January 6th

 Richardson makes a compelling case about the links between Republican rhetoric surrounding Democratic electoral victories that stretches back to the 1990s, and Trump's efforts to overthrow electoral democracy five years ago today.

She goes on to note the common thread from his two impeachments and the complete faceplant from Merrick Garland to delay the appointment of Jack Smith and then the SCOTUS' grant of immunity for presidential actions and how that created the lawlessness we see from Trump now.

Trump's whole life has been a bully who uses his money to bully contractors and debtors and escape the most significant consequences for his actions. He ran for president - allegedly - to boost his ability to start some sort of OANN type "Trump TV" to challenge Fox from the right. (Let that sink in.) Once he won, he now has to continue to bully and threaten to stay on top. The entire system of constitutional checks and balances is as foreign to him as calculus is to a sea urchin. 

January 6th was the moment when the old Republican Party could have held him responsible for his actions and we could have escaped this nightmare. If ten more Republican Senators had voted to convict in the Senate - and they all knew he was guilty - then we would not be staring down the insanity of 2025 and now 2026. We would not be threatening Greenland/Denmark. We would not be levying tariffs on whatever seizes his fancy. We would not be rounding up citizens and residents and deporting them to offshore gulags. In fact, there probably (certainly) would be a Republican president right now anyway, given the anti-incumbent tides that swept the world after Covid. They could have had their tax cuts and deregulation. 

Instead, it has become a party steeped and dependent on fear-mongering conspiracy theories.

Instead, democracy in our country is undergoing a series of battering blows every day. 

The Locus Of Evil

 Donald Trump is a depraved, small, heartless man with the mental architecture of a Jersey Turnpike toilet. However, the real locus of evil on this fell times is Stephen Miller. His recent incantation of the threats against Greenland and Denmark is a great example of just how batshit insane his political impulses are. 

The threats against Greenland are a great example of the stupidity and evil of Trumpistan, and how they are effectively the same thing. Greenland hosts American military bases as a member of NATO. They are our allies, especially against Russia and maintaining the UK-Iceland gap. It is otherwise a barely inhabitable frozen wasteland. It has "rare earths", but again, rare earths are not rare, just hard and dirty to refine. It also looks huge on a map. This cascading features of stupidity are what drives Trump and Miller to threaten a long time ally. 

And this doesn't even cover his jackbooted thugs breaking into schools.

Miller is most likely universally reviled in whatever remains of the old Republican Party - a party that itself was hardly a beacon of intelligence and decency. I am hopeful that there are enough of the old Republicans left to muzzle this rabid Pomeranian before he does even more damage to our country.

The Donroe Doctrine

 Among the more stupid utterances from our most stupid president was Trump's assertion of a Donroe Doctrine because people "hadn't heard about the Monroe Doctrine." That's always a tell that he has just learned something. Now, most anyone with a working knowledge of US History remembers the Monroe Doctrine, but the reason they remember it is often muddled.

The Monroe Doctrine was largely the brainchild of John Quincy Adams, Monroe's Secretary of State and an experienced diplomat. Quincy Adams had been our minister to Russia during the Revolution when he was about 19 years old. The situation was that during the Napoleonic Wars, Spain had been both weakened and liberalized during Napoleon's conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. Existing elites in the Spanish New World colonies were upset at the democratic and anti-clerical reforms coming from the puppet government in Madrid, so Continental Spanish America rose up in wars of independence stretching from Mexico to Argentina. 

After Napoleon had been defeated and the forces of monarchical conservatism had created the Concert of Vienna to maintain order in Europe, they looked westward to reestablish Spanish control of the New World. Britain, who had benefitted from the newly opened ports and was ideologically disposed to freer trade, wanted to enlist American help in guaranteeing Spanish America's independence. 

Adams realized that the real guarantor of that independence was the British Navy. Still, riding the wave of American nationalism that resulted from the War of 1812 (fought against the British, and therefore making it hard to visibly align with Britain), Adams wrote the doctrine that the New World was to be free from further colonization of any kind, and it was American policy to guarantee this. In return - in a laughable boast at the time - the US would remain aloof from European affairs. 

Very few people on either side of the Atlantic took much note of the Doctrine at the time. It was not a law or treaty, it was just something James Monroe said. Britain made sure no one crossed the Atlantic to reinstate Spanish colonialism, until the Civil War came. With both the US and UK preoccupied by the war, France installed a Hapsburg prince, Maximillian, as Emperor of Mexico. Once the war was over, Grant moved a full army to the Rio Grande, France withdrew support and Maximillian died before a Mexican firing squad. The Monroe Doctrine was revivified a bit there.

However, the real prominence of the Monroe Doctrine came at the end of the 19th century, with America's war against Spain. This conflict focused American military planning on the building of the Panama Canal after the war and this in turn led to America - a country founded on anti-imperialism and self-determination, which the Monroe Doctrine buttressed - becoming an imperial power. We seized and held Puerto Rico, Guantanamo Bay and would later help wrest Panama from Colombia. 

Teddy Roosevelt would issue his corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, stating the US was the sold policeman and debt collector for the Western Hemisphere, especially the Caribbean. Many of the small countries rimming the Caribbean were deeply in debt to European powers and incapable of paying those debts off, at least in part due to the corruption in their Customs Departments. Because most revenues at the time came from import duties, control of the Customs Houses was a great way to get rich. This had been true in the US as well, until civil service reform helped end that corruption. Roosevelt initiated a period of American bullying and quasi-imperialism that lasted until his cousin, Franklin, began the Good Neighbor policy.

To recap: The original Monroe Doctrine was an expression of America's deep antipathy towards imperialism. In the late 19th and early 20th century, it actually became a lever to shift America into a quasi-imperial power, leaving the US very much hated until FDR reversed that policy. Since then, America had vacillated between supporting and opposing democracy in the Caribbean basin.

What Donald Trump is expressing in his Donroe Doctrine is a return to the worst of Teddy Roosevelt's imperialism but ramped up to 13 out of 10. TR - and Wilson with his invasion of Mexico - embraced the sort of paternalistic racism that at least had benevolent intentions - as misguided as they were. TR took over Customs houses in order to forestall European creditors from coming in and doing the same. Wilson invaded Mexico, because they were under a terrible miliary dictator during a revolution. Neither wanted or certainly stated such a naked statement of intentions to loot those countries. 

Donald Trump's operational persona is and always has been that of a wannabe Mafia Boss. He uses threats and boasts to cow opposition, but as we have seen, he usually backs down when he's opposed with sufficient resolve. This bullying persona meshes with Don Trumpeone, the insecure mob boss who needs to display dominance and opulence, because deep down, he knows he's the son his parents were disappointed in.

Trump is stripping away even the pretense of paternalism in favor of naked predation. In the Puzo/Coppola mythology of the mob, the first Don Corleone was a protector of the poor immigrants of New York, whereas Michael becomes simply a ruthless, heartless killer. Trump is that ruthless killer, devoid of human connection or feeling, alone in his darkened mental landscape and seeing the entire world as either wolves or sheep, and visualizing himself as the biggest wolf of all.

This is, to borrow a phrase from conservatism, deeply un-American.

A Distraction, Not A Lifeline

 The idea that Trump launched his raid in Venezuela to distract from both the Epstein Files and Jack Smith's testimony about Trump's criminality is a solid theory. I do think, however, that there were a lot of agendas pushing the escalating attacks on Maduro over the last year. Rubio wants regime change in Caracas and Havana. Hegseth wants to watch Delta Force kill people. Trump wants the oil. It is worth noting that Venezuela's oil is of notorious low quality, making it difficult to refine and use productively. However, that subtlety is unlikely to matter to Trump's lizard brain. For instance, rare earths are not "rare" it's just hard to refine them. Still, that fucking moron just heard "rare" and wants to annex Greenland.

As Elliot Morris points out, Americans do not want to go to war in Venezuela. The results are pretty stable, as most Americans remember what happened the last time we invaded a country to install a friendly government. A plurality of Republicans oppose this move as well, especially those who aren't in the MAGA cult.

Morris also noted a few days ago how different the perceptions of Trump are depending on whether you watch Fox News. This is a huge problem in deprogramming people from the MAGA cult. As long as they get this incredibly warped view of reality from Fox, their loyalty to this president will be unchallenged. In the Fox Cinematic Universe, Trump did a cool-assed John Wick-Rambo raid. For the rest of us, the essential impression is that this was tactically impressive and strategically incoherent. Amazing job kidnapping the president of a sovereign country, I guess. What now?

The fundamental question at this moment is whether we really will be putting "boots on the ground." If we are, that requires Congressional approval that I don't think will be forthcoming. Trump will likely ignore this and do it anyway, which creates yet another chapter in our ongoing constitutional crises. 

So, does this distract from the Epstein and Smith news? Yeah, sure. But not in a good way, because people aren't really on board with another example in naive nation building.

The Historical Precedents of Regime Change

 We have no way of knowing what comes next in Venezuela. There is a democratic opposition there, although a lot of them are in exile. While we removed Maduro, the basic power structure that surrounded him is still in place and can likely only be dislodged by a full ground invasion. 

Let's take a moment to look at the history of American-led coups and removals from power. In 1954, the CIA helped overthrow Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz. The coup was successful, but two young radicals - Che Guevara and Fidel Castro - began to look at the US as the fundamental enemy of liberty and equality in Latin America. Later, the CIA would try and remove Castro via the Bay of Pigs invasion. This pushed Castro to ask the Soviets for nuclear weapons for self-defense. The resulting Cuban Missile Crisis nearly ended human civilization.

Also in 1954, we overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh. The resulting brutality of the Shah's rule led to growing anti-American sentiment that erupted in the 1978 revolution, the consequences of which we are still wrestling with.

In 1963, we gave support to the Vietnamese military to overthrow Ngo Dinh Diem. The subsequent chaos and destabilization led inexorably to America's military presence being necessary to prop up the South Vietnamese government. To be clear, Diem was terrible (like Maduro), but by supporting Thieu's coup, we "owned" the outcome. This led to Colin Powell's "Pottery Barn Rule" which states that when "you break it, you own it." It's why coalition forces did not march on Baghdad in 1991.

In the late '60s and '70s, we supported right wing regimes in South America and at least one coup in Chile. While I don't think replacing Allende with Pinochet necessarily made America any safer and it led to thousands of political killings and repression in Chile, it wasn't an abject failure the way many other coups were.

Similarly - and really the most similar to today - we deposed Manuel Noriega in 1989, because of his ties to the Colombian cartels and the coming cession of the canal to Panama. The US had a long presence in Panama and the transition to better governance was fairly easy, once Noriega was gone. I have no doubt that this was the model for someone like Rubio. Venezuela is not Panama.

Under HW Bush, we not only invaded Panama, but we did NOT invade Iraq. We did, however, try and stabilize Somalia, a haphazard plan that led to the Battle of Mogadishu.  

The most recent examples of US-led or abetted regime change are, of course, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Iraq has remained a troubled, fractious place, and it took a decades long occupation and thousands of American deaths. Of the three, it was the most successful example. Afghanistan immediately collapsed back into Taliban rule and Libya remains a failed state. 

If we look at the Fragile State Index, Afghanistan is tied for 7th, Libya is 16th and Iraq is 31st. Venezuela is 30th, which suggests that there is precious little stability to build on. Trump is out there saying that we are going to "run" Venezuela. That is impossible without Congressional consent. Existing authorities in Venezuela are calling bullshit on this.

(In case you're wondering, the US has fallen to 141st out of 179 countries, ranked the same as Argentina, Hungary and Barbados.)

As I'm writing this, that big fucking dumbass is on TV basically admitting that we attacked and deposed Maduro for oil. Unless we are prepared for an Iraq-style military occupation, it seems very unlikely that we are going to find much support within Venezuela for this. Sure, Venezuelan emigres in South Florida are going to be stoked. But within the power structures of Venezuela, you cannot maintain political legitimacy by being a Quisling traitor to your own national sovereignty. You had Trump bloviating about how the new president, Delcy Rodriguez, was eager to work with America to help exploit their oil at the very same time that she was on TV denouncing the attack.

I know why Rubio wanted this. He wants regime change in Venezuela and Cuba, because he's a neo-con whose parents fled Cuba. I know what Hague-seth wanted this. He's got a war-boner and loves the idea of sending Delta Force on a Chuck Norris mission.

Trump, however, is a fucking mobster. He wants the oil. He was likely promised the oil by Rubio in order to get permission. Rubio strikes me as precisely the same sort of credulous boob who though we would be welcomed in Baghdad as liberators. 

They have no idea what is going to happen next.

Congratulations, Team Trump. You won the news cycle! 

That means nothing if you can't implement something productive out of this gross violation of international law and the American Constitution. 

Pure, Unadulterated Trumpism

 This morning's strikes on Caracas and the arrest/kidnapping of Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, is a perfect distillation of Trumpist policy.

First, it was likely tactically pretty sound. If they really did manage to get Delta in and out of the capital with the president of another country...that's pretty impressive. However, we should note that this is fundamentally impressive on the level of staff officers in the US military. Trump - even Hegseth and Rubio - were not stooped over a table gaming out scenarios. They gave JSOC a mission, and the mission was successful. To this point. 

Winning the daily news cycle is Trump's biggest political strength.

Second, what was the strategic endgame here? Politically, Maduro is a bad guy who no one is going to feel much sympathy for. Here are some other unsympathetic bad guys: Saddam Hussein, Moammar Ghaddafi and Sheik Omar. We toppled or helped topple these dictators and the result has been decades of chaos, civil war and civic unrest. 

Trump and the people around them are not long term planners.

Third, this was almost certainly illegal. Having a warrant for Maduro does not give the US the right to invade a country - even for a few hours. Rubio and Hegseth lied to Congress a few weeks back when they said they were not pursuing regime change in Venezuela. There is no recognized "right to attack another country because you don't like their leader." 

Trump and his minions routinely lie and break the law.

The stated reasons for invading Venezuela are going to be some boilerplate about drug smuggling and - I think - weapons charges (which seems thin). Trump has pardoned the former president of Honduras who was convicted of being a drug smuggler and the head of various crypto schemes designed to launder money for cartels. It's not about the drugs. It's about the oil. Yes, Hegseth and Rubio aren't going to admit that, but Trump already has! He can't fucking help himself. This is about looting natural resources.

Trump is obsessed with oil, rare earths, you name it, in the pursuit of immediate material gain.

I saw one response along the lines of "There is no international rules-based order, might makes right and we wanted him gone, so he's gone." This is a form of hyper-realist foreign policy thinking that a state is alone in an anarchic world and must pursue its advantages with single-mindedness. International Law is therefore a joke. This represents a fundamental shift in American policy that is more cohesive than "Trump like dictators." Trump likes power and the expression of power. What we did in Caracas was smarter than what Putin has done in Ukraine, but it's the same fundamental approach to international affairs: might makes right. It is also part of the Trumpist foreign policy that makes the Western Hemisphere America's hegemonic playground. 

Trump's admiration of Xi and Putin is based in their willingness to violate international norms, which he has always wanted to do.

 This is a distraction from a lot of bad news. Millions of Americans are going to be priced out of health insurance in the next week. The Epstein files are trickling out. Trump's declining health is in the news. He's tremendously unpopular.

Trump - when cornered - commits outrageous acts to change the subject.

So, that's it. That's the nature of Trump's political persona in one lethal act.

More to follow.

UPDATE: Trump is basically saying we are going to annex Venezuela because of the oil.

The Corruption Is The Point

 If you want to get a really compelling vision of how Trump 2.0 has led to a web of shady dealings, kickbacks and grifts, The New York Times did a great job with this story.

New York

 I was hoping that the end of the mayoral election would mean being able to stop paying attention to NYC politics. 

I was naive. 

As Krugman points out, NYC is doing great. It's recovered from Covid in ways that place like San Francisco really hasn't (yet). Crime is down, life expectancy is up. Some good policy decisions, like congestion pricing, have worked; others are still up for grabs, and NYC is a great ground zero for "abundance" experimentation, when it comes to housing.

Having just driven to JFK yesterday, I can attest both that the area around Flushing has improved a lot over the last decade, it's still vaguely dystopian in its aesthetics. Business fronts just look dirty and tired. The Van Wyck remains the single worst road in America, with construction that has never ended. If you were from a small town, and flew into NY via JFK or even LaGuardia, you would probably think it was a failed city on the brink of collapse. 

But it's not. It's old and grungy, sure, but it works in it own chaotic way. It will be interesting to see what Mamdani can actually achieve, given NYC's fractious politics and power structures. I'd wager he does some good, but falls far short of the dreams of his most ardent supporters. 

Best of luck, New York. Except for the Mets.

Happy New Year

 It has to be better that the last one. 

Right?

Stephen Miller Almost Has A Point

Stephen Miller

@StephenM

What if I told you our national debt is the tab for the mass looting of the American economy and the mass theft of the American dream?

This was Nosferatu Cosplay enthusiast Stephen Miller's tweet this morning. It's a... bold claim. Yes, the National Debt is exploding, and that is beginning to have a negative effect on our economy. We are returning to something like the early '90s when government borrowing was driving up interest rates. In 1990, a 30 year mortgage carried around 10% interest. By 2000, it had dropped to 8% and the budget was balanced. At the beginning of the Great Recession, it had fallen to 6%. 

One of the real problems with the economy right now is a frozen housing market, despite the 30 year rate being around 6.5%. In 2016, as Obama left office, the national debt was $19.6 trillion. In 2020, as Trump left office, the debt had swelled to $26.9 trillion. After the pandemic and by the time Biden left office, it was up to $34T. In one year, Trump has added another $2T to the debt, despite not facing any significant headwinds, like a pandemic or recession. 

All of this means that we are headed for a debt crunch, and Miller seems to have gotten that message.

The problem is that we know what has driven the spike in debt: government spending exceeds revenues. As we are seeing and will continue to see, the reason why this happens is that we refuse to tax the very rich at levels that we see in other advanced economies. We still fund a massive national defense and a welfare state that - however patchy and insufficient - still provides a lot of benefits to millions of people.

Yes, we have a debt crisis looming, but it's not because of immigrants. It's because of Republicans.

The Unbearable Hypocrisy of MAGA

 Look, if you get upset about hypocrisy, you're going to be upset a lot. Still, the hypocrisy of MAGA is just too much to stomach. Here are two examples.

Trump has been launching illegal attacks on boats in the Pacific and Caribbean. As this report suggests, at least one of the attacks has probably killed marijuana traffickers. There is zero evidence that any of these boats are carrying Fentanyl, which is the purported casus belli behind the attacks. At any rate, Trump has pardoned maybe the largest money launderer in the world, because crypto. He's more or less legalized marijuana and pardoned numerous people affiliated with drugs but he's fine killing the poor people who are probably carrying pot or maybe cocaine while they are out fishing, because it's a way to make a quick buck. Now, they can't go more than a mile or two offshore to fish, because they might be killed by Stephen Miller's rage against people who put spice in their food.

The thing that has MAGA all frothy online is a story from a few year back about a massive fraud uncovered by Minnesota and federal law enforcement back in 2022. Many of the people involved are Somali-Americans, so this is a great way to be xenophobic, racist and also point a pale, quaking finger at Ilhan Omar. Yeah, it's fraud; yeah, it's a crime; yeah, they should go to jail.

However, Donald Trump has been convicted of fraud on several occasions. The election case in which he was found guilty in the spring of 2024 was effectively a fraud case. Trump "University" was found fraudulent in 2018. Trump's "charitable" Foundation settled allegations of fraud in 2019. 

What's more, it is difficult to list all the people convicted of fraud that Trump has pardoned - almost certainly in exchange for cash - since returning to office.

They don't care about drugs; they don't care about fraud. However, many in MAGA really do. They turned to Trump because their blighted communities - hollowed out by retail monopolies and declining job opportunities - have turned to opioids. This is why Miller and Rubio's plan to oust Maduro has been cloaked in attacks on fentanyl traffickers. They also feel cheated by a system that is rigged towards the rich and well connected - people who can commit fraud and get a presidential pardon.

If they ever realized how bad they've been played, then Trump's approval rating would be at 5%. 

The Billionaire Economy

 Yglesias makes a bullshit defense of billionaires - or more accurately, he erects some strawmen to knock down regarding anti-billionaire politics. It's true that many leftists and socialists have some nutty ideas about economics, and it you just go by the online posting of some of them, there are strawmen aplenty to attack.

The problem isn't exclusively billionaires and many billionaires are not exclusively evil people. The problem is that we have a system that tilts away from equality and towards plutocracy. The problem is that Republicans have stripped away campaign finance laws so that there is no way to regulate the millions that a billionaire can leverage to warp an election. This is fundamentally corrosive to democracy.

As Krugman points out, Republican policies purport to be "business friendly" but they are far more likely to hurt small business owners - many of whom vote Republican. The most obvious example is GOP hostility to the ACA, which many small business owners rely on. Tariffs are a new wrinkle created by Trump, but they are another policy that hurts small business owners.

I'd go further and note that rising inequality reduces consumer spending, which is an overall drag on the economy. How much of the recent GDP growth was simply building AI data centers and how much was consumer spending? One of the fundamental causes of the Great Depression was weak and narrow consumer spending. Demand fell, because whole segments of the economy had no disposable income. 

This seems to be the supply side argument of the so-called "Abundance" movement in the Democratic Party. Housing is a real problem and supply is part of it. (A sizable part of that supply issue is higher interest rates that freeze housing stock, but building more housing would be a net positive.) Reduce prices by increasing supply is not a crazy idea. There is the inevitable leftist pushback that Abundance doesn't solve everything, so what good is it really? 

Permitting reform is a good thing and not something that necessarily gores the oxen of Democratic constituencies. However, if you really want to increase housing stock, you very well need to fund it. If you want to help small businesses, you need to fund the ACA. If you want to develop a poorer region, you will need development funds.

That comes from taxes. I think we've reached a point where we need a far more aggressive and progressive capital gains tax regimen. We also need a wealth tax. 

One of Yglesias' arguments is that Elon Musk got rich by building something people need. The problem is that Musk is the richest man in the world not because Tesla makes the best or more affordable electric cars. They don't. He's the richest man in the world, because Tesla stock is ridiculously overvalued. Tesla makes money of its batteries, which are excellent, but Tesla is not a great automaker. Still, people think he's the future and are investing in Tesla stock accordingly. That seems, for lack of a better word, fake. 

What's more, that stock price - being inflated - absolutely should be taxed, especially if that tax money then turns around and funds the ACA or Medicaid or infrastructure or housing or whatever a society needs.

Shamelessness As A Superpower

 I think I've mentioned in passing that the Trumpist superpower is shamelessness. Richardson, in the course of her recap, mentions the increasing understanding of just how Trump is abusing his pardon power. There really is no restriction on the pardon power, though there is a prohibition on bribery. It seems that there is more than a little smoke in regards to bribery for pardons.

On December 23, Rebecca Ballhaus, Josh Dawsey, and C. Ryan Barber of the Wall Street Journal examined Trump’s use of the president’s pardoning power to cash in, with “lobbyists close to Trump” saying that “their going rate to advocate for a pardon is $1 million.” Some of those eager for a presidential pardon have offered lobbyists as much as $6 million if they succeed.

The Justice Department’s former pardon attorney, Liz Oyer, was fired in March. She told the Wall Street Journal reporters that Trump “appears to be considering political, personal and financial interests and not the interests of the American public,” subverting the pardon process.

Trump sees everything as a business deal. Everything is a transaction that he either "wins" or "loses." We cannot be surprised if he is simply accepting bribes in return for pardons - or that the corrupt legions around him are doing so. If you are a Trump Loyalist, you can freely accept bribes knowing that Trump will pardon you on his way out the door. Given the near impossibility of their being 67 votes in the Senate to convict under impeachment, Trump knows he's immune.

The evidence of that corruption is therefore not likely to result in criminal charges. All that is left is the public shame of being a corrupt hack...but if you have no shame to begin with, then the final measure of consequence and thus of reining in their criminality is removed.

Hopeful

 Richardson flags something I missed. SCOTUS ruled that Trump could not deploy the National Guard without satisfying the stringent requirements of the Posse Comitatus Act. Basically, unless Congress authorizes martial law, the President may not nationalize the National Guard for law enforcement purposes. What Richardson flagged was Brett "I Like Beet" Kavanaugh wrote in a footnote.

Earlies, Kavanaugh had written a decision allowing people to be stopped for the probable cause of their ethnicity. Guilty on account of being Brown. These became known as "Kavanaugh Stops" which must have stung a bit, because the new footnote reads as follows.

The Fourth Amendment requires that immigration stops must be based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence, stops must be brief, arrests must be based on probable cause, and officers must not employ excessive force. Moreover, the officers must not make interior immigration stops or arrests based on race or ethnicity.”

We have work to do when it comes to restoring meaningful democracy in this country and for the most part SCOTUS - with its 6-3 Republican majority - stands in the way of that. 

However, Kavanaugh clearly amended his previous position either because he felt he was misinterpreted or because the phrase "Kavanaugh Stops" stung. 

You can't shame MAGA. Their shamelessness is their super power. But maybe you can shame some of the Republicans that are otherwise enabling this shitshow.

Yeah, That's Odd and Stupid and Dangerous

 Martin Longman notes something I noted when I heard it. Yesterday's strikes in Nigeria don't make a ton of sense geographically. Most of the ISIS/Boko Haram activity has been in northeast Nigeria, not the northwest. What's more, while we coordinated with the Nigerian government, that government does not want to make this a sectarian conflict. Nigeria works very hard but only somewhat successfully at keeping the idea of sectarian violence in the background. The Muslim/Christian divisions in the country are very strong and often violent, even without the psychopaths in Boko Haram making things worse.

It seems that if you want Trump to do something - as he did in this case - you just have to get it on Fox News. We heard this in his first administration; Trump doesn't (can't?) read, so he gets most of his "information" from the TeeVee. This is...suboptimal. This is why Hague-seth is Secretary of Defense and Tulsi Gabbard is DNI: they were on Fox.

This really is the stupidest timeline.