeps track of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/12/03/trump-gag-orders-dc-new-york/">which ones are active</a>: Judge Chutkan's order preventing Trump from disparaging prosecutors, witnesses and court personnel involved in his trial is suspended while the appellate court considers it. They might rule any day now.</p>
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<p>Judge Engoron's order preventing Trump from attacking court personnel is currently in force as an appeals court evaluates it.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://jensorensen.com/2023/11/25/width=580 trump-vermin-fascism-cartoon/"><img src="https://jensorensen.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/nothingsshocking600.png" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>After normalizing Trump for many years, many voices in the mainstream media finally seems to be acknowledging his threat to America's constitutional democracy. Thursday, WaPo editor-at-large Robert Kagan published "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/30/trump-dictator-2024-election-robert-kagan/">A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.</a>"</p>
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<p>Today's NYT has an article "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/04/us/politics/trump-2025-overview.html">Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical than His First</a>". The authors note that Trump has always had "autocratic impulses", dating back to his praise of the Chinese massacre of the Tiananmen Square demonstrators, and reflected in his admiration for autocrats like Saddam Hussein or the Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte, not to mention Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>What would be different in a second Trump administration is not so much his character as his surroundings. Forces that somewhat contained his autocratic tendencies in his first term — staff members who saw their job as sometimes restraining him, a few congressional Republicans episodically willing to criticize or oppose him, a partisan balance on the Supreme Court that occasionally ruled against him — would all be weaker.</p>
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<p>Princeton Professor <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/04/a-second-trump-term-will-be-far-more-autocratic-than-the-first-hes-telling-us">Jan-Werner Müller</a> has a similar article in The Guardian. He observes that establishment-Republican institutions like the Heritage Foundation are now on board with a Trump autocracy.</p>
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<p>Trump is not hiding anything; nor does a figure like the Heritage president, who <a href="https://www.hungarianconservative.com/articles/interview/politicians-dont-like-doing-the-right-thing-interview-with-kevin-roberts/">considers</a> Hungary “not just a model for conservative statecraft, but <em>the</em> model”.</p>
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<p>Liz Cheney's book <em>Oath and Honor</em> comes out this week. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/28/politics/liz-cheney-trump-mccarthy-book/index.html">Early reports</a> portray it as an insider's view of how the Republican Party officials caved in to Trump, even as they criticized and even laughed at him privately.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Elon's breakdown</h3>
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<p>Elon Musk is further gone than I thought. In an <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/29/elon-musk-to-advertisers-who-are-trying-to-blackmail-him-go-f----yourself.html">interview Wednesday</a> at the NYT DealBook summit, he told companies who have responded to his antisemitic tweets by pulling their ads from X to "Go fuck yourself."</p>
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<p>If someone is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself. GO. FUCK. YOUR. SELF.</p>
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<p>You can <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlSUy5MS2b0">watch the video</a>. He clearly expected the audience to applaud his courageous stance, but instead there was a stunned silence. The interviewer (Andrew Ross Sorkin) then asked about "the economics of X", which relies on advertising revenue to survive. And Elon responded:</p>
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<p>What this advertising boycott is going to do, it's going to kill the company. ... And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company. We'll document it in great detail. </p>
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<p>When Sorkin explained how the advertisers would justify themselves, Musk countered:</p>
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<p>Tell it to Earth. ... Let's see how Earth responds to that.</p>
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<p>Elon seems convinced that he is the hero of this story, and that the People of Earth will frame events the way he does. How dare companies like Disney choose to spend their advertising dollars somewhere else? How dare they decide that displaying a trailer for "Wish" next to some white supremacist rant doesn't serve their purposes? The People of Earth are so attached to the X platform and so enamored of Elon himself that they will make Disney pay for such arrogance.</p>
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<p>Unsurprisingly, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/technology/elon-musk-dealbook-advertisers.html">advertisers did not flock back to X</a> after Musk's threat to expose them to "Earth". </p>
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<p>Three things are worth pointing out here: First, Musk's attempt to turn this into a free-speech issue falls flat. Sure: Antisemites, racists, misogynists, and even outright swastika-waving Nazis have a right to speak their minds and try to make converts. But they are not entitled to have someone else sponsor a platform for them.</p>
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<p>And second, I see Elon's stewardship of X as part of what Cory Doctorow calls "<a href="https://thebasics.guide/the-great-enshittening/">the Great Enshittening</a>" of the internet. I would gladly spend my X-time elsewhere if some alternative platform achieved a critical mass of users, and I welcome X's looming demise because it might create space for something better to emerge. </p>
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<p>As for Musk himself, I see him as the kind of tragic figure Aeschylus would have found fascinating. Like the Trump saga, Elon's story demonstrates that being worshiped is bad for mortals. Almost no humans have enough strength of character to stay sane once they've been surrounded by a cadre of worshipers the way Elon has.</p>
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<p>One of the things I admire most about Barack Obama is that he has shown the good sense to keep our admiration at arm's length.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Biden economy</h3>
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<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-third-quarter-economic-growth-revised-up-52-2023-11-29/">GDP growth after inflation was 5.2% in the third quarter</a>, which is a stunning number. At its peak in the third quarter of 2019, the Trump economy posted <a href="https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_real_gdp_growth">4.6% growth</a>. </p>
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<p>The US economy <a href="https://twitter.com/JosephPolitano/status/1730356558805049790">continues to lead the G7 countries</a>.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://weeklysift.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/screenshot-2023-12-04-at-10.53.07e280afam.png"><img src="https://weeklysift.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/screenshot-2023-12-04-at-10.53.07e280afam.png?w=995" width=580 alt="" class="wp-image-38823" /></a></figure>
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<p>The inflation rate is now <a href="https://twitter.com/mtkonczal/status/1730271729698705470">lower than when Biden took office</a>. </p>
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<p>And what about the <a href="https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1730359448906928174">claim that Biden has been bad for US oil production</a>?</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://weeklysift.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/screenshot-2023-12-04-at-10.57.24e280afam.png"><img src="https://weeklysift.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/screenshot-2023-12-04-at-10.57.24e280afam.png?w=556" alt="" class="wp-image-38825" /></a></figure>
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<p>The continuing good economic news contrasts with the public view that the economy is in bad shape. <a href="https://twitter.com/drvolts/status/1730721498900652332">David Roberts</a> refers to this as the "vibes" problem, which Democrats have to get better at addressing. </p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Substantive accomplishments -- even the ones the public says on polls they want/like -- are not enough, in & of themselves, to win political approval. They don't advertise themselves or tell their own story. The channels through which the public has traditionally been informed about political accomplishments have become fragmented, polluted, and dominated by lavishly funded right wingers. They can't be relied on. ... In other words, Dems are winning the war of substance but losing the vibes war, largely because they don't seem to realize that those two fights have drifted almost entirely apart.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://gortoncenter.org/event/film-discussion-dr-strangelove/"><img src="https://gortoncenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/thumb_F414D4C3-5C33-44F6-815A-F74D70704602.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>Henry Kissinger died at 100, inspiring obituaries like "<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/henry-kissinger-war-criminal-dead-1234804748/">Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies</a>". Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Chile ... if you live long enough, all your crimes start to sound like ancient history. </p>
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<p>But what I had thought was Kissinger's most lasting contribution to American culture turns out not to be true: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove">He wasn't the model for Dr. Strangelove</a>.</p>
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<p>It is frequently claimed the character was based on Henry Kissinger, but Kubrick and Sellers denied this; Sellers said: "Strangelove was never modeled after Kissinger—that's a popular misconception. It was always Wernher von Braun." Furthermore, Henry Kissinger points out in his memoirs that at the time of the writing of <em>Dr. Strangelove</em>, he was a little-known academic.</p>
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<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Day_O%27Connor">Sandra Day O'Connor</a> also died. The first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, she lived to be 93. Appointed by Ronald Reagan, she was the kind of conservative justice that today's conservatives abhor. She wasn't driven by ideology. Instead, the facts of the case mattered to her, and you couldn't predict her vote without examining them. <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/01/sandra-day-oconnor-legacy-00129693">Politico</a> summarizes:</p>
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<p>[H]er decisions and her reasoning demonstrated a constant attention to the proper role of the Supreme Court as a nonpartisan arbiter of hot-button issues in American life, to the actual facts about the actual parties, and to the way in which the bench’s rulings would be experienced by the American public. ... The strategy of the Roberts Court, however, has been strikingly different.</p>
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<p>Republicans have begun talking about having a health care plan again. I say "again" not because they have had a health care plan in the past, but because they <em>talk about</em> having a plan every now and then. </p>
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<p>Back in 2015 <a href="https://kffhealthnews.org/news/back-to-the-future-trumps-history-of-promising-a-health-plan-that-never-comes/">Trump promised</a> a "terrific", "phenomenal", and "fantastic" system to replace ObamaCare. But once in office, he left the details to Republicans in Congress, who never united around any particular proposal. Their slogan of "repeal and replace" was always light on the "replace" side. When John McCain delivered the final vote needed to save ObamaCare in 2017, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/07/27/539907467/senate-careens-toward-high-drama-midnight-health-care-vote">his office's statement</a> said:</p>
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<p>While the amendment would have repealed some of Obamacare's most burdensome regulations, it offered no replacement to actually reform our health care system and deliver affordable, quality health care to our citizens.</p>
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<p>Nothing has changed in the last six years. <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/30/trump-obamacare-repeal-00129223">Trump is now talking again about repealing ObamaCare</a>. </p>
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<p>Trump’s campaign is drawing up a health care proposal, although it is unclear when that will be released or if it will propose a full replacement plan (Republicans have struggled to put one together for years).</p>
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<p>Not to be outdone, <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4339833-desantis-health-care-plan-supersede-obamacare/">Ron DeSantis</a> is also talking about a health care plan.</p>
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<p>We need to have a health care plan that works,” he said when asked whether he will repeal and replace ObamaCare. “ObamaCare hasn’t worked. We are going to replace and supersede with a better — better plan."</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/03/politics/desantis-obamacare-biden-impeachment/index.html">When?</a></p>
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<p>DeSantis said details of the plan will likely be worked out in the spring and that his campaign would “roll out a big proposal.”</p>
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<p>By spring, of course, DeSantis will be an ex-candidate and whatever proposal he might have come out with will be moot.</p>
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<p>The basic conservative health-care problem is that market competition will <em>never</em> deliver a good health insurance system. There's a simple reason for that: The way to make money in health insurance isn't to deliver quality care at an affordable price. Instead, the path to high profits is to insure people who don't get sick, and to encourage people who likely will get sick to insure with somebody else. The less government regulation a system has, the more this market imperative will assert itself.</p>
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<p>Almost no other market works this way. For example, if you're a car company, there's no group of consumers that you hope <em>doesn't</em> buy your car.</p>
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<p>Sports Illustrated got nailed for apparently <a href="https://futurism.com/sports-illustrated-ai-generated-writers">letting AI write articles</a> and then crediting them to fake reporters with AI-generated photos. </p>
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<p>What's weird to me is the deception. I mean, why not be up-front about it? There's nothing inherently immoral about letting ChatGPT write an article if you then fact-check, edit, and take responsibility for it. I have no plans to produce Sift articles that way, but if I did, I wouldn't be ashamed to admit it. (I'm trying to inform people and promote my point of view rather than validate some claim about my abilities.) </p>
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<p>In high school I worked for my local newspaper, and occasionally my job involved writing intro paragraphs for box scores of minor sporting events we hadn't sent a reporter to: "Joe Blow scored 23 points to lead West Nowhere High to a 79-53 rout of its crosstown rival East Nowhere." I was essentially doing the work of an AI: not reporting anything new, but applying common narrative templates to information already in the box score.</p>
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<p>In the WaPo, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/01/ai-sports-illustrated-bot-journalism/">Josh Tyrangiel</a> takes a similar view: He used to work at Bloomberg, which quickly processed company earnings reports to produce headlines that its subscribers would trade on. But rapidly searching through numbers to find the most significant ones is something computers do better than humans.</p>
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<p>Bloomberg shifted to automated earnings headlines in 2013 and has used AI to create its earnings summaries since 2018. It also employs more journalists and analysts now than it did back then — some 2,700, all of whom get to do more interesting work than writing earnings headlines and summaries.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://theweek.com/cartoons/cartoons-george-santos-expulsion-vote"><img src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/tkzG5hfEZAD6ifmz2Nr5Ca-768-80.jpg.webp" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>As expected, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/30/trump-dictator-2024-election-robert-kagan/">George Santos was expelled</a> from the House of Representatives. What's surprising is the 114 votes not to expel him.</p>
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<p>More evidence how out-of-it I am: <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/04/world/oxford-word-of-the-year-2023-intl-scli-gbr/index.html">The word of the year is "rizz"</a>, which I had never heard of until I read the article. Reportedly, it is Gen Z slang for "a person’s ability to attract a romantic partner through style, charm or attractiveness". </p>
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<p>If you're one of those people who does the bulk of your charity giving at the end of the year, consider the <a href="https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LandingPage&country=US&uselang=en&utm_medium=portal&utm_source=portalBanner_en6C_2023_4_fonts2FRU&utm_campaign=portalBanner&form-template=FRU_US_4&fundraiseupScript=1">Wikimedia Foundation</a>, which supports the Wikipedia. It doesn't have any poster children or sad animals to show you, but Wikipedia has become central to our basic information infrastructure. I rely on it constantly for historical information, and it actually isn't a bad way to keep track of evolving news stories, like natural disasters and mass shootings. Typically, the first reports in the media aren't terribly accurate, and over a period of days it can be hard to sort out what was rumor and what is still considered reliable. Wikipedia collects and curates that stuff.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with a visual pun</h3>
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<p>The artist Gustav Klimt had a very distinctive style, as you can see from one of his most famous works: <a href="https://www.neuegalerie.org/womaningold">The Woman in Gold</a>.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://www.neuegalerie.org/sites/default/files/inline-images/1.%20Klimt%2C%20Adele%20Bloch-Bauer%20I%2C%201907%20%281%29.JPG" width=580 alt="" /></figure>
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<p>The similarity in names inspired Carl Tétreault to produce this image of The Man With No Name: "<a href="https://www.tumblr.com/zombiscuit/143268452570/klimt-eastwood-11x17-i-did-it-finally-im-very">Klimt Eastwood</a>".</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://64.media.tumblr.com/bee2c6fcca19a25149977f33f76d5126/tumblr_o63cfw8NWz1t3q4d7o4_640.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></figure>
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<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>The great tactical disadvantage for all those of us who will fight for democracy is that you have one tool to do it: democracy. You must use democratic means to defeat anti-democratic forces. And that can feel like fighting with one hand tied behind your back. But you're either a democrat or you're not.</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/withpod-live-with-chris-hayes-and-rachel-maddow/id1382983397?i=1000636401428">Rachel Maddow</a></p>
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<p>This week's featured post is "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/11/27/the-remarkable-biden-economy/">The Remarkable Biden Economy</a>". </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about the hostage release in Gaza</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://theweek.com/cartoons/427908/political-cartoon-israel-palestine-conflict"><img src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6wZkqYNwEsSPLkUk4sUHbS-1024-80.jpg.webp" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>The long-rumored ceasefire-with-prisoner-exchange deal between Israel and Hamas <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/22/world/what-do-we-know-about-the-israel-hamas-hostage-deal/index.html">took effect Friday</a>. The ceasefire started then and was supposed to last four days. Talks are underway to extend that period and perhaps free more hostages. Otherwise, fighting will resume tomorrow.</p>
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<p>Any agreement that results in real actions is a good sign: The two sides have ways to talk to each other, and are building trust that agreements made can be carried out. But there's still a long, long way to go. (Late-breaking reports say <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/nov/27/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-gaza-ceasefire-hostages-deal-end-extension-benjamin-netanyahu">the truce will last another two days</a>.)</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Dutch election</h3>
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<p>Anti-Islam and anti-EU politician <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/22/far-right-party-set-to-win-most-seats-in-dutch-elections-exit-polls-show">Geert Wilders</a> led his Party for Freedom to a surprisingly good showing in the parliamentary elections Wednesday. Still far from a majority, his 35 seats is the most by any individual party in the 150-seat parliament. He will get the first chance to put together a majority coalition. </p>
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<p>I'm not sure the WaPo is correct in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/25/europe-far-right-netherlands-election/">interpreting this result as showing a rising right-wing momentum in Europe</a>, especially given the <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-election-results-opposition-donald-tusk-wins-final-count-civic-platform-pis/">Polish election results</a> in October. But it bears watching.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">but we should talk more about how Trump gets covered</h3>
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<p>Major media still seems to be having a hard time figuring out how to cover Trump. In 2015, he was a man-bites-dog story who clearly was never going to be president anyway, so he got millions and millions of dollars worth of free media coverage. Entire Trump speeches were broadcast live on CNN, and quotes the media determined to be "gaffes" got repeated again and again. </p>
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<p>Eventually, outlets noticed that they had become vehicles for disinformation. Unlike the typical presidential candidate, Trump was not embarrassed to be caught in a lie, and would keep repeating the lie long after fact-checkers had debunked it. In fact, he had more persistence than the fact-checkers, so he would keep lying, while fact-checkers found it pointless to keep repeating the same debunking columns. This led <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/12/10/meet-bottomless-pinocchio-new-rating-false-claim-repeated-over-over-again/">WaPo's Glenn Kessler</a> to invent the "bottomless Pinocchio":</p>
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<p>The bar for the Bottomless Pinocchio is high: The claims must have received three or four Pinocchios from The Fact Checker, and they must have been repeated at least 20 times. Twenty is a sufficiently robust number that there can be no question the politician is aware that his or her facts are wrong.</p>
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<p>Similarly, Trump's "gaffes" were not the usual sort of political misstatements: slips of the tongue or half-truths that got stretched to the point of hyperbole, like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/mar/25/hillaryclinton.uselections2008">Hillary Clinton's harrowing tale of landing in Bosnia under sniper fire</a>. Trump wasn't misspeaking, he was intentionally trolling; he said outrageous things strategically, to get attention and change the direction of the national conversation. (You can see that happening now with his trials. Are the news headlines about the damning and unanswerable evidence of his criminality? Of course not. They're about some attack on a court official or witness or prosecutor that is likely to get somebody killed eventually.)</p>
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<p>What many outlets came down to was a non-amplification policy: Let Trump say whatever he wants, and if it's too outrageous we just won't pay attention. At a surface level that made sense: If he is saying these things to manipulate our attention, ignore him.</p>
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<p>Now, though, we're seeing the downside of that policy as well: For years, right-wing politicians have used "dog whistles", turns of phrase that may sound innocuous to the average voter, but communicate a more sinister message to the politician's extremist base. So, for example, you didn't need to say openly racist things about Black people; if you simply talked about "the inner city", your racist supporters would get your message. </p>
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<p>Non-amplification, though, lets Trump get all the benefits of a dog whistle while opening saying what he means. For example, when he called his political enemies "vermin" a couple weeks ago, <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/abc/trump-calls-his-political-enemies-vermin-muted-national-news-coverage">the major news outlets didn't cover it</a> right away. So his followers on Truth Social got the message, but the people he was implicitly threatening to exterminate didn't. Likewise, his <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/major-news-outlets-ignored-trump-amplifying-calls-citizens-arrest-his-foes">sharing of a fan's fantasy of performing a "citizen's arrest"</a> on NY AG Letitia James and Judge Arthur Engoron escaped immediate national attention.</p>
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<p>I don't know why this is so hard: You don't give Trump a live microphone to pass on disinformation. You never quote him without an immediate fact-check. But you do cover the fact of him making racist, violent, or authoritarian remarks.</p>
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<p>Five co-authors at <a href="https://www.cjr.org/analysis/election-politics-front-pages.php">Columbia Journalism Review</a> researched similar issues, and found that almost none of the major-outlet coverage of politics informed readers/viewers about the policy issues at stake. </p>
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<p>Instead, articles speculated about candidates and discussed where voter bases were leaning.</p>
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<p>The authors also found a major difference between the choices made on the front pages of The New York Times as opposed to The Washington Post: In the lead-up to the 2022 elections, The Times consistently emphasized issues that favored Republican narratives, while the Post was more balanced. </p>
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<p>Exit polls indicated that Democrats cared most about abortion and gun policy; crime, inflation, and immigration were top of mind for Republicans. In the <em>Times</em>, Republican-favored topics accounted for thirty-seven articles, while Democratic topics accounted for just seven. In the <em>Post</em>, Republican topics were the focus of twenty articles and Democratic topics accounted for fifteen—a much more balanced showing. In the final days before the election, we noticed that the <em>Times</em>, in particular, hit a drumbeat of fear about the economy—the worries of voters, exploitation by companies, and anxieties related to the Federal Reserve—as well as crime. Data buried within articles occasionally refuted the fear-based premise of a piece. Still, by discussing how much people were concerned about inflation and crime—and reporting in those stories that Republicans benefited from a sense of alarm—the <em>Times</em> suggested that inflation and crime were historically bad (they were not) and that Republicans had solutions to offer (they did not).</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p><a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-139110825?selection=24d5b434-5112-48f2-a380-08e7468a2282#:~:text=%E2%80%9DFour%20score%20and%20seven%20years%20ago%20our%20fathers%20brought%20forth%20on%20this%20continent%2C%20a%20new%20nation%2C%20conceived%20in%20Liberty%2C%20and%20dedicated%20to%20the%20proposition%20that%20all%20men%20are%20created%20equal">Heather Cox Richardson</a> reminds us of the true origin of Thanksgiving: The mythic "first Thanksgiving" of Native Americans and Pilgrims had been long forgotten when it resurfaced in 1841, and inspired a nation torn by the slavery question to imagine reconciliation. A Thanksgiving holiday did not become official until President Lincoln began proclaiming days of thanksgiving during the Civil War.</p>
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<p>Cory Doctorow is one of the most interesting voices to listen to about technology and its influence on society. In this article, he talks about <a href="https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/">why the internet keeps getting less useful and more annoying</a>, which he labels "the Great Enshittening". X/Twitter is an obvious case in point, but it's far from the only example.</p>
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<p>The problem, he says, is structural change, not that tech people suddenly became villains. </p>
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<p>Tech has also always included people who wanted to enshittify the internet – to transfer value from the internet’s users to themselves. The wide-open internet, defined by open standards and open protocols, confounded those people. Any gains they stood to make from making a service you loved worse had to be offset against the losses they’d suffer when users went elsewhere.</p>
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<p>It follows, then, that as it got harder for users to leave these services, it got easier to abuse users.</p>
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<p>In other words, inside tech companies there have always been arguments between people who want to extract more value from their users and people who want to give their users better service. But the argument against exploiting users was "if we do that, they'll leave". </p>
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<p>In today's internet, though, it gets harder and harder to leave an abusive platform for a less abusive one. (I'm still using X, for example, even as I experiment with alternatives.) So "if we do that, users will leave" isn't as persuasive an argument as it used to be.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mike-johnson-christianity-public-schools_n_65565dfce4b0998d699f5f0d">HuffPost</a> has an article about the work Speaker Mike Johnson used to do as an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, a group trying to get the courts to recognize special rights for Christians. The article quotes Johnson making a point he still makes, claiming that "separation of church and state" is not only a "misunderstood" concept, but that when Thomas Jefferson originally used the phrase, he didn't really mean what we think.</p>
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<p>What he was explaining is they did not want the government to encroach upon the church, not that they didn’t want principles of faith to have influence on our public life.</p>
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<p>Johnson is counting on people not looking up the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html">letter where Jefferson coined the phrase</a>. Here's the key paragraph.</p>
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<p>Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that <em>the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions</em>, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. [italics added]</p>
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<p>The obvious corollary to Jefferson's letter is that government <em>can</em> restrict actions, even if you justify your actions with some religious belief. So it's fine if you want to believe that gays or transfolk are immoral, but if you want to turn same-sex couples away from your wedding-cake shop, that's an <em>action</em>, not an opinion. </p>
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<p>This week in When Bad Things Happen to Bad People: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/25/derek-chauvin-convicted-of-george-floyds-reported-to-have-been-stabbed-in-prison">Derek Chauvin</a>, the police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, got stabbed in prison. And <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/kyle-rittenhouse-broke-net-worth-b2453285.html">Kyle Rittenhouse</a>, who became a right-wing hero after killing two people and shooting a third during the unrest following a police shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, is now broke, according to his lawyer. </p>
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<p>He is working, he is trying to support himself. Everybody thinks that Kyle got so much money from this. Whatever money he did get is gone.</p>
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<p>Not to worry, though, Rittenhouse has a book coming out. Crime may pay yet.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with some holiday self-defense</h3>
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<p>Perhaps you've been lucky so far, and a few of your local retailers didn't start playing "Jingle Bell Rock" until Black Friday. But for the next month or so all restraint is off, so you won't be able to leave the house without hearing "Santa Baby" coming from somewhere. </p>
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<p>I mean, some Christmas music is fine, and I'd probably miss it if I went a full season without any. But December is a whole month, and the Christmas playlist just isn't that long. Even "O Holy Night" gets old if you hear it night after night after night.</p>
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<p>So what you'll need by December 25 is some off-beat Christmas music no one else is going to play, or maybe even some anti-Christmas music to channel your building resentment before it blows. Here are some of my favorites.</p>
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<p>If you dread getting together with your dysfunctional extended family, the Dropkick Murphys have it worse than you do, and sing about it (with a very catchy tune) in "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTx-sdR6Yzk">The Season's Upon Us</a>". </p>
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<p>You know that face you make when you were hoping for one kind of present and get something else entirely? Garfunkel and Oates have a song about it: "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMWTs0YT928">Present Face</a>".</p>
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<p>It seems like every kind of place has a song explaining why Christmas so wonderful there. It's become a formula and you can do it for anywhere, as Weird Al proved by collecting Cold War nostalgia in "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t039p6xqutU">Christmas at Ground Zero</a>". Similarly, the makers of South Park cranked out "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zad5rhVOirg">Christmastime in Hell</a>". </p>
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<p>South Park, it turns out, has an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=south+park+christmas+songs">entire page of Christmas songs</a>. Or if you want offbeat or unusual Christmas songs no one else knows about, there are <a href="https://www.conwaydailysun.com/things_to_do/music/news/quirky-christmas-songs-to-help-you-survive-the-season/article_236e0fcc-d4ca-11e7-9987-976d7ab11fcd.html">entire playlists</a> available on the web. You're welcome.</p>
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<p>Feel free to share your own rebellious seasonal music in the comments.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-80151405476973253992023-11-20T12:01:00.000-05:002023-11-20T12:01:20.982-05:00Echoes and Resemblances<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon.</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- <a href="https://bookmarks.reviews/george-orwells-1940-review-of-mein-kampf/">George Orwell's 1940 review of <em>Mein Kampf</em></a></p>
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<p>This week's featured post is "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/11/20/revisiting-the-fascism-question/">Revisiting the fascism question</a>". I didn't notice this cartoon until after that article posted. </p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.ajc.com/opinion/mike-luckovich-blog/1112-mike-luckovich-trumptator/S5YTOKIH75CJBNDHII7W3Z2QJA/"><img src="https://www.ajc.com/resizer/Pg5pOsn84etE_r3yyjEP0DtJTiA=/814x458/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ajc/T46ZYH6YTJBVRBJHXUWEH2GY7I.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>If you wondered what I was doing with my week off last week, I was in a church <a href="https://freeandresponsible.blogspot.com/2023/11/my-humanist-afterlife.html">speculating about death</a>. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about Gaza</h3>
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<p>A frequently rumored deal where Hamas would release some number of hostages in exchange for a ceasefire of a certain number of days <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/19/politics/hamas-hostage-release-deal-pending/index.html">keeps not quite happening</a>. </p>
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<p>The war news this week centered on the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-al-shifa-hospital-patients-staff-displaced-people-leave/">Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza</a>, which Israel has claimed sits over a Hamas command-and-control center. Meanwhile, though, it was a hospital, and conditions there became horrific while Israel searched it for Hamas fighters and their hostages. Saturday, a deal was reached to evacuate the patients that could be moved and leave the hospital with a skeleton crew to take care of the rest.</p>
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<p>Israel turned up a collection of weapons from the hospital and a shaft that presumably goes down into deeper tunnels. But so far this evidence has fallen short of a command-and-control center, so not everyone was impressed.</p>
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<p>It's hard to feel good about any news coming out of Gaza. My interpretation of the October 7 attacks is that Hamas designed them to offend Israel as deeply as possible, giving Israelis the maximum motivation to come to Gaza and root them out. Simultaneously, Hamas had embedded itself in Gaza so tightly that Israel would have to do ugly, horrible things to succeed in rooting them out. For its part, Israel is now doing those ugly, horrible things, and Palestinian civilians are dying in large numbers. </p>
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<p>Watching from the outside, I have a hard time coming up with some alternative path Israel ought to be taking, and yet I also have a hard time rooting for them to succeed in their current path. I find myself agreeing with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/15/opinion/israel-gaza-facts.html">this Nicholas Kristof column</a>, especially this line:</p>
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<p>Unless you believe in human rights for Jews <em>and</em> for Palestinians, you don’t actually believe in human rights.</p>
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<p>There's been a lot written -- maybe appropriately so -- about antisemitism on college campuses, and from the left in general. But this week we got a reminder that antisemitism on the right is far more pervasive and virulent.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.slowboring.com/p/antisemitism-in-america">Matt Yglesias</a> wrote a fairly long column about left and right antisemitism, which I'll oversimplify down to this: Leftists sympathize with Palestinians, and sometimes end up overshooting into hating Jews. Rightists hate Jews, and so invent conspiracy theories to justify that hatred. Neither position is good, but they're not exactly mirror images of each other.</p>
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<p>Cases in point are these statements by <a href="https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1725145527388414170">Tucker Carlson</a> and <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-defends-elon-musks-antisemitism-some-largest-financiers-left-wing-anti">Charlie Kirk</a>, which blame Jews for financing "white genocide" and "anti-white causes". <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-actual-truth-antisemitic-post-backlash-advertisers/">Elon Musk</a> responded to a tweet expressing a similar view with "You have said the actual truth."</p>
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<p>In case you thought Hamas was the only group of unreasonable radicals, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-extreme-ambitions-of-west-bank-settlers">The New Yorker interviews Daniella Weiss of the Israeli settler movement</a>. </p>
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<p>The borders of the homeland of the Jews are the Euphrates in the east and the Nile in the southwest.</p>
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<p>That's the land promised to Abraham's descendants in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2015&version=NIV">Genesis 15</a>. It includes big chunks of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. </p>
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<p>If someone decides to invent a new religion today, who will decide the rules? The first nation that got the word from God, the promise from God—the first nation is the one who has the right to it. The others that follow—Christianity and Islam, with their demands, with their perceptions—they’re imitating what existed already. So, why in Israel? They could be anywhere in the world. They came after us, in the double sense of the world.</p>
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<p>She's fine with non-Jews continuing to live in these lands, as long as they accept that </p>
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<p>We the Jews are the sovereigns in the state of Israel and in the Land of Israel.</p>
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<p>That means accepting that "they are not going to have the right to vote for the Knesset. No, no, no."</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and averting a government shutdown</h3>
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<p>I give Speaker Johnson credit for not waiting until the absolute last minute to recognize reality: Any plan to keep the government funded has to rely on Democratic votes, so loading a continuing resolution up with right-wing culture-war riders can't work. The House got a relatively clean CR done <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/house-set-vote-johnson-plan-avert-shutdown-hell/story?id=104877426">Tuesday</a> (supported by 209 Democrats and only 127 Republicans), the Senate <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/15/politics/senate-vote-avert-shutdown/index.html">passed it Wednesday</a>, and President Biden <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/17/politics/biden-signs-stopgap-spending-bill/index.html">signed it Thursday</a>, with a day to spare. The ordinary business of government shouldn't be dramatic. Things that need to get done should get done without watching some clock tick down to zero.</p>
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<p>Johnson accomplished this by pulling the same trick Kevin McCarthy did just before the House sacked him: He avoided putting the bill through the Rules Committee (where all bills usually go, so that rules can be established for amendments, debate limits, etc., and which McCarthy had stacked with "Freedom" Caucus members as part of the deal that made him speaker). That meant it needed a 2/3rds supermajority to pass, which it only got via overwhelming Democratic support. </p>
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<p>Predictably, passing a realistic CR with mostly Democratic votes <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/11/14/freedom-caucus-mike-johnson-government-shutdown">angered the "Freedom" Caucus</a>, which has no interest in the kind of compromise democracy always entails. So far no one is proposing another vacate-the-chair resolution. But it's hard to see how Johnson gets past the next set of funding deadlines without a revolt.</p>
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<p>About those deadlines: The one weird thing about the Johnson-designed CR is that it has two. The bill would extend funding until January 19 for military construction, veterans’ affairs, transportation, housing and the Energy Department. The rest of the government – anything not covered by the first step – would be funded until February 2. </p>
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<p>It's not clear what kind of game Johnson has in mind. Maybe he wants to get full-year appropriation bills approved for the January 19 departments approved first, then have a showdown over big cuts to the February 2 departments. Or maybe he wants to be able to have a shutdown over the January 19 departments while the others are still funded. We'll see how Democrats maneuver in response.</p>
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<p>In general, it's hard to disagree with one part of Johnson's rhetoric: Congress ought to debate individual programs on their merits, rather than vote the whole government up or down. However, such a plan requires <em>repeated </em>compromises with Democrats, and recognizing that the small and fractious Republican House majority can't get its way on everything. As long as the House loads every bill with things Democrats will never support, nothing will pass and we'll keep coming down to deadlines with the government unfunded.</p>
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<p>The CR does not include additional aid for Israel or Ukraine. Meanwhile, Johnson's previous bill that coupled aid to Israel with a deficit-increasing IRS cut is <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4310130-senate-blocks-house-bill-israel-irs/">dead in the Senate.</a> If Israel (not to mention Ukraine) is going to get more aid, the House is going to have to try again. </p>
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<p>The fact that <a href="https://www.budget.senate.gov/chairman/newsroom/press/memorandum-cuts-to-irs-tax-enforcement-would-increase-the-deficit">the IRS cut increases the deficit</a> (by making it easier for rich taxpayers to cheat; I've heard the cut described as "defund the tax police") is routinely left out of <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/senate-blocks-14-3-billion-in-aid-for-israel/">conservative-media articles</a>. Conservative media frames the situation as Democrats wanting to protect IRS bureaucrats, not Democrats wanting rich people to pay the taxes they legally owe.</p>
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<p>Basically, there are two kinds of legislators. When something needs to get done, one kind thinks "What am I willing to give up to make this happen?" and the other thinks "What can I get people to give me to stop blocking this?"</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the China summit</h3>
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<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/15/politics/biden-xi-meeting/index.html">President Biden met President Xi on Wednesday</a>, and accomplished a small number of important but not flashy things: They restored communications between Chinese and American military leaders, which is how minor incidents are settled without escalating into war. And China agreed to reduce precursor chemicals for making fentanyl, which is a key point in the China-to-Mexico-to-America drug trade. The two leaders disagreed about a number of other issues, like Taiwan. </p>
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<p>Yeah, yeah, Taiwan and trade and <a href="https://grist.org/climate-energy/china-and-the-u-s-the-worlds-biggest-polluters-strike-a-climate-deal/">climate agreements</a> and all that are important, but here's what you were really concerned about: <a href="https://apnews.com/article/xi-jinping-pandas-apec-94420197473c4152d6a2ce054c725873">China will resume sending pandas to US zoos</a>.</p>
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<p>Back in 2018, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OubM8bD9kck">John Oliver</a> publicized the banned-in-China anti-Xi memes styling him as Winnie the Pooh, and now I can't see him without <a href="https://www.opindia.com/2019/10/china-ban-cartoon-winnie-the-pooh-comparison-xi-jinping/">noting the resemblance</a>.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Tuberville drama</h3>
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<p>Senator Tuberville's blockade on military promotions <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/16/politics/gop-senators-late-night-military-nominations-fails/index.html">continued this week</a>, and we found out that he has at least one ally: Mike Lee of Utah. </p>
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<p>Several Republicans have publicly expressed frustration with Tuberville on the floor of the Senate, to no avail. Democrats are going to propose a temporary rule change to circumvent the blockade, but it needs 60 votes to pass. If all 51 Democrats show up to support the change, nine Republicans will be needed. No one knows whether the anti-Tuberville faction has that many Republicans. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Trump's "insurrection"</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.ajc.com/opinion/mike-luckovich-blog/118-mike-luckovich-witch-anger/E4YPLKO5HNA65FMVN5QRVFSVDQ/"><img src="https://www.ajc.com/resizer/8FV9umcbVhJH6tk2_f0cLFyIX7M=/814x458/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ajc/5XWUO4AT4BC4XEOI5PDDEAKOBA.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>A Colorado judge weighed in Friday on whether the <a href="https://www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/senate-and-constitution/14th-amendment.htm#:~:text=Passed%20by%20the%20Senate%20on,laws%2C%E2%80%9D%20extending%20the%20provisions%20of">14th Amendment's</a> insurrection clause makes Donald Trump ineligible to be president again. The ruling is a mixed bag: She finds that Trump did engage in insurrection, in the sense intended by the Amendment, but denies that the phrase "officer of the United States" was intended to include presidents. As a result, Trump's name should appear on Colorado primary ballots.</p>
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<p>That sounds like a victory for Trump, but <a href="https://twitter.com/harrylitman/status/1725701240443768917">Harry Litman</a> isn't so sure. The engaged-in-insurrection part is a finding of fact (based on extensive examination of evidence) which the appellate courts would be inclined to defer to, while the not-an-officer part is a matter of law that the higher courts will want to decide for themselves. So this Trump "victory" may set up a less victorious outcome on appeal.</p>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Court_Probation/02nd_Judicial_District/Denver_District_Court/11_17_2023%20Final%20Order.pdf">judge's opinion</a> is a good summary of what happened on January 6. A key point is that Trump's words can't be taken at face value because</p>
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<p>Trump developed and employed a coded language based in doublespeak that was understood between himself and far-right extremists, while maintaining a claim to ambiguity among a wider audience.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/11/19/1019825478/former-first-lady-rosalynn-carter-dies">Former first lady Rosalynn Carter died Sunday</a>. Her husband, former president Jimmy Carter, has been in hospice since February. </p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2023/nov/16/george-santos/?fbclid=IwAR2T-ZgXYxqybU2gybuVBNyaHz3QE-xGM3o0CrCQk8IpOKRv0_La8lG55LE"><img src="https://wehco.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/img/photos/2023/11/16/231117_George_Santos_t800.jpg?90232451fbcadccc64a17de7521d859a8f88077d" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>When Republicans and a few Democrats voted against a resolution to expel George Santos from the House of Representatives a few weeks ago, they claimed it was because he had not yet gotten the due process that an Ethics Committee investigation would provide. </p>
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<p>Well, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67446799">the Ethics report came in Thursday</a>, saying that </p>
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<p>Mr Santos exploited "every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit."</p>
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<p>A new expulsion resolution is expected after Thanksgiving, and it will probably pass.</p>
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<p>The Supreme Court finally <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/Code-of-Conduct-for-Justices_November_13_2023.pdf">adopted an ethics code</a>. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/opinion/supreme-court-ethics-code.html">Critics</a> are not impressed.</p>
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<p>The most glaring defect of the new code is its complete lack of any enforcement power. Its 15 pages are littered with weak verbs like “should,” “should not” and “endeavor to,” which, as any college student on a pre-exam bender will tell you, is a reliable way to sound serious without actually doing the work. ... Whatever the justices do, they must know there will be no professional repercussions. Appointed for life and removable only by impeachment, they are effectively untouchable.</p>
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<p>Baseball's A's will move from Oakland to Las Vegas by 2028, leaving Oakland without any sports franchises. The A's are baseball's most traveled franchise, beginning as the Philadelphia Athletics, then moving to Kansas City, Oakland, and now Las Vegas.</p>
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<p>My annual exercise in humility -- reading various publications' best-books-of-the-year lists and admitting how few of them I've even noticed -- <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/11/16/best-books-year/">begins with the Washington Post</a>. And Vox reviews the <a href="https://www.vox.com/23961161/national-book-award-2023-finalists-winners-list">25 nominees</a> for a National Book Award. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with an interesting question</h3>
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<p>WaPo columnist <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/11/16/books-reread-read-again/">Michael Dirda</a> raises the idea of books you come back to again and again, and refines it a little: Books you may have read only once, but you <em>want</em> to come back to. What's interesting in his column isn't his list of 22 books, but the question itself. </p>
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<p>I'll offer <em>All the King's Men</em> as a novel I re-read every five years or so, and <em>Gravity's Rainbow </em>as one I don't re-read cover to cover, but keep coming back to for specific scenes and descriptions. (If you write, you need to keep exposing yourself to authors whose grasp of language is deeper than your own.) As for a set of books I want to come back to someday: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle">Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle</a> and Nick Harkaway's <em>Gnommon</em>, which I almost understood the second time through.</p>
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<p>Your turn.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-2723179592525219812023-11-06T11:04:00.002-05:002023-11-06T11:04:28.947-05:00Doubt and Indecision<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><strong>No Sift next week. The next new articles will post on November 20.</strong></p>
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<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.</em> <em>I do not think this is necessary.</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- Bertrand Russell <br>"<a href="https://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com/historical/living-in-an-atomic-age/present-perplexities-1953-05-12">Present Perplexities</a>" (1953)</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>This week's featured post is "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/11/06/can-we-talk-about-israel-and-palestine/">Can we talk about Israel and Palestine?</a>"</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:heading {"level":3} -->
<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was avoiding talking about the war in Gaza</h3>
<!-- /wp:heading -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>That reluctance is the subject of the <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/11/06/can-we-talk-about-israel-and-palestine/">featured post</a>. </p>
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<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>This week Israeli troops moved into Gaza in force, and have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/06/israel-hamas-war-blinken-turkey-gaza-us-submarine-ankara-talks-hakan-fidan">encircled Gaza City</a>, cutting the region in two. The Gaza health ministry now reports <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/nov/06/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-jordan-airdrops-medical-supplies-gaza-blinken-turkey-push-contain-conflict">over 10,000 Palestinian deaths</a>, though this number can't be independently verified.</p>
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<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />
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<p>Here are a couple of links that didn't make it into the featured post: <a href="https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1720088460021899553">Ta-Nahisi Coates</a> goes to the West Bank and interprets what he sees through the lens of Jim Crow: Some people can vote and others can't. Some people can go wherever they want and others can't. The history of how things got to be this way may be complicated, Coates says, but the morality of it is simple.</p>
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<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>And <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/04/opinion/sunday/palestinians-west-bank-israel.html">Nicholas Kristof</a> visits two Palestinian men he met 41 years ago on a bus.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>I pushed back and noted how brutal the Hamas terrorism had been and how many Israeli civilians had been killed or kidnapped. Saleh and Mahmoud said that they mourned the Israeli deaths, but wondered why the world wasn’t equally outraged that Palestinians have been killed in cumulatively greater numbers. They were disappointed by my focus on the Hamas barbarism, and I was disappointed by their reluctance to unequivocally condemn those attacks.</p>
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<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>... We parted, all of us less spry than we had been the first time. They were fairly ordinary Palestinian men who had mostly kept their heads down; they had avoided politics and had not lost family members to the conflict. But they had lost freedom and dignity. There are untold numbers just like them who never make the headlines but are stewing inside.</p>
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<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>I remembered two young men full of promise and warmth, animated by hope and inhabiting a world in which Israelis and Palestinians interacted regularly and didn’t much fear each other. It is wrenching to see such change. As Saleh and Mahmoud became dads and grandfathers, they were shorn of a future, of vitality, of hope.</p>
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<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>And that, I think, is the core of the Palestinian problem.</p>
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<!-- wp:heading {"level":3} -->
<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and talking about the new Speaker's first bill</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.ajc.com/opinion/mike-luckovich-blog/112-mike-luckovich-goliath-agrees/4ECSS7QOUBALTA3RW5WWFDVUFY/"><img src="https://www.ajc.com/resizer/hEzyz5z8opvaYeQsrStmfHLJ02Q=/814x458/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ajc/QHO2ZQLINZEW3I2HUBGFEE2Y4A.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>OK, the House has a speaker again so it's open for business and ready to govern. Sort of.</p>
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<p>The first order of business is a <a href="https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2023/10/25/israel-ukraine-border-whats-bidens-105-billion-military-bill/">$105 billion emergency spending bill</a> Biden proposed that included money for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, and the southern border. It seems likely to pass the Senate with a substantial bipartisan majority.</p>
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<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>But "No, no, no," the House Republican majority says. "That's not how we want to do business any more. We'll unbundle the pieces and look at them separately, then combine them with cuts so that spending doesn't increase."</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>One problem with that approach is that bundling proposals together is how you assemble coalitions big enough to pass things. But never mind, Israel is popular, so let's start there: a <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/11/2/23944340/mike-johnson-house-israel-aid-bill-passes">$14.3 billion aid-to-Israel bill that is offset by a $14.3 billion cut in funding the IRS</a>, undoing a piece of Biden's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_Reduction_Act">Inflation Reduction Act</a> that passed last year before Republicans got control of the House. </p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://claytoonz.com/2023/11/02/republicans-chosen-people/"><img src="https://claytoonz.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/cjonesrgb11042023.jpg?w=600" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>But there's a snag in the House's logic: The IRS funding was supposed to crack down on rich tax cheats, and is expected to <em>raise more revenue than it costs</em>. The <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2023-11/CBO_Estimate_for_the_Israel_Security_Supp_Approp_Act_2024.pdf">Congressional Budget Office</a> estimates that cutting $14.3 billion out of the IRS budget will decrease revenue by $26.8 billion over ten years, for a net deficit <em>increase</em> of $12.5 billion. (The <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-gop-passes-israel-aid-bill-offset-irs-funding-cuts">Fox News story</a> on the bill leaves this detail out.)</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>So in order to "balance" deficit-increasing aid for Israel, the House adds a deficit-increasing cut to the IRS. </p>
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<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>A few things we can conclude from this:</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
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<ul><!-- wp:list-item -->
<li>House Republicans aren't serious about the deficit. If they were, they'd pair the $14 billion of Israel aid with $14 billion of deficit reduction, not an additional deficit increase.</li>
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<li>They aren't serious about helping Israel. Otherwise they wouldn't try to score political points that will slow down coming to an agreement with the Senate.</li>
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<li>Getting aid to Ukraine is going to be difficult. (That should make Putin happy.)</li>
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<!-- wp:list-item -->
<li>Helping rich people cheat on their taxes is a high priority for them.</li>
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<li>If this is how Speaker Johnson approaches legislation, avoiding a government shutdown is going to be difficult. New funding has to pass both houses of Congress by a week from Friday.</li>
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<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />
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<p>Cutting spending: Great idea! Here's a Labor Party video from Britain a few years ago that explains how <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehcc0gbzdT4">austerity (doesn't) work</a>.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and prejudice rising in America</h3>
<!-- /wp:heading -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>There were always a number of things wrong with the "melting pot" imagery America once used to describe itself. (Chiefly: the assumption that you had to give up your prior ethnic identity to become truly American, and the fact that we never allowed Black people to fully melt in.) But there's one thing it got right: Whatever ethnic squabbles you had in the old country should be left in the old country. Germany/France, Greece/Turkey, Serb/Croat -- whatever it was, we didn't want it here. Of course we developed our own ethnic rivalries, but at least they were based on things that happened in America, not feuds brought across the ocean. Mr. Dubois and Mr. Schwartz could be good neighbors here, whatever the Der Kaiser and la République were bickering about.</p>
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<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>We seem to have lost that. One of the many depressing aspects of the current conflict in Israel and Gaza is antisemitic and Islamophobic violence in the United States. This much should be obvious: Your Palestinian-American neighbor is not a Hamas terrorist and your Jewish-American neighbor is not trying to steal anybody's ancestral land. I understand that Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East face difficult issues that I don't know how to resolve. But the echoing violence here in America is something we can and should <em>just stop</em>. There's no reason for it.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:heading {"level":3} -->
<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Trump trials</h3>
<!-- /wp:heading -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Donald Trump is testifying today in the New York civil fraud trial against the Trump Organization. Last week, Trump sons Don Jr. and Eric testified, and Ivanka is due up on Wednesday. </p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://claytoonz.com/2023/11/03/trust-fund-baby-testimony/"><img src="https://claytoonz.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/cjonesrgb11052023.jpg?w=600" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>Last Friday on MSNBC's "Deadline White House", former DoJ official Andrew Weissman outlined the standard Trump family strategy on testifying. (Sorry I can't find video on this or quote him exactly.) </p>
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<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>The first ploy, Weissman said, is to claim to be the smartest person in the room. You see this, for example, in things Trump has said about <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-mar-a-lago-1-8-billion-own-company-said-it-was-too-high/">valuing Mar-a-Lago</a>: He knows what it is worth, and nobody else's opinion matters. Appraisers don't know, assessors don't know, accountants don't know -- but he knows. When that fails, the back-up ploy is to claim to be the dumbest person in the room: It's not my job to know these things; I have people for that. I just do what the accountants and lawyers tell me.</p>
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<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>It will be interesting to see which way Trump himself goes today.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Don Jr. and Eric were using the second ploy in their testimony. Junior's Wharton MBA, he testified, doesn't mean that he knows anything about accounting. (I have it on good authority that other Wharton MBAs were mortified by this.) The accountants, the Trump sons both claimed, did the financial statements and they just signed off on them.</p>
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<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Both of them were <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/donald-trumps-sons-get-challenged-on-the-witness-stand">tripped up by Assistant Attorneys General Colleen Faherty and Andrew Amer</a>, who produced emails and other documents the sons couldn't explain.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
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<p>If you've ever had somebody else do your taxes, you should understand that accountants don't work the way the Trumps claimed. Accountants are not auditors; they apply laws and rules to the numbers you give them. If you lie to your accountant about, say, what you spent to keep your home business operating or how much you paid for the house you just sold, it's not up to the accountant to do an independent investigation and correct you.</p>
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<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Same thing here: When Trump claimed his Trump Tower apartment was <a href="https://theweek.com/donald-trump/1009134/trump-told-banks-his-11000-square-foot-trump-tower-triplex-was-triple-that">three times its actual size</a>, it wasn't the accountants' responsibility to get out a tape measure and check.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and tomorrow's elections</h3>
<!-- /wp:heading -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Ohio votes on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/06/ohio-abortion-vote-issue-1-six-week-ban-clinics">whether to guarantee a right to abortion</a>. <a href="https://www.lex18.com/news/kentucky-votes/new-poll-puts-kentucky-governors-race-in-dead-heat-both-with-47-support">Kentucky</a> and <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4292905-democrats-mississippi-tate-reeves-brandon-presley/">Mississippi</a> have surprisingly competitive governor's races. And <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/176650/virginia-2023-elections-youngkin-abortion">Virginia's legislative elections</a> will tell us whether the issues Glenn Youngkin won on two years ago still resonate.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:heading {"level":3} -->
<h3 class="wp-block-heading">this week's best schadenfreude moments</h3>
<!-- /wp:heading -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Now that Mark Meadows appears to be offering testimony that contradicts what he said in his book, <a href="https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4292647-mark-meadows-sued-by-book-publisher-over-false-election-claims/">his publisher is suing him</a>.</p>
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<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />
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<p>Crypto-currency fraudster <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/02/sam-bankman-fried-found-guilty-on-all-seven-criminal-fraud-counts.html">Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted</a> on all counts. Wikipedia sums up <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bankman-Fried">his spectacular fall</a>:</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:quote -->
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Prior to FTX's collapse, Bankman-Fried was ranked the 41st richest American in the <em>Forbes</em> 400, and the 60th richest person in world by <em>The World's Billionaires</em>. His net worth peaked at $26 billion. By November 11, 2022, amid the bankruptcy of FTX, the <em>Bloomberg Billionaires Index</em> considered his net worth to have been reduced to zero.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph --></blockquote>
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<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>The satirical <a href="https://twitter.com/DougJBalloon/status/1720229873401147642">NYT Pitchbot</a>'s take:</p>
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<!-- wp:quote -->
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>If the federal prosecutors can put Sam Bankman-Fried in jail for stealing billions of dollars, imagine what they can do to you.</p>
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<!-- /wp:quote -->
<!-- wp:heading {"level":3} -->
<h3 class="wp-block-heading">but hardly anybody has been talking about the World Series</h3>
<!-- /wp:heading -->
<!-- wp:image {"sizeSlug":"large","linkDestination":"custom"} -->
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://theweek.com/cartoons/todays-political-cartoons-november-5-2023"><img src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/JmRDfJ9Dr7PmbNSsZQusNY-768-80.jpg.webp" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>If you're younger than, say, 50, you probably have no notion of what the World Series meant when I was growing up in the 1960s. For a little over a week, the world all but stopped. If somebody was playing football on Saturday or Sunday, nobody noticed. </p>
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<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>And it wasn't just the sports world that ground to a halt: The games were all played in the daytime until 1971, and radio broadcasts echoed through factories and other workplaces. Young fans like me applied considerable ingenuity to sneaking radios into our classrooms. (If you could stuff one of the cheap new transistor radios into a shirt pocket and cover the bulge with a sweater, you could thread the earphone cord under a sleeve as far as your left wrist -- or right wrist if you were left-handed. Then you could prop your head up palm-to-ear while pretending to do schoolwork with your dominant hand.)</p>
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<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>There were no "playoffs" until 1969, and no "wild card" teams until 1995. The regular-season champion of the National and American Leagues played each other, and since there was no interleague play during the season (until 1997), the two leagues were impossible to compare. So the Series held a considerable mystique: These match-ups -- Mickey Mantle facing Sandy Koufax or Bob Gibson -- could only happen in an All-Star game or a World Series. No one knew what to expect.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>That mystique cloaked a difficult truth about baseball: Unlike football or basketball, baseball is so inherently random and streaky that you can't tell how good a team is by watching it for only a week or two. (For example, countless <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Belinsky">no-name pitchers</a> have thrown no-hitters during their one magical day in the sun, only to immediately fade back into obscurity.) So while it was undoubtedly true that occasionally the lesser team won the World Series (like the Pirates beating the Yankees in 1960 despite being <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_World_Series">outscored 55-27</a> over the course of seven games), it was easy to suspend disbelief and convince yourself that the winner was indeed the best team.</p>
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<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>That's much harder to do now. Twelve teams -- nearly half of the 30-team league -- get into the playoffs, so one or two of them are bound to get hot and play way over their heads for a few weeks. Whichever two teams are most favored by luck and circumstance will meet in the World Series, and one of them will win. Is that "champion" the best team in baseball? Don't be silly.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Under the pre-1969 system, this year's World Series would have featured the Orioles (101-61 in the regular season) against the Braves (104-58), instead of the Rangers (90-72) against the Diamondbacks (84-78). An Orioles/Braves series would have been the culmination of the drama fans had been watching all summer. (Within the National League, the Braves/Dodgers pennant race would have been epic.) Instead, those of us living outside of Texas and Arizona were scratching our heads saying, "Wait. Who are these guys again?"</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Or we just <a href="https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/38804549/world-series-was-least-watched-fall-classic-tv-history">ignored it</a>. Because "World Series winner" -- the Rangers this year, in case you hadn't heard -- has just become a line in a record book. It doesn't actually mean anything any more. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
<!-- /wp:heading -->
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<p>The latest set of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/us/politics/trump-biden-times-siena-poll.html">polls from NYT/Siena</a> aren't good, and aren't good in mysterious ways: Trump has a surprising amount of support among young voters and voters of color.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>I finally broke down and subscribed the <a href="https://statuskuo.substack.com/">The Status Kuo</a> blog by Jay Kuo. His latest post is "<a href="https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/one-year-out-from-election-2024">One Year Out from Election 2024</a>", and it roughly parallels the argument I made in "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/09/25/about-the-polls/">About the Polls</a>" in September. He is concerned about the polls, but still thinks Biden is in a far better position than the polls make it appear.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/drvolts/status/1721286521192665218">David Roberts</a>:</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:quote -->
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Every single Dem presidential candidate of my lifetime, the tag-team of RW media & shitty MSM has honed in on some (often silly) weakness & beaten it to death. Gore is insincere; Kerry's a flip-flopper; Clinton had her emails; Biden's age. Only Obama has escaped this. ... </p>
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<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Any realistic alternative to Biden would also be tagged with some flaw, some Thing, some narrative that the media beat to death until the public started repeating it back to them. It's structural, just how the game works.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>And then we'd get calls to shove that person aside in favor of some other even-more-unicorn unicorn that would not be subject to the same shit. There is no unicorn. Solve the structural information problem or things keep getting worse.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>It reminds me of a refrain I've heard so often in climate/energy over the years: "they've polarized X, let's talk about Y instead." Dudes. They can polarize anything! They've spent decades building a giant polarization machine! There is no non-polarizeable term/tech/policy!</p>
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<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />
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<p>The vote to expel George Santos from Congress failed. But the interesting voice here is <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffJacksonNC/status/1720451558909845668">Jeff Jackson</a>, a Democrat who voted not to expel him. Jackson points out that an Ethics Committee report on Santos is due in two weeks. The Ethics Committee process that gives investigated members certain rights, and expelling Santos without the report would set a bad precedent. Jackson fully expects to vote to expel Santos after the report comes out, but not until then.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>He <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffJacksonNC/status/1720452522828050867">anticipates an objection</a>:</p>
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<!-- wp:quote -->
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>“But Jeff, the other side doesn’t care about precedent or due process!” Perhaps, but I do. And I think we all should. So that’s the standard I’ll defend.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph --></blockquote>
<!-- /wp:quote -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>MSNBC's <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/democrats-george-santos-house-expel-vote-rcna123314">Hayes Brown</a> argues the other side:</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:quote -->
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>The bigger threat, as I see it, is not that members are kicked out too easily for partisan reasons. It’s that members who are clearly unfit to serve are permitted to remain because of the letters next to their names.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph --></blockquote>
<!-- /wp:quote -->
<!-- wp:heading {"level":3} -->
<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something anachronistic</h3>
<!-- /wp:heading -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>I've closed with this 2Cellos video before, but not for nine years. This <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT3SBzmDxGk">17th-century performance of AC/DC's "Thunderstruck"</a> is worth a second look.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Just for reference, here's AC/DC's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2AC41dglnM">original</a>. </p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-47212402755456345342023-10-30T12:31:00.002-04:002023-10-30T12:31:57.268-04:00Worldviews<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>Someone asked me today in the media, "People are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue?" I said, "Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.</em>"</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->
<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"right"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-right">- <a href="https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1717718043525099743">Speaker Mike Johnson to Sean Hannity</a></p>
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<p>This week's featured post is "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/10/30/mike-johnson-is-worse-than-you-think/">Mike Johnson is worse than you think</a>".</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about the new speaker</h3>
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<p>Wednesday, the House ended three weeks of chaos by <a href="https://www.house.gov/feature-stories/2023-10-25-new-speaker-of-the-house">electing Mike Johnson (R-LA) Speaker of the House</a> on a <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/house-speaker-vote-live-updates-10-25-2023/">party line vote</a>. The <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/10/30/mike-johnson-is-worse-than-you-think/">featured post</a> outlines why Johnson scares me more than some random right-wing extremist with similar views on most issues: Mike Johnson is a Christian Nationalist. So he feels perfectly justified in ignoring the will of the electorate and imposing his moral vision on us.</p>
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<p>But there's more to think about here than just Johnson. <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/10/23/the-house-still-divided/">Last week</a> I may have raised your hope that non-MAGA Republicans had found their backbones. I apologize. After watching the MAGA wing <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/tom-emmer-withdraws-bid-for-house-speaker-hours-after-gop-nomination">torpedo Tom Emmer's candidacy for speaker</a>, his supporters gave in and voted unanimously for Mike Johnson, whose ideology differs from Jim Jordan's only by being more theocratic. </p>
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<p>Ken Buck of Colorado is a prime example. Two weeks ago, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXatTzMEPKU">in an interview with MSNBC's Katy Tur</a>, Buck seemed to be taking a principled pro-democracy stand:</p>
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<p>I asked [Steve Scalise] last night: "Will you unequivocally and publicly state that the election, the 2020 presidential election, was not stolen?" He didn't answer that question very clearly and Jim Jordan didn't answer that question very clearly.</p>
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<p>But then <a href="https://coloradonewsline.com/briefs/in-reversal-colorados-ken-buck-backs-new-house-speaker-mike-johnson-despite-election-denial/">he backed down</a> and voted for Johnson, who <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/mike-johnson-january-6-house-speaker-nominee-rcna122081">led 100 Republican members of Congress</a> in supporting an unsuccessful lawsuit by the Texas attorney general that would have invalidated the electoral votes of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Without those states, Joe Biden would not have had 270 electoral votes and the outcome of the election would have been thrown into dispute. (The Supreme Court refused to consider the case on the grounds that Texas had no standing.)</p>
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<p>After casting his vote in support of Johnson on Wednesday, Buck <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/ryanstruyk/status/1717231650805846130" rel="noreferrer noopener">told CNN</a> that he had not heard Johnson acknowledge that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, as he had previously demanded of Jordan and Scalise.</p>
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<p>“I have not gotten that promise from Mike,” Buck said. “I hope he comes around to that point.”</p>
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<p>Here's how much respect Johnson has for Buck's question: When Johnson faced the press for the first time as speaker, <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4274345-republican-tells-reporter-to-shut-up-johnson-2020-election/">ABC's Rachel Scott tried to ask something similar</a>. She was shouted down by the Republican congresspeople surrounding Johnson, highlighted by North Carolina's Virginia Foxx yelling, "Shut up! Shut up!" The Hill describes the Speaker's response:</p>
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<p>Johnson smiled, shook his head and said “next question.”</p>
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<p>That seems to be Speaker Johnson in a nutshell: He dresses more neatly than Jim Jordan, keeps his cool, and is not as uncouth as Virginia Foxx. But he's on the same page, and will unapologetically take advantage of their rudeness.</p>
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<p>In the same <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXatTzMEPKU">Katy Tur interview</a>, Rep. Buck mentioned that he wanted assurances from the speaker candidates that they would bring Ukraine funding up for a vote. It looks like he didn't get that from Johnson either. Thursday, Speaker Johnson announced that he intended to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/new-us-house-speaker-says-ukraine-israel-funding-request-should-be-split-2023-10-27/">separate Ukraine and Israel funding bills</a>. The implication of that is that each bill would be subject to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastert_Rule#:~:text=The%20Hastert%20Rule%20says%20that,would%20vote%20to%20pass%20it.">Hastert Rule</a>, which does not allow votes on bills that don't have majority support inside the Republican caucus. Ukraine aid is a <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4226675-most-house-republicans-vote-to-uphold-ukraine-aid/">close question</a> within the caucus, so it may not come up for a vote in the full House, where it would surely pass.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Israel/Gaza war</h3>
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<p>Unless you implicitly trust one side or the other, it's hard to get any clear idea of what's going on in Gaza. Bombs are falling, and whatever anyone intends, they fall (like the rain) on the just and the unjust alike. A <a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/10/29/23937655/israel-ground-assault-gaza-hamas-explained">ground invasion has started</a>, but doesn't seem yet to be an all-out assault. Such an assault may still be coming, but it might not.</p>
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<p>The possibilities for the war to expand are numerous. A northern front could open <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/10/30/1209377261/israeli-troops-trade-fire-over-its-northern-border-with-hezbollah">between Israel and Hezbollah</a>. A <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/video/west-bank-protests-remain-calm-as-blackouts-in-gaza-halt-communication-196616261683">uprising in the West Bank is possible</a>. I've seen a <a href="https://twitter.com/YairWallach/status/1718604283795439932">claim on X/Twitter</a> -- God knows if anything on X is true these days -- that <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/shin-bet-said-to-warn-settler-violence-could-cause-west-bank-eruption/">Israeli settlers</a> are attempting to expel Palestinians. <a href="https://twitter.com/PeterBeinart/status/1718732338178265154">Peter Beinart</a> believes this report enough to claim he saw it coming in his article last spring: "<a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/could-israel-carry-out-another-nakba">Could Israel Carry Out Another Nakba?</a>".</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and another mass shooting</h3>
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<p>This is America, so you don't have time to process one shooting before the next one happens. Saturday night, shots were fired in <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/news/breaking-news/2023/10/29/deadly-shooting-ybor-city-2-dead-19-injured/">Tampa's Ybor City neighborhood</a>.</p>
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<p>A shooting erupted in the middle of Ybor City after a Saturday night full of Halloween celebrations, leaving two dead and at least 18 people injured, Tampa police said.</p>
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<p>But you may not be ready to think about that yet, because the rampage <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/27/us/maine-shootings-suspect-search-friday/index.html">in Lewiston, Maine</a> Wednesday evening is still so fresh. A shooter attacked random people in a bar and in a bowling alley, killing 18 and wounding 13. (Early reports that 50-60 people had been injured were wrong.) The shooter has been identified as Robert Card, and his body was found Friday; apparently he killed himself. </p>
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<p>If you wanted to make the point that American gun laws are insane, you could hardly have designed an event more perfectly. In July, Card bought a Ruger SFAR high-powered rifle and a Beretta semi-automatic pistol. Ten days later, while serving as an Army reservist at a camp in New York, </p>
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<p>the army gave Card a “Command Referral” to seek treatment after he told army personnel at Camp Smith Card had been “hearing voices” and had thoughts about “hurting other soldiers.” A National Guard spokesperson confirmed to CNN Card was transported to the nearby Keller Army Community Hospital at the United States Military Academy for “medical evaluation,” after Army Reserve officials reported Card for “behaving erratically.”</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/maines-yellow-flag-law-scrutinized-woefully-weak-mass-shooting-rcna122541">His family</a> was also worried about him.</p>
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<p>Card's family told NBC News on Thursday that he had been hearing voices for months. “His mind was twisting them around,” said Katie Card, the suspect’s sister-in-law.</p>
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<p>She said the family reached out to police and Card’s Army Reserve base as they “got increasingly concerned.”</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, Maine only has a "yellow-flag law", a watered-down version of the red-flag laws 21 other states have. </p>
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<p>Even though Card underwent psychiatric treatment, [Nick] Suplina [senior vice president for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety] said he believes that would not have immediately set Maine's yellow flag law into motion because that process involved a law enforcement agency in a different state. [New York]</p>
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<p>The family would have likely had to contact police in Maine, starting a new process, Suplina said.</p>
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<p>So in the United States, or at least in Maine, you can be crazy, people can know you're crazy, there can be a recent record of you buying a gun suitable for mass killing, and nobody can do anything about it.</p>
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<p>I've heard several local people explain that implementing a more effective red-flag law hadn't seemed all that urgent, because Maine (and particularly a small town like Lewiston), just didn't seem like the kind of place where these things happen. But the inadequacy of that kind of thinking has been exposed over and over again: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkland_high_school_shooting">Parkland, Florida</a> wasn't the kind of place where these things happen. Neither was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robb_Elementary_School_shooting">Uvalde, Texas</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting">Newtown, Connecticut</a>. After last year's Fourth of July shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, I tried to explain <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2022/07/11/the-right-has-an-immature-notion-of-freedom/">what that meant</a>:</p>
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<p>I don’t think I’ve ever been to Highland Park, and you probably haven’t either. <strong>But you’ve seen it.</strong> <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/07/04/highland-park-had-storied-movie-history-before-july-4-parade-shooting/">The movies use Chicago’s North Shore suburbs</a> to symbolize affluent communities so sheltered from the scary aspects of modern life that teens have to seek out adventure for themselves. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferris_Bueller%27s_Day_Off">Ferris Bueller</a> lived in Highland Park; so did Joel Goodsen from <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risky_Business">Risky Business</a></em>. That idyllic family life <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Wife"><em>The Good Wife</em></a> had before her crooked-politician husband went to jail and everything fell apart? It was in Highland Park. The town sits between Lake Forest, where 1980 Best Picture <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinary_People"><em>Ordinary People</em></a> was set, and Winnetka, site of the <a href="https://thecinemaholic.com/home-alone-filming-locations/">Home Alone house</a>. (But parts of that movie were shot in Highland Park too.)</p>
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<p>During their glory days with the Bulls, basketball legends Michael Jordan and Scotty Pippen had Highland Park mansions. Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick was born there. About 30K people live there now, and the 2010 census says the median household income is over $100K.</p>
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<p>Here’s what I’m trying to get across: If a mass shooting can happen in Highland Park, it can happen anywhere. It can happen in your town too.</p>
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<p>So me say it again: As long as we have these crazy gun laws, we're all vulnerable.</p>
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<p>Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is hearing a case that could invalidate another kind of red-flag law: one that takes guns away from domestic abusers. Such laws are excellent from two points of view: </p>
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<li>They undoubtedly save the lives of spouses, children, and other close associates of violent individuals.</li>
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<li>And they <a href="https://efsgv.org/press/study-two-thirds-of-mass-shootings-linked-to-domestic-violence/">probably prevent mass shootings</a>, because mass shooters often start on a smaller scale, with violence against the people closest to them.</li>
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<p>But maybe a law disarming domestic abusers is one of those nice things we just can't have in the United States, at least not under this Supreme Court.</p>
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<p>According to <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/10/24/23914235/supreme-court-domestic-violence-abusers-gun-policy-us-rahimi">Vox' Ian Millhiser</a>, Zackey Rahimi is "an individual that no sensible society would allow to have a gun". Allegedly, in addition to assaulting his girl friend in a parking lot, Rahimi fired a gun at a bystander who witnessed the incident. He was involved in five other shooting incidents in a little over a year.</p>
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<p>And yet, an appeals court recently found that Rahimi has a constitutional right to own a gun. In fact, any law that tries to take his guns away is <em>unconstitutional on its face</em>.</p>
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<p>That means that, if the Fifth Circuit’s decision is upheld by the Supreme Court, this federal ban on firearm possession by domestic abusers may never be applied to any individual, no matter how violent that individual may be and no matter how careful the court that issued a restraining order against such an individual was in ensuring that they received due process.</p>
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<p>But we haven't gotten to the craziest part yet: That result is a <em>correct</em> application of the doctrine Clarence Thomas laid out in the <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2022/06/27/three-supreme-court-decisions-with-long-term-consequences/">2022 Bruen decision</a>.</p>
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<p><em>Bruen </em>held that, in order to justify nearly any law regulating firearms, “the government must demonstrate that the regulation is <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf">consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation</a>.” This means that lawyers defending even the most widely accepted gun laws, such as the federal ban on gun possession by domestic abusers, must show that “analogous regulations” also existed and were accepted when the Constitution was framed — particularly if the law addresses “a general societal problem that has persisted since the 18th century.” If they cannot, the challenged gun law must be struck down.</p>
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<p>And that's where we're out of luck. Domestic abuse certainly existed in the Founding Era, but it wasn't considered a crime. And there's no contemporary record of any law taking flintlock pistols away from wife beaters. So unless the Court wants to backtrack on a fairly recent decision, Rahimi (and even worse people) will get to keep his guns.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Trump trials</h3>
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<p>Another of Trump's co-defendants in the Georgia RICO case pleaded guilty Tuesday: <a href="https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4272209-jenna-ellis-pleads-guilty-georgia-election-interference-case/">Jenna Ellis</a>.</p>
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<p>Ellis, who once described herself as part of an “elite strike force team” of attorneys pursuing unfounded claims of election fraud, pleaded guilty to one count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings.</p>
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<p>“If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges,” a tearful Ellis told the judge.</p>
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<p>What damage Ellis' testimony might do to Trump -- or to co-defendant Rudy Giuliani, who Ellis worked with closely -- is still speculative. In the NYT, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/opinion/jenna-ellis-georgia-trump.html">Norman Eisen and Amy Lee Copeland</a> cast her as a star witness, but it's hard to say at this point.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/19/giuliani-trump-lawyer-conspiracy-legal-438225"><img src="https://cf-images.us-east-1.prod.boltdns.net/v1/static/1155968404/d006a9ff-e929-479b-ac26-a188146f8de4/2f51f448-c9e4-4fc0-b84d-2abec662fccd/1280x720/match/image.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><em>Rudy Giuliani, flanked by cooperating witnesses Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis.</em></figcaption></figure>
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<p>Two different Trump gag orders were in the news. In the civil fraud trial against the Trump Organization in New York, Judge Arthur Engoron called Trump to the stand, found his testimony not credible, and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/26/politics/trump-gag-order-engoron-fine/index.html">fined him $10,000</a>. Engoron had earlier issued a gag order on Trump preventing him from attacking officers of the court when Trump had baselessly posted on Truth Social that Engoron's law clerk was Chuck Schumer's girlfriend. He had fined Trump $5K when the post persisted on Trump's campaign website, which his lawyers said was "inadvertent". </p>
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<p>This fine came after Trump told reporters outside the courtroom on Wednesday that "This judge is a very partisan judge with a person who is very partisan sitting alongside him — perhaps even much more partisan than he is." Judge Engoron took that as yet another reference to his clerk, which Trump denied on the stand. (He claimed he was talking about Michael Cohen, who had appeared that day as a witness. Attacking witnesses is also typically frowned upon.) This was the claim Engoron said he didn't believe.</p>
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<p>Meanwhile, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/federal-judge-reimposes-limited-gag-order-donald-trumps-104467839">Judge Tanya Chutkan</a> (presiding in the federal election interference case against Trump) issued a gag order banning him from attacking prosecutors and witnesses in that trial. She stayed the order temporarily while waiting for an appellate court to rule, but then reinstated it when Trump used the temporary break in the order to go after potential witness Mark Meadows.</p>
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<p>Trump is claiming that his status as a former president and current presidential candidate gives him rights no other criminal defendant would have. I doubt the appeals court will agree with him.</p>
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<p>Ultimately, Trump will have to be found in contempt of court because he is in fact contemptuous of the proceedings against him. Clearly, $10K fines are not going to restrain him. Eventually, we'll have to see if jail time works.</p>
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<p>This should be an exciting week in the New York fraud trial: <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67243100">Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka</a> are expected to testify.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/2023/09/11/bramhall-cartoons-editorial-september-2023/"><img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.nydailynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/TOON102923.jpg?fit=1280%2C9999px&ssl=1" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>The Commerce Department reported that the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/26/us-gdp-grew-at-a-4point9percent-annual-pace-in-the-third-quarter-better-than-expected.html">US economy grew at a 4.9% annual pace</a> in the third quarter. (And yes, that number does account for inflation.) The previous week, a report from the Federal Reserve said that both mean and median <a href="https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/great-news-about-american-wealth">household wealth</a> is up. In other words, American households are generally richer than they were before the pandemic.</p>
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<p>One of the continuing mysteries of American politics is that President Biden consistently polls badly on economic issues, while the country's economic statistics have been quite good. </p>
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<p>Weird weather continues to result from climate change: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Otis">Hurricane Otis</a> made <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hurricane-otis-mexico-acapulco/">landfall near Acapulco</a> as a Category 5 storm Wednesday. It is the only Cat 5 storm to hit the Pacific coast, and intensified from a mere tropical storm in less than 24 hours.</p>
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<p>Virginia holds its elections in odd years, making the state a possible bellwether of national trends. Two years ago, Glenn Youngkin's upset victory in the governor's race drew attention to critical race theory and other right-wing education tropes. </p>
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<p>A week from tomorrow, the governorship is not on the ballot, but <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/538/virginias-legislative-contests-important-races-2023/story?id=104299286">control of the legislature is</a>. Democrats currently hold a small majority in the Senate and Republicans in the House. </p>
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<p>Here are a few things Trump said in Sioux City, Iowa yesterday. He bragged about being willing to <a href="https://twitter.com/BidenHQ/status/1718734283815211350">ignore our NATO obligations</a>.</p>
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<p>I remember, the head of a country stood up and said, "Does that mean that if Russia attacks my country, you will not be there?" And I said, "That's right. That's what it means. I will not protect you."</p>
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<p>He <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/trump-forgets-city-during-iowa-224540652.html">said hello to Sioux Falls</a>, not realizing where he was. (Sioux Falls is in South Dakota.) And he claimed that <a href="https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1718728874022908034?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">Hungary shares a border with Russia</a>. </p>
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<p>The NYT collects <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/30/us/politics/trump-biden-age.html">some of Trump's other recent blunders</a>: He warned that the US is on the verge of World War II. He bragged about being ahead of Barack Obama in the polls, and claimed that he beat Obama in 2016. He referred to Hungarian President Viktor Orban as the president of Turkey. He pronounced Hamas as if it were hummus. </p>
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<p>But Biden is the one who's out of it because he's too old. </p>
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<p>Mike Pence suspended his presidential campaign. From the beginning, his campaign has felt like one of those moments in football when a quarterback cocks his arm and I think, "Where is he throwing that?" And sure enough, the pass goes right to a defender and gets intercepted.</p>
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<p>Same thing here. I never understood what voters Pence was targeting. MAGA voters resent Pence for not cooperating in Trump's coup. Non-MAGA voters resent Pence for staying loyal to Trump right up to moment of the coup. Maybe he thought that he could reclaim the Evangelical voters he led to Trump in 2016, but they're long gone. In the GOP, the good-Christian-family-man boat sailed a long time ago.</p>
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<p>He should have thrown the ball out of bounds and punted.</p>
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<p>You may not know about Conservapedia, the conservative alternative to the "liberal" (i.e., reality based) Wikipedia. But <a href="https://twitter.com/abughazalehkat/status/1717556189217611832">Kat Abu</a> pays attention to these things, while managing to keep her sense of humor.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something massive</h3>
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<p>There's something really primal about singing along with large numbers of people. Also, large groups often sound surprisingly decent. (The notes sung tend to average out on the right ones.) Astrid Jorgensen of Australia <a href="https://www.themusicman.uk/pub-choir/">started the Pub Choir project</a> to create singing-together projects on an epic scale.</p>
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<p>At Pub Choir events, Jorgensen teaches a well-known song in 3-part harmony to non-trained singers. The performance is filmed and posted on the net.</p>
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<p>In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTmRhPsJo5M">this video</a>, Pub Choirs in cities across Australia unite to sing Toto's "Africa". The result is strangely compelling, whether you like the song or not.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-51360906325032714312023-10-23T12:16:00.000-04:002023-10-23T12:16:31.300-04:00Null and Void<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>It’s ridiculous that Republicans cannot elect a speaker, but it is also, at this point, unsurprising. A gaping void exists at the center of the populist strain of Republican politics; where the ideas ought to be, you too often find a long, primal scream of “Noooooooo!!!!”</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- Megan McArdle<br>"<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/19/jim-jordan-speaker-republican-tea-party-void/">Republicans have created a void that's becoming harder to escape</a>"</p>
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<p>This week's featured post is "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/10/23/the-house-still-divided/">The House, still divided</a>". </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about chaos in the House GOP</h3>
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<p>The <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/10/23/the-house-still-divided/">featured post</a> provides a quick summary of where we are and how we got here, and then references a couple of deeper essays about how the House and the House Republican caucus actually work. But if you're looking for some clear this-is-what-happens-next-and-when speculation, I don't have it. </p>
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<p>The McArdle quote above (and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/19/jim-jordan-speaker-republican-tea-party-void/">article</a> it comes from) makes a good point: Factions compromise with other factions because they have policy goals they want to achieve. But MAGA really has no goals beyond returning Trump to power. Cutting the deficit? No. When Trump was in power and had two years of a Republican Congress, they exploded the deficit with both tax cuts and spending increases. Inflation? They complain about it, but have no plan for addressing it. Crime? Ditto.</p>
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<p>I’m sure my Republican readers would add other things they care about: the left-wing capture of schools and education policy, the progressive drift of corporations and the mainstream media, the DEI bureaucracies metastasizing across every class of institutions, the gender-medicine doctors rushing kids onto puberty blockers and hormones. ...</p>
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<p>But notice how few of the things on the list are things Congress can actually fix, even theoretically.</p>
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<p>Imagine that you're an establishment Republican trying negotiate for MAGA support to become speaker, or that you're Biden trying to make a deal to keep the government open. What can you offer them that they would actually care about enough to give you something back?</p>
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<p>If reality mattered, the House Republican infighting would smash once and for all the myth that Trump is a great deal-maker. He claims that if he were president he could <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-describes-how-he-could-solve-russia-ukraine-conflict-24-hours">bring Ukraine and Russia to an agreement in 24 hours</a>. But the squabbling among his allies in the House has brought Congress to a standstill for three weeks with no end in sight. </p>
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<p>Where is he, and why can't he solve it?</p>
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<p>In the real world, without reality-TV editing to make him look brilliant, Trump is terrible at making deals. He broke two of Obama's agreements -- the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/world/middleeast/trump-iran-nuclear-deal.html">Iran nuclear deal</a> and the <a href="https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-trump-paris-climate-accord/">Paris Climate Accords</a> -- claiming each time that he would get a "better deal". ("I think the people of our country will be thrilled, and I think then the people of the world will be thrilled," he said about his fantasy Paris renegotiation.) In fact, he got no deal, and in each case the country is worse off than if he had left Obama's agreements in place. </p>
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<p>In 2017, he came <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/07/27/539907467/senate-careens-toward-high-drama-midnight-health-care-vote">within one vote</a> of undoing another long-negotiated Obama compromise, Obamacare. He would have taken health insurance away from millions of Americans -- again with <a href="https://kffhealthnews.org/news/back-to-the-future-trumps-history-of-promising-a-health-plan-that-never-comes/">no plan to replace it beyond a fantasy</a>. </p>
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<p>His big diplomatic "accomplishment", the <a href="https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/united-states-mexico-canada-agreement">USMCA</a>, is basically what Obama had already negotiated as part of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership">Trans-Pacific Parternship</a>, another deal Trump blew up. His flashy negotiations with North Korea produced a great photo opportunity -- which benefited Kim more than anyone -- and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/north-korea/beautiful-letters-dark-nightmare-how-trump-s-north-korea-gamble-n1230866">no substantive progress</a> on the main issue, North Korea's nuclear missiles. His trade war with China gave him great opportunities to posture, but <a href="https://www.axios.com/2021/02/01/trump-trade-war-china-failure">accomplished nothing</a>.</p>
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<p>And then we get to Trump's #1 issue: immigration and the border. The pieces of a deal have been lying around ever since the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Eight_(immigration)">Gang of Eight compromise</a> passed the Senate and died in the House in 2013. Neither side likes things the way they are and everybody has something to gain from striking a deal. But even with two years of a Republican-controlled Congress, he got no immigration legislation passed, and even <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_United_States_federal_government_shutdown">shut down his own government</a> to (unsuccessfully) pressure the Republican Congress to fund his wall.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and war</h3>
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<p>There are lots of individual stories in the Israel/Gaza war, but the fundamental situation didn't change much this week: Hamas still holds hundreds of hostages. Israel is attacking Gaza from the air, but hasn't launched a ground invasion yet. Lots of people in Gaza are dying (though it looks like <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/21/middleeast/cnn-investigates-forensic-analysis-gaza-hospital-blast/index.html">Israel wasn't responsible for destroying that hospital</a>). A shipment of <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/video/truckloads-of-humanitarian-aid-finally-enter-gaza/">humanitarian aid</a> made it into Gaza, but it's a drop in the bucket. </p>
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<p>If Israel has a plan for resolving this situation without killing a huge number of civilians, nobody seems to know what it is. In Israel's defense, though, I haven't heard a good suggestion yet for what they <em>should </em>do. </p>
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<p>Hamas <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judith-raanan-natalie-us-hamas-hostages-released-what-know-rcna121472">released two American hostages</a>, but there are still other American hostages in Gaza. Why them? Why now? I don't think anybody knows.</p>
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<p>Biden gave an Oval Office speech to the nation [<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTxDZ6D1A1E">video</a>, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/10/20/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-unites-states-response-to-hamass-terrorist-attacks-against-israel-and-russias-ongoing-brutal-war-against-ukraine/">text</a>], explaining why Israel and Ukraine deserve our support. He also said:</p>
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<p>the United States remains committed to the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and to self-determination. The actions of Hamas terrorists don’t take that right away.</p>
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<p>But without any viable peace plan, it's hard to take that sentiment seriously, whether it comes from Biden or from Israeli leaders. </p>
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<p>Biden also urged Americans not to bring the Gaza conflict home, citing the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/16/us/chicago-muslim-boy-stabbing-investigation/index.html">murder of a six-year-old Palestinian American</a> near Chicago. The article says the boy's mother came to the US 12 years ago, which would make him an American citizen.</p>
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<p>We can’t stand by and stand silent when this happens. We must, without equivocation, denounce antisemitism. We must also, without equivocation, denounce Islamophobia.</p>
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<p>And to all of you hurting — those of you who are hurting, I want you to know: I see you. You belong. And I want to say this to you: You’re all America. You’re all America.</p>
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<p>Times like these are when I'm most grateful that Biden defeated Trump in 2020. I shudder to think of this kind of crisis going on in the world with Trump posturing and grandstanding and appealing to everyone's worst impulses.</p>
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<p>I'm impressed that the White House text of Biden's speech includes his handful of verbal stumbles and misstatements. For example, he referred to Netanyahu as "president" rather than "prime minister". The text corrects that mistake with a strikethrough, but doesn't pretend he didn't say it. </p>
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<p>Ukraine's summer offense <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/e83bd6fe-43b8-4adf-9bea-07609bc223d0">didn't gain much ground</a>, but their increasing drone and missile capability has <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/20/ukraine-crimea-black-sea-counteroffensive-russia-fleet-navy-drones-war/">challenged Russia's dominance of the Black Sea</a>. </p>
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<p><a href="https://twitter.com/BrianKarem/status/1716152032233468063">Mitch McConnell</a> is still on board with helping Ukraine defend against Russia's invasion:</p>
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<p>No Americans are getting killed in Ukraine. We're rebuilding our industrial base. The Ukrainians are destroying the army of one of our biggest rivals. I have a hard time finding anything wrong with that. I think it's wonderful that they're defending themselves- and also the notion that the Europeans are not doing enough. They've done almost 90 billion dollars, they're housing a bunch of refugees who escaped. I think that our NATO allies in Europe have done quite a lot.</p>
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<p>I was late finding "<a href="https://www.dogshirtdaily.com/p/how-not-to-respond-to-a-terrorist">How Not to Respond to a Terrorist Attack</a>", which Benjamin Wittes posted the day of the the Hamas attack on Israel. But it's well worth bookmarking and coming back to after future attacks, wherever they occur and whomever they victimize.</p>
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<p>Fundamentally, he urges humility on those of us tempted to comment quickly. What needs to be affirmed in the immediate aftermath of murder is not deep or complex, but very simple: Murder is wrong. Not "wrong, but" or "wrong, except", but just wrong. There is a strong temptation, which I feel myself, to segue past the tragedy of individual lives cut short, and to talk instead about the larger context, the need for revenge, what I think will or should happen next, how this event proves some other point I often make, and why people who disagree with me are dangerously misguided. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Trump trials</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.ajc.com/opinion/mike-luckovich-blog/1020-mike-luckovich-rigged-i-say/N3YTUDVIUFCNNCG5WIBY5ADRTU/"><img src="https://www.ajc.com/resizer/8i_WwQzN9d_6QuEUOVN5QxxYaz8=/814x458/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ajc/WERPDS3IYBBVPBLTMZSHQIHGLU.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p><a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/10/trump-trials-update-bad-week-for-the-donald.html">Sidney Powell and Kenneth Cheseboro</a> pleaded guilty and have promised to cooperate with Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis. So three of the original 19 defendants in the Georgia RICO case have now pleaded guilty.</p>
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<p>By all accounts, Powell and Cheseboro got very good deals, which they took just before their trial was supposed to begin. Neither will do jail time. </p>
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<p>There are two theories on how they got such good deals: Either they have really juicy testimony to offer against the other conspirators, including Trump, or Willis really, really wanted to avoid revealing all her evidence and strategy in a trial before Trump's trial. (Both Powell and Cheseboro had taken advantage of Georgia's law giving them the right to demand a speedy trial. There's still no trial date for the other defendants.)</p>
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<p>Powell and Cheseboro are widely assumed to be two of the unnamed and unindicted co-conspirators in Jack Smith's January-6-conspiracy indictment against Trump, but neither has any deal with Smith so far. As long as that's the case, it's hard to see what they could testify to for Willis. Either might legitimately plead the Fifth Amendment rather than describe crimes Smith could still indict them for. </p>
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<p>If either of them makes a deal with Smith, the floodgates will open.</p>
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<p>The biggest immediate impact of the guilty pleas is its effect on Trump politically: It's hard to claim there was no crime when your former allies have already confessed to crimes. </p>
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<p>As for where each fit into the larger conspiracy: Powell was at the center of spreading the Big Lie, as well as the effort to seize voting machines. Cheseboro organized the fake-elector scheme. I would expect Powell's testimony to be most damaging to Rudy Giuliani and Cheseboro's to John Eastman, if you're looking for the next possible dominos. And Mark Meadows was everywhere, so any new testimony might target him.</p>
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<p>Judge Chutkan issued a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.258148/gov.uscourts.dcd.258148.105.0_2.pdf">gag order</a> against Trump </p>
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<p>All interested parties in this matter, including the parties and their counsel, are prohibited from making any public statements, or directing others to make any public statements, that target (1) the Special Counsel prosecuting this case or his staff; (2) defense counsel or their staff; (3) any of this court’s staff or other supporting personnel; or (4) any reasonably foreseeable witness or the substance of their testimony.</p>
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<p>and then explicitly described what is not included:</p>
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<p>This Order shall not be construed to prohibit Defendant from making statements criticizing the government generally, including the current administration or the Department of Justice; statements asserting that Defendant is innocent of the charges against him, or that his prosecution is politically motivated; or statements criticizing the campaign platforms or policies of Defendant’s current political rivals, such as former Vice President Pence.</p>
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<p>Trump predictably claimed that this order <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-is-appealing-a-partial-gag-order-imposed-on-him-in-his-2020-election-interference-case">violates his First Amendment rights</a>. This is in line with Trump's refusal to acknowledge that <em>indictment is a meaningful act</em>. A grand jury of ordinary Americans has found that the evidence of his criminality is sufficiently strong that a trial has to be held. That's not nothing, and it restricts a person's rights in ways that are necessary for holding a fair trial. </p>
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<p>For example, unindicted Americans are free to travel wherever they want. But if you've been indicted, you have to be present when your trial starts. The rights you would ordinarily expect as an American have been narrowed to accommodate your trial.</p>
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<p>Again and again, Trump pretends that his indictments are nothing, and so his rights should not be restricted in any way.</p>
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<p>Meanwhile, Justice Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing Trump's ongoing New York $250 million civil fraud trial, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/20/trump-fine-gag-order-00122832">fined Trump $5K</a> for violating his previous gag order and threatened to jail him for future violations. The <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/03/trump-fraud-trial-gag-order-00119735">gag order</a> had been issued after a Trump Truth Social post targeted Engoron's principal clerk. </p>
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<p>Consider this statement a gag order forbidding all parties from posting, emailing or speaking publicly about any of my staff</p>
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<p>As requested, Trump took down the offending post. But apparently it was still posted on his campaign web site. Trump's lawyers claimed this violation of the order was inadvertent, but at a minimum it shows Trump and his people failing to take the order seriously. </p>
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<p>It's just a matter of time before some judge has to jail Trump for contempt, because he is in fact contemptuous.</p>
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<p>Forbes is claiming that former Trump Organization CFO Adam Weisselberg <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2023/10/12/trumps-longtime-cfo-lied-under-oath-about-trump-tower-penthouse/?sh=19193f4edb29">committed perjury</a> during his testimony at Trump's New York civil fraud trial. After the report was published, <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/allen-weisselberg-testimony-forbes-perjury-rcna120604?cid=eml_mda_20231018&user_email=d295d0daf4d2c7cfba1698e67ff0dd7daceda8f62ae0a8df812f637949b6a39c">prosecutors cut Weisselberg's testimony short</a>. </p>
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<p>Weisselberg is still on probation after pleading guilty at a previous trial and serving three months in prison. </p>
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<p>Significantly, perjury in the first degree is also a felony punishable by up to seven years. But perhaps most importantly, the Manhattan district attorney would not have to undertake a new prosecution of Weisselberg for perjury to move to revoke his probation. It would be enough for the DA's office simply to convince Judge Juan Merchan that Weisselberg engaged in new, criminal conduct during that [five-year] period.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p>Threats and disasters are more newsworthy than positive trends, so it's easy to imagine the world is in worse shape than it actually is. <a href="https://substack.com/notes/post/p-138034500">Brian Klaas</a> calls attention to ten charts of important trends, several of which are encouraging. For example, the percentage of the world's population living in extreme poverty has been falling for two centuries, and falling faster in recent decades.</p>
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<p>Rep. Jeff Jackson's podcasts have been offering a great inside view of how the House works. Now it looks like North Carolina will <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffJacksonNC/status/1715024725771014461">gerrymander him out of Congress</a>.</p>
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<p>As I envision my next car, I find [<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/19/climate/ev-range-anxiety-a-case-study.html">one</a>, <a href="https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/taking-ev-road-trip/">two</a>] cautionary tales of road trips in EVs. I am leaning towards a plug-in hybrid.</p>
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<p>A San Francisco chef describes how <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/20/opinion/restaurant-industry-shutdown-inflation.html">his idea of a restaurant has changed</a> post-Covid: small dining room, short menu, no reservations, and a retail shop to even out revenue. He thinks this model will catch on.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something harmonious</h3>
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<p>A barbershop quartet demonstrates that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdTS6-fbNH0&t=500s">all music is really barbershop</a>. A song just takes about 20 years to get there.</p>
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Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-10758656066093188462023-10-16T11:35:00.001-04:002023-10-16T11:35:27.457-04:00Oppositional Thinking<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>What do my worst enemies want me to do — and how can I do just the opposite?</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- Thomas Friedman, <br>"<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/opinion/israel-hamas-.html">Israel has never needed to be smarter than in this moment</a>"</p>
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<p>This week's featured post is "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/10/16/my-9-11-flashbacks/">My 9-11 Flashbacks</a>". </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about war</h3>
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<p>The <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/10/16/my-9-11-flashbacks/">featured post</a> is only tangentially about Israel, Hamas, and Gaza. It's more about how memories of all the mistakes we made after 9-11 keep getting in the way as I try to process what's happening in Israel and Gaza.</p>
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<p>As usual, I'm not trying to cover breaking news. Israeli troops are massing outside of Gaza, but if you want to know what exactly they're doing, you'll have to look somewhere else. </p>
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<p>One thing that I don't think the mainstream news sources are explaining very well is why Egypt isn't letting in Gazan refugees. There are probably a bunch of reasons, but one is the fear that <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-palestinians-egypt-sinai-war-894d45535fed1049a0076453ca99c555">anyone who leaves Gaza won't be allowed back in</a> after the conflict subsides. By letting refugees in, Egypt fears it will be assisting in an ethnic cleansing. </p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Palestinians and Arab nations are marked by the experience of the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation when Palestinians were expelled or fled to neighboring countries and have not been allowed to return since, a major sticking point in the long defunct peace process.</p>
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<p>This is the first major war <a href="https://apnews.com/article/twitter-x-hamas-israel-war-elon-musk-misinformation-5e344fc9134741d4f5dc17ed04262940">since Elon Musk destroyed Twitter as a reliable source of raw news reports</a>. As a result, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/israel-attacks-video-disinformation.html">misinformation and disinformation are rampant</a>.</p>
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<p>The extremists on both sides are hard to understand. For example: the various people and groups who are standing with Hamas. I suspect there aren't many such people, but they've made themselves hard to ignore.</p>
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<p>Liberal economist <a href="https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/western-leftists-have-lost-the-plot">Noah Smith</a> explains like this:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>It’s one thing to believe that Israel is an apartheid regime and that war against it is justified; it’s another to believe that massacring random festival goers is an acceptable way to prosecute that war. ... People always have a choice whether to cheer for atrocities or to refuse to cheer for them. When your rallies end up with swastikas and “Gas the Jews” and people making fun of dead innocents, well, you made the wrong choice.</p>
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<p>He notes a split between Democratic Socialist leaders and the left-wing grass roots:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Bernie Sanders <a href="https://twitter.com/sensanders/status/1710654061618372659">strongly condemned</a> Hamas’ attack, as did <a href="https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/media/press-releases/statement-rep-ocasio-cortez-violence-israel-and-palestine">AOC</a>. The “Squad” called for Israel not to take military action in response, which is highly unrealistic, but which doesn’t constitute an endorsement of Hamas in the slightest. Elizabeth Warren, who has been consistently pro-Palestinian over the years, <a href="https://twitter.com/JoshKraushaar/status/1711420664622592272">broke down in tears</a> at the reports of Hamas’ violence and said “I'm here today to say unequivocally there is no justification for terrorism ever.” And so on. A number of New York <a href="https://twitter.com/bradlander/status/1711168969980166363">leaders</a> from the Democratic party have <a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/2023/10/09/mayor-adams-says-dsa-backed-nyc-pols-must-soul-search-after-controversial-pro-palestine-rally-is-that-something-they-stand-for/">scolded</a> the DSA rally; AOC <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/10/aoc-pro-palestine-nyc-rally-00120684">denounced</a> the rally’s “bigotry and callousness”.</p>
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<p>As an explanation of support for Hamas among the grass-roots leftists, Smith points to the failure of 20th-century leftist projects: Communism fell, decolonization happened largely without revolution, and democratic (i.e., non-revolutionary) socialism has been pretty successful in Europe.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Swedish workers are not going to start a revolution, because Swedish social democracy is pretty damn nice.</p>
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<p>Palestine was one of the few places where the old models seemed to fit, so Western leftists have invested much of their identity in it. </p>
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<p>So when their chosen heroes — the freedom fighters in whom they invested so much moral cachet — showed up at a concert and started beheading raver kids and Asian workers and abducting grandmas and God knows what else, what were Western leftists supposed to do? In situations like that there are really only two things you <em>can</em> do, without switching your whole ideology — you either tell yourself that your team’s inhumanity is justified in the name of higher goals, and march shoulder to shoulder in the streets with the most belligerent elements, or you pull back and call on both sides to avoid killing civilians. Left-leaning leaders chose the latter, but many on the grassroots chose the former.</p>
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<p>And then there's the other extreme, the one rooting for ethnic cleansing in Gaza.</p>
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<p>Often in the last few months I've linked to Kat Abu's tweets. Her <a href="https://twitter.com/abughazalehkat">home page</a> claims "I watch Fox News so you don't have to." Her summaries of what goes on on Fox in a typical week are often both accurate and hilarious. </p>
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<p>I had never paid attention to her ethnicity, which turns out to be Palestinian. It wasn't something she focused on much, at least not enough to draw the notice of a casual observer like me. Since the recent conflict started, though, <a href="https://twitter.com/abughazalehkat/status/1711882161060536362">she hasn't been shying away from it</a>. </p>
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<p>I've been seeing straight-up calls for Palestinian genocide on my [timeline] for the past 48 hours. If you're someone who carries this view, join me on a livestream so you can describe exactly how my family and I should be annihilated to my face.</p>
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<p><a href="https://twitter.com/abughazalehkat/status/1712083257083212044">She was serious</a>:</p>
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<p>I’ve got two takers for the “Tell Kat How You Would Exterminate Her And Her Loved Ones” livestream, which I’m aiming to do Friday afternoon. Anyone rooting for Palestinian extermination can be a guest, so long as (1) you stay on topic (pro-genocide) and (2) your camera stays on.</p>
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<p>But the event <a href="https://twitter.com/abughazalehkat/status/1712586330528416044">didn't come off</a>:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Both volunteers for this livestream have backed down — one called me a cunt and the other pretended a day later that he was *actually* just talking about Hamas.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the House</h3>
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<p>Steve Scalise's candidacy for speaker has come and gone, but little else has changed this week. Republicans are still unable to unite behind a leader and unwilling to make a deal with Democrats. And so there is no speaker and the House is not functioning. </p>
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<p>This has real-world consequences. The most obvious ones are that Israel and Ukraine are going to run out of key munitions if Congress doesn't authorize sending them more, and that the government is on track to shut down on November 17.</p>
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<p>The NYT <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/us/politics/house-speaker-whats-next.html">summarizes the state of the House</a>. <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/10/09/the-weirdness-in-the-house/">Last week</a> I noted how unlikely a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/13/bipartisan-speaker/">bipartisan deal</a> seemed, but that it might become the only way out. A week later, that possibility is still unlikely, but its odds are rising as other possible escapes fizzle.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and democracy</h3>
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<p>Results won't be official for another day or two, but it looks like the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67122025">Law and Justice Party is going to lose control of Poland</a>. If so, this is huge. Law and Justice is a right-wing populist party that has been undermining democracy since it took power in 2015. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_and_Justice">Wikipedia</a> says:</p>
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<p>The party has caused what constitutional law scholar <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojciech_Sadurski">Wojciech Sadurski</a> termed a "constitutional breakdown" by packing the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Court_(Poland)">Constitutional Court</a> with its supporters, undermining parliamentary procedure, and reducing the president's and prime minister's offices in favour of power being wielded extra-constitutionally by party leader Jarosław Kaczyński. After eliminating constitutional checks, the government then moved to curtail the activities of NGOs and independent media, restrict freedom of speech and assembly, and reduce the qualifications required for civil service jobs in order to fill these positions with party loyalists. The media law was changed to give the governing party control of the state media, which was turned into a partisan outlet, with dissenting journalists fired from their jobs. Due to these political changes, Poland has been termed an "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illiberal_democracy">illiberal democracy</a>", "plebiscitarian authoritarianism", or "velvet dictatorship with a façade of democracy".</p>
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<p>That the voters retain enough power to toss L&J out is amazing, and it bodes well for other illiberal countries like Hungary.</p>
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<p>Meanwhile <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/13/asia/new-zealand-general-election-labour-national-intl-hnk/index.html">New Zealand is moving rightward</a>. At the moment, though, this looks like the normal back-and-forth of democratic politics, rather than the more fundamental kind of change Poland might be having. </p>
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<p>Speaking of places trying to restore democracy, it looks like Wisconsin Republicans won't <a href="https://www.wpr.org/robin-vos-impeachment-janet-protasiewicz-still-table">go through with their plan to impeach newly elected Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz</a>. Protasiewicz' election tipped the court's majority to the liberals, and in particular threatened the heavily gerrymandered district maps that have given Republicans supermajorities in the legistlature, in a state where their party has been narrowly losing statewide races lately. </p>
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<p>What better use for a supermajority than to remove a judge who might find that those maps violate the state constitution? But when the Assembly's speaker, Robin Vos, consulted two retired WSC justices on the plan, both poured cold water on it. </p>
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<p>Maybe the voters of Wisconsin will once again get a chance to choose the legislature.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and health care</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image alignright size-large"><img src="https://www.packagingdigest.com/sites/packagingdigest.com/files/archive/www.packagingdigest.com/photo/296/296029-Wheaties_retro_boxes.jpg" width = 300 alt="" /></figure>
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<p>Once in a while, one person's story really captures the insanity of the American health care system. Tuesday, that person was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/oct/10/mary-lou-retton-hospital-pneumonia-olympic-gymnastics">Mary Lou Retton</a>, the gymnast who won five gold medals in the 1984 Olympics, and whose exuberant smile graced Wheaties boxes and other commercial products for years afterward.</p>
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<p>Retton is 55 now, and according to her daughter's Instagram post, is in a Texas ICU fighting for her life against a rare form of pneumonia. She has no health insurance, so her daughter is asking for donations to cover her mother's bills. </p>
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<p>What do you have to do in this country to be worthy of medical care?</p>
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<p>Another example of our national dysfunction turned up two weeks ago in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82QYlbiawJI">John Oliver's piece</a> on prison health care, which he kicked off with clips of local news anchors trying to get their viewers upset about paying for inmates' medical conditions.</p>
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<p>It is just wild to point out that the only place Americans are guaranteed health care is jail, and make it sound like somehow the problem is prisoners, and not our deeply broken system.</p>
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<p>This is a standard feature of right-wing framing, which you can also see in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/04/cpac-rightwing-republicans-ukraine-support-marjorie-taylor-greene">this quote from CPAC</a>: </p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Why, while we have veterans in the street, we have homeless people all over the place, we have inflation going crazy, are we going to send billions and billions and billions of dollars [to Ukraine]?</p>
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<p>The constant refrain is that if you find (or imagine) an example of unfairness, the solution is to level down rather than level up: Rather than do something to help veterans in the street or other homeless people, cut off Ukraine aid. Don't provide more people with health care, take it away from prisoners. In the name of fairness, everybody should suffer.</p>
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<p>Three Alabama hospitals will soon <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/3-hospitals-closing-maternity-labor-delivery-units-alabama-rcna111374">stop delivering babies</a>, leaving two entire counties without a birthing hospital. This is in a state that already has high rates of maternal and infant mortality. The hospitals attribute the closings to staffing shortages and funding problems. None of the articles I read made a connection between the difficulty getting ob-gyn doctors to come to Alabama and the state's draconian abortion laws. But I have to think it plays a role.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p><a href="https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/10/11/george-santos-other-shoe/">George Santos</a> and <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4255308-menendez-case-signals-new-chapter-for-doj-on-foreign-agent-law/">Bob Menendez</a> both got superceding indictments. The charges are that Santos conned his contributors by abusing their credit card information, and that Menendez was an agent of Egypt.</p>
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<p>Moms for Liberty is a dark-money-funded astroturf movement to move public schools in a conservative direction by banning books and introducing right-wing curricula. <a href="https://www.salon.com/2023/10/10/moms-for-liberty-meets-its-match-parents-in-this-swing-suburban-district-are-fighting-back/">Salon</a> highlights a group of parents in Bucks County, Pennsylvania that is trying to fight back.</p>
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<p>When RFK Jr. was running as a Democrat against Biden, Sean Hannity promoted him hard, giving him an hour-long interview with softball questions. But then Kennedy announced he was running as an independent, and polls showed him potentially pulling votes away from Trump. So Hannity <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/11/sean-hannitys-predictable-heel-turn-rfk-jr/">turned on a dime</a> and became a hostile interviewer.</p>
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<p>Fox News hosts don't work <em>for</em> their viewers, they work <em>on </em>them.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something rare</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2023/10/15/best-eclipse-photos-ring-of-fire-wows-western-states-as-all-us-see-solar-eclipse/?sh=4a94e5e645ab"><img src="https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/652c5343fbf6b4ae1a3d2bb0/PANAMA-ASTRONOMY-ANNULAR-ECLIPSE/960x0.jpg?format=jpg&width=600" alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>I didn't see the ring-of-fire eclipse Saturday, which was better in the western states. The <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2023/10/15/best-eclipse-photos-ring-of-fire-wows-western-states-as-all-us-see-solar-eclipse/?sh=4a94e5e645ab">photo above</a> is from Panama.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-96588528093629332023-10-09T12:35:00.001-04:002023-10-09T12:35:22.538-04:00Unaffordable Luxury<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>As a nation, Israelis acted as if we could afford the luxury of a vicious internal fight, the kind in which your political rival becomes your enemy. We let animosity, demagogy and the poisonous discourse of social media take over our society, rip apart the only Jewish army in the world. This is our tragedy. And it carries a lesson for other polarized democracies: There is someone out there waiting to gain from your self-made weakness. This someone is your enemy.</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">-<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/08/opinion/international-world/israel-hamas-attack.html">Shimrit Meir</a> </p>
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<p>This week's featured post is "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/10/09/the-weirdness-in-the-house/">The Weirdness in the House</a>".</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about Kevin McCarthy's downfall</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://theweek.com/cartoons/todays-political-cartoons-october-6-2023"><img src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/3Scjd8sd3Ld6nwYkwFSeS9-768-80.jpg.webp" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>This, and what might happen next, is the subject of the <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/10/09/the-weirdness-in-the-house/">featured post</a>.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and war in Israel and Gaza</h3>
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<p>Hamas, which controls Gaza, launched a surprise attack on Israel Saturday. The attack was unusually vicious, even by Hamas' previous standards, and included a massacre of hundreds of Israelis attending a rave. I don't do breaking news, so I advise you to follow developments through some more comprehensive news source. </p>
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<p>I have a muddle of feelings about this:</p>
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<li>The attacks on Israeli civilians are morally repugnant and should not be tolerated, either by Israel or by world opinion. Israel has every right to defend its citizens.</li>
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<li>The people of Gaza live under awful conditions and feel abandoned by the outside world. When human beings live in a constant state of despair and hopelessness, some percentage of them will respond violently, even if their violent options are equally hopeless. This should surprise no one. You don't have to side with Hamas to realize that any outcome leaving Gazans in despair is not a long-term solution.</li>
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<li>I worry that Israel's retaliation will be so extreme that those Americans currently saying "I stand with Israel" will be horrified. I will be happy if in the weeks to come I can confess to misjudging the nation and its government. (For comparison, think about all the regrettable things we did after 9-11.)</li>
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<p>Predictably, American politicians are using this moment to take potshots at each other. But this did not happen because <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-republican-2024-candidates-trump-4fc0bf20c40acdcf49a579db79bec035">Biden showed weakness in dealing with Iran</a>, or because Trump and other MAGA Republicans have "embraced the language of isolationism and appeasement" (as <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/07/gop-presidential-hopefuls-reaffirm-support-for-israel-following-hamas-attack-00120481">Mike Pence</a> charged). <strong>This war isn't about the US.</strong> Israel has plenty of deterrence capability on its own, and Hamas attacked anyway.</p>
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<p>The most partisan thing I can legitimately say is that the US government would have an easier implementing its response if we had a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/15/politics/antony-blinken-state-department-nominees/index.html">confirmed ambassador in Jerusalem</a>, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/senate-military-nominations-holds-tommy-tuberville-e38d853526de044ac59338d32d7a0e10">our military didn't have 300 promotions frozen</a>, and the House had a speaker who could put through emergency aid if Israel needs it. But even if we had a full team ready to tackle the crisis, this would have happened anyway. It's not about us.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Trump</h3>
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<p>Every time I think Trump can't shock me any more, he proves me wrong. This week we heard him go full Nazi in an <a href="https://www.meidastouch.com/news/trump-echoes-hitler-migrants-poisoning-the-blood-of-our-country">interview with National Pulse</a>. Talking of migrants at the southern border he said:</p>
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<p>Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions and insane asylums. We know they're terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we're witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It's <strong>poisoning the blood of our country</strong>. [my emphasis]</p>
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<p>The phrase "poisoning the blood" does two things: It's a fairly direct racial reference, and it dehumanizes the people it targets. Hitler said something similar in <em>Mein Kampf</em>.</p>
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<p>All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.</p>
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<p>At the time, Hitler was just a crazy little man who said outrageous things. Sophisticated Germans knew better than to take his rhetoric seriously.</p>
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<p>The other thing we found out about Trump this week is that he <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/after-white-house-trump-allegedly-discussed-potentially-sensitive/story?id=103760456">disclosed secrets about our nuclear submarines</a> to a foreign national who belonged to his Mar-a-Lago club. I wonder if it ever occurred to Chinese or Russian or Iranian intelligence to give agents <a href="https://www.ajc.com/lifestyles/trump-palm-beach-what-comes-with-200-000-mar-lago-membership/603RTnTl238MFVeXpLgy2M/">$200K</a> so that they could give it to Trump and join Mar-a-Lago.</p>
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<p>In 2016, Republicans were <a href="https://www.commentary.org/noah-rothman/hillary-national-security-risk/">beside themselves</a> at the thought that classified information might have made it onto the server in Hillary's basement, which foreign governments might have been able to hack into. Now we know that Trump just blabs secrets to random people, and they don't care. Fox News <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/after-waiting-nearly-24-hours-fox-news-briefly-mentions-report-donald-trump-revealed">waited nearly 24 hours</a> before briefly mentioning this story.</p>
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<p>When he was in office, Trump's clubs and businesses functioned as <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-payday-lenders-spent-1-million-at-a-trump-resort-and-cashed-in">conduits for bribery</a>.</p>
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<p>Trump has <a href="https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1709717514224013777">lashed out at his former chief of staff</a>, John Kelly, who recently <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/02/politics/john-kelly-donald-trump-us-service-members-veterans/index.html">confirmed reports</a> about Trump's disrespect for soldiers who died or were wounded in the line of duty. Kelly joins a long list of high Trump administration officials who have bad-mouthed their former boss, calling him "<a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/trump-moron-tillerson-publicly-confirms.html">a f**king moron</a>" and many other colorful names. </p>
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<p>Can you imagine anything like this happening to Obama? There's virtually no such thing as an Obama-administration tell-all book. Every Obama-administration account I've read paints the President as sharp, compassionate, and basically decent.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and life expectancy</h3>
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<p>By now probably most of you have heard that life expectancy in the US flattened out in the 2010s (after decades of steady increase) and then started going down even before the Covid pandemic. This week two articles in The Washington Post and one in Vox provided more insight into that phenomenon.</p>
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<p>Here's how <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23895909/angus-deaton-anne-case-life-expectancy-united-states-college-graduates-inequality-heart-disease">Dylan Matthews</a> sums up the public's prior understanding in Vox:</p>
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<p>For the past decade or so, Princeton economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case have been promoting a particular <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/1/12/16863282/opioid-epidemic-study-deaths-of-despair">story about death in America</a>. Less-educated Americans, particularly those without college degrees, have seen their life expectancy outcomes diverge from those of more-educated Americans. Much of this divide can be explained through a category that Deaton and Case call “deaths of despair”: deaths from suicide, opioid overdoses, and liver cirrhosis and other alcohol-related causes. The deaths are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/04/06/how-dare-you-work-on-whites-professors-under-fire-for-research-on-white-mortality/">concentrated in non-Hispanic whites</a>. This phenomenon indicates something is deeply wrong with the way American society treats its most marginalized citizens, including lower-class whites.</p>
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<p>But <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2023/american-life-expectancy-dropping/">five WaPo reporters</a> tell a somewhat different story: Yes, addiction and suicide are cutting into life expectancy, but the big problem is chronic diseases: </p>
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<p>Chronic illnesses, which often sicken people in middle age after the protective vitality of youth has ebbed, erase more than twice as many years of life among people younger than 65 as all the overdoses, homicides, suicides and car accidents combined, The Post found.</p>
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<p>In other words, we're doing a really bad job taking care of people who need low levels of care over long periods of time, like people with diabetes, high blood pressure, or cardiovascular disease. Or maybe people who have survived one bout with cancer and are vulnerable to a recurrence. We're also bad at helping people live in ways that avoid chronic diseases.</p>
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<p>But we're not failing <em>everybody </em>with chronic diseases, just the poorest and least educated Americans.</p>
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<p>Wealth inequality in America is growing, but The Post found that the death gap — the difference in life expectancy between affluent and impoverished communities — has been widening many times faster. In the early 1980s, people in the poorest communities were 9 percent more likely to die each year, but the gap grew to 49 percent in the past decade and widened to 61 percent when covid struck.</p>
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<p>The Vox article narrows this down further: The epicenter of the problem is high school dropouts in rural areas. Part of the problem is probably lifestyle choices like smoking and bad diet. Access to healthcare is also part of the story. (In the small town where I grew up, well-to-do people take for granted that you need to seek care in a major city if you have a serious problem. Less well-off people don't have that option, and poorly educated people may not get good advice on where to go, even if they assemble the resources.)</p>
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<p>Matthews makes a good point: While it would be great if the US could implement better health policies generally, narrowing the problem description makes it more tractable.</p>
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<p>People dying now cannot wait for the whole US economy to transform to be more worker-friendly, as nice as that might be. They need solutions that are tailored for their specific problems, that can be implemented soon.</p>
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<p>A <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2023/republican-politics-south-midwest-life-expectancy/">second WaPo article</a> looks at the influence of politics: It compares three demographically similar counties on the shore of Lake Erie: one in red Ohio, one in purple Pennsylvania, and one in blue New York. </p>
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<p>New York advances policies that promote public health, while Ohio doesn't, and Pennsylvania is in between. So New York discourages smoking with high taxes on cigarettes, it enforces seat belt laws more rigorously, and its Medicaid benefits are comparatively generous. The results show up in death rates. And we can only guess how much worse this is going to get, as MAGA politics causes people to lose faith not just in Covid vaccines, but in vaccines and medical expertise generally.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p>If you're worried about President Biden's mental acuity, you should watch <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfU931HBWvQ">this interview with Pro Publica's John Harwood</a>. Admitttedly, Harwood asks friendly questions and doesn't aggressively try to fluster the President. But the questions are substantial, and Biden answers them thoughtfully. He sometimes has to search for words, but he has no trouble grasping what Harwood is getting at, and he gives coherent answers from the heart. He doesn't have to control the conversation in order to follow it, so he can address the questions Harwood asks, rather than constantly steering the conversation back to some other topic.</p>
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<p>You know what else Biden doesn't do? Lapse into canned talking points or go off into long well-rehearsed monologues about how unfairly he's been treated. When asked about something tricky, his answers are carefully nuanced. (For example, when asked about former Democrat Joe Lieberman's work for the No Labels third-party movement, Biden carefully explains that he thinks No Labels is a mistake, but that Lieberman is acting within his rights as an American.)</p>
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<p>I've been saying for a while that Trump displays far more signs of mental decline than Biden does. I think if you compare this video to any recent Trump speech, you'll see it.</p>
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<p>When Democrats scare themselves about the 2024 election, the possibility always comes up that a third-party candidacy might siphon votes away from Biden and get Trump elected again. But as <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/cornel-west-rfk-jr-biden-democrats/">The Nation</a> notes, it's not obvious that such candidates won't pull more votes away from Trump.</p>
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<p>Suppose you're a Republican whose main gripe with Trump is that he promoted the Covid vaccine. You can protest by voting for RFK Jr.</p>
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<p>The economy added <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm">336K new jobs</a> in September, and previous monthly estimates were revised upwards by 119K. </p>
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<p>One way you can see the slant in American news coverage is the way the <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jobs-report-stunner-us-economy-creates-336000-jobs-in-september-nearly-twice-the-number-expected-123822203.html">monthly employment reports</a> get covered. </p>
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<p>The US economy added 336,000 jobs in September, highlighting concern that the labor market isn't cooling as fast as the Federal Reserve would like in its battle against inflation.</p>
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<p>Bad news: More people are working and their wages are rising.</p>
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<p>OK, that's Yahoo Finance, so you'd expect their coverage to be aimed at investors rather than working people. But the same themes showed across the board: More people working for more money is at best mixed news, rather than the outcome our economic policies should be trying to achieve. <a href="https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1710417970160169107">Matt Yglesias</a> tweeted an image of the headlines on the NYT home page, and commented:</p>
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<p>The NYT covered the jobs report from four different angles, none of which involved the possible benefits of more people getting jobs.</p>
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<p>I don't think there's anything intentionally sinister in this kind of coverage, but it does reflect the skewed motivations built into our commercial media: News companies rely either on people with enough disposable income to subscribe, or on advertisers, who want to reach consumers with money to spend. So news coverage is aimed primarily at people with money, rather than at people who are working for hourly wages or trying to find a job.</p>
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<p>Fox News' coverage, on the other hand, was sinister: They felt a need to actively misrepresent the report. <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/jesse-watters/fox-news-jesse-watters-accuses-joe-biden-lying-september-jobs-report-about-336000">Jesse Watters</a> says "the Biden administration" (actually the nonpartisan Bureau of Labor Standards, the same career bureaucrats who produced these reports under Trump) is "cherry picking and double counting", because government jobs (73K new jobs in state and local government, but still 2K below the pre-Covid level) shouldn't count (because public school teachers don't really have jobs, I suppose), and jobs in the hospitality industry "like bartenders hostesses, waitresses" are "not really careers". And <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-business-charles-payne-says-336000-jobs-added-september-was-not-strong-jobs-report">Charles Payne</a> declared "it was not a strong jobs report" because leisure and hospitality jobs (accounting for 96K of the 336K new jobs) are "the lowest paying jobs in America" -- ignoring the fact that average hourly wages <em>rose</em> slightly (by 0.2%) during the month and the average workweek was unchanged.</p>
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<p>While we're discussing Fox, The Five's co-host <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-greg-gutfeld-says-elections-dont-work-and-calls-civil-war">Greg Gutfeld</a> started out talking about a Philadelphia DA's light treatment of shoplifters and looters, segued to how unfair it was that 1-6 rioters didn't get a similar "criminal mulligan", and then went totally off the rails, claiming that "elections don't work" and "you need to make war" like we did to end slavery.</p>
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<p>The race-baiting in Guttfeld's rant was barely cloaked at all. "They" (the looters) get off easy because they're "the oppressed", while "we" (1-6 rioters) don't because we're "the oppressors". In case you didn't catch that, Black criminals get treated better than White patriots.</p>
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<p>About shoplifting and other retail theft: Retailers appear to be <a href="https://popular.info/p/target-says-its-closing-9-stores">using crime as an excuse to close stores</a> that they wanted to close for other reasons. "Shrink", the technical term for inventory losses as a percentage of sales, rose only slightly from 2021 to 2022. 2022's shrink was the same as it was in 2019 and 2020. Crime appears to have been no worse at the stores Target closed than in similar stores that stayed open.</p>
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<p>The NYT ran an apparently even-handed story about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/07/us/politics/politics-states-moving.html">two families who moved to a different state for reasons related to politics</a>: the Nobles moved from red Iowa to blue Minnesota, and the Huckinses from blue Oregon to red Missouri.</p>
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<p>I'm biased here, but the two cases don't look that similar to me. The Nobles move from suburban Des Moines to suburban Minneapolis because they have a transgender son whose treatments and school-bathroom use have become illegal in Iowa. That's a genuinely political motive.</p>
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<p>But the Huckinses move from a neighborhood in Portland where they didn't feel safe to a small town in Missouri where they can leave their truck unlocked and play with their grandchildren, who already lived there with Ginger Huckins' daughter from a previous marriage.</p>
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<p>Both families say they're happier in their new homes. But Steve and Ginger Huckins are better off for reasons only tangentially related to politics: their grandchildren and the small-town lifestyle. I'm sure Oregon also has small towns where they could feel safe, and Missouri includes St. Louis, where they might be no safer than in Portland. (I live in a blue Boston suburb where people aren't very rigorous about locking things up and I never worry about walking home after dark.)</p>
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<p>The Nobles, on the other hand, are running away from acts of the state legislature, which would create problems for their family in any part of Iowa. The article makes me wonder if there are <em>any </em>blue-state refugees who are truly parallel to the Nobles. I suppose someone might move to avoid taxes (one of the Huckinses' complaints) or regulations on a business, but even those reasons seem weak compared to the state persecuting your son.</p>
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<p>We don't know the whole story yet, but Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders might be taken down by <a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/lets-talk-about-podiumgate">a scandal centering on a $20K podium</a>. </p>
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<p>My Facebook friend Jennifer Sheridan (who designed the t-shirt I'm wearing in my FB profile photo) wrote:</p>
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<p>I think I have figured out something important about the Book Banners.</p>
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<p>When I was a kid in school, I was a book nerd, and my friends were book nerds, and we all knew which books had "dirty parts." We would read them, probably giggle a bit, and then get on with our lives. No one ever made a big deal about it, it was nothing.</p>
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<p>And I realize looking back, that if you weren't a book nerd in school, you probably don't know there have ALWAYS been library books that had dirty parts.</p>
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<p>If you are a grown person now, and are hearing "filthy" passages from some books that are popular today, you might find it shocking that books with those kinds of passages can be found in public school libraries.</p>
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<p>But because you didn't read as a kid, you think this is all something new. It isn't new; you've just shown you never cared about books.</p>
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<p>I'll just add that I went to a religious elementary school, so I knew where all the dirty parts of the Bible were.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something untranslatable</h3>
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<p>One of my favorite books to randomly page through is <em>As They Say in Zanzibar</em> by David Crystal, a collection of proverbs and sayings from other cultures. How else would I discover that in Ukraine they say "Those who have been scalded with hot soup blow on cold water."</p>
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<p>Sometimes these words of wisdom seem to contradict each other. For example, Canadians are credited with "Crooked furrows grow straight grain" while on the Ivory Coast they say "A crab does not beget a bird."</p>
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<p>And then there are sayings that are just obscure, like the Slovenian "When you are chased by a wolf, you call the boar your uncle."</p>
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<p>Almost as much fun are <a href="https://blog.ted.com/40-idioms-that-cant-be-translated-literally/?fbclid=IwAR0umssSdX2HoID7K6r6rqIb0AUWcYYKAirNraBYXsc5kAVPp46faxBBbWg">idioms from other languages</a>. When a someone is very stubborn, Russians say "You can sharpen an ax on his head." To the Portuguese, taking the blame for something you didn't do is "paying the duck".</p>
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<p>Where we say that something easy is "a piece of cake", the Poles say "It's a roll with butter."</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-48321477122714750852023-10-02T10:32:00.000-04:002023-10-02T10:32:10.342-04:00Simple Propositions<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>You guys, the UAW — you saved the automobile industry back in 2008 and before. You made a lot of sacrifices. You gave up a lot. And the companies were in trouble. But now they’re doing incredibly well. And guess what? You should be doing incredibly well too. It’s a simple proposition.</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/09/26/remarks-by-president-biden-at-united-auto-workers-picket-line/">President Joe Biden</a>, <br>on a picket line in Belleville, Michigan on Tuesday</p>
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<p>This week's featured posts are "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/10/02/maga-and-the-swifties/">MAGA and the Swifties</a>" and "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/10/02/when-should-public-officials-resign/">When should public officials resign?</a>"</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about the close call on a government shutdown</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://theweek.com/cartoons/far-right-puppet"><img src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/AG3tdkwvx3RhmcBVTF5PFE-1920-80.jpg.webp" width= 580 alt="" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><em>McCarthy's sudden reversal made all this week's cartoons obsolete.</em></figcaption></figure>
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<p>The government <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/30/us-government-shutdown-congress-senate-kevin-mccarthy">did not shut down</a> Sunday morning, and will not shut down until at least November 17. </p>
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<p>The shutdown, which had appeared nearly inevitable, was avoided when <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/01/us/politics/mccarthy-shutdown-turnabout.html">House Speaker Kevin McCarthy changed his position Saturday morning</a>: He allowed a vote on a short-term continuing resolution. Once the resolution came to the House floor, it passed easily, 335-91. It then went to the Senate, where it passed 88-9. The bill was signed by President Biden Saturday evening with an hour to spare. </p>
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<p>The resolution was opposed almost entirely by Republicans: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2023/house-vote-government-shutdown/">90 representatives</a> and <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4232305-these-republican-senators-voted-against-the-government-funding-bill/">nine senators</a>. Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois was the lone Democrat in opposition. Two House Democrats, Rep. Katie Porter of California and Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska, did not vote. The Republican opposition came mostly from the party's right wing, the likes of Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.</p>
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<p>The resolution continues funding government departments at the same levels as fiscal 2023, which ended on September 30. It also added $16 billion for disaster relief, but included no additional aid to Ukraine. (A similar bill in the Senate had $6 billion for Ukraine, but the House bill got through first.) </p>
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<p>President Biden believes he has a promise from Speaker McCarthy to allow a separate vote on Ukraine aid soon. However, Biden also believed McCarthy had committed himself to funding the government back when the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/30/politics/whats-in-the-debt-ceiling-deal/index.html">debt-ceiling deal</a> was reached in June. McCarthy ultimately came through, but not without considerable drama. </p>
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<p>It also remains to be seen if McCarthy will continue as speaker. Gaetz and his right-wing allies in the "Freedom" Caucus had threatened to withdraw their support from McCarthy if he made a deal to get Democratic votes, as he did Saturday.</p>
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<p>McCarthy has clearly been frustrated by the nihilism of his party's right wing, which never proposed a government-funding deal it could support. McCarthy told reporters after the vote:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>If you have members in your conference that won’t let you vote for appropriation bills, [don’t] want an omnibus and won’t vote for a stopgap measure, so the only answer is to shut down and not pay our troops: I don’t want to be a part of that team.</p>
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<p>The next question is whether Gaetz and his allies will carry out their threat to submit a motion to vacate the chair, which would remove McCarthy from the speakership unless Democrats decided to save him. (They say they won't <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/01/mccarthy-speakership-mercy-democrats-00119359">without getting something in return</a>.) Over the weekend <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/01/matt-gaetz-kevin-mccarthy-house-speaker-shutdown-deal">he said he would submit the motion</a> sometime this week. McCarthy responded with bravado: "Bring it on. Let's get this over with."</p>
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<p>Also: Will anything be different as we approach November 17? McCarthy bought himself (or his successor) some time, but if he has some plan for achieving a less chaotic outcome, he hasn't revealed it yet. </p>
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<p>One final point: The fact that McCarthy's change-of-mind resolved the issue so quickly is pretty convincing evidence that Republicans were causing the problem.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Trump trials</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://theweek.com/cartoons/inflator-deflated"><img src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/C8hmS8oeRbEka5FB7jZWUe-1920-80.jpg.webp" width= 580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>The New York Attorney General's lawsuit against the Trump Organization <a href="https://www.dcreport.org/2023/09/26/donald-trump-liable-for-fraud/">won a big victory</a> Tuesday: Judge Arthur F. Engoron issued a partial summary judgment on the case, declaring that Trump had committed fraud by inflating his net worth when applying for bank loans. Because Trump Organization's fraud is ongoing, the judge </p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>cancelled all of the business licenses for the Trump Organization and its 500 or so subsidiary companies and partnerships after finding that Trump used them to, along with his older two sons, commit fraud.</p>
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<p>His gaudy Trump Tower apartment, his golf courses, his Boeing 757 jet and even Mar-a-Lago could all be disposed of by a court-appointed monitor, leaving Trump with not much more than his pensions as a one term president and a television performer.</p>
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<p>Under the New York General Business Law you can only do business in your own name as a sole proprietor or <a href="https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/GBS/130">with a business license</a>, which the state calls a “business certificate.” All of Trump’s businesses were corporations or partnerships that require business certificates.</p>
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<p>The judge's <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/09bac166-8275-40ef-8bd4-cacb594ee766.pdf">ruling</a> found that a trial was unnecessary to determine fraud, because all the arguments Trump's lawyers presented in his defense were beside the point. </p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>[The Office of the Attorney General] need only prove: (1) the [statements of financial condition] were false and misleading; and (2) the defendant repeatedly or persistently used the SFCs to transact business.</p>
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<p>The instant action is essentially a "documents case". As detailed [elsewhere in this ruling], the documents here clearly contain fraudulent valuations that defendants used in business, clearly satisfying OAG's burden.</p>
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<p>Trump's attorneys instead argued a number of legally irrelevant points, like that the banks in fact did not lose money, or that the SFCs contained a clause warning the banks to do their own valuations, or that property valuations are subjective. Their stubbornness in repeating arguments the judge had already rejected as frivolous led the judge to sanction the attorneys $7500 each. (<a href="https://www.dcreport.org/2023/09/26/donald-trump-liable-for-fraud/">David Cay Johnston</a> notes that this ruling could be cited in some future disbarment hearing.) <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/09/29/1202534656/trump-fraud-ruling-new-york-business-empire-judge">University of Michigan business law professor Thomas elaborates</a>:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>What we've seen with Donald Trump over and over again is that often arguments that gain traction with his supporters are flatly inconsistent with the law.</p>
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<p>Underlining that point, Trump has continued <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12563785/New-York-Judge-rules-Trump-company-engaged-fraud-refuses-dismiss-AG-Letitia-James-250-million-lawsuit.html">making the irrelevant arguments</a> rather than addressing the actual ruling.</p>
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<p>I've heard a number of analogies capturing why the nobody-lost-money argument fails. Here's my favorite: What if as you were closing up at your job, you stole $100 from the till, then went to the racetrack and bet it on a horse that won? In the morning you could replace the $100, so your employer didn't lose money. But you're still a thief.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2023/sep/30/bookkeeping/?fbclid=IwAR3MkpfilfCGBHnGdIxAgvMgQ4SHIoeb5c2pB4FmJQw829n6PHEOBqWh47Y"><img src="https://wehco.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/img/photos/2023/09/28/231001_Bookkeeping_t800.jpg?90232451fbcadccc64a17de7521d859a8f88077d" width= 580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>Probably the most egregious overvaluation was of Trump's apartment in Trump Tower, which he claimed was three times its actual size and valued accordingly. The judge comments:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>In opposition, defendants absurdly suggest that "the calculation of square footage is a subjective process" ... A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud.</p>
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<p>Of course Trump will appeal, but an appeal is not just a do-over. He'll have to support an argument that the judge did something wrong. The judge's reasoning is simple and doesn't seem to rely on esoteric points of law, so an appeal doesn't seem to have much to work with. </p>
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<p>Meanwhile, a trial on the rest of the state's charges, including insurance fraud, will <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/02/trump-fraud-case-new-york">begin today</a>. Thursday, the appeals court <a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-letitia-james-fraud-trial-new-york-d8934da24e78ca0cedab7303efdf48bd">refused to delay that trial</a> pending a ruling on Trump's appeal. The trial will also determine the fines Trump will have to pay. The state is asking for $250 million.</p>
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<p>Trump has said he's going to appear in court today, though it's not clear what he plans to do there, since it's not time for him to testify, if he intends to do that at all (which I doubt). Trump says a lot of things, so I'll believe he's coming when I see him.</p>
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<p>In political terms, one consequence of this decision isn't getting the attention it deserves: Like <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-rape-carroll-trial-fe68259a4b98bb3947d42af9ec83d7db">sexual assault</a>, Trump's involvement in fraud is no longer just an accusation: It is a finding of a court of law. Trump is no longer just "alleged" to have committed fraud. He committed fraud.</p>
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<p>Fani Willis got the first guilty plea from one of her 18 RICO defendants. (It's kind of amazing this isn't even the lead story under "Trump trials".) <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/09/29/1202819213/first-trump-codefendant-pleads-guilty-georgia-election-case">Scott Hall pleaded guilty</a> to five misdemeanors and was sentenced to five years of probation. He is also committed to testify in future proceedings, and if he doesn't testify truthfully, the deal is revocable.</p>
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<p>Hall's role in the Georgia election-stealing scheme is both low-level and easily established: When Trump allies were trying to assemble (or invent) evidence of voter fraud in Georgia, they illegally accessed voting machines in Coffee County. </p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>The security breach in the county about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta is among the first known attempts by Trump allies to access voting systems as they sought evidence to back up their unsubstantiated claims that such equipment had been used to manipulate the presidential vote. It was followed a short time later by breaches in three Michigan counties involving some of the same people and again in a western Colorado county that Trump won handily.</p>
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<p>... Authorities say Hall and co-defendants conspired to allow others to "unlawfully access secure voting equipment and voter data." This included ballot images, voting equipment software and personal vote information that was later made available to people in other states, according to the indictment.</p>
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<p>In a RICO case, specific crimes like these are used to establish the existence of a corrupt organization that other defendants belong to. Hall's guilty plea raises the question of whether it will start a stampede to make a deal with Willis before the other defendants do. A defendant's only leverage in such a deal is if s/he can testify to something Willis can't already prove.</p>
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<p>In other Georgia-election-case news, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and three of Trump's fake electors <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/29/jeff-clark-georgia-election-case-00119172">lost their bid to move their cases to federal court</a>. Mark Meadows' similar motion had already been denied, and Trump surprisingly announced he will <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-filing-seek-remove-georgia-election-case-federal/story?id=103580385">not try to shift his case</a> to federal court. </p>
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<p>Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro are the first of the 18 (now 17) RICO defendants facing trial. They requested a speedy trial, which will begin October 23. CNN has speculated that <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/29/politics/powell-chesebro-georgia-trial-plea-deals/index.html">they will be offered plea deals</a> to avoid this trial, which would preview the state's evidence to the other defendants. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the sham impeachment hearing</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://theweek.com/cartoons/todays-political-cartoons-september-30-2023"><img src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/AGKfK6esNsADMFEeebFhP3-1600-80.jpg.webp" width= 580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>Like the rest of the House Republican investigations of Joe Biden, the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/28/politics/president-biden-impeachment-hearing-takeaways/index.html">opening session</a> of their impeachment inquiry did not live up to its billing. None of the witnesses called were "fact" witnesses, i.e., none of them saw or heard President Biden doing anything impeachable. The witnesses also made much weaker claims than the Republican congressmen did.</p>
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<p>Forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky: "I am not here today to even suggest that there was corruption, fraud or wrongdoing. More information needs to be gathered before I can make such an assessment."</p>
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<p>Law professor Jonathan Turley: "I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment. That is something that an inquiry has to establish."</p>
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<p>That's a far cry from the claim House Oversight Chairman Rep. James Comer made, that the GOP probes have “uncovered a mountain of evidence revealing how Joe Biden abused his public office for his family’s financial gain.”</p>
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<p>A rule of thumb: Investigations that are going somewhere get more and more specific. For example, the <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/04/10/what-we-learned-from-the-trump-indictment/">Manhattan case about Trump's Stormy Daniels payoff</a> -- widely considered the weakest of the four Trump indictments -- has come down to this: 34 Trump Organization documents are fraudulent business records.</p>
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<p>The longer the Republican investigation of Biden stays at the level of "Hunter did shady things and Joe must have been involved somehow", the more likely it is to go nowhere.</p>
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<p>A tip on interpreting headlines: When a headline attributes some wrong-doing to "<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/video/6338174486112">the Biden family</a>", that means the article contains no new information about President Biden himself. If they had anything on Joe, that would be the headline.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the rain</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/new-york-city-see-historic-flooding-6-inches-rain-pelts-northeast-rcna118033"><img src="https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2023-09/230929-new-york-flooding-mn-1530-b7c4ed.jpg" width= 580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>Climate Change Summer has turned into Climate Change Fall. Friday, as much as 8 inches of rain fell on parts of New York City, shutting down the subways and producing flash floods. The storm was not due to a hurricane or tropical storm. Instead, seemingly innocuous systems came together unexpectedly to produce a hurricane-like rainfall. The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/30/nyregion/climate-change-flooding-storms.html">NYT</a> explains:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>It has been raining a lot in New York, which hasn’t seen a September this wet in over a century. Climate change is very likely stoking more ominous and lengthy downpours because as the atmosphere heats up, it can hold more moisture, said Andrew J. Kruczkiewicz, a senior researcher who specializes in flash floods at Columbia Climate School at Columbia University.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-york-citys-floods-and-torrential-rainfall-explained/">Scientific American</a> gives the larger context:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>The 2018 National Climate Assessment (a new version of which is due sometime this year) found that the amount of rain that fell during the heaviest 1 percent of rain events had increased by 55 percent across the Northeast since 1958, with most of the increase happening since 1996. That trend will only get worse as global temperature rise, causing more evaporation from oceans and lakes and giving storms more water to fuel deluges.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Taylor Swift</h3>
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<p>The right-wing attacks against Swift are the subject of <a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/10/02/maga-and-the-swifties/">one of the features posts</a>. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and two speeches aimed at workers </h3>
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<p>Biden and Trump each talked to auto workers, but in very different ways. Biden went out on the picket line with UAW strikers and <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/09/26/remarks-by-president-biden-at-united-auto-workers-picket-line/">addressed them with a bullhorn</a>. In addition to the quote at the top of this post, he said:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Wall Street didn’t build the country. The middle class built the country, and unions built the middle class.</p>
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<p>Biden handed the bullhorn to UAW President Shawn Fein, who said:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>These CEOs sit in their offices, they sit in meetings, and they make decisions. But we make the product. They think they own the world, but we make it run. </p>
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<p>Whether we’re building cars or trucks or running parts distribution centers; whether we’re writing movies or performing TV shows; whether we’re making coffee at Starbucks; whether it’s nursing people back to health; whether it’s educating students, from preschool to college — we do the heavy lifting. We do the real work. Not the CEOs, not the executives.</p>
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<p>The next day, Trump was <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2023/09/27/donald-trump-returns-auto-industry-strike-uaw-ev-taking-center-stage-presidential-election-joe-biden/70960155007/">invited by management to speak at a non-union auto parts shop</a>.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>About 400 to 500 Trump supporters were inside a Drake Enterprises facility for the speech. Drake Enterprises employs about 150 people, and the UAW doesn't represent its workforce. It wasn't clear how many auto workers were in the crowd for the speech, which was targeted at them.</p>
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<p>One individual in the crowd who held a sign that said "union members for Trump," acknowledged that she wasn't a union member when approached by a Detroit News reporter after the event. Another person with a sign that read "auto workers for Trump" said he wasn't an auto worker when asked for an interview. Both people didn't provide their names.</p>
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<p>In other words, Biden lent his support to an event workers started on their own, while Trump staged a event for the cameras, complete with extras playing phony roles. His support for working people is about as authentic as his <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-fraud-ruling-property-valuation-michael-cohen">property valuations</a> or his marriage vows.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Cassidy Hutchinson's book</h3>
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<p>I read <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Enough/Cassidy-Hutchinson/9781668028285">Cassidy Hutchinson's new book <em>Enough</em></a>. A lot of what's in it is stuff you already know if you watched her testimony and followed the news about her. </p>
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<p>But it does make it easier to understand how she could fall under Trump's spell: She had a psychologically abusive father whose approval she valued but could never secure. He was a head-of-the-household type who had big plans, but was never wrong. It was up to Cassidy's mother to make the details of those plans work, and to take the blame if things fell apart. So that role was already in Cassidy's head, waiting for Trump to slide into it.</p>
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<p>Her description of the Trump White House resembles an abusive family in a lot of ways. Hutchinson and her boss Mark Meadows lived in fear of Trump's temper. And if he did erupt, the explanation that he's an over-coddled asshole wasn't available to them. Instead, they believed they should have foreseen and prevented whatever set him off.</p>
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<p>The book also underlines a problem in our justice system: It's expensive, even if you did nothing wrong. When Hutchinson got her first subpoena from the January 6 Committee, everyone told her she needed a lawyer. She was driven to use a TrumpWorld lawyer when an independent lawyer quoted her a six-figure price. Only after she got disgusted with herself and wanted to change her testimony did she ask Liz Cheney for help. Cheney gave her a lead on a firm that took her case for free.</p>
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<p>This raised a question in my mind: If you're a witness and not a target of an investigation, and if you intend to answer all questions truthfully, why do you need a lawyer? All the coverage I've seen takes the necessity of counsel for granted, so I asked a lawyer I know to spell it out.</p>
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<p>He made three points: </p>
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<li>You don't always know for sure that you won't eventually be a target, even if you're innocent. </li>
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<li>A lawyer can negotiate about <em>how </em>you'll testify, to minimize how much the investigation will disrupt your life.</li>
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<li>If you're not familiar with all the relevant laws, you may not realize that you violated one. If you did, you may need to negotiate a plea deal or a cooperation agreement. </li>
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<p>With Trump and his allies threatening retribution if they ever get back in power, both sides need to think about this problem. Merely witnessing a suspected crime shouldn't bankrupt you.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p>Senator Dianne Feinstein died at the age of 90. <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/29/dianne-feinstein-senator-mayor-00006007">Politico looks back at her career</a>. </p>
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<p>Governor Newsom is wasting no time in naming her successor: <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/01/newsom-senate-pick-butler-00119360">Laphonza Butler</a>, the president of Emily's List. The official announcement is expected later today.</p>
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<p>Newsom had made two pledges, both of which this appointment fulfills: He said he would appoint a Black woman, and that he would not give any of the candidates already running for this seat in 2024 an advantage by naming them as the interim. </p>
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<p>I didn't watch the second Republican presidential debate. In reading accounts of it, nothing made me feel like I missed out.</p>
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<p>Ron DeSantis is a terrible strategist. He was riding high immediately after last fall's midterm elections for a simple reason: He won his race handily, while Trump's favorite candidates almost all lost. His potentially winning message against Trump was obvious: I can win and Trump will lose again. (If Trump wanted to respond by claiming he didn't lose, let him. It makes him sound like a whiner. Ask: "So are you living in the White House now or not?" When that sets off another rant, respond with an eye roll and "Whatever.")</p>
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<p>DeSantis' policy positions should have sounded conservative while remaining vague, giving a wide range of Republicans room to fantasize about the wonderful things he might do after he won.</p>
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<p>Instead, he committed to very specific and not very popular policies, like a six-week abortion ban, taking books out of libraries, and seizing control of universities. It's been all downhill from there.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/25/2195155/-Cartoon-The-newsmaker"><img src="https://www.politico.com/dims4/default/12f1bc1/2147483647/resize/1160x%3E/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2F4b%2Fbc%2F6f09ab274589a2c152c0fa8c3c1a%2F4-tom-tomorrow-thismodernworld-com.jpg" width= 580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something out of this world</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/space/jupiter-moon-europa-alien-life-chaos-terrains-b2046377.html"><img src="https://static.independent.co.uk/2022/03/29/12/newFile-3.jpg" width= 580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>In 2024, NASA is planning to launch a probe to study Europa, a moon of Jupiter where <a href="https://europa.nasa.gov/why-europa/evidence-for-an-ocean/">scientists hope to find an ocean of salty water</a> under a thick crust of ice. The presence of water, kept in a liquid state by friction-producing tides powered by Jupiter's gravity, opens up the possibility of finding extra-terrestrial life for the first time. </p>
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<p>The probe, which NASA is calling the <a href="https://europa.nasa.gov/message-in-a-bottle/learn/">Europa Clipper</a>, would go into orbit around Jupiter in 2030. </p>
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<p>Over several years, it will conduct dozens of flybys of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, gathering detailed measurements to determine if the moon has conditions suitable for life.</p>
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<p>"OK," I imagine you thinking, "but what's that got to do with me?"</p>
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<p>NASA is offering a variety of ways for you to engage with the mission. Inspired by the thought of Europan life, U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón has written a poem for the mission "<a href="https://www.loc.gov/programs/poetry-and-literature/poet-laureate/poet-laureate-projects/a-poem-for-europa/">In Praise of Mystery: a Poem for Europa</a>". NASA's "<a href="https://europa.nasa.gov/message-in-a-bottle/sign-on/">Message in a Bottle</a>" campaign invites you to cosign Limón's message. </p>
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<p>The poem will be engraved on the Clipper, along with participants' names that will be etched onto microchips mounted on the spacecraft. Together, the poem and participant’s names will travel 1.8 billion miles on Europa Clipper’s voyage to the Jupiter system.</p>
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<p>Other suggested activities have a more educational flavor: NASA provides material that might nudge you to <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/learn/project/write-a-poem-about-space/">write your own space poetry</a>. Or you can download a line-drawing of the Clipper and Europa suitable for coloring. The coloring can get even more interesting if you <a href="https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/europa-texture-coloring-activity/en/">put textured surfaces under the paper</a>. </p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-12267489093053480722023-09-25T10:56:00.000-04:002023-09-25T10:56:00.381-04:00Strange Behavior<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>So a Democratic Senator is indicted on serious charges, and no Democrats attacking the Justice Department, no Democrats attacking the prosecutors, no Democrats calling for an investigation of the prosecution, and no Democrats calling to defund the Justice Department. Weird, huh?</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- <a href="https://twitter.com/WalshFreedom/status/1705258251636666568">Joe Walsh</a></p>
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<p>This week's featured post is "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/09/25/about-the-polls/">About the Polls</a>". </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about the looming government shutdown</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.syracuse.com/opinion/2023/09/editorial-cartoons-for-sept-24-2023-mccarthys-fractious-house-senate-dress-code-autoworkers-strike.html"><img src="https://www.syracuse.com/resizer/sBHTk-KF7q1pGUeUWETiGQTy7o8=/800x0/smart/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/advancelocal/NRZHLXUOXFHRJPMG77FE7LSYG4.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>Typically, a government shutdown happens because the House, Senate, and Presidency aren't all controlled by the same party, and one party wants something the other doesn't want to give. Attempts to work out a compromise fail, so the new fiscal year starts and big chunks of the government close for lack of money. </p>
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<p>So in 1995, Speaker Newt Gingrich wanted major cuts in spending that President Clinton wouldn't agree to. In 2013, Republicans wanted to defund ObamaCare. Those shutdowns resulted from a dysfunctional inability to negotiate a compromise, but they at least represented a coherent clash of policy goals.</p>
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<p>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_United_States_federal_government_shutdown">2018 shutdown</a> was a bit strange, because during the post-midterm-election session, Republicans still controlled all three power centers, pending a Democratic takeover of the House when the new Congress would be seated in January. In December, Republicans had worked out a deal to fund the government that didn't include more money for Trump's Wall. But when he saw how badly that deal played with his base, Trump reneged. </p>
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<p>The government was shut down for 35 days, during which time the Democrats took control of the House, ending the possibility of passing a wall-funding bill. So Trump relented, reopened the government, and then declared a national emergency that allowed him to divert money appropriated for other purposes into wall-building.</p>
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<p>This year is stranger yet, because the Republican majority in the House can't even agree on a set of demands, much less negotiate a compromise with the Democratic Senate and White House.</p>
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<p>Here's how everyone expected the process to work: Speaker McCarthy would placate the far-right "Freedom" Caucus by passing what is know as a "messaging bill" -- a bill that everyone knows has no chance to become law, but which includes provisions that express what the MAGA base really wants. Of course the messaging bill would be rejected by the Senate, and then the real negotiating could begin.</p>
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<p>The problem is that the House GOP can't even get its messaging bill together, so negotiations with the Senate and the White House can't start. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/25/could-discharge-petition-keep-government-open/">The WaPo examines the possibilities</a>, none of which resolve the situation in time to avoid a shutdown.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and corruption</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://jensorensen.com/2023/09/21/real-conspiracy-cartoon/"><img src="https://jensorensen.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/realconspiracy600.png" alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>There's a Democratic corruption story this week: <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/9/22/23885517/bob-menendez-indictment-charges-corruption-scandal-bribery-wife">New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez got indicted</a> for accepting bribes. New Jersey Democrats <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/23/nyregion/robert-menendez-political-future.html">reacted the way a sane party would</a> to such serious allegations.</p>
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<p>Calls for his resignation mounted from ethics groups, Republicans and even longtime Democratic allies who stood by him last time, including the governor, state party chairman and the leaders of the legislature. And party strategists and elected officials were already openly speculating that one or more of a group of ambitious, young Democrats representing the state in Congress could mount a primary campaign against him.</p>
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<p>Three-term Congressman <a href="https://twitter.com/AndyKimNJ/status/1705658967878230372">Andy Kim</a> has already announced his candidacy, posting: </p>
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<p>Not something I expected to do, but NJ deserves better.</p>
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<p><a href="https://twitter.com/WalshFreedom/status/1705258251636666568">Joe Walsh</a> comments on all the things that <em>didn't</em> happen.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>So a Democratic Senator is indicted on serious charges, and no Democrats attacking the Justice Department, no Democrats attacking the prosecutors, no Democrats calling for an investigation of the prosecution, and no Democrats calling to defund the Justice Department. Weird, huh?</p>
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<p>Also: No calls for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/29/lindsey-graham-riots-trump-prosecuted-records">violence in the streets</a> or <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4187490-republicans-just-cant-stop-calling-for-civil-war/">civil war</a>.</p>
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<p>The one bad sign from Democrats is that the <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4218993-menendez-steps-down-as-foreign-relations-chairman-after-indictment/">Democratic Senate caucus seems to be standing by Menendez</a>. He had to resign as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, but Majority Leader Schumer is not asking for his resignation from the Senate.</p>
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<p>And if there's corruption in the air, there must be a Clarence Thomas story. Pro Publica has been ahead of everybody else on Thomas scoops, and <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-secretly-attended-koch-brothers-donor-events-scotus">they published a new one Friday</a>: In 2018, Thomas rode on somebody's private jet -- he never reported the trip, so we don't know whose -- to attend the winter donor summit of Stand Together, the Koch-led network of high-roller conservative money men.</p>
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<p>During the summit, the justice went to a private dinner for the network’s donors. Thomas has attended Koch donor events at least twice over the years, according to interviews with three former network employees and one major donor. The justice was brought in to speak, staffers said, in the hopes that such access would encourage donors to continue giving.</p>
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<p>That puts Thomas in the extraordinary position of having served as a fundraising draw for a network that has brought cases before the Supreme Court, including one of the most closely watched of the upcoming term.</p>
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<p>Political fund-raising violates the code of ethics that applies to lower-court judges. But the Supreme Court has no formal code and is expected to police itself. </p>
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<p>In 2021, Thomas sided with the Kochs in a 6-3 ruling allowing dark money groups to keep their donors secret. The court will soon hear a Koch-backed case that could sharply curtail the ability of government agencies to issue regulations. Pro Publica claims Thomas has flipped his position to support the Koch view. </p>
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<p><a href="https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/1705310100322492487">Rep. Ted Lieu</a> sums up:</p>
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<p>Clarence Thomas secretly accepted millions in lavish gifts from billionaires. He secretly shows up at a fundraiser for billionaires to help raise money for a super PAC. And he votes on cases to help billionaires. This isn’t the appearance of corruption, this is corruption.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Rupert Murdoch</h3>
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<p>While Fox News has been focusing attention on Joe Biden's age issues, Rupert Murdoch has continued to run both Fox and News Corp at the age of 92. This week he announced he will turn the empire over to his son Lachlan, sparking a series of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230922-an-inside-look-at-the-real-rupert-murdoch">retrospectives about his career</a>.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2023/sep/22/fox-news/"><img src="https://wehco.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/img/photos/2023/09/22/230923_Fox_News_t800.jpg?90232451fbcadccc64a17de7521d859a8f88077d" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">but we should be paying attention to a court case that hasn't gotten much coverage yet</h3>
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<p>I'm becoming dangerously complacent about Supreme-Court-considers-triggering-Armageddon stories. Remember <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_v._Harper">Moore v Harper</a> and the "independent state legislature" theory? The upshot of ISL is that once you get control of a state legislature, you can gerrymander to make your control permanent, and then leverage that power to determine all the other elections in your state. "Independent" means "unchecked by the courts", which means that if your power grab violates the state constitution, no one can call you on it. </p>
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<p>Anyway, that was decided in June, and the Court did not in fact opt to make it easier to end democracy. It was a 6-3 decision, which means that we're still safe from permanent minority rule, at least until John Roberts and either Brett Kavanaugh or Amy Coney Barrett change their minds. So rest easy, everybody.</p>
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<p>Now we've got another end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it case coming up: <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-v-community-financial-services-association-of-america-limited/">Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v Community Financial Services Association</a>, which will be argued next week and probably decided sometime in 2024.</p>
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<p>The origin of this dispute is fairly trivial in the grand scheme of things: CFPB issued regulations cracking down on the payday-lending industry, which could use some cracking down on, because it <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/predatory-payday-lending/">exploits people who live paycheck-to-paycheck</a>. CFSA represents payday lenders who would rather operate without government interference. So it sued. In the course of that lawsuit, it made an atomic-bomb-scale argument: <em>The whole CFPB is unconstitutional.</em> </p>
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<p>Now, you wouldn't expect mortgage bankers, home builders, and realtors to be fans of federal regulation, but those associations <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-448/266839/20230515120807734_230503a%20Amici%20Curiae%20Brief.pdf">filed a brief</a> warning that striking down <em>all </em>of CFPB's rules simultaneously could cause the real estate market to seize up, disrupting some large portion of the entire economy, and possibly setting off a Depression.</p>
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<p>But it's actually worse than that, because of course there's no line in the Constitution saying "Congress shall establish no consumer financial protection bureau". So CFSA had to make a broader argument: The way CFPB is funded is unconstitutional. Congress doesn't appropriate a specific amount of money for CFPB each year. Instead, it gets whatever funding it needs up to some cap, and the funding is perpetual until Congress says otherwise.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/9/23/23864355/supreme-court-cfpb-unconstitutional-consumer-financial-fifth-circuit-great-depression">Here's the problem</a>, as described by Vox' Ian Milhiser: If funding something without approving a specific sum each year is unconstitutional, there goes Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and a whole bunch of other stuff. </p>
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<p>Under this interpretation of the Constitution, moreover, many key federal programs simply could not exist. Medicare, for example, is a health insurance program that <a href="https://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/ssact/title18/1812.htm">pays for beneficiaries’ health costs as those costs arise</a>. It is impossible for Congress to determine, in advance, the specific dollar amount that Medicare will spend in any given year. To do so, Congress would need to precisely predict which health services would be provided to every senior in the United States, and how much each one of those services would cost.</p>
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<p>Imagine it: I recently had a fairly expensive medical test. (It came out well. Thank you for wondering.) We're near the end of the fiscal year, so under a specific-sum appropriation system, Medicare might say, "I'm sorry, but we can't pay for your test because medical expenses nationally ran a little high this year and we've already spent all the money Congress appropriated." Every year, millions of Americans like me would game the system to get our medical care done in October rather than September. Some number of people would take their chances without care, and some of them would die. </p>
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<p>Oh, and all those programs would be vulnerable to government shutdowns -- not that we ever have to worry about that.</p>
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<p>The hyper-conservative Fifth Circuit appeals court <em>agreed</em> with CFSA. </p>
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<p id="dbhmY4"><em>Consumer Financial</em> reveals just how deeply delusional thinking has penetrated into the post-Trump federal judiciary. The plaintiffs’ arguments in <em>Consumer Financial </em>have no basis in law, in constitutional text, in precedent, or in rational thought. And they risk the sort of economic catastrophe that the United States hasn’t experienced for nearly a century.</p>
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<p id="RkStgx">And yet a federal appeals court bought these arguments. So now it’s up to the Supreme Court to save the United States from calamity.</p>
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<p>It's a safe bet that Justices Thomas and Alito will vote to blow up the system. (Alito, IMO, is the most predictable judge on the Court. You don't need to know anything about the facts of the case or the relevant law, just who stands to benefit. He will consistently vote for Republicans over Democrats, corporations over working people, and Catholics over secularists. The CFPB protects working people from corporations, so he'll be against it.) So we'll need to count on two of Roberts, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett to save us.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p>A <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/24/business/wga-strike-ends-reaches-deal/index.html">deal has been announced</a>, so the writer's strike may end soon.</p>
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<p>Worth reading: the Atlantic article subtitled "<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/11/general-mark-milley-trump-coup/675375/">How General Mark Milley protected the Constitution from Donald Trump.</a>"</p>
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<p>The NYT has a disturbing article about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/23/world/asia/china-sea-philippines-us.html">China claiming sovereignty over the South China Sea</a>, and how little can be done about it short of war.</p>
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<p>Another week of Fox News, <a href="https://twitter.com/abughazalehkat/status/1705258751437979716">summarized by Kat Abu</a>.</p>
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<p>This week's scandal: <a href="https://apnews.com/article/fetterman-depression-senate-return-hoodies-shorts-771886ba8f3caee9be9674d186cd656b">John Fetterman wears hoodies and shorts.</a> It's technically a violation of the Senate dress code, but when he's dressed like that he votes from the doorway.</p>
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<p>In the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/us/jessica-burgess-abortion-pill-nebraska.html">Handmaid's-Tale dystopia</a> known as Nebraska:</p>
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<p>A Nebraska woman who acquired abortion pills that her teenage daughter used to end her pregnancy last year was sentenced on Friday to two years in prison.</p>
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<p><a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/09/18/pride-and-violence/">Last week</a>, I wondered how conservative media would erupt if AOC were caught doing something like Lauren Boebert's lewd behavior while watching a musical. Turns out <a href="https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1705207515493888137">AOC was wondering the same thing</a>.</p>
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<p>Jimmy Carter has been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/21/us/politics/jimmy-carter-hospice.html">in hospice for seven months</a>, but he still enjoys peanut butter ice cream and plans to celebrate his 99th birthday this coming Sunday. Saturday he was <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/former-president-jimmy-carter-makes-appearance-georgia-festival-days-9-rcna117008">spotted at the Plains Peanut Festival</a>.</p>
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<p>And while we're talking about family values (i.e., Boebert), Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are facing death together after 77 years of marriage.</p>
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<p>In the silly-but-amusing category, conservative podcaster <a href="https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1706021667326083409">Clay Travis</a> tweeted about Kansas City Chief tight end Travis Kelce:</p>
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<p>Travis Kelce is doing Bud Light and covid shot commercials. He needs to fire all his marketing agents. Or he needs to just go ahead and cut his dick off, become a chick, and endorse Joe Biden.</p>
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<p>And <a href="https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1706118101085868264">Ron Filipkowski</a> replied:</p>
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<p>He scored a touchdown today in a 41-10 win and left the game with Taylor Swift. Seems to be doing ok.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://theweek.com/cartoons/wrecking-ball"><img src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/BK4owsJucHzrBEpaCpxHRe-1024-80.jpg.webp" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>Elon Musk said he wants users to <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/09/19/musk-x-twitter-charge-all-users-monthly-subscription-fees">pay a monthly fee to use Twitter</a>. </p>
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<p>I've used X/Twitter for years now. I use it to cast a wider net for points of view than I'll find in my usual news sources. I don't often post content other than links to this blog.</p>
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<p>Since Musk took over, I've thought about leaving X. And I've <a href="https://newsie.social/@DougMuder">checked out Mastodon</a> as an alternative. But inertia is powerful, so I've stayed.</p>
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<p>If they start charging a fee, though, I'll have to take positive action to stay on X. I'll have to give them a credit card number or something. Just by doing nothing, I could quit. </p>
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<p>I would do nothing, and see how long it took them to turn off my account. I suspect the vast majority of users would do the same. Charging a fee will probably complete Musk's destruction of the platform, setting fire to the remainder of his $44 billion investment.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something uplifting</h3>
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<p>The FamilyThis web page has an article about <a href="https://www.familythis.com/trending/kids-wholesome/">times kids surprised their parents and older siblings with their kindness and compassion</a>. Like this one:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>had lunch with my son at school for his birthday. he can pick 2 kids to sit with him and one I had never met. i asked afterward who he was and he said "oh, i don't really know him but no one had picked him for birthday lunch before"</p>
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<!-- /wp:quote -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-30149139990112473922023-09-18T12:35:00.000-04:002023-09-18T12:35:35.745-04:00Pride and Violence<!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
<p class="has-text-align-center"><em>I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. </em>... <em>Pride is their necklace; a garment of violence covers them. From their prosperity proceeds iniquity; the imaginations of their hearts run wild. They mock and speak with malice; with arrogance they threaten oppression. They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongues strut across the earth.</em></p>
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<p class="has-text-align-right">- <a href="https://biblehub.com/psalms/73.htm">Psalm 73</a> </p>
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<p>This week's featured posts is "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2023/09/18/dont-just-connect-the-dots/">Don't just connect the dots</a>". It sets the Biden impeachment in a larger context of conspiracy theory reasoning.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This week everybody was talking about the looming government shutdown</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://theweek.com/cartoons/5-unimpeachably-funny-cartoons-about-kevin-mccarthy"><img src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/jjvEUSRLpSBDC4X884BM25-768-80.jpg.webp" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>As always, the federal government's fiscal year ends on September 30, i.e. a week from Saturday. So unless Congress passes and President Biden signs some new appropriation bills in the next two weeks, the government will shut down on Monday morning, October 2.</p>
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<p>If the budget process were working the way it's designed, funding the government would mean passing 12 separate appropriation bills, each covering some set of government activities, like defense. That seems extremely unlikely at this point. The Senate is more-or-less on track, but Kevin McCarthy's Republican majority in the House can't unite on a set of proposals, much less get together with the Senate and work out something both houses can pass.</p>
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<p>Failing at 12 appropriation bills, the next option is one big omnibus bill, which has happened in recent years, and which House Republicans have been railing against. That doesn't seem very likely at the moment either.</p>
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<p>The third option is a continuing resolution, which allows the government to keep spending money at the same rate as last year, until Congress can get its act together to pass an omnibus. Currently, Kevin McCarthy is trying (and <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/17/kevin-mccarthy-shutdown-republicans-00116417">mostly failing</a>) to build support for a continuing resolution. </p>
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<p>The far-Right "Freedom" Caucus has made a series of <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/freedom-caucus-lays-demands-avoid-222454700.html">demands</a> for what any continuing resolutions would have to include, such as ending the Trump prosecutions. (Anything to avoid a trial in front of a jury, which would see the evidence and find Trump guilty.)</p>
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<p>So we seem headed for a shutdown. The main issue in the shutdown is whether or not McCarthy will fulfill the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/29/us/politics/debt-ceiling-agreement.html">deal he made with Biden in May</a> to resolve the debt ceiling crisis. The "Freedom" Caucus thinks the spending targets in that deal are too high, so they want to renege. </p>
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<p>When McCarthy agreed to open an impeachment inquiry targeting President Biden (without any evidence of wrongdoing), some speculated that he had bought himself credit with the far Right, which would give him some room to maneuver on the spending bills. But, as CNN analyst <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/14/politics/2024-election-biden-impeachment-saga/index.html">Stephen Collinson</a> observed, "That narrative barely lasted a day." Apparently any concession these people get only whets their appetite for more. </p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Ken Paxton</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.reformaustin.org/political-cartoons/the-texas-senate/"><img src="https://www.reformaustin.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/RA.091623.Texas-condones-corruption-1068x858.jpg" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>Ken Paxton is the <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/16/ken-paxton-acquitted-impeachment-texas-attorney-general/">corrupt attorney general of Texas</a>. </p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Even in the long, sordid history of Texas political scandals, Paxton stands out. The accusations leveled against him in 21 years of public life ranged from felonious to farcical: that he<a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2019/06/19/ken-paxton-criminal-case-timeline-texas-attorney-general-fraud/"> duped investors</a> to whom he sold stock, profited from inside information on a <a href="https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2016/08/29/2-new-prosecutors-probing-paxton-linked-land-deal/10108749007/">land deal</a>, <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/25/texas-bar-ken-paxton-2020-election/">made false claims</a> in court about the 2020 presidential election, and purloined another lawyer’s <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2014/11/18/incoming-ag-ken-paxton-returns-another-lawyer-s-1000-pen-he-picked-up-at-courthouse-metal-detector/">expensive pen</a>.</p>
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<p>Other episodes gave grist to criticism that Paxton considered himself above the law, like when he <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2022/09/26/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-subpoena-abortion-lawsuit/">fled his home</a> last year, in a truck driven by his wife, to avoid being served a subpoena.</p>
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<p>In March, the Republican Texas House overwhelmingly voted to impeach him on 16 counts, with 70% of Republicans voting against him. But Saturday, only 2 of 19 Republican senators voted to convict on any charge, and so he was acquitted and returns to office. </p>
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<p>What changed? <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/09/17/ken-paxton-texas-impeachment-gop">The politics, not the evidence</a>. National Republican groups stirred up the grass roots.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>It was made clear to Texas GOP senators that they'd face a very well-funded primary opponent in their next election if they voted to impeach.</p>
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<p>"Christian" organizer <a href="https://twitter.com/NateAFischer/status/1702884339875266993">Nate Fischer</a> argues</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>I judge politicians on their effectiveness against the left. In an existential war, you do not remove an effective officer—much less cede his position to the enemy—because an affair or gambling problem comes to light. We are in a war for our civilization. Paxton and Boebert have been effective in important battles. But if God could use Samson as his instrument to deliver Israel, I’m skeptical of calls to toss one of our fighters out because he doesn’t meet some standard of conduct that is anything but a uniform rule across the political aisle.</p>
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<p>And of course, any conspiracy-theory allegation against a Democrat is evidence that no standard of conduct is "a uniform rule across the political aisle". So this "Christian" applies no moral standards at all to the conservatives he supports.</p>
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<p>Matt Yglesias <a href="https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1703372148662816965">responds</a>:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>This is how corrupt people use culture war hysteria to bait you into sacrificing your interests to advance theirs; it’s the ultimate logic of Trumpism — he may be a thief, a liar, and a scumbag but at least he’s *our* scumbag.<a href="https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1703372148662816965/photo/1"></a></p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">the Hunter Biden indictment</h3>
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<p>Hunter was <a href="https://apnews.com/article/hunter-biden-gun-charge-investigation-e5c8ded90ea8c22d2e2e7cb09804b747">indicted on federal firearms charges</a> Thursday. You'd think this would settle questions about the independence of the Justice Department from White House interference, but <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/republicans-satisfied-hunter-biden-gun-charges-small-start/story?id=103194671">no</a>. </p>
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<p>Hunter could wind up at the center of a legal question that cuts across partisan lines. A federal appeals court representing a different district has found that the law he's accused of violating <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/09/politics/appeals-court-firearms-illegal-drug-users/index.html">conflicts with new Supreme Court precedents</a> and so is unconstitutional. So people on all sides have to ask themselves what's more important: getting/saving Hunter or gutting/preserving federal gun laws?</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and the Trump interviews</h3>
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<p>Two female journalists did televised interviews with Donald Trump recently: <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/transcripts/full-transcript-read-meet-the-press-kristen-welker-interview-trump-rcna104778">Kristen Welker</a>, as her inaugural broadcast as host of Meet the Press, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJn0c7J9cjA">Megyn Kelly</a> on her XM Radio show. </p>
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<p>It's hard to say what the point of doing either interview was. Conde Nast Legal Affairs Editor <a href="https://twitter.com/ZaleskiLuke/status/1703412189762031910">Luke Zaleski</a> summarizes the problem:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Trump doesn’t do interviews. He tells long fake stories that provide an alternate reality in which he’s the hero and allow his audience to conflate themselves with him as he pretends to vanquish imaginary enemies like “Sleepy Joe” “Crooked Hillary” “the Deep State” & “Fake News”</p>
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<p>The traditional power of the press comes from its ability to publicly shame a politician for lying or hypocrisy. But Trump has no shame. NYU journalism Professor <a href="https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/1703459783238439157">Jay Rosen</a> describes Welker's approach as "zero innovation", meaning that she treated Trump like a typical, shameable public figure.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Everything was predictable, nothing was surprising, and new host Kristen Welker did nothing to justify going to the well again with another Trump Q & A.</p>
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<p>So Trump got a platform to spread his usual disinformation, and NBC got to publish a <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/fact-checking-trump-meet-press-interview-rcna105297">separate fact check</a>, which (as we know) accomplishes little. Unlike a Cronkite-era politician, Trump is not shamed to be caught lying, and his cultists will brush off any fact-checking as "fake news". Worse, traditional fact-checking is meant for correcting simple lies and misstatements. It can't cope with a complete alternate reality. </p>
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<p>"Pinning Trump down", as Welker did when she got him to say he would testify under oath that he never ordered a subordinate at Mar-a-Lago to delete security video, is also useless. Making that statement serves Trump's purposes now -- it makes him sound determined and resolute -- but when Trump does not testify at all in any of his trials, he will not feel shame for having said that he would. </p>
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<p>The end result of this interview is that viewers are more poorly informed about Trump-related issues than they were before they watched. I have to agree with Rosen's conclusion:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>I would love to hear what [MSNBC's Rachel Maddow] thought about NBC's interview with Trump. She is the one who said on air: “There’s a cost to us as a news organization of knowingly broadcasting untrue things.” NBC willingly paid that cost today.</p>
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<p>Tonight we'll see a test of Maddow's integrity: Will she call out her sister network?</p>
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<p>Welker also asked Trump: "Is there any scenario by which you would seek a third term in office?" In other words, "Do you intend to ignore the Constitution?"</p>
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<p>Trump said "No." But again, he's not going to feel bound by that answer, so what's the point of asking? All Welker did was put into viewers' minds the idea that seeking a third term (in defiance of the Constitution) is an option.</p>
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<p>One upside of Kelly's interview is that Trump <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-megyn-kelly_n_65037aa6e4b0208b8ffab2d8">said some things</a> that Jack Smith will probably use against him in court.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>I’m allowed to take these documents, classified or not classified. And frankly, when I have them, they become unclassified.</p>
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<p>Aside from being nonsense legally, Trump's statement sounds an awful lot like a confession that he <em>did</em> take classified documents.</p>
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<p>It's a mystery to me why Biden's mental capabilities are being questioned, but not Trump's. There could be a story <a href="https://twitter.com/jimstewartson/status/1702881375534362925">like this</a> every day:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Trump says Joe Biden is “cognitively impaired” and then accuses him of getting us into World War TWO.</p>
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<p>Or consider this part of the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/transcripts/full-transcript-read-meet-the-press-kristen-welker-interview-trump-rcna104778">Welker interview</a>:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>You talk about Kim Jong Un, right? I got along great with Kim Jong Un after the first month or two when we were sparring. But I got along great with him. We were in no danger. There was — President Biden said, and he felt even now, and President Obama told me when we sat down, Obama told me, and Biden still to this day, except I don’t think he knows, he’s only — he can’t put two sentences together. But President Obama told me, “Our biggest threat is from North Korea. We’re going to end up in a war.”</p>
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<p>Yep. It's <em>Biden</em> who can't put two sentences together.</p>
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<p><a href="https://twitter.com/drvolts/status/1701667664811418039">David Roberts</a> raises a worthwhile question:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>How would we even know if Trump's age was affecting his mental acuity? He's done nothing but ramble sub-literate nonsense since he came on the public stage. Could you even tell if he got dementia?</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and Mitt Romney</h3>
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<p>I've always been of two minds about Mitt Romney, an ambivalence that comes through in "<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2012/03/19/the-tragedy-of-mitt-romney/">The Tragedy of Mitt Romney</a>" which I posted during his primary campaign way back in 2012. At his best, Mitt is a conservative version of Joe Biden: a basically decent person who can listen to members of the other party, define common goals, and occasionally get something important done. RomneyCare, the Massachusetts health insurance program that <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2011/10/11/how-mitt-romneys-health-care-experts-helped-design-obamacare/?sh=51763de4fb5a">became the model for ObamaCare</a>, is a prime example.</p>
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<p>Mitt's tragic flaw is that he's never had quite enough courage to be that person consistently. So he's been a truth-teller, but only sometimes. Other times, he has pandered to the worst elements in his party. Two examples stand out: His 2012 presidential campaign ran away from his record as governor of Massachusetts, to the point of promising to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/28/supreme-court-obama-health-romney">repeal the same ObamaCare his program had inspired</a>. And he <a href="https://www.politico.com/blogs/donald-trump-administration/2016/11/dinner-for-3-trump-romney-and-reince-231976">bowed down to Trump</a> during the 2016 transition, hoping to become secretary of state. </p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://claytoonz.com/2023/09/17/bye-bye-mitten/"><img src="https://claytoonz.files.wordpress.com/2023/09/cjonedsrgb09192023.jpg?w=600" alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>This week he announced that he's <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/13/politics/mitt-romney-not-running-reelection/index.html">not running for reelection</a> in 2024. As a result, he is free from future political considerations and can be a truth-teller again. And so we have "<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/11/mitt-romney-retiring-senate-trump-mcconnell/675306/">What Mitt Romney Saw in the Senate</a>", a preview of an upcoming biography by McKay Coppins. The biography comes from long conversations with Romney, as well as access to his papers and journals.</p>
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<p>And so we find out:</p>
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<li>The Republican Senate caucus gave Trump a standing ovation, and then laughed at him after he left.</li>
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<li>"A very large portion of my party really doesn't believe in the Constitution."</li>
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<li>During Trump's first impeachment, Mitch McConnell told Romney: "You’re lucky. You can say the things that we all think. You’re in a position to say things about him that we all agree with but can’t say."</li>
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<li>"No one has been more loyal, more willing to smile when he saw absurdities, more willing to ascribe God’s will to things that were ungodly than Mike Pence."</li>
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<li>Some Republicans wanted to vote for Trump's second impeachment or conviction, but were intimidated by the prospect of right-wing violence against themselves and their families. At that time, Romney was paying $5K a day for security.</li>
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<p>In return for this openness, Romney is being lauded as a man of principle and integrity. And he has been, <em>up to a point</em> and <em>some of the time</em>.</p>
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<p>You know what I long for? Republicans who not only speak out against the MAGA usurpation of their party, but take that message to the voters rather than meekly slip out the Capitol's side door like Romney and <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/24/flake-retiring-after-2018-244114">Jeff Flake</a> and <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/04/lamar-alexander-retiring-senate-442699">Lamar Alexander</a>. Maybe such a race is hopeless -- it was for <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/liz-cheney-defeated-in-wyoming-gop-primary">Liz Cheney</a> -- but people of real principle would make a charge-of-the-light-brigade anyway. To paraphrase the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-trial">MAGA god himself</a>: If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a party anymore.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and you also might be interested in ...</h3>
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<p>Climate Change summer is continuing as we approach fall. The worst catastrophes happen when <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/11/africa/libya-flooding-storm-daniel-climate-intl/index.html">natural disasters cause failures in human infrastructure.</a> </p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>More than 5,000 people are presumed dead and 10,000 missing after heavy rains in northeastern Libya caused two dams to collapse, surging more water into already inundated areas.</p>
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<p>Meanwhile, Hurricane Lee spent most of its energy over the Atlantic, but was just 4-mph short of hurricane status when it <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hurricane-lee-path-landfall-canada-new-england/">hit Nova Scotia</a> Saturday. Places like Halifax and Bar Harbor, Maine don't usually have to worry about tropical storms.</p>
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<p>The United Auto Workers are striking against the Big Three American automakers. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/09/uaw-union-strike-biden-electric-vehicle-investment/675331/">The Atlantic</a> explains that this is about more than just the usual wages and benefits: Government-subsidized investments in electric vehicle plants are being used to shift production to states that make it hard for workers to unionize.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://theweek.com/cartoons/big-3-automakers"><img src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/7epEVa6bhysJGCn7eJ3frX-1024-80.jpg.webp" width=580 alt="" /></a></figure>
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<p>As you may have heard, Saturday night <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/13/politics/boebert-beetlejuice-musical/index.html">Rep. Lauren Boebert</a> was escorted out of a production of the musical "Beetlejuice" for vaping, taking flash pictures of the performance, and "creating a disturbance". Afterwards, she denied vaping, said she didn't realize she couldn't take pictures, and admitted "laughing and singing too loud". Unfortunately for her, the vaping is <a href="https://www.9news.com/video/news/local/next/next-with-kyle-clark/lauren-boebert-wasnt-telling-the-truth-about-beetlejuice-ejection/73-bc109d37-e9af-415b-aaad-80ca1e8cc5e6">on video</a>, along with some <a href="https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1702863988134990288">mutual groping with her date</a> (Boebert's <a href="https://coloradosun.com/2023/05/16/lauren-boebert-divorce-filing/">divorce</a> is still pending), as well as Boebert giving theater employees the finger on her way out the door.</p>
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<p>In response to the clear evidence that her denial was a lie, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/16/boebert-video-apologizes-beetlejuice-show-00116390">Boebert apologized for the vaping</a> (claiming she "genuinely did not recall" doing it), but did not comment on the public groping.</p>
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<p>The incident provoked a stream of what-if comparisons on social media: How would conservative politicians and media personalities erupt if some prominent liberal woman like AOC behaved the same way? Or a woman of color? Or a gay or lesbian politician with a same-sex date? What if Biden did something inappropriate in public, denied it, and then explained away his denial by claiming he didn't remember?</p>
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<p>Who better to comment on Boebert's "trashy" behavior than fellow "trash monster" <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIcqkzVN6Dw">Trae Crowder</a>? Boebert's "vaping and hollering stuff" in the theater doesn't alarm him:</p>
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<p>My fellow Trailer Americans, I ask you: Who among us? Right? I mean, we do that. We do. Get a little too excited at a public event, start cussing in front of the 8-year-olds, then act indignant when the bouncer shows up. "Oh, what? Is it illegal to have a good time now?"</p>
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<p>What's wrong with Boebert, according to Crowder, isn't that she comes from the underclass, because "some of the most genuine, kindest, most empathetic people I've ever known were trailer babies". We'd do well, he says, to have a Congress full of such people. But Boebert is a "ladder-puller", who tries "to take away the same government benefit programs that kept her alive as a child".</p>
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<p>Boebert ... somehow took all the wrong lessons away from her life and now spends her time spewing misplaced rage and making us all look bad.</p>
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<p>BTW: If you want a view of how the world looks to the White rural underclass, I can recommend this year's Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Copperhead">Demon Copperhead</a></em> by Barbara Kingsolver. </p>
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<p>While we're talking about the Party of Family Values, <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/09/15/kristi-noem-corey-lewandowski-affair-shakes-up-trump-running-mate-stakes/">The New York Post</a> claims South Dakota Governor (and rumored Trump VP candidate) Kristi Noem has been having an affair with former Trump advisor Corey Lewandowski. Both are married. All together, the two couples have seven children.</p>
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<p>Remember Kim Davis, the county clerk in Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples back in 2015? That case is still percolating through the system. Two couples sued her for damages, and a judge ruled in March 2022 that she had violated their rights. Wednesday, a jury <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/09/14/1199477637/kim-davis-same-sex-marriage-license-ordered-to-pay-damages">awarded one couple $100K</a> and the other nothing. (I'm not sure what distinction the jury saw between the two couples.)</p>
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<p>Davis plans to appeal, on grounds that the current Supreme Court might find tempting: </p>
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<p>We will argue religious accommodation under the First Amendment, and other state and federal laws. We will also argue that <em>Obergefell v. Hodges </em>was wrongly decided and should be overturned.</p>
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<p>She previously had moved to have her case dismissed, on the grounds that she had immunity for acts performed in her official capacity. But the plaintiffs argued that official immunity doesn't apply when the official is doing something clearly outside the law. An appellate court refused to dismiss, and in 2020 the Supreme Court <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-rejects-appeal-county-clerk-who-wouldn-t-issue-n1242124">decided not to hear her appeal</a>. But this time around could be different, if the current Court is looking for an opportunity to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/24/thomas-constitutional-rights-00042256">reverse Obergefell</a>.</p>
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<p>Two thousand South African rhinos are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/18/climate/rhino-herd-sold-south-africa.html">looking for new homes</a>. </p>
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<p>A line too good not to repeat: After Mitch McConnell froze up a couple weeks ago, fellow Kentucky Senator Rand Paul <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4189102-rand-paul-on-mitch-mcconnell-freeze-ups/">was not all that supportive</a>. Among other comments, he disputed the Capitol doctor's claim that McConnell had not suffered a seizure, but only the effects of concussion recovery and dehydration.</p>
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<p>Afterwards I heard a comment that Rand Paul is "nasty and brutish and short".</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading">and let's close with something sentimental</h3>
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<p>In 1950, Oswald Laurence recorded a message telling patrons of the London underground to "mind the gap". After Laurence died in 2003, his widow Margaret McCollum began going to the nearby Embankment tube station whenever she wanted to hear his voice. </p>
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<p>Eventually, though, the transport company replaced Laurence's recording with an artificially generated voice. Margaret then asked the company for a recording. But <a href="https://twitter.com/CalltoActivism/status/1703193821079564308">they did her one better</a>: They restored Laurence's announcement for exactly one station, Embankment.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->Doug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.com0